by M. Z. Kelly
“How do you want to proceed?” Ted asked me as the others gathered around me on the street.
“No time for a warrant. Let me knock on the door and play it like I’m upset over Lexi’s disappearance and stopped by to talk. We’ll see how he reacts. I’ll leave my phone on in case there’s any trouble.” I handed over Bernie’s leash, thinking it would be easier to deal with Dillon Walker without my dog being present.
After rehashing the details a half-dozen times, the feds were finally satisfied with the plan. The others hung back with Bernie as I walked down the sidewalk and rang the bell. I tried it three times without getting a response.
I said into my phone, “No response. I’m going around back to check on things.”
I heard John Greer on the line, telling me to wait for them. I ignored what he said and found a gate at the side of the house. I looked through a couple of windows into the darkened interior of the house but couldn’t see anything. I then tried the door but found it was locked. Greer, Ted, and the others were coming through the gate with Bernie as I was using a rock to break a window in the French doors.
“What are you doing?” Greer demanded.
I pulled out my gun, thought about Joe Dawson, and said, “It’s a little something one of your agents taught me.”
He held onto my arm as I was about to enter the residence. “You know that anything we find in the house isn’t admissible.”
My eyes shot darts at him. “The clock is ticking. I’ll worry about what someone in a robe says later.”
The others followed as I went through the house, room by room, finding it empty. Jeremy Spender was saying something about wild goose chases as I tried the garage door but found it was locked.
“Doesn’t make sense,” I said to Ted who had Bernie at his side. “The garage door is locked from the outside with no access from the house.” I’d tried an exterior door to the garage earlier and also found it was locked.
Ted shrugged. “A little strange.”
“How’s your judo?”
Greer overheard us. “You can’t just break it down.”
My brows inched together. “What’s another door at this point?”
He shook his head, exhaled, and then said to Ted, “Go ahead.”
I took control of Bernie while Ted worked on the door. It took him three tries but the door finally splintered and came off its hinges.
I searched for a light switch but couldn’t find one as I followed Ted into the garage. I then heard a sudden, all too familiar, frantic buzzing sound. Someone behind us had a flashlight that came on, illuminating the glass cages against one wall.
“Wasps,” Ted said, the light reflecting off the cages and illuminating his face. “There must be hundreds of them.”
“It looks like we found The Apostle,” Spender said, pushing his way in front of me.
I went over and grabbed the flashlight out of his hands, irritated by his interference. As Spender complained, I searched the rest of the darkened garage. My spirits sank when I realized it was empty, except for a few boxes and the glass cages.
I was about to turn and leave when my light washed over something on the floor a few feet from the cages where the wasps still buzzed.
I walked over with Bernie, illuminated the object, and then picked it up before turning back to Ted.
“What is it?” Ted asked, coming over to me.
It took every ounce of strength I had to blink back the tears that threatened to burst from my eyes. “It’s a rose.”
FORTY NINE
Ted dropped me off at the station to get my car about an hour later. The SID teams had been dispatched to go over Dillon Walker’s residence, but I doubted they wouldn’t find anything worthwhile.
I was convinced that Walker was The Apostle and he had Lexi. Flowers were Lexi’s favorite thing in the world, and the rose was a message telling me that he had the girl.
After I secured Bernie in the backseat, I pulled out of the parking lot doing my best to keep my tears at bay. “Focus,” I said out loud. “Keep your head in the game.”
I drove around aimlessly for several minutes when something about what I’d said struck me. Lucas Caufield’s words came rushing back to me. This is a game of life and death. I realized that Dillon Walker, The Prophet’s apostle, was playing a game and Lexi was the prize.
“Flowers,” I said as Bernie whined in the backseat. “He knows Lexi loves flowers.” Then, all at once, something else came to me. Lexi had told me that she put flowers on her mother’s grave every week, without fail.
I picked up my phone and dialed Selfie’s number, praying that she would pick up. When she answered, I apologized for calling in the middle of the night.
“No problem,” Selfie said. “Couldn’t sleep anyway, thinking about Lexi.”
“Can you do me a favor and try to pull up the obituary on Lexi’s mother from the Internet? I need to know where she’s buried. I’d do it on my phone but it takes forever to load.” I gave her Lexi’s last name and my best guess as to when her mother had been murdered.
“What’s going on?” Selfie asked. I could hear her working her keyboard as we talked and knew that she was in front of her computer.
“Just playing a hunch.”
In a moment she came back on the line. “It says here the interment for Laurel Anne Mills was at the Mountain View Cemetery. It’s above Sunset, just south of West Hollywood.”
I made a U-turn, stomped on the gas, and said, “Thanks, Selfie. I’ll be in touch.”
Bernie and I made record time, arriving at the memorial park fifteen minutes later. It was a small cemetery with an administration building that looked like it was seldom used. I found a glass display case outside the building that had a grid pattern, marking the location and names of the subjects interred in the cemetery. I used my flashlight and skimmed down the list of names.
“Laurel Ann Mills,” I said, reading the name aloud and memorizing the burial location.
As I headed into the cemetery with Bernie, it dawned on me why Lexi loved flowers. Her mother had been named for a flower.
My big dog and I were a good twenty yards from Lexi’s mother’s gravesite when I saw the mound of flowers. As I came closer, I realized that the grave was completely covered with flowers.
I sighed and turned around, making a full circle and scanning the area, at the same time saying to Bernie, “What the hell is going on?”
Then I saw the figure. A man was standing in the shadows, not too far from the administration building where I’d found Lexi’s mother’s name. He took a few steps closer to me, but the darkened silhouette was still a good twenty yards away. Bernie was on alert, releasing a deep growl.
I gripped the gun in my holster at the same time my flashlight washed over the man, illuminating his features. I now realized that I was standing a few yards away from Dillon Walker.
“What’s going on?” I demanded. He took a couple of steps closer to me but then stopped. “Where is Lexi?”
I saw his even features change, something between a smile and contempt finding his face. “She is with The Prophet and The Apostle.”
“What? I don’t understand what’s going on. Why are you doing this?”
The strange look on his face remained. “Because I am an apprentice, the first of those who have been chosen.”
Bernie was now straining on his leash. I had a thought about releasing him, but I wanted answers. “Chosen for what? Tell me what’s happening.”
“A change is coming to the world, Kate. The Prophet is changing…becoming reborn.”
It was the same thing Lucas Caufield had said, but none of it made any sense. “Where is Lexi? Please help me find her.”
He took a couple of steps closer to me. He then stopped and said, “Lucas Caufield already told you everything you need to know. It’s time for you to play the game. The Prophet and his apostle are waiting.”
“Waiting for what?”
Walker didn’t answer. Inste
ad, he reached into the pocket of his overcoat and pulled out a gun.
I had been gripping my own gun in my purse and brought it out, levelling it on him. “Drop the weapon.”
The strange smile played on his face again. It reminded me of a look I’d seen before when someone had a secret.
“Final warning,” I said as Bernie strained on his leash, growling. “Put the gun down.”
Dillon Walker’s smile grew wider. He then raised the gun up, aimed it at his head, and shot himself.
FIFTY
Bernie and I got home a little after four in the morning. The FBI and the department’s SID technicians had been dispatched to the cemetery. Dillon Walker’s body had been searched but nothing worthwhile was found, and we were no closer to finding Lexi than before. If what Walker had said was true, we now knew that he was an apprentice. The Prophet and his apostle were still out there somewhere.
I now realized that I’d been set up for weeks, maybe months, for everything that had transpired. Ted and I had theorized that Dillon Walker had met The Prophet while living in Florida, possibly growing up there together. They’d bonded in their insane beliefs, maybe Walker becoming radicalized by The Prophet, as Jeremy Spender had suggested, before beginning their killing spree. Something happened in Florida, maybe something to do with Lucas Caufield, and the killings had stopped for several years.
When Caufield moved to California, something had triggered the killings again. I wasn’t sure what had caused that, but I thought it might be because of something he knew about The Prophet and his apostle. Whatever had happened, I decided that Lucas Caufield had the answers. I was determined to confront him later that morning and get to the truth.
After walking Bernie and putting him to bed, I fell into my own bed. I told myself that I needed sleep, but tossed and turned for over an hour. I then drifted off into a fitful sleep before hearing a knock on my door.
Bernie immediately alerted, growling as I stumbled out of bed and found my bathrobe. I pulled my gun out of the holster that I kept on the nightstand and found my way to the door.
“Who is it?” I demanded, trying to regain my senses and focus on the person I saw through the peephole.
“It’s just one of the neighborhood zombies,” I heard a man say.
I pulled the door open, determined to confront the intruder. I found Joe Dawson standing in my doorway. “I heard you could use a little help finding a guy named The Prophet, Buttercup.”
“You’ve been officially removed from the case,” I said to Dawson a few minutes later, after I’d gotten dressed and poured him a cup of coffee. I settled in across from him at the kitchen table. “I can’t let you ruin your career on my account.”
“This has nothing to do with you.” He took a sip of coffee, then fixed his baby blues on me. “And maybe you’ve forgotten, I’ve already ruined my career a couple of times without any help.”
I laughed, remembering that when I first met him he’d just come out of a forced retirement after getting drunk and insulting his boss.
I met his eyes and sighed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know where we go from here. And I’m about to lose my mind knowing that Lexi’s with that mad man.”
“Blue-eyed soul, Buttercup. Your soul might be a little rough around the edges because of what happened, but you’ve still got one. We’ll find the bastard. Tell me what you’ve got.”
I spent the next hour, going over everything that had happened since Dawson had been off the case, telling him about my meeting with his brother, Lexi’s kidnapping, and about Dillon Walker being The Prophet’s apprentice. “I think I’ve been set up for weeks. Whatever crazy thing they’re planning, Lexi’s in the middle of it, and it’s going to happen soon.”
He rubbed his wide jaw. “I’d say we’ve got less than twenty-four hours.”
I set my coffee cup down and fixed my eyes on him. “I need you to level with me. Your brother said you took something from him, something that can’t be forgiven. What was he talking about?”
Dawson stood up and went over to the kitchen counter. He poured himself another cup of coffee and then turned back to me. “I took his wife.”
“What?”
He sipped his coffee before going on. “After…” He cleared his throat and took a moment, maybe deciding how to tell me what had happened. “When we had our differences on the Georgia and Florida cases, Lucas and I went our separate ways. He eventually retired because of his illness. One day I got a call from his wife. Joann said that she was leaving him.”
“Because of his illness?”
He sighed, came back over and sat down. “Maybe that had something to do with it, but the truth was they hadn’t gotten along for years. My brother had another problem before he got sick.”
I thought about how Lucas Caufield had asked me to touch him. “He was a womanizer?”
He nodded. “Joann finally had enough.”
“And the two of you got together.”
“It was just a friendship at first. We went out for coffee a few times after they separated because she wanted to know how Lucas was doing. In time, it turned into something more than that.” He kneaded the muscles in his neck. “In hindsight, I guess it was a mistake.”
“You’re no longer together?”
He shook his head. “It went on for about a year. Lucas eventually found out about it and we haven’t spoken since.”
I thought about what he’d said for a moment. “What happened explains at lot, but it still doesn’t explain your brother’s relationship with the Prophet.”
Dawson nodded his big head. “You’re right. I think there’s something else going on.”
As I waited, I had the impression that he was trying to find the words to explain something that he’d suspected for a long time.
He finally said, “I think my brother is one of them. I think he’s an apprentice.”
FIFTY ONE
Dawson took a breath and went on. “As everyone knows, the press got involved in the Florida case. When they ran some articles mentioning my brother, he was eventually contacted by The Prophet. From what I know, they had several phone conversations about the killings. I think it eventually became more than that.”
“You think he was recruited?”
“Joann told me that after Lucas became ill, she cleaned out his home office. She said there were notes, diagrams, and drawings, all related to a potential victim. At first, she thought it was just information on a past case he’d worked, but when she took a closer look she realized that Lucas was planning a kidnapping and murder similar to the Georgia and Florida cases.”
“Did she go to the authorities?”
He shook his head. “She threw everything out, deciding that her husband was losing his mind. Joann said she couldn’t let Lucas go to prison, given his medical condition.”
I went over and poured myself another cup of coffee, thinking about what he’d said. I then went back to the table. “Did his ex-wife know anything about The Prophet or his apostle?”
He met my eyes. “This is where things get pretty strange. According to the notes she found in Lucas’s office, The Prophet believed that his actions would light a fuse, triggering his followers to come out of hiding.”
“And then what?”
“They believed that by killing innocents it would begin a series of world-wide calamities.”
“You make it sound like there are others out there that are ready to kill.”
Dawson took a breath and went on, “I kept this to myself because I didn’t want to believe any of it. But after what’s happened over the past few days, I think that’s exactly the case. The Prophet is planning to signal his followers to begin a killing spree that will spark the end of the world as we know it.”
FIFTY TWO
Bernie had been sniffing around the table, looking for crumbs. He gave up and trotted off to the bedroom.
“When you say followers, how many people do you think we’re talking about?”
>
Dawson sipped the last of his second cup of coffee and then regarded me. “It’s hard to say, maybe dozens. It could be that The Prophet has followers around the country, waiting for his signal to begin killing people.
I saw that the light of a new day was filtering through my kitchen window. It reminded me that we were running out of time. “Why do you suppose there were so many years between the first two killings and what’s happened recently.”
“Just a guess, but it could be that they were recruiting, finding followers to set things in motion.”
“None of this explains my involvement, why I’ve been set up to be involved in their crazy game.”
“It’s just another guess on my part, but I believe when The Prophet heard about the cases you worked through the press coverage, he chose you as a conduit to begin the killings. Maybe he sees you as a test, someone to be defeated as part of the process he’s setting in motion.”
I sighed. “Unfortunately, none of this brings us any closer to stopping him.”
There was a knock on my door. I went over and found Natalie and Mo standing there in skin-tight workout outfits.
“We were just heading over to Booties ’n’ Buddies to work out,” Natalie said. “Mo and me are gonna get our butts in shape.” She slapped her derriere.
“It was baby sis’s idea,” Mo said, pushing her way inside. “My moneymaker’s still as good as the day God minted it.” I saw her gaze wander over to Dawson.
“Looks like we interrupted somethin’,” Natalie said, after following her inside. “I guess Kate’s lady parts are no longer in hibernation.”
My cheeks reddened as Dawson laughed. “It’s not what you think,” I said to him. I then turned back to my friends. “This is Joe Dawson. He’s with the FBI.”
After introductions and several winks, indicating they didn’t believe that Dawson and I hadn’t spent the night together, Mo poured herself a cup of coffee and took a seat across from the big FBI agent.