Snuff (30 page)

NINETY-NINE

John
felt the full weight of a pale, bloated moon suspended in a cloud-curdled sky, above the silent lawns of Evergreen Memorial. As if it had grown physically closer to the earth during the drive over.

Warm wind whistled through
overgrown grass and the woven wrought-iron bars of the back gates as they approached. 

Lisette pulled out her Glock
, and shot off the rattling padlock.  The gates creaked, almost with an edge of distant, mocking laughter, as though disrepair had turned them wicked, and they would love nothing more than to watch terrible things happen to the two of them.

She kept
her weapon drawn, blending into the surroundings like an oiled shadow.  John didn’t entertain the idea of waiting for backup or reinforcements, and it seemed Lisette hadn’t, either.

Moonlight bleached her hair and skin
silver as she looked from side to side. John kept a few paces behind her left flank. “If Brooke estimated a five minute walk, it’s got to be close.”

Overgrown weeping willow branches brushed
swaying blades of grass, dead leaves caught in a tornado of dirt clods as wind swept by.  It was when they slipped past the fringe of old trees with gnarled bark, that they saw it. 

The mausoleum had the same ancient quality of the
surrounding trees, like it had grown from a root beneath the ground, as well. 

Lisette broke into a run
, and took the ivory steps three at a time. 
Cartwright
had been carved into granite above the entrance, and the stairs were flanked by statues of white angels with small smiles and blank stone eyes that seemed to follow John’s progress. 

“Mother
fuck
.” She slammed her palm into the steel door.  “She must have it blocked from the inside.”  She snapped up her walkie-talkie.  “I need that goddamned SWAT team
now
.” Moonbeams tiger-striped her eyes through the branches of a far-off tree when she turned to John.  “Do you think she’ll be alive?”

He would have answered, but Stacy’s cheerf
ully lunatic ringtone rang out,
so foreign amidst the hushed landscape of moldering headstones, that for a moment the pair of them did nothing but stare stupidly, until John’s higher brain suggested he really ought to answer, if for nothing more than putting a stop to the racket. 

“I know you told me not to call,” Stacy began, a second after he’d fumbled with his iPhone and stuck it to his ear, “but I heard back from Interpol
, and Ivashkov’s plane is due to touch down any minute.  That email I hacked—the one the ‘contact me’ comments from the blog are routed to—got a new message.  It’s only one line and pretty cryptic, but I found an IP, so that’s good news.”

Lisette aimed her third kick at the mausoleum’s door, which did nothing at all but rattle as though it were giggling at her failed attempts of forced entry.  “Call the airport
, and ask security to detain him.  Give them instructions to wait for me.” 

“They won’t hold him long without a warrant.  You’d better hurry.”

“
What does Interpol have?”

“Well, it turns out organized prostitution is illegal in Czech Republic, but enforcement is lax,
and since they’re considered private clubs where members pay dues, police couldn’t make arrests if they wanted. He hasn’t been charged with anything past 1989—drug smuggling—but he’s been accused of paying political contacts to further his own agenda.  No worse than the dicks in Washington, huh?  He was naturalized in 1990; dual citizenship here, and in Czech Republic.  It’s not much.  Interpol’s good for records and AFIS and ballistics, not so much in the way of gossip, or word on the street.”

Beams
of multiple flashlights shone through blackness the low-slung, guttering moon couldn’t reach, voices and grumbling static drawing nearer. 

“Hurry the fuck up, goddamnit,” Lisette shouted across the lawns, having forfeited round four with the mausoleum door. 

“Doesn’t she speak eloquently,” Stacy said.  “It’s funny, you’d never know she had a mouth like that from looking at her.”

The swell of backup
loomed closer, and John turned to Lisette as he and Stacy disconnected.  “I’m going to leave you to it.  Ivashkov’s jet’s landing soon.”

“You’re never going to get anything out of him.  It’ll be a wasted t
rip.  I can order a tail later if the lieutenant can make room in the budget.”  She descended the stone steps to dodge the avalanche of men in black fatigues and Kevlar.  Dew-smeared grass smushed beneath her Timberlands as she found to her way to his side, hands on hips, not appearing as imposing as he knew she tried to be, even with a holstered Glock and a scowl that could peel paint. 

“A tail won’t do any good
, either.  I’ve asked Customs to detain him.  I need to at least
try
to speak to him.” He held out his hand, which she looked askance at, as if he were suggesting a moonlit waltz amongst the headstones.  “I need your keys.”

She dug them from her pocket and slapped them into his palm.  “What about Brooke?”

“You’re here.  She won’t be alone.”

“But,” she spluttered
over the horrible screech of metal on metal as SWAT burst through the mausoleum’s door, “this is
your
case.  Your victim.  Don’t you want to make sure she’s okay?”

“Of course, that’s why I’ll call later for an update.
  This is more your case than mine.  I’ve only been here four days.” 

He gave her his best reassuring smile.  She gave him the finger.

“You’re a dumbshit if you think you’ll get anywhere with that guy,” were her echoing last words as he headed for her patrol unit.

ONE HUNDRED

I’ve hit her enough times to cause mortal damage, so I shouldn’t be scared, but my limbs don’t agree with that analysis.  I’ll be scared of her forever.  She’ll haunt my dreams with her empty laughs and mechanical smiles until I die. 

Struggling to my feet is a chore, since Hannah’
s clinging around my ankles like one of those koala bears that snap around the tip of a pencil. 

The noise from that end of the room i
s unearthly; a soft purr that morphs into a moan that balloons into a scream of bowel-shaking proportions. 

The sounds
she makes aren’t English, or any distinguishable language, but I understand the meaning.

Hannah’s tears slide down the curve of my
calf. I pat her shellacked curls with a wet, sticky palm.  “It’s okay,” I tell her, surprised to hear my voice is a perfect flatline.  “You’re going to be fine.  She can’t hurt you.”  Because she can’t even move.  “Try to find that blowtorch, will you?”

Abby said she couldn’t feel the pain towards her final days, but I hope Bianca can.  Swallo
wing your own medicine is painful.

I lean my head against the wall and blink sweat out of my eyes. 
The wall vibrates beneath my shoulder blades, but it doesn’t seem like anything to get excited about.  Though it would be a mark of how fabulous my luck is if an earthquake decides to hit while I’m underground with a half-dead psycho and a sobbing teenager.

“Do you feel that?” Hannah
struggles to her feet.  “What’s going on?”

I don’t know why she keeps asking
questions.  Her guess is as good as mine.  “California’s due for an earthquake.  It’s been a while since one struck.”

“Ohmigod
ohmigod.”  She sucks in a greedy lungful of air and sinks to the floor.  “We’ll be buried!”

As far as earthquakes go, this feels like a car door slamming.  “
This isn’t even a one on the Richter scale.”

I’m wondering whether I should feel victorious, not hol
low, like an ice cream scoop tunneled a path through my insides and splattered them onto the floor, when the lights blink on and drown every coherent thought.

I cringe into my hands, away from the assault of the overhead bu
lbs, when I hear my name. 

I
t’s Lisette standing at the top of the stairs, the brightest thing in the doorframe, leveling a gun at my face. She looks like the angel I thought she was the first time I’d met her, in the back of that ambulance. If angels have blonde hair and firearms.

Her face is carved of
stone, save flashing gold eyes.  “Can you walk?”

“Yes.”  I disentangle my one hundred and thirty pound tumor.  “Come on.  You’re fine.”

Lisette descends the stairs, lifting her banded wrist to her mouth.  “Tell EMS to get in here.”  Her gaze snaps back to mine.  “Brooke, go upstairs.  Take her and go.” 

Her haste
is hard to fathom.  The threat is neutralized; there’s no need to rush.  And moving appears to be an impossibility, from the sweaty grip Hannah’s got on my ankle. 

Lisette moves
closer to the bloody, flattened lump of squealing flesh and bone.  Denim-clad legs twist like pretzels, blood drizzles the lacy hem of her once-white blouse, and a red bib pools at the neckline.

Her face is a mass of mush, a concave hole when her nose was. 
The eyes are oozing, open blisters.  Broken teeth scattered in tangles of blonde hair glitter like decorative pearls.  The only noise escaping the pulpy mess of meat her lips have become is a half-screamed
unnngh.

Lisette
circles the semi-corpse, keeping clear of the swirling blood spatter smeared on the granite.  “Who did this?” 

Isn’t it obvious?
I think, until I look at Hannah and realize she’s covered in blood, too.  “Me.”

It almost looks like she’d like to congratulate me on a jo
b well done, but she refrains, and jerks her chin at the far wall.  “What the fuck is this?”

“I guessed cannibals, but I was wrong.  It’s symbolic of how we use other people, or whatever.”

Her eyebrows join.  “But they’re eating each other.  Cannibals eat people.”

It’s nice to know she shares my lack of art appreciation.

“I want to go home,” Hannah sniffles behind her hands.  “Please, can I go home?”

I pull her to her feet as a few paramedics trundle down the stairs. They
exchange glances and raised eyebrows—nothing much they can do, not when death circles Bianca like a vulture.  She’ll die.  I only find it a shame that she won’t die in this room.  That happy event will occur in the back of an ambulance, or a sterile hospital room. 

Lisette backs up before a crowd of paramedics swallow her and holsters her gun
. “Let’s get you out of here.”

I follow her up the stairs, holding Hannah’s hand, though I can’t match Lisette’s leaps
.  The adrenaline rush must be petering. 

When we cross the threshold of the door, I freeze. Hannah doesn’t.  She keeps going until my stiff arm yanks her back. 

A glass ceiling towers so high above such a narrow space that it feels like I’m at the very bottom of a well.  Stars smother the inky sky, twinkling through gray, swirly clouds and dust-caked panes.

Five bodies are here, interred above the room Abby died in.  The granite of that room matches the walls and floor of this one. 
Ornate, gilded lettering is carved onto plaques, and all their last names are the same. Sweating white roses burst out of cut-crystal vases beneath each inscription.

Lisette stops barking instructions at the people combing the floor with tiny brushes
, her face softening when it finds mine.  “It’s a mausoleum.  This is where Bianca’s family is.”

“How could she keep us in a cemetery?  Nobody heard us
screaming
?”

What would you call this?
Poetic?  Dying in a cemetery; I can’t think of anything more ironic.  But then I doubt I know the real meaning of the word, since I learned the definition from Alanis Morisette.

Lisette
blinks eyes as gold as the plaques behind her.  “This place has been neglected for a few years.  It doesn’t have many visitors.  Nobody would have heard, even if it did. That room’s been reinforced and soundproofed.”

Amber flecks swim t
hrough the granite, catching the starlight.  I’ve never been claustrophobic, but the walls are so winter-white, I feel like they’re inching closer together.  “If you’re going to die in a mausoleum, it should at
least
be your own.”

Her stoic cop face takes hold, and she gestures for Hannah and me to follow her out. 

ONE HUNDRED ONE

Paul Rison, thirty-three—quit Clearwater Security three months ago for no reason after six years, found another job in same field a month later. Weird, right? I’ll look into personal financials, see if anything sticks out.

John
exited out of Stacy’s text and lit the flashers on the patrol unit he’d commandeered.  He left it idling in the loading zone of LAX.  The glass doors of the entrance swept apart to receive him, and no sooner had he taken three steps off the floor mat, than a security guard sidled up to greet him.

John dug his credentials from his breast pocket and didn’t bother with niceties.  “You’ve detaine
d someone for me?”

“Customs officers at the private
terminal held him up.”

“Has he given them trouble?”

“Not him.”  The man matched John’s long strides.  “His attorney.”

They rounded a corner to a bank of elevators. 

“How long has he been waiting?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” T
he security guard glanced at the face of his watch as they waited for a free carriage to chug to a stop.  “Twenty minutes?”

Then you do know
, John wanted to say, though he didn’t, because his mother had raised a gentleman.  “It’s just him and Mr. Morgan?”

A button
flashed red, and the pair of them stepped into the empty elevator.  “Morgan brought the wife along, too,” his companion informed him.  “She hasn’t been a pain in the ass or anything, just confused.”

John didn’t like
asking delicate questions like
have you been involved in the murder of seven women and the torture of eight?
in front of wives because they tended to react badly, but sometimes uncomfortable situations couldn’t be avoided. 

The silver door slid aside after a slow upward crawl, and John followed the
guard down a hallway with blue carpeting and gray walls.  He checked his iPhone once again when it chimed, announcing a text from Stacy: 
Mr. Rison leased himself a new Mercedes, moved into a new condo, and put his mother in a cushy old folk’s home after he quit Clearwater.  Going salary for his position at the new firm is slightly less than what he made earlier—fishy, huh?  More later. 

He put his phone away
as the guard stopped before an unmarked door, and pulled it open.

Sal Morgan, resplendent in an expensive suit that did nothing to camouflage his jiggling belly, hopped to his feet
from a chair close by.  “I must not have made it clear earlier, but harassing Mr. Ivashkov won’t help your plight to find—whatever the hell it is you’re looking for.”

The guard pulled the door shut, and Jo
hn blinked around the small, dark room.  “Would you like to know what the hell I’m looking for?  You weren’t very curious when we last met.”

“Sal gets a little excited when he finds my nephew in a police station,” a man with a thick head of salt-and-pepper hair and a charcoal suit said, rising from the leather sofa
against the far wall.  “What is you needed to talk to me about?”  He had eyes on the border of gray and silver, not unlike the metal doors of the elevator, and even those had more sparkle.

“Bianca Cartwright.”

His light-tanned face split into a pleasantly confused smile that looked as though it had been practiced many times in a mirror.  “Who?”

“A stripper who works
at the club your nephew manages.  The one I’m told you smuggle drugs through.”

The
smile turned sharp.  “I wouldn’t know a thing about that, I’m afraid.  I only pop in from time to time.  I certainly wouldn’t know anything that’s gone on recently.  I’ve been out of the country for the past three days.”

“So I’ve
heard.” John’s gaze landed on a slight brunette woman with overlarge, dark eyes, and chestnut hair swept into a knot at the back of her head.  His eyes zeroed on the thin fingers with which she twisted a ring on her right hand.  “You like to keep busy.  Idle hands, I’m guessing.  Is this your wife?” He smiled at her, and she smiled back, like she’d been wired to do so, though it was a timid one.

Leoš
nodded proudly at his prized show horse. “That’s my Anna.”

“And you’ve b
een married for how long?” 

John
had directed the question at her, but it was her husband who supplied the answer. “Twenty years.”

“When’s your anniversary?”

“What the hell does that matter!” Morgan harrumphed, apparently unable to assign a task to his hands, because they kept fidgeting.

Leoš gave the man an indulgen
t smile before turning it back to John.  “In the spring.”

“Are you in the habit of buying Anna jewelry outside of special occasions?”

“I’m not sure what you’re asking.  Maybe you could try a direct question, and I’d be better equipped to answer.”

Fair enough
.  “Why is she wearing a dead girl’s ring?”

Anna
’s soft face twisted when she shot her husband a confused look.  “Leoš, what on earth is he talking about?”

John took a fe
w steps toward her.  “May I?”  She looked like she might object, but he took her hand in his before she’d gotten control of her faculties.  “This ring belongs to a dead girl named Emily.”  He held her hand beneath the beam of a lamp on the end table, light winking on diamond facets and rolling over the braided gold band.  “She died a little over a month ago.  It was made for her, so there’s no question about who it belongs to.”

“You’re mistaken,” Leoš said at the same time his attorney
bellowed, “that’s a large accusation to make when you’re not even positive it’s the same ring!”

“I am positive it’s the same ring.  No question.”

“I’m sure my client can clear up any confusion.”

John released Anna’
s clammy wrist and stood.  “Have you forgotten I’m a fed?  I love theories.  Spin me a story on how a dead girl’s ring found its way on Mrs. Ivashkov’s finger.”

“I bought
it while antique shopping.” Leoš moved to place a calming hand on Anna’s cashmere-coated shoulder.  “My wife has an affinity for vintage jewelry.”

“Easy to
verify.  I’ll just call your bank and ask for the transaction information.”

“It was paid for in cash.”

“I’m sure the shop keeps records.  They’d probably have receipts for something worth that much.  It’s three carats.  Emily’s fiancé spent two months pay on that diamond.”

“One-of-a-kind jewelry isn’t always so one-of-a-kind,” Morgan spouted, spittle collecting at the corners of his lips.  “Replicas are made at the jeweler
’s discretion.”

“I’ll be sure to ask the man who made this ring if he created any extras.
  Any other theories?”  He waited for a response.  None came.  “This doesn’t look very good, Mr. Ivashkov.  I’m going to have to take you in.”

“This will never make it into a courtroom,” Morgan said
, as John pulled a pair of handcuffs from his waistband.  “This is ludicrous, a ploy to get leverage on my client’s nephew.”

“But your client’s nephew was never in trouble.”  The cuffs jingled in John’s hand as he made his way to Leoš’s side. “
How lucky a happy accident like this happened.”