Fallen Masters Read online

  Whoosh! Smoke and fire blew in every direction. The two young arsonists fled, jumped into the still-running car, and sped off to their next destination—another church about one hour away. It would be their tenth immolation in just six weeks. And they had more work to do—much more.

  * * *

  From the Charlestown, Missouri Telegraph-Reporter

  Two Locals Arrested in Church Arsons; Suspected “Church Burner” to Be Charged

  DANTON—Two men were charged Friday morning with setting fire to a church in eastern Missouri. Local and federal authorities said the men may face charges in nine other church fires that have taken place over the past several weeks.

  The men, Carl Robert Turner, 20, of Danton, Mo., and Brent Begley, also of Danton, were arrested and charged with arson of a building in the fire, last Sunday, of the Mission Community Church in Charlestown. Officials expected to charge the pair with three burnings here, three in nearby Corinth and one other in Charlestown, as well as two more that fit the same pattern.

  Because the building was a church, the charges were elevated to a first-degree felony, said Dan Breslin, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. That felony carries a sentence ranging from probation to 99 years to life in prison, Breslin said.

  “We’ve been looking at these two guys for a while,” the spokesman said. “But we had to paste together information. By working closely with our local partners, we brought tremendous resources to this investigation, working around the clock for over a month.”

  Also deployed in the investigation was a three-year-old black Labrador female with a super snout by the name of Mina. Her human escort was Mike Maloney, a member of the Missouri State arson task force, based in Jefferson City.

  “She’s an accelerate detection canine,” Maloney said. Without elaborating on details of the investigation, he said the hound, who has her own badge, played a role in the capture of the suspects, too.

  Law enforcement officials at yesterday’s news briefing praised just about everyone, from the church volunteers who guarded their own parishes night and day, to a cooperative news media that would not let the story die, to numerous individuals who provided tips to different agencies.

  Bond for the men was set at $10 million apiece. They were being held at the Charles County Jail in Charlestown, pending a court appearance set for next week.

  Investigators have said that the fires have followed a loose pattern. Different types of congregations, including Baptist, Methodist, Christian Scientist and nondenominational churches, have been hit. The fires have broken out at different hours, but all occurred at night.

  Carl Turner, said to be the “mastermind” of the arson scheme, grew up in his grandparents’ home and attended church regularly until the last year when his attendance became erratic, for the first time in his life.

  “This is not his character. He was raised to be a good Christian,” his grandmother, Agnes Turner said. “Our house is full of crosses and pictures of Jesus, our savior,” she added.

  Looking back, relatives and acquaintances note several signs that Turner, described by many as a bright student and an avid reader in high school, was rebelling against the strict Christian upbringing by his grandparents.

  Begley, the suspected “follower” of his lifelong friend, meanwhile, seemed to have become disenchanted with religion after his mother died of a heart disease on Christmas Day two years ago. He was also unemployed, with no prospects for work.

  Begley’s late mother had been extremely devout and had operated the nursery at the First Baptist Church for many years. His father, also deceased, had been a carpenter.

  “Brent was always a quiet, shy kid,” a next-door neighbor said. “Carl was more outgoing, more of a personality, always the prankster—and very, very intelligent. I always thought he had a little bit of the devil in him.”

  On his Facebook page, Turner said he was a fan of bonfires and listed his religion as “anti-Christian.” He also posted a quote from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche that said remorse for wrongdoing was useless: “Never give way to remorse, but immediately say to yourself, that would merely mean adding a second stupidity to the first.”

  CHAPTER

  43

  Melbourne, Australia

  Waiting in the green room, Dawson Rask looked down at the cover of his latest book as he sipped a cup of tea. He listened to the banal voice of Jim Mayer, the radio host. The Chat was a popular talk show that was carried by stations all over Australia. It was, he was assured, quite a coup to be booked on the show.

  The show concept built upon each previous segment to be inclusive of all topics. It was an interactive show in which listeners responded by phone and via email.

  “Our next guest is the American author, Dawson Alexander Rask,” Dawson heard Mayer say. “Have you read any of his books?”

  “I’m sorry to say that I have not,” the guest replied. “Though I have certainly heard of him, and he does seem to be quite popular now.”

  “Yes, doesn’t he?” Mayer replied.

  “Mr. Rask?” an attractive young female assistant said, stepping into the green room. “You will be on when we come back after the break.”

  “Thank you,” Dawson said. He followed her into the broadcast room. Here, there was an L-shaped desk, over which hung two enormous microphones. Dawson wondered why the radio stations couldn’t just use the lavalier mikes like they did in TV studios, but figured that perhaps the large microphones were as much for symbolism as they were for operation. After all, radio was entirely acoustic.

  Mayer was tall and slender, with very black hair and a black Vandyke beard. His face was ruddy, and the skin was drawn tightly over his cheekbones. He reminded Dawson of the old character actor, John Carradine, and except for the Australian accent, his voice was similar.

  Mayer had a computer monitor in front of him, as well as microphone control switches. He didn’t look up as the production assistant helped Dawson into his chair, then handed him a headset. He could hear announcements in the headset.

  “… at Mercedes, Melbourne. Politics, sports, the arts, all on the 3WA3 station. And now, back to The Chat with your host, Jim Mayer.”

  “My guest for this segment is American author Dawson Alexander Rask. Welcome to the show, Mr. Rask.”

  “Thank you. And thank you for allowing me this opportunity to visit with your listeners.”

  “Six million,” Mayer said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My listeners,” Mayer said. “Six million, the largest number in this time slot in Australia.”

  “That’s quite impressive,” Dawson replied, not certain where Mayer was going with this.

  “So you can see that, with this many listeners, I have an obligation to keep the standards of this show very high.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “How do you rate yourself as a writer, Mr. Rask?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Would you compare yourself with someone like John Cheever, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, for example?”

  “I’m not sure what you are getting at, Mr. Mayer. The writers you just named have all won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. I have not.”

  “No, you haven’t, Mr. Rask. Nor are you ever likely to.”

  “I wasn’t aware than one had to be a Pulitzer Prize winner to be a guest on your show,” Dawson said.

  “Mr. Rask—I have to tell you, in all candor, that I see your type of writing as being nothing more than drivel.”

  Dawson stared across the L-shaped table at the radio host, and at the smug, I gotcha look on his skeletal face. Was this guy for real? All right, maybe he wasn’t Shakespeare or Twain, or even Hemingway. He knew that he could write well and tell a damn good story, and what else did a novelist owe his reader?

  He was about to walk out of the broadcast room when it happened again. Disconnected words from the posters in the room, including a movie ad for The Chronicle
s of Narnia, from CD covers, even memos, but in a non-obvious way—everything around him started flying through the air toward him: words and letters that spelled the name of the famous author C. S. Lewis. He felt as if he should duck. His hands got clammy, and he felt nauseous without understanding exactly why.

  What did he have for dinner last night? He had to think for a minute before he recalled. He had prawns, huge, broiled prawns. He knew that sometimes people reacted badly to shellfish, but nothing like that had ever happened to him before.

  Was he having a reaction now? Something was definitely happening.

  “No response, Mr. Rask? You have come to Australia, to my radio show in particular, so you can pimp your book. The least you can do is carry on a conversation with me. That is what ‘chat’ means, you know.”

  “You seem to be doing a pretty good job of carrying on a conversation with yourself,” Dawson said, trying to control the anger welling up inside.

  “This is Jim Mayer, and you are listening to The Chat,” Mayer said softly—caressingly almost, it seemed to Dawson, as if he were making love to the microphone. “The American popular author Mr. Dawson Alexander Rask is my guest, and I have been trying—without success, I hasten to add—to get some sort of vocal response from him. You do speak English in America, do you not?”

  “We do.”

  “Ah, good, then we can communicate. Mr. Rask, and again, I mean no disrespect to you, as you have made a fine living at writing bubblegum fiction … but what is the point?”

  “Mr. Mayer, is it?”

  “I’m sure you know my name by now.”

  “How can I put this in a more literary, erudite manner? I’m going to use a word once made famous by Norman Mailer. Go fug yourself!”

  “We’ll be back right after this message,” Mayer said quickly; then he killed both his microphone and Dawson’s. He looked across the desk at Dawson as he was taking off his headset. There was not one sound on his headset, since this obviously was not a programmed break. Through the plate glass window that opened onto the control room, he could see that the producers were scrambling to fill the dead air.

  Dawson had the irrational thought that Mayer might take a punch at him, but since he had Mayer by at least forty pounds and three inches, none of it fat, he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Have you read any of my books, Mr. Mayer?” Dawson asked.

  “No, why in Heaven’s name would I want to?”

  “I take it, then, that you aren’t one of my fans. I’ll just put you down as undecided.”

  When Dawson returned to the control room, he was met by the same attractive young woman who had led him into the broadcast booth. To his surprise, she had a broad smile on her face.

  “You were wonderful!” she said.

  “I don’t think Mr. Mayer thinks so,” Dawson said.

  “No, but his listeners do. The telephone lines are all lit up, email is flying in, and they are all on your side. I am, too, by the way, and I want to apologize to you for the way he acted. Please don’t think that we are all like that.”

  Dawson smiled back at her. “I’d rather think everyone is like you,” he said.

  CHAPTER

  44

  As Dawson walked through the lobby of the station, there were at least three television monitors glowing in brilliant HD color. Each one was on a different channel, and breaking news of the Viva Domingo slayings scrolled across the bottom of every broadcast and cable network, including one showing Dave Hampton’s broadcast.

  He caught snatches of news—another Viva Domingo murder in Ireland, Hampton speaking of dark matter, gossip about Charlene St. John collapsing at a seminar. Local accidents. A burning building. He could hear every one of the programs, and the words flying at him were dizzying and mystifying, this time with pictures and extreme close-ups of talking heads. A smiling woman holding up some detergent …

  “Look for the logo, a big C,” the woman holding the detergent said.

  “Of course, there is a rather sweeping S-curve just before you get there,” one of the talking heads was saying.

  “The burning warehouse is on Lewis Street,” a voice over the picture of the fire said in an excited voice.

  Now the words were repeated so that they stood out.

  “C.”

  “S.”

  “Lewis.”

  “C. S. Lewis.”

  What was this? Why was he getting these bits and pieces about C. S. Lewis?

  Dawson missed a step, fell, and landed facedown. When he looked up, he saw a delivery truck with the letters CS painted on the side. The driver, who was signing in, was wearing a name tag that read LEWIS.

  “Are you all right, sir?” the station security guard asked as Dawson stood up again.

  “Yes, yes.” Embarrassed and bruised, Dawson started back to the car.

  The publicist came toward him. She was a well put together woman in her forties with an air of efficiency about her. “Your next interview is at Channel Ten,” she said. “The driver knows the way, but I have to ask you, are you up to it? You seem distracted.”

  “I’m fine,” Dawson said.

  “Perry Landers.”

  “What? What did you say?” Dawson asked, almost shouting the words.

  “I said I will meet you there,” the publicist said, confused by Dawson’s strange reaction. “Listen, are you sure you are all right?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine.” He felt impatient and distracted but did not want to offend someone who was trying to help him.

  “All right, if you say so.” The publicist gave him one more odd look, then moved quickly to her car, a silver Porsche. By the time Dawson’s driver had their car started, the publicist had already pulled into the street and was maneuvering her nimble little sports car quickly through the traffic. She would be there minutes ahead of him.

  “Perry Landers?” the driver asked. Except this time, Dawson knew he hadn’t said a word, because he could see the driver’s lips in the mirror as he was checking the traffic prior to pulling away from the radio station.

  He hadn’t said the words earlier, either, nor had the publicist. Wherever the words came from, it was playing over and over in his mind, like an aggravating tune that would sometimes get stuck in your head and play repeatedly as if in some kind of exasperating comic scene like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, when she was running around the room trying to get away from the ever-present spirit—except in this case, the name being said was not “Sam Wheat,” but “Perry Landers.”

  Dawson Rask was caught in just such a loop, but it was beyond exasperating, it was verging on madness. Dawson had experienced jetlag before, where he felt dizzy, but never had he heard voices in his head. Though he hadn’t read his work, he knew C. S. Lewis’s name—but what did he have to do with Dawson Rask?

  “Excuse me,” Dawson said to the driver.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Is there a person or a place called ‘Perry Landers’ here in Australia? Does that mean anything to you?”

  “No, sir. At least, it’s not a place that I know of. And if it’s a person, I don’t think I would be able to tell you that. But I have an iPhone. Would you like me to look it up, see if there is such a person, or place?”

  “No, that’s okay, I was just wondering. Oh, earlier when we driving to the station, back a few blocks before we got there, I noticed a large statue of a lion. What is that for, do you know?”

  “A large statue of a lion?” The driver shook his head. “No, sir, we didn’t pass a lion statue. But there is one on Spring Street, if you would like to see it. It was I believe a gift of some sort from China, I think. Anyway, it is in front of Tinian Garden. It is at the beginning to our Chinatown.”

  “You had to have seen the lion,” Dawson said, exasperated by the driver’s response. “How could you miss it? It was huge!”

  “Mr. Rask, we didn’t pass any lion,” the driver repeated. “I been living here all my life, and the only lion we have is the one I
just told you about down at Chinatown. Would you like me to drive you by there on the way to the TV station? It’s not that much of a detour, and we’ve got time.”

  “No,” Dawson said, speaking more harshly than he intended. He softened the tone of his voice. “No, thank you. That’s all right, just go on to the TV station.”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver said.

  Not only was Dawson confused, but he was beginning to get a little frightened, too. He was absolutely certain that he’d seen a large oversized metal sculpture of a lion. And not just any ordinary sculpture but an animated sculpture. But the driver insisted that there was no lion there.

  Was he becoming unhinged? Schizophrenic? He closed his eyes in the back of the car and just breathed deeply. What would his character Matt Matthews do?

  First of all, Matt would not be frightened. He would be calm and methodical. He would go over all details of the situation and take stock of just what was happening.

  Yes, that was it. Be calm and methodical.

  Dawson took out his ballpoint pen and the sheet of paper that gave him his schedule. Punching the point out of the pen, he began to write down and isolate all the images and words that he could remember.

  He was just finishing when he felt the car turn off the street and into a drive.

  “Here we are, Mr. Rask. I’ll be waiting here in the car for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you with that Perry Landers thing,” he said.

  “That’s all right.”