The Enforcer's Bride

Chapter 9

Andrew

“Dude who still goes to an actual library?” Tori asked as we sped down the highway toward Washington, D.C.

“Someone who needs to access archives that haven’t been digitized.” I pressed harder on the gas pedal, the past week had been a whirlwind.

We arrived at Diane’s apartment later the day she went missing only to find it ransacked. Her bed was turned over, the mattress cut open, clothes were strewn all over the place.

“Holy f**k, I think we need to call the police.” whispered Tori.

“What will they do if we have no proof? ‘Excuse me officer but we think our friend was kidnapped by a religious cult and all we have to go on is an old man that showed up at the bakery.’”

“Well we have the letter,” Tori bit her lip, “Andrew, what if this is something serious?”

“What like Jonestown?” I teased, “I’ll keep an eye out for the Koolaid.”

“No like, what if she’s important to them or something.”

“Hmm, could be. Most cults can’t operate if they lose too many followers. The idea is to keep everything insular and breed a certain mentality or way of life. I’ll bet Diane escaped and for some reason they needed her back,” I shrugged.

We started sorting through the mess to try to find any clues we could. Notes, diaries, grocery lists, anything to help us find out more about Diane or where she came from. I peeked into one of her bottom kitchen cabinets and noticed a tiny piece of fabric in the back right corner, almost to the wall. I reached in and gave the fabric a soft pull, which popped open a false cabinet bottom and revealed a small flattened backpack.

“Smart girl,” I whispered, “Hey Tori, come look what I found!” We dumped the back pack contents on the floor. Inside there must’ve been at least twelve hundred dollars in cash, ten different fake IDs, a burner phone, pepper spray, and a small black book.

“Read what’s inside.” At Tori’s request I opened the little black book and read aloud:

“My name is Hannah. I escaped The Province when I was sixteen. I don’t know if my family is alive. If you’re reading this, please help me.”

I stepped further on the gas of my yellow Ford Mustang, speeding up the highway. We tried googling, calling local university professors or religious leaders, but no one seemed to know what The Province was. One Bishop we tried to visit hastily turned us away and told us that he’d, “Pray for us.” I mean thanks dude I’ll accept your prayers but right now I just need answers. I’ve never been a religious man so I don’t know the intricacies of the church, but it seemed to me as if the Bishop was trying to avoid answering our questions. I was frustrated, how is this group so powerful to take people and no one notices?

A few hours later we hit the beltway and were soon dodging traffic in the city. Between undergrad and law school I spent seven years living in D.C but I always felt like driving in the city was like driving in Mario Cart. Cars going every which way, nobody following the rules of the road, and sometimes people will randomly throw things out their windows.

We parked and headed into the Library of Congress where my friend David was waiting.

“Hey dude! I didn’t know you got into research!” He greeted me and shook my hand.

“Not as deep as you man.” I assured him. David graduated at the top of our class and is truly an academic machine. While the rest of our cohort would celebrate happy hours or go on trips for spring break, David clocked more library hours than the rest of our class combined. He’s a quirky dude, always a little disheveled and needing a haircut, but if we needed information that wasn’t readily available I knew he was the go to guy.

After quick introductions, David lead us through the lobby, down a back hallway to an elevator. He pressed a few buttons and scanned his employee card and the elevator started descending.

“To access non-public information we have to go to the vaults, luckily for you guys I have keycard access. Of course there’s files that are classified and even I don’t have security clearance, but if you’re looking for American cult history that shouldn’t be too hard to find.” The elevator doors opened to a massive room full of shelves packed full of files. The ceiling was low and it was impossible to see how far back the room extended.

“It smells old in here,” Tori muttered.

“Welcome to about three thousand square feet of information,” David explained, “But what you’re looking for will be this way.” David lead us through the fluorescent lit maze until we stopped at a particular shelf.

“Should we have dropped bread crumbs or something?” Tori joked. David stared back her completely serious, “No, why would you need to do that?” 

I smiled down at Tori, “Just go with it,” I mouthed. David was doing us a huge favor, also I didn’t know if we could make it back to the elevator without him. He started pulling files off the shelf and handing them to me and Tori.

“Now which cult did you say that you were looking for?”

“The Province,” I said. David froze then slowly turned back to face me.

“The Province? Are you sure?” I started to get a weird feeling in my stomach. Tori and I exchanged worried glances, would this be another dead end?

“Yeah, do you know anything about them?”

David sighed, looked at the files in our hands, took them back, and placed them on the shelves.

“Wait, can you not help us?” I asked, starting to worry that we came all this way for nothing.

“The Province is located in a different section you won’t find information on them over here.” David turned and started leading us deeper into the shelves.

“Well if they’re not located in the cult section, what section are they in?” Tori asked, almost jogging to keep up with David’s stride. David immediately stopped almost causing Tori to run straight into him. He turned and looked at both of us.

“Organized Crime.”