Hollywood Forbidden: A Hollywood Alphabet Series Thriller

by M. Z. Kelly

Buck and I saw the violent crash as the motorcycle hit the back of the truck and then tumbled wildly through the air like something out of a daredevil show. The rider came off the bike and went down hard in the road.

  We ran into the street with our guns out, seeing that the battered girl who had been in the truck was hysterical. I saw there were cuts all over her face and arms as she tried to tell us something about the crash.

  “He’s got a gun,” Natalie screamed.

  Buck and I both turned toward the shooter at the same time Bernie released a low grow. The rider, dressed in black leather and a dark helmet, was standing in the street. His gun came up at the same time we both made the announcement for him to drop the weapon. When he drew a bead on the girl we both fired several shots at the same time. The shooter’s body was blown back by the bullets’ impact, sending the gun flying out of his hand.

  I went over to him as Bernie continued on attack mode, wanting a piece of the shooter. I held my big dog back and bent down to the man, seeing that his eyes were fluttering open. He was still alive.

  “Why?” I said.

  Blood gurgled from his mouth and he stammered, “The…this…iss…the end…” His eyes then rolled back in his head and he was gone.

  I stood up as the girl came over to me. Her voice was frantic, bordering on hysteria. “We’ve got to go now. I know where the girls are.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  My friends and Sammy insisted on going with us and we were in too big a hurry to argue. After everyone piled into the Buck’s SUV, I asked the girl, who I now knew as Grace, what happened to her. The story came out in starts and stops, Grace fighting back tears as she told us about her ordeal, where the other girls were being held, and the urgency of the situation.

  “The other man is called Lamech. He was planning to marry a girl named Wendy but she and Sissy escaped. I think he’s going to kill them all.”

  “Lordy no,” Mo yelled from the backseat. “I thought you said they escaped.”

  “Wendy was caught trying to get over an electric fence and Sissy…” Grace huffed out a watery breath. “She gave herself up.”

  As Mo went into a crying fit, Natalie did what she could for Grace’s cuts, trying to pull shards of shattered windshield glass from her face and arms. The only good news about what we’d learned from Grace is that we now knew we were dealing with only one man—Lamech.

  We turned off the street and bounced down a dirt road, following Grace’s directions. Before leaving we’d called for backup. Lieutenant Sloan was behind us in an unmarked car, followed by a couple of uniformed cops that had been pulled off patrol duty.

  “Don’t you worry, sweet pea,” Natalie said to Grace. “We’re gonna take care of the ugly wanker.” She continued trying to comfort Grace as she worked on her injuries.

  “I get my way,” Mo said, drying her tears, “And I’m gonna sit on that Lemech dude’s nasty ass ‘till he’s flatter than a dead squirrel in the middle of a road.”

  I turned from the front seat and said to my friends and Sammy, “Listen to me. You will not, I repeat, you will not go into that house until it’s secured by the police. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

  I got some grunts and groans, which I knew was the closest I would get to a yes from any of them.

  “It’s Joey,” Grace said, pointing at the bloody figure sitting on the side of the dirt road. We slowed down as Buck radioed for one of the uniformed officers to stay with him and request an ambulance.

  “Looks like bloody hell,” Natalie said as we moved past him. “If it were me I’d leave him right here.”

  “Maybe I’ll come back for him later,” Mo said. “If he touched Sissy I’ll rip off his joy stick and poke out his other eye with it.”

  I had the feeling that Mo meant what she’d said. I was warning them again to stay in the car when we saw the small house up ahead where the road ended.

  “The girls are held in the bedrooms,” Grace told us as Buck slowed down and pulled over near a stand of trees where we had cover from the house. “They have locks on all the doors.”

  “I don’t see any cars in the driveway,” I said to Buck, after leaving my friends and Grace in the car.

  We then met up with Sloan and the uniformed officer at the side of the road. We discussed the situation for a moment, Buck saying, “It could be that this Lamech guy knows what happened and is gone.”

  “You and Buck cover the back,” Sloan said. “We’ll go in through the front. We make entry on my three count.”

  As Buck and I walked past the SUV I said to my friends, “I’ll come back and give you the all clear signal when the house is secured. Do not leave the car until I return.”

  “They ever listen to anything you say?” Buck asked as we made our way over to the side of the house.

  “Only if it’s something they already agree with.”

  We found that the house was surrounded by a fence that Grace had told us was electrified. We found an electrical panel and killed the power before making our way through a gate into the backyard. The yard behind the house was small and ran downhill into the woods. We realized that the house had probably once been a caretaker’s cottage for the closed tile factory.

  Buck and I stopped at the backdoor to the small house with our guns drawn. Bernie tugged on his leash and panted as we waited. We listened, hearing nothing from inside the house. A few moments later we heard Sloan’s “go” signal crackle over the radio and we went inside.

  The house was small and dark. There was a kitchen adjacent to the living room with a couple of pizza boxes and some beer cans. I followed Buck down the hallway where we saw there were three doors, all with the padlocks in place.

  “Anybody there?” Buck called out as the uniformed cop brought over some keys he’d found on a chain in the kitchen.

  “I’m in here,” we heard a girl calling out to us.

  After a couple of attempts, the lock clicked open and we went inside. The air in the room was rank as the girl came over to us. “I’m Maddie. There are girls in the other rooms.”

  We made quick work of the other padlocks, freeing two other girls, one I recognized as Clara from the courthouse kidnapping. The other girl told us her name was Wendy. She then said something that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck lift.

  “There’s another girl,” Wendy said. “Her name is Sissy. She tried to escape but they caught her. I think the man named Lamech took her somewhere in the woods.” She broke down crying but managed to add, “He said he’s going to kill her.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  My phone rang as we were headed into the backyard. It was a Detective Hawkins from the Poctatello, Idaho police department, telling me that Molly Wingate of Hollywood Station had given him my number.

  “I understand that you’ve got some of our home grown crazies out there,” Hawkins said.

  I took a moment, briefly summarizing what had been happening as we moved through the backyard, toward the woods. “We know one of the men was a guy named Jackson Caldwell but he goes by the moniker, Priest.”

  “Priest is part of a group that calls itself, The Family,” Hawkins said. “They all lived together at a compound about twenty miles from town until we raided the place about four years ago based on some suspicions they were taking girls, brainwashing them, and forcing them into polygamy.”

  “What did you find during the raid?” I asked, at the same time I thought I heard Natalie’s voice somewhere in the woods, beyond the backyard.

  “Not much because they burned the place down during the raid. Thirteen people died including women and children, along with a couple of federal officers. It was a pretty bad scene.”

  “I think I remember reading something about the raid. Any idea who was involved in, The Family, along with Priest?”

  “I’ve got a real good idea. The guy’s an attorney, but he and Priest had solid alibis so we couldn’t make anything stick on either of them.”

  I heard someone sc
reaming as we made our way down the hill to a clearing. I saw a familiar figure holding Sissy Maddox with a knife to her throat at the same time Detective Hawkins said his name. “The guy calls himself Lamech, but his real name is Tom Kincaid.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  “I always thought you were some kinda flip’n barmcake,” Natalie said as she and Mo confronted Kincaid. He was dressed in a suit, while Sissy wore a wedding gown. I had the impression that we’d interrupted a wedding ceremony, Kincaid’s warped plan to marry and then kill Mo’s niece.

  “You put the knife down and walk away,” Mo bellowed in her deep voice. “Any harm comes to that girl and you’re gonna see some kind of big, bad ugly.”

  Sissy was crying, trying to pull away from her captor but he had one arm wrapped around her neck. He had a knife in his other hand, holding it up to her throat.

  Buck and I had our guns out, along with Sloan and the uniformed officer, but we had no chance of taking the shot without hitting Sissy. Bernie was straining against his leash, pulling me closer to where Kincaid and Sissy were standing.

  “She’s mine now,” Kincaid said. “The end is coming. Her only chance for eternal life is to be with me.”

  “You are one crazy motherfucker,” Mo said.

  I was afraid she’d only make things worse as Bernie growled and Kincaid went on, “I am the prophet, the one chosen by the messiah to save my followers.”

  “By marrying the girls and then killing ‘em?” Natalie said. “You’re one brick short of a shithouse.”

  I circled behind them, hoping I could get a better angle on Kincaid, at the same time wondering where Sammy Boxer had gone. Natalie and Mo continued to tell Kincaid exactly what they thought of him as I considered releasing Bernie. I decided it wasn’t an option, given that Kincaid had a knife to Sissy’s throat.

  “It is time,” Kincaid finally said, turning away from my friends, at the same time turning Sissy so that she was facing him. “HE is coming again and bringing the End of Days…”

  Kincaid looked over at us, a shocked expression on his face and his voice trailing away. Then I realized there was a large knife in his back. He fell forward at the same time Sissy pushed away from him and ran to Mo. I looked over and saw that Sammy was standing in the woods, just a few yards from the fallen figure.

  Sammy smiled at us as we came over. In his high-pitched warble he explained, “Did two tours in Iraq. My specialty was cold steel.”

  I turned to Buck, released a long breath, put my gun away, and said, “I guess every dog has his day.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  We spent the rest of the day with the CSI unit processing the crime scene, including the house and grounds, and piecing together Kincaid and Caldwell’s involvement in polygamy and murder as part of the cult they called, The Family. As night began to fall, Sloan, Buck, and I took seats around a small table on the patio of the house where the girls had been held and discussed what we’d learned.”

  “According to the Idaho detectives,” I said, “The Family operated for years in a rural area outside Pocatello. When several girls from the surrounding area went missing, the parents began to suspect the cult was involved. Federal authorities eventually became involved in the investigation and a warrant was issued to search their compound.”

  “I remember seeing something on a segment of one of those nighttime TV news shows about the raid,” Sloan said. “Weren’t a bunch of people killed?”

  “The raid on the compound resulted in the death of two FBI agents as well as thirteen Family members who died when the compound burned to the ground, including Tom Kincaid’s father, Raymond.

  “After the raid, the investigators found some graves in an isolated area of the compound containing the bodies of four girls, all dressed as brides. According to the detectives, the elder Kincaid had been a preacher who founded the cult, raising his son Tom to believe that he was born a prophet to save The Family from an impending apocalypse.”

  “But Kincaid, or Lamech as he called himself, survived the raid,” Buck said.

  “According to the investigators he wasn’t at the compound when the warrant was served.”

  Sloan took a sip of bottled water. For the first time in days some of the tension in his face seemed to have eased. “So what exactly do we know about these people who called themselves, The Family?”

  “The cult believed that Tom Kincaid had been anointed as a prophet by God to save The Family through marriage. His father preached that Tom’s marriage to virgin brides was the only way for his followers to be assured of ascendency to heaven during the coming apocalypse.

  “As it turned out, Kincaid, in his sick, twisted mind, hastened his victims’ exit from this life by telling his followers that the girls had to precede them in death as a means to prepare the afterlife for The Family’s eventual arrival.”

  “How did he beat the charges?” Buck asked, nuzzling Bernie who was resting between us.

  “There was no evidence that directly tied him to the murder of the girls. Since the compound burned down in the raid there were also no surviving witnesses that could testify to what went on there.

  “Kincaid also had a solid alibi when the raid went down, telling the investigators that he was with a friend, Jackson Caldwell. The detectives knew that Caldwell was also involved in the cult, calling himself Priest and performing the marriage ceremonies for the group. He was arrested but later released, just like Kincaid, when they had nothing that could link him to the killings.”

  Buck tossed his hat onto the table, apparently in disgust. “So how did we get so lucky that Kincaid and Caldwell ended up in our little piece of paradise?”

  I told him what I’d pieced together. “After the raid on the compound, Kincaid relocated to California where he had a small law practice for a while before becoming an assistant district attorney on the island. He gave the appearance of being an upstanding citizen, but in time reunited with Caldwell.

  “The two men eventually met Clay Aster and Harvey Brill and became part of the Blue Hoods. In time, they took over the sex club for their own secret ritual of marriage and murder before later killing the two attorneys so they couldn’t talk about what they knew.”

  I took a sip of my bottled water, then continued, “We’ll never know for sure, but it seems likely that Caldwell was the courthouse shooter and someone with the motorcycle club facilitated his escape from the parking lot. There may have also been other club members who helped kidnap the girls.”

  “Wonder how Marlena Aster and Carly Lucia fit into everything,” Sloan said.

  “It seems likely they were both murdered because they had knowledge of both attorneys’ past involvement in the Blue Hoods and that Kincaid and Caldwell had taken over the club.”

  “So Baxter actually talked to this Caldwell nut and didn’t remember him?” Sloan asked. I’d mentioned to the lieutenant earlier in the evening that Tim Baxter had met Jackson Caldwell a few weeks earlier at the Bluefin Bar.

  “I questioned him a couple of hours ago,” Buck said. “He admitted that he had too much to drink and didn’t really remember the conversation or anything about Caldwell.”

  Sloan shook his head. “Maybe he and Spencer need an alcohol program.” The lieutenant released a long breath, dragging a hand through his gray hair. “I had one of the DA’s from the mainland check the records on the cases Kincaid handled over the years. He’d been the ADA on several cases Aster and Brill defended. The defendants in those cases appeared to have gotten light sentences, no doubt because Kincaid brokered plea bargains in exchange for keeping quiet about the Blue Hoods and sharing the victims in their sex club.”

  Sherman Oakley with the CSI Unit came over to us. He and his team had spent the entire day sifting through evidence. He removed his wire-rimmed glasses and mopped his brow.

  “So far, it looks like we’ve got just a couple of graves in the woods with the bodies of two young women,” Oakley said. “The victims are dressed in gowns just like
we found on the Garrett property. Same cause of death. There could be other victims in the surroundings woods. I’ll let you know.”

  After some more discussion, Buck summarized what Joey Quinton had told the investigators. “The kid admitted that he worked with Derek Shaw, getting girls for Kincaid and Caldwell, and receiving a couple thousand dollars for each victim they delivered. His father, of course, denied any knowledge of what his son was doing. He’s already scrambling around, trying to set up a legal defense for himself and his kid.”

  Regardless of their legal maneuverings it was my belief that Hal Quinton had been complicit in a cover up of the killings. It also seemed likely that he’d assisted Clay Aster in setting up Collin Rae Hopkins to take the fall for the murder of Angela Waters. His son, Joey, had probably gotten involved in the cult based upon his knowledge of Brill and Aster’s prior involvement in the Blue Hoods. At the very least, I thought we had enough for Joey Quinton to go down as an accessory to murder.

  Sissy, Maddie, and Clara had all been released to their parents, but Sissy insisted on going with Grace to the hospital where she was being treated for her minor injuries. Mo told me that Sissy was already working on convincing her mother to let Grace live and work at the Stardust while she went to school.

  It was evening by the time Buck and I drove my friends and Sammy Boxer back to the Stardust. The press had gotten wind of the day’s events and they were already running stories about Sammy’s heroics. As we walked into the retirement home the little PI was telling Natalie and Mo that he planned to write a book about the events.

  “We can give you lotsa juicy quotes and gossip for your book,” Mo said. “Maybe baby sis and me can even go on your book tour, spill all the nasties about Kincaid and his friend.”

  “I’m just glad I didn’t let that dirty bugger play hump the honey,” Natalie said as we entered the main ballroom and Buck excused himself to go thank the Stardust treasurer for supporting the policeman’s ball. “Even if it does mean I’ll end up playing selfie sex for the rest of my life.”