Cult Following

by Donn Cortez

  The woman in the green sweater gaped at them. Calleigh turned to her, smiled and said, “You can go.” She did.

  Charlessly was shaking his head, but he still looked cheerful. “I don’t know what to say, Miss Duqesne—that’s quite the story. I suppose my lawyer will have to sort everything out—”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll be giving him all sorts of business. But first, you and I have a little business of our own.” She pulled a folded piece of paper out of her back pocket and handed it to him. “This is a warrant to search your property, your vehicles and your computer records. The thing about old appliances is they tend to have all sorts of corners and edges and flanges inside—you know, the kind that accumulate grease and dust and various types of debris? You think maybe a speck or two of plant material might have gotten stuck in one of them?”

  “Even if that were so,” he said, “all these items are second-hand. I don’t think a jury will hold me responsible for the history of an old fridge—”

  “You can’t sweet-talk DNA, Oscar. Because you used clones, any trace I find I can link to three previous arrests: the one in North Florida, the hash lab—and the grow-op Kyle Dolittle was supervising. And Dooley himself has been telling us quite a bit….”

  The smile on his face was beginning to look a little frozen. Calleigh motioned through the glass door to the two officers outside, and they came forward.

  “One of the marks of a good businessman is keeping good records,” Calleigh said. “I’m thinking that when we get into those files of yours—you know, the ones you couldn’t remember the password to?—we’ll find all sorts of things.”

  Charlessly didn’t have a reply to that.

  Silencing a salesman, Calleigh thought. It almost made up for ruining her pants.

  The big wrought-iron gates of the Vitality Method compound were locked. Calls to the inside went unanswered. Horatio was forced to use more direct methods.

  “Break it down,” he said. The officer behind the wheel of the cruiser nodded, put the vehicle in gear and rolled forward. The iron battering ram jutting from the front bumper hit the gates with a resounding CLANG, throwing them open in a second.

  Horatio, gun drawn and torso sheathed in a bulletproof vest, followed the cruiser in. He was flanked by four cops in SWAT gear.

  No one was in sight. The officers spread out around the perimeter, checking the archery range, the pool, the auditorium. All empty.

  Horatio checked the front door: open. He led the way inside, gun leveled in front of him. There was no one behind the receptionist’s island.

  “Not good,” he muttered. He was afraid of what he’d discover in the dorms…but all he found were small, plain rooms with neatly made beds.

  Sinhurma’s office and living areas were deserted as well. In the Japanese garden where Horatio had last talked to the doctor, he found a single slip of folded paper, weighed down with a small gray stone. On the paper, a few precise brushstrokes formed four Japanese ideograms in black ink. Horatio didn’t know what it represented…but he knew it was meant for him.

  “The ideograms mean sayonara,” Delko said. “Goodbye.”

  He, Wolfe and Horatio were working the scene at the clinic; Calleigh was still busy at Charette and Sons.

  “You know Japanese, Eric?” Horatio asked.

  “Just a little. Dated an exchange student from Tokyo for a while—she used to leave me little notes. If I could figure out what they said, there was a reward.”

  “Well, our reward here is to prevent a massacre,” Horatio said. “Eric, you start on the dorms. Wolfe, take the clinic. Both of you keep on eye out for a security center—all those cameras have to feed somewhere. I’m going to tackle Sinhurma’s private space. We’re looking for anything that might tell us where they’ve gone or what their intentions are. Anything that might indicate a timetable is important, too. Let’s go.”

  Delko headed off at a trot. Wolfe hesitated, then said, “You really think we’re looking at some sort of mass suicide?”

  “Hard to say,” Horatio said. “Sinhurma’s a master manipulator—this might just be a feint. I’ve been trying to rattle him, get him to make a mistake; he’s smart enough to try the same strategy on me. If we overreact, he can very easily use public opinion to make us look like a bunch of ‘paranoid storm troopers.’ Not my words—the judge’s. We’re lucky we got a warrant at all.”

  “But you think Sinhurma could be serious?”

  “I think we better track him down and ask him,” Horatio said. “Fast.”

  Sinhurma’s private quarters were as sumptious as the dorm rooms had been monastic. A huge central living space looked out over the Japanese garden through one glass wall; the blinds had been closed when Horatio was here last, preventing him from seeing what he was now.

  The floor was polished hardwood, overlaid with thick Persian carpets big enough to smother elephants. Recessed alcoves along one wall displayed a variety of items: a jeweled dagger, a sculpture of a bird being engulfed by flame, a golden mask that looked vaguely Egyptian. Huge, brocaded pillows were scattered around the room, the only furniture in it a raised platform of transparent Lucite set against the window, with a thin foam pad on top. Sinhurma’s throne.

  You sat right there, haloed by Miami sunshine—time it right and you could put the setting sun right behind your head. With that Lucite platform you could almost look like you were levitating, couldn’t you?

  Only your inner circle would be allowed in here, and they’d all be seated on the floor looking up. After a long day of strenuous exercise and little food, those big soft cushions probably felt like heaven…and that’s when you would reveal the secrets of the universe. After, of course, you’d pumped all your followers full of drugs…

  He went over the room carefully, but there was nothing in it to suggest where Sinhurma had taken his disciples.

  Sinhurma’s bedroom was next. It was so undistinguished that at first Horatio thought it was for guests, but after looking at the other rooms he realized the truth.

  The bed was king-size—of course—with a purple velvet duvet draped over it. Antique dressing table and bureau made of some dark, polished wood. A closet full of expensive suits and shoes and a rack loaded with silk ties. Other than the clothes, the room was as sterile as an empty hotel suite.

  Horatio had searched many bedrooms, had looked into the private nooks and crannies of every kind of life. This was the first time he’d been confronted with this kind of blankness; it was as if someone had gone through the room with some sort of cosmic vacuum cleaner and sucked it dry of any trace of personality. It was like a display in a furniture store, dressed to give the impression of being real.

  This isn’t you. This is just another convenient fiction, left for me to find. You’ve erased yourself from this room as completely as you erase people’s defenses. As completely as you erase lives.

  But Horatio wasn’t as easy to fool.

  No trace of personal items except the suits and shoes. He could have taken them, too—why leave them behind?

  As a message.

  Another “good-bye”—but this one aimed at what the clothing represents. The conventions of mainstream society, the conservative uniform of those who fit in. Wherever you’ve gone, you don’t plan on ever wearing a suit again.

  The bathroom off the bedroom was just as devoid of life. No medications, no toiletries, not even towels. If Sinhurma’s vanishing act was a setup, he’d gotten all the details right.

  He hoped Wolfe and Delko were having better luck.

  Sinhurma’s office wasn’t the wood-paneled, bookshelf-lined room Wolfe was expecting. Instead, it was filled with plants from floor to glass ceiling, with a small fountain in one corner and an actual stream running through it. The desk was made of rattan, with a chair of the same material behind it and a wireless keyboard resting on top. The monitor and CPU were hidden inside a wall unit disguised as a bamboo wardrobe; double doors swung open to reveal a hermetically sealed, climate-con
trolled glass cabinet that kept the humidity at bay. Another bamboo-fronted bureau beside it did the same for shelves of books and drawers full of documents—or would have, if any papers were left. The books—medical texts, mainly—had been abandoned, but all the files appeared to be gone.

  He tried booting up the computer, but nothing happened. A quick check of the equipment—once he figured out how to open up the glass case—revealed that the internal drives had been removed. From the cables leading into it, he deduced that this was where the security cameras had fed to, as well. There were no tapes or disks.

  Wolfe sighed. Unless the potted palms started talking, the room didn’t look like it was going to give up any secrets.

  And then he noticed the picture.

  It hung on the wall to the right of the desk. The thing about pictures on walls, Wolfe thought, is that you see them every day. And after a while, you stop seeing them—they’re just part of the landscape.

  He went over and took a closer look. It showed a group of beaming patients standing in front of the clinic, clustered around a grinning Sinhurma like chicks around a mother hen. He did a quick count of the faces and came up with twenty-six.

  Ruth Carrell and Phillip Mulrooney were standing next to each other. Both of them looked proud and happy.

  “And they say pictures don’t lie,” Wolfe murmured.

  Delko found the same thing in each of the dorm rooms: a single cot, a chest of drawers, an empty closet. At least, that’s what each room appeared to hold at first glance.

  Under an Alternate Light Source, it was a different story. He didn’t find blood, but other bodily fluids—seminal, vaginal—showed up readily. Different colors of hair on several pillows, and a used condom under a bed that had been missed by whoever did the cleaning. Despite the narrowness of the beds, it seemed that the residents of the dorms had made room in them for company.

  The communal bathroom yielded a wastepaper basket that hadn’t been emptied. Used tissues, and lots of them.

  “Either someone had a cold,” he murmured, “or people were doing a lot of crying….”

  They met in the kitchen to compare notes.

  “The office was cleaned out,” Wolfe said. “Computers are all missing their drives, no hard copies of anything but textbooks on the premises, including recordings from the security cams.”

  “What about the clinic itself?” Horatio asked.

  “I found medical supplies and equipment, but everything was sterilized and scrubbed down. No drugs, no used syringes, no swabs or medical waste. I did, however, find this.” He showed Horatio the picture.

  “The dorm rooms?” Horatio asked.

  “Empty—but not quite as clean,” Delko said. “I found used tissues, a condom and fresh sexual traces. In almost every bed.”

  “So either they were having a lights-out party,” Horatio said, “or they thought this might be the last chance they had.”

  “What about this room?” Wolfe asked.

  “I already went through it,” Horatio said. “No fresh fruit or vegetables, no canned or dry goods. A few plates and cooking utensils that apparently they didn’t want.”

  “That’s a good sign,” Delko said. “People planning on a mass suicide don’t usually make dinner plans.”

  “Unless their plans and Sinhurma’s don’t coincide,” Horatio said. “The problem is, we just don’t have enough information on what those plans are. We need to get inside Sinhurma’s head….

  “Wolfe, get back to the lab. See if the Vitality Method Web site is still up, check for recent postings and go through everything on it. If he’s really planning something drastic, he won’t be able to resist some sort of announcement.

  “Delko, hit the outbuildings and grounds. I’m heading over to The Earthly Garden, see if there’s anything there.”

  The arresting officer in the case of both James “Jimbo” Collinson and Oscar Benjamin Charlessly was Lieutenant Frank Tripp, a gruff, balding man whose bulldog determination and level headedness Calleigh was well familiar with. He was with her now as she talked to Charlessly in the interview room, glowering at the suspect from across the table. Calleigh liked Frank; though she didn’t approve of smoking, anytime she thought of the cop she imagined him with a cigar clenched between his teeth.

  “Well, Oscar,” she said brightly, “it seems that some awful person had crammed your used appliances full of high-grade dope.”

  The salesman still hadn’t lost his poise; though he’d insisted on his lawyer being present, he’d agreed to answer a few questions.

  “It’s a terrible thing,” he said with a grin. “But I really don’t see how I can help you in that particular area.”

  “Well, that’s not the area I need help in,” she answered. “What I need to know is whether or not you had any partners other than Samuel Lucent, Kyle Dolittle and his friend, James Collinson.”

  “I wish I had,” Charlessly said. “Got Jimbo too, huh?”

  His lawyer, a pale man with curly black hair and watery eyes, said, “My client has no knowledge of any of the persons so named—”

  “Oh, relax, George,” Charlessly said. “We’re just having an informal chat—right, Miss Duquesne?”

  “Sure, Oscar. So no one else was involved?”

  “ ’Fraid not,” he said affably. “I mean, if I could spread the blame around a bit, I would—but y’all seem to have caught all the fish in one go, haven’t you? Mind you, I’m definitely the small fry in all this; how was I supposed to know my trucks were bein’ used to haul illicit material around? I didn’t do any of the driving or loading—that was all Jimbo. Samuel was just this guy I sold a few hand-mixers and blenders to. If you ask me,” he said, leaning forward and dropping his voice to a whisper, “the real brains of the operation was Dooley.” He winked.

  Calleigh smiled despite herself. “Nice try, Oscar. The files we pulled from your computer showed the kind of profit you were making from this operation, and everyone else agrees it was your idea to begin with.”

  He shrugged and sat back. “Guess it’ll all come down to finger-pointing in court, then. Believe you me, if there was some criminal mastermind I could finger instead of two brain-dead bikers and a Rastafarian plumber, I would.”

  “I’m surprised, Oscar,” Calleigh said. “I would have thought that a slick operator like yourself would have been better prepared.”

  He chuckled. “Have a patsy all set up, y’mean? Well, Miss Duquesne, I guess I’m just not that hardhearted. I may or may not be guilty of dealin’ a little herb, but that don’t make me some kinda monster.”

  “Maybe not,” Calleigh said, “but nice guys don’t set Claymore mines to guard their investments.”

  Horatio found The Earthly Garden closed and locked. It had been released as a crime scene the day before, but apparently hadn’t reopened since. He peered inside through the glass of the front window, but didn’t think the place had anything new to tell him. In any case, the restaurant hadn’t been covered by the warrant, and there was no one around to ask for permission to enter.

  The clouds overhead were heavy and dark, lightning flashing as it had the night of Phillip Mulrooney’s murder. Horatio drove back to the crime lab, expecting a downpour to start at any second; the thunderheads grumbled and roared but refused to give up anything but sound and fury.

  Had he pushed Sinhurma too far?

  The dorms had room for two dozen people. Twenty-five souls, including Sinhurma himself. Were they already dead? Had they drunk Kool-Aid laced with cyanide, like the Jonestown cult, or were they planning on doing something worse? The Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult in Japan had released sarin gas in a subway, killing twelve people and injuring thousands—were they going to do something similar? Sinhurma’s medical degree gave him access to all sorts of drugs; the amount of havoc he could wreak with twenty-four dedicated followers to disperse them was horrifying to consider.

  Had he pushed Sinhurma too far?

  The sky offered its own cacoph
onous opinion; Horatio didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t sound approving….

  12

  THE PHONE RANG TEN TIMES before someone picked it up. “Ms. Murayaki, please,” Horatio said. “Tell her it’s Lieutenant Caine.”

  “Hello, Horatio,” Sun-Li’s cool voice replied. “My assistant’s not in and I’m in the field—my calls are being forwarded. I’d love to help you out, but I’m a little busy at the moment—”

  “Too busy to help prevent another Heaven’s Gate?”

  There was the briefest of pauses. “Okay, you’ve got my attention. What’s the situation?”

  “I have a cult group that’s vanished. Two dozen people gone. Their leader is under suspicion for murder and I have to find him before he decides to do something drastic.”

  A burst of static cut off her reply. “—ammit. Horatio? You there?”

  “I am, but I didn’t quite catch that.”

  “Look, we should talk in person. Can you meet me?”

  “Certainly. Where are you?”

  “A little off the beaten track, at the moment. I’ll give you directions.”

  He pulled out a pen and notebook and jotted them down. “I’ll see you in about half an hour,” he said, and hung up.

  The place she’d told him to go was past Florida City, on a citrus farm; he could smell the warm tang of grapefruit half a mile before he got to the place. Night had just fallen, and the crickets were loud enough to sound like they were seriously considering a march on the city.