Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [419]
In less than ten short years, the Church of Spiritual Freedom claimed more than five hundred members with almost two hundred of them living on a compound he had built in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Ironically, the area was only a few miles from where the journalism student had been raped twenty-seven years earlier. Everett had either been innocent and had nothing to hide, or perhaps, Maggie couldn’t help thinking, he was superstitious and didn’t think lightning could strike in the same place twice.
If it was the latter, he had good reason to believe it. In the past ten years, he and his church had not been in any kind of trouble with the law—no IRS audits, no weapons violations, no building permit or zoning violations. The illegal-weapons summon at the Massachusetts cabin was the first violation, and even that could only loosely be connected to Everett’s church. In fact, everything seemed to be going quite nicely for the good reverend. He had even made some close and powerful friends in Congress, permitting him to buy a parcel of government land in Colorado for a sinfully low price. If things were going so well, why did he want to uproot and move to Colorado?
Maggie wasn’t certain what her mother’s involvement was with Everett and his so-called church. One thing Maggie did feel certain about, however, was that the man could be a time bomb waiting to explode. And despite only circumstantial evidence, she knew he was somehow involved in, at least, Ginny Brier’s death and possibly the floater in North Carolina. It was too much of a coincidence that these women died while Everett’s rallies were taking place just footsteps away. As for the nameless transient, well, she was still a mystery.
The crisp autumn air chilled her, but she kept the windows down. She took deep breaths, filling her lungs with the scent of pine and the exhaust fumes of the traffic on I-95. She’d need to have all her senses on alert and in overdrive for this mission. Even without a confrontation, being in the same room with her mother was difficult enough. There were too many memories. Too much past left behind, and that’s just the way Maggie preferred it.
It had been more than a year since she had visited her mother’s apartment, although she doubted her mother would remember that visit. How could she remember? She had been passed out for most of it. Now Maggie wondered how she would begin to explain this visit. What did she think she could do, just drop by and say, “Gee, Mom, I was passing through and thought I’d stop and see how you were? Oh, and by the way, did you realize your precious Reverend Everett may be a dangerous maniac?” No, somehow she didn’t think that would get her anywhere.
Maggie tried to put aside what she had learned in the FBI file and what she had just learned from Eve. Instead, she tried to remember everything in the past year that her mother may have told her about Reverend Joseph Everett. She was embarrassed to admit that she hadn’t paid much attention. In the beginning she had simply been relieved that there was someone else to watch over her mother. Months went by without a suicide attempt, and Maggie hoped that the woman had finally found a less destructive addiction. Perhaps she had finally found a way to get the attention she so craved, and it didn’t include a trip to the ER.
Later, when she discovered that her mother had stopped drinking, Maggie was skeptical. It seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch. And, of course, there was one. The sudden sobriety had changed the habits but hadn’t changed Kathleen O’Dell’s personality. She was still as selfish, needy and narrow-minded as she had always been, only now Maggie couldn’t explain it away as drunken