by C G Cooper
Blood was gushing through a hole in Jordan’s black coat. The kid’s face couldn’t be paler, but it seemed to shrivel, like a dried-up tangerine. Mac caught him as he fell and lowered the wiry, twitching body to the ground. He pressed a glove against the spurting, bloody fountain.
“Who did this to you, Jordan? Who was the voice in my head?”
Jordan’s lips barely moved. “N-Niko. Victory. I’m the moving hand.”
“Stay with me.”
Jordan said, “I’m sorry. I’ve been bad. Sorry, Mama. Sorry, Da.” There were tears in his eyes. “Tell Tiffany I’m sorry.” The light had almost gone from his eyes. He sucked in a breath, brought it fiercely. “Serapis!” he said. “Save me, Dread Master. The day draws nigh. Hold me—”
Mac wasn’t sure what he had just heard, but he couldn’t ask anything more. The fountaining of Jordan’s blood had stopped. Mac sat on his haunches. There was no hope of catching the woman now.
The students had cleared a space around him. Emma picked herself up off the ground. Behind her, a campus security guard yelled to clear a path. Mac pulled out his phone.
Chance picked up immediately. “I found it,” Chance said. “Just where you told me.”
Mac said, “I need you to call your friends. Get them to lock down campus. Nobody leaves. Then get to the church ASAP.”
“On my way,” said Chance. “What for?”
“You gotta arrest me.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The interview room smelled like smoke, despite posted warnings not to light up. It was the people, Mac decided. They brought in the stink on their clothes. The chair he was seated on was metal and uncomfortable. The table in front of him was plastic and marred with years of convict graffiti.
Chance sat across from him, his expression hard. He’d bought it off Magnum, PI. Amazingly, it worked even without the mustache.
“Why’ve I got another kid on a slab down at County?” asked the detective. “I trusted you. That’s what I deserve, getting in bed with a spook.” He turned, said over his shoulder, “That’s a figure of speech.”
“I can explain,” said Mac. “But you need to lose the peanut gallery. And bring in our special guest.”
He’d seen the “special guest” on his way in. The petite, attractive woman had looked primed for the witness stand in her gray pinstripe pant suit.
Chance eyed him, looking tired. At last, he got up, tapped the glass.
He said, “Wait here.”
Mac lifted his right arm, displaying the handcuff chaining him to the table. Chance walked into the hallway. Mac saw him make a placating gesture as he closed the door. The room was almost soundproof, but not quite. Mac heard a slight rising of voices, an answering murmur, footsteps. Chance returned.
Seating himself opposite Mac, he said, “What can you tell me, between us?” He didn’t sound nearly as agitated as he had moments ago.
“Between us? I know how Tiffany died.”
Chance started ticking off the list on his fingers. “Fell from a roof. Three other people around. Nobody close enough to push—”
“Mind control.”
“Mind control?”
“I’m sure now. A chemically induced, highly suggestible state. Super hypnosis. I think there’s a subliminal element at work. Still working out all the details. Jordan Ross died the same way.”
“He died of a bullet wound.”
“From a gun aimed by me when I was under their control. He asked me to kill him. Maybe that was guilt, but I don’t think so. I think he was being controlled. Remember Sub CR-E6? I think that was Jordan Ross. Tiffany’s a possibility, too, but I like Jordan for the prototype. They tortured him, tested him. He killed his folks first then his dogs. What’s that tell you?”
Chance shrugged.
“It tells me, maybe he had a hard time with Mom and Dad. Tall, mean, and scary had to help. They tried again after they’d perfected the formula. With the dogs. That was after the success with Tiffany, remember.”
There was a knock at the door.
“That’ll be our special guest,” said Mac.
Chance cracked the door, peeked, swung it all the way open. Anne-Jeanette Keyes posed in the bright light flooding in from the hall.
Chance said, “Please come in, Professor.”
Anne sat as a uniformed officer brought in a third steel chair, which Chance accepted. Anne’s makeup, Mac noticed, had been subtly adjusted to suit the uneven light of the interview room. She wore her red-gold hair up, dividing it from her dark pants suit by the full span of her ivory skin and smooth, white neck. With her teasing grin, she reminded Mac of the Greek Sphinx. He didn’t doubt she could snap a man’s neck.
As the officer shut the door, Anne said, “Aloha, darling.”
“Aloha,” said Mac. “You’ve met Detective Chance?”
“Briefly,” she said, offering Chance her hand.
He took it, almost kissed it on impulse, gave it a shake.
“He’s got a girl back in Albany,” said Mac.
“I’m sure she’s lovely,” purred Anne.
Chance cleared his throat. “The reason we asked you here—”
“We, detective?” said Anne. “Are you suggesting that this gentleman, currently in custody, is partially responsible for the invitation you extended?”
“No need for games,” said Mac. “The detective knows as much as I do. Now, how about you tell us about the night Tiffany died?”
Anne studied her reflection in the mirror and dabbed a pinky on the corner of her mouth. Then she turned back, looking straight into Mac’s eyes. “I won’t tell you what happened. But I will tell you how I intend to take revenge.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It had been blowing a gale for less than an hour and already the asphalt was invisible beneath a coating of white. Stars swirled at the SUV’s windshield, glimpsed through beating wipers as Chance hunched over the wheel. Despite the concentration driving in the blizzard demanded, he hadn’t stopped asking questions.
“This group, spy ring, whatever,” he said to Anne, who sat primly in the passenger seat while Mac sprawled in the back.
“DIOS,” said Anne.
“Yeah,” said Chance. “That’s ‘God’ in Spanish. We dealing with religious extremists?”
“We are not,” said Anne. “How astute of you to ask. I can see why Mac relies on you to sift through the details.”
Mac said, “If they’re not religious, what’s their angle?”
“I didn’t say they aren’t religious,” she said. “Only that we’re not dealing with religious extremists. The organization’s motives are not primarily religious. They do have religious trappings that are sometimes used to recruit new members.”
Chance said, “Jordan Ross was a true believer.”
Every muscle in Anne’s face tensed. “He was weak-minded and insincere. His motivations don’t interest me.”
“They used to,” said Mac. That got a glare from Anne. “You made Tiffany his motivation.”
“I did not make Tiffany anything. I trained her to be the woman she wanted to be. She was a student, friend, protégé. Jordan Ross and his allies took that away.”
“You were the one who put her in danger,” said Chance.
Anne seemed suddenly meeker, less present, than at any time since Mac had met her.
“She put herself there. I told her she was ready. I was sure she was. That night, the last of her life, was to be her final exam. If she got results, I meant to put her in touch with persons who could advance her career. She deserved—”
Anne’s sob shocked Mac. Neither he nor Chance said a word as she dabbed her eyes.
“After what happened,” she said, “I contacted a mutual friend of ours, Mac. The reason for your being here, on this assignment, devolved from my tip-off.”
So, that was what she had meant last night before dinner. Whatever the details, Anne was responsible for his opportunity to get back in the field. Had she lef
t his selection in Bogey’s hands or asked for him specifically? He resolved to ask, but not in front of Chance.
“I’ve been watching DIOS for years,” she said. “I first became aware of them while teaching as an adjunct at Harvard.”
“How long ago was that?” said Chance.
“Must I calculate? Very well. It’s eight years, plus ou moins. At the time, I thought them a harmless variant on the countless secret societies the privileged are fond of, which mainly offer arcane settings in which to fornicate and then brag to their friends.”
She continued, “When I dug into the matter, I discovered how wrong I was. DIOS is more in keeping with what those societies pretend to be. A nation unto themselves, pledging allegiance to none but their dark masters. They exist in every center of learning the world over, spreading roots like an insidious weed.”
Mac said, “How deep do those roots go?”
Anne favored him with a grin. “Precisely the question I’ve been trying to answer.”
“So, this place you’re taking us tonight,” said Chance, “what’s it got to do with Tiffany’s murder?”
Anne had refused to name their destination, guiding Chance turn-by-turn instead of letting him follow the GPS on his phone.
“I applied for my job at Schuyler to chase down a lead,” she said. “A scientist, a man with connections to state covert agencies. I learned that he had been in contact with DIOS members, offering to sell secrets. He was initiated into the network months before I tracked him down, and he rose quickly to become a figure of importance. Not one of their masters, you understand, but an influential pet of at least one leader. Brilliant mind for chemistry. Turn there.”
Chance squinted the way she was pointing, slowed almost to a stop before turning onto a barely distinguishable access road.
“I take it we’re not going in through the front door,” he said.
“We, darling? You are here in the role of driver. I certainly won’t be going in. But no. To answer your question, Mac won’t be entering through the front.”
Chance stopped the SUV. They were a few feet into the woods. The path ahead could be seen in the headlights only because the snow lay more thickly in the ruts of ancient tire tracks.
“Wait a sec. You expect me to wait in the car while Mac risks his neck playing commando?”
Anne said, “I have reason to believe Mac will be gathering information that exceeds your need to know, Detective. Isn’t that right, Mac?”
If she said so, Mac believed her. He’d already stretched the definition of need-to-know. “Spy stuff,” he said. “Top secret. I’ve gotta go alone.”
“Forget I offered,” said Chance.
“As it happens,” Anne said, “he won’t be completely alone. I have an agent on the inside. She’ll toggle a light to guide your approach, Mac, then stand ready to open the door. Granting you admittance will be the full extent of her role, mind. I can’t ask her to do more, for reasons you’ll understand when you get there. But calm yourself, Detective,” she assured Chance. “Your friend won’t be in danger. All hostiles with reason to be present are confined to campus. Dying in dramatic fashion is the one thing that despicable young man did right. Drive on, please.”
Chance drove. Mac was ready to knock him out and chain him to the steering wheel if need be, but when Anne held up a hand minutes later, he slumped resignedly and looked at her for instructions.
“We’ll light the way for a few minutes,” she said, “then head back to the school. Fifty yards on your right, Mac, you’ll find a creek bed. Frozen over, I shouldn’t wonder. Do be careful. Follow the creek for two hundred yards and you’ll come to a hill. Your destination is on top. Look for the light.”
Pausing, she set her purse in her lap. “You’ve little to worry about, but the ingenuity of these persons has, on occasion, caught me off guard.” From a side pocket of the purse, she produced a slim pistol. “Beretta 950 Minx. Big bang in a small package. Eight-shot magazine.”
Mac held out his hand. The gun was surprisingly heavy. He covered it with his other hand, made it disappear. Anne brought up a set of schematics on her phone and told him the rest of the plan.
“I don’t like this,” Chance said as Mac climbed out of the SUV.
“It’s what I wanted,” Mac said. “Drive safe and wait for my call.” Leaving behind his bulky overcoat, Mac climbed from the SUV and set off through the snow.
He’d gone twenty paces when Anne called his name. Holding up a hand to make Chance stay put, she shut the door of the Cherokee and walked to meet him through the streaming whiteness. She had something in her hand. A compact, he realized when she got closer. Not Tiffany’s. She twisted a tube of lipstick and looked in the mirror to apply it.
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a goth,” he said, commenting on the dark purple shade.
“Needs must,” she said, and kissed him. His head swam. “That should top you up, darling.”
Hunching his shoulders, he walked away into the cold. He knew, now, whom he’d find waiting when he arrived at the house on the hill.
Chapter Forty
Mac trudged on through the woods. Anne’s pistol was in the pocket of his slacks. The storm would have blinded him in the open, but the evergreens in their white shrouds provided sufficient cover. He made good time, in spite of the wind and his thick boots, finding the creek after a few minutes.
A frosted slope that must have been popular with sledders rose from there. Mac fought the wind, forcing his way alongside the creek for a minute more, until he found a place to jump across. He could no longer feel his nose or earlobes, but the rest of him still worked.
At the top of the hill was a vast expanse of nothingness. Clouds covered the moon and stars. The snow was blowing so thickly that Mac couldn’t decide if the void was black or white. That he could see the peak at all was the only evidence that the house perched, unseen, on the line between earth and heaven, illuminating its wedge of existence.
He trudged in the direction of the diffuse light, keeping as low as possible to let the wind blow over him and to make himself less conspicuous. If Anne was right, her clever chemist would not be at home. His wife, however, might be. Anne didn’t believe her to be a member of the secret organizations herself, but she was sure the woman knew her husband was up to no good.
He was near enough to glimpse the house through the snapping white curtains of snow when a portion of it fell briefly into shadow. He paused and waited until it appeared again, then advanced, drawn like a moth to the on-again, off-again light. The wind blew westward, riding an arm of the winter maelstrom.
Approaching the house’s east face, Mac saw it clearly for the first time. Two stories, broader on all sides than it was tall, with a wraparound cedar deck, floor planks elevated a yard off the ground by thick timbers. A rail with built-in benches closed in the deck up to a height of six feet or more.
A shorter man would have had a hard time slipping inside, but Mac put a hand up, checked that the coast was clear, and levered himself over the one-by-six that formed a seat back for the bench. He swung his left leg over like a pole vaulter clearing the bar. Safe on the other side, he crouched low, drawing Anne’s pistol.
The light he’d been following winked out and stayed out. Its loss didn’t hurt visibility. In fact, it improved it; the floodlights surrounding the house were almost as blinding as the blizzard itself. Mac blinked to clear phantom flashes from his eyes. The brass handle of the glass door leading to the deck turned. He took aim. Emma Jarrald stepped out.
She didn’t look at him at first, didn’t speak. He didn’t know what to say to her, so he lowered the pistol and kept his mouth shut. As he crossed the deck, she lifted her head to watch him, tight-lipped, like he was part of a funeral procession. She flinched away from the gun. He tucked it away.
“I couldn’t save her,” said Emma. “I wanted to, I just— I froze. That night. I froze.”
“It happens,” said Mac.
Her eyes wen
t to the pocket that now concealed Anne’s Beretta. “You won’t—?”
She was asking him not to kill anybody who didn’t need killing. He was always okay with that.
“Your family,” he said, pointing at her, “my family,” he finished, touching his own chest.
She collapsed against him, sobbing into his collar. He gently pushed her off.
“Stay outta the way. I’ll be quick.”
She nodded.
Mac slipped inside. The heat-pumped air woke his extremities to tingling numbness. For the first few seconds, all he could do was stand in the dark and shiver. Finally, when his warmth was uniform enough that he didn’t feel like he was rolling around on pins and needles, he removed his boots.
The home office he’d entered was decorated with the mementos of a world-traveler. Yellowed books and bits of statuary were everywhere. Here, then, was Brian’s sanctum sanctorum. The one he admitted to having, anyway.
Glancing through the glass at Emma, Mac returned the icy steel of the pistol to his hand. If he was going to find what he was after, he was going to have to go deeper, and he meant to be prepared.
Chapter Forty-One
The TV was on in the living room. Through the doorway, Mac glimpsed Zelda Jarrald’s slippers. She was sitting with her feet up on an ottoman, flipping through news channels while she spoke to someone on the phone. From this side of her conversation, Mac figured out it was her lawyer on the other end of the line. Zelda was demanding to know when her husband could return home and didn’t much care, or so she said, what the police had to say about the campus being on lockdown.
Mac inched along the wall opposite the doorway, wondering what she would do if she found him creeping soundlessly around her house, gun in hand. Emma had trusted him not to do more harm than necessary to her family. Giving her adoptive mother a heart attack would qualify as harm. He had a sudden, strong recollection of Leilani as an infant falling asleep on his chest. Mac made a silent promise and decided that he’d do everything he could to spare the Jarrald women pain.