by Alex Siegel
"Tell you what," he said. "You three sneak in that way. Once you're inside, I'll bust down the front door and create a distraction. That should allow you to sweep the house safely."
"I actually had that in mind, big guy." Brian winked.
He went to the window and tried to slide it open, but it was locked. He detached a black kit from his utility belt. He took out a sheet of plastic and peeled off an adhesive backing. He firmly pressed the plastic against the window, covering the glass completely. He took a separate handle from his kit and stuck it to the center of the window. The contact cement created a strong bond instantly.
Brian yanked on the handle. The glass broke, but the shards stuck to the plastic, and Stony only heard a slight crunching noise. There was no tinkle from falling glass. He pulled out all the glass at once and placed the sticky mess on the ground. He performed a leaping dive through the opening and landed silently inside the house. The whole operation took twenty seconds.
Stony helped Mia and Veronica sneak through the window.
"Go make some noise," Mia whispered.
"With pleasure," Stony replied.
He jogged around to the front door of the house. He hardened his skin in all the places he could without restricting movement.
He readied his shotgun, kicked the door open, ran inside, and bellowed, "Federal agents! Freeze! Hands in the air!"
A man and a woman were sitting on a couch and watching television. The man wore loose black robes with pentagrams embroidered on the sleeves. The woman wore just black leather panties and purple lipstick. They were watching some kind of kinky porn with terrible production values. The video looked like it had been shot on a phone camera.
Stony didn't see any threats, so he quickly checked the rest of the room. Inverted crucifixes were hung on the wall along with the obligatory picture of Anton LaVey. A wooden altar was next to a bookshelf containing powders, colored liquids, flasks, and ritual knives. A half-eaten pizza was on a table, and he could smell the pepperoni.
"What do you want?" the woman said in a shaky voice. "We didn't do anything wrong. We're minding our own business."
Stony heard thumping noises in the rest of the house but no gunshots. That was probably a good sign.
A moment later, Brian, Mia, and Veronica entered the living room through another door. They had two prisoners at gunpoint, another man and woman. The man was wearing women's purple lingerie, and his coarse hair poked through the fishnet fabric. The woman was carrying a wooden paddle.
"That's all of them," Brian said. "No sign of Orcus. Nothing illegal at all."
Stony nodded. "Garden variety Satanists. OK. We're looking for Caligula. According to our information, this is his address."
"Your information is wrong," the woman in the leather panties said. "He hasn't lived here for a year."
"But he was here?"
"Yes. He was our leader until the police arrested him."
Stony looked at Veronica.
She nodded. "It's the truth."
Stony turned his attention back to the woman on the couch. "What did the police arrest him for?"
"Child molestation," she said, "but he didn't do it. The charges were false."
"That's a lie," Veronica said.
"Regardless," Stony said, "we need to find him fast. Where is he?"
The woman shrugged. "I don't know. We never heard from him after the arrest. The police refused to release any information. We don't even know if the case went to trial."
"Who arrested him? On what date?"
"The Memphis Police. November twenty-fifth. We went to the station several times, but the cops wouldn't talk to us. We never saw Caligula again."
"That's the truth," Veronica said.
The woman on the couch gave her a questioning look.
"I'll call headquarters and get to the bottom of this," Mia said.
She spent a while talking on her phone, longer than Stony expected. Apparently, the guys in Washington were having trouble getting information.
"They searched the Memphis Police Department computer system," Mia finally reported. "They found an arrest report for the right date at this address. There is no booking number though. No court appearance. No indictment. Our agents couldn't figure out what happened to Caligula after his arrest. The paper trail ends abruptly."
Stony furrowed his brow. "Strange."
"The best they could do was produce a name of one of the arresting officers. Tim Green. I have his phone number and address. He lives in an apartment in downtown Memphis."
"I know that guy," the woman on the couch said. "A real asshole."
"Call him," Stony said.
Mia made another phone call and had a brief conversation.
"He claims he doesn't remember anything," she said. "He doesn't recognize the name Caligula, but he sounded nervous. Then he hung up on me."
"Let's talk to him in person," Stony said grimly. "Maybe we can jog his memory."
* * *
The helicopter landed on the top floor of a six-story parking garage in downtown Memphis. It was the middle of the night, so no cars interfered with the landing.
Stony, Mia, Brian, Veronica, and Agent Lewis hopped out. They had left the big guns in the helicopter and were armed with just pistols. They couldn't run around Memphis with automatic weapons. The body armor was suspicious enough.
The team jogged down a stairwell and reached street level. Tim Green's apartment was a couple of blocks to the northwest, and the team headed in that direction.
The empty streets were dead quiet, and all the stoplights were flashing yellow. The only other person in sight was a vagrant sleeping in a doorway.
Stony liked the buildings. Most cities were full of boring glass and steel boxes, but Memphis had a rich architectural style. Some buildings looked a hundred-years-old and had lavish ornamentation. One tall building even had gothic windows and a peaked roof.
Mia had her phone in hand, and it navigated the team to the right address. The eight-story apartment building had red walls. Balconies jutted out from the third floor up to the top. White granite panels covered the exterior of the first floor and gave the place a touch of elegance.
Stony tried the front door, but it was locked.
Brian immediately produced a set of lock picks. Stony, Mia, and Veronica shielded him with their bodies. Brian inserted his picks, jiggled, twisted, and opened the door.
"By the way," Agent Lewis said, "that was illegal."
Everybody else ignored him.
They entered a drab lobby. An elevator took the team to the seventh floor, and they walked to apartment 708. Stony knocked on the door.
A black man with a bald head opened the door. He was just wearing his underwear. Stony could see the man's plump belly and man-boobs in all their distasteful glory. He was holding something behind his back, and Stony expected it was a gun.
"Are you Officer Tim Green?" Stony said.
Green nodded. "What do you want?" he said in a suspicious voice.
"We're federal agents. We called a little while ago. You arrested a man who went by the name Caligula. We urgently need to find out what happened to him."
"I don't know! I don't remember anything!"
"He's flat-out lying and scared," Veronica said. "He knows the truth."
Stony punched Green in the jaw, knocking him down. As Stony had anticipated, Green was holding a gun in his right hand. Stony took it away.
"Stop!" Agent Lewis said. "You can't go around hitting cops! Let me handle this. Officer, I apologize on behalf of my colleague. Let's talk inside your apartment."
Green scrambled to his feet and backed up. The PEA team entered the apartment and closed the door.
Stony looked around at the cheap furnishings. A white cotton futon served as the couch. Foam stuffing poked out of cracks in a brown vinyl recliner. The yellow carpet had a few, small burns, and he smelled cigarette smoke.
"Who are you guys?" Green said, rubbing his jaw.
"We actually are federal agents," Lewis said, "despite my colleague's inexcusable behavior. We're investigating the kidnapping of those school children. There is a chance the suspect intends to meet Caligula, which is why we have to find him immediately."
Green looked at all the PEA agents in the room, one at a time. "That's impossible," he finally said. "Caligula is dead."
Stony and Mia glanced at each other in surprise.
"Oh?" Lewis raised his eyebrows. "Explain."
"He hanged himself in his jail cell right after we arrested him," Green said. "He tied a bedsheet to a sprinkler head. We didn't even get a chance to book him."
"That's odd, and why is your memory suddenly improving?"
"Uh, maybe getting hit woke up my brain."
"Do you know why he hung himself?" Lewis said.
"I guess he felt guilty about all the little girls he raped. He knew he was going away for a long time. He decided to take the quick and easy way out."
"That's not the whole story," Veronica said. "You're hiding something."
Green glared at her. "How do you know that?"
"I just do, and we're not leaving until we get the entire truth."
"I think I need to call a lawyer."
"Officer," Lewis said, "we don't have time for lawyers. The lives of a dozen innocent children are in imminent danger. Two have already died. Please, tell us everything."
Green just set his jaw.
A sliding glass door led to a balcony. Stony opened the door and stepped outside. Warm, humid air caressed his face as he gazed at downtown Memphis. Nearly all the windows in the buildings were dark. There were no witnesses. He looked down seven stories at the hard pavement below. He shook the railing, and it felt solid.
Stony went back into the apartment, grabbed Green by the neck, dragged him to the balcony, and shoved him against the railing. Stony made sure Green had a good look at the ground.
Green tried to fight off Stony, but it was no contest. A few hard blows subdued the cop.
"Feel that fear?" Stony growled. "That tightness in your stomach? That loosening in the bowels? That's nothing. Imagine you're five-years-old. You were just kidnapped from your classroom. A madman has you chained by the neck like a dog. If you move a muscle, real dogs will bite you. Two of your friends were tortured to death, and you could be next. You don't know whether you'll survive the night. That's real fear, and it's what those children are experiencing right now. If you don't cooperate, I will start breaking off parts of your body."
"You wouldn't...," Green gibbered.
Stony reached back and made a fist.
"OK!" Green said. "You win! Caligula didn't hang himself. We... helped him do it."
"What do you mean?"
"Everybody knew he was a sexual predator. He put a dozen girls in the hospital, but nobody could prove it in a court of law. We didn't have any hard evidence. He was too careful. I and a few other officers decided to get justice the old-fashioned way. We hung him in a jail cell and made it look like suicide. But you didn't hear that from me! I'm not confessing to anything!"
Stony released Green and stepped back. "I don't have a problem with that. Caligula got what he deserved."
Stony turned to his teammates. Lewis was obviously furious, but the rest had passive expressions.
"He's telling the truth," Veronica said, "but now I'm confused. If Caligula has been dead for a year, what does Orcus want with him?"
"That's obvious," Mia said. "Caligula was a pedophile and a serial rapist, and he was also a murder victim. That's a lot of evil in one place. His grave could be used to perform a powerful ritual."
"And Orcus has plenty of human sacrifices to work with," Stony said. He might kill all of them to summon Forneus.
"We need to find that grave tonight."
Stony turned to Green. "Where was Caligula buried?"
"I don't know." Green shrugged. "We never found out his real name. No family ever came forth. He was just a John Doe to us. We put his body in a meat wagon and sent it to the coroner. I never heard what happened to it after that."
"Which coroner?"
"West Tennessee Forensic Center. It's only a mile from here."
"We'll need a case number," Stony said. "Some kind of identifying information."
Green winced. "Sorry. I don't remember."
"Do you at least have the time of death?"
Green thought for a moment. "We arrested him at sundown and hung him a couple of hours later. Eight PM?"
"A John Doe suicide at eight PM on November twenty-fifth. That should be specific enough to pull a case file."
Lewis took out his phone. "I'll get headquarters on it." He made a call and stepped away.
Green rubbed his face where a bruise was forming. "Am I in trouble?"
"Not with me," Stony said. "We'll forget we had this conversation if you do the same. As far as the world is concerned, Caligula killed himself."
He turned to his teammates. Mia, Brian, and Veronica nodded in agreement.
"Oh," Green said. "Good. I never got your names... or saw your badges."
"That's right." Stony patted Green on the shoulder. "Good night."
The PEA agents left the apartment. Lewis went with them while still talking on the phone. By the time they reached the street, he had some information.
"Bad news," he said. "The PEA contacted the Forensic Center. An investigator there found a match in the computer database, but when she tried to open the file, it didn't work. Somebody had deleted it."
"Strange," Mia said. "Orcus isn't known to have skills as a hacker."
"What about backups?" Stony said.
"Those are kept offsite," Lewis said. "They won't be available until morning."
"That's too late! There must be paper records in some file cabinet somewhere."
"The staff is searching. I'm supposed to go over there and offer my assistance."
"What about us?" Stony said.
"I was told to order you to go back to the helicopter. You're not dressed for, uh, an office setting."
Stony looked down at his black body armor. "But I left the big guns behind."
Lewis shook his head sadly. "I'm really starting to understand why the third division rarely goes out into the field. Your behavior with Officer Green was disgraceful, not to mention unethical and illegal."
"But I got results."
"By threatening to throw him off a balcony and smacking him around. Do you even understand what you did wrong? And let's not forget the murders you committed. Horrifying isn't a strong enough word. I have to go."
Lewis ran off. Stony presumed he would reach the Forensic Center on foot. It was only a mile away after all.
The members of the third division headed back to the helicopter at a less hurried pace.
"Was my behavior really that disgraceful?" Stony said.
"Seemed perfectly fine to me, darling," Mia said. "You just bruised him."
"I thought you went easy on him," Brian said.
"Lying bastard got what he deserved," Veronica said.
Stony smiled. "I knew I could count on my friends for support."
They reached the parking garage and made the long climb up a stairwell to the roof. The helicopter was still parked where they had left it. The team climbed into the passenger compartment and settled in.
The air was warm, and the city was quiet. Stony's eyes began to droop. The last few days had been busy and tiring. He was used to short, intense operations, not sustained investigations.
He shook himself awake. He had to stay alert and ready for action. The kidnapped children were counting on him.
About twenty minutes later, Mia's phone rang. She answered and pressed the speaker button.
"Yes?" she said.
"We made some progress," Lewis said. "It turns out there is a physical folder containing the information we need, but it's missing from the file cabinet."
"Naturally," Stony said.
"We checked the surve
illance video. An evidence technician stole the file a few hours ago and left the building with it. We presume he went home for the night."
"What is his address?"
"There are other PEA agents in the area," Lewis said. "They can interview him."
"We have a helicopter. We can get there fast! Besides, Orcus could be at the technician's house."
Lewis paused. "You have to promise to show restraint. Don't break the guy's legs the first chance you get. At least pretend like you care about obeying the law and following proper procedure."
Stony snarled. "Sure. I promise."
"OK." Lewis sighed. "Here is the address...."
* * *
The helicopter was hovering over a residential neighborhood on the east side of Memphis. Small homes formed neat, straight lines below. The grass and trees were a lush green.
"You're sure you want to do it this way, sir?" the helicopter pilot yelled over the rotor noise.
"Yes!" Stony said. "No time to screw around. Go down now!"
The helicopter descended at a reckless speed towards a house with a red roof. Stony clenched his jaw as his stomach tried to climb up his throat.
He checked on his teammates. Mia and Veronica were holding their automatic shotguns. They had the serious expressions of warriors going into battle. Brian's shotgun was strapped to his back, and he held long daggers instead. He preferred weapons that killed silently.
The descent came to a sudden stop a few feet above the roof of the house. The helicopter hovered, and the wash from the rotors made the surrounding trees whip around.
Stony threw open the helicopter door and jumped onto the roof. He ran towards the front of the house, leapt over the gutter, and landed on the front lawn. His teammates joined him seconds later.
As soon as everybody was assembled, Stony charged towards the front door of the house. He lowered his shoulder, hardened his skin, and crashed through.
"Spread out!" he said. "Find him!"
Stony turned on the light and looked around. He was in a living room. A gigantic, brown suede beanbag took the place of a couch. A black vinyl recliner stood directly in front of the television, and several video game controllers were on an adjacent end table. Bachelor pad, he thought.