Angel of Death - Debt Collector 5 (A Jack Winchester Thriller)

by Jon Mills

  “I also hired a private investigator in Peru and for a long time they have been investigating and chasing up leads. They sent me a few photos.”

  He went over to a counter and began rooting through a drawer. When he returned he emptied the contents of a large yellow envelope onto the table. Among some of the papers, there were two photos taken from behind of a woman with a large hat walking in a marketplace. In each one you couldn’t see her face but a tattoo was visible on her neck. It was Chinese.

  “My daughter had that tattoo added to her neck when she turned eighteen.” He scoffed. “I remember the day well. She had been threatening to get one for years.”

  “Are you sure this is your daughter?”

  He went over to a decanter of bourbon and poured himself two fingers. He downed it in one go. “I can’t be certain but it looks like her.”

  “Did you ever share this information with the investigator?”

  “I had to. I provided her height, hair color, some details about birthmarks and tattoos.”

  Jack nodded while looking over the photos.

  “So if you have a man down there who is investigating this, why bother hiring me?”

  He took a big gulp of his drink. “Because I’m not sure I believe this investigator has seen her.”

  Jack got this confused look on his face. “But you said you think this is her.”

  “The scrawled letter, yes. The photos, I’m not too sure.”

  “Just ask him to get more proof.”

  “It’s not as easy as that. It’s already cost me thousands of dollars to have him and his team investigate. They want a hundred thousand dollars up front to go in and get her.” He paused and dropped down on the couch looking defeated. “I want to see my daughter again, Mr. Winchester, but how can I be sure?”

  “So you want me to find your daughter for less?”

  “Not exactly. I want you to check in on this man. See if he is telling the truth.”

  “Why not do it yourself?”

  He got up and began pacing around the room with a drink in his hand. “I have a business to run. I can’t just pull myself away and besides I don’t have the expertise or skillset you do.”

  “How do you know what skillset I have?”

  He stopped walking and turned. “Anyone that advertises at a sliding pay scale is either confident in their abilities or stupid. You don’t strike me as stupid.”

  Both men studied each other.

  Jack exhaled hard. “How long ago did she disappear?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “Besides the letter. You still think she’s alive?”

  “I know she is. At least for now.”

  Jack stepped back and studied the man. “Why do I get a sense you are not telling me everything here?”

  Patrick hesitated before replying. “I know the people who took her. They’re a cult. Well, they don’t see it that way but they are. I got involved with them a few years ago before my wife passed away. Back then they were mostly operating out of Chicago. It was all under the umbrella of holistic healing. With my wife’s condition we were seeking out alternative solutions. A naturopath here in the city referred my wife to them. He belonged to their group. He said they had helped others in the past.” He breathed out and slumped back in his chair. “Anyway, we began going out to these sessions held in a home not far from here. It was a small meeting place where they would gather and discuss natural alternatives for ailments and spirituality and so forth. I just went along because of my wife. You know, to provide support. Anyway, the more we got to know them, the stranger things became. It was subtle at first. Small things they would say and do that made me wonder if they were all there. You need to understand I just wanted to help my wife, Mr. Winchester. One thing led to another and we found we were paying an exorbitant amount of money to go on these retreats where my wife and I would drink ayahuasca.”

  “Ayahuasca?”

  “It’s a thick brew that they make from a vine and leaf. You see things when you are on it. It’s meant to help people struggling with personal issues, drugs or just medical problems.”

  He got up and went back over to the decanter. “Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”

  “No, I’m fine. Did you say you hadn’t contacted the police or FBI?”

  Patrick met Jack’s gaze. “I have considered speaking with them but she’s over eighteen. Besides, they won’t see anything criminal about what has happened. In their eyes she is living her life but I know that she’s being held against her will.”

  “Where in Peru?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t exactly know,” he said with an edge to his voice.

  Jack nodded slowly before running a hand over his head. “Look, Mr. Lefkofsky. This isn’t exactly the kind of work I do. You want me searching around in another country without any idea of where your daughter is. We aren’t talking about a city where I can bang on doors, ruffle a few feathers or hit up some of those who knew her. Peru is a big place.”

  “I understand. I just don’t know who else to turn to on this.” He looked down into his glass. “I know these people, Mr. Winchester.” He shook his head. “It’s not a good situation.”

  “What business are you in, Mr. Lefkofsky?”

  “Importing and exporting.”

  Jack smiled. “What kind?”

  “Antiques.”

  “Those antiques wouldn’t by any chance have something in them, would they?”

  He eyed Jack over the top of his glass. “What I do for a living is my business, I’m looking to hire you to find my daughter and bring her home, not place my operation under a microscope.”

  “How can you be sure that the man you hired isn’t working for this group and trying to extort money?”

  “Money is of little concern to them,” he replied.

  “Trust me, Mr. Lefkofsky. Money matters to everyone, even the religious.”

  He stood up and went over to his desk and returned with a brown package. He placed it on the table and slid it across.

  “There is thirty thousand dollars there. I will give you another thirty thousand once the job is complete.”

  Jack glanced down at the bag. He didn’t even open it.

  “And if the man hasn’t seen her? What then?”

  “Find my daughter.”

  “Let’s say I agree. What’s to stop them from doing the same again?”

  “Are you asking if they would try to come and get her?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Well, that’s where I was hoping you would be able to take care of that.”

  Jack snorted and rose to his feet. “I don’t take on every job that comes my way and something about this doesn’t feel right.” Jack proceeded to walk towards the door.

  “I will give you a hundred thousand.”

  He paused with his hand on the door handle. That was more than enough to disappear for a long while. He had been thinking of heading down to Barbados or purchasing a property on one of the smaller, isolated islands in the Florida Keys. The idea of spending the rest of his life drifting around on a boat in seclusion was tempting.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t,” he replied.

  Chapter Four

  PERU

  Danielle Lefkofsky was never let out of his sight except for when they gathered supplies from the city of Cusco. Most of the time they visited Puerto Maldonado as it was closer but when packages were sent from Chicago they would travel to Cusco in a small plane they had bought using funds from the organization. It had been a month since they had taken the trip into the city. Each time it was the same, two of his men along with three other women would make the long trip out of the Amazonian jungle into the bustling streets of the city in the alluvial valley.

  All she could think about on the journey by boat, truck and plane was getting a message to her father through a young street girl who had helped her the first time around. She had tried to send another message last month but they had become suspic
ious of her and had forced their way into the bathroom saying that she was taking too long.

  So much had changed since she had met Eric Castillo and the group over two years ago through her parents. Back then there were no strict rules that a person needed to abide by. The group known as the Eternal Temple Movement had welcomed her with open arms. Castillo had this natural charm that attracted women, and a way with words that could make a person sit for hours listening. Everything he said made sense back then. She didn’t get the impression that he was looking to control anyone or even start a new religion. Instead what she saw was a powerful movement driven by a deep understanding of entheogens and their relation to a person’s growth.

  At first everything about them was accepting. It was liberating until it all changed.

  After studying for a year in med school, she dropped out. It simply wasn’t her. It was what her father wanted her to do. It didn’t take long to realize that a career as a doctor didn’t feel right. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help people but she had seen the trouble that her mother had gone through with cancer. The way her body deteriorated from all the years of chemotherapy and drugs being pumped through her system. It was horrible and even worse to hear her mother throwing up in the bathroom throughout the day.

  The idea that she would graduate into a very old-school mentality of giving people pills instead of plants didn’t appeal to her. It made no sense in her mind. Sure, pills helped, but with all the side effects, she had to wonder if her mother would have lasted longer had she had an alternative medicine. Seeing her suffer only made her realize how much she wanted to look for natural alternatives.

  As the truck bumped its way around a green-covered mountain on the way to the small private airport, Danielle stared out the window and reflected back to her conversation with her father.

  Being as her father had already paid for her tuition and put in a good word with one of the instructors at the university, he wasn’t bothered by her change of heart; he was embarrassed by having to deal with the consequences.

  “What do you mean you dropped out?”

  “I can’t keep doing it.”

  “Is there a problem with the work? Are you sick?”

  “No.”

  “We can speak to Don Walthen if you are falling behind.”

  She sighed. “It’s not that, Dad, I just don’t want to do it. I thought I did, but with mom and everything. I want to be here for her.”

  “I’m here for her.”

  “You are never here. You are always in meetings. She needs to have someone here around the clock.”

  “I hired the very best in care, Danielle. She’s being looked after.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? She very well may be at the end of her life and even then you can’t seem to pull yourself away from your work.”

  Her father nursed a glass of bourbon. He swallowed it in one gulp and went and refilled it.

  “It’s not as easy as that, Danielle. I have to oversee—”

  “Your drug business?”

  He stared back at her.

  “Careful.”

  “What? You going to pay one of your guys to whack me?” She paused. “I don’t understand you. You have made more than enough. Put it to good use. Eric wants to open a treatment center down in Peru. You could fund that.”

  He snorted. “Eric Castillo is a lunatic. A woo-woo optimist who spends more time talking about the light than actually giving anything that helps people. Just look at your mother, for God’s sake. How many times has she taken his holy medicines? And not a single one has healed her.”

  Danielle exhaled hard. “It’s not as easy as that, Father. It can take months of treatment. You took her to two retreats and then brought her back to the city. That’s not enough.”

  “It’s where she belongs. It’s home.”

  “But it’s toxic. It’s full of stress. The very thing that probably gave her cancer.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true.”

  Her father dropped his head. There was silence for several minutes.

  “Eric wants me to go with him and the others. I want to take mother with me. He said she would be well cared for and once she is better we’ll send her back.”

  “She’s not leaving this place. We’ve already done that and it didn’t work. End of story.”

  She balled her fists. “You are so stubborn.”

  Her father lost his temper and threw his glass against the wall. It shattered and he walked out of the room. Danielle spent the next ten minutes picking out glass from the throw rug and trying to keep their dog back.

  She couldn’t believe he would be so selfish but that was him.

  A bump in the road made her bounce in her seat. One of the men in the front glanced in his rearview mirror at her. All of them had been told to take an oath of silence. For the past month they weren’t allowed to say anything.

  Her mind drifted back to the past.

  The very first evening her parents had taken her with them, he caught her eye. Eric Castillo had long, dark hair that he tied back in a ponytail. That night he was wearing a loose-fitting white shirt, with cream khaki bottoms and sandals. His beard was trimmed, and he had these icy blue eyes with a penetrating stare.

  They sat for three hours listening to him speak about holistic medicine, what tribes had known for years that modern-day medicine was only beginning to understand. He would then veer off and talk about enlightenment and the power of meditation and how each of us was living in one conscious state and limited to our senses, but through deep breathing and ingesting different forms of entheogens, a person could enter new states of consciousness.

  It was in these states of consciousness that people could truly understand their true self beyond the limiting structure that society had created.

  “You are not your career, your family or any of your worldly possessions. All of these things are temporal. Don’t fix your eyes on these but look towards that which is eternal.”

  It wasn’t long after that he came up with the name for their movement. Until that point they had just met in homes and most of the time they shared what had worked for them. Discussion revolved around what alternative forms of medicine had worked.

  It was exactly what she had been looking for; someone who spoke and acted outside of the box. There was a lot about what he said that didn’t make sense but he had a way of helping people to understand that when they consumed the holy medicine, they would see for themselves.

  “Your heart and mind will gain clarity to that which is confusing now. You will see the path that you have stepped off, and you will see the light that will lead you back.”

  The entire night her mind was buzzing with the possibilities, and it was all she could speak about on the way home. Even her father who had always been skeptical couldn’t help but wonder if what they were talking about was real. Desperation helped and Eric Castillo knew how to play on the minds of the desperate.

  Over the following months, she spent as much time as possible with him and the others. They would volunteer their time at soup kitchens, and offer relief as support workers after hurricane and tornado disasters. There was a real sense that what they were doing was changing people’s lives. It was no longer just about what she wanted to do with her life anymore. It was now all about serving others.

  That soon changed when she left with him for Peru. She couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment the adoration of the many went to his head. It wasn’t money, even though they never wanted for anything as a group. It wasn’t women, as all kinds of women threw themselves at him, including the married ones. It was the power over others. The ability to make decisions for others and the sense that people were hanging on every word he said.

  Within six months of being in Peru, she knew she had to get out. It was changing her into someone that she didn’t want to become. The focus had shifted away from alternative forms of medicine and now they spent hours every day listening to him s
peak from a book that he had written. It was his own religious text. Words that he said had been given to him in an altered state of consciousness. No one doubted him, at least that was the impression she got. If they did, they never said anything. All of them had experienced these journeys into altered states of consciousness. That wasn’t the problem. It was when they came back that trouble raised its head.

  “I’m going to return home, Castillo.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mother needs me. She is on her deathbed.”

  “That’s unfortunate. I offered her the chance to be here but your father threw it back in my face.”

  “My father doesn’t understand. Whatever he decided to do though was because he loves her.”

  Castillo snorted. “I sense that you are confused, Danielle. Wasn’t it you who said that your father cared more about his work than your mother? That the reason he had her there was because he didn’t believe the holy medicine could help?”

  “I misunderstood him.”

  “Ah,” he walked around beneath the bamboo hut as though he was a god among men. “Have you sought the wisdom of the Sage?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “I must go.”

  “No, it doesn’t feel right. You will stay until I have heard.”

  “You?”

  “Am I not the one that has taught you the ways of the eternal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Am I not the one that has helped you through the trauma of your youth?”

  Danielle knew then that he wasn’t going to agree to her leaving. She had planned that night to leave without his consent and she did. She made it to a small village that bordered the Amazon River. Before she could use one of the boats, Castillo had sent four of his men to bring her back.

  “You can’t keep me here!”

  “You are confused, Danielle. You are the one that is keeping you here. You are free to go once I have heard from the Sage herself.”

  When he referred to the Sage, he meant the anaconda snake that nearly everyone saw when they drank ayahuasca. Eric believed that it was some deity that imparted wisdom. Those who encountered it were usually consumed by it. It was a terrifying experience but after it happened she had felt liberated.