the Program (2004) Read online

  The Program

  Gregg Hurwitz

  *

  SUMMARY: In this powerful follow-up to his action-packed thriller The Kill Clause, Gregg Hurwitz, the new maestro of pulse-pounding suspense, ratchets up the excitement with another sensational page-turner featuring Tim Rackley, a driven lawman motivated by honor, morality, and a deep sense of justice. Called back into the fold of the U.S. Marshals Service, Tim is tasked with retrieving Leah Henning, the daughter of a powerful Hollywood producer, from a mind-control cult. As Tim wends his way deep undercover into an insidious operation called The Program, he confronts a brand of mind-warping manipulation beyond his worst expectations. Tim becomes enmeshed with a diverse band of characters -- from the charismatic, messianic leader T. D. Betters to a cult reject burnout to the intelligent yet highly vulnerable Leah herself -- and finds himself caught in a shadowy landscape of lies, manipulation, and terror. At stake: innocent minds -- maybe even his own.

  PROLOGUE:

  To the bemusement of the tourists and a third-grade class shepherded by a portly teacher, the woman crouched naked near the fourteen-foot mammoth and urinated. Her hands gripped the kinked-wire fence encircling the vast Lake Pit, the La Brea Tar Pits' main attraction. Her face was smooth and unlined; she could still have been a teenager.

  A few of the children laughed. A stout man in a white Vandyke and a pinstripe shirt ceased his lethargic tapping on a set of bongos, gathered up the bills he'd accrued in an overturned boater, and scurried off. A golden-years tourist clucked disapproval, clasping her strap-held camera to her side. Her husband gazed on, mouth slightly ajar, as if unsure whether the vision before him was real or a preview of senility.

  Heedless that her ankles were getting splattered, the young woman stared through the fence at the fiberglass family of Columbian mammoths, life-size props for the prehistoric death trap. The baby mammoth stood in its father's shadow on shore, watching its mother mired in the hardened surface a stone's throw out. The mother stayed snapshot-frozen in her sinking terror, her upper legs midflail, trunk extended.

  Farther into the lake, the tar crust gave way to a murky brown liquid that fumed and bubbled with eruptions of methane. The sludge beneath the surface housed the world's richest deposit of Ice Age fossils. A thick, oppressive smell pervaded the area -- equal parts sulfur dioxide and baked Nevada highway.

  The woman turned to face the crowd, and it froze, as if this rail-skinny girl were wired with explosives. Her inside-out panties lay where she'd kicked them off, crowning the heap of clothes to her left. The backs of her arms were purple, contused from elbow to shoulder.

  "Why isn't anyone helping?" the naked woman implored the onlookers. "Can't you see? Can't you see what's going on?"

  The teacher blew into the whistle dangling around his neck, withdrawing his class to the picnic area near the rest rooms. A two-man security team motored up on a golf cart, cutting through the thickening mass of gawkers. The driver hopped out, face shiny with sweat. His partner stayed in the cart, fingers drumming nervously on the security decal; dealing with a naked woman pissing on county property was a far cry from tending to sunstrokes and graffiti.

  Backhanding moisture off his forehead, the driver spoke into his radio. "Is LAPD on the way?"

  From the burst of responding static resolved a few security catch-phrases. "...backup en route...crowd control...detain the perpetrator...."

  He plucked at the front of his blue shirt. "Ma'am, please put your clothes back on. There are children present."

  An appeal to common decency wasn't the shrewdest approach when facing a naked crazy person.

  Cars had backed up on Wilshire Boulevard, parallel to the fence on the lake's south side; spectators were standing on top of a bus shelter for a better vantage. Onlookers streamed over to the scene. At the west edge of the park in the cafe of the neighboring county museum, the windows were all but blotted out with faces wearing blank expressions of morbid curiosity. A KCOM cameraman tripped over a cable and went down, cracking his lens and bloodying his palms.

  The girl's head pivoted frantically as she suddenly became aware of the commotion. Her chest heaved. When she spotted the four blue-uniformed officers cutting through the crowd, she sprinted along the fence, to a proliferation of gasps and shrieks from the crowd. At the south edge of the lake, a break in the fence accommodated a low cast-iron bridge. She vaulted deftly over its side, landing on the strip of dirt, and scurried back near her previous post, this time just inside the enclosure.

  Three of the cops froze on the other side of the fence; the fourth followed her route and paused with one black boot up on the bridge's rail. The girl's eyes darted, terrified pupils held in crescents of white. "Can't you help? Why won't you help?"

  One of the cops, the oldest, eased forward, gesturing down the fence line for his partner on the bridge to stay put. "We're here to help."

  She walked down the slope to the father and baby mammoth at the shore's edge, treading on yellow flowers.

  A note of alarm found its way into the veteran cop's voice. "Ma'am, just hold up now. Please don't go any nearer."

  The girl rested an arm on the baby's side, staring out at the doomed mother who remained sunk in the sludge, rocking slightly in her perennial grave. The girl was crying now, shoulders heaving, wiping tears off her cheeks with the back of a slender hand. The air was filled with an electric charge, the anticipation of something horrific about to occur.

  The other officers were fighting to calm the spectators, who were shouting advice to the cop and demands to the girl. She remained lost in herself.

  "Get them back!" the veteran cop shouted. "Get up a perimeter. Let's get this girl some space."

  His hand was still extended, holding his partner on the bridge in place. He tried to keep his voice calm and reassuring while speaking loudly enough for the girl to hear him over the commotion. "My partner there, his name is Michael. He's gonna wait right there until you're ready for him to come down. Then, when you decide, we can come help you take care of that mammoth."

  A burst of bubbles broke through the thick tar near the female mammoth, creating a momentary pool before the crust re-formed. The girl turned back to the lake. The cop on the bridge tensed like a retriever at the edge of a duck blind.

  "Wait!" the officer shouted. "Talk to me. Tell me what I can do."

  She stopped and gazed at him. Her face held a sudden calm, the calm of determination. "The Teacher says to exalt strength, not comfort."

  She turned and strode out onto the lake's tar surface. The cop on the bridge leapt down, but he was a good thirty yards away. The older cop was yelling, veins straining in his neck, and the spectators went mad with a sort of frenzied, hypnotic motion, like concert viewers or soccer fans. The girl's bare feet slapped the black surface, which started to give as she neared the enormous female mammoth twenty yards from shore. The crust gave with a wet sucking sound under her next step, and she screamed. Her arms shot up and out, and she struck the thin layer of congealed tar with her right knee and elbow, both of which immediately adhered to it.

  The crowd surged and ebbed, drawn and repulsed.

  The girl tried to pull herself up, a gooey sheet forming between her trapped arm and the lake's surface, but then her hip stuck and she rolled to her side, the tar claiming her hair. One of her legs punched through the crust into the brown liquid below, and her body shifted and started a slow submersion. Still she struggled toward the mammoth.

  The cop from the bridge was standing on shore, and the veteran cop was still shouting -- "Get a rope! Throw her a goddamn rope!" -- both meaty hands fisting the wire rectangles in the fence so tight his fingers had gone white.

  The girl strained to keep her face
free and clear, pulling against her entangled hair so hard it distorted her features. Aside from her panicked eyes, she seemed weirdly calm, almost acquiescent. Both of her arms were mired now, her lower body nearly lost, and the crowd watched with horrified apprehension as she sputtered, a quivering, sinking bulge. Her face, the sole oval of remaining white, pointed up at the midday sun, sucking a few last gasps before it, too, filled and quieted, enveloped beneath the surface.

  The crowd was suddenly silent, deflated. From the throng emerged the sound of one person sobbing, then another. Within seconds a chorus of cries was raised.

  The veteran cop was on the radio, sending for an aerial ladder truck from the fire department, shouting across the receiver between transmissions for security to locate a garden hose. He'd sweated through his undershirt and uniform, the dark blue turning black in patches. When his partner reached him, he was still staring at the dented ring of tar where the girl had disappeared.

  His lips barely moved when he spoke. "What the hell could make a person do something like that?"

  The tar slowly constricted around the spot where the girl had sunk, until it again formed an oblivious, smooth sheet.

  Chapter one

  Dray walked briskly through the kitchen and entry, wiping barbecue sauce on her olive sheriff's - department - issue pants, which she still hadn't had time to change out of. She pulled open the front door, and the image hit her like a truck -- husky detective in a cheap suit thumbing a bound notepad, dark Crown Vic idling curbside behind him, partner waiting in the passenger seat, taking a pass on the advise - next - of - kin.

  The detective crowded the door, imposing and cocky, which further added to her disorientation. "Andrea Rackley? Mrs. Tim Rackley?"

  Ears ringing, she shook her head hard. "No." She took a step back and leaned on the entry table, displacing a tealight holder that rolled off the edge, shattering on the tile. "No."

  The man's forehead creased. "Are you all right, ma'am?"

  "I just talked to him. He was in the car, heading home. He was fine."

  "Excuse me? I'm not sure what you..."

  He lowered his pad, which she saw was not a detective's notepad but a PalmPilot encased in fine leather. Her darting eyes took in that his suit was not cheap but a fine cashmere, the car was in fact a maroon Mercedes S-class, and the partner was not a partner at all but a woman with a wan face, waiting behind like a well-trained dog.

  The flood of relief was accompanied by a torrent of sentence fragments even she couldn't keep up with. "You don't come to the door of a law-enforcement family all somber asking for a next - of - kin ID already lost someone in the family my God --"

  She leaned shakily against the wall, catching her breath. A draft sucked the doorknob from her grasp. Startled, the man skipped back, lost his footing at the step, and spilled backward, landing hard on his affluent ass.

  Dray had a split second to note the pain and alarm register in the wide ovals of his eyes before the door slammed shut.

  Tim stifled a yawn as he pulled into his cul - de - sac, the starch - stiff security-guard monkey suit itching him at the collar and cuffs. His baton sat heavy on his equipment belt, along with a low-tech portable the size of a Cracker Jack box, which seemed like a toy company's idea of a radio rather than the thing itself. A big comedown from his beloved Smith & Wesson .357 and the sleek Racals he'd used as a deputy U.S. marshal before his own shitty judgment in the wake of his daughter's violent death had forced him from the Service.

  Yesterday he'd chased down a teen vandal at the facility where he worked on the northern lip of Simi Valley. The pursuit represented the second time he'd broken a sweat in the eleven months he'd been guarding RightWay Steel Company's storage warehouses; the first had been unglamorously instigated by a roadside-stand enchilada mole he'd injudiciously wolfed down on a lunch break. Eleven years as an Army Ranger, three kicking in doors with the U.S. Marshals Service warrant squad, and now he was a locker-room commando with a diminished paycheck. His current coworkers got winded bending over to tie their shoes, which seemed to come undone with such alarming frequency that he'd spent the majority of the monotonous morning debating whether to volunteer proficiency training on the matter. The old man's groan he'd inadvertently emitted while stooping to pick up a dropped key outside Warehouse Five had leached the superiority right out of him, and he'd spent the afternoon valiantly refraining from doughnuts.

  He was reminding himself that he should be grateful for any work when movement on his walkway drew his attention. A man stood appraising his suit, dusting off the pant legs as if he'd just taken a spill.

  Tim accelerated sharply, almost clipping a parked Navigator with tinted windows. He pulled into his driveway and hopped out as the man smoothed his clothes back into place. A woman had climbed out of the Mercedes at the curb and was standing meekly at the end of the walk.

  Tim approached the man, keeping the woman in his field of vision. "Who are you? Press?"

  The man held up his hands as if conceding defeat. He still hadn't caught his breath. "I'm here to...speak with...Tim Rackley. Marshal Tannino gave me your address."

  The mention of his former boss stopped Tim dead on the lawn. He and Tannino hadn't spoken for the better part of a year; they'd been very close when Tim worked under his supervision, but Tim last saw him in the midst of a storm of controversy Tim had brought down on himself and the Service.

  "Oh," Tim said. "I'm sorry. Why don't you come in?"

  The man patted the seat of his pants, wet with runoff from the sprinklers. He glanced at the door nervously. "Truth be told," he said, "I'm a bit afraid of your wife."

  The kitchen smelled sharply of burned chicken. Dray had forsaken her corn on the cob for a three-finger pour of vodka. "I'm sorry. Something about it -- the knock, his expression -- put me back there, the night Bear came to tell us about Ginny." She set her glass down firmly on the stack of overdue bills at the counter's edge.

  Tim ran his fingers through her hair and let them rest on her shoulders. She leaned into him, face at his neck.

  "I thought my heart would just give out there at the door. Good-bye, Andrea, hasta la vista, sayonara, I've fallen and can't get up."

  Her voice was raised and, Tim was fairly certain, audible to the couple sitting on the couch one room over.

  "He's a friend of the marshal's," Tim said softly. "Let's sit down, see what he wants. Deal?"

  Dray finished her vodka in a gulp. "Deal."

  They shook hands and headed into the living room, Dray refilling her glass on the way.

  The woman sat on the couch, a gold cross glittering against her sweater. The man stood at the sliding glass doors facing the backyard, hands clasped behind his back, his stoic posture undercut by the moist patch of trouser plastered to his rear end. He pivoted as if just taking note of their entrance and nodded severely. "Let's start over." He extended a big, rough hand. "Will Henning. My wife, Emma."

  Tim shook his hand, but Dray stood where she was, arms crossed. Copies of The Lovely Bones, gifted eight or so times by well-intentioned acquaintances, occupied the shelf behind her, the bluish stack accentuating her light hair. "What can we help you with?"

  Will pulled a fat wallet from his back pocket, flipped it open, and withdrew a snapshot from the fold. He gestured impatiently for Tim to take it, his face averted as if he didn't want Tim to read the pain in it. A posed high-school-graduation photo of a girl. Pretty but awkward. A bit of an overbite, front tooth slightly angled, mournful green-gray eyes that were almost impossibly big and beautiful. Straight, shoulder-length hair that shagged out at the edges. Her neck was too thin for her head, lending her a certain fragility. Understated chin, full cheeks. The kind of face Tim had seen described as "heart-shaped" on fugitive identifiers; the term had stuck because he'd never before found it to make sense.

  Tim's eyes pulled to the much-publicized school photo of Ginny on the mantel. Her second-grade year. And her last.

  "I'm so sorry," Tim said. "When
was she killed?"

  Over on the couch, Emma made a little gasp. Her first peep.

  Will took the picture back from Tim abruptly, casting a protective eye over at his wife. "She's not dead. At least we hope not. She's...well, sort of missing. Except she's eighteen --"

  "Nineteen," Emma said. "Just turned."

  "Right, nineteen. Since she's not a minor, we have no legal recourse. She's gotten herself in with one of these cults. Not like the Jehovah's Witnesses, but one of those creepy, mind-control, self-help deals. Except more dangerous."

  Tim said, "Have you tried --"

  "The goddamn cops have been useless. Won't even file a missing person's. We've tried every law-enforcement agency -- FBI, CIA, LAPD -- but there are virtually no resources devoted to cults. No one cares unless they turn Waco."

  "Her name," Tim said.

  "Leah. She's my stepdaughter, from Emma's first marriage. Her real father died of stomach cancer when she was four."

  "She was a student at Pepperdine." Emma's voice was brittle and slightly hoarse, as if she had to strain to reach audibility.

  Tim's eyes returned to Emma's cross pendant, this time making out Jesus' tiny hanging form.

  "Three months ago we got a phone call from her roommate. She said Leah had dropped out. She said she was in a cult, that we'd better find her or we'd never see her again."

  "She came home once," Will said. "March thirteenth, out of the blue. My men and I tried to reason with her but she...uh, escaped out the bathroom window, and we haven't seen or heard from her since."

  He was the kind of man who had men.

  "I'm sorry," Dray said. "I don't mean to be rude, and I understand how painful this is for you, but what does this have to do with Tim?"

  Will looked to Tim. "We're familiar with your...work. Marco -- Marshal Tannino -- confirmed that you were a brilliant investigator. He said you used to be a great deputy --" He caught himself. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way."

  Tim shrugged. "That's okay. I'm not a deputy marshal anymore." The edge in his voice undercut his casual tone.