What"s this?
Sandwiched between the latest issue of Sports Ill.u.s.trated and an L.L.Bean catalog was a small package, one of those padded manila envelopes. My address had been handwritten in black marker, and the envelope was sealed tight with a lot-and I mean a lot-of clear tape. We"re talking the whole roll.
Whatever was inside wasn"t getting out on its own.
I was looking so much at the tape that I didn"t notice something right away. The postmark was from Park City, Utah, but there was no return address. Not in the upper left corner, not on the back, not anywhere.
Oh, great. Cue the paranoid thoughts...
You could forgive an FBI agent for being a little...um...spooked when it came to mysterious packages in the mail. The Unabomber, anyone? Those anthrax-infected letters sent after 9/11? In fact, since then, any mail delivered to me or any other agent at my office without a return address had to be X-rayed.
But this wasn"t my office. This was my home, and I didn"t exactly have an X-ray machine tucked away next to the old Black & Decker tool set down in the bas.e.m.e.nt.
Here goes nothing.
After giving the package a quick shake, as though I were a kid on Christmas morning, I grabbed a pair of scissors and cut open one of the ends. So far so good. There was no suspicious powder, and it certainly wasn"t a bomb.
Instead, it was a Bible.
Really? A Bible?
My first thought was that some religious charity had decided to step things up with its fund-raising.
But there was no letter attached. No solicitation. Just a holy Bible.
No, wait. Make that a stolen holy Bible.
Flipping it open, I saw PROPERTY OF THE FRONTIER HOTEL, PARK CITY, UT stamped on the inside cover.
Frontier Hotel? I"d never heard of it, let alone been there. I was pretty sure I didn"t even know anyone from Park City. I once skied at Deer Valley years and years ago, but that was it, my only visit.
I took the last sip of beer and was about to shrug it off and move on to more pressing matters-like grabbing a second beer, for instance-when I noticed that one of the pages was dog-eared.
I turned to it.
The next thing I knew, I was practically turning my house upside down.
Chapter 24
IT WASN"T ANYTHING I read.
It was something I couldn"t read.
What had been dog-eared was a section in the Old Testament, the Song of Moses, from the book of Deuteronomy. A pa.s.sage was missing-literally cut out from the middle of the page-right between Deuteronomy 32:34 and 32:36.
What was 32:35?
Maybe if I"d paid more attention in Sunday school, when I was an altar boy at Saint Augustine"s Church, I"d know. But I was the kid in the back of the room, staring at the clock and counting the minutes until they served the cookies and lemonade.
So off I went. A tornado from room to room.
I knew there was a King James Bible somewhere in the house. A beautiful one, too. Leather-bound, gilt-edge paper. It had belonged to Susan. John Jr. read from it at her funeral. I still remember how brave he was, holding back the tears so he could finish his pa.s.sage.
"Mom wouldn"t want me to cry," he told me afterward.
That"s where I looked first, his room. The bookcase next to his desk was too obvious. I mean, what thirteen-year-old kid puts something where it belongs, right? After scanning the shelves, I checked the closet. Then the small table by his bed. Then under his bed.
Max"s room? I went down the hall and did the same routine, checking everywhere. I felt like one of those parents in those after-school specials, rifling through his kid"s room searching for his stash of weed. Of course, Max was only ten. There wasn"t even a stashed-away Playboy to be found.
Or a Bible.
I kept looking, determined as h.e.l.l to find it. This was strange, after all. Someone was trying to tell me something, and whoever it was had gotten cute about it.
Was cute even the word? It depended on the message, didn"t it?
I searched everywhere in the guest room, otherwise known as Marshall and Judy"s room. I went back downstairs and looked in the den. Finally I remembered. Duh!
I"m the one who had it.
I"d put it in a box of Susan"s things that I kept under our bed, the side she slept on, no less. Dr. Kline would have a field day with that one, wouldn"t he?
I hightailed it into my bedroom. Pulling out the box, I put on emotional blinders. I didn"t want to get caught up in the other items in it, the keepsakes. That had blubbering, crying mess written all over it.
Thankfully, the Bible was right on top. No digging necessary. I sat on the bed, turning to Deuteronomy and the Song of Moses.
Scrolling down the page with my index finger, I stopped on the missing pa.s.sage, 32:35. I read it once, then twice.
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence;
their foot shall slide in due time:
for the day of their calamity is at hand,
and the things that shall come upon them make haste.
I read it over again a few more times, although I didn"t know why. Maybe I was hoping that I was missing something, that there was a different interpretation.
There wasn"t.
No matter how you sliced it, I was being threatened. Someone had it out for me.