"No, I came straight here after I saw it. Haven't even finished my rounds yet. You want me to have someone from the maintenance shop go up and fix the door?"
"No, Mike." Katzer said. "Don’t' tell anyone else just yet. Fix the door yourself. I want to read over our insurance policy again before I file a police report. I might try to handle this one under the table with the Beckel family. If I remember correctly, they seemed easy to deal with, so maybe I can work out an arrangement. Avoid negative publicity. I'd rather the media not get a hold of it."
"I understand." The man stood and walked toward the door.
"Thanks, Mike." Katzer called out.
The man didn't stop, just a raised a hand in acknowledgement.
He was wrong about his mother's reaction. Heidi Katzer sat in his office and seemed to take the news in stride. She actually seemed happy about it. He figured she was just having a good day. At her age the chasms in her moods swings were massive and, it seemed, dependent on how she felt that day. When she felt good, she was almost giddy. When she felt bad, she was a bear. The night she tortured and killed the woman had been a bad day, he thought.
"This is good news," she said.
"Good news?" Scott said. "How the hell is this good news?"
"Don't you see? If someone wanted to see inside Andrew Beckel's grave that proves the book has been found. And it means that Ashley Regan has the book." She smiled a devilish grin. "Imagine her surprise when she found it empty."
"It was probably not the first one she's hit." Scott said.
"That makes it even better."
"I don't understand. Why would that make it better?"
"Because it being empty was unexpected. It'll knock her off kilter." Heidi grabbed a small bottle from her purse and rubbed lotion over her wrinkled hands. "And if she's off kilter, she may make a mistake. When that happens, we got her…and my journal."
20
After the tenth ring Ashley Regan hung up. Sam Connors still wasn't answering the phone. It had been two weeks since their argument on the phone. She tried to explain her need to stay longer with her distraught friend Christa, but Sam pitched one of her hissy fits. Apparently Sam couldn't understand why Ashley would take so much time off work over a friend's relationship problems. In a way, Sam had a point, but when Sam hung up on her, Ashley didn't call her back right away.
She assumed by now Sam would be over her temperamental refusal to communicate. It had always been how she handled discord between them. She'd get mad, storm off, and refuse to speak. On the phone or face-to-face. Although a bit immature, she still was a caring, loving partner. Flaws and all.
Christa was driving the rental car, a Chevy Impala they'd paid cash in advance for a one-week rental. Their next stop was a small family plot in Butler, Tennessee. If the journal was accurate, that's where they would hit the jackpot. But the journal had been wrong in Nashville. The casket in the marble crypt did not contain the item listed in the journal. None of the caskets in the crypt contained it either. And for the first time since their adventure began, Regan and Christa came away empty handed.
The turn of bad luck began in Dahlonega when a cop making his nightly rounds spotted their car in the cemetery. She and Christa ducked when they saw headlights coming down the street and panicked when the cruiser pulled into the cemetery. They grabbed their gear, tossed it in the car, and fled the cemetery while the cop car was on the adjacent part of the circular drive. Fortunately for them, he didn't pursue.
Their first mistake. Regan was determined that was their last. She'd been careful to ensure their movements were untraceable. She didn't want to be 'on the grid' as they say. Everything paid for in cash. No credit cards to track their movements. They changed rental cars after each cemetery. And now that Christa had scored them fake driver's licenses, Regan felt untouchable.
She wanted to start with the local Charleston graveyard but resisted the temptation. The small out-of-town cemeteries were less of a risk so she opted to practice on cemeteries with very little traffic reducing their chance of getting caught. She had never dug up anything the size of a casket before and wanted to make a test run to determine what unexpected problems might be encountered. She was convinced that trial and error practice would help them gain the skills they needed to get in, retrieve the secreted item, and get out without being detected…or caught.
Their first attempt was a bust. They were unprepared. After more planning, Regan and Christa developed an equipment list and made another trip to an out-of-town hardware store to acquire the tools necessary to accomplish the task. Next, a dry run on a cemetery not listed in the journal. That rehearsal proved helpful and warranted another trip to a different hardware store. Now, the two women knew they were ready.
She was nervous when they finally hit the Charleston cemetery, the same cemetery her parents were buried in. Her hands shook with anticipation of what they would discover. She kept expecting the unexpected to happen any minute. It didn't. Regan and Christa were in and out of the graveyard in record time, prize in hand.
Nestled on Watauga Lake in the northeastern corner of Tennessee, Butler was a long drive from Charleston. Regan and Christa made a stop in Banner Elk, North Carolina for the night. The hotel was a cheap imitation log cabin lodge with ten rooms. While she was checking in she noticed the neon sign hanging over the entrance change from "VACANCY" to "NO VACANCY." The manager seemed to appreciate the cash she presented at check-in and asked no questions.
When they got to their room, Regan tossed her bag on the floor. "I guess this is their idea of 'rustic charm.' I have another description for it."
Christa Barnett flipped on the bathroom light. "Looks clean in here." She walked over to a bed and pulled down the sheets. "Beds are clean. Linen's been changed. So it ain't the Hilton, big deal. It's only for a couple of nights."
"Thieves can't be choosey, right?" Regan laughed.
"Let's go eat, I'm starving." Christa walked toward the door.
She pulled out her cell phone. "Let me try calling Sam again, then we'll go." She dialed the number and let it ring. When Connors voice mail answered, she hung up.
"Guess she's still pissed, huh?" Christa said. "She's acting kind of childish, don't you think?"
"I guess so. It's not like her to give me the silent treatment for this long." Ashley Regan couldn't imagine why Sam still wouldn't answer. They'd had spats in the past but none had ever lasted more than a day or two.
Jake pushed the backpack strap higher on his right shoulder while he waited for Francesca to authenticate her identity to gain entrance into the Commonwealth Consultants building from the subterranean parking garage. After she entered, it was his turn. Only one at a time was allowed through the door. Those were Wiley's security rules and the guards, all former Special Forces, got upset if the rules weren't obeyed.
The seven-story, all-glass building in Fairfax, Virginia was deceptive in appearance since the only windows in the entire building were in the top-floor penthouse suite. Behind the exterior glass veneer were two steel-reinforced solid concrete walls. Between each wall a two-inch lead lining. No signals got in. No signals got out. Even the penthouse had lead-lined walls and lead infused glass windows. If anyone knew how to shield a building, it was Elmore Wiley.
Jake entered the same 24-character password into the keypad followed by a thumbprint on the scanner. The door clicked and he entered the lobby through an enhanced body-screening unit. The unit didn't screen for weapons, since weapons weren't unusual at Commonwealth. Its technology was more sophisticated. The unit sniffed for explosives and scanned for electronic eavesdropping devices on everyone and everything that entered the building.