Sacrifice

by Michael Arches

  “I told you guys this was a big deal about nothing. We gotta get people analyzing the son of a bitch’s phone.”

  Drew nodded. “Already in the works. Look, if you suffer a heart attack or a stroke or God knows what else as a result of your injury, we’ll never hear the end of it. Do you feel like coming back to my office and talking about what happened, or do you want to sleep first?”

  I understood his worry about someone acting under his orders. “Sure, I’ll talk. To you, not the press. And I need you to call Linda Kingsley in my office to get her helping you on the cellphone.”

  -o-o-o-

  Drew drove us to his office, and we three sat in a conference room. I told them in as much detail as I could remember exactly what’d happened from when I entered the vestibule until the EMT touched me on the back. Answered lots of questions, but couldn’t help with the big one, namely why Viceroy and Muriel had started wrestling.

  We threw around a dozen different scenarios, none of which made any sense to me. Finally, I said, “That’s the best I can do for now. Later in the morning, let’s talk to the kids. One of them may be able to tell us what the hell happened.”

  Before I could sleep, I had to run a gauntlet of reporters. They’d somehow figured out where I was staying. Angelina acted like we were long-lost pals. My only comment was, “I’m fine. No comment about the events earlier.”

  Didn’t get to bed until five-thirty a.m. Couldn’t sleep at first because of my ribs, so I took a Percocet the ER surgeon had given me. That helped, but every time I moved, the pain woke me up.

  -o-o-o-

  At eleven, I gave up on sleep. A few minutes later, Willow called. Then Mom, and finally Randy. Chilled them all out despite the crazy shit they were seeing on TV. Those media fools kept replaying a video of my ambulance as it tore out from the BBQ restaurant like I was at the edge of death.

  By noon, I was back at the police station. Most of the painkiller had worn off, and I needed a clear head. So, I switched to ibuprofen. That shit didn’t help much.

  Drew arranged for us to chat with his niece, Taylor Lazarov, first. He probably thought she’d be most likely to give him the straight scoop.

  The girl seemed to have it all—a cover girl’s face, a great figure, and grades at the top of her class. At that moment, though, her skin was deathly pale, and her eyes bloodshot. I assumed Drew would ask the questions, but he pulled me aside. “Because I’m her uncle, I think someone else should interview her. Do you mind?”

  “No, but let’s get it all on tape. I don’t want anyone wondering later whether I was trying to cover up my mistakes.”

  Taylor’s dad and the sheriff came along for the festivities.

  I turned on a digital recorder, introduced myself, and identified the other people in the room. Then I asked a few easy questions about Taylor’s job to encourage the girl to relax a bit. This wasn’t going to be a Guantanamo terrorist’s interrogation, for damn sure, but she’d just survived the worst night of her life.

  Once she settled back in her chair, I asked, “Were you asleep before the struggle started between your manager Muriel and Viceroy?”

  “No, too freaked out. And he snored so loud.”

  That was the answer I was praying for. We had a witness to how it all started. “Tell us what happened.”

  She put her hands over her face, and I thought for a moment she wouldn’t be able to say anything. Then she whispered, “The monster was lying across the hallway in front of us. Once he fell asleep, I thought I could jump over him and disappear before he knew what’d happened. Problem was, I also realized everyone else probably wouldn’t get away, and I thought he’d shoot those I left behind. I kept praying you guys would come, but you didn’t.”

  She hadn’t said anything interesting yet, but that was fine. She was working up to it. “You’re doing great. Everybody’s lying down in the back of the hallway?”

  “Yeah, Muriel was next to me. I could tell she wasn’t asleep either. Too fidgety. Then she pressed a finger to my lips and slowly rose onto her hands and knees. She was the one closest to him. All night, she’d stayed between us kids and that evil guy.”

  “Did you hear anything as she crawled toward Viceroy?”

  Taylor shook her head. “No, even though it was so quiet. Felt like inside a grave.”

  “Could you see anything?” I asked.

  “A faint glow from the open end of the hallway. Where we were, though, it was totally dark. I saw Muriel’s shape outlined by the glow. When she reached him, she stood. He was flat on the floor. One of her legs moved quickly. I think she kicked him in the head. She grunted like she’d put all her strength into it.” Tears welled in Taylor’s eyes.

  That kick was the thunk I’d heard, but Viceroy outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. “It was a good idea,” I said. “Probably her best chance to take him without a weapon. How did he react?”

  “She wasn’t strong enough,” Taylor said with a trembling voice. “I’m much more muscular. I should’ve kicked him instead. I—”

  “No!” Drew said. “You’re still young.”

  “Muriel had bad hips,” his niece said. “No strength in her legs. Needed a cane. I have very strong legs. Cheerleader—duh.”

  Actually, I was sure Taylor was right about who was stronger, but no teenager deserved the burden she was trying to lift onto her shoulders.

  I leaned forward to emphasize what I was about to say. A stabbing pain shot through my right side, but I ignored it. “Listen to me, Taylor. Muriel did her very best. That’s all we can ask of anyone. She gave her life to save you and the others. Her leg may have been weak, but she had the heart of a lion. And I’m sure, she never would’ve let you take her place if you’d volunteered.”

  All three men in the room agreed with me. Tears flowed down the girl’s cheeks.

  To distract her from useless second thoughts, I asked, “Can you tell us anything about the fight between Muriel and Viceroy?”

  “Not much. Too dark. I got up, tried to help her, but she moved between me and him until he shot her. Muriel fell against me. Knocked us both over. The boom seemed to burst my eardrums. Blinding flash. Hot sticky liquid everywhere. Her blood.” Taylor sobbed uncontrollably.

  We took a break. I knew what’d happened after, so no need to drag her through that again.

  Her father wanted to end the interview, but Drew talked to him, promised we’d keep the rest of our questions short. I agreed.

  Drew brought her a cup of orange juice, and we gave her a chance to get control of her emotions again. When she was ready to go on, I turned to the only other topic I needed to know about. “Before he fell asleep, did he say how he’d gotten himself into so much trouble?”

  “No,” she said, “mainly, he talked about how he was going to get away on an airplane. He said you’d never risk my life or the others’.”

  But we had. Rather than give in to a murderer’s extravagant demands, we’d tried a crazy scheme that’d killed Muriel. The kids easily could’ve ended up the same way. Guilt flooded through me, my stomach roiled, but I tried to keep a blank face. “What else did he say?”

  She thought for a moment. “He did a lot of chanting, like those monks you see in movies and TV. I couldn’t understand the words. Maybe Latin. I was going to take that class, but my school canceled it to save a few bucks. Anyway, he kept saying over and over something like, ‘Ahvay sahtahni’.”

  That phrase didn’t mean a damned thing to me. After a few more questions, I thanked her profusely for helping us.

  As she stood to leave, she said, “You’re the one who shot him, aren’t you? You came, just not as fast as we expected. Muriel should’ve waited.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I glanced at Drew.

  “She took him out,” he said. “Probably saved your life and the other kids’ lives. We’re incredibly grateful.”

  Taylor came around the table and gave me a hug. That warm
ed my heart. I returned her embrace, but I knew we’d taken a chance of losing them all. I’d have to live with that for a long time to come.

  When she and her father left the room, I turned off the recorder.

  “Pretty much what I expected,” I said, “but I was surprised to hear Muriel attacked first.”

  The two cops nodded.

  “Dang it!” Drew said. “If we’d started five minutes earlier, you probably would’ve saved them all. That’s just between us.”

  “Second-guessing doesn’t help,” the sheriff said. “By the way, I know what he was chanting. ‘Ave Satani.’ It means ‘Hail, Satan.’ He was praying for the Devil’s help.”

  “A satanic worshiper?” I asked. “Is there really such a thing? I thought that was just Hollywood bullshit.”

  “Oh, it’s a thing,” the sheriff said. “Church of Satan. Been around since the sixties. A lot of heavy metal band members belong.”

  I thought that was all teen rebellion or marketing bullshit. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s not talked about much in polite company, but some people really worship the Devil,” he said. “Lots of prisoners claim to be Satanists. Courts say they have a right to practice their religion in the joint. By the way, I hear the winter solstice is one of their favorite holidays. It’s just around the corner.”

  Maybe because of the insanity of the last few days, my mind went blank for a few seconds. This news put our investigation onto an entirely different trail. I’d thought the women were being kidnapped to become sex slaves then killed to hide the evidence. Now, I realized they might be ritual sacrifices.

  But before I could think through the implications, we had to talk to two other hostages. We couldn’t speak with the boy with a bruise on his temple because he had a concussion. According to his dad, he’d been pistol whipped for trying to protect one of the girls from Viceroy grabbing at her.

  I interviewed the two kids, but we learned nothing new.

  -o-o-o-

  Drew and the mayor held a press conference to explain what’d happened. I stood behind them and fielded the few questions they couldn’t answer. In particular, reporters kept pressing us about why we hadn’t moved faster. All we could say was we wanted to be sure Viceroy was sleeping when I snuck in. That didn’t seem to satisfy them, but then again, I doubted anything would. Just the way reporters were—always trying to stir up controversy.

  After the press conference, I went to a room at the police department where they stored all of Viceroy’s stuff. Talked to Linda about the laptop and the phone. She was working with Willow on collecting the data from both devices. After hanging up, I examined the knife Drew’s folks had found. It was a slim, double-bladed dagger. The golden handle contained a series of tiny symbols. The only one I recognized was an inverted pentagram, but it was so small, I could barely make it out.

  The local crime lab had checked it for human blood, and found a minuscule quantity—couldn’t be tested for DNA or blood type.

  Drew let me take the knife, the phone, and the laptop back to Aspen. He also promised to let me know if anyone tried to claim Viceroy’s body or personal effects. I asked him to warn Taylor that she might be needed as a witness in Pitkin County if we found the other person or persons who’d conspired with Viceroy.

  -o-o-o-

  Before driving back, I took another dose of ibuprofen. It didn’t help much, but I couldn’t drive while tripping on Percocet. Just had to tough out the pain.

  I had plenty of time to think on the drive. Not that it helped. Aspen obviously had some kind of satanic cult lurking in the shadows, maybe the bastards had been active for months or years. But if so, why hadn’t we found any remains from earlier sacrifices?

  The answer came to me soon enough. During the warmer months, the cult could’ve buried what was left of the bodies deep in the forest. But before May, the ground had been frozen. What had they done with victims from last winter or spring? I hoped the answer was that their crimes didn’t go back that far.

  The return trip took considerably longer because I wasn’t speeding with my lights on. Over the last hour of the trip, I talked to Linda. She’d already received information from Viceroy’s cellphone company and his Internet provider. Those were the logical places to start looking for other cult members.

  I arrived back home well after dark. Despite getting some sleep in the morning, I was exhausted. Could barely stay awake. So, I didn’t even bother going into the office. Just turned off Highway 82 at Old Snowmass and drove to Willow’s waiting arms.

  -o-o-o-

  Thanks to modern pharmacology, I slept better than earlier in the morning. Several times though, I woke up seeing the picture in my mind of the restaurant manager’s throat torn open. The realization that we’d let her down made me feel empty inside.

  Last night in Craig had been as brutal as anything I could remember. We should’ve anticipated that the manager would try to take on Viceroy alone. We easily could’ve moved the timeline up an hour, but we were thinking about our own problems, not how terrified the hostages were. If we’d moved faster, the outcome probably would’ve been much better.

  Willow came with Boomer and me to the sheriff’s office. She was struggling to get into Viceroy’s account on his super-secure messaging app. Because the laptop and the phone contained critical evidence, we needed to keep both secure at my office.

  Linda focused on running down the people on Viceroy’s phone call list and his message list. She’d already identified the right carrier for the burn phone. Unfortunately, the company was based out of Panama. Despite sending them a valid search warrant, the company was slow to send us copies of the texts.

  While Willow and Linda handled the high-tech issues, I focused on old-fashioned police work, namely talking to witnesses. First, I returned to the woman who lived next to Viceroy, Grace Reynolds. Hoped she could tell me about his friends.

  It was Sunday morning, so I hurried to Snowmass Village to catch her before church. Lots of folks in this liberal county skipped weekly services, but Grace struck me as a Bible-thumping gal. She was a morally upstanding woman, and there’s ‘no better place for local gossip,’ as Mom used to say.

  Sure enough, Grace was out walking her dog in her Sunday finest, namely a pretty, long-sleeved, yellow dress and matching hat. Her shoes were a conservative black. When she spotted me, she stopped and waved.

  I gingerly got out of my SUV. The slightest sideways motion was painful. Thankfully, I’d left Boomer at the office with Willow. Couldn’t play tug-of-war with him as he strained at the leash to chase some strange smell or another critter.

  “Lovely morning, sheriff,” Grace said. “I was glued to the television yesterday. Petrified when they hauled you off in an ambulance, but your chief deputy issued a statement that you were only lightly injured. Is that true?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Randy’s as honest as the day is long. Just picked up a nasty bruise.” I touched it lightly with my left hand. “I was hoping you’d have a few minutes to talk with me again.”

  She pointed at her Jack Russell Terrier. “I have to walk Freddie before the service, or he’ll chew on the furniture. Need to wear him out.”

  The dog zoomed from side to side as far as his extendable leash would go. He sniffed like crazy even though there was a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I was sympathetic to her predicament. “How about the three of us stroll together. It’s a wonderful morning. Warm for December.”

  She nodded. I fell into step with them. “One of the other deputies told me he turned Viceroy’s radio off for you. Sorry it took so long.”

  “Yep, Deputy Tantor took care of it. Real nice fellow. And you made sure that Viceroy character wouldn’t be bothering me again. Pow.” She made a gun with her right hand and pretended to fire it.

  While I hadn’t shot the bastard for playing his radio too loud, he wouldn’t be doing it again in our lifetimes. “Did you have any idea he was m
ixed up with devil worship?”

  She patted her heart. “Lord, no. I would’ve told you, right off. His friends were all mean, but none of them looked like demons.” She paused. “Except the one guy. Tall and stocky. Baldheaded, and he had tattoos above his forehead that looked like horns. Really creepy.”

  “He sounds like somebody I’d love to meet. Any idea what his name is?”

  She shook her head. “Although I did see him once at the grocery store about a mile down the road. So probably lives in the area.”

  “I’ll bet he does. You could be a great detective.”

  She beamed. “Freddie and I watch a bunch of cop shows.”

  “How about other people who visited Viceroy? Names or descriptions would be very helpful.”

  “His current girlfriend drives a shuttle bus to Aspen. Fake platinum blonde hair. Wears her shirt open to show off her…whatevers. All the guys ogle her. His previous girlfriend was a librarian, worked in Basalt. Nice girl in her late twenties. So too young for him. I’ve no idea why she went out with that loser. Haven’t seen her around for a few months.”

  Her comment sent a chill through me. “Got a name or description?”

  She rubbed her forehead. Freddie almost pulled her off balance, but I grabbed her arm to steady her.

  “He’s a sneaky mutt.” She shook her finger at him.

  Dogs had their tricks, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to distract her.

  After a moment she said, “Sandra somebody, I think. Tall and gawky. Jet black hair. Bangs covered her eyes.”

  I made a mental note to check on her as soon as I’d learned what I could from Grace. Did devil worshipers kill their own? Or just strangers?

  I kept walking with Grace and her dog, but didn’t learn much more. Viceroy didn’t have folks over often. She did mention one other guy, mid-fifties, tall with curly brown hair, but quite a few people in the area fit that description.

  According to Skip, they hadn’t found any signs of satanic worship in the townhouse when they searched it. Nor had there been any such evidence in his Land Rover. The asshole had kept that part of his life completely secret.