The Collector

by Cameron

  She gave her a smile, trying to reassure her daughter, when she felt nothing but rising panic inside her.

  “Yeah, okay,” Stella said. But at the door, she stopped to look back, checking on Gia, making sure she hadn’t fallen again into her feverish painting spell.

  “I’ll be okay. Promise,” Gia said.

  The minute Stella stepped out of the studio, Gia ran for her purse. She pulled out her cell phone and the business card she’d tucked away in her wallet.

  He picked up almost immediately.

  “Detective Bushard? Seven?” she said breathlessly into the phone. “It’s Gia Moon.”

  She stared at the canvas, sickened by the sight painted in shades of red and black. The woman in the painting had been gutted like a fish.

  She’d never imagined anything like this carnage. The visions that had haunted her these last months involved only Gia and the danger to her daughter. But now she realized she was locked in a battle with a spirit who wouldn’t stop.

  The demon needed blood. Lots of it. And she was his voice into this world of terror.

  He’s playing with me. I’m part of the game.

  “He’s going to kill again,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “A young woman. Her name is Kieu. Or maybe the letter Q is in her name,” she said, unable to look away from the painting. “You have to find her, Detective. You have to find her now.”

  30

  Life is always better when there are rules.

  You understand how fundamental order can be. Rules instruct the dull muttons of this world, providing guidance on the sheep’s place in society. The rules give a hierarchy, a plan. Without them, there can only be chaos.

  But some people don’t take well to instruction. They aren’t satisfied with what they have. They consider themselves above the very laws of nature. They overreach, breaking the rules.

  When that happens—when the common people usurp the powers of the universe—collapse will surely follow.

  You understand how, throughout history, it’s been the same. Plagues. Natural disasters. All of them consequences of man’s inability to follow the rules. Destruction is the price man pays for disobedience and disorder.

  But you are proactive, the one who sees the disaster that is coming, and acts. In this one thing, you must never falter.

  When she opens the door, you strike down the concubine. The older woman runs when she sees the girl dead at your feet. She begs for her life. You act quickly. Amnesty is just another way of breaking the rules, making a travesty of justice.

  It is your duty and privilege to weed out the practitioners of superstition, the deluders of the innocent. This is a test and you will not fail.

  You drag both bodies into the center of the room, moving the furniture in order to make a proper sacrificial space. You are careful to wear surgical gloves so there are no prints. But it doesn’t matter. The invisible leave no prints.

  You do research. You want the moment to be perfect. You play the scholar, finding examples of what you must do. When Tu Duc ascended to the throne, he was forced to put his older brothers to death, lest they usurp his power. When the people of God forgot to worship properly, turning to idols, God sent a flood to cleanse the world.

  These two women are not the people of God. Best to just do away with the vermin.

  Now you are the enforcer—the wolf. Because you know the rules.

  But David doesn’t. He thinks he’s safe in his Tower of Babel at Gospel Enterprises. In the end, you can no longer stand and merely watch someone try to circumvent the very laws of nature.

  You must act. Quickly, decisively.

  Of course, there will be penance for the cleansing you are about to commit. Just like Apollo when he killed the Python of Gaia. Or like the concubine who disposed of the rightful queen and all seventy of her ladies-in-waiting by entombing them alive. You will be seized by remorse. But that will come later. Much later.

  You set out your instruments. Right now, you are surgeon and artist. You pick out the scalpel and make your first incision. You enjoy the precision of it. You’re cutting into raw filet mignon.

  The moment feels incredibly right. Better than the other time. It’s clean and controlled. You read the words from the book you brought along, and smile. Everything is perfect.

  Blood seeps into the carpet as the concubine’s eyes stare sightlessly at the ceiling.

  You haven’t given yourself much time. You planned it that way. The ticking clock inside your head adds to the excitement. There’s always the possibility that you will be interrupted.

  When you reach the stomach cavity, the intestines pop out like springs, spraying everything. You feel baptized.

  You stop and stare at the four walls, becoming almost lost in the pattern of the blood. The beauty of it.

  There’s something about blood on a perfectly white wall. You wonder if any artist has ever captured such perfection. To you, it represents the very pattern of life.

  You’ve never experienced anything so profound. You almost weep, thinking of the lost opportunity, the lack of time.

  You get back to work.

  You continue cutting. You are judge and jury, meting out the necessary penalty. Even though the time is too short, you understand you have passed a great test. You fulfill your duty and set balance to the world.

  From now on, you make the rules.

  31

  David stood outside the door to Velvet’s condo. The door was cracked open, as if maybe the last person to shut it hadn’t been paying attention, and the door hadn’t latched properly.

  That in itself was strange. Velvet was usually so meticulous and extremely attentive. Normally, she would be waiting for him, wearing close to nothing and holding a chilled martini at the ready.

  But he told himself today was different. Today was business. He was to meet Xuan Du, the new fortune-teller, the psychic Sam thought could take Mimi’s place.

  There was only one small problem, of course. David didn’t fucking have the Eye of Athena. It was gone. Stolen.

  He stuffed his roiling anger back into that corner of his mind where he’d contained it since he’d discovered the necklace had been disturbed in the vault room. It had taken him a day or two to decide how to deal with the disaster of the break-in. His security guy, Jack Lackey, had a top-notch operation. Jack had assured David it would just be a matter of time before he tracked down the Eye.

  David pushed the door open. He would have to talk to Velvet about this lapse. Now wasn’t the time to let their guard down. Someone was out to destroy him. Whoever it was had murdered Mimi Tran—they had stolen the Eye. Until David could shut down the danger, they all needed to keep on their toes.

  For an instant, he thought about that kid, that student of Fegaris, the one David had paid to give him the Eye in the first place. Thomas Crane was his name. The thought occurred to David that Crane was somehow involved, the one calling the shots. But Jack and his people had looked into it. After Fegaris died, Crane had turned into a number-one nut job. Apparently, even though he’d been cleared of her murder, the accusations still haunted Crane’s career, and the guy had snapped.

  Or maybe it was his conscience, David thought.

  Whatever the reason, Crane, a once promising archaeologist, was now nothing more than a shovel bum, working on a Native American site in New Jersey funded by the feds under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. The guy was no threat at all.

  David stepped inside the condo, calling Velvet’s name. He paid for the damn place, right? In any case, he had a key. And while he’d always given Velvet the courtesy of ringing the doorbell, he thought he’d make his point better by surprising her.

  But it wasn’t Velvet who was surprised. His poor Velvet was well beyond anything of the kind. It was David who had the shit shocked out of him.

  He’d walked into a fucking nightmare.

  The first thing he saw was the blood. It was everywhere. Sprayed across the walls, painting the carp
et, staining the beautiful Vietnamese prints Velvet loved so much.

  Someone had moved the furniture, placing the pieces around the two bodies in the center of the room. For an instant, the pattern reminded David of Stonehenge or even one of those circular tholos temples in Greece. The bodies were at the epicenter, the focus of the room and the carnage there.

  He almost didn’t recognize Velvet, the body closest to him.

  She’d been disemboweled. Her intestines were flung far and wide, reminding him of those novelty snakes released from a can. Her hands had been cut off at the wrist. They lay just a few inches away, like one of those dolls you pull apart, only to have the body parts snap back together when you let go.

  She was wearing the jade ring he’d bought her. She’d picked it out against his wishes. He’d wanted to buy her something more expensive, a Burmese ruby ring at the same store, but she’d insisted. The ring was simple, carved with Vietnamese calligraphy. Something about a bountiful future.

  He remembered her smiling up at him and saying that sometimes simple things were best.

  A book lay opened on her chest. Jesus, was there something stuffed in her mouth?

  He turned away and vomited on the carpet.

  When he’d emptied his stomach, he stumbled into the kitchen. Leaning over the sink, he splashed water on his face. He didn’t know how long he stood there, staring at that white porcelain as the water funneled down the drain.

  This wasn’t anything like the time with Michelle. He’d never walked in to find her body eviscerated on the floor. He hadn’t seen blood splattered on the walls.

  He couldn’t imagine anyone doing what he’d seen in that room. Who cut up bodies like puzzle pieces?

  Velvet had been a special girl, bright and talented. A beautiful woman who someday would have accomplished great things.

  He told himself to get a grip. He couldn’t help Velvet if he fell apart. He needed to keep it together. Find out what the hell was going on.

  He grabbed a couple of paper towels and scrubbed his face dry. He tossed the paper towels into the trash compactor and walked back to face the carnage in the living room.

  The two women had been laid out in what was most certainly some sort of ritualistic manner. They were head to head on the carpet. Their hands had been cut off and lay just a few feet away. Both had been cut open, sternum to groin. But only the psychic, the one David assumed to be Xuan Du, had her eyes gouged out.

  He turned away, unable to look at those empty sockets…at the same time thankful that Velvet had been spared that fate. But then he noticed Velvet really did have something stuffed in her mouth.

  David stepped closer. Some sort of pastry?

  “Jesus.”

  The room started to spin. He grabbed the back of a chair for balance. That’s when he saw his shoes. They were covered in blood.

  He looked back at the carpet, saw where his footprints led to the kitchen in patches of red.

  “Shit!”

  Suddenly, he wasn’t thinking about Velvet lying there in pieces, her body violated.

  He was thinking about the O. J. Simpson trial and his Bruno Magli shoes, the very same brand David was wearing now.

  The vomit. The bloody footprints. No way in hell he could ever clean this up.

  And then there was Velvet. The condo was in his name, for God’s sake. She was his mistress. Just another bread crumb leading the trail straight to him.

  Someone was trying to set him up.

  They’d broken into his collection. They were killing the people trying to help him….

  He forced himself to scrutinize the scene without emotion. Looking closer, he thought he recognized the pastry stuffed in Velvet’s mouth. It looked like one of those cakes sold for the August festivals here in the bakeries of Little Saigon. Moon cakes.

  Sam had filled him in on Mimi’s murder. She, too, had had something stuffed in her mouth. The head of a parrot. That’s where the police had found the missing stone from the Eye of Athena. Inside the parrot’s beak.

  David knelt over Velvet. He took out his handkerchief. Very carefully, he pried the pastry loose.

  He hovered over her for a minute more, holding the moon cake. Velvet, her eyes and mouth open, stared up at the ceiling as if frozen in a silent scream.

  He stood and turned quickly away. He focused instead on the cake. He could see clearly that something had been forced inside. He almost put it in his pocket before thinking better of it. He didn’t want to get caught with the damn cake on him.

  He had to hide it somewhere. Keep it safe.

  But first, he needed to make sure he wasn’t missing anything.

  He took out his handkerchief and wrapped up the cake. He placed it gently in his coat pocket. Back in the kitchen, he started searching through the drawers. She was his mistress; that would explain his prints. He found a small flashlight in the third drawer down.

  He came back into the living room. Leaning over her, careful not to disturb the body, he flashed the light inside Velvet’s mouth.

  Suddenly, she exhaled.

  He screamed and fell backward, dropping the flashlight.

  He crab-walked away from the body on the heels of his hands and feet. Even with her guts spilling out on the carpet, he half expected Velvet to sit up and ask him what the hell he was doing.

  He was panting for breath, really shaken. He’d read somewhere that a body could do that postmortem. They called it a death gasp.

  He looked at the now-bloody flashlight and the pattern it had made rolling across the white carpet—the mess of his prints on the carpet.

  Shit!

  It took him another few minutes to calm down. He couldn’t undo his mistakes, but he could come up with a good story to cover for them. In the meantime, he needed to do some damage control.

  Back in the kitchen, he grabbed a dish towel hanging on the handle of the oven. He used it to pick up the bloody flashlight, and wrapped it up tight. He put it inside the pocket of his trousers.

  The condo didn’t have a parking complex. Each unit had a place out back for vehicles. He was sweating like a pig, worried that someone might see him there—which was exactly what happened. Some kid on a mountain bike came speeding by, giving him a suspicious look.

  David tried to act nonchalant, as if nothing unusual was happening. Which it wasn’t. Really, how many times had he parked right here on his way to see Velvet? What would the kid report to the police even if they thought to ask?

  Eventually, he put the cake and flashlight in the trunk of his Mercedes.

  When he thought he could handle it, he returned to the condo with its two dead bodies. He sat down on the couch.

  He cried, long and hard.

  When he could finally manage it, he pulled out his cell phone.

  He took a deep breath and dialed 911.

  32

  Carin Barnes sat cross-legged on the hotel bed, looking down at the file folders lined up before her. She was wearing running shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with her alma mater, the University of Michigan. In the weeks since she’d contacted Professor Murphy about the bead found at the murder site, she’d been gathering information on the players involved.

  The first file folder, to her right, she’d labeled “David Gospel.”

  Gospel was connected to the Eye through the murder of one Mimi Tran, the fortune-teller who’d been found stabbed to death with her eyes gouged out, and a bead from the oracle’s necklace stuffed in her mouth.

  Not so coincidentally, his son, Owen Gospel, had been implicated in the separate death of another fortune-teller. To Carin, it looked to be a slam-dunk case…before a transient confessed to the murder. Even without FBI training, anyone could tell the file on the death of the Long Beach psychic, Michelle Larson, reeked.

  Another interesting fact penned in the file: Gospel collected psychic artifacts.

  “Imagine that,” she said, shutting the Gospel file and taking another drink of the ridiculously bad hotel coffee. From
past experience, she knew no sugar or white powder that passed for cream could make a dent in it, so she drank it black.

  Thus far, she hadn’t been able to connect Gospel with Estelle Fegaris or Thomas Crane, two of the other files set out before her.

  Carin stared down at the file for Estelle, and smiled. After all these years, it would all come together—just as Estelle had predicted.

  Carin knew Terrence, her boss at NISA, did not consider her the subtle sort. He’d spent most of their lunch together—before he’d given her the green light to head up the investigation here in California—he’d talked about her bull-in-a-china-shop approach. Finesse had never been a big part of her work at the FBI, which was exactly why she’d never been considered for covert operations.

  Carin looked up into the mirror straight ahead. Clocking in at just under six feet, she had an athlete’s body. She wore her blond hair short and choppy, and hid her steel-gray eyes behind sensible lenses.

  She’d lost count of how many times some random person had stopped her on the street to ask if she were interested in a career in modeling. There was even a time in graduate school when a short, balding man had run after her huffing and puffing down the streets of Old Town in Pasadena. He’d kept screaming that he really was an agent with the connections to get her on the cover of any magazine and she was going to be very sorry if she didn’t stop to talk to him.

  Carin couldn’t have been less interested.

  The way she saw it, she could either be one of those tall, skinny women with hunched shoulders who felt awkward in her own skin…or she could stand to her full height and ignore the gawkers. So, no, Terrence, Carin Barnes didn’t have an ounce of subtle in her.

  She looked down at the files. But she did know how to keep secrets.

  She opened the file labeled “Estelle Fegaris.”

  Carin had always been fascinated by the brain. From the first time she’d studied biology in high school, she was determined to learn everything she could about the workings of the human mind. How was it possible that the chemical and electrical interactions of cells led to conscious thought? And if it’s true that we only use a small percentage of our mental capacity, what then was the purpose of the dormant sections?