Amy told him she’d have to make a few calls and that she’d call him back. Hatcher started the car and drove. He hated using Amy this way. She didn’t know about Vivian and would almost certainly recognize the name the moment she heard it. But he didn’t want to explain any of that. He was going to have to take his chances.
He was barely a few blocks from where he started when he slammed his hand against the steering wheel and cursed.
He pulled into a lot and shifted the car into park. He laid his head back and closed his eyes.
What did he know? The Carnates were attempting . . . something. To open a portal to Hell? Maybe. That’s what Bartlett would say. But could he believe him? Even if he wasn’t lying, did he have any clue what he was talking about?
His nephew apparently died shortly after birth. So why send him on a snipe hunt for the boy? And why would Susan lie?
Susan. How the heck did she get involved?
And was Vivian still alive? Why would they want him to think she was dead? Was she a part of it? Did Edgar know?
Edgar, that was one fucker he wanted to have another talk with. What was that lying son of a bitch up to? The questions were causing his head to swim, and not very well, his thoughts sloshing in rough waters.
Frustration started welling up, turning to anger. Most of it was directed at himself. How could he have let so many people deceive him? Reading people was his best skill. Maybe his only skill.
But he knew the answer, and it made his face flush red.
Vivian was his girlfriend, and she was often moody. Couple that with the fact she always accused him of trying to interrogate her, he never really questioned her veracity. Susan . . . that was a tougher one. He trusted her, but the big thing was guilt. He had led them to her, or so he thought. His own shame made him blind to any signs.
Bartlett. He thought hard about Bartlett and realized Bartlett had been careful to let others explain things. Calvin took the lead in the briefing they gave him. Other questions were handled by Edgar. Bartlett was cautious. Calvin probably had no idea what was really going on.
That left Edgar. Hatcher tried to replay some of their conversations, tried to view them through the lens of what he now knew. He pictured him in the car, the last time they’d met.
I’m a great actor.
Hatcher slammed the side of his fist against the dash. A motivated person could beat an interrogation, if they approached it as a role. Remove the anxieties that are coupled with telling lies—the feeling of shame, the worry over getting caught, the guilt over not being honest—and a good actor could easily fool even the most skilled interrogator. As long as he knew his lines.
Another fist against the dashboard. God, he’d been stupid.
Now what? He stared into the center of the steering wheel for several minutes, then put the car in gear and pulled onto the road. In the direction of the Church of the Ascension.
His phone chimed out just before he got there. The number on the screen was familiar.
“Amy. Tell me you got something.”
“Still no ID. I talked to the detective in charge, pretended I was working a missing person’s case. She’s a Jane Doe. They managed to keep the details out of the papers. It’s just showing up as a woman murdered in a hotel room. The hotel certainly doesn’t want anyone to know how gruesome it was.”
“Do they have any lead on who she was?”
“I don’t think so. I probed a bit. They’re cross-checking missing persons reports.”
Hatcher stirred the information into his thoughts, watched them swirl in his mind’s eye.
“Whose name was the room under?”
“That’s the interesting thing. There’s no record. Somebody on the staff confessed to taking cash to keep it off the system. They treated it under their celebrity protocol, only they never required an actual ID or credit card. It was listed to a Zelda Zonk. The police actually tried to track the name down and couldn’t find anyone. Then someone pointed out it was the name Marilyn Monroe used to travel under.”
“I guess someone thought that was funny.”
“They also mentioned they’re looking for you.”
“Swell.”
“Don’t worry, they don’t know your name. And it’s only for questioning. All they have is a description. Muscular guy with short hair and a frown.”
“I’ll try to smile.”
“Hatcher, I know it’s a waste of breath, but don’t go off trying to do everything by yourself.”
“You think I should head down to the nearest station, tell them everything? If I don’t even believe most of it, how could I possibly convince the police?”
She sighed. “At least be careful then.”
Hatcher told her he would and started to hang up, then thought of something.
“Amy, one more thing. You said Susan had changed her name when she moved to New York.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” Even as he asked the question, he knew the answer. Dreaded hearing the confirmation.
“It was a stage name. She was an actress. Broadway. Had a degree in theater. According to some of the statements, she had a promising future, but developed a drug problem.”
“Stage name,” Hatcher said, mumbling the words.
“Yes, Susan Jordan. Cleaned herself up, never tried again. Became Susan Warren when she got married. Why?”
“Nothing,” he said, thinking, that was one woman who sure as hell got her tuition’s worth.
CHAPTER 20
THE LARGE DOUBLE DOORS TO THE CHURCH OF THE ASCENSION were unlocked. Hatcher stepped inside and walked up the aisle toward the altar. A priest was lighting candles. He turned at the sound of Hatcher’s footsteps.
“May I help you?”
“Just passing through,” Hatcher said.
“I’m sorry?”
Hatcher passed by him, his body angled toward the stairwell. “Heading downstairs, Padre.”
The priest stepped back, a hand on the cross hanging from his neck, over his shirt.
“I’m not going to hurt you. I just need to head down.”
“I don’t understand. No one’s there. Are you—we have very little of value. Our collections are deposited immediately.”
“I’m not here to rob you. I’m here for the tunnel.”
The priest rolled his eyes, let out the breath he’d been holding. “There is no tunnel, son. That’s just a local legend.”
Hatcher pulled open the door to the stairwell. “You don’t mind if I check it out myself, do you, Father?”
The stairway was dark. Hatcher bounded down them two and three at a time. He heard the priest following, huffing further objections. When he reached the bottom, he immediately headed for the storage closet. The knob wouldn’t turn.
Behind him, the priest came off the last step breathing audibly. “Please, I don’t want to have to call the police. You’re not the first person to come here looking for some tunnel. There’s nothing down here.”
“Humor me, Father. Would you mind opening this?”
“I must insist you leave.”
“I’m not going anywhere. If you don’t unlock this, I’ll have to kick it in.”
“Okay, this is unacceptable. I’m calling them.”
“If there’s nothing behind this door, why won’t you open it?”
“Because you cannot come into a house of God and act this way. Do you think a man of the cloth should just let himself be ordered around by anyone who wanders in off the street?”
“Please, pretty please, with a cherry on top. Just open it. If I’m wrong, I’ll go away. Peacefully.”
The priest stared at him with shaky eyes, the set of his jaw giving him a look that was half indignant, half frightened. He stayed that way for a few breaths, then his body seemed to loosen, and he lowered his head, giving it a shake.
“I swear,” he said, removing a set of keys from his pocket and stepping forward. “I must convince the diocese to sue all those websites. Lizard pe
ople, underground societies. People will believe anything.”
The door swung out. The priest moved with it.
“There. You see? It’s just a storage room.”
Hatcher said nothing. He brushed past the priest and headed straight to the back. Some shelving had been moved to block the large back door. Hatcher slid it out of the way.
“Hey! You promised! I’m not kidding! I will call the police!”
“Good,” Hatcher said. “Send them down after me.”
“You’re wasting your time. That door doesn’t lead anywhere.”
“Is that so?”
Hatcher pressed the thumb latch and tugged. The large door only moved a few inches at a time. He put all his weight into it, finally getting it open.
“I tried to tell you.”
On the other side of the door was a wall of rock. Stones, packed tightly, wedged from floor to ceiling. He reached a hand out and touched one, pushed on it, then pulled. It wouldn’t budge.
“I’m told it used to lead to a subbasement of some sort. It was filled in long before I got here.”
Hatcher pushed and pulled on random stones. None of them moved.
“Now,” the priest said, “will you please leave?”
“Just tell me something, Father. Is there another way down there?”
“No. Listen to me—this is all just legend. Stories.”
Hatcher let his eyes run over the blockade of stones. The silence yawned. He heard the priest shuffle his feet, sensed him about to say something. Hatcher held up a hand and turned to go.
As he stepped out of the storage room, he turned back. “What legend?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said it was all legend. What legend?”
“The lizard people. Isn’t that why you’re here?”
“But what, exactly, is that legend?”
“Some old story about how a race of lizard people was found living beneath Los Angeles. Someone had even mapped out an entire underground city. The mayor had gone so far as to hire some ‘expert’ to dig to find them. This was many decades ago.”
“But what does that have to do with this building?”
The priest let out a sigh that sounded like air escaping a tire. “Someone got it in their head that one of the entrances to the tunnels was beneath the church. Don’t ask me how.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“You hesitated there, Padre.”
“It’s silly.”
“I like silly. Same way I like being humored.”
“Local residents have told me stories, things they said they heard as kids, about how another type of church was built right below this one. A place where the lizard people would conjure the Devil.”
“Was there a point to any of it? In the stories, I mean?”
“One parishioner told me his grandmother used to warn him that the lizard people were controlled by witches, and if he wasn’t good, they would sneak into his bedroom at night and carry him down so they could offer him to Satan. Through a doorway to Hell.”
“Again, I’m sensing there’s something else. Something maybe you left out.”
The priest stared at his shoes, gave his head an ironic little shake. “He said something about a sign, that she’d said they were looking for a sign.”
“What kind of a sign?”
“If I tell you, will you really leave? No more questions, no more anything?”
Hatcher held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor.”
“The arrival of a person. Someone he called the Devil’s Right-Hand Man.”
Hatcher eyed the priest for a few more moments, then gave a curt nod and headed up the stairs, leaving the man with an unamused look on his face. He took the steps two at a time, thinking about the Devil’s Right-Hand Man, and how he knew someone who seemed to meet that description perfectly.
SINCE HE HAD NO WAY OF KNOWING WHETHER THE PRIEST called the police, Hatcher wasted no time driving away, vaguely heading back toward Venice.
His head felt like somebody had scrambled his thoughts. Nothing made sense, and trying to get a handle on what was happening was causing his temples to thump.
Had the Carnates really gone through such an elaborate ruse just to get him to break the tablet? Could Bartlett have been right? Did he just let himself play into their hands?
But no. There had to be a more efficient way to get at the tablet than that. Hell, if Edgar was working with them, he could have destroyed it. Or they could have hired someone. It wasn’t like he was the only one in the world smart enough to find it. He was missing something. Probably a lot of somethings.
Why did they kill Lori? And where was Vivian? Did they take her? Was she still alive?
He called Amy, but she didn’t answer. A few seconds after he left a message, he got a text from her saying she was conducting an interview and would call him later.
His options were limited. He needed to do some research, maybe get on the internet again. He could swing back by the bar, but Denny would probably give him a hard time. At the very least, he’d pressure him into watching another Mark Specter show, like he’d promised. Obviously, he didn’t have the time to sit around and watch some guy create a bunch of—
Illusions.
The word seemed to echo in his head, repeating over and over. No, he thought. No, no, no. No way.
He stepped on the gas and sped toward the Liar’s Den.
The door wasn’t locked. Some guy he didn’t recognize was behind the bar. Hatcher ignored him and headed back toward Denny’s office.
“Oh, hey,” Denny said, looking up from his desk. “Need the computer again?”
“Maybe in a minute. Remember that video you made me wa—that you, uh, showed me a month or so ago?”
“The last Mark Specter one?”
Hatcher nodded. “There was a particular trick he did, something where he pulled a watch from a store window.”
“Oh, yeah,” Denny said, his eyes brightening. “That one. What about it?”
“Can I see it?”
“You mean now? You wanna watch a Mark Specter DVD?”
“Just that one trick.”
Denny’s expression sagged a bit, but the idea of watching even a few minutes of a Specter video with someone seemed to counter the disappointment well enough, and he pushed himself out of the chair and poked through a shelf haphazardly cluttered with books and papers and magazines and DVDs. He sorted through a few piles until he settled on one in particular. He held up a case. It had a picture of a shirtless guy with long blond hair wearing an ankle-length black duster over jeans and biker boots, head dipped slightly as he stared at the camera. There was a burst of flame behind him, and the effect was to make it look like he was walking out of it. The word Specter was writ large across the top, beneath it were the words Extreme Magic.
Denny popped the disc into the drive of his PC. Hatcher circled around the desk and leaned against a filing cabinet, looking over Denny’s shoulder.
The disc menu had the show broken down into sections, titles under thumbnail pictures. Denny quickly found the one he was looking for and clicked on it. The drive engaged and whirred and a video image of an urban street at night filled the screen. A bluesy bass rhythm shuffled in the background.
Specter—Hatcher seriously doubted that was his real name—walked into the frame from behind the camera, wearing the same duster but this time with a white shirt under it and a straw cowboy hat on his head. He kept going a few yards, then looked over his shoulder at the screen and said something about having a little fun.
A pair of young couples, two guys and two gals, came into view heading toward him, talking among themselves and laughing. Specter gave one more glance over his shoulder, winking, and veered into their path.
After asking what time it was and having one of the men glance at his watch, Specter gave a bit of patter about time and space and the mysterious ways matter can behave. He gestured for the people to follow and led
them across the sidewalk toward a storefront one building further down the street. The camera caught up and zoomed in on a jewelry store display. Specter had them all gather around the shop window and gave some spiel about glass being liquid and always in motion and how with enough focused energy you can penetrate it. Then he placed his fist against the glass and pressed it through.
There it is, Hatcher thought. Son of a bitch.
The sleeve of his duster bunched up as his arm slid out the other side. He pushed as far as he could, to at least halfway up his upper arm, and reached for a watch. The people gasped and made noises. He held the watch in his hand, letting the camera zoom in some more, before pulling his arm out in one swift motion. He knocked on the glass with his fist, showing it to be solid, and invited the others to check it. Then he handed the guy who’d told him what time it was his watch back. The guy looked into the camera, then back at the watch, and absently muttered something that was bleeped out.
“Neat trick, huh?” Denny said.
Hatcher stared at the screen, or more accurately, stared at the window in the video, until the scene ended.
“Play that again.”
Denny shrugged, then gave the mouse another click. Hatcher watched the scene unfold, paying particular attention to the glass. It was the same illusion. No doubt. Only the one the Carnates had performed had another twist.
“Tell me something, Denny. Has this guy ever, like, taken off someone’s head?”
“Huh?”
“As a trick. Has he ever removed someone’s head?”
“Uh, I don’t know,” Denny said. He drummed his fingers on the desk and turned back to his computer. “Let’s find out.”
A Google search didn’t pull up anything like that with Specter. But it did find an illusion called decapitation. It involved a hollow table, guy in a clown suit, and a space for him to lean his head back. The magician would hold up a clown’s head for the audience, while the clown’s body remained on the table, his real head tucked beneath the surface through an opening. Sometimes, the clown’s head would move its mouth or eyes or both. Sometimes it would even speak.
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