by Rex Burns
“A moral innocent? Like a retarded person?”
“I haven’t heard of that. But anything’s possible. The best is a victim that’s unborn.” He looked up. “They’re truly innocent—haven’t even been in the world, so they’re the purest. Plus, the Bible describes children as closest to God, so that kind of sacrifice insults God more.”
“Unborn babies? Fetuses?”
“The best is a third-trimester fetus offered at a certain moon phase or especially in late April or early May, depending on the cult.”
“So a cult would go after pregnant women?”
He nodded and took a long drink of his wine. “There’s an information network on crimes with satanic elements. It reported a fetus sacrifice a couple years ago near Aberdeen, South Dakota. We found out only because the mother died from the abortion.”
“They forced her to have an abortion?”
“She volunteered. She was part of the cult.” He added, “Some cults, you’re supposed to have human sacrifice to become a priest or priestess. Best if it’s a kid of your own. If not, someone else’s will do.”
“A man fathers a child or a woman gets pregnant knowing they’re going to use it for sacrifice?”
“Hey, remember Abraham and Isaac. It’s the ultimate test of obedience and faith.”
The man was entirely convinced, and I felt a prickle of flesh at the nape of my neck. “This woman really thought she was a witch?”
He held his hand palm-down and wagged it above the sea-blue tablecloth. “Witches claim they practice white magic. Run around naked in the woods and sing chants to nature. They don’t like being called Satanists. Like I say, the victim was found dead, so it was harder than hell to interview her. And not too many people were willing to talk about it, either. This was South Dakota. There couldn’t be any Satanists in God-fearing South Dakota.” He snorted.
“Yet you’ve found it here in San Diego.”
“But not human sacrifice—not yet.”
“Do you know the Satanist cults here?”
“Hell, they’re in the Yellow Pages.” Shaughnessy leaned forward, intent. “I’m not one of those who believe in a widespread organization of Satanists. There are some international groups: the Order of the Golden Dawn, started a hundred years ago in England. And the OTO—Ordo Templi Orientis, started in Germany about the same time.” He shook his head. “But they’re not highly organized structures. They have a post office box, write letters to each other, trade porno films. That kind of thing. What we’ve got in California are a bunch of splinter groups: the Brotherhood of the Ram, the Process Church of the Final Covenant—Son of Sam was supposed to belong to that one. LaVey’s Church of Satan. Now there”—his finger emphasized the point—“is what I’m talking about. Out of LaVey’s group come a bunch of splinter groups: the Temple of Set, the Church of Satanic Brotherhood, the Satanic Orthodox Church of Nethilum. Everybody wants to lead their own cult, you see, and that works against a rigid organization.”
“All these people practice sacrifice?”
“No evidence of it. Public Satanists are too high-profile. If they break the law, they might lose their tax break for being churches. Thing is, their message is do whatever you’re strong enough to get away with. People read that shit and think they’ll try to show how really powerful they are. The really dangerous ones are the sociopaths, the unaffiliated Satanists. They’d probably be out killing someone anyway, but Satanism gives them an excuse. And sometimes the trigger.”
Between my fingers, I twisted a sea-blue matchbook bearing the restaurant’s name: The Blue Crab. “But even they can get followers?”
“Hey, there’s Charlie Manson. People—kids especially—want to control their world. Magic promises that. The whole appeal of magic is that the mind can control matter and there’s nothing random in the universe; everything has meaning and correspondence. If you know the secrets to that meaning, you can manipulate the world. And if you don’t do it, some other magician will. What you do is convince a thirteen-year-old kid you’ve got power and can pass it on to him. Then you’ve got him.”
I dredged up a distant memory of the appeal magic had when I was a kid—not just the fun of entertaining and mystifying my friends and relatives with the Magic Handkerchief or the Tibetan Steel Rings. It was the promise that, for a few dollars, I could learn secrets that would let me influence the mysterious currents of the universe. Ads in comic books marketed the ancient wisdom of the Rosicrucians, complete with the drawing of a man who radiated power from a triangle in his forehead. A genuine and unexpurgated copy of the Book of the Dead would reveal timeless wisdom. A special sale price on the Egyptian Guide to Spiritual Power. In a way it was as escapist as the comics themselves, and—very quickly—just as unconvincing. But I had to admit the appeal had been there. As a college student I had taken a series of comparative religion classes from Professor Spiegleberg. I was searching for universal truths, yes, but also for hints of the more arcane and perhaps enabling knowledge of the book of Atharva-Veda or the Upanishads. I had finally decided that strength like that had to come from within and not through the help of texts. But what of those who failed to discover that?
“You’re talking kids, what, around twelve? Early teens? What about adults who practice Satanism? Like those people down in Matamoros who killed thirteen victims?”
“That was Palo Mayombe—the black magic side of Santeria,” Shaughnessy said. “A lot of people in the drug trade practice that—Jamaicans, Haitians. Santeria’s a mixture of Catholicism and African religions from all over the Caribbean. What they do is make offerings to some god or saint for protection or favors, and Palo Mayombe grew out of that.” He leaned his elbows on the blue tablecloth as the waiter took away the empty plates and brought coffee. “I got called in on a drug bust a month ago down in National City. The arresting officers found this guy’s basement rigged up with a goddamned altar. Had about a hundred of these perfumed red candles burning all over the place—hotter than hell and smelled like a French whorehouse. Had a crucifix on the altar—pure silver—stuck in a bowl of water, a bunch of daisies, an unopened bottle of rum, and a wooden cross with a couple white feathers tied to it. Had a bowl full of blood and chicken guts on the floor in front of it. And all sorts of food offerings, too. Cockroaches you wouldn’t believe.” He added, “They weren’t part of the ceremony.”
“Santeria?”
“Yeah. White’s the color of Obatala, father of all saints, source of purity and wisdom in Santeria. But either the guy didn’t make the right offering or he didn’t listen when Obatala told him to knock off the dealing, because we busted his ass with two keys of pure. But that wasn’t black magic—it was the guy’s religion. Just like some Catholics have a little shrine in the backyard or give gifts to saints for special favors. Now, if the guy thinks Obatala’s not strong enough medicine, next time he might start practicing black magic—Palo Mayombe.”
“But what about the sociopaths? The ones who do practice human sacrifice?”
Shaughnessy’s head wagged. “They’re like the weather—everybody talks about ’em, nobody does anything about ’em. Reason is, there’s not that much evidence. Full moon, certain high unholy days, you get all sorts of rumors. But there’s no evidence of an organized underground. Like I said, it’s a bunch of small groups or individuals making up their own ceremonies.” He drained his coffee cup. “They’re the ones to be scared of—they’re nuts. Others use it to frighten kids; I know a couple cases where satanic rituals have scared children into doing what pornographers wanted and then keeping quiet about it. You read about them: the day-care trials. But I don’t class that as cult activity. They go through the motions, but they don’t really believe in it—it’s just a way to control the kids.”
“But isn’t that what it’s all about—control?”
“Yeah.” The detective nodded. “You got that right. For the adults, especially. The few I know about firsthand were in it for sex, money, and power. That’s where y
ou’re likely to get the drug use, too. Some guy—or woman—recruits a kid, gets him into rituals, he brings in a few of his friends, pretty soon you got a cult. Whether it turns murderous or not can just be a matter of luck.”
Outside the restaurant, we paused by the locked gate leading to the private dock and its moored boats. “Do people stay involved in these cults for a long time, or do they just sample it and move on?”
“Depends on the individual. I’ve heard there are satanic families; parents who raise their kids up as Satanists instead of Lutherans or Catholics or whatever. But they don’t broadcast what they’re doing. And despite the Satanic Church they don’t have an organization. At least I don’t believe they do. Some people think different.”
“It’s conceivable a teenager could start out practicing Satanism and stay with it as an adult?”
“Hell, till he died of old age, I guess. Again, I’ve heard about—but I haven’t seen—grimoires that go back four or five generations.”
“Grimoires?”
“A book of satanic rituals and prayers for a person, family, or cult. Supposed to be covered in human skin. Has the rituals to be practiced and when, the names of their victims and spirits they control. There’s a Book of Shadows, too. It’s a kind of diary of what the member or cult did and when. That way the member or even the next generation can see the correspondences and know what rituals and prayers work.”
I watched the opaque, green water bob along the hull of the nearest moored boat. It hadn’t been scraped in a while. At the waterline, fingers of black scum swayed gently. “The girl I’m looking for may be pregnant.”
“Oh? How far along?”
“Probably in the second trimester now. Maybe more.”
“I see. And she’s involved in a cult?”
“I think she was. I don’t know if she still is.” I added, “Before she disappeared, she said the baby was a bond of some kind. A bond of life.”
The detective, too, watched the uneasy boats. “A bond of life … That doesn’t sound like Satanism. Death, maybe, but not life. Still, you’re right to be worried. Beltane is coming up.”
“What’s that?”
“Spring unholy day—last of April, first of May. A time of sacrifice.”
“Jesus. …”
Shaughnessy fished in his wallet for a business card before heading for his car. “Look, I got to get home. But here’s my number. You have more questions, you need any help, give me a call. Anytime.”
CHAPTER 14
I HAD A lot to mull over, not the least of which was this glimpse into dark crevices of human behavior. I didn’t think of myself as naive; I knew Satanism wasn’t confined to films and television. But neither did I envision it as something intruding into the lives of people I knew, people like the admiral and Jenny or even Henry and Margaret.
Spying, betrayal, espionage—these I knew firsthand. The motives behind these acts were money, political conviction, or a combination of the two. But to justify abortion or murder with inflated jargon and comic-book incantations defied reason. It was hard to see it as even a throwback to some primitive yearning. Instead, it was self-delusion, willful surrender to irrationality. That was it: it was a sleep of reason that didn’t merely free demons but created them and gave them power. Anyone in their right mind would laugh at such fantasies. And if he weren’t in his “right mind”? Was madness so widespread? Was the creature beneath the depths of Balboa’s sunny ocean truly so vast, truly so close? Had I truly been so blind?
The trip home across the tall, sweeping bay bridge went unnoticed. It wasn’t until I was in my living room and jotting down the information Shaughnessy gave me that I remembered my intention to call Henry. And it wasn’t until I reached for the telephone that I remembered to check the answerer for messages. There was one: “Mr. Steele? This is Ralph Goddard. Please call me this evening anytime before ten,” followed by the number.
Goddard was polite but firm. “My wife tells me you made certain insinuations about her, Mr. Steele, that are both damaging to her reputation as well as emotionally unsettling. If you try to contact her again, or if you in any way publicize your allegations, you will be sued for damages. Do I make myself understood?”
“I asked your wife questions about David Gates’s death, a case in which she was involved. She chose not to answer.”
“That case was thoroughly investigated by the authorities and closed with a finding of accidental death. The tenor of your questions challenges that finding, Mr. Steele, and has considerably upset Kimberly. Moreover, any suspicions you have are entirely unfounded and without basis in fact.”
“I don’t have enough for suspicions, Mr. Goddard. Only for a few ideas.”
“Then keep your ideas private—and away from my wife. If your unwarranted intrusion into our lives creates the slightest problem for either Kimberly or myself, I assure you, Mr. Steele, you will—I repeat, will—be subject to litigation.” Click.
Henry was less combative but almost as abrupt. “I told the sheriff’s officer what you’d found out, Steele. He said nothing points to foul play, and everything points to Dorcas willingly going somewhere. He further said Dorcas was over twenty-one and had a right to go anywhere without telling anybody.”
I wasn’t surprised; that was my reading, too. “What did he say about investigating the Hawley death?”
“He said he’d look at the reports, but he wasn’t very eager about that.” Henry cleared his throat. “I understand you came around to talk to Margaret this morning.”
“What can you tell me about David Gates’s death?”
“Goddamn it, that case is closed! I don’t know what Margaret told you—she was damned near incoherent by the time I got home. Pie-eyed. But Dorcas has nothing—not one thing—to feel guilty about. Everyone—the police, Dorcas, Mrs. Gates herself—said it was an accident. We’ve suffered enough over that incident and it’s closed!”
“Did Margaret ever tell you about Dorcas’s statement that it was a sacrifice to Beelzebub?”
“That’s sheer nonsense. She mentioned it and I told her it was nonsense! Dorcas was upset. God, who wouldn’t be? She was saying things without any idea of how they sounded. Of course she felt guilty. Who wouldn’t? They knew they shouldn’t have gone out there with that handicapped boy in the first place, and they didn’t keep an eye on him once they were there. Christ, you know how kids that age are. But it was an accident. Dorcas … well, Dori just let her imagination get the best of her. None of that sacrifice nonsense happened. It just didn’t happen, and I thought Margaret had all that crap out of her mind long ago.”
“You don’t even think it’s possible?”
“No! Of course not! I do know my own daughter. I know what she’s capable of and what she would never under any circumstances do. She’s a loving, caring person. She still cries, for God’s sake, when a dog gets hit by a car. I saw her. That’s not the kind of person who would murder another human being!”
I tried to imagine one of my own daughters participating in a sacrificial rite, one not even involving a human, and I could not. The only image of Karen or Rebecca was their disgust at the idea. “Do you want me to keep looking for Dorcas?”
Henry sighed. “I’m sure she’s just gone off to be by herself for a while. Why, I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s nearly as serious as Margaret’s parents do.”
“Is that a yes or no, Henry?”
He finally spoke. “I’m sending a check for one thousand dollars to you to cover expenses.”
It must have been a yes. “You might not like what I turn up.”
“Just turn up the fact that she’s alive and well. Any nonsense about Beelzebub or sacrifices is mere hogwash and I’m not worried about anything like that.”
CHAPTER 15
NEITHER JENNY NOR the admiral wanted to hear anything about Dorcas being involved in Satanism.
“I can’t imagine it, Jack. I just can’t imagine anyone doing that kind of thing, much less Dor
i!”
“I don’t know that there’s any truth to it, Jenny. But Margaret’s lived with the suspicion for a long time. It’s eaten away at her.”
“And she never said a thing to me about it! All this time. … I’ll call her as soon as I hang up, Jack.”
“Do you know anyone who might give me information about Satanism in the local high schools? Especially when Dori was there?”
“You might talk to Megan Wells. She was a counselor in one of the area high schools before she married. Perhaps she can think of someone.”
She gave me Megan’s home and work numbers and asked if I thought Dorcas’s disappearance was related to Satanism.
“No,” I said cautiously. “I don’t think so. But I do feel she’s still interested in religions. She apparently received books from an ashram or religious commune.”
“Oh, Jack, not one of those awful cults!”
“There’s no real evidence of that, Jenny.”
“There doesn’t seem to be evidence of much at all, does there?”
That was true, and didn’t leave much to say. Jenny hung up to call her daughter; it was still early enough to catch Megan at work. I dialed that number. She was surprised to hear my name, and I caught a note of reservation in her voice. “Don’t tell me you’re calling for one of our seminars.”
Her business was a new service answering to the increased demand for private instruction in business and industry. She advised companies on whether they should develop their own specialized curriculum and instructors or hire outside agencies. She offered guidance for establishing those schools, as well as providing speakers and short courses and even arranging the location and catering if necessary. She had told me some of the challenges of finding speakers on a wide variety of topics and at a wide range of fees. It was, she had smiled, private enterprise in public education, and a lot of work for a one-woman office.
“Not unless you have a speaker on Satanism.”
“You’re serious? I think I could find one. Satanism and cults or just Satanism?”