Black Fall
Dedication
Dedicated to “Princess Irene,” Irene Larsen
Civilized Sciences
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years
It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws could be sustained under the existing legal framework if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger society.
Civilized Sciences Foundation, CSF Congressional Report 1975
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Civilized Sciences
Chapter One: Enraptured
Chapter Two: Death’s Door
Chapter Three: Hummingbird
Chapter Four: Revelations
Chapter Five: The Algorithm
Chapter Six: Nonlinear Calculations
Chapter Seven: 1600
Chapter Eight: Troubled
Chapter Nine: Cause of Death
Chapter Ten: Out of State
Chapter Eleven: Shunned
Chapter Twelve: Paper Chase
Chapter Thirteen: Mimicry
Chapter Fourteen: Control
Chapter Fifteen: Unnatural Disasters
Chapter Sixteen: Mastermind
Chapter Seventeen: The Link
Chapter Eighteen: Force Majeure
Chapter Nineteen: Psychometry
Chapter Twenty: Misdirection
Chapter Twenty-One: Assailants
Chapter Twenty-Two: Orderly Conduct
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Informant
Chapter Twenty-Four: Citizens Communication Agency
Chapter Twenty-Five: E-ticket
Chapter Twenty-Six: Paul Is Dead
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Bridge
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Escape Valve
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Vigil
Chapter Thirty: Optics
Chapter Thirty-One: Wormhole
Chapter Thirty-Two: Line of Sight
Chapter Thirty-Three: Snare
Chapter Thirty-Four: Seizure
Chapter Thirty-Five: Whiteboard
Chapter Thirty-Six: Serial
Chapter Thirty-Seven: Code
Chapter Thirty-Eight: Commander
Chapter Thirty-Nine: VAX
Chapter Forty: Whirlwind
Chapter Forty-One: Gone
Chapter Forty-Two: The Pattern
Chapter Forty-Three: Ley Lines
Chapter Forty-Four: Retreat
Chapter Forty-Five: Silverback
Chapter Forty-Six: The Bush
Chapter Forty-Seven: Rescue Op
Chapter Forty-Eight: Secret Cinema
Chapter Forty-Nine: Advocate
Chapter Fifty: Strangers in the Dark
Chapter Fifty-One: Elijah
Chapter Fifty-Two: Undercover
Chapter Fifty-Three: Ground Control
Chapter Fifty-Four: Sudo
Chapter Fifty-Five: Hazmat
Chapter Fifty-Six: The Door
Chapter Fifty-Seven: Sanctum
Chapter Fifty-Eight: Assembly
Chapter Fifty-Nine: Inquest
Chapter Sixty: Playground
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Jessica Blackwood Novels
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
Enraptured
When she saw the telephone pole with the yellow plastic base again, Olivia Fletcher slammed on the brakes of her mail truck, bringing it to a skidding halt. She checked the postal computer GPS on the dashboard one more time. It still insisted this was the intersection.
But that was impossible. There was supposed to be a gas station and mini-mart at the corner. She remembered the old man who sat behind the counter and the two mutts that would slobber on her ankles when she’d stop by to get her bottle of Diet Shasta. The lot was now just dirt, scattered with rocks. It was hard to even call it a lot. The land blended into the rest of the landscape.
As she stared out at the empty plot, perplexed, a dust-filled breeze blew into the cab, forcing her to roll up the window.
This had been her route two years ago. She was positive she’d passed the station only a couple of weeks back on her way to Runyon. Charlie, the carrier who normally had this route, hadn’t mentioned anything about the station or the old man going away. There was no property for sale sign or anything else indicating it had been torn down. Of course, Charlie also hadn’t said anything about skipping town a few days back, leaving her to take over.
Deciding the postal computer GPS was lying, Olivia pulled out her phone to check Google Maps. There was barely one bar of signal. All things considered, she thought herself lucky to get even that much in the Colorado high desert.
The map slowly loaded on her phone. In league with the postal computer, it insisted this was the right turnoff.
“Well, heck,” Olivia muttered, then turned the truck down the dirt road toward Moffat. Maybe somebody there could tell her what happened to the station.
The last time she’d driven through Moffat, it had been a collection of paint-stripped houses and a trailer park where people had kept to themselves. They all seemed a little churchy to her. They weren’t Mormon fundamentalists or anything as far as she knew, just folks who liked to be left alone.
Based on the landscape and the shape of the ridge she was driving toward, Olivia was certain this was the road to Moffat after all—except there was no farmhouse and run-down shack like she remembered. It was just open plain on either side, with patches of weeds and stunted trees half-petrified from the dry air.
She reached the top of the ridge that overlooked Moffat. But there was no town to see. Even the road, covered in dirt and gravel, was only partially visible. It was the only sign people had ever been here, and barely at that. It reminded her of one of those atomic bomb test sites out in Nevada—after the bomb had gone off.
She drove the truck to the exact spot her postal computer GPS said was the center of Moffat, and put it in park. She found herself in the center of nothing.
“Hell,” she grumbled, shaking her head. Bracing against the grit-filled wind, Olivia slid open her door and stepped onto the road. She shielded her eyes with a tanned hand and looked for some trace of the town. If this was Moffat, there should have been a row of houses to her left, a garage and a Laundromat to her right, and a small grocery store next to the farm services building straight ahead.
Olivia remembered the name of the woman who worked the grocery store counter. Eunice. She had an orange tabby cat that sat on the counter like a pudgy king, demanding to be petted by everyone who entered. But there was no store. No Eunice. No pudgy cat.
Olivia pulled strands of hair from her eyes and wiped away the dust that kept coming. The trailer park where Eunice lived should have been at the end of the street. Now it seemed the trailer park only existed in Olivia’s memory. She glanced back at the bundle of mail in her truck, which she was supposed to leave at the PO box in the store. That wasn’t going to happen.
What was she supposed to do?
There was no way around it: she felt foolish. But she’d already spent two hours going up and down the road that led to the Moffat turnoff.
Suppressing an expletive, she dialed her son-in-law, a deputy sheriff in Cooper. He’d be able to straighten this out. The two got along well, and often talked several times a day.
“What’s up, Olivia?” he casually asked.
“Eric, this is gonna sound stupid, hon. I don’t want you thinking your mother-in-law has lost it.”
“You kill som
ebody?” he joked.
“Not exactly.”
His tone suddenly got serious. “What’s going on?”
“I . . . lost a town.”
A long pause. “Moffat?” There was no trace of surprise in his voice.
Olivia froze. “Yeah, how’d you know?”
“I got a man with a produce truck in front of me asking the same thing. Hold on. I’m getting something over the radio.”
Olivia kicked the toe of her shoe into the dirt while she waited for him to finish. There was something metal under the dust. Curious, she knelt down for a closer look.
“Well, that’s odd,” Eric said, returning to their call. “The telephone exchange says all the numbers appear disconnected. I haven’t heard of any recent tornado reports. I better call the sheriff. Any idea how many people live out there?”
“Fifty-eight,” she replied, without missing a beat.
“You know that off the top of your head?”
Olivia swept her hand across the metal sign at her feet. It said:
welcome to moffat, population 58.
She read it aloud over her phone, then said, “Eric . . . I think the town is flat-out gone.”
“Gone? No people?”
“Gone, as in not here. No people. No town.” Olivia stood up and felt cold.
Gone. The word echoed in her head as she tried to imagine the town as it once was: the buildings—the people.
The sun was setting and the shadows were growing longer. She noticed bits of charred, broken boards poking out of the dirt. A cracked cinder block stuck out of the ground like a giant chipped tooth.
She was taken back to the stories in high school history class about ancient cities buried under the dirt. One day, the people just covered everything and left. Nobody knew why.
She climbed back into the truck and locked the door as the wind grew stronger.
Either something took these people and their town, or they went willingly, erasing every trace of their existence.
She wasn’t sure which scenario scared her more.
Chapter Two
Death’s Door
Dressed in an Akris pantsuit, with platinum-blond hair, high cheekbones, and a slim nose—both crafted by a high-end Beverly Hills plastic surgeon—Diane McGillis looks more like a model-turned-K Street-lobbyist than a serial killer as she turns the key to the door of the townhouse that houses her office, located a few blocks from the White House.
It’s 9:47 am, which means she’s just finished her Pilates class and stopped by a juice bar on her way to work for her kale cleanser shake. My unkempt hair pulled back in a tie, I’m in jeans and an unwashed sweater, sipping a three-hour-old Starbucks latte and wishing I had time to make it to the gym, much less do a load of laundry or even shower.
I glance at the half-empty cups and fast-food containers scattered around the monitors and cameras set up in our rented loft across the street from McGillis’s office. I guess I should clean those up. I guess I should be doing a lot of things.
Right now, what I’m really wishing for is a break in the McGillis case. She’s not your typical serial killer, and her victims and their families—hell, most of the FBI—don’t see her for what she is.
I’d had to call in a few favors to even get this investigation going. One of the conditions of the surveillance operation was that I would work the crap shifts so others in the detail could spend normal hours with their families.
“Has she done the egg trick?” my grandfather asks over speakerphone.
I’m watching McGillis while my grandfather rummages through old files in the basement of his ramshackle mansion in Los Angeles. I’d forgotten he was even on the line. “The egg bag? She’s not doing kiddie shows, Grandpa.”
The “egg bag” is pretty much what it sounds like: an egg, made of wood, and a small velvet bag. The egg goes in the bag, and it vanishes. The magician will turn the bag inside out to prove the egg isn’t there. It’s actually more impressive than it sounds in the right hands. Grandfather, one of the last magic greats, could have an audience rolling in the aisles while he made a hapless volunteer search in vain for the egg. This was a far cry from McGillis’s performance. Her volunteers tended to die.
He sighs, exasperated. “No. No. The gypsy egg thing.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s supposed to be a purifying ritual. The medium tells the client to bring a fresh chicken egg to a session. They rub the egg all over the client’s body, then ask the client to crack it open. Inside there’s blood, hair, other putrid things. The client is duped because they brought the egg.”
I adjust a tripod to get a better view through a gap in the loft’s curtains. “And the medium switches it for a prepared one when they’re not looking?” I reply.
“Yes. You can hide the seal with superglue. Sometimes they do the switch right behind their back, or they use an accomplice. Does this witch have a helper?”
“Yeah,” I reply, leaning in to look through the telescope aimed at McGillis’s window. I can see she’s talking to her assistant, Leo Martine. He’s rail thin, in his late twenties, and nearly as well dressed as McGillis. “I’m looking at him. Mousy kind of guy. Went to Vassar. We’re not sure if he’s in on it.”
“He has to be,” Grandfather replies. “He’s the one doing all the dirty work for her. Have any of the victims come forward yet?”
“No. We’re trying to build a list of clients by watching who comes in and out of the place. Maybe one of them will help us out.”
“You can always send me,” Grandfather offers.
“I may have to take you up on that.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d say his offer sounds genuinely sincere. Of course, I have to keep in mind he’s a professional faker who has spent countless hours staring into a mirror perfecting his skills as a liar. However, over the last year, I have to admit that things have improved between us. Either he’s become less of a bastard, or I’ve become a little more of one and can give it right back to him.
We’ve always had an awkward relationship, to put it mildly. I left home as soon as I could, mainly to get out of his shadow. Technically, I left Mexico City. It was on the night I almost drowned while performing an escape he’d engineered on international television. I wasn’t really sure if he’d have been upset with that outcome, as long as it got him enough publicity.
My dad, bless his heart, was always more of an older brother to me than a father. He was young when I was born, and still very much my grandfather’s son. My mother didn’t stick around long enough to make an impression on me. I used to imagine that I took after her, projecting whatever qualities I wanted on my made-up version of her. I blamed Grandfather for her absence.
Despite his present helpfulness, when I was growing up he was an overbearing bastard who would cut my father and uncle down right in front of me. Nothing was ever good enough for him. Now I realize he was projecting his own insecurities on everyone around him. Not that this makes his behavior right. But as I got older, I saw what real evil was. Grandfather growled a lot and said mean things, but when it came down to it, he’s always been there when I’ve needed him. Learning to ask for his help has been the hardest part.
Diane McGillis, on the other hand, is one of the evilest sociopaths I’ve ever encountered. She’s set herself up in Washington, DC, as a spiritualist, but besides reading fortunes for bored politicians’ wives and neurotic lobbyists, she also masquerades as a holistic healer offering medical advice and prescribing unproven, if not flat-out fake, remedies.
But this isn’t the truly sinister part of her enterprise, or the reason I hate her with a passion. Her specialty is victimizing people in the late stages of cancer. McGillis performs crystal healing ceremonies, dispenses special teas, and offers a grab bag full of other claptrap options tailored to each victim’s belief system—none of which come cheap. She befriends them, earns their trust, gets them to make her a life insurance beneficiary via some bogus spiritual charit
able organization she controls, and then manipulates them into stopping chemotherapy or any other form of conventional treatment that might really save their lives. She gives them false comfort with a soothing quilt of lies—a contrast to the cold, hard reality of cancer specialists and hospitals. When her bullshit fails to help them and they pass away, she collects on the insurance policies. She empties their bank accounts on the way to the grave and then hits the jackpot when they die. They think she’s a friend, even to the point of getting her victims to alienate their families and loved ones. A skilled manipulator, she knows all the right triggers to press.
She’s led at least four people to their deaths so far. Who knows how many others she conned before showing up in the capital eighteen months ago. The twenty thousand dollars she pays for rent every month has to come from somewhere. It’s sick. She picks on people at their most vulnerable. The hardest part is explaining to the victims’ families that the person their loved one trusted, who provided so much comfort during the final stages of their loved one’s life, was actually hastening their deaths for personal gain.
McGillis’s mistake was the choice of her most recent victim, the wife of a sitting senator. He was bitter about the money she’d been paying to McGillis while his wife was alive, and even angrier when he found out after her death that McGillis was a beneficiary. McGillis probably just saw this wealthy woman as an ideal target. But had she done her research, she would have learned that Senator Foster is a member of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and in charge of appropriating funding for the US Department of Justice.
It’s sad that this is what it took for McGillis to appear on our radar. But that’s the way things work in this city.
“Has she done any psychic surgery?” Grandfather asks.
Popular in the Philippines and South America, psychic surgery involves a so-called healer pretending to make “magical” incisions in someone’s body to remove tumors without cutting the skin. Actually, they’re using sleight of hand techniques to produce bloody chicken guts. It sounds ridiculous, but thousands of people seek this out, believing it’s a viable alternative to the cost and pain of actual surgery or a terminal diagnosis. Even famous, otherwise intelligent people like Peter Sellers and Andy Kaufman fall for the scam out of desperation.