THE DEPARTURE

by Jan Matthews

The elevator lurched to a stop as the interior light flickered and went out. In the twilight, I eyed my prisoner; hands cuffed behind his back, blue eyes like stones thrown into a gaunt face.

Paranoia gripped me. His followers were many. I forced the stony look back at him, knowing he wasn't intimidated by a woman, hardware and all. Not a male cop, either, as he had spit at the burly desk sergeant on his way in.

Two rival and bloody factions had split the cult recently, and our small northern town had become the battleground.

Someone, I couldn't help but think, might have staged the power outage to get him free, though trapping us here could also be the preliminary to removing him from this world altogether.

“You will die for me,” he abruptly intoned.

I knew too well to listen to the warnings of my superiors, my partner Wes, and the deprogrammer who had advised us every step of the way leading to the arrest of the murderous leader of the New Light Church . I considered myself immune from his infection. He was a con man who could read his target's psyche with razor-sharp precision, swallowing completely the minds they offered to him on their knees, begging to be saved. I felt my lip curl into a sneer, the only visible sign that I heard him.

“We will kill you, too,” he said.

In the beginning, my partner Wes did not have a personal stake in our case. It had been assigned to us, at first, as a squabble between neighbors. But his daughter Hannah and her husband Sonny were pulled into the dark gravity of a group of what seemed to be benign, retro-hippies on the hill, their back-to-the-land ideals shrouded in an obscure text, and living communally at the old Brighton farmhouse.

Once they were in, and Wes started exhibiting signs of losing his perspective, as the Captain informed him unkindly, I stayed on the case, answering the calls involving border disputes and noise complaints, talking to the neighbors. I spoke to the same two people at the farmhouse, with always the same result of feeling a door shutting in my face even standing in the dooryard surrounded by pecking chickens.

It was Wes who got on the internet on his own after the captain found out about Hannah and Sonny. Wes made contact with the deprogrammer, a psychologist who knew the leader well. Soon after, a west coast journalist tapped him. She had been following the story since the first complaints were registered with local police of missing family members known to be a part of the group, the cult, and on websites dedicated to exposing fraudulent religious groups. Parents and spouses, siblings and friends waited anxiously on the west coast to hear that the deprogrammer had rescued their loved ones, their lost ones. More eyes were on the group now; my eyes became more discerning, trying to see past neighbors' complaints of noises and lights in the dead of night, and always hoping for a glimpse of Hannah and Sonny.

“Don't get your hopes up,” I said in my in my bored, we-do-this-all-the-time voice. “It's just an old building.” A muscle twitched in my arm, force of will keeping my hand away from my sidearm.

“Maybe,” baring his teeth, “maybe not. We will kill you. We will kill you first.”

I put a sharper edge in my voice to cut through his crap. “Who do you think you are, anyway?”

Oh, man, wrong question, Callahan.

“The next evolution. The first soul of the New Light Church in the new millennium. Heroes of the next order.” He didn't have to shout. His voice held the rock solid belief I'd been warned about and witnessed. The utter insanity that was the glue of his belief might get him off on a non comp if he was willing to cop to it. The thought made me sick.

“You and a dozen other crackpots,” I said, my gut churning, “except you are going down for Murder One.”

We both heard the odd noise, a low, sustained, mechanical creaking that was not moving us up or down. Manny smiled upwards, then looked at me. The smile was predatory, and he didn't have to say it as it echoed in my mind.

The police station has four stories above ground, and we were coming down from the holding cells at the top. I was escorting him from our lockup to the van waiting downstairs to take him to the county jail. In the event of a power loss in the building, we had been told, the elevator car would return automatically, albeit slowly, to the first floor.

I did not like the way my guts hammered at me in the close half-light, the shark-eyed man repeating his ravenous mantra. I could hear their voices calling in the dark and felt a chill of displacement with the effort of retaining control. I felt chained to this beast in human clothing. The elevator still remained stopped between two floors. I tried to focus on at least one familiar voice, willing it to be George the maintenance guy. Their voices distorted in the shaft, in the semi-darkness, and in this creature's murderous glare.

I reached for the phone, but it had not worked in years. When was the last time this thing was inspected? My two-way on my hip transmitted nothing but the hiss of empty air. I pressed the talk button, spoke briefly, but got no reply.

“They've come for me. You should pray.” His voice pried at me to loosen my hold on reality, to cling on to him. “It is the hour of your death.”

Or yours, I thought. And I have to protect your ass from your own flint-tailed, pitch-forked devils coming for you. I let my eyes bear the message. No insanity cop-out for you, Manny Constantin. Your own henchman think they can do a better job than you at tormenting lost and weary souls from one coast to the other. Free or in jail, you are standing in their way. They'll make a martyr of you, but, if I could, I would toss you to them myself.

Manny actually blinked, eyes cutting to the mute doors. I didn't say it, in order to keep from provoking another rant. Standing in the twilight of emergency lights with ominous, anonymous banging and creaking, more than one voice echoing in the elevator's shaft was starting to slash at my last nerve. Drained after spending less than 10 minutes with Manny, I tasted how his victims must have felt after weeks of indoctrination.

I did not fully believe it was his followers come to rescue him, though I had to analyze it on different levels. A simple break down of an old elevator. But why didn't they answer the two-way? If his followers had come to free him, if his former followers had returned to kill him, I had to protect him. They had to go through me to kill or save him.

How hard could it be to tamper with the elevator, I wondered. I wondered if he knew, if they had planned it all along…

Cut it out, Callahan, I ordered myself. You are freaking yourself out.

I kept my thoughts on Hannah. On Sonny.

Just two days ago, I had walked into town from my little cabin in the woods on my day off. Out of uniform, in jeans and a flannel shirt soft on my skin, and a Red Sox cap over my short dark blonde hair; in the mirror a small women who had barely passed the Academy height requirement. Stronger than I look, usually to my advantage, I had a small gun in the holster at my back, nestled like a dangerous and secretive bird. I wore it all the time, even on a day when walking was the only thing keeping me from going crazy with worry in the cabin. I worried about Hannah, about Wes. I fretted over the warnings from the deprogrammer and other professionals about the escalations in violence in this kind of situation, and the signs to watch for. People went missing in this group, this from the deprogrammer and the journalist, and had yet to be found.

The worst news we got was of the Departure, a wilderness exodus Manny was planning, heading north to Canada where our alien eyes could not follow.

Barry has a small country-style store with a broad wooden porch and gas pumps in front. I had one foot on the lower step when they came out. I hadn't seen the van, apparently, behind an SUV with out-of-state plates. Inside, as the door opened, raised voices filled the little store. I only saw the two of them.

Hannah and Sonny.

Strangely, they had no bags, and I had a feeling the raised voices inside were one or both of the leaders of the group. I was grabbing to keep a fragile thread of relationship between us in the shadows of the porch. I was not in uniform, I thought with relief. Eye contact, a smile, reaching out my hand, anything to rekindle a light in those dead, angry eyes. I had known her since she was thirteen. I did not know Sonny, someone she met in college. In the shadows, Sonny pulled on her arm as if to go back inside, recognizing me. Even as they started to turn, the voices got louder, and they hesitated, trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.

I remember how bright the day, sun, clouds, great banners of blue sky. How dark the distance between us.

The elevator shook as if someone had yanked on its umbilicus, a preliminary to our descent. Wes, taken from his case in the light of mounting evidence that this group was usually the last to see a short list of folks alive, and that his daughter had not been kidnapped, but lived among them willingly, kept pushing. Did the research, contacted the families, the deprogrammer, kept talking with the journalist who had received death threats she could only associate to members of the NLC. Weapons would appear, all were sure, in the hands of the benign hippies on the hill, inevitably. Gunfire would split the night after one more heated exchange between Manny and Brother John, like the one now in Barry's store.

Down below, it should have been my partner Wes waiting for us, to escort the fallen leader of the NLC who, like a tapeworm, had finally outgrown his host. However, Wes had not survived the emotional battle and lay in chemical restraint at the local hospital.

On the porch, Hannah shook her head at me, made a shooing motion, and cut her eyes to Sonny. I thought to Sonny, then. Now, in retrospect, the warning was about those inside, the wolves howling at each other in the aisles between bagels and boxes of cereal. A warning. Brother John and Manny inside having the start of the big break up before the Departure. I distrusted Sonny, blamed him for keeping them in, but it was both of them searching for that simple, communal, back-to-the-land way of life.

“Please, Hannah,” I said with my hand out. The gun was at my back. What if I just took her?

“No, Cathy,” she whispered, waving me off. Sonny's eyes blazed up as heavy-stepping, booted feet came closer to the other side of Barry's screen door. Barry was telling them to scram, before he called the cops. “Oh, please, Cathy, get out of the way before…”

Sonny grabbed her hand, rushed her down the steps. He banged right into me so hard I took a step back, but he grabbed my hand.

“She doesn't need you and your induslave ways.” He spat it at me loud enough to impact on my eardrum. Then he let my hand go. The screen door opened with an angry squeal and slammed shut. Brother John and Manny stood watching a moment before they came down the steps, also empty-handed.

“Get in the van.” Manny said, and they did. They drove away.

“Cath? You okay? Sit down girl, you look stunned.”

I was stunned. In my hand was the weary half of a matchbook. He must have been carrying it around for a long time, hoping. Sonny had written help us.

“I need your phone, Barry,” I told him.

Hannah and Sonny, I thought, stuck with the wolf in the elevator. What gave them away? Was it the flick of an eye, a flash of guilt or fear? Or was it me, standing there like an idiot with my hand out?

When we descended on the farmhouse, we found their bodies in the broken-back barn with a blanket thrown over them. It was obvious they had hurt her to make him talk. Then they had left. Abandoning the place with no time to hide the bodies, we finally had our case. With some Federal help, we tracked Manny down in the woods not far from the border, John remaining at large.

The elevator began its slow descent. The fear I smelled was my own. Manny smiled as if I had offered him a bouquet of flowers.

What would I do? There was only one way in or out. I would shove him down and get down low myself, my eye always on my prisoner, and the goal that waiting van. If they had subdued the others, though I had not heard gunfire, not yet, I could not depend on them. If they had not, the sounds of a struggle would bring them like the cavalry down on us.

If I spoke, I would give my fear away. I glared, putting as much fire and hate into it as I could, imagining him in flames, in torment, in Hell.

Three, passing the third floor.

It's warm, it's hot. Like the building's on fire.

He said, watching the trickle of sweat down my face, “Fire purges. Fire purifies.”

I bit hard on the inside of my cheek.

Two.

“Are you scared? Who's waiting for us, Officer Callahan?”

I said, “The death penalty for you. My dinner for me.”

One.

The doors hesitated, then began to open. A rush of cold air stirred me.

“Move out,” I told him.

The lights flashed back on, power restored. The doors closed before we could unlock ourselves from our mad embrace, the hatred coiled around us. The elevator moved downward again. The basement. Manny eyed the now flashing panel, and though his expression did not change, I noticed a tightening of his jaw lasting about two beats, a code for fear.

His fear.

Then I knew for sure they were here. Fire Department lockout. Someone had the key and was bringing us to them. The power outage plan had failed.

The car settled in the basement. Not our original destination, but he was cuffed, and I was armed. His breath came fast, a pulse beating hard in his neck. Anger crossed his face, disbelief, then---

Was that hope?

The doors clacked open again. He shoved me hard with his bony shoulder, out of his way, and in a choreographed movement meant to awe and inspire the gullible folk who had come for him, he jumped out of the car, arms in cruciform, the cuffs dangling from his wrists, a dark Houdini.

Shocked, I cried out: “Bastard!” All that time he'd spent working at the cuffs for this moment.

A single shot took him down.

My reeling mind assumed it was Brother John, hell-bent on replacing his master. A battle had indeed occurred here. John lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, not far from his previous master. Manny's rescue had been imminent, and I yanked my gun from the holster, adrenaline flinging me to the next level of awareness.

“Don't come out, Cathy.” It was Wes's voice, broken by grief, by despair. “Just go back up, hear me?” Before I could open my mouth to protest, to step out and reach for him, he twisted the key in the panel. I heard another shot, and the automatic doors shut in my face.