Hollywood Blood: A Hollywood Alphabet Series Thriller (14 page)

“Yeah,
” Mo chimed in. “I’m thinking ‘bout letting Mr. Frederick work his magic on my locks.”

“Mr. Frederick?” I asked, stopping in front of their apartment and thinking about my tangled frizzies. “He does hair?”

Natalie glanced back at Mo and giggled. “We’ve heard he’s a real artist.” She turned back to me. “What do you say? It’ll do you wonders.”

“I’ll see if I can make it,” I said. Then I saw Mo laughing in my rearview mir
ror. “What?”

“It’s nu
thin. I just got a feeling Jack’s gonna be real happy with Mr. Frederick’s work.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Tomorrow, we kill the cop,”
Myra says after contacting her beloved, and putting her own piece of the game in place. “Azazel is raising the stakes.”

Rose smiles, kisses her sister on the lips. When they part, she says, “This should be fun.”

As their lips come together again, Myra thinks about staying. Spending the night and making love to Rose without Azazel and the Predators watching, sounds exciting. As much as she wants to be with the beautiful young woman, she resigns herself to taking care of other pressing duties.

As she prepares to leave,
Myra says, “Be sure the dog isn’t around when you do the crawly. No mistakes.”

Rose nods. “I
’ll be careful.”

Forty-five minutes later,
Myra stops at a gas station near a residential area in the city of Glendale. She uses the restroom where she takes a few minutes to transform herself.

After s
lipping out of her leather clothing, Myra puts on a blue cotton dress and pair of brown flats. She pins her hair back, dons on a wig, and then removes the jewelry from her piercings and makes sure that her tattoos are covered.

Myra
’s final transformation involves latex facial prosthetics, a pair of blue contact lenses, and using a dental appliance to conceal the teeth she has filed into fangs. After years of practice, using skills she learned from a former studio makeup artist, Myra is an expert at dramatically altering her appearance. She studies herself in the mirror, satisfied with the image of the prim little housewife that stares back at her.

By the time she’s driven through the neighborhood and pulled into the driveway of the modest home,
Myra has gone away. She is hidden in the shadows of her transformed features and altered personality. The change is so complete that, as she opens the front door, the killer momentarily forgets about the dark world of Azazel, her sisters, and the Predators.

“Sorry, I’m late,”
Myra says, putting her purse on the counter and kissing her husband.

“Not a problem,” he says, lingering in her arms. After a longer, more passionate kiss, he adds, “I just fed Emily and got her ready for bed, if you want to tuck her in.”

Myra pulls away, then comes back to him. “How about a glass of wine when I’m finished?”

“You got it. I also picked up some takeout.”

Myra walks down the hallway and opens the door to her daughter’s room. It’s pink and white and has a hand-painted mural of a mermaid in the corner.

“Mommy,” the four-year-old says, extending her arms.

“I missed you today,” Myra says, smothering her daughter with kisses. “How was grandma?”

“We had fu
n. I baked cookies.”

Myra
turns her head slightly, smiling at Emily. “Did you eat your dinner?”

“I ate it all.” The little girl pauses,
returning her mother’s smile. “Well most of it. I didn’t eat all the broccoli.”

Myra
snuggles her daughter in her arms. “That’s okay, sweetheart. Would you like to read a story?”

“I get to pick,” Emily says, shuffling through a stack of books
with nursery rhymes and stories in the corner of the room. “Let’s read about Elmo,” she says, bringing over a book.

Myra
spends the next ten minutes reading to her daughter about the Sesame Street character before the child begins to drift off to sleep. She kisses Emily, pulling the covers up around her, then joins her husband on the sofa in the modest family room.

They exchange kisses as
Myra accepts the glass of wine. Her husband fixes her a plate of almond chicken, hands it to her.

“Busy day?”
Myra asks, setting her glass down and tasting the chicken.

“Not really” he says. “Lots of waiting around, as usual. And, you?”

She shakes her head. “Just spent the day trying to calm a few nerves. The murders have been all over the newspapers and television.” She smiles at her husband. “I hope they catch whoever’s involved soon. I think it’s getting to everyone.”

“Me too. All this talk of death and dying gets a little depressing.”

After chatting about their day for half an hour, Myra and her husband begin to exchange kisses again, this time more passionately. Lights are dimmed and doors are locked. The couple moves into the bedroom, slips off their clothes, and falls onto the bed.

“Let’s make this special tonight,”
Myra says, finding her way into his arms.

Her husband chuckles. “What do you have in mind?”

“Let’s pretend I’ve done something really bad and you have to punish me.”

“That’s going to take a lot of imagination,” he says. “You’re usually a very good girl. But I’ll see what I can do.”

Myra spends the next several minutes being scolded and punished as the man she is married to, the man she despises, berates her for all manner of fabricated failings. After a few gentle slaps, Myra brings out a pair of bondage bracelets, leather ties, and a strap.

“Where did you get these?” her husband asks.

Myra giggles. “I have my sources.” She holds her hands up. “I’m all yours.”

Her husband ties her wrists to the headboard. Then, as she demands, he spreads her legs, tying her feet to the bedposts with leather straps.

“I’m ready for my punishment, now,” Myra says, when he’s finished.

The leather strap she’s brought him—a beaded metal flogger, is designed to cut into the flesh with each stroke. After her husband brings the whip down a couple of times on her breasts and legs,
Myra sees the blood oozing from her flesh. A delicious, icy feeling washes over her.

“I can’t do this,” her husband says after a moment. “I’m hurting you.”

Myra feels something sour rising in her throat as she hears his words. Her husband is a weak little bastard who couldn’t harm a flea.

When the games are over, the man she is married to finally enters her
. As always, his lovemaking is hurried and selfish. Myra’s thoughts drift away. Her mind is floating somewhere above the room until it fixes on an imaginary scene.

A
decision is made. When the time comes, there will be a tribute to Azazel. The man she loves will receive a human sacrifice—her husband.

Chapter Thirty

“You look beat down,” Charlie said to me
before cramming a donut into his mouth.

“Just a little cramp
in my neck and shoulders,” I lied. I took Bernie over to a corner of the HSS conference room where I had him settle.

As a trade-off for Robin doing my hair, I’d agreed to give him a break and spent the night at Mom’s house. Miss Daisy ended up roaming around all night, fading in and out of trances, and warning me about
the gathering dark forces.

I then had the unsettling experience of going to my apartment to get ready for work this morning and thinking someone had been
inside. There was nothing I could put my finger on, but, either I was imagining things, or a couple of my personal belongings were not where I thought I’d left them.

The outfit I’d decided on w
as all wrong, too. I had on a pair of plaid flannel pants and a dark blue blazer. On my way into the meeting, I’d stopped by the restroom and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

I was horrified.

My pants looked like pajama bottoms.
What the hell was I thinking when I got dressed?
My hair was also frizzing out again. I’d considered running out of the building and calling in sick, but there was no way I was going to miss this taskforce meeting, not with Skully already breathing down my neck.

I took a seat between C
harlie and Pearl as the room filled with detectives and several FBI agents. Pearl pointed out Special Agent Byron Ellington, the head of the fed’s side of things. I’d been told he was a no-nonsense go-getter, but he looked to me like a chunky Denzel Washington.

Stan Baker
sat across from me and must have overheard my conversation with Charlie; seen my distress.

The smart ass little detective motioned to me and said to his partner, “Maybe the case is putting a cramp in her style.”

“There are some days of the month that’ll do that,” Kennedy agreed.

I leaned over
, levelled my eyes on them. “It sounds like you two are experts on menstrual periods. I read a case study recently that said guys like you had cloying mothers who molested them.”

Baker tried to come up with a rebuttal, but couldn’t pull it off before Skully called the meeting to order.

We spent the next fifteen minutes with introductions. I learned that, in addition to Ellington, the federal side of the taskforce consisted of two profilers, Special Agents Hank Sullivan and Janice Taylor. There was also an expert on the psychology of cults and mind control, Fred Lundy, on loan from NYPD.

The cult expert tried to lighten up the proceedings by telling us that, while his name rhymed with Ted Bundy, he hadn’t committed a serial murder in several weeks. We were also told that the feds had an agent working on the Internet side of things who would join the meeting in progress.

“We will be adding additional staff and resources in the next day or two,” Ellington said, in his best FBI baritone. “We expect a sizable addition to the agents already assigned as we ramp up our efforts.”

“I’ve brought the FBI up to date on where we stand,
” Skully chimed in, “but I have a list of several items I’d like to get an update on from our SID unit and detectives working the case.”

Bob Woodley and his supervisor, Stan Walters, entered the room and took seats across from Skully. I wasn’t surprised that Chandra Martin hadn’t joined them.

After introducing the SID staff, Skully said, “Can you go over the physical evidence and other issues that we’ve been waiting on?”

Woodley cleared his throat and started to say something, but Walters, a classic administr
ator in a cheap suit who I knew from past encounters took himself way too seriously, took over.

“Let’s start with the blood and fingerprint evidence,” Walters said, shuffling through some papers and adjusting his glasses. “We found several footprints at both the Trevon Jackson and Marilyn Bryant crime scenes. Some of those footprints were a match to prints from the shoes taken from the woman who was shot and killed off the Santa Monica Pier yesterday. She
’s been identified as, Henna Marie Patterson, age twenty-six.”

Woodley handed out mug shots and the arrest record of the deceased woman
. Walters went on, “As you can see, Patterson had a record of convictions for petty theft, public intoxication, and some minor drug charges, but nothing too serious. She was born and raised in Temecula, before dropping out of school in her senior year and leaving home about six years ago. Her mother describes her as a lost soul, basically a street person. She denied any knowledge of her daughter associating with the woman we know as Myra or any cult members.”

Walters fanned out a stack of the remaining mug shots. “We’re going to distribute her photograph to the press today and ask for
the public’s help regarding any information about possible friends and associates. Patterson also had the same distinctive tattoo on her left forearm as Chloe Bryant has, the Latin phrase—
Sorores Sanguinis
, Sisters of the Blood.”

Bob Woodley added, “
We questioned Bryant about the tattoo. It was done by a male subject she’d never met before in a house somewhere in the valley, but she couldn’t remember the location. We’ve run the tattoo through the data bases, done some checking with the local parlors, and even put feelers out around the state. So far, we haven’t come up with anything worthwhile.”

“Any
footprints that are a match?” Special Agent Sullivan asked Walters. He was a bull of a man, with dark eyes and almost no forehead thanks to a thick head of jet black hair.

Woodley glanced at his paperwork and answered.
“We have two other distinct footprints at the Jackson crime scene, but, so far, no suspects to match them to.”

“What about fingerprints?” Baker asked. “We know there were prints found at the scene of the Marilyn Bryant murder.”

Walters said, “We did lift some prints off the chair Bryant’s body was tied to. Unfortunately, so far, we aren’t getting a match through any of the databases.”

Walters went back to his paperwork. “There were also some hair samples taken from the Bryant crime scene. We’re doing DNA analysis on those, as well as fibers that we found at both crime scenes.”

“What kind of fibers?” Janice Taylor asked. She was an attractive woman in her mid-thirties with straight brown hair swept into bangs that I already envied.

“They were cotton fibers, common to many types of apparel,”
Walters said. “It could be they were dislodged during the crimes. We got a match on the fibers at both the Jackson and Bryant crime scenes. It’s not much to go on, but it is further evidence that the same subject or subjects were likely involved in both crimes.”

“Any progress on finding the manufacturers of the hood and leather ties used at the Jackson murder?” Skully asked, turning to Pearl.

“Nothing, so far, but we’re still checking on a few Internet sites that specialize in that sort of thing.”

“I’ve also got feelers out at a local goth shop on Melrose,” I said, feeling compelled to explain my inquiries there. “The store supplies a lot of the locals and the owner is looking through their catalogues.”

“Let’s talk about the rap video,” Skully said, moving on. I had the impression he was annoyed with me again, but wasn’t sure why. “Were we able to enhance any of the scenes this Myra person was in?”

Woodley lowered a screen and turned
on a projector, taking over for his boss.

“This is the best we’ve been able to come up with. The original video edits have been digitally enhanced, but, as you can see, the woman known as
Myra has so much makeup and hair, that we don’t have a lot to go on.”

Woodley
killed the video after a few moments. “I can tell you that, based upon a physical analysis of the scene, the woman looks like she’s in her late twenties or early thirties, about five-eight, 135 pounds.”

Ellington then took over, turning to the profilers and the cult expert. “I’m going to have my staff give us some behavioral analysis of these crimes and then, hopefully, we’ll be able to move this investigation in a new direction.”

I was skeptical that the FBI had anything worthwhile to offer, but tried to control my
big brother
bias and listen with an open mind.

Janice Taylor stood, brushed the hair out of her eyes, and began the discussion, speaking in a polished, confident tone. “As you all know, this case involves three different murders and three crime scenes. Since we believe the killing of Marilyn Bryant was opportunistic, to extract information, I’m going to concentrate for a moment on the Nordquist and Jackson killings.

“The killer left a signature at both these scenes, namely lyrics that were written on a tarot card found in the street at the first scene and on the victim’s bedroom wall at the second. Ignoring any specifics about the lyrics for a moment, it’s important to understand that a signature, when used in the commission of multiple murders, is the perpetrator’s way of expressing some inner personal motivation and release.

“In these kinds of cases, the killings become an act of control, where the killer is acting compulsively by seeking empowerment through acts of extreme violence. The killing process becomes a ritual, involving th
e buildup and release of energy. The signature itself is a way for the killer to leave a psychological sign at a crime scene as a method of satisfying some inner need.” 

She cleared her throat and continued, “The tarot card left at both scenes was the death card, a signature that expresses the perpetrator’s power over life and death. In the Trevon Jackson case, the killer left another signature behind when the victim was castrated. It is not atypical for these types of killers to engage in a pattern of escalating violence and depravity.”

Taylor paused, her gaze lingering on the audience. “This case is extremely unusual in several respects. First, the killings involve an apparent female perpetrator acting out a classic male pattern of ritualistic murder. Second, this female is working in concert with others acting as a surrogate killer on behalf of a male, either real or imagined. According to Chloe Bryant, she refers to this subject as Azazel, one of seven disciples chosen by Satan to seek revenge in the world.”

The FBI agent
asked Fred Lundy, the NYPD cult expert, to join her and said, “There is a third aspect to these crimes involving a ritual of control that we now want to discuss.”

Lundy stepped forward.
He was probably in his late forties, but was handsome, with a boyish face and large brown eyes. “As my colleague said, these crimes are unique on several levels, but it’s the aspect of manipulation that I want to discuss. The loss of individual or collective freedom through the use of physical or mental manipulation forms the basis of what is commonly referred to as brainwashing or mind control. There are numerous documented cases of these techniques being used in a variety of circumstances.

“There are also recorded instances of Satanic Ritual Manipulation or SRA having occurred over the past several decades. These case histories involve the use of physical, cognitive, and sexual control for the purposes of satanic indoctrination.”

Lundy paused and took a sip of water. “We believe that the signatures left a the crime scenes have been planted as part of a ritual of satanic control and manipulation. But those elements have been combined with another aspect of control that’s unique to this case.” Lundy nodded to Janice Taylor.

Taylor flipped on the overhead projector again and we saw the lyrics from the song, “Love me or Kill Me,” by Fleshded. I’d gone over the lyrics at least a dozen times and knew them by heart.

“As you probably know by now, these lyrics are from a love song, written to Satan,” Lundy said. “It’s a plea for Satan to come into his lover’s life, but there’s far more to this than meets the eye. In one respect, the song is a projection that’s being used by the killer to act upon what she believes is Satan’s desire—namely to kill on his behalf. The act of leaving the lyrics at the crime scene also forms part of the killer’s signature, but there’s an added aspect to these lyrics that we’ve recently discovered.”

Taylor made several keystrokes on the laptop and we saw the lyrics of, “Love Me or Kill Me,” shift. Some of the letters of the words stood out from the others, giving them a three-dimensional appearance.

“These lyrics are not only part of the killer’s signature, they are one of the portals that Chloe Bryant was talking about,” Fred Lundy said. “This is the entrance to, The Forbidden World.”