by M. Z. Kelly
When we pulled up in front of Harvey Brill’s house we found Mo and Natalie on the front porch. The home was small, a single story painted in bright hues of blue and green. The yard was a mess. The lawn needed mowing and some of the plants were dead. My friends came over to us as we got out of the car.
“We didn’t touch nuthin,” Mo said. “And it’s real bad in there.”
“His body’s in the bedroom,” Natalie told us. “Looks like a butcher shop in Manchester my dad shopped at when I was a kid.”
Nothing much bothers my two friends, so I knew the crime scene wouldn’t be pretty. After giving them orders to stay put we slipped on gloves and paper booties and went inside. The home was nothing fancy, just a kitchen and family room with two bedrooms and a bath on one wing. The largest of the two bedrooms was where we found Harvey Brill, or what was left of him.
“This is what they mean by drawing and quartering,” Buck said after we’d gone into the room and made a cursory examination of the body. He motioned to the rope dangling from the ceiling above Brill’s naked, mutilated body. “Somebody trussed him up, probably let him suffer for a while, before cutting him down and doing the rest.”
The rest involved Harvey Brill’s body being cut into four pieces, including the severing of his head, just above the tattoo of a cross on the lower portion of his neck. The attack looked like it must have been carried out by a machete or some other large cutting instrument. There was blood everywhere, covering the walls and the white bedspread beneath the body. I’d seen a lot of vicious attacks in my life but this ranked near the top.
“Somebody musta been real pissed,” Mo said after I went back out to the front porch to question them about what they knew. I’d left Buck in the bedroom to secure the scene and call the CSI Unit.
“Looks like a bleeping slaughterhouse in there,” Natalie agreed. “Sammy was right ‘bout what he told us.”
I came over to them. “Exactly what did Sammy tell you?”
“He said Brill had a reputation for gambling and losing a lot of money,” Mo said. “He and Aster had some kinda falling out that ended their partnership. Before that they were both into some crazy sex stuff.”
“What kind of crazy sex stuff?”
“Sammy said there were rumors ‘bout them both being involved in some kinda sex cult,” Natalie said. “It’s something called the Blue Hoods.”
“What else?” I demanded, at the same time thinking about the snuff video we’d found in Aster’s secret room. Were the men in the blue hoods Aster and Brill? From what I could tell they did fit the approximate physical size of the two men.
“That’s all we know,” Mo said, tearing up. “I’m starting to get real worried ‘bout Sissy now. There’s no telling what kind of monsters have got ahold of her.”
I had to agree but kept what I thought to myself. I told them both to wait on the porch until formal statements could be taken. I then went back into Brill’s living room and met up with Buck again. “You thinking what I am?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Brill and Aster could be the two guys in the snuff video.”
I then told him about what Natalie and Mo had said about Sammy Boxer hearing rumors that Aster and Brill were involved in a sex cult on the island.
“We’ve had our share of sexual assaults on Catalina over the years but I’ve never heard about a sex cult.”
I breathed, brushed a hand through my hair that had gone frizzy due to the fog. “I hate to even say this, but I wonder if Aster and Brill might have been killed to cover something up, maybe what someone had planned for Sissy and her friends.”
“If that’s the case we’re definitely running out of daylight on this. We have to find those girls.”
“The other possibility is that Carly Lucia might have paid back Brill for what he did to her.”
“It’s possible but…” His gaze swept down the hallway to the open bedroom door where Brill’s butchered body was lying. “I just don’t know if she has it in her to do something like this.”
We both turned as Julie Spencer and Tim Baxter came through the front door, telling us the M.E. was on his way. They asked about the body and we took them into the bedroom. They stopped in their tracks when they saw what had been done to the attorney. Baxter took a step back, bent over, and threw-up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“How long have you been here?” Grace asks the girl on the other side of the wall, the one named Sissy.
She hears Sissy’s voice, just above a whisper, frightened and desperate. “I’m not sure…days, I think…why are we…here?” Her voice chokes with emotion.
“I don’t know.” Grace is quiet for a moment, listening to be sure her captor hasn’t returned. Finally she says, “Joey, do you know him.”
“Who?”
“He’s the one who took me.”
“No.” After a pause Grace hears Sissy say, “There are others…my friends.”
“How many?”
“Three of us, plus another girl and you.”
“Do you know where they are?”
“In other rooms, I think. They took me and my friends from the courthouse and brought us here.”
Grace wonders where here is. “Are we in a house?”
“I’m not sure. We were blindfolded.”
“Do you have food and water?”
“Sometimes…” Sissy’s voice dissolves into tears.
Grace tries to reassure her but doesn’t really know what to say. Finally, she asks, “The men in blue hoods. Have you seen them?”
“Yes…”
Sissy breaks down again. After several tries and more questions about the men, Grace realizes the girl is on the edge of completely falling apart. The last thing she hears Sissy say is something about games. After that there are only muffled cries, the sound of someone who has lost all hope.
Grace lies back on the floor staring up at the ceiling and the single light bulb that is now her sun, an endless light burning through all the days and nights, dissolving time. Now that she’s been given some water her mind is clearer. The fragments of what she knows about this new world begin sifting through her mind.
House Rules. Men in Blue Hoods. Other girls. Sissy. Games.
She turns the words and phrases over in her mind. They are like fragments of an equation, parts of a much bigger whole. While she doesn’t know what any of it means, Grace knows one thing for sure. Her life and the lives of the other girls are in jeopardy. She has to find a way to escape.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
We spent most of the night at Harvey Brill’s house processing the crime scene. The medical examiner, who was really just a local doctor acting in the capacity of a M.E., was a middle-aged guy with a bushy moustache and wild hair named Fred Rinsler. He confirmed that the death instrument was likely a machete.
“There are ligature marks and abrasions on the victim’s neck,” Rinsler told us, sounding like a kid at Christmas. “My guess is that he was lifted off the bed several times, probably by a rope and pulley system, but asphyxiation wasn’t the cause of death. He bled out from the blunt force trauma.” He rubbed his hands together. “I should have more for you after I get him on a slab.”
“Don’t get many homicides on the island,” Buck said, referring to Rinsler after we walked away. “Somebody just made his day, if not his entire year.”
Lieutenant Sloan arrived at the scene and Buck took a moment to walk him through what had happened and also fill him in on Clay Aster’s secret room and video. I took the time to check on Tim Baxter. I found him and Spencer in the kitchen drinking some soda water they’d found in the victim’s fridge.
“How are you doing?” I asked Baxter as I came into the room.
“I’m fine. Just a touch of the flu, I think. Haven’t felt right all week.”
Yeah, nothing like a bad case of the homicide flu.
“According to McCade, there was some kind of snuff film in Aster’s room?” Julie Spencer asked. She was wearing a
short black dress that made me wonder if she’d chosen the outfit for Buck or had been pulled away from a party by his call.
“Two men in blue hoods attacking a victim. She looked to be in her thirties. It was pretty gruesome.”
“Maybe Aster just liked to watch snuff videos. We know he had a kinky side.”
“Could be,” I said. “Have either of you ever heard about a group on the island called the Blue Hoods? From what I’ve heard it’s some kind of sex cult.”
They both shook their heads. “Where’d you hear about that?” Spencer asked.
I didn’t want to go into details about my friends hiring the PI, but decided I had no choice but to tell them the source. “Sammy Boxer mentioned it to some friends of mine.”
“If it came from Boxer he’s probably the leader of the cult,” Spencer said. “Why are you even listening to that little idiot?”
“As I said, he mentioned it to my friends, so I had no choice but to pass the information along.”
Sloan and Buck came into the room. The lieutenant looked downtrodden, like he’d been thrown by Buck’s horse, if he’d had a horse. He said, “Aster’s secret room…”
“Sorry we missed it,” Spencer said, interrupting and starting to make excuses. “But we looked…”
Sloan waved her off. “I haven’t seen the video yet but I do know there’s been some talk over the years about a sex group.”
“Do they call themselves Blue Hoods?” I asked.
“Never heard that term used before. I think we should meet up at the station first thing in the morning. I wanna take a look at the video and send it over to sex crimes on the mainland. See what they make of it.”
“What about the press?” Baxter asked. “They’ll be on this like flies on…you know what.”
“I’ll release a formal statement in the morning. So far we’ve got nothing official that ties Brill’s murder to Aster’s so I’ll leave any speculation in that regard out of the discussion.” He huffed out a long breath. “Let’s begin to wrap things up here and call it a night.”
It was after two in the morning by the time Buck drove me back to the Stardust. The fog was no longer rolling across the island in waves, but it had settled in making the houses and trees barely visible as the headlights from his SUV washed over them. It made what happened seem all the more forbidding.
“We need to go back to both Hal Quinton and Carly Lucia with the video tomorrow,” I said. “If Aster and Brill were involved in this Blue Hood group one or both of them has to know something about it.”
Buck released a breath, rubbed his neck. “I keep seeing that poor girl.”
“The one in the video?”
He glanced over at me, nodding. “Makes me wonder how anyone could be sick enough to do what those two men did to her.”
His words brought Sissy and the other girls to mind. I shuddered at the thought they might be in the hands of whoever was connected to the sex cult. It created a cascade of images, my mind filling with all the terrible things I’d seen over the past few years.
I sighed. “Maybe when this is all over we’re both going to need a vacation on a tropical island where they’ve never heard the word homicide.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Grace jumps back when the door creaks open. A tray of food with a bottle of water is pushed inside.
“Eat,” a man’s voice says. He’s behind the half open door, unseen.
The door closes, locks. She hears his footfalls outside the room as he leaves.
The tray has a plate with a sandwich and an apple but it’s the water Grace goes for first. She’s careful, taking her time to drink slowly. When the bottle is half empty, she examines the sandwich. She’s not sure if it’s turkey or ham but she’s starving and doesn’t care. She eats slowly, savoring each bite. When she’s finished she decides to keep the apple and what’s left of the water for later. She has no idea when or if the man will come again so she has to conserve what she’s been given.
She goes back over to the wall where she talked to Sissy before, listening. There’s only silence. Maybe the girl is being quiet because someone is in the house. “Sissy,” she calls out softly. There’s no answer. “Are you there?”
She hears a shuffling sound, maybe Sissy coming over to the wall. “They’re coming,” Sissy cries.
“What…who…”
Grace turns to the door as it’s unlocked and pushed open, slamming back against the wall. A man comes into the room, a man Joey had warned her about.
“It’s time,” the man in the blue hood says. His voice is harsh, demanding. “Come with me, NOW.”
Grace cowers, moves back against the wall. The man comes forward, reaches down and slaps her. “On your feet.”
She manages to pull herself up, her legs and arms trembling. “Out,” the man says, pushing her toward the open door. When she’s outside the room, he pushes her down a hallway. “Keep moving.”
In a moment Grace finds herself in a living room. There’s a sofa here, and a chair across from a fireplace. She glances over to the door, the windows that are blacked out. She has no idea if it’s daytime or night. There are three girls here and another man also wearing a blue hood.
“On the floor,” the man who came for her commands.
She does as he says, at the same time looking over at the girls on the sofa and chair. The girls all look to be about her age, maybe even a year or two younger. Three of the girls are black, sitting together on the sofa. A fourth girl sits clutching her sides in a chair. Grace searches their faces, wondering which one is Sissy.
“Did you all enjoy your food?” the man who has pushed Grace into the room asks. The other man is silent. Grace can see his eyes through the blue hood. She has the impression that he’s studying each of the girls, maybe deciding something. A wave of fear rolls down her spine.
“Why are we here?” The question comes from one of the girls on the sofa. Her gaze fixes on the man who brought Grace into the room before defiantly moving over to the other man.
“What’s your name?” the man who does the talking asks.
“Maddie.”
He comes over to her, runs a hand over her cheek. She shrinks back, clutching her sides. “I like you, Maddie,” he says. “Maybe we’ll save you for last.” He turns to the other girls. “Why don’t you introduce yourselves?”
Silence.
The man walks over to Grace and grabs her by the hair. “Your name?”
“Grace,” she mumbles.
The other girls then all say their names without prompting: Clara, Sissy, and Wendy. Grace now knows that Sissy is sitting farthest away from her, next to Maddie on the sofa. The girl named Wendy, the one in the chair, is trembling and keeps her eyes fixed on the floor.
“Now that you all know one another, let me answer Maddie’s question,” the man who came for Grace says. “You are all here because you have been chosen.”
He doesn’t say anything more until Maddie finally asks the question Grace is sure they’re all wondering about. “Chosen for what?”
The other man, the one who hasn’t spoken, steps forward. His voice is less harsh than his companion, but there’s something about the way he looks at them that terrifies Grace.
“This is a special time,” the man announces. “A ritual that’s been going on for many years is approaching. It’s called The Rendering.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“I sent Aster’s video to the sex crimes unit early this morning,” Lieutenant Sloan said when we gathered in the conference room the next morning.
Sloan looked like he’d been up all night, not that the rest of us had gotten much sleep either. Julie Spencer was wearing a winkled blue blouse and tan pants, not her usual slutty outfit. I saw that neither Baxter nor Buck had shaved. The rough texture of his beard looked good on my partner, while Baxter looked one stop short of a street urchin. Even though he’d slept through most of the night’s events, Bernie was catching some more shuteye in the co
rner.
“Maybe they can give us something to go on from the tape,” Sloan went on between sips of his coffee. “It’s about the only lead we’ve got right now.”
“Last night you mentioned there have been rumors of a sex group on the island for a number of years,” I said. “Do you know anything more specific about it.”
Sloan set down his coffee cup, released a breath. “It’s a rumor, maybe more like what’s sometimes called an urban legend than anything else. A few locals and even a couple of cops have mentioned it over the years. It had something to do with a few guys getting together in the middle of nowhere with some girls who were taken against their will. After they had their way with the girls, the men supposedly went back to their ordinary lives.”
“What about the girls?” Buck asked. “Did any of them ever surface, lodge a complaint?”
Sloan shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”
“And none of these men who participated were ever caught?” Spencer asked.
“There was some talk about a code of silence, but like I said it might just be rumor. You know how these things can get started and passed down over the years.”
“And the term Blue Hoods?” I asked. “Did that phrase or anything similar ever surface along with these rumors?”
Sloan shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”
The thought of Sissy and her friends being with men like this sent a wave of nausea through me along with the headache I’d had since waking up. I’d bought a latte at the local Starbucks but it hadn’t helped much with my fatigue. I tossed what was left of the drink in the trash.
“About an hour ago I released a statement to the press about Brill being a homicide victim,” Sloan went on. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook since. A couple of reporters have put together the fact that Aster and Brill were partners at one time and wanted to know if the homicides are linked. So far, I’ve told them we have no evidence to indicate that. I’ll probably end up having to do a press conference in a day or so.”