The Prophet Motive Read Online Free PDF

strewn about the floor, or over the backs of chairs, no rotting food smells, no furniture dust you could do math problems in. There wasn’t much in the way of furniture at all, in fact, just a white wicker sofa and a matching coffee table facing an old TV—tuned to The Simpsons. The beige walls were stark naked.
    John slammed his front door shut and recovered his smoldering cigarette from an otherwise empty ashtray on the coffee table. “My wife has a big mouth, telling you where to find me.”
    “Not big enough. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here now.”
    He blinked like a man who’d been drinking for hours, slow as a drawbridge. “What do you want to know?”
    “Whatever it is you don’t want me to know.”
    “You tell Teresa about Earthbound?”
    “Of course not. I know better than to compromise a homicide investigation, even with the wife—soon to be ex-wife—of the lead investigator. But why ask me that? Oh, of course. You’d love to provide headquarters with a sound reason to pull me off the case. Well, the feeling’s mutual, now that I know you better.”
    She zipped by him into an immaculate kitchen smelling of pine and soap. Despite John’s built-in dishwasher, a pile of clean dishes dried in a dish rack by the sink. Not The Simpsons, but The Odd Couple crossed her mind. Only here was Felix and Oscar in the same body.
    He pounded to a halt behind her. “Now what? You want to fix yourself a snack?”
    She faced him. “What’s the matter, John? Your dishwasher broke? Or it doesn’t quite get the job done for you?”
    He crossed his arms and glared. “Quit it, Doc. Quit snooping around, trying to psycho-analyze me, because it’s pointless. You can’t get rid of me, and I can’t get rid of you.”
    On the sidewalk, a hunchbacked homeless man, his face shrouded by winter scarves, jostled Marilyn on his way by. She resumed her trek.
    At the corner of Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue, she noticed a pamphlet distributor that she had not seen before, a slender young man in chinos and a button-down shirt with a solid green necktie—or a tie with one stripe, depending on one’s point of view. She crossed the street at the next traffic light and approached him, hoping once again that she’d found an Earthbound cult recruiter—the predator she’d been stalking in reverse.
    She had no way to reduce her suspects by race or sex or age, but a pamphlet pusher of ecological concerns would most likely be the predator, whose favorite prey all shared one easily observable trait: commitment to preserving the environment.
    Marilyn threw back her shoulders and thrust her chest out to give the pamphlet pusher a clear view of her ratty Greenpeace Tee shirt as she crossed in front of him. He was busy hollering now, hollering the same thing over and over again.
    “Help stop the world population explosion!”
    The pusher handed Marilyn one of his banana yellow sheets and repeated his unwavering shout almost directly into her ear.
    “Help stop the world population explosion!”
    She stopped to read the pamphlet. Its message was of the type she’d expected and hoped for: idealistic, cryptic hyperbole.
     
    Do you feel as if the world has gone totally mad ?
    But nobody seems to notice? Have you sensed
    the growing anarchy in today’s so-called modern society?
    The problem stems from the growing lack of equilibrium on planet Earth. The rampant and unrestrained over-population of human beings on every continent has destroyed the delicate harmony that until recently existed between man and nature. This has led to disruptions in the planet’s magnetic energy flow patterns , which we now know effects human brain waves ...
     
    The zany literature might’ve been churned out by any number of local cults—or by the just plain nutty. For cults pamphlets such as this one gave their distributors an excuse to beg from passers-by. The pamphlets also helped to identify individuals who could be swayed by emotion, even in the plain