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“You mean like Roswell, New Mexico, and UFOs?”
“Or who really killed JFK,” she said. “There’s a rumor going around that he’s somehow going to come down from his room to talk to them.”
“From some secret government spot?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
She nodded. “Remember, some of his fans think he’s like some spiritual prophet or god or something.”
“He’s not coming down. Spiritual god or not, he’s under guard.”
“Doesn’t matter. They believe what they believe.”
Thomas wasn’t having any of it as he eyed the mass of people. “If he’s so god-like, why did he allow himself to be locked up for twenty years?”
“Because he chose to?”
“Oh, shit, that’s completely nuts.” He was moving closer to the hospital, Johnson beside him.
“For most people, yeah. But some of his followers think—”
“Followers?” He threw her a glance as they tried to ease through the shoulder-to-shoulder people in the horde, most with cell phones and cameras recording the action.
“Followers. Fans. Whatever. They think Jonas being released from prison is like the Second Coming.” Johnson had to shout to be heard and noticed that traffic around the lot was slowing, more and more vehicles arriving, more women dashing over the berm surrounding the parking lot to join the ever-growing throng.
“Oh, for the love of God,” he muttered.
“Exactly! That’s what they think.” And he saw it then, some of the placards with Biblical phrases or Christ’s image along with Jonas’s.
“This is sick!”
“That doesn’t always mean what you think it does.”
“You know what I’m saying,” he bit out.
Johnson shook her head as the chanting continued, the crowd getting louder. “I’m just sayin’.”
“Hey!” One of the guards, a burly Black man with a badge identifying him as Bertrand Mullins, was keeping the crowd at bay as Thomas and Johnson pushed their way through the undulating mass. “You the cops?” Mullins asked. He was sweating despite the frigid temperature. “Help us out here, will ya?”
“We’re here to see Jonas McIntyre.”
“You and the rest of the damned world. Hey, hey, hey!” He turned to a scrawny woman with bleached hair who was trying to wriggle past. “Ma’am, unless you’re a patient you can’t go inside.”
“Then I’m a patient,” she threw back, her eyes blazing.
“I don’t think so,” Mullins argued.
Johnson said, “She’s on something.”
As Mullins was dealing with the thin woman, two other security guards, one so muscular his uniform was stretched over his back and biceps, another shorter, a spark plug of a guy with a thin red beard, appeared. They charged through a side door and started trying to hold the mob back. The bigger guy was on a walkie-talkie, the shorter one inserting himself between the building and three women with signs.
Jostled, Thomas asked Mullins, “You called the PD?”
“Ten minutes ago. And you all took your damned sweet time!”
Thomas shook his head. “We didn’t take the call. Hey—” He felt an elbow in his back, whirled and faced a man in a flannel jacket who had pushed past him but was stalled by the throng ahead of him. “Sir, you need to leave. Now.”
“What? Who gives you the authority to tell me what to do?” The guy, clean-shaven with wire-rimmed glasses and a pinched expression, tried to stare him down.
It didn’t work. “Detective Cole Thomas.” He flipped out his ID. “Hatfield County Sheriff’s Department. I suggest you leave now.”
