Cult Following

by Donn Cortez

  “He no longer believed in the rightness of Doctor Sinhurma’s teachings,” Humboldt said. “He’d lost his faith.”

  “And then his life,” Horatio said. “Seems like an awfully big price to pay for breaking a diet.”

  Humboldt turned his hands palms up in a what-are-you-gonna-do gesture. “I don’t claim to know the mind of God. What I do know is that Doctor Sinhurma is a very wise, insightful man, and when Phillip turned away from that wisdom he was killed by a bolt from the heavens.”

  “In a toilet,” Salas said. “If God threw that thunderbolt, he has a nasty sense of humor.”

  “Or maybe,” Horatio said, gazing at Humboldt mildly, “someone else has.”

  The last interviewee was Darcy Cheveau, the cook. He was well-built and swarthy, with dark curly hair cut short and a five-o’clock shadow that looked closer to midnight. He had a small, crescent-shaped scar just above his lip. He was the kind of person that exuded menace like an expensive cologne; you couldn’t quite recognize what it was, but it got your attention.

  “Mister Cheveau,” Horatio said. “Where were you when the incident occurred?”

  “You mean when Phil was fried?” Darcy said, flashing a grin. “Same place I was all day—in the kitchen, crankin’ out grub.”

  “You don’t seem terribly upset by it,” Salas said.

  “Me and Phil weren’t that close. It’s like the Doc says—everybody’s karma gets ’em sooner or later.”

  “By ‘the Doc’ you mean Doctor Sinhurma?” Salas asked.

  “Yeah. You on the Method, too?”

  “Hardly,” Salas said.

  “So you think Mulrooney deserved what happened to him?” Horatio asked.

  “Hey, I don’t know—that’s between him and the universe, right? But getting zapped like that—somebody up there didn’t like him much.”

  “I’m more interested in the people down here who didn’t like him,” Horatio said. “Did you and Mister Mulrooney have any friction between you?”

  “Nah, we just weren’t buds,” Cheveau said, shrugging. “Didn’t know him that well, honestly. And it looks like that ain’t gonna change anytime soon….”

  Calleigh Duquesne, dressed in dark slacks and a white blouse, blond hair in a ponytail, arrived while Horatio was still interviewing the staff; she had a wide smile on her face and a Makita power saw in her hand. “All right, who ordered the blue plate special?”

  Delko grinned and held up a gloved finger. “That would be me. Medium rare, please.”

  Calleigh sniffed the air delicately. “I would think ‘well-done’ would be more appropriate, don’t you?”

  “It was worse before they took the DB away,” Delko said. “Lightning doesn’t turn people into sooty silhouettes like in the cartoons, but the internal temperature of a bolt can be four times hotter than the surface of the sun; that’s definitely enough to barbecue flesh.”

  “Where can I plug this in?”

  “Anywhere but here,” Delko said, brushing fingerprint powder onto an outlet over a counter. “I’ve checked the breakers, and this is the only outlet that the lightning affected.”

  “Was there anything plugged into it?” Calleigh asked. She crouched down, set the bright orange tool case on the floor and snapped open the latches.

  “Nope. No prints, either—but look at this.” Delko pointed to a spot near the top of the outlet. “Looks like a pattern melted into the plastic.”

  She came over and studied it, holding the saw. “Hmm. Doesn’t look like the outline of a plug. Maybe something resting against the outlet?”

  Delko put down his dusting brush and picked up his camera. “Yeah, and I think I know what.” He told her about the knives Horatio found. “I’m betting one of them was jammed between the wall and the plug,” he said, snapping a picture of the pattern.

  Horatio walked into the kitchen. “Calleigh, glad you’re here. I need you to look behind the wall in the bathroom, see if you can trace the path the lightning took. Eric, you find anything else in the kitchen?”

  Delko showed him the outlet. “Interesting,” Horatio murmured. “You test all the appliances?”

  “Every one. They’re all working.”

  Horatio looked around the room, hands on hips. “Okay, this is a vegetarian restaurant in Miami. I would imagine that fresh fruit and vegetable juices feature prominently in their menu…so what am I not seeing?”

  Delko glanced around. “No blender.”

  “Right. Check the Dumpster, see if we get lucky.”

  “I’m on it.”

  Calleigh slipped on a pair of safety goggles. “Okay if I start, H?”

  “Go ahead. I’m going to make a call.”

  Horatio stepped back out into the main area of the restaurant; the employees had been told they could go home. He pulled out his cell phone and hit the first number on the speed dial: the Miami-Dade crime lab.

  “Mister Wolfe? Horatio.” He had to speak up over the ratcheting clatter of the saw. “I need you to find out everything you can about a Doctor Sinhurma and any possible connection to a restaurant called The Earthly Garden. That’s right, the diet doctor…also, I need the cell phone records for a Phillip Mulrooney for the last twenty-four hours. Okay, thanks.”

  He snapped his phone shut and slipped it into his pocket. The sound of Calleigh’s saw biting into plaster sounded like an angry animal; outside, the rain began pelting down in earnest.

  Horatio Caine knew Miami. He knew her the way a sailor knows the sea, the way a man knows a temperamental lover; he couldn’t tell you what she was going to do, but he could tell you what she was capable of. She was a city of extremes—on the surface all neon dazzle, golden-brown skin against white sand, parrot-bright fashionistas slamming back Mohitos, hot bodies in hot clubs on hot tropical nights. The cutting edge of the East Coast, sharp as a Versace suit, quick as a supermodel on Rollerblades.

  But underneath the glitter, darkness.

  Horatio knew how short a trip it was from the warm glow of nightclub neon to the hard, fluorescent glare over the autopsy table. He knew that despite all the money flowing through, Miami-Dade remained one of the poorest counties in the country. He knew that hot weather led to hot blood, and a certain segment of the population thought “tourist season” referred to carjacking.

  Horatio thought of Miami as a borderland, a place between. Some people found it hard to see, that line between the dark places and the light, but it was where Horatio lived. Not in some nebulous gray area, either; he had a foot planted firmly in both realms, and to him the demarcation was as clear as the difference between life and death. It was a line that ran through everything, and it was always there. Where other people saw sunlight, Horatio saw shadows.

  His job was to take care of those who crossed that line. And they always cross it going the wrong way, Horatio thought as he entered the observation gallery. Too many of them end up down there.

  He looked down at Doctor Alexx Woods and keyed open the mike. The Miami-Dade coroner’s facility was also a teaching lab, with a number of high-resolution screens in the glassed-in area overlooking the autopsy room itself. Horatio sometimes monitored autopsies from there, not because of any sense of squeamishness but because the cameras in the room below could magnify any detail he wanted a better look at.

  “Well, Alexx?” Horatio said. “What can you tell me about our vic?”

  Alexx smiled up at Horatio, then down at the body on the table before her. “Poor boy suffered facial trauma and burns from the exploding cell phone, but that wasn’t what killed him. COD was cardiopulmonary arrest, probably caused by lightning.”

  Horatio frowned. “Probably, Alexx?”

  “Well, there’s some contradictory indications. A lightning strike can be anywhere up to two billion volts, but since skin has a relatively high resistance the charge usually travels along the surface.”

  “Flashover,” Horatio said.

  “Yes. It’s the reason why most people survive lightning strikes
—the bolt travels over the body instead of through it. Along the way it vaporizes any moisture present, causing distinctive linear or punctuate burns. You can see them here, under the arms, more down the inside of the thighs, on his feet and his forehead.”

  “Which is what shredded his clothes and blew off his shoes.”

  “There’s also this.” Alexx pointed to a feathery pattern on his chest. “It’s called a Lichtenberg figure, sometimes shows up in lightning strike victims. Extravasated blood in the subcutaneous fat causes fern-shaped lesions on the skin. Nobody understands the exact pathogenesis, but it disappears from the body within twenty-four hours.”

  “So what doesn’t add up, Alexx?”

  “Patichiae in the eyelids and the visceral pleura.” She pointed out the telltale red dots of tiny burst blood vessels in the whites of the body’s eyes.

  “Asphyxia? That is unusual.”

  “You see it sometimes in cases of low-voltage electrocution. If the current is above what’s called the ‘let-go’ level—about sixteen milliamps—the victim’s flexor and extensor muscles in his forearm contract. If the flexor is the stronger of the two, the hand spasms closed, sometimes preventing the victim from breaking the circuit. The current induces tetanic paralysis of the respiratory muscles, so he can’t breathe—if it goes on long enough, the victim suffocates.”

  Horatio leaned forward and studied the image on the monitor. “Sixteen milliamps. You can get that with house current…so if his heart hadn’t stopped he would have died of respiratory failure?”

  “Not from lightning. A thunderbolt’s an extremely short event—the whole thing’s over in two hundred milliseconds or less, and peak current duration is maybe point one percent of that. In most cases of tetanic paralysis the lungs start functioning again as soon as the current’s interrupted; it would have taken two or three minutes of continuous contact for him to asphyxiate. These hemorrhages aren’t pronounced enough for that—I’d say he was without oxygen for a minute, maybe less. I also found these.” Alexx pointed out a series of small red dots on the upper thigh. “Needle marks.”

  “Odd place for tracks. Junkies usually go for an easily accessible vein.”

  “Well, these are intramuscular and at least a week old—looks like whatever he was taking, he stopped taking it. If so, the tox screen probably won’t tell us what he was on.”

  “No,” Horatio said, “but it will tell us what he wasn’t on…and that might be just as useful. How about stomach contents?”

  “Results just came back. Partially digested chili, looks like.”

  “Vegetarian?”

  “No—definitely animal protein.”

  “So our boy was backsliding,” Horatio mused. “Giving in to the temptations of the flesh…thanks, Alexx.”

  Alexx looked down at the body with the same tenderness she always showed to those under her care. “We all give in to weakness now and then,” she said softly. “Nobody stays strong forever.”

  2

  “HOW’S THE RENO GOING?” Horatio asked. Calleigh had cut away a large part of the wall behind the toilet, extending all the way up to the ceiling. The exposed pipe was copper from the bowl up to head height, where it joined to a piece made of PVC.

  Calleigh grinned and pushed her safety goggles up on her forehead. Bits of drywall dust speckled her face and arms. “Well, I may not be ready to host my own TV show, but I think I found what we were looking for.” She pointed to a spot just below the join, on the copper pipe.

  Horatio stepped up and took a closer look. “Burn pattern—and something else.”

  “Tool marks,” Calleigh said. “I think something was attached at that point—probably some sort of clamp. And I can tell you how they got access, too.”

  She motioned for Horatio to follow her and stepped around the corner into the kitchen. She walked to the opposite side of the wall, where a first-aid kit hung. She took it down, revealing a small square of plywood attached by screws. “This was probably put in by a plumber after he cut through the wall to get access to the pipe. The copper looks pretty new—I’m guessing that section of the plumbing was replaced after a leak.”

  “Or maybe it was put there for a more specific reason,” Horatio said. “See if you can find out when it was installed—and I want the panel, the first-aid kit and that section of pipe in the lab. The question now is—how did the lightning get from the roof to here?”

  Calleigh pointed at a small window set high in the wall, propped open a few inches with a broken-handled coffee mug. “No screen—I’m thinking some sort of wire was fed through it. I’ve already checked it for trace, but didn’t find anything.”

  “Okay—good work.”

  “Carpentry and plumbing,” Calleigh said cheerfully. “I guess this is power-tool day. Things keep going like this, I’ll be working a jackhammer by the end of my shift.”

  “If I need any concrete broken up,” Horatio said with a smile, “you’re first on my list.”

  The rain had come down in a torrent, but it was over now; orange-red light gleamed through the breaking clouds over the freshly washed streets, the kind of presunset glow that could make even the industrial backside of an alley look pretty. Horatio walked up to a Dumpster that sounded like a bear was thrashing around inside and rapped on the metal. “Is that my CSI or am I addressing Oscar the Grouch?”

  Eric Delko’s head popped up over the lip. “Hey, H—think I found something.” He reached down and pulled up an industrial-grade blender. “Burn marks on the plug end.”

  “Well done.” Horatio took a closer look at the plug. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. An empty package of ground round.”

  “And Alexx found meat in the vic’s stomach….”

  “Anyway, I bagged it and sent it to the lab for processing. Maybe we can get a print off the plastic.”

  “Good job. I’ll have the restaurant staff come in for prints and DNA, see if we can find a match.”

  “Y’know, I hate to say it, H, but…”

  “Yes?” Horatio gave him an inquiring look.

  “I’m getting kinda hungry.”

  Horatio chuckled. “Okay. Run that blender over to the lab and then grab some dinner.”

  “Yeah? How about you?”

  “I’m going to go talk to someone about a diet….”

  Ryan Wolfe sat at one of the lab’s computers, intent on the screen, and didn’t look up when Horatio walked in. Horatio knew Wolfe wasn’t being rude or unperceptive—it was just that the young CSI tended to totally focus on what he was doing to the exclusion of all else. Wolfe had a mild case of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which to Horatio’s way of thinking made him a perfect fit for his job.

  “Mister Wolfe,” Horatio said. “What have you got for me?”

  “Quite a bit,” Wolfe said. “Do you want to hear about the doctor or his diet first?”

  “Let’s start with the man,” Horatio said.

  “Doctor Kirpal Sinhurma. Originally from Calcutta, came to the States on a scholarship and graduated from Johns Hopkins with a psychiatric degree in 1975. Settled down into private practice in New York State, wrote a few self-help books that made a lot of money, went back to school in the early nineties and got a degree in nutrition. Relocated here five years ago.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s he been doing since he got to Miami?” Horatio leaned against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms.

  “Founding his own movement, apparently. His web site reads more like New Age manifesto than nutritionist.” Wolfe tapped a few keys. “See for yourself.”

  Horatio leaned over and scanned the screen. “Hmm. Quite a few celebrity endorsements listed.”

  “Yeah—models and actors, mainly. He seems very popular with the young, rich and pretty crowd. His philosophy leans heavily toward appearance reflecting spiritual enlightenment.”

  “What can you tell me about the diet itself?”

  Wolfe frowned and tapped a key. “Not a lot of hard data. I’ve read
several articles and interviews, and it seems to be a regimen that varies from person to person. The only universal is the elimination of all animal products from your diet and periods of fasting and meditation.”

  “Okay, what about vitamin supplements?”

  “That’s where it gets interesting. The ‘Vitality Method’ is a two-step process; anyone can buy the book and follow the diet, but that’s just preparation. When you feel you’re ready—and have the cash—you sign up for one-on-one time with Doctor Sinhurma at his clinic. You spend two weeks there, during which time they supply their secret blend of ‘vitamins, exercise and counseling’ that will presumably keep you young and healthy far longer than you have any right to.”

  “Any connection to The Earthly Garden?”

  “Yeah. He owns it. He’s got another in Queens and one scheduled to open in L.A. next month.”

  “So our Doctor Sinhurma is building himself an empire,” Horatio said. “One where presumably the unattractive and carnivorous are not welcome….”

  “That’s not all. There was too much on the site to read through everything, but I did a representative sampling, and the later posts from the doctor are different in tone from the early stuff. He starts off talking about universal harmony and gradually gets more and more strident. And here’s something I thought you’d want to see.”

  Wolfe scrolled down, then clicked on a link. Horatio’s eyes narrowed as he scanned through it. “ ‘Nature itself will pass judgment on those who deride us,’ ” he read out loud. “ ‘Justice may take its time, but when it arrives it will hit like a bolt from the blue.’ Posted two days ago…”

  “I tracked down those cell phone records you asked for, too. Guess who the last person our vic got a call from was?” Wolfe punched up the information.

  Horatio nodded. “The good doctor himself. And if our time of death is accurate, it looks like Mister Mulrooney may have even been talking to him when the lightning struck.”