Crossing the Cult
Joseph McGee Private Investigator: Book Two
CROSSING THE CULT
McGee Confronts a Murderous Cult
Carl Douglass
Neurosurgeon Turned Author Writes With Gripping Realism
PO Box 221974 Anchorage, Alaska 99522-1974
books@publicationconsultants.com—www.publicationconsultants.com
ISBN 978-1-59433-580-8
eISBN 978-1-59433-581-5
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2015952501
Copyright 2015 Carl Douglass
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in any form, or by any mechanical or electronic means including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, in whole or in part in any form, and in any case not without the written permission of the author and publisher.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Dedication
To the people of the wild, Wild West and a nod to the effete Easterners.
Disclaimer
All of the six novellas in the McGee Series are works of fiction and should not be construed as representing real persons, places, or events. Some names of real persons and places appear but only for the purpose of creating a setting in the real world or as a mention of historical circumstances. None of the real people or the real places were actually involved in the fictional portrayals found in these short books. All of the events described were created from the author’s imagination.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter One
1881
Petter Arontsen was excommunicated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [Mormons] on June 12, 1881 for the most grievous of sins—apostasy. It was his fiftieth birthday, and he never forgot the insult and humiliation inflicted on him by the LDS Prophet. To rub salt in Petter’s wound, his excommunication was announced in the church’s newspaper, the Deseret News, on the day of Petter’s fiftieth birthday. Petter lost most of his friends—all of whom were Mormons. At least as important to him was that he also lost most of his business opportunities. His family—four wives and eighteen children—was disillusioned, regarding his expulsion from the church as grossly unfair. They were glad to leave “Zion” and try another place and another life.
The other place was easy. In fact, they moved about following Petter’s work opportunities as master mason. He was successful and became anxious to start his own business in a permanent location. That location was an odd one, as it turned out. The family settled in the very middle of Wyoming in a hamlet called Iron Heart in reference to the train locomotives that received scheduled maintenance there. The presence of the trains provided the opportunity Petter needed to make his name and fortune. Iron Heart was located in the center of a shallow depression in the desert floor surrounded by low granite mountains. Petter and his sons established a quarry and attracted highly skilled quarriers. He shipped precisely cut granite blocks around the country and frequently provided master and journeymen masons to supervise the planning and construction of buildings in every major city in America and Lower Canada. By 1910, Petter no longer wielded a hammer and chisel. He made his millions with a pencil and a telegraph.
Iron Heart would have remained a hamlet housing skilled quarriers, masons, shippers, salesmen, and accountants were it not for the burning need Petter Arontsen had to enlarge the religious universe of those around him. In 1888, he actually purchased the town—lock, stock, and barrel. He became the mayor, primary employer, greatest benefactor, and eventually, the city’s major religious figure—almost the only one. He groomed his eleven sons to follow his lead, and together they began to attract followers to Iron Heart—not for work—but to join Arontsen’s innovative church that he named—with a modicum of immodesty—The Only True Church of Christ.
Being the home of a church with such a provocative name surely needed the city to change with the times and circumstances. The mayor and the city council—consisting of four of his sons, two daughters, and two sons-in-law, who were all also prominent in the church—voted unanimously to change Iron Heart to The Heart of Eden. By 1900, there was a serious draw from America and soon thereafter from Eastern and Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand to The Heart of Eden. Prophet Petter Arontsen—as he became affectionately known—developed a proselytizing network par excellence. The advantages of The Only True Church were many and were extremely appealing: earthly wealth afforded by lucrative work in a well-established industry, polygamy that attracted rich men who could afford to take wives from among the many nubile girls in The Heart of Eden and from around the world, whose passage and promise of a good life was assured by the simple expedient of joining the wealthy congregation.
By the time the Prophet Petter died in 1932, there were 200,000 citizens/members in The Heart of Eden with an average income of $83,000 for a family of four—a small family—and $142,000 for a family of fourteen—more nearly the average. By the standards of the time—the depths of the Great Depression—that was princely. He was wise in almost every respect by maintaining control of almost all aspects of his and his family’s lives and the lives of his congregants. He established a hierarchal order that assured a smooth succession in leadership of the church, the city, and the burgeoning businesses based on nepotism.
The Prophet hit upon another highly effective way to ensure tranquility and contentment among the members. The church and the city passed laws that required every member to divest himself and his family of all holdings in return for a guaranteed cradle-to-grave comfortable life. That was highly appealing to the people living on the brink of disaster during the Depression. The other element of control which guaranteed social contentment was that all marriages were controlled by a central “Sacred Marriage Bureau.” Members trained in sociology and psychology investigated the compatibility of marital arrangements and granted licenses to those of a marriageable age and with an appropriate work ethic. The system worked, much as society works in Scandinavia—no one stood out; everyone was average; and there was no need for contention and rivalry for jobs or to find a suitable mate.
The next four presidents of the church were selected by the Council of the Prophets—six men handpicked by the president, who were of irreproachable moral character and proven financial ability and stability—all of whom were sons of Petter Arontsen. The next three were grandsons of the founding Prophet. All of the presidents were excellent husbandmen of the large fortune they inherited. Each man was richer than the last; and by 2013, Prophet/President Erasmus Jessen—the first man not directly related to the Arontsen family—had an estate that made him a double billionaire. His three predecessors were also fine managers and were able to pass on an increase of more than a billion dollars.
The liberal policies of The Only True Church adapted with the times and were inclusive rather than exclusive. It was more than social liberalism; it was financially practical because the church attracted people with money who were of both genders, all races, and all sexual persuasions. Some of the less pious sang irreverent songs of praise for the church and its Prophet—the favorite being, “Oh, how the money rolls in, rolls in; oh, how the money rolls in.”
It was not until the fall of 2013 that the first fissures began to appear in the idyllic church, town, ind
ustry, and social structure in the form of a whistle blower named Devon Carlisle.
Chapter Two
2013
Devon Michael Carlisle joins The Only True Church of Christ in 2001 when he is fifteen years old. The Harold and Martha Carlisle family has four children when they join and four more enter the world in Heart of Eden after they settle into Stephen Randolph Arontsen’s community. Harold and Martha divest themselves of three million dollars in investments and savings in a single gift to the church when they leave New York City and move to the middle of wind-swept and barren Wyoming. Following the instructions of the prophet, Harold continues in his financial management business via the internet and is able to work from the family’s new location. The family continues to contribute more than a million dollars a year to the church.
Devon graduates from True Church Preparatory School as its valedictorian in 2003 and goes on to the land-grant University of Wyoming in Laramie—more accurately in the high Laramie Plains between the city and the Snowy Mountain range. There, he follows the prophet’s directions and graduates magna cum laude with a BA in business administration and a minor in finance. In 2010, he obtains a masters degree in finance, and a CPA. The costs of all of that education are underwritten by The Only True Church of Christ higher education foundation.
The funding for education comes with strings attached. Each student is obligated to sign a binding contract to work in Heart of Eden or for the church in a location selected by the Council of the Prophets for at least ten years. That is no burden for the second son of the Carlisle family because Devon is a true believer. Devon has a head for numbers and an insight into investment and finance that makes him a serious asset for Prophet/President Arontsen who wants a foothold for the church in the New York Stock market and with the Big Apple’s financial giants. Five months before the Prophet’s death, he is able to get Devon a seat on the NYSE when a vacancy appears, and a mid-level job as assistant to the CFO of BB&H [Berkeley, Bradley, and Hawthorne], one of the largest and most active of New York’s financial houses.
Devon cements his position with BB&H when, in 2011, he is able to expose an embezzlement scheme involving three vice presidents of the company and to provide the evidence used in court to convict them. Devon learns that his true gift is research—to find the nugget or the crime hidden in the mass of numbers and transactions. During that incident, he first came to know McGee & Associates Investigations and to become more than a nodding acquaintance of J.P.A.M.J. McGee, the charismatic and brilliant head of the private investigation company which serves the rich and famous, and even the government, upon occasion.
Devon’s entire salary and bonus package is banked directly into the Only True Church of Christ Bank in Heart of Eden, Wyoming, where other financial geniuses determine where investments are to be made. Devon is granted $80,000 a year plus expenses to maintain his life in New York and Heart of Eden. The new prophet, Erasmus Jessen, agrees with his predecessor that young Devon is an asset and rewards him with the right to marry when he is only twenty-three years old, five years earlier than usual for the tightly controlled religious community. He is even promised that he will be accepted into the Council of the Providers—the support group of five-hundred successful men and women who provide the detail work and the bulk of the income for the Council of the Prophets—and will be granted the special dispensation of beginning his plural marriage life earlier than his peers. It is evident that young Devon Carlisle is being groomed to be one of the Council of the Prophets when a vacancy occurs.
2013 is the beginning of a major life change for Devon, his family, and The Only True Church of Christ. That is the year when fissures of doubt appear in the foundation of Devon’s faith. From early childhood, Devon develops an inquisitive mind coupled with a desire to dig into the roots of the truth. Until 2013, it has not occurred to him to apply those cognitive traits to his church. He probably would never have probed beneath the establishment of the obviously rock-solid financial and then the social structure of the religion for which he testifies fervently in Sunday testifying and glorifying meetings ever since he and his family joined the charismatic brother and sisterhood of believers, had he not stumbled onto an anomaly.
It is a matter of having too much knowledge—not a rare cause of the downfall of intensely devoted religious adherents—and having that knowledge turn up a revelation of sorts. Devon is seeking ways to increase the income of the church; so, he begins a foundation-level study of how the highly successful religious organization functions financially. It takes some digging; but while studying stock market transactions seeking patterns of investing, he finds a disturbing pattern. Hidden in the reams of numbers and stock transaction records is a recurring leitmotif of what Devon knows are greenmail purchases and sales. The Only True Church of Christ has a regular practice of buying a large amount of a company’s stock at an inflated price so that the management—fearing a takeover—will be forced to buy it back at an even higher premium to avoid a hostile takeover. The practice is considered unethical by most traders, and the church’s transactions are obfuscated by use of dummy trusts and cut-out corporations. The names listed in the companies are rank-and-file church members with no business interest, experience, or involvement.
Then he begins an investigation into whether or not the church has practiced—either intentionally or unintentionally—inappropriate or even illegal short sale transactions. What he learns in that effort convinces him that he is in over his head, and he decides to contact McGee & Associates Investigations for professional help.
Chapter Three
2013
McGee’s private office line phone rings, waking him from a reverie that features fly-fishing on the Provo River in Utah, one of his favorite getaways and mind cleansers.
“Hello,” he says.
“Mr. McGee, thank you for taking my call. You probably don’t remember me, but I’m Devon Carlisle from the Berkeley, Bradley, and Hawthorne financial firm. Maybe you’ll remember that you and I worked on an embezzlement issue involving three vice presidents of the company, which worked out well for BB&H and me.”
“I do remember. How are you doing lately, Devon?”
“I’m fine personally, but I have a delicate problem.”
“You’ve reached the delicate investigations department. Tell me what’s going on?”
McGee presumes that he is about to hear some personal problem that Devon needs to hide. He remembers how strict the young man is about his religion and knows that a personal peccadillo would be a mountain where for others it would be a molehill. He is surprised by Devon’s answer.
“It’s not really about me. It’s about the church, or at least somebody who controls money for the church. It would be very destructive if it ever got out. In a nutshell, I am still an assistant to the CFO of BB&H, and I handle the church’s investment accounts. I have found evidence of greenmail offenses and maybe even some short sale transactions that are not altogether … what shall I say … kosher.”
“I’m aware of your expertise. How can McGee Investigations help?”
“I want a very private and very complete forensic accounting of the transactions by the church; and I want it to be kept a secret until all of the evidence is available; so, I don’t go off half-cocked and injure the church and destroy myself and my family.”
“With regards to secrecy, how would you pay for our services, Devon?”
“I thought of that problem. Before I called you, I set up a company which I call BB&H Educational Services using my wife’s maiden name as the president and CEO. I have very considerable discretion over business expenditures for the church investments, and I can bill that account without the fact being known that I am the one looking into the accounts. So, that’s not the problem. What is a more likely concern is that anything I do within the company will be tracked by IT and security. Can you hack into the account and check it out surreptitiously?”
“Probably, but we will be in a grey area lega
lly. In the end, if or when any of this becomes public, you will have to be the guy whose name appears, not mine. Agreed?”
“Yes. I am looking at the future, and it looks like this might become a real problem. But I just cannot turn a blind eye. That would be dishonest, and I can’t live with that.”
“Is it your intent to be a whistleblower, Devon?”
“Gosh, I hope not. I would like to have all of the data and be able to present it to the Prophet/President and the Council of Prophets; so, it can be corrected. I am afraid there is a rotten apple in the barrel somewhere, and they need to know who it is. So far as I can tell by my limited research thus far, we are talking millions, maybe even billions, if this all goes back for decades like I’m afraid it does.”
“All right, Devon. First, I think we should not communicate by regular phones again; and we should not meet in my offices or yours. Go out and buy a box of burner phones. Pay cash and program my private number into a few of them. Change phones every month at least. Second, you will need to meet with my partner, Caitlin O’Brian, who is a top-flight analyst with a lot of experience in stock transactions and chicanery. She used to be a NYPD detective.”
“Oh, Mr. McGee, I certainly don’t want to get the police involved.”
“Caitlin is very sensitive to the distinctions between private and police investigations. No police until and unless you want to. We contract to give you the best evidence we can produce, and you can deal with what you learn at your discretion. And, just call me McGee. Everybody does. Okay if we all call you Devon?”
“Sure.”
“So, meet me tomorrow in Lederman’s Grill on fifth. I’ll bring Caitlin and get you two together; so, we can get this show on the road.”