Law of Five

by Robin Mahle

  “It seems there has been a recent development that has come to my attention,” Trainor began.

  Katie’s heart sank. This was it. Something had happened and neither of them had known what it was. She looked to Scarborough.

  “I’m afraid I’m not sure what you are referring to, Mr. Trainor. Would you care to elaborate?” Nick asked. His cell phone vibrated against his waist. On retrieving it, he noticed the call was coming in from Marshall. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to take this.” He had known Marshall and Detective Gibbons were tracking down Kempt and assumed they must have found her.

  “Yes. Of course,” Trainor replied.

  It was the phone call Laura made the moment she heard the police were at her door. A call she’d made to the FBI office where Shalot was being held. It seemed Laura had been keeping tabs on Shalot, as per Branson’s request. She knew he’d been transferred to their custody. She only needed to listen to the news for that information. And what Laura had relayed to them just before stabbing herself had quickly made its way through the field office and to Shalot’s attorney.

  Scarborough had been in such a hurry to question Shalot, he brushed past everyone in the office to reach him. And as he now stood outside, prepared to answer Marshall’s call, ASAC Newland waited.

  Katie didn’t want to be left in the room alone with these men. There were people in the viewing room – she was safe – but somehow, that didn’t seem to matter. Shalot cast his eyes on her, devouring her features. Trainor could have cared less as he scrolled through his cell phone, taking no notice of his client. But she had been here before. Now was her opportunity to be the one in control. She wasn’t the one in shackles.

  “How did you come to know about me?” Katie leaned in, pressing her weight against her forearms. She looked directly into his eyes, mirroring no fear in her own.

  Shalot cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “I saw you once.” He turned his gaze to her short, brunette hair. “Your hair used to be long. I liked it better that way. Did he make you cut it short?”

  Katie slammed her fist against the table, nearly cracking the half-inch thick acrylic that rested on top of the hardwood. “Where did you see me?”

  Trainor suddenly perked up. “I think you’d better wait for the big boys to get back, little lady. You have no right asking my client anything.”

  “Your face looked so beautiful, but I could see how much pain you were in. How much he had made you suffer.”

  Katie began to rise and turned from Shalot, peering into the two-way mirror.

  “You were being interviewed by a reporter shortly after you returned to San Diego. After you’d killed him—the man who took you, I mean. Well, I know you didn’t actually kill him. Your cop boyfriend came to the rescue, didn’t he? And then there was our friendly neighborhood FBI Agent Scarborough.” Shalot lowered his face towards his cuffed hands and scratched at the tip of his nose. “Funny how you and that agent have crossed each other’s paths once again.”

  Before she could reply, Scarborough returned. He brushed past Katie without a glance and immediately approached Shalot. “Where’s that woman being held? The Sparks woman? Where the fuck is she?”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Trainor stood up, thrusting his arm between the two men. “You better check yourself, agent. Now I see where Ms. Reid gets it from.”

  “Your client has ordered the deaths of four women and now a fifth has gone missing. You better see to it that he starts to cooperate. We may no longer have proof that he killed Lindsay Brown, but if you don’t think Lewis Branson will sing like a fucking bird, you’re sadly mistaken.” Nick turned to the man in shackles. “He knows all about your little group, doesn’t he, Shalot?”

  Katie didn’t know who that call had been from, but someone must have found something to prove Shalot wasn’t the killer. Her legs were heavy, and the sensation that had just passed through her was something between vindication and terror at the fact that her assumption had been correct. Shalot may not have killed Lindsay, but he was the ringleader of a naïve and easily submissive group of people who hung onto his every word, willing to kill in the name of him and his beliefs.

  But where the body could be weak, the mind could be strong, and so she forced herself nearer to him. Nearer to a man who wanted her for himself. “Tell me where she is, Edward. Tell me and you can have me.”

  Nick whipped his head around as she said those words.

  “How can I have you? You think I’m stupid enough to believe you would ever choose me?”

  “Okay, I think we’re done here,” Trainor said.

  “You found calm in the chaos. Acceptance. No pressures to conform to a puritanical society. That’s why you followed Branson to begin with. You didn’t like the rejection from women who you thought were trash. The group didn’t reject you though, did they? Not at first. Not until you started laying claim to Branson’s role as leader. Taking the message of the law of fives to its most literal meaning and bending it to suit your needs. The five cycles of humanity.” Katie softened her stance, her shoulders dropping, her face revealing concern. “I wouldn’t have rejected you. I understand that you thought you were doing the right thing. Showing the rest of society just how wrong they were and how they knew nothing of the true meaning of life.”

  Trainor snapped his case shut. “If you’ll show us out, Agent Scarborough.”

  Katie retreated, but did not break her stare. Edward believed her; she could see it in his eyes. Just wait.

  Nick walked around the table, removing the cuffs from the table and the floor.

  Shalot laced his fingers as he continued to hold Katie’s gaze.

  Tell me, goddammit.

  “Let’s go; we’re done here,” Nick said, taking her arm.

  22

  THE PARAMEDIC SEARCHED for a pulse, but there was no pulse left. He raised his head to Gibbons, who stood only feet away, as he watched the man do his job. The look on his face was enough. Laura Kempt was gone.

  Her cousin was moved to the other room where she sat wrapped in a blanket, clearly suffering from shock. After some questioning, it became clear that she had known nothing of Laura’s activities, nothing of the cult to which she belonged.

  Marshall remained in the small dining area adjacent to the kitchen while several officers began collecting evidence and preparing the scene for the medical examiner’s office. They would remove the body.

  They would be forced to let Shalot go. He didn’t kill Lindsay. The possible murder weapon still protruding from the leg of the now deceased Laura Kempt.

  According to the call he had just made to Scarborough, all they had at the moment was a list of names and one other address. It would take too much time to find out where the fifth victim was being held and if she was still alive.

  The best Marshal could hope for now was for them to tack a surveillance team on Shalot until they caught the remaining followers. Scarborough might be able to convince a judge to hang on to Shalot a while longer under suspicion of conspiracy to commit murder, but they needed one of the Brotherhood to offer up real evidence against Shalot. Until that happened, Shalot could very well be set free in a matter of hours and Marshall couldn’t accept that.

  Shalot’s apartment building was about a twenty-minute drive from his current location. Marshall’s cell phone rang several times. At least two of the calls were from Katie, but there was no time. He had to do this before Shalot was set free, if it came to that, and he didn’t know when it would be, but it would be soon. It was the only way to keep her safe. She would only try to stop him.

  ***

  Marshall climbed to the second-floor apartment. It was approaching midday on Friday and he expected most of the occupants of the building to be away. He cast a look left, then right. No one seemed to be around. He wrapped his fist with his jacket and punched a hole through the front glass window. The window remained intact and he was able to pull the sliding single pane open. Again, he turned to check his surroundings. The noi
se from the break echoed, but still no one emerged. He stepped inside.

  Dust floated in the shafts of light that occupied the apartment. The blinds had been drawn, but the afternoon sun found its way inside, leaving a dusky glow in its wake. If Shalot was to be set free, even if only for a short time until the Feds could build a case against him, Marshall knew Katie wouldn’t be safe.

  He didn’t know what he was looking for that they hadn’t already found when he and Gibbons were there the other day and the FBI had already done a sweep too.

  He meandered in the gloom, finally finding some light as he flipped the switch near the kitchen. The living area lit up. It looked no different than before. Had he expected it to? Shalot had been in holding for the better part of a week. No one had been here since then.

  Marshall figured he had a couple of hours in which to work. Once all the paperwork was through the system, he assumed Shalot would come here first. Where else could he go?

  The laptop was gone. A few items appeared to be laid in a haphazard matter. The FBI had done their job, by all accounts.

  He moved towards the bedroom and stood at the threshold. A full-sized mattress lay on the floor. A sheet and blanket were crumpled and rested on it. The pillow had formed to the shape of Shalot’s head.

  Marshall walked in, now standing inches from the mattress. He surveyed the room. An old oak dresser in need of repair sat in front of the bedroom window. A flat-panel TV rested on top of a shoddy-looking stand and there was the small desk where they found Katie’s files.

  The closet ran along the east wall. Marshall approached it, pulling the bi-fold doors open. To his surprise, Shalot’s clothes were meticulously placed in order of type and color. For a man who believed in chaos, this struck him as peculiar.

  He inserted his hands between the articles and began pushing them aside, peering behind them, again looking for something he wasn’t sure of yet. Marshall moved down the line until he reached the jackets that hung at the far end of the closet; they were difficult to reach.

  But when Marshall began shifting them, pushing the hangers closer together, he noticed something unusual. “What the hell?” He pressed the clothes as far as he could to expose what appeared to be a safe inside the wall. A small one to be sure, but it was a safe. The Feds appeared to have missed it, and he had too the first time, but here it was and he needed to know what it contained.

  A keypad served as the locking mechanism and Marshall hadn’t a clue as to how to get inside. But he was sure he would find something worthwhile and so he began to hunt for any tools Shalot might have.

  On the balcony beyond the living room, he’d spotted a door. Storage room. The heavy sliding glass door leading to the balcony resisted, but Marshall was able to push it open enough to slip out.

  The handle was locked, much as he expected, but this was a simple privacy lock. The kind one would find on a bathroom or bedroom door. A large rock rested against the outer wall of the balcony. It must have been used to prop open the storage room when it was in use. He reached for the rock that was about the size of his hand and held it on top of the doorknob. Retrieving is gun, Marshall began to use the butt of the handle as a hammer against the stone. A few hard hits and the knob broke, dropping to the ground. He placed his gun back into its holster and pushed the other side of the knob free, leaving only the latch to push back and the door would swing open freely.

  The storage room appeared to be no larger than about a six by eight space. The inside contained several shelves mounted to the walls, each displaying various cans of paint, most of them having been opened. Brooms and a mop rested against the back wall and a shop vac sat on the concrete floor. But he could find nothing else that might be of use. “Damn it.”

  Marshall returned to the living room, leaving the storage room door ajar. The idea that he might lose his badge over this mattered little to him now and so leaving evidence behind of his visit was of no consequence. Besides, he thought Captain Hearn would understand. He knew what Katie had been through. Maybe that would be enough to get him to turn a blind eye to this quest to find something that would put Shalot away before he ever got a chance to be set free.

  He’d spent too long now in search of a tool with which to open the safe. With no other way to get inside it, Marshall would need help. The only person he trusted to keep this quiet was Agent Scarborough. Detective Gibbons was a good man and a great detective, but Marshall saw how he looked at him earlier today as he stood frozen, watching Laura Kempt bleed out. There was a slim chance Gibbons might turn on him; slim, but he just couldn’t risk it.

  He removed his cell phone from his inner coat pocket and made the call. The line rang for too long and just as Marshall was about to end the call, the agent picked up. “Scarborough, it’s Avery. I found a safe in Shalot’s apartment, in a closet. I need your help to get inside. I know there’s something there that will give us what we need to put the bastard away before you release him.”

  “Oh Christ, Avery. Are you there now?” Scarborough asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “We turned him loose thirty minutes ago. Get the hell out of there, Avery.”

  “Goddammit! You couldn’t find a way to keep him? Laura Kempt just killed herself because of Shalot. Shit. What about Branson? What about Hudson?”

  “She admitted to killing Lindsay Brown; you said so yourself. Detective Gibbons bagged the knife and had your lab compare it to the ME’s report. It’s a match, Avery.

  “As much as I didn’t want to let that son of a bitch go, I got nothing else. I need more than Branson and Hudson saying that he’s put together some sort of brotherhood that’s going around killing people. I need proof of it!”

  Marshall wanted to hang up right then and there, but he knew Scarborough was right, which made his presence here, in Shalot’s apartment, even more critical.

  “The guy’s been in custody for almost a week under charges that he killed Lindsay Brown,” Nick continued. “Now we find out that he didn’t. After this, my boss is going to want more than hearsay because the media’s going to tear us a new one for this. Shalot will make sure of that. Look, we’re already tracking down one of his followers. Hudson gave us Hayden Jennings’ name and we got a match in the system. We’re already working to locate him in Virginia. Once we do that, we’ll get what we need from him to put Shalot away for good. Avery, we’re putting a team together. They’ll keep tabs on him from here, but you need to get out of there.”

  The sound of a key turning in a lock grabbed Marshall’s attention. “Shit. He’s here.” He didn’t wait for Nick to reply, only dropped his phone back into his pocket and placed a hand on his holster, unsnapping it and ready to pull it on whoever was about to open that door. He could hear his heart pounding in his ears. It was the second time today he’d been faced with drawing down on someone. Not since Hendrickson had he been confronted with that choice.

  He recalled the broken glass on the ground beneath the front window of the apartment. It would be easy to spot and would alert anyone outside that someone had forced his way in. Marshall had left the sliding pane open too so he could get back out. His eyes were fixed on the door, then the window, then the door again. Someone was waiting out there and he knew who it was. He suspected Shalot knew who was inside as well.

  Finally, a push on the front door, slowly, cautiously. “Detective Avery, you have no right to be here. I could have your badge for this. I saw your car in the parking lot, but I didn’t know you had it in you to break into someone’s home,” Shalot said. “I’m unarmed, detective, and I’m coming in now.”

  This son of a bitch was behind all of it. Everyone knew it and yet here he was, a free man. He’d been tracking Katie down for a year and Marshall couldn’t bear the thought of him sitting near her in class, thinking about how he could have, at any time, followed her out into the parking lot and taken her. He could have taken her the way Hendrickson had. The man was crazy; believing in some crazy damn cult, demanding that his followers k
ill innocent people to prove what? Loyalty to him over Branson? Or was it just his own brand of control because he had none in other areas of his life? Whatever the reason, he indirectly perpetrated those brutal murders under the guise of a perverted belief that chaos was the rule of law.

  Marshall’s hairline began to drip with sweat. The hand that rested on his gun felt clammy. He waited for Shalot to come inside, but had not drawn his gun. Not yet. Not unless the man gave him a reason.

  Shalot’s foot appeared in the opening, his leg, then his body, but he continued to hold the door in front of him. “I’m unarmed, detective.”

  “Put your hands up, then,” Marshall replied, his nerves fully on edge. Was he prepared to do it? Was he prepared to kill someone? If it meant keeping her safe, then there was no question in his mind.

  Shalot finally emerged from behind the door, his hands held firmly above his head. “See? All okay here, Detective Avery. Everything’s fine. The FBI let me go. I told you I didn’t kill Lindsay Brown.”

  “You might not have, but you sure as hell ordered the deaths of other innocent people. Your followers? Is that what you call them? What’s in the goddamn safe, Shalot?”

  A smile that seemed to teeter along the lines of being amused and pissed off appeared on Shalot’s face. “The FBI couldn’t even find that. You are very good, detective, but as you can see, I am now a free man and you have no right to be in my home. You might want to consider leaving before I decide to press charges. What would Kate think?”

  Marshall was the only person that called her Kate. A memory flashed before him as he reflected on the moment he and Scarborough stepped down the stairs into that basement where Hendrickson had her, holding a knife to her throat. Threatening her as this man would surely do, given the chance.

  Rage began to build inside him now. The idea that Shalot presumed to know Kate. Presumed to call her Kate. Marshall would not see her hurt again. She’d been through too much, more than anyone should ever have to suffer. He knew Shalot would be a constant presence if the FBI couldn’t press charges. He would never go away, much like Hendrickson hadn’t until they finally put a stop to him. They would always be looking over their shoulders.