by G. K. Parks
It wasn’t uncommon for balloons to rupture under the highly stressful situation in which these women found themselves, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the supplier was using substandard latex or if the structural integrity of the balloons were already compromised. Sending an e-mail to the team to request an analysis of the remaining shreds of the damaged vessels recovered from the bodies, I hoped they might be able to trace the chemical compound to a manufacturer and possibly figure out where the item had been purchased. Truthfully, it was a fool’s errand, but I wasn’t sure what else the bodies could tell us. Everything had been processed. Dirt, fibers, and trace elements didn’t indicate any pattern or point to an actual suspect.
“What about natural supplements and herbs?” I asked the empty room, scanning through the reports again. From everything we knew about Wilde’s farming practices at the co-op and his online research, I didn’t think anyone could leave this place without having some type of herbal substance in their bloodstream. If we could trace that to the dead mules, we’d at least have reasonable cause for searching the entire compound for drugs. However, there were months between the time the women left the cult and when they were found dead. My theory wouldn’t work.
Shifting through the notes I’d made, I didn’t like where my mind had gone. There was no denying that Tim was doing a lot of heinous things to his female followers, but maybe he wasn’t directly involved in the drug trade. Perhaps they escaped him, only to be preyed upon by some supplier linked to the cartel. Scratching that thought, I knew we had to stick to the facts. The fact was Tim had a record involving drugs and sexual assault. The leopard didn’t change his spots; he just got better at hiding them.
My phone beeped, and I checked the message. Decker had returned. Maybe he brought some good news with him. Tidying up the mess I made, I placed my random notes in a pile and unplugged the tablet. Before I even left the bedroom, the door to the trailer opened. Glancing out to make sure Decker was alone, I hefted the stack into my arms to place back in the secret cubby in the kitchen.
Jace gripped the edge of the doorway, struggling to hoist himself up the steps. Realizing something was wrong, I focused on him. He was pale and sweaty. Even when he was in complete drifter mode, he didn’t look this bad. Slowly, he pulled the door closed behind him and stumbled to the couch, collapsing sideways onto it.
“Are you okay?”
“Sorry, I’m late.” He flipped onto his back and put an arm over his eyes to block the overhead light. “Did Tim get suspicious?”
“I haven’t spoken to Tim today.” I put the items away and locked the door. “You don’t look so good.”
He laughed. “I don’t feel so good. I think I have the flu.”
“I thought you were checking out the crime scene. Don’t tell me you really took off for a night of partying?”
He pulled his arm away from his bloodshot eyes. “Don’t I wish. The crime scene and the body were six hours from each other. The commute was a total time suck.” Suddenly, he pushed himself up. “Bathroom,” he mumbled, crossing the room and barely closing the door before getting violently ill.
My stomach turned, but my constitution was strong enough to resist becoming susceptible to the suggestion. When he came out, I pointed to the bedroom. “Take the bed. You’re sick.”
He didn’t even protest. He just moved into the other room and dropped face first onto the mattress. While I went into the kitchen to get something to settle his stomach and keep him from dehydrating, he kicked off his shoes and got under the covers.
“I have to stop being such an overachiever,” he said when I came in with a cup of tea. “It takes real commitment to go to the lengths of contracting the flu just to sell a lie. I guess I wanted to be just like you.”
“It’s not a lie anymore.” I edged away from him. “And for the record, if I get sick, I’ll kill you.”
“Noted.” He closed his eyes, clearly exhausted and miserable. “I should update you on the situation.” The thought made him turn a shade greener.
“Unless it’s something that can’t wait, we’ll go over it tomorrow. Did you have the medical team at HQ check you out?”
“There wasn’t time. I wanted to get back before Tim started asking questions that you couldn’t answer.”
“How considerate.” Leaving the room, I returned with the bucket from under the sink. “Just in case you need this.” I placed it on the floor beside him. “If you need anything else, just yell. I’ll be in the other room. And there isn’t a chance in hell that I’ll clean up your puke, so don’t even ask.”
He let out a pained exhale. “Okay.”
Leaving the room, I gave the couch a tentative glance. I had too much to do, and sleeping on that uncomfortable excuse for a sofa wasn’t going to help matters. Rolling my eyes, I set up shop at the kitchen table, pulling out the gear and notes that I just stowed away.
I spent the next few hours analyzing Wilde’s web history. Ben had been kind enough to forward it to me, so I read through page after page of farming procedures and practices. While some of the articles had actual scientific value, it was the comment section that caught my attention. Wilde posted on several of the pages under an indecipherable handle. All of his messages were related to the article and completely innocuous, at least on the surface. However, this could easily be how he was transmitting encrypted messages.
He used several words repetitively, and he often listed quantities. In some instances, it was crop yield. Other times it was acres, fertilizer amount, and nutrient ratios. The list could go on for a while. Sitting back, I simplified the repetitive words, assigning each one a letter. Next, I wrote down the corresponding quantity, leaving off the unit of measure. He could be talking about kilos. He could also be talking about how much nitrogen to add to the soil.
Performing a search for the same set of words and values, I hoped to hit on something. Of course, Wilde’s posts filled the list, but the farther down I went, the more obscure the search results became. Realizing this wasn’t getting me anywhere, I logged into the DEA’s database, checking to see if they made any busts that corresponded to the numbers in any of the posts. I started with the oldest one that I could find.
At some point, my eyelids became heavy, and I decided to give up on the endeavor. Scribbling down the last entry I checked, I put the tablet and uplink into the false back of the kitchen cabinet and reviewed my notes again. We were missing something. What was it? I rested my head on my arm, and reread the page, but the words were no longer processing.
The sound of running water woke me, and I opened my eyes and stared at Decker who was rinsing out his mug in the sink. He didn’t look nearly as sickly as he did last night, but he wasn’t firing on all cylinders either. Lifting my head off my arm, I carefully straightened up, regretting having slept at the table, and decided that it was Decker’s fault for getting his flu germs on the couch.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I kept down the tea you gave me last night. And I just finished a cup of soup. We’ll see how it goes.” He rested his hips against the counter. “Didn’t you say you were going to sleep on the couch?”
“I changed my mind. I wasn’t sure how long it would take for the flu virus to jump off you and infect the sofa cushions.”
He snickered. “I didn’t realize you were a germophobe. That wasn’t indicated in your file or in any of your previous behaviors.” He pulled out a chair and sat down. “I’m pretty sure that’s not exactly how it spreads either. However, you’ll be pleased to know that I disinfected the bathroom this morning.”
“Great.” I stretched my shoulders and back, briefly nostalgic for one of Martin’s massages. “Since you’re feeling better, why don’t you tell me how your trip went?”
He set his jaw. “It was brutal. The latest victim was torn apart. I’m hoping she was dead before it happened. A lot of the damage was due to predation, but the knife marks were obvious. The fingerprints turned into a b
ust, but we actually matched the wound track to the other dead women. Whoever gutted them used the same knife.” He bit his bottom lip. “I know our latest victim was one of Wilde’s former followers. There haven’t been that many women who have left, maybe ten in the last nine months. That’s counting Anika. I have the possibilities narrowed down to two, possibly three, based on build and what was left of her facial features. The team will start there for the ID. We should know something soon.” He checked his phone as if to make sure he hadn’t slept through a call.
“Didn’t you say you weren’t leaving until you found something solid?”
He gave me a sad smile. “I did.” He scanned through the photos on the device, holding it toward me. “Recognize that? It’s part of one of the informational flyers Wilde hands out at the farmer’s market. It had some writing on it. Our techs are working on an analysis, but it’s the closest we’ve come to connecting this to Wilde’s cult.”
“Where’d you find it?”
Decker’s sad smile turned into a deep frown. “It was partially buried in the desert, fifteen feet from where the body was discovered. Stella already said that any decent defense attorney could have it thrown out as circumstantial. It isn’t our lynchpin, but it gives us every indication we’re on the right track.”
I looked down at my notes, remembering some of my wayward thoughts before falling asleep. “The only way we’re ever going to seal this deal is by getting upstairs, copying his records, and finding out where that staircase leads. So what the hell are we waiting for? How many more bodies have to turn up before someone gives us the go-ahead?” The anger was due to a lot of things, including lack of sleep. “If the DEA is happy just dicking around, tell me, so I can get approval from my superiors. I’m not going to sit on my hands any longer, Jace. Let’s get this ball rolling.”
“I agree. We only discovered the existence of these files less than a week ago, and we’re monitoring Tim’s computer activity and tracking his contacts. The ball is rolling. We’ll get those files soon enough. Trust me.”
“Can I?” My eyes searched his face. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem like I should.”
He actually grinned. “You’re so full of shit.” His eyes crinkled at the corners. “There’s no way in hell that’s true. You’d never say it if you really thought it.”
I shrugged, getting up to make some tea. It was the closest I’d get to caffeine, and I really needed the jolt. “Maybe I would.”
“You’re frustrated and annoyed. Probably tired too.”
“Exhausted.”
He continued to chuckle quietly. “Which is why you chose to work all night instead of sleep. I’m just a little unclear as to your motivation.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Is it because you’re driven by some unhealthy obsession with justice, or is it because you want to go home?”
“Neither. It’s because I’m tired of your pestering ways and psychobabble annoyances. Plus, I had to pick up your slack since you decided to go on a little vacation.”
“Then you must be thrilled that I caught some kind of stomach bug.”
“Not really, but it seems to have left your system pretty quickly. Are you sure it wasn’t food poisoning?”
“It could have been. I really don’t know. I started feeling off yesterday morning. I was sick most of the day, which made investigating pretty pointless, but it seemed to fizzle out after I got back last night. Maybe it was a twenty-four hour bug.”
“Let’s hope so.” I looked at the clock, realizing we were going to be late for the morning ritual. “I should head out. Are you staying here?”
He shook his head. “Tim will expect to see me, particularly when I haven’t been around for two days. I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a day without seeing him. I never had that long of a furlough. It’s nice having someone to watch my back.”
“I don’t take flattery well.”
“Yeah, I noticed. You don’t take most things well.”
“No, I don’t.”
Thirty-one
Things around the co-op continued to be erratic, but Decker was back to himself by the next day. The team identified the dead woman as Melanie Shaw. She had left the Church of Perpetual Light seven months ago. Before joining the ranks of the enlightened, she had been an investment banker. A few bad personal investments had reduced her amassed wealth from ten million to a million. And a SEC investigation into her private and professional trading cost her job. A very public divorce wiped out another fifty percent of her assets, and Tim took the rest. Decker remembered the announcement that she had left, supposedly to reconnect with her ex-husband, but he didn’t remember seeing her leave. Agent Eckhardt and the LAPD liaison spoke to the ex, but he hadn’t seen Melanie since the divorce. And he had an alibi for her TOD.
“When’s the team going to bust through the fence and start asking Wilde about her disappearance?” I asked. “We have an ID. She never went back with her husband. So Tim’s the last person that we know saw her alive. It’s logical. It makes sense.”
“It does.” Decker’s response was in agreement, but his tone hinted that it wasn’t going to happen. “But Wilde has an alibi for her estimated TOD.”
“Of course he does. Why wouldn’t he?”
Decker rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “Do you want to know who his alibi is?”
“You?”
Decker blew out a breath. “You can’t even begin to comprehend how much this sucks.” He sifted through the printouts and notations that had been piling up in our hidden compartment. “Farmer’s market starts in an hour. If Tim’s suspicious of your snooping upstairs, he hasn’t let on to me. He has checked the circuit breaker a few times, so I’m hoping that the random power disruptions saved your ass because in an hour we’re breaking into that room and scanning every file we find.”
“We? Didn’t you ban me from the upper level?”
“Stop being a martyr. My orders aren’t intended to punish you, and you know that. That being said, you will listen and obey. If I tell you to get out of there, you get out of there. Is that clear? There’s no ‘give me five seconds’. We go when I say we do. Or are we going to have a problem?”
“No problem, sir.”
He smirked, hearing the disdain in my voice. “Go outside and help Sarah with the baked goods. Once the table is ready and customers come in, slip away and meet me in the dining hall.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
“Now you sound like Scotty from Star Trek.”
“But I didn’t even use a Scottish accent.” Bumping the table with my fist, I met his eyes. “I’ll see you soon.”
As usual, the weekend was a busy event. The townsfolk and hipsters from the inner city and surrounding areas would stop by to shop for artisanal, farm fresh offerings. The honey was always a big seller, as were the fresh herbs, baked goods, and various folksy trinkets. I doubted that any of the patrons realized this co-op was a cult in disguise. Even when Tim started preaching and passing out pamphlets, I think they thought he was just one of the vendors setting up shop. It probably worked in his favor or else his clientele would likely diminish.
Once the table was set, I snuck back to the main building. Decker was eating an apple in the dining hall while watching Hannah and Dana hurry about the kitchen. I took a seat beside him, relaxing against him when he put an arm around my shoulders.
“Why are you eating that?” I asked in a lovesick tone.
He chuckled. “I had to do something.” When Dana stepped out of the kitchen, Jace asked if they needed any help, but she took one look at the two of us, blushed slightly, and shook her head. “I’m surprised none of the women have tried to kill you yet. In case you didn’t realize it, I was a very hot commodity before you took me off the market.”
“Sure, you were.” I watched as Hannah traded out the unbaked goods for the freshly made treats. As soon as the timer was set, they marched out of the kitchen, armed with pastry boxes brimming with croissants, muffins, and cookies. “Ready?�
�
He strained to hear the sound of the front door before standing up. “Let’s move.”
Before we left the dining hall, he activated the mini EMP, shorting out the lights and the ovens. The ladies would be so pissed. We continued out of the room, toward the rear of the building. Taking a left, we went up the stairs and down the hallway without missing a beat. Tim was outside, and at the moment, the coast was clear.
“File room,” I said, pointing to the door as we moved past it. I didn’t bother pointing out the storage space. Leading the way to the end of the hallway, I knelt down, pulling my lock picks from inside the ankle brace. “Time me.” After twenty seconds, the lock popped, and I pushed the door open an inch. Stepping inside, I made sure we were alone. “Clear.”
Decker pushed the door closed behind us, scanning the room for signs of a struggle. The spots remained on the rug, but the bed had been made. He went past it, moving toward the only other door in the room. Removing the gun he had hidden beneath his untucked shirt, he twisted the knob and opened the door. The staircase led into a dark abyss. Pulling a tiny flashlight from his pocket, he turned to me. “Wait here.”
While he went exploring, I studied the room and searched the furniture. A few minutes later, he returned, tucked the flashlight away, and wiped his palms on his pants. Then he went to the bed and carefully pulled down the covers. When he revealed the sheets, he looked up at me. The stains were gone, and I wasn’t certain they had been the same set I’d seen the prior week.
“They had the same specks as the rug,” I insisted. While he remade the bed, I knelt down, photographing the spots. Decker joined me, using his knife to cut a piece of the stained carpet for further testing. After placing it inside an evidence bag and stuffing it in his pocket, he helped me search the rest of the furniture.
“The stairs lead to a series of tunnels,” he said, not bothering to glance up. “The ground is dirt, and so are the walls. There’s minimal lighting, and reinforced frames are supporting the structure to prevent a collapse. I don’t know where they lead, but they must run beneath this building. Last week, I checked the basement, but there were no hidden rooms or trapdoors.”
