Second Life (Will Finch Mystery Thriller Series Book 4) Read online

  1978, Jonestown.

  909 dead—two children survive.

  Where are they now?

  “We have two lives, and the second begins

  when we realize we only have one.”

  — Confucius

  ※

  Inspired by true events

  ~ Bonus Features ~

  Be sure to review the Bonus Features

  available at the conclusion of Second Life.

  ※ — ONE — ※

  18 NOVEMBER, 1978—Jonestown, Guyana

  “Are there any snakes here?” Ruth Watts tried to steady her voice. She hated snakes and she’d seen far too many of them over the past two weeks. Nonetheless, she felt determined to press onward. She brushed the sweat from her eyes and stepped tentatively past an uprooted banana tree as she followed Danny Pass into the jungle.

  Danny ignored the question. “Just ten more minutes in here and we’ll circle around the gate and be out on the road.”

  “Front Road?” she asked, and realized how silly the question must seem, even coming from a seven-year-old. Everyone called it Front Road, but from the day she arrived in Jonestown, Ruth realized that it could just as well have been named Only Road.

  “Yeah. And there’s no snakes on Front Road.” Danny thought about that and then made a minor correction: “A least no snakes that can surprise you.”

  Ruth decided to ignore this and took his hand. Danny was older than her—twelve—and the only friend she’d made since she’d arrived at the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project. Or simply Jonestown, as everybody called it. That was the name painted on the heavy wooden board suspended from a pole above the gate leading into the compound. Ruth didn’t know why people here didn’t just call things what they were. Two weeks ago, without any notice, her parents had taken her out of second grade in Brookfield Elementary School in Oakland, California and they’d flown in a rickety plane that landed on the dusty strip of dirt in the middle of the jungle. When Danny said he’d be her big brother, she felt special for the first time in months. Maybe for the first time ever.

  Twenty minutes earlier Danny had appeared beside Ruth in the Flavor Aid line-up. Her mother had released Ruth’s hand as she turned to her husband to whisper something into his ear. The distraction provided just enough diversion for Danny to guide Ruth by the elbow past one of the dozens of one-room cabins that stood in the central square of the camp.

  “They’re doing another White Night test,” he told her.

  “What’s a White Night?”

  “A loyalty test. Everyone has to do it. But this time it’s for real.” He’d continued to coax her across the field until they reached the edge of the campground. For the first time since she’d arrived in Jonestown, the guards seemed to have disappeared from the perimeter. Hand-in-hand Danny and Ruth stepped over the trip wire and into the jungle. The alarm failed to sound. They’d made it over the first hurdle.

  “What does for real mean?” she asked and paused to look back at the camp.

  He set his hands on her shoulders and peered into her eyes. Behind them they could hear the screams of children coming from the compound. The children went first, then the adults. They both took a deep breath as a wave of panic washed through them.

  “It’s over for them. For our parents, too,” he said to alert her to the pending disaster.

  “What?”

  “Death!” His voice held a rising urgency intended to impel her forward. “It means they’re all going to die.”

  But when he tugged on her hand to continue their escape, she pulled away. The thought of leaving her parents didn’t bother her so much as the idea that they’d been leading her to some horrible place. A place called Death. The weariness of the people in Jonestown, their uneasy talk, the heavy weight of foreboding that had pervaded almost every conversation she’d heard in the past week, the irregular announcements blasted over the compound PA system—all of it now submerged under the rich chaos of chirping birds and the bugs and flies that whizzed incessantly around her face, eyes and ears. Which was worse? Her parents’ deceptions or this horrid wilderness?

  They’re all going to die. Ruth repeated the words to herself and for the first time she understood. She gasped and braced herself against a tree.

  When the shock of realization subsided, she knew that only Danny could take her away from the growing terror of the camp. Maybe he would save her. She jumped over a pool of murky water and followed him across a series of connected logs that crossed the fly-buzzing bog. On the far side of the swamp Danny found a trail that slipped into the shadows. The damp jungle swallowed them and the waning cries and screams from Jonestown faded as they plunged onward.

  “Where’s the road, Danny?”

  “Not far.” He held a pointed finger to his lips and turned to her. “Sssshhh.”

  They looked up through the canopy of the trees. Through the tiny window formed by a break in the leaves, they could see a small aircraft circle as it spiraled lower and lower in a tight turn above them.

  “The landing strip,” Danny said. “That’s it! We’ll go to the landing strip and hide in the bushes until the plane lands.”

  ※

  Jane Smythe sat in a wooden chair beside the unarmed officer in the Houston International Airport security observation room. Although she’d arrived two hours earlier, Jane had been told that she couldn’t visit with her niece. No embraces, no hugs, no chance to offer the love Ruth needed. Not yet.

  But through the one-way glass window she could see Ruth talking with two social workers in the next room. The social workers, both women in their early thirties, had their hair rolled into buns held in place with plastic hair claws. One perched a clipboard on her left forearm and from time to time made a note on a page clamped under the steel tongue on her board. While Jane couldn’t hear what they said, she was surprised by her niece’s calm demeanor, her upright posture, the easy way that she rested her hands in her lap, the lifeless smile that appeared on her lips when she spoke. It was as if the disaster in Jonestown had never happened.

  A single knock on the observation room door was followed by the appearance of a tall, lean man wearing a business suit and a narrow blue tie. Just below his right eye sat a round mole the color of a ripe raspberry. His hair was cropped in a brush-cut that reminded Jane of the early 1950s. An Eisenhower man. Some people had completely jumped past the 60s, she thought, and this is one of them.

  “Hello, Mrs. Smythe. I’m Gerald Gordon.”

  He shook her hand and sat next to the security officer. Gordon set his briefcase on the floor, briefly struggled to snap open the twin latches, then laid a file on the table.

  “I’ve been appointed to work with you and your niece by California’s Division of Youth Services. And you’ve come down here from Pennsylvania. Do I have that right?”

  “Malvern. It’s just outside of Philly.”

  He nodded. “You’ve met Officer Ray, I assume?”

  “Yes. Together we’ve been watching my niece Ruth and the social workers”—she pointed to the one-way glass as if it held a mirage—“for the past twenty minutes. When can I actually talk to her?”

  “Soon. As soon as you and I agree on the details.” Gordon nodded obliquely and rubbed his nose with the front of his hand. “First, let me say how sorry I am for your loss. Were you close to your sister?” He opened the file folder as if he might find the answer in one of the back pages. “Sara Watts, isn’t it?’

  “We were. At least when we were young. After our teen years we drifted apart. I guess most kids do, don’t they? Especially with her in the Bay Area and me and my hus
band in Malvern. Then when she joined the Peoples Temple, we … lost touch.” She pressed a tissue to her eyes and looked away from his stare.

  “And Randy Watts. That was her husband?”

  She nodded. “It’s hard to believe. They’re both gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Gordon looked away. Apparently he couldn’t believe it either.

  Jane Smythe locked her hands together and studied their emptiness. Yesterday, as she flew down from Philadelphia, she’d read everything she could about the Jonestown slaughter in two newspapers. Over nine hundred people dead. The biggest civilian mass killing in American history. And every one of them lined up to drink grape Flavor Aid poisoned with some God-awful concoction. To think they’d all volunteered! One of the four survivors called it “revolutionary suicide.” More like revolutionary madness, she thought.

  “Well, now the only thing that matters to us is your niece, Mrs. Smythe.” Gordon tried to fix a smile to his mouth. “Have you ever heard of the witness protection programs?”

  “Yes.” She held two fingers to her mouth. “But aren’t they for—”

  He waved a hand to dismiss her objection. “Not entirely. And your niece will be one of the exceptions. The last thing she’ll want is to relive this tragedy for the rest of her life. We want to give her a new name. With a new identity. And”—he held a palm up as if it contained an invisible gift—“a new life.”

  Jane paused to consider this. She’d already agreed to take the girl into her home. Her husband Bert insisted on it. Besides, they’d been unable to conceive a child of their own. A child they’d prayed for until their prayers turned into agnostic despair. Maybe the tragedy had “a silver lining,” Bert had said when he saw her off at the airport. Then he’d added, “Bring home our little girl.”

  “Now we already have a name she can take on.” Gordon tilted his head to one side and whisked the palm of his right hand over his brush cut.

  “Well, she can have our surname. Smythe. It’s a good name.”

  Gordon smiled as if everything was now on track, but with a slight adjustment required. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But I’m afraid it doesn’t quite work that way. We choose the names from children of the same age and gender. Deceased children. Just so we have all the documents already in place. Birth certificates and so on.”

  She smiled as though she’d made a small error that no one could fault her for. Of course the child didn’t have to take her last name.

  “So the name she’ll use is Isobel Oehmke.” His voice carried a note of hope.

  She blinked. She’d always hated the name her sister had given to the girl. Ruth. Dredged up from the Old Testament, of course. It meant “friend.” Could they not have found something more inspired? Anyway, now they were about to change that. To Isobel. A good-ole-fashioned American name.

  “All right.” She felt her face pull into a tight grimace as the reality of her niece’s loss struck her once more. “That sounds fine.”

  “Good. Good. I’ve got the paperwork right here for you to sign. And I’ll coordinate everything with Children’s Services in Pennsylvania,” Gordon said with a stiff nod. “For now, you and your husband will be her legal foster parents. A formal adoption could be arranged if and when you and your husband are ready for it. That can be sooner or later. Or not at all. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. When can I take her home?”

  “Soon. Maybe as early as tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Finally a genuine smile broke over her face. “That would be perfect. Just perfect.”

  “But if all this is going to work the way we hope, you can never publicly reveal that Isobel Oehmke was rescued from Jonestown. It could just be too damaging for her—especially in her teen years. And many years beyond for that matter. Do you understand?”

  Jane nodded. It could be their secret, something private they would never reveal outside the family. At least for now. And in that moment she determined that she and her husband and Isobel would hide their terrible loss from the outside world. As if Jonestown were a private tragedy. Theirs alone to forget.

  ※

  She hated the name. Isobel Oehmke sounded like a stuck-up donkey. An idiot child from Malvern, Pennsylvania, of all places. Where exactly was that?

  “I hate it!” she protested to Danny during their final meeting. She looked along the corridor to the departures gates in the airport. They’d spent two whole days here and at the Houston Airport Holiday Inn. While the hotel provided a pleasant enough change from the jungle compound in Jonestown, all the arrangements her Aunt Jane had made felt like a second disaster designed to ruin her life.

  “Well, at least I’ll know how to find you,” Danny said with a look of certainty. “There can’t be many Isobel Oehmkes in Pennsylvania.”

  She rolled her lips into an angry pout. The fact that she’d be the only Isobel Oehmke, possibly the only one in the entire world, offered little consolation. She tried to put it out of her mind. Maybe if she concentrated on Danny. Or Jason. They’d changed his name, too. He’d suddenly become Jason Wishart and he was being sent to live with his grandparents in Boston. Half a world away.

  “So you’ll try to find me?”

  He nodded. “Don’t worry. When we’re older. Then we can do what we want.”

  “We can?”

  “Yeah, of course. So just keep that name until I find you, Isobel Oehmke.” His smile suggested that the new name might be pretty good after all.

  “All right.”

  “And there’s something else.”

  She waited.

  “Save yourself for me, okay.”

  A blank look crossed her face. “What does that mean?”

  “It’s what people do when they pledge themselves to one another. Can you pledge yourself to me?”

  She wondered if she could. “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Then I pledge, too.”

  An old man leaning on a black hickory cane waved his free hand at them.

  “Jason. Time to go.” Jason’s grandfather called to the boy from the Eastern Air Lines check-in counter.

  Jason leaned forward, gazed into her eyes and kissed Isobel’s forehead.

  “Good-bye, Isobel.”

  “Don’t forget me,” she called, and just as a baggage cart rumbled between her and Jason, she waved a hand in the air, a gesture he didn’t see—and one that he did not return.

  As she watched him leave, she thought that their pledge was a good thing. Maybe the best thing she could possibly hold onto right now. She would save herself by pledging to Jason Wishart and begin her life all over again. This time as Isobel Oehmke.

  ※ — TWO — ※

  “WE’RE ALL JUST one step away from the angels!”

  The audience erupted with laughter, shouts, jeers, and volleys of clapping. No one was holding back. Half the crowd prodded Kali Rood on, the other half couldn’t contain their disbelief. Another chorus of boos interrupted her train of thought and she briefly stumbled.

  At first Will Finch wondered if she could recover her momentum. He turned his attention from Kali Rood to her opponent, Dr. Martin Fast. He lifted his arms aloft in an effort to rally the crowd to his cause. New shouts of support rose in the chamber.

  For the past twenty minutes, the two debaters had been vying for acclamation under the dome of San Francisco’s City Hall. As part of their commitment to “freedom of speech and open discussion,” the city had sponsored a series of monthly lunch-hour debates in the gala hall under the City Hall dome. The previous three debates had been polite, almost tedious. But today’s topic, “Engineering a Solution to Climate Change,” drew a standing-room-only crowd. A thousand or more citizens pressed together and expressed their agreement and dissent in chants and overt screams. When the last round of applause filled the air, Finch could see the security staff begin to fret. They were under-staffed and the crowd was over-excited.

  Kali Rood held her hand up, a gesture for calm. She sto
od at her dais on the circular platform positioned in the broad staircase that descended to the main hall from the second floor balcony. Standing at his podium, ten feet away, Martin Fast studied her with a look that asked, good lord, what will she come up with now?

  She stepped up to the microphone, her hand a little higher now. The gesture worked. A brief hush fell over the mob.

  “I mean it,” she said in a whispered voice that managed to echo through the auditorium. Then in a much louder voice she cried, “We’re just one step away from the angels!”

  Another roar sounded from her supporters. Martin Fast shook his head in disbelief as he took a step toward his mic.

  “One step away from the angels? Sorry. We’re not,” he retorted. “If anything, we’re one step away from the chimps and bonobos.”

  A new burst of laughter and heckles erupted from the crowd. Next the jostling began. Then the chants started in earnest. “Get her out! Get her out!”

  Finch shook his head and wondered how long the anger could simmer without boiling into outright violence. Both debaters had veered off topic and into personal attacks. Somehow the discourse had dissolved into a fracas that resembled a European football match complete with jeering hooligans. Finally the moderator interrupted the proceedings by thanking the participants and the city for their support, then he brought the duel to an end. The audience released a collective sigh; a measure of both relief and disappointment. After a brief physical skirmish to the right of the staircase the crowd rolled out of the cavernous space onto the outdoor plazas surrounding the hall, trading taunts and insults as they went.

  By the time the room emptied, two people had been injured after trading blows. Another had fainted. Finch made a note to add the toll of injuries to the conclusion of the story he’d submit to the eXpress. It was one more episode of civil unrest that he’d covered in a summer that was becoming more rancorous with every passing week.