by M. Z. Kelly
His thoughts coalesced, the other pathways closing down. Blood. That was the night’s mission.
They stopped and watched a convenience store across the street from the mall. He knew most of the patrons would be after something that would alter their consciousness. They were contemptible, worthless. He needed a certain level of purity for tomorrow’s event, and he knew even here, with time, that was possible.
As they waited, Macy’s thoughts eventually drifted to his companion. Joshua Brown had been his partner for the past decade, the one who got to enjoy the fruit of his creations while he’d been locked up. Now that he was free, he realized he resented Brown, his banal thoughts and predictable approach to killing. He decided the one-time security guard had, like so many things, outlived his usefulness. Then he had another thought that brought a smile to his thin lips. Why not utilize that which is no longer useful?
A car pulled into the parking lot of the store and a young woman got out. Macy’s senses immediately went on alert. She was in her late teens, just about the right age, with long dark hair. Her body was slender and supple. But all that was secondary. He was looking for both beauty and grace.
“Wait here,” he told Brown. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He got a nod before heading across the street and into the store. He went over to the soda dispenser, watching the girl from a couple of aisles away. She opened the door to a refrigerated case and removed a quart of milk. Then she got a loaf of bread and walked to the counter.
Macy went over, getting in line behind her. He closed his eyes, inhaling the scent of her shampoo—a chemist’s chemical imitation of lavender and apples. The smell was artificial and predictable.
“Hello.”
Macy opened his eyes, seeing that the girl had turned toward him and was smiling. Her hair was brown and touched her shoulders, her eyes the color of the sky in springtime. Physically, she met his criteria.
He then saw that the line ahead of her wasn’t moving.
“Never fails,” he said after returning her greeting.
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m in a bit of a hurry, and the line…” He shrugged. “I guess it’s to be expected.”
“Would you like to go ahead of me?”
“No, I wouldn’t think of it.”
“It’s no problem. I just picked up a couple of things for my mom. No big plans tonight.”
She stepped aside and he moved around her, at the same time knowing the girl had just sealed her fate. “You’re too kind.”
After paying for his drink, Macy went outside and nodded to Brown. It was the signal to bring the car around. In a moment his partner had parked next to the girl’s car.
When she came out of the store, it was a matter of moving swiftly and making sure that she didn’t scream. Just before he closed the lid on the trunk, he smiled at the girl who was bound and gagged. The Reaper had his next victim.
FORTY-FIVE
We were scheduled to meet with the FBI at Hollywood Station at ten the next morning. Since I was unable to get much sleep and got up early, I took the opportunity to stop by my mother’s house in North Hollywood on the way into the station. I found her in her kitchen reading tea leaves.
Mom, who considered herself a part-time psychic, had a history of odd behavior. In recent months, she’d been calling herself Rose. Her behavior had become so strange that I’d convinced her to go to therapy with me. The therapist explained that she was suffering from something called a dissociative personality disorder brought on by the way she’d handled me finding out that she was not my biological mother. The fact that Mom had withheld that knowledge from me for years, and that I’d recently learned she’d had an affair with Ryan Cooper before he’d murdered my love-dad, had all weighed heavily on our relationship. I tried to focus and push all that history aside as I sat down for coffee with her in the kitchen.
After discussing the Reaper case for a couple of minutes, Mom mentioned the upcoming family reunion she had planned. “Amanda called last weekend. She thinks they’ll be able to make it, but can only stay for one night. Geoff has some kind of business deal pending in Europe.”
“That’s nice,” I lied. “It seems like years since we’ve all been together.”
I wasn’t looking forward to seeing my sister or Geoff, her little nitwit of a husband who had inherited the family fortune. Amanda and I had been at odds for years, having little in common. She didn’t seem to care about Mom’s strange behavior in recent years and she wasn’t sympathetic to what I’d learned about my love-dad who was her biological father.
Mom went on. “Amanda wants us all to go to the Beverly Hills Hotel for dinner. She’ll pay for everyone.”
Just shoot me now.
“It sounds lovely.” I took a breath and changed the subject. “There’s something I need to ask you about, regarding Dad’s death.”
Mom’s gray eyes became unfocused, her gaze drifting off. “Not again.” She shook her head. “I don’t really have anything more to say about the matter.”
We’d had several discussions about my love-dad’s death at the hands of Ryan Cooper. At one point, Mom even mentioned that she thought she might know who my biological father was. As it turned out, she didn’t, and she hadn’t been very forthcoming about everything that had happened during the time when my love-dad had been murdered.
Mom did know about my earlier suspicions that the Revelation had been involved in my love-dad’s death, along with Ryan Cooper. She also knew that Collin Russell had given me the letters my bio-mom had written.
I pressed on, despite her reticence to discuss the issues. “I recently had dinner with a woman who knows about the Revelation. She said that Collin Russell and Harlan Ryland were originally involved in the secret organization, but that it eventually splintered and they formed the Tauist Society.”
Her gray eyes found me again. “Are you sure?”
I nodded. “Russell and Ryland have made millions from their followers. I think they may have also had a hand in the deaths of Jean Winslow and my father.”
She sighed. “If that’s the case, I don’t know anything about it.”
I studied her for a moment. I was frustrated, wondering if this was more stonewalling, or if she was telling me the truth. “But you have been to the Tauist Retreat.”
The skin around her eyes grew tighter. “So what?” She now studied me. “Why is it that you think I might know more than I’ve already told you?”
Maybe because you lied to me before. I did my best to deflect her anger. “It’s just that…you know how important this is to me. If there was someone else behind Dad’s death, I need to know about it.”
She shook her head, not looking at me.
I waited a moment, then treaded back into deep water. “What about Ryan Cooper? Could he have been working for Russell and Ryland?”
She looked back at me. It took her several seconds to answer. “I suppose it’s possible. He knew a lot of people back then.”
“Like Donald Regis, the head of Wallace Studios?”
She nodded. “Yes, from what I understood, they were close.”
The discussion continued for several minutes, without me getting anything more. I finally asked the other question that had been consuming me for several days. “What about my lieutenant, Ozzie Powell?”
“What about him?”
“I recently found a photograph of him with Jean Winslow and Dad. Ryan Cooper and Kellen Malone were in the same picture.”
“Malone?”
I nodded. “Russell’s son.”
Mom stood up and walked to the sink. She poured out her coffee before turning back to me. “What did your lieutenant have to say about all this?”
“I haven’t talked to him yet.”
Her eyes remained fixed on me. “Then I think the answers to your questions need to come from him. He and your dad were pretty close at one time.”
I stood up and walked over to her. “What aren’t you te
lling me?”
Mom sighed, and her gaze moved off again. “I don’t know what, if anything, Ozzie Powell had to do with what happened. All I know is that he, your dad, and Leo Kingsley were all good buddies. Maybe you should also talk to your partner.”
***
As I drove to the station, I thought about what Mom had said. I’d known that my love-dad, Leo, and Oz had all joined the department around the same time and had hung out together. Now I wondered if Leo might also know something more about my dad’s death that he’d kept from me. If that was the case, it was inexcusable. Leo knew how consumed I’d been with finding out who was behind my love-dad’s death. If he knew something, maybe even something about Oz being involved, I was determined to get to the bottom of it, even if it meant the end of our friendship.
Unfortunately, when I got to the station and saw the dozens of media vehicles surrounding the building, thoughts about my dad’s death drifted away, and I began to focus on the task at hand.
“What’s the latest?” I asked Leo as Bernie and I arrived at my desk.
“Everyone’s been ordered to meet downtown at ten. Word has it the chief wants to use the national media spotlight to get some face time, maybe use the publicity to further his political ambitions.”
I put my purse in my desk. “If we do that, we’ll waste the entire day and lose any chance we have of stopping Macy.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He stood up. “Let’s go talk to Oz, see if he’ll give us a pass.”
Leo and I spent the next half hour pleading our cause without any success. The lieutenant looked exhausted and out of breath as he took his coat off the rack and gave us our final marching orders. “I’ll see you both downtown at ten. Don’t be late.”
We were back at our desks, me still fuming about having to waste our day, when Joe Dawson called me. “Looks like the press has you surrounded, Buttercup. Come out with your hands in the air.”
“I’d love to, but our chief has other ideas.” I explained about being summoned to the press conference.
“Tough break. I thought I’d go by and pick up Rosie, see if she has any thoughts on what our boy’s planning next.”
His mention of the former profiler brought to mind what had occurred to me last night. “I’ve been thinking a lot about these crimes, what Macy and Brown have done in the past. I think we need to concentrate on the ritual aspect of the cases. Maybe she can help with that.”
I glanced around the station, seeing the detectives that were heading out for the news conference. Leo was standing in the hallway and glanced over at me, a message that it was time to go. I made an impulsive decision.
“I’m not feeling very well,” I said to Joe. “I think I’m going to go home sick. Any chance you can drive me to the doctor?”
“Pick you up in half an hour.”
After ending the call, I walked over to Leo with Bernie. “I’m feeling a little under the weather. If you see Oz at the press conference, could you tell him I took sick leave?”
Leo regarded me. “What gives?”
“It’s a strange thing, but when I think about the chief, the press, and the cameras, I suddenly get sick to my stomach.” I tugged on Bernie’s leash. “See you later.”
FORTY-SIX
Bernie and I met Joe in front of the station. After getting my furry partner situated, I buckled in as Joe said, “I hope this isn’t going to get you into any trouble.”
I showed him my phone. “I’ve got one of those shop a doc phone apps. I’ll ask them what they’ve got for a giant bureaucratic headache and I’m covered.”
He put the car in gear. “I could use your prescription.”
“Problems with Greer?”
“And the profilers. They think they can catch our bad guys by sitting around a conference table and talking about how someone wetting his pants as a kid turned him into a killer.”
I laughed. “I need to introduce you to a lawyer I know.”
As he drove us to UCLA, we chatted about how we’d spent our evenings. I told him I was planning to see Noah over the weekend, then added, “I think I should have been more understanding about the events surrounding his injuries and the breakup with his fiancée.”
“Maybe he never got over the girl.”
I took a breath. “It’s a possibility. We’ll just have to see how things go.”
We drove in silence for a couple of minutes before I mentioned the morning’s conversation with my mother. “She thinks both Leo and Lieutenant Oz might know something more about my dad’s death, since they were all buddies back when they joined the department.”
“Leo seems pretty straightforward to me. Why don’t you talk to him first?”
I glanced at him and smiled. “I’ll try to work it into my schedule.”
As we turned off the freeway in Westwood where the UCLA campus was located, my thoughts drifted to my sister and our earlier conversation about her. “I’ve been thinking about Lindsay, your thoughts that she might have willingly gone with The Swarm to try and stop them.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“I have no doubt about that.” I laughed. “But I think you could be right about what happened. And, if she is working underground to identify those involved, I’m just hoping at some point we’ll hear from her.”
“I’ve got lots of sources working on it behind the scenes.” He met my eyes. “As I told you before, this is personal. I won’t give up until we find your sister.”
I was grateful and felt my emotions surfacing. “I appreciate that.”
We found Rose Castillo finishing up with one of her classes in the department of anthropology. We waited outside until she came out of the classroom.
When she saw us, she said, “Good news?”
“Wish it was,” Joe said. “We thought we might do a little brainstorming session with you, if you got a few minutes.”
“Let’s go to my office and talk.”
When we got upstairs, I took a moment to settle Bernie into a corner of her office. I noticed that she had a photograph of herself when she was much younger with a young woman, and asked her about it.
“She’s my niece, Amelia,” Rose said, coming over to me and examining the photo. “She works for a police department in South Florida now.” She chuckled. “The photo was taken on her twenty-first birthday. As you can see, I haven’t aged at bit.”
Joe chimed in from behind us. “Rosie and me get younger and smarter every day.”
We took seats on the other side of her desk and I gave her the latest. “As you’ve probably seen on the news or the Internet, Dr. Moore was forced to murder Macy’s mother. He also made threats that he’s going to kill again tonight.”
She seemed shocked by what I’d said. “I spent a quiet evening at home doing some research and didn’t see the news. Can you show me the video?”
I took a moment, found the video on my iPhone, and played it for her. After the horrific scenes of Dr. Moore bludgeoning Alice Macy to death, her son appeared in the video. I was struck by his calm, even tones as he described what he had planned next.
“I have a message that some of you may be interested in hearing,” Macy said, standing in front of his mother’s dead body. “I have a certain need that will not be denied. Therefore, at precisely midnight tomorrow night, I will kill again.” The monster leaned closer to the camera, his tawny eyes glowing in the dim light. “It will be a remarkable event that is not to be missed.”
The screen faded to black and I closed the app. “As you can see, he’s feeding off the public hysteria.”
Rose agreed. “That’s been his goal all along. This is as much about ego and fear as it is about killing.”
“But killing is what meets his so-called need,” Joe said. “And the posings are his way of displaying that need.”
“Whatever he has planned will involve a ritual, as with the other most recent murders. I think that should be our focus.”
“What are your thoughts about Macy u
sing Dr. Moore to murder his own mother?” I asked Rose. “That’s about as depraved as you can get.”
She concurred, adding, “There was likely some kind of trauma in Macy’s childhood that involved his mother. Killing her was his way of trying to bury that pain.”
I took a breath, feeling frustrated. While we had lots of theories, we knew that Macy and Brown would strike again in a matter of hours, and we had no idea where to even begin looking for them.
“Maybe we need to backtrack,” I said. “Look at Brown and Macy’s crimes from the beginning and see if they can tell us anything about what they’re planning next.”
Joe groaned and set his briefcase on the desk. “I’ve got enough paper on the murders to keep us busy all day.” He looked at me. “I’m starting to feel like Greer and the profilers. Not sure this is going to get us anywhere.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He shook his head and we all dug in, each of us taking a stack of paperwork and summarizing what we knew about each victim. The crimes had started in 2006, with the murder of a girl taken from a fast food restaurant near a freeway onramp. The killings then became increasingly sophisticated, with posing and staging taking place in the later murders.
I then summarized what we knew about April Lynn Thomas, the victim that had resulted in Macy being declared criminally insane and committed to Berkshire State Hospital.
“Thomas was taken in the parking lot of a bookstore in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she worked as a clerk. She was nineteen and living with her parents at the time. He kept her for six months, and…” I took a breath, pushing down the bile rising in my throat as I reviewed the crime scene photos. “There were multiple cuts inflicted on her body, some that were healed. It resulted in the branding of her skin with dozens of religious and other symbols associated with death.
“He was perfecting his art when he was caught,” Rose said.
Joe looked at his old friend. “Some fucking artist. Tell me something, why are artists always crazy?”
Rose shrugged. “Some people think there’s a fine line between genius and madness. Van Gogh is probably the best known example. He had bouts of mental illness that may have assisted his creative impulses before he eventually committed suicide.”