Gone (Michael Bennett)

priest is in a better place now. He has gone to his God. You know, like your friend. What was his name? Hughie?”
    He was taunting me now. Trying to get to me. He was. I wanted to smash the screen with my fist, but I couldn’t. I took a breath and refused to give him what he wanted.
    “That’s true,” I said calmly. “Good point, Manuel. Hughie’s gone to God.”
    I paused as I leaned in closer to the computer’s camera.
    “Just like your wife, Manuel. No, wait. I made a mistake. How could she be with God? I sent that bitch directly to hell.”
    Perrine hurled the ball against the wall and didn’t bother catching it this time. He stood up and walked over to the camera until his face filled the screen.
    “I have one more thing to show you, Bennett. My men are sending it to you right now. If you have any popcorn available, I advise you to get it popping and pull up a seat. You’re going to like this, Mike. I know I will. We can talk after. Maybe when it’s over, we’ll trade notes. But if you don’t feel like talking, that’s OK, too. I’ll understand. You probably won’t be in the mood. Au revoir. ”
    The screen went blank.
    “Wait,” I said to Agent Downey. “What in the hell is he talking about? He’s sending something else? What is it? Where is it?”
    “Something’s coming in now. It’s another Skype request,” a tech said, clicking a button.
    The first thing I noticed about the footage on the screen that opened up was that it was from a night-vision camera. It was showing an empty field. The grainy image reminded me of a black-and-white TV image, only with dark green instead of black, and light green instead of white.
    And it wasn’t footage, I realized suddenly. Since this was Skype, it meant what I was looking at was something that was being filmed in real time.
    The camera swung shakily to the left. A kneeling figure appeared. It was a soldier of some kind, wearing a dark hazmat suit with a full gas mask.
    The fentanyl , I thought. Perrine was ordering another fentanyl attack and making me watch. Two more hazmat-suited soldiers appeared beside the first, and the camera started moving, shaking a little as the group moved across a field.
    There was some kind of fence at the far end, which they climbed, and then they were standing in a dirt road. The soldiers started moving up the slightly curving, uphill road, covering each other. Then they went around a bend, and suddenly, there was a house.
    Realizing what it was hit me not like an electric shock but like a sudden shot of anesthesia. I felt numb. Like I wasn’t there anymore. Like I wasn’t anywhere. Like the bottom of the world had just dropped out from underneath me.
    “It’s his safe house!” Emily yelled from somewhere behind me as the soldiers on the screen arrived at the porch.
    “In Susanville! My God, his family!” Emily yelled as she burst into the office. “Contact the marshals! Where are the marshals? Perrine is attacking the Bennett family in Susanville as we speak!”

CHAPTER 83
     
    THE SKYPE IMAGE WAS showing a dead marshal on the porch when I stood and walked out of Downey’s office. I walked over to the corner desk Emily and I were sharing and just sat there rigidly, with my feet on a plastic file box, gazing steadily forward at a blank spot on the wall.
    Emily rushed over to me.
    “The image cut off, Mike. They kicked in the door of the house, and the image went blank. We’re sending everybody there. Everybody.”
    I didn’t reply, didn’t look at her. I kept staring at the wall. I needed to be there for my family, and yet it was impossible for me to be there. This did not emotionally compute for me, apparently. It was like being tied to a chair and having to watch your two-year-old climb out and off the ledge of an open window. I felt beyond confused, beyond disoriented. I felt disintegrated inside.
    I don’t remember much about the next twenty minutes that went by. I vaguely remember a lot of activity around me, Emily making a lot of heated phone calls and Downey coming over to me a few times in order to assure me that every available unit was on its way to my family.
    And what will they find when they get there? I kept thinking.
    The next thing I knew, I was being guided by Emily up onto my feet. I followed along obediently as she took me out into the stairwell. But instead of heading downstairs, she led me up.
    “What’s going on?” I mumbled.
    “They’re bringing you up there to Susanville,