The Paradise Prophecy

by Robert Browne

  Maybe so, but if Gabriela had gone to all the trouble to say what she’d said-had even scribbled it in a book-then it obviously meant something to her.

  Something important.

  Callahan thought about the T-shirt and the verse on the wall and Ruiz’s remark that Gabriela had been obsessed with Paradise Lost. There had been other notations in the book’s margins. Other passages highlighted.

  Could they mean something as well?

  Getting to her feet, she headed toward the bedroom, Ruiz and Martinez following behind her, Martinez saying, “What? What is it now?”

  Callahan ignored him and moved through the closet to Gabriela’s prayer room. Grabbing the book, she leafed through it until she found the verse again, then continued turning the pages, finding more highlighted passages-each one as impenetrable as the last. Milton may have been a genius, but accessibility was not his strong suit.

  Gabriela’s notes seemed to be confined to the eleventh chapter-or Book XI. On some pages, only individual words had been highlighted and the notes scribbled in the margins did little to illuminate what might have been going on in the pop star’s mind. Numbers and letters were written down and crossed out, then written down again, as if she were trying to puzzle something out. Break some kind of code.

  But in Paradise Lost?

  That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And Callahan again wondered if the girl had gone looney tunes.

  “Look at this place,” Martinez said, taking in the altar and symbol on the wall. He picked up the copy of Forbidden Rites from the prayer-desk shelf. “Look at what she was reading. I told you she was in league with the Devil.”

  Ruiz swiveled his head toward him, his face tight with anger. “Say that again and you’ll be looking for a new job before the day is over.”

  The threat must have carried weight, because Martinez practically swallowed his tongue before shaking his head in disgust.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” he said to Callahan. “We all know what happened to Gabriela, and the more we follow this road, the more dangerous it gets.” He turned, headed out the door. “I’ll drop your bag at the hotel. You can find your own way there.”

  Then he was gone.

  Fine, Callahan thought, no big loss. And Ruiz certainly didn’t seem too broken up about it.

  She gestured to Paradise Lost. “Do you have any idea why Gabriela was so obsessed with this thing?”

  “No,” he said. “And I have to admit, I’ve never read it. I tried a few times, but it was beyond me.”

  Except for a few religious scholars, a handful of uptight literary types-and maybe Gabriela herself-the same was probably true for most people.

  Callahan thought about the facts surrounding this case. An improbable death, phantom gasoline smells, a victim who looked like barbecued roadkill, a satanic symbol burned into the floor of an otherwise untouched room, a secret prayer sanctuary, the strange, obsessive scribblings in the margins of an epic poem about the fall of Satan . . .

  And, of course, the message in both the book and on Ruiz’s cell phone.

  Protect her.

  Maybe Martinez was right, after all. There was enough weird going on around here to attract a bucketful of goth nerds, with a side order of religious fanatics. Something had been going on in Gabriela’s life that was far beyond her role as a Christian pop star.

  Something that had gotten her killed.

  And call Callahan crazy, but she had a gut feeling that it somehow related to those two words, and the book she held in her hands.

  Protect her.

  But her knowledge of these things was far too limited for her to even begin to figure it out. What she needed was the help of an expert. Someone on call. A Milton junkie, religious historian and occult specialist all wrapped into one-assuming such an animal existed.

  There was one sure way to find out.

  Dropping the book to the prayer desk, she excused herself, then pushed past Ruiz and went back out to the living room.

  She snatched up her phone, punched in the security code and was about to hit autodial when it buzzed in her hand. Checking the screen, she immediately put it to her ear. “I was just about to call you.”

  “We had a look at the data you uploaded,” a voice said.

  It was the same cold, disembodied voice she always heard when she dealt with Section. The agency wasn’t big on formalities like names or ranks or identifying information in case you were unfortunate enough to one day find yourself compromised.

  It simply gave orders. If you didn’t follow them, you risked losing your job.

  Or your life.

  “I’m thinking I need a specialist,” she said. “Somebody at the top of his game.”

  “We’re a step ahead of you. Proceed as usual and we’ll contact you when the arrangements have been made.”

  Then the line clicked.

  12

  HARRISON, LOUISIANA

  It was nearing midnight when the trouble started.

  Batty hadn’t dragged himself out of bed until late in the afternoon, and had spent the first few hours of the new day fighting a raging hangover. By the time he had purged himself of the previous night’s toxins, he was ready to start anew and didn’t waste any time getting over to Bayou Bill’s.

  Bill’s was busy as always and Batty was working on boilermaker number three (feeling generally sorry for himself that the redhead had once again failed to show), when the door blew open and a guy who may as well have had the word tourist stamped across his forehead stumbled in, looking lost and concerned and generally discombobulated.

  He wasn’t the source of the trouble, however. Just a curiosity that got Batty’s attention right before the trouble began.

  It was a hot night and the tourist was sweating like a man who wasn’t used to the weather. But the moment he locked eyes with Batty, his entire demeanor changed, as if he’d found what he was looking for and was grateful to have it over and done with.

  Batty half expected him to head straight to the booth. He was wondering what this was about and why he was about to be approached, when the guy surprised him by averting his gaze and taking a stool at the bar instead.

  Batty watched old Bill put a bottle of beer in front of him and wondered if he’d been imagining things.

  Wouldn’t be the first time.

  And a moment later, he was too distracted to care.

  The trouble-when it finally came-came from the parking lot, just outside a window across from Batty’s booth.

  It was dark out there under the trees, but there was enough moon that he could see a handsome but worn-looking woman and her biker boyfriend in among the parked cars. They’d pulled up on a Harley shortly before the tourist wandered in, and started making out, looking like they were about to do the dirty right there on the hood of Ronny Cantrell’s twenty-year-old Town Car.

  Batty had been doing his best to ignore them ever since.

  But some things were impossible to ignore. As he contemplated ordering another boilermaker, their voices began to rise-muffled behind the window, but loud enough to catch his attention. He looked over and saw that the make-out session had abruptly ceased and the biker now had hold of his girlfriend’s wrist.

  This was not, mind you, a little love squeeze. This was an all-out assault, fingers digging into the ulnar nerve, trying to elicit a reaction and not a favorable one. It was rough and mean and-window or no window-generally ill-advised in the presence of a gentleman like Batty. A gentleman who believed that you never lay a hand on a woman unless you intend to make her feel good.

  Batty rose, feeling the booze sluice through him, but he didn’t let that slow him down. He called out a good-night to Bill, who was too busy to notice, then went outside, staggering only slightly as he approached the biker and his girlfriend.

  The bearded bastard still had her by the wrist and Batty could see from the look on her face that she wasn’t enjoying it one little bit.

  “Excuse me,” he said, moving
in close. “I’d advise you to let this poor lady go, and don’t touch her again or you’ll be making an appointment with the dentist tomorrow, assuming you can still pick up a phone.”

  The biker looked at him, annoyed. Not a man who liked to be interrupted when he was busy inflicting pain.

  “Who the fuck are you?” He turned to the woman, not bothering to release her wrist. “Is this guy a friend of yours?”

  She winced, trying to pull her hand away.

  “No,” she cried, the terror in her voice clearly reflected in her expression. “I don’t know him.”

  The biker’s eyes narrowed. “The hell you don’t, you little-”

  That was when Batty swung, his fist connecting with a solid crack. He had warned the man, but the man hadn’t listened, and Batty was a big believer in following through on a threat.

  The biker, however, was neither small nor flabby, and despite nearly toppling to the ground with a bloody mouth, he recovered from the punch much quicker than anticipated.

  The next thing Batty knew, the asshole was upright and moving fast, and it was immediately obvious that he hadn’t yet had anything to drink-which, unfortunately, gave him an advantage. In the flurry of punches that followed, Batty came up two for seven, only one of which connected in any substantial way.

  It all ended with Batty faceup on the ground between two cars, staring into the eyes of the man who might very well stomp him to death without even a twinge of guilt, as the girlfriend shouted, “Kill the sonofabitch!”

  So much for chivalry.

  The biker wiped at his mouth, looked at the blood on the back of his hand, then rolled his tongue over his teeth, checking to see if there was any damage.

  “You may be right about that dentist,” he said thickly. “But they’re gonna have to carry you outta here on a stretcher, you little mother-” He froze as the barrel of a gun touched the back of his head. Batty was surprised to see the sweating tourist standing directly behind him.

  “Time to call it a night,” the tourist said softly, looking considerably more confident than he had when he first walked into the bar.

  The biker threw his hands up. “Easy, buddy. We just came here for a drink. He started it.”

  “And I’m finishing it. Grab your skank, get on your bike and get the hell out of here. Now.”

  There wasn’t any room for negotiation in the tourist’s tone, and apparently the biker wasn’t as stupid as he looked. He glared at Batty, then grabbed hold of his girlfriend’s arm, pulling her away, and a moment later, their bike was roaring down the street.

  Batty got up on his elbows, squinting at the tourist, who tucked his gun away and crouched next to him, pulling him upright. “You okay, Professor?”

  So it hadn’t been his imagination. This guy knew who he was. “Still alive, more or less. Who the hell are you?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “Well, I appreciate the help, friend, but I could’ve handled the sonofabitch just fine on my own.”

  “That’s a debate we’ll have to save for another time. We’re running late.”

  Batty furrowed his brow at him. “Late for what?”

  “You’ve got a plane to catch.”

  Then the guy quickly brought a hand up, and to Batty’s surprise, something sharp and hot stung his neck.

  He grabbed at his throat and fell back, but before he could say a word, the world tilted sideways and the tourist started to double and triple right there in front of his eyes as the moonlight suddenly grew very dim.

  Then it disappeared altogether as Sebastian “Batty” LaLaurie fell down a deep, dark hole.

  BOOK IV

  Land of the Lost

  Millions of spiritual Creatures walk the Earth

  Unseen, both when we wake, and when we sleep

  -Paradise Lost, 1667 ed., IV:677-78

  13

  LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  He watched the girl get off the bus at the Greyhound station, her doe eyes taking in the world around her with obvious disappointment.

  It was not, he imagined, what she had expected to find. The city wasn’t as clean as it looked on network TV-cars choking the boule-wasn’t as clean as it looked on network TV-cars choking the boulevard, trash clogging the gutters, the smog not as thick as it once was, but still smelling faintly of dirt and spit and sulfur.

  There were no digitally enhanced blue skies here. And the only palm trees left were now victim to a slow-killing rot.

  A homeless woman was huddled on the sidewalk near the bus station exit and the girl gave her wide berth, clutching her knapsack as she moved, looking as if she were afraid the old woman might spring to her feet and block her passage like a troll at the gates of Purgatory.

  But the old woman remained still, only her eyes moving as the girl hurried past and made her way up Cahuenga toward Hollywood Boulevard, where surely things would look much better.

  This was, after all, the land of dreams. Home to the stars.

  But he knew that things would not look better. And as he followed the girl, staying a discreet distance behind her, he could see the change in the way she carried herself as her disappointment deepened. The footsteps slowed, the shoulders slumped, the head swiveled back and forth, hoping to find something-anything-that looked even remotely inviting.

  The chicken hut on the corner? The check-cashing store? The urgent care clinic with iron bars on its front window? The tattoo parlor?

  There was nothing. And he knew she was suddenly terrified, wondering if she’d made a mistake.

  In this day and age she should have known better. But fifteen-year-old girls are not prone to critical thinking, especially when they want desperately to get away from home.

  Some things just never change.

  He had been watching her for many days now. Had followed her all the way from Lawton, Arizona. She’d gone missing from her home, but he’d found her at the bus depot there, counting the money she’d kept hidden in her dresser drawer, holding it close to her budding chest, eyes darting, hoping no one was paying much attention to her.

  But he was.

  And all the time he had watched her, from Arizona to California, he had been second-guessing himself, wondering if his instincts were wrong.

  They’d certainly been wrong before. Many times, in fact.

  There was the exchange student in eastern France. The painter in Hammersmith. The humanitarian in Macedonia. The missionary in northern Thailand . . .

  He had searched the globe, year after year, and thought he’d heard her song. But what he’d really heard was his own wishful thinking. Nothing more. And he had begun to wonder if it was all a lie. A cruel deception, perpetrated by a father who no longer cared.

  But this one was different.

  This one gave him hope.

  The kind of hope he had almost forgotten about. The kind of hope he’d felt in the long ago days, when he’d first made the decision to stop the killing, the debauchery, the self-serving narcissism that drove so many of his kind.

  Maybe he was crazy, but it seemed that the circumstances were finally right for once. The fourth moon would soon be here, and he could hear the girl’s soul calling out to him, so much stronger than any of the others.

  And he knew that she was different. Special.

  A gift from an absentee father.

  His message to God.

  After wandering up Hollywood Boulevard for several long blocks, her knapsack starting to weigh her down, the girl turned into a small coffeehouse on the corner of Gower, the kind of place that looked as if its prices might be right for her miniscule budget.

  He waited as she bought a muffin and a cup of tea. She took a seat near the window, looking back the way she came with small-town eyes, full of trepidation and confusion, clouded faintly by tears. He knew it was really sinking in now, and before long the panic would start, and she’d be ripe for the taking by the first “kind soul” who came along.

  She had been much safer back in Lawto
n. Despite her repugnant stepfather, the world around her had been smaller there, more easily controlled. But try to convince a teenager she’s better off where she is and see how far that gets you. Especially when the aforementioned stepfather starts getting friendly and making comments about her changing body. Doing it while Mom is conveniently at work.

  And Mom was always at work.

  Stepping into the coffeehouse, he moved toward a table in back, careful not to make direct eye contact with her.

  Too early for that. He didn’t want to scare her away.

  The girl gave him only a cursory glance as he entered-which was just fine with him. She kept her gaze on the street, sipping her tea, nervously nibbling her muffin, probably wondering if she had enough money to find a place to sleep tonight and still have any left over. There was a free shelter less than a block down Gower, but he doubted she knew about it. The only planning she’d done before getting on that bus was to buy a ticket.

  And because he wasn’t quite ready to make contact with her, he knew he’d have to find a way to guide her there.

  Which, of course, was the difficult part.

  One thing he had learned in all these years of “sobriety,” as he called it, was that people had minds of their own, and getting them to do what he’d like them to do without resorting to treachery-and thereby breaking his code-took a lot of ingenuity. But he also found that if you presented them with the opportunity to make the right decision, they often did.

  But as he well knew, it wasn’t the decision itself that mattered. It was the intent behind it that counted.

  Pulling the plug on a dying loved one because you want to inherit his estate is vastly different from pulling that plug because you want to end his suffering. You’re either a murderer or a humanitarian, but you can’t be both.

  And the former will never get you that ticket to heaven, no matter how things may look to the world at large.

  She was halfway through her muffin when a young man walked past the coffeehouse window. Twenty-five, slender but muscular, with raggedy brown hair and few days’ worth of stubble on his chin. Hollywood pretty, like so many of them were out here-and a predator, no doubt about it.