Cult Following

by Donn Cortez

  “Of course, people would keep shooting each other,” Calleigh added. “That’s the problem with any kind of gun control—it’s not the guns that need controlling.”

  “Guns don’t kill people?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “Of course not,” she said primly. “Bullets kill people. I should know.”

  Horatio just grinned and shook his head.

  “Seriously, though,” she said, “we both know it’s human nature that makes people into killers, not guns. If you took the guns away, they’d just find other ways to kill each other.”

  “Less convenient ways, one would assume…”

  “Granted, shooting someone is awfully easy,” she admitted. “I have a friend who refers to shootings as computer crimes—point-and-click, you know? But that’s not the reason guns are always gonna be with us.”

  “Oh? What is?”

  “If there’s one thing people find harder to give up than anything, it’s control. Owning a gun gives you control over life and death; once someone’s tasted that—not killed someone, just truly understood that they could—it’s hard to give up. Keeping someone from having a gun is a lot easier than letting him have one and then trying to take it away.”

  Horatio nodded. “It all comes down to power, doesn’t it? You threaten someone’s control, you threaten to take away their power. And at that point, they don’t react rationally, do they?”

  “Not in my experience. I hate to boil life down to a bumper sticker, but the most honest statement I ever saw concerning gun control was ‘YOU CAN HAVE MY GUN WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD FINGERS.’ Not really a sentiment I agree with—especially considering how many times I’ve had to do just that—but it really cuts through all the rationalizations about home defense and target shooting and ethical hunting to one simple fact: people don’t want to give up the power owning a gun gives them.”

  “Emotional reason, emotional reaction,” Horatio said. “And people acting emotionally make mistakes….”

  “You haven’t made any mistakes on this case, Horatio,” she said quietly. “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “but in truth, you’ve got me thinking more about our friend Doctor Sinhurma. Maybe a threat to his own power would shake him up a little.”

  “Make him react emotionally, hope he makes a mistake?”

  “Exactly. The question is, what do I use for ammo?”

  “Wish I could help,” Calleigh said, getting up. “I just came out here to tell you I’m finished processing the Lucent stuff. No prints except his—I’m gonna tackle the appliances next, see if they came from the same source.”

  “Okay.”

  Calleigh went back to the lab. Horatio sat and thought. Eventually, he got up and went to pay Alexx a visit.

  Calleigh traced the hand-mixers and blenders back to a company in California. They didn’t do much business in Florida, but had sold a bunch of equipment to a restaurant in Georgia that had gone belly-up two years ago. They, in turn, had disposed of most of their hardware through a liquidator called Charette and Sons, a place that bought up equipment and fixtures from businesses that failed and resold them.

  C and S’s warehouse was in an industrial area of Opa-Locka, a neighborhood that had seen better times. Built in the twenties by a developer named Glenn Curtiss, it was intended to one-up the Mediterranean style of Coral Gables by borrowing from a little farther east—the Middle East, to be exact. While its city hall, with its Moorish domes and minarets, was certainly unusual, the city itself had faded over the decades to a place largely housing lower-income families. And there was something distinctly odd, Calleigh had always thought, about eating at a McDonald’s on Ali Baba Way.

  Charette and Sons’ showroom was considerably cleaner than Leakyman Plumbing’s. It featured a large, well-lit room, one wall lined by industrial-size stoves and sinks, one with floor-to-ceiling shelves holding various kitchen appliances, and another with a long glass display case that doubled as a countertop with a computer sitting on it. Inside the case were rows of gleaming knives, cleavers and other utensils.

  A pear-shaped man in a short-sleeved white shirt, with a round, jowly face and a flushed pink complexion bustled up to her. “Hi! Lookin’ for anything ’n particular?” His accent was Southern, and deeper than Calleigh’s by about two Kentucky valleys.

  “Well, I sure hope so,” she said, flashing him a brilliant smile. She shifted her own voice a few more degrees away from North almost automatically; people always felt more comfortable dealing with one of their own, or at least someone they perceived as belonging to the same group. “I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about some of your customers.” She showed him her badge, almost apologetically.

  “Well, I don’t see why not,” the man said, returning her smile. “What would y’all like to know?”

  “Have you sold equipment to a restaurant called The Earthly Garden?”

  “I’d have t’check mah records,” the man said. He walked up to the counter and swiveled the computer around to face him, then frowned. He reached out with one thick finger, pressed a key, then raised his hand. He added a squint to his frown, moved the finger over another key, then changed his mind. His hand moved over the keyboard from one side to the other, as slow and hesitant as a chubby hummingbird on a diet.

  “Excuse me, Mister—”

  “Charlessly, Oscar Charlessly. Call me Oscar.” The man beamed at her, then turned his attention back to the computer and immediately sank into a pit of despair. “Oh, Lordy,” he muttered. “I’m really not much of a computer person. Kari usually takes carra this sorta thing, but she’s off sick t’day.”

  “Do you mind if I have a look?”

  “Help y’self,” he said, stepping back and waving her forward. “It’s all geek t’me.”

  It only took her a few seconds to figure out the filing system, but as soon as she tried to access a list of accounts it asked her for a password.

  “Would you like to type it in?” she asked him.

  “Sure—if I knew what it was,” he said cheerfully. “Like I said, Kari usually takes carra this stuff. Me, I just sell equipment. I c’n tellya ’bout some great deals we got on toaster ovens, but the accountin’s a little over mah head.”

  “What about the owner? Is Mister Charette around?”

  “Nah, he’s kinda retired. Comes in now and then and pokes around, but he kinda lost interest after his sons quit the biz. Guess they didn’t wanna spend their lives sellin’ used grease traps and old freezers.”

  “I see. When will this Kari be back?’

  “Oh, she sounded pretty sick on the phone—nasty flu bug, ah think. Might be gone the resta the week.” He shrugged apologetically. “Sorry ’bout that.”

  “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. Maybe you can help me, though—salesman like yourself, I’ll bet you remember all your customers.”

  He laughed heartily. “Well, I do mah best. Who were you lookin’ for, again?”

  “Actually, it would be either of three businesses: Leakyman Plumbing, a restaurant called The Earthly Garden, or a clinic called the Vitality Method.”

  A look of mild confusion crossed Charlessly’s pudgy face. “Well, I guess the restaurant’s a possibility, but we don’t do much business with doctors or plumbers. And I can’t rightly say I remember this Garden place buyin’ from us, neither.”

  “Do you think you could call this Kari? Maybe get the password from her?”

  “I could—but she told me she was gonna turn her ringer off, take a bunch of cold medicine and hit the sack. I doubt we could raise her.”

  “All right, then,” Calleigh said with a sigh. “Guess I’ll try again later. Thanks for your help, Oscar.”

  “I regret I could not be of more assistance,” he said solemnly, then added a grin. “Y’all come back, anytime.”

  Doctor Alexx Woods believed in many things. She believed in family, she believed in friendship, she believed in giving back to th
e community. She believed that every life was precious and that individuals could make a difference; she saw it every day in the people she worked with, and she was proud of every one of them.

  She also believed in the dead.

  “Dead men tell no tales?” she sometimes said. “Honey, my entire professional career wouldn’t exist if that were true.” The dead had much to teach; all you had to do was pay attention. Alexx had gotten very good at hearing what they had to say—sometimes she swore a corpse wanted her to notice something.

  Today, the corpse of Ruth Carrell had told her something important.

  “You wanted motive?” Alexx said, handing Horatio a sheet of paper. “You got it. Tox screen on Ruth Carrell just came back.”

  Horatio scanned the sheet—and whistled. “Alexx, is this right? This reads like a pharmacy’s shopping list.”

  “Tell me about it. Antidepressants, hypnotics, stimulants—this is the weirdest goddamn cocktail I ever saw. No wonder Sinhurma’s patients are so ecstatic: those shots he’s giving them keep them in a permanent state of chemical rapture.”

  “And he’s passing them off as vitamin supplements. His patients are so light-headed from lack of sleep and fasting they don’t even question a little more euphoria…this must be why Phil Mulrooney was killed. He’d stopped taking the shots and his head was starting to clear. Once he figured out what was going on it was only a matter of time before he exposed the whole scam.”

  “Proving it’s another matter,” Alexx said. “Giving people these drugs isn’t technically illegal—he does have a medical license. Lying about it is enough to get his license revoked, but our only witnesses are people so brainwashed they’ll do whatever he tells them to. We can’t even prove Sinhurma was the one who injected Ruth Carrell.”

  “This may not be proof, Alexx, but it certainly qualifies as something else,” Horatio said.

  “And what would that be?”

  “Ammunition…”

  “Doctor,” Horatio said pleasantly. “Nice of you to see me.”

  Doctor Sinhurma sat cross-legged on a small pedestal in the center of a Japanese garden. Stands of bamboo around the perimeter kept the garden discreetly screened from the rest of the compound; a small pond with a fountain in the shape of a pagoda trickled away quietly behind him. He was positioned in such a way that the bright overhead sun reflecting off the surface of the water haloed his head in light, making his face hard to see. “Not at all, Horatio,” he said serenely.

  Horatio put on his sunglasses and stared directly at him. “Lieutenant Caine,” he said.

  “You seem agitated, Lieutenant. Is something the matter?”

  “Very much so, Doctor. Maybe you can help me out with a little spiritual advice.” Horatio stood on a flagstone path that wound its way around the garden; on either side, plots of white gravel were raked into patterns of smooth, gently curving symmetry. “You see, I know this person who’s about to land in a lot of trouble. Unfortunately, he seems oblivious to just how bad things are about to get.”

  “In that case, he deserves to be warned, don’t you think?” Sinhurma asked gently.

  “Well, that’s my problem. See, this person’s grasp of reality isn’t that strong…he labors under the illusion that he’s beyond consequences, which makes any rational discussion pointless.”

  “Perhaps it is simply rationality that is pointless.”

  “In fact, when cornered he’s given to making the kind of semiprofound statements first-year philosophy students spout while on their third beer…so apparently I’m going to have to introduce him to some of the harder sciences. I was just wondering which one I should start with.”

  Sinhurma’s gaze was untroubled. “Perhaps your friend understands more than you think.”

  Horatio’s smile was cold. “I never said he was a friend.”

  “Then his fate is hardly your concern—”

  “Physics might be a good start. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction? For instance, the act of killing someone in Florida provokes the corresponding act of execution by the State.”

  “I think you’re confusing the laws of Man with the laws of Nature—”

  “The most appropriate method would be the electric chair, but lethal injection will still get the job done….” A small gray pebble lay a few inches from Horatio’s foot; he kicked it idly off the path and onto the white gravel. “Perfect symmetry is rarely possible, is it? No matter how carefully you plan.”

  Sinhurma’s face still held a calm smile, but Horatio could hear the tension in his voice. “I don’t think you really understand the nature of perfection.”

  “Or what about chemistry? Maybe I could make him see the light with some clever metaphor using acids and bases….” Horatio shook his head and held up a hand in apology. “No, you’re right, that’s too esoteric. If I’m going to use chemistry, I should be more direct; I should just mention what we found in Ruth Carrell’s blood.”

  Sinhurma paused. “Ruth was—”

  “—troubled, right?” Horatio snapped. “That’s the word everyone uses when they want to imply that the person they’re slandering was crazy or high on drugs.”

  “If Ruth was taking drugs, I had no knowledge of it.”

  “Uh-huh. Killing Ruth was a mistake, Doctor. We know every drug you were pumping into her without her knowledge or consent, and when we prove it you can kiss your medical license and your clinic good-bye. And we will prove it, because you’re still doing it.”

  Horatio took a step forward, leaning in just slightly toward the doctor. “You have to, now. You have to keep them on the drugs, or everything will fall apart. You’re the one who’s addicted…and I’m the one who’s going to cut off your supply. I don’t think you’ll find a lot of acolytes in prison, Doctor.”

  Sinhurma laughed, lightly. “I think you are the one who’s deluded, Lieutenant Caine. I am not going to prison. If I am going anywhere, it is to a better place, not worse. I am a successful, well-regarded man with many friends; my life is full, and will remain so. What happened to Ruth was a tragedy, but Miami is a violent place. Karma dictates our endings as well as our beginnings.”

  Horatio gave him the kind of smile that made most men flinch. “I’m not going to stand here and debate your New Age fortune-cookie credo with you, Doctor. I came here to put you on notice. Enjoy your little barricaded paradise while you can—because the next time we talk, I’ll be reading you your rights.”

  Horatio turned and strode away.

  Maxine Valera was, as usual, peering through a microscope when Calleigh walked in. She straightened up and said, “Let me guess. You want me to process feather DNA from an arrow.”

  Calleigh smiled ruefully. “Is there any chance you could?”

  “Well, using regular PCR techniques it’s highly doubtful. Researchers have recently developed a technique for pulling DNA from ancient hair samples, which suggests that surrounding keratin might protect enough cellular material for testing—but nobody’s tried it on feathers yet.”

  “And you want to be the first, right?”

  “Let me finish,” Valera said with a smile. “Hair shafts are hollow—feathers aren’t. Unless you have the base of the quill—”

  “Which I don’t—”

  “—that method won’t work. I also considered a Low Copy Number test.”

  “But the problem with LCN is contamination,” Calleigh said with a sigh. “And these feathers—while not exactly Stone Age—are pretty old. Any result we get with LCN is going to be highly suspect and almost useless as evidence.”

  “Right. Sounds like you already figured all this out.”

  “I did. I didn’t much like what I came up with, so I thought I’d try something else.” She took the large brown envelope she had in her hand and dumped out a bunch of smaller envelopes on the worktable.

  Valera picked one up and scrutinized the small amount of leafy green material within. “Bribing me with drugs won’t change the facts,” she said, de
adpan.

  “Really? Even with a selection like this?” Caleigh plucked a sheet of paper out of the envelope and held it out. “Samples from every major pot bust in Miami in the last six months. I’m trying to track down a lead with a drug connection in the Mulrooney case, and I’m hoping this’ll help. The sample you’re holding is from a suspect we busted with a brickyard worth of hash; I’m hoping you can match the DNA to another bust, which might just tell me where he was getting his dope from.”

  “Well, it’s worth a shot,” Valera said. “Unlike the arrow.”

  “Ouch,” Calleigh said.

  9

  WOLFE HAD TRACKED DOWN the rocket. Now, he wanted the system that launched it—the launch pad and the igniter.

  He already knew he was looking for a rail system with a broken or newly replaced ceramic blast deflector. He knew the fuel formulation the rocketeer had used. He didn’t know what sort of launch system had been utilized, but they were always electric and usually physically wired to a controller. Remote systems existed, but they were rarer, more expensive, and there was always the possibility of interference; and even though the launch sequence itself could be triggered remotely, the electric charge that ignited the rocket still had to have wires to travel down.

  That meant they had to lead from the launch pad on the roof to a control console nearby—probably inside the kitchen, where Wolfe stood now. The small window high up on the wall that Calleigh had spotted was the most likely route; two sets of wires had probably been fed through it, one up to the launch pad, and another from the launch pad to the hole behind the first-aid kit that led to the copper pipe.

  The problem was that said wires would be in plain view—not to mention the controller itself. The kitchen wasn’t that large, and the waitstaff would be continually moving in and out of it with food orders and dirty plates. Somebody standing there with a piece of electronic equipment and wires trailing out the window would definitely attract attention.