Page 155 of The Grave Artist

Jake, the first of the team back from the Fisher incident, was climbing from his SUV in the parking lot outside the HSI building.

He was looking at the somber man in a suit that matched his demeanor: dark gray. He was large, a bit pear-shaped, and the tension in the cloth gave him wrinkles radiating from the crotch.

“Yes.”

“I’m Tony Horowitz, California Highway Patrol Special Investigations.” A badge appeared.

Jake lifted an eyebrow.

“Professor Heron, have you heard from your mother lately?”

Not even trying to guess what this was about, he said, “Not directly. But yesterday she came by my apartment in San Francisco. My niece, Julia, is staying there while I’m down here on assignment.”

“This I-squared thing. Yeah. We’ve heard about it.” He looked at the Garage, which was from the outside the very definition of a dumpy, discarded, well,garage.

“Did she have a conversation with your niece?”

“Julia was out. My mother left a message on the security system.”

“What did she say?”

“Just that she wanted to see me and that she’d be in touch later,” Jake said. “She didn’t leave a number or say where she was staying. What’s this about?”

Horowitz said, “I’ll explain. We know your mother and father, Gary Heron, have been involved in an organization known as the Family.”

“The cult, right. They have been for years.”

“Do you know much about the group?”

I contributed to it for my birthday.

A special day . . .

But Jake said only, “They didn’t share anything. I think they wanted my brother and me to be involved, but neither of us, even when we were kids, were joiners. They gave up.”

“You know the name Bertram Stahl?”

“He was the founder. Maybe he’s still the head.”

“He is, yes. He and members of the Family have shown up on our radar from time to time. But Stahl was smart, and nobody in the Family was ever convicted of any crime.”

“No,” Jake said, “it was more a personality cult than organized extortion or kidnapping. Stahl was like a secular messiah. I think he just wanted followers to worship him. The cult begged for money and sold crap online. And the proceeds went into his pocket.”

“Well, for some reason, he decided to change direction. He became fascinated with the end of the world. A doomsday thing.”

“Not uncommon with cults, but the leaders usually have some explaining to do when the deadline comes and goes and the world’s still here.”

Horowitz gave a smile. “We heard they were stockpiling guns, stealing food and supplies, vandalizing government facilities and utilities, so we opened a case. We scored an informant inside, and they told us what Stahl was doing. We got enough for RICO and conspiracy charges. We raided the cult’s main operation in Mendocino. Stahl got away. He took a half dozen of the most ardent followers with him. They’re armed and on the run.”

“And my mother?” Jake’s face screwed up with disgust. “She had to be part of it. She and Stahl escaped together, I assume. That’s why she came by my place. She was hoping to hide out in my apartment. Both of them.”

“No, no, no ...” Horowitz shook his head. “Yourmotherwas the informant I mentioned.”

“What?”

“She’s the one who turned in Stahl and the others. She didn’t want anything to do with the direction Stahl was taking the cult. Stahl found out she betrayed him and went after her, but she got away in time.” He hesitated. “I’m not happy saying this, Dr. Heron, but I have to. Your father tried to stop her. He was going to hold her in their barracks until Stahl could get her.”

Jake had only a vague notion of Gary Heron, an impression that had been sanded down over the years so that his father had moved from nondescript to near obscurity. He was a character in a science fiction movie slowly becoming invisible.