The Devil's Lullaby

by Chris Scalise

  “It’s a long story,” Allison murmured. “More importantly, what are you doing here?”

  “I gotta be honest,” Aren said, “your proposition intrigued me. I hate the Las Vegas Exorcist, and that’s not a word I use lightly. If you know something that could bring him down, I’m all ears. Do you have time to grab lunch?”

  “I uh…” She was going to confess that her sole employee had recently quit and that she had no one else to watch the store, but it quickly occurred to her that she owned the store. She could just lock the door and return later. Since the cat was clearly out of the bag anyway, she might as well try to get any information she could out of Aren Anzalone. “Sure,” she said finally. “Is there somewhere I can meet you in like half an hour?”

  “How about the Peppermill?” Aren asked.

  “Okay, sounds good. I guess I’ll meet you there then.”

  15

  The Peppermill Restaurant and Fireside Lounge was a Las Vegas institution. Located on a semi-vacant stretch of land on the north Strip between the Encore and the Stratosphere, it represented a throwback to Vegas’s kitschy past, a celebration of all that is ostentatious. From the outside, the restaurant resembled a typical yet colorful diner with a sloped roof, a gaudy blue paint job, and a distinctive halo of fluorescent blue lights separating the roof shingles from the tinted windows that covered the length of the perimeter.

  As distinctive as the exterior was, however, the real visual spectacle was inside. The color scheme was an orgy of blue, pink, and purple, with lush faux-trees and a vast mirrored ceiling. As Allison entered the restaurant for the first time in more than twenty years, she thought it resembled a diner straight out of Alice in Wonderland. The booths were brightly illuminated in cool colors, the fake tree leaves dangled from the ceiling, and the hanging Tiffany lamps spotlighted each table with a dim glow. It was clear that the restaurant hadn’t changed much since it first opened in 1972, and that’s how people liked it. It was a cozy reminder that the Strip hadn’t always been a self-important glitter parade awash in Louis Vuitton stores and infested with trust-fund hipsters and Kim Kardashian wannabes. It was just...the old Peppermill.

  When Allison arrived, Aren was already seated at one of the booths. She sat across from him and greeted him with an awkward smile. She was embarrassed and somewhat irritated by how goofy she felt in his presence.

  They exchanged brief salutations and then made idle small talk about her boring upbringing in North Las Vegas and his boring upbringing in Yakima, Washington. They discussed everything they loved and hated about Las Vegas, and Allison vented her frustration about the rising real estate costs. As she segued into a passionate tirade about how the incoming Raiders football franchise would raise housing costs even more, Aren calmly interrupted her with the very topic she had been hoping to avoid.

  “So I have to ask,” he said, ignoring her detailed explanation of how the new Raiders stadium would destroy Dean Martin Drive once and for all. “What’s the deal with the magic shop? Do you actually own that?”

  Allison took a deep breath. “Yeah. It’s all mine. I mean, I was in my twenties when I opened it, and it seemed like a pretty smart business to get into. Affordable inventory, high markups, you know?

  “I mean, I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life working for someone else and making them rich while they decide how much money I deserve to make. But that was quite a while ago. Lately, I’ve been thinking it’s probably time to sell the shop. There are other ways to make money, right? Who knows? Maybe I could do the PI thing full-time.”

  Aren nodded. “The sign in your window said that you do psychic readings. Are you a psychic?” He couldn’t help but smirk as he asked the question.

  Allison was growing increasingly annoyed by the unsolicited interrogation. “Let’s talk about the Las Vegas Exorcist. I want to know everything you know. Before, it was about business. But now it’s personal.”

  “Why?” Aren asked, leaning back in the cushioned booth.

  “Because now my friend is dead.”

  Aren leaned forward and looked inquisitively into her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  Allison took a deep breath and divulged the full story: her encounter with Jack, her meeting with the Las Vegas Exorcist, her research into the strange but barely explained disappearances of other young women. By the time she reached the part of the story about Cassidy’s phone call and disappearance, tears were streaming down her face.

  “I’ll never forget that voice,” Allison said, nearly shaking. “The woman sounded like, I don’t know, forty-five, maybe fifty. She had one of those gravelly sort of smoker’s voices. She said, ‘It’s a big fucking desert, bitch. You better start digging.’ Who the hell was that? And on Cassidy’s phone? And I know I heard a second voice whispering in the background. I just can’t get the whole thing out of my head. Part of me is like...maybe she’s still alive. Maybe it’s just some weird head game. But then I’m like, no way...Not a chance.”

  “You told the cops about this?” Aren asked.

  Allison nodded. “I spent the whole fucking night at the station answering questions. They practically waterboarded me.”

  “Did you tell them everything you told me?”

  Allison shook her head. “I told them everything they needed to know about the Las Vegas Exorcist and Cassidy’s history with him, but I didn’t say anything about my own investigation. I also begged them to trace the phone, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. They just kept saying that their best guys were investigating, whatever the fuck that means.”

  “The phone’s probably been disconnected by now,” Aren said, “maybe even destroyed. But we might be able to find out for sure.”

  “How?”

  “You said she had an iPhone, right?”

  “Yeah,”

  “Well, we could go back to that house where she was living. Look for an iPad or an old iPhone or something. If she has Find My iPhone set up, we can trace the phone that way. I wouldn’t count on the local cops to do anything. We’ve been through these cases before, and they never lead anywhere. Dominic is really good about covering his tracks, and Las Vegas Metro is one of the most corrupt police forces in the country.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Allison said. “I have to go back to that house anyway. I need to find that diary that Cassidy was talking about. But I want to know about these other disappearances. Who’s Cindy?”

  Aren smiled. “I see you watched the YouTube video.”

  “Yeah. You said that you had some damning info about Dominic, and you mentioned a woman named Cindy that you and your girlfriend met at Dominic’s church. When you started to tell the story—”

  “The video cut out,” Aren said. “You can thank Dominic’s lawyers for that. They were threatening a defamation suit, and the Skeptic Society wanted no part of that, so they just caved. I don’t blame them, though. They’re a nonprofit that’s struggling just to pay the bills. I offered to pay their legal fees, but they wouldn’t allow it because they didn’t think there was any way they could win. We just didn’t have the physical evidence. Like I said, Dominic’s really good at covering his tracks.”

  Just then, the waitress came to deliver their drinks and take their order. Aren ordered a cobb salad, and Allison ordered an omelette.

  “So who’s Cindy?” Allison asked as the waitress walked away.

  Aren paused, gathering his thoughts. He looked somewhat somber as he considered the question and reflected on what was obviously a painful memory. “Cindy was a lot like your friend,” he said. “A lost soul who was just desperate for answers and looking for a way out. When I was doing the undercover thing at Dom’s church, I had a couple of conversations with her. I watched her go through the whole exorcism process, saw her fall down to her knees and thank God for saving her when it was over. I thought that would be the end of it.”

  “Let me guess,” Allison said, “she came back a week or two later and rambled incoherently about being stalke
d by some demon with a creepy white face.”

  Aren looked surprise. “Yeah. Pretty much. I’m guessing that’s what happened to your friend too?”

  Allison nodded. “The first night I met Cassidy, I sort of eavesdropped on a conversation she was having with Dominic. The creepiest part is that he said he knew how he could help her, but I’m not sure what he meant by that.”

  “And I’m guessing Cassidy had money to burn?”

  “Her dad founded the Sinclair Steakhouse chain.”

  “I’d say that’s pretty well-to-do.”

  “Why is that important?” Allison asked. “Was Cindy loaded too?”

  Aren nodded. “Dominic hustles hundreds of people out of their money every year, maybe thousands. But the ones who disappear always fit the same profile: young, female, and rich. And it’s always the same story, too. Cindy wasn’t the first person to disappear after ranting about a pale-faced stalker.

  “After she disappeared, I obsessively started looking for her. Then, while reading through every online article ever written about Dominic, I found this seemingly random series of Twitter posts from one of the head honchos at Caesars Palace. He was looking for answers about his daughter Denise’s disappearance, and the only reason he even showed up on my radar was because he briefly mentioned that his daughter had been going to these exorcism services.

  “This guy didn’t think Dominic had anything to do with her disappearance, though. He thought she had just had a mental health breakdown and left town or something. Apparently, she had been talking about strange music playing on her radio and a strange figure hovering over her bed. He wanted the public’s help finding her so he could have her committed.”

  Allison hesitated for a moment as the sounds of boisterous chatter and clanking silverware echoed all around her. “And, was Denise ever found? And Cindy?”

  Aren hesitated and pressed his palms together, elbows on the table. “Denise is still considered a missing person. “But Cindy’s body was found about six months after she disappeared. She was dumped in the woods on Mount Charleston, not even buried. Some hiker’s dog sniffed her out.”

  Allison suddenly felt sick to her stomach. “How did they know it was her? I mean...”

  “Dental records. And they did the whole DNA analysis thing. They were looking for the killer’s DNA, but they couldn’t find a match. Dominic was a person of interest at the time, and he volunteered a DNA sample to get the cops off his back. No match.”

  “I don’t think Dominic’s the one doing the killing,” Allison said.

  “No, there’s an entire team at work here. Dominic’s just the ringleader. He chooses victims that he thinks are easy to manipulate, and his cronies create these horror scenarios, constantly elevating the realism until the victims are willing to pay any amount of money to be free. He takes the lion’s share of the money, and his lackeys do all of the dirty work.”

  Allison puzzled over Aren’s theory for a moment. “If it’s all just a con to get money, why do the girls have to die?”

  “Because when you’re running that kind of con and taking the kind of money that he’s helping himself to, you can’t leave any loose ends behind. Sooner or later, the whole thing would unravel. Once the fear is eliminated, at least one of those girls would come to her senses and say, ‘Wait a second…’”

  “How much money is he taking?”

  “According to Cindy’s parents, she withdrew almost twenty grand from her family’s different bank accounts in the days before her disappearance. And according to Denise’s dad, he was searching her room after she vanished and found a transaction report for a twenty-five-thousand-dollar withdrawal. All cash transactions. No paper trail. No DNA. Even the few phone records they’ve found have all been traced to disposable phones. Dominic always covers his tracks. And now another girl has disappeared. Fuck...”

  Allison’s head was spinning. It was highly likely that Cassidy was already dead, perhaps lying in a vacant field like discarded garbage. Allison knew there was no way she’d be able to eat her meal.

  “So you tried doing, like, an undercover sting with your girlfriend?” Allison asked.

  “We just went to a couple of Dominic’s services. I tried to be as incognito as possible, but it didn’t take them long to figure out who I was. Let’s just say we weren’t welcomed back. After his security goons dragged me out, Dominic actually followed me to my car and threatened to kick my ass if he ever saw me again. I just smiled and said he better watch his own ass when he gets to prison.”

  Allison thanked the waitress as she refilled her drink and walked away.

  “I need to get into Cassidy’s house,” Allison said. “She told me to find her diary and give it to her mom. But maybe that diary is our smoking gun. Maybe there’s info that could actually bring Dominic down. Think about it. If she documented the same kinds of things that we know about Cindy and Denise, and she has damning information about Dominic that’s actually in writing, it could definitively link him to all three disappearances.”

  Aren thought for a moment. “It’s worth a shot.”

  Allison and Aren arrived at Cassidy’s house on the cul-de-sac about an hour later.

  “I thought you said she was rich,” Aren said, stepping out of his black Tesla Model X and observing the unassuming two-story tract home. The paint was peeling from the house, and the lawn—like so many in the Las Vegas area—was more brown than green.

  Allison led him to the front door. “I said her dad is rich. I don’t know what her situation is.”

  She noticed that the front door had been busted, almost certainly by the police the night before. There was a huge hole next to the knob and deadbolt and an enormous brown crack spanning from the knob to the top of the door. Across the front porch was a thin barrier of yellow police tape bearing the words “Police Line – Do Not Cross.”

  Ignoring the warning, Allison made her way toward the door, encouraged by how easy it would be to enter the home. Before she could reach the porch, Aren rushed forward and stretched his hand in front of her as a gesture to stop moving. Before she could even open her mouth to ask what he was doing, she looked up and remembered the small bullet camera that was mounted above the front door, its lens pointing directly down at the porch.

  “That thing might still be recording,” Aren said. “Let’s go around the back.”

  After briefly looking around for an alternative means of entry, the two trespassers strolled over to the side yard, where Aren unlatched the wooden fence and entered the very narrow back patio. There was a sliding glass door which was also locked, but no other points of entry could be seen. Near the back fence was an open shed that contained what appeared to be a few storage boxes and gardening tools.

  Allison stepped into the shed, moved a few items around, and returned with an aluminum extension ladder. She pulled the ladder to its full height and leaned it against the house so that it nearly reached one of the second-story bedroom windows.

  “Some people don’t lock their windows on the second floor because they don’t think they’re vulnerable,” she explained as she began to climb.

  “Impressive,” Aren said. “Do you rob houses, too?”

  “I read a lot of books,” Allison said with a smirk.

  When she reached the top, she pressed her hands against the glass and attempted to push the window to the left. It almost surprised her how easy it was to get it open. Once it was opened all the way, she popped off the screen and hopped into what appeared to be a small guest bedroom. The queen bed was made up, and the art on the wall was simple and generic, suggesting that the room was meant to look appealing but didn’t actually have a full-time resident. Before she could even exit the room to unlock the front door, Aren hopped in behind her.

  “This looks like my grandma’s house,” he said, looking around.

  Allison ignored him as she studied the carpeted floor and followed it into the hallway. Where was she supposed to find a floorboard?

  She
stepped into what looked like the master bedroom. The bed was massive, probably a California King, and it was fully made up, just like the bed in the other room. Allison walked beside the bed and opened the two drawers of the white nightstand. There was a package of Halls cough drops and a romance novel, but the drawers were otherwise empty. On top of the nightstand was a white clock radio. She picked it up and studied it, and sure enough, there was a Bluetooth symbol on the side. It would have been easy for someone to remotely manage the device with their smartphone, playing any terrifying song at any ungodly hour. That could certainly explain the impromptu serenade from Hell that Cassidy had described to Dominic.

  Allison made her way downstairs and saw that the living room had hardwood flooring. Now she was getting somewhere. She tapped the various floorboards with her feet, looking for any that might be loose. A couple of them creaked slightly, but they all seemed pretty intact. She moved the massive black sofa and examined the floorboards beneath it. She noticed one board that had a distinctive outline on all four sides. She bent over to investigate further, and lo and behold, the board fully lifted from its space.

  When she set the board aside, though, she didn’t find a diary beneath it. The space was certainly large enough to conceal a diary, but it was empty, revealing only the foundation underneath. Was this the wrong floorboard? Or had somebody beaten her to the punch? Allison reflected on the previous night, fearing that Cassidy’s muffled pleas may have been overheard by the wrong people. Almost instantly, Allison felt that painful sensation in the pit of her stomach again.

  “Hey, check this out,” Aren’s voice shouted from the kitchen.

  Feeling defeated, Allison returned the floorboard and met Aren in the kitchen.

  Aren was staring at a printed sheet of paper that was hanging on the refrigerator, held in place by a plastic magnet in the shape of a cartoon cat. He pulled the sheet from the fridge and handed it to Allison.

  Allison skimmed the large print on the page. The message contained a friendly greeting from an unidentified person, followed by a list of general information including emergency contact numbers and the house’s Wi-Fi password. At the bottom of the sheet was a list of local businesses and their addresses. The list included the nearest grocery store, recommended restaurants, a pizza delivery place, and a drug store.