“We got the FBI on the phone,” Jason Battlesea said, “and some guy named Fitzgerald said to tell you that this man you’re interested in has never been fingerprinted. So if you’re going to check for his fingerprints, you’re going to have to have some reason to bring him in. He’s some kind of lawyer.”
Gregor considered this. Ray Guy Pearce a lawyer? There was nothing impossible about it, and given the man’s mental state on every level, it had probably been a smart move. Lawyer or not, though, there were ways to get a man fingerprinted.
“I’m surprised somebody hasn’t insisted over the years,” Gregor said, “but it doesn’t matter. We’ll get him fingerprinted. And then I’m going to break his head.”
“But I don’t understand,” Jason Battlesea said. “Is this the person who killed Chapin Waring? He came in from outside and killed her? But why would he do that? If he knew her in Queens, why didn’t he kill her in Queens?”
“He didn’t know her like that,” Gregor said. “He thought he was shielding her from the agents of the worldwide reptilian conspiracy.”
“What?”
Gregor shook his head. “Mr. Pearce believes,” he said, “that the entire world is run by thirteen families, the richest thirteen families on the planet. The members of these families are not human. They are the descendants of the union of human women with Satan’s demons. And these thirteen families have been the same families since the beginning of time. They just pretend to be other people in order to fool the public about the true nature of the world. So, you see, they’ll create the illusion that someone like Bill Clinton was born and grew up in poverty, when in reality he was the son of one of these families, and being groomed to take power.”
Jason Battlesea looked bewildered. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but that sounds like gibberish. Are you trying to tell me that this Pearce guy is crazy?”
“Not in the way you mean, no,” Gregor said. “There are a lot of people in the world—in the world, mind you, not just in the United States—who believe versions of that story. And there are a lot of versions. There are Catholic and Protestant versions, atheist versions, Muslim versions. A little twist here and there, and the story works for anybody. Ray Guy Pearce thought Chapin Waring was a member of one of those thirteen families, and that she had escaped from that family and now wanted to tell the truth to the world. But she couldn’t poke her head above the radar, or they would find her, capture her, and destroy her.”
“She was wanted for a double homicide,” Jason Battlesea said. “Of course we wanted to find her and capture her.”
“Mr. Pearce believes that was all just a cover story for the forces of evil who were afraid she’d blow their cover. So, he covered for her when she needed covering, he taught her how to live underground and without being noticed—”
“He published books. He wasn’t trying not to be noticed.”
“Some of the books he published were manuals on how not to be noticed,” Gregor said. “And I have to admit, he was smarter than most of these guys. The usual thing in trying to hide is to take yourself off to some remote area and do what’s called ‘going sovereign.’ That means trying to stay off the grid entirely. No hooking up to the electrical system. No buying oil for the furnace. No going to the grocery store. You build yourself a place out in the middle of nowhere. You hunt and grow your food and use firewood to heat your house in winter. You don’t use money and you don’t let yourself get seen. And it fails every time.”
“It sounds like the Unabomber,” Battlesea said.
“It is like the Unabomber,” Gregor said, “and like a half dozen other people you’ve heard of. The Weavers at Ruby Ridge, for instance. Do you know what the two big problems with going sovereign are?”
“Is one of them that it’s crazy?”
“No,” Gregor said. “The first thing is that it’s really hard to hide out in areas with sparse populations. We’re talking about really small towns here. There’s not much to do. There’s not much to see. And there’s nowhere to go. That means that people watch other people. They see somebody new, they notice him. They check out the new guy’s behavior. They try to figure out what he’s doing. Of course, they know about going sovereign. They’ve seen these guys before, and they know a lot of them aren’t stable, and a lot of them are wanted by somebody or other. So they watch, and they watch television, and when the guy’s picture shows up on America’s Most Wanted, they pick up the phone and give the authorities all the necessary directions.”