“I’m sorry to drop in like this. It’s an intrusion—”
“Of course it is not,” she said serenely, and opened the door wide. “Please come in.”
Roarke stepped into a long, high hallway with theatrical lighting. Singh took his overcoat to hang in the closet; then he followed her past what he was vaguely aware was interesting abstract art hung on the soaring walls.
She stepped through into the main living area, a sweeping two-story loft space, and turned to him. “May I get you coffee?”
“Coffee would be great,” he admitted.
“If you will excuse me,” she said. She moved through a door into what he assumed was the kitchen; he had never been farther inside than the entry hall before.
He walked around the room. It seemed vast, clean, like a particularly well-laid-out gallery or museum. There were clusters of furniture creating living and conversation spaces, but most notably there was art: huge canvases and sculptures of both abstract and classic themes; medieval iconography, aboriginal art, strange surrealistic installations. There was one work in the corner that drew him, a statue in an alcove cut into the wall. He moved toward it, and an odd feeling was building in his gut even before he reached the wall.
Inside the oval space was an altar, with lit votive candles in front of an idol: a black-skinned, four-armed figure with facial features contorted into a fearsome grimace. Her foot was planted on the body of a headless man lying naked and prone on the ground. She brandished a bloody, curved sword in one hand while raising the severed head in another, and a necklace of skulls hung around her neck.
Roarke felt his stomach flip. Not quite Santa Muerte, but familiar, and just as menacing. He stared down in confusion, fixed on the candles surrounding the sculpture. They were burned down to a quarter of their original length. Not new.
His eyes moved again to the statue’s curved sword . . .
The bright-burning candles flickered, and a voice spoke from behind. “Kali Ma.”
Roarke turned his head to see Singh in the doorway, watching him from the shadows.
She looked behind him to the idol. “She is called the Destroyer. But she is also known as the Redeemer. I have been meditating on her. To better understand the force that is Santa Muerte. They are the same, in essence. Kali’s earliest incarnation was as an annihilator of evil forces.”
The atmosphere was so charged that Roarke felt a prickling of alarm. Singh moved farther into the room, and there was an agitation in her that he had never seen before.
“I believe in the existence of evil, of course. It is manifest in every aspect of our work. I would like to believe there is also some counterforce to the dark.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be God?” he asked, partly to break the hypnotic flow of her words. His own voice sounded hollow in the industrial space.
She looked ironic. “The Christian god, you mean? A single, male deity?” She turned toward the altar, and the shadows from the flames played across her face. “Most of the rest of the world finds that metaphor . . . limiting.”
“I get that,” Roarke said. He did. At the same time, he felt cold. He wasn’t sure how much of the conversation was real.
“There have been a dozen blogs from Bitch today. By my analysis, they come from at least seven different authors.” Roarke stared at her. She lifted her shoulders. “There is a new metaphor now.”
A new metaphor. A new road.
Roarke looked away from Singh, at the savage face of the idol, and the chill deepened in him.
Behind him, in the hall, he heard the sound of a key turning and the door opening. He twisted toward Singh. The look on her face was something uninterpretable. And his pulse was suddenly pounding, his breath short.
Someone close to you is lying.
Footsteps moved in the hall, approaching. Roarke automatically, instinctively, reached for the weapon in his shoulder holster . . .
Epps walked through the doorway. He carried a bag of groceries in the crook of his arm. A bouquet of flowers stuck out of the brown paper, and he held a bottle of wine in his other hand.
The candles flickered in the altar as Roarke looked from one agent to the other in complete disbelief.
And then he understood.
Epps nodded to Singh, the briefest of gestures, and without a word Singh took the grocery bag from him and disappeared into the kitchen.
Then he turned. Before Roarke could ask, “How long—” Epps said, “August.”
Roarke stared at him, stupefied. Four months. Five. They’ve been together all this time . . .
His agent shook his head. “You—are a damn fool. I am not.”
Through the shock of it, Roarke realized Epps was right. It all made perfect sense, and it had all been going on under his nose, and he hadn’t seen a thing. He grasped for balance, for the right thing to say.
“I should have known. I can’t believe I didn’t know. I’m happy for you. I just worry that—”
Epps held up a hand. His face was ominous. “If you say one word about this affecting the quality of our work, you’re a bigger hypocrite than I thought.”
Roarke felt himself bristling, but there was no way Epps wasn’t right. He nodded.
Epps lifted the bottle. “Now I’m going to open this wine. We’ve got shit to do.”
Chapter 61
Santa Cruz: one of the last true counterculture bastions. A crescent of glimmering bay with its famous boardwalk and amusement park, a coastal town that since the sixties has happily drawn more than its share of freaks, hippies, surf rats, cultists, druggies, punks, environmental hard-liners, and other elements of the extreme left.
The social worker called Rachel walks under the holiday lights strung across Pacific Avenue, the city’s central strip. And Cara follows her at a discreet distance.
Now that they are here, the setting seems inevitable. There is a Main Street sense to this drag, with its brick sidewalks, antique streetlamps, and plate-glass windows decorated for the holidays in twinkle lights and fiberglass snow and mechanized toys and dreamy angels. But the psychedelia of the Haight is also here, reflected in the more outré window decorations, and there is a similar war between upscale boutiques and funky dives: the head shops and record stores and used clothing stores fighting to hold their ground against the Gap and Urban Outfitters and Starbucks.
Cara is cautious, but efficiently disguised in her bulky wool sweater and wool hat, and so far the social worker is completely unaware of her, caught up in her own mission. After all, there are many strollers doing their Christmas shopping along the avenue, and other camouflaging distractions: musicians, jugglers, the ever-present panhandlers, the endlessly pacing schizophrenics—the street is a haven for the mentally ill as well.
And there are the street children. Ragged, dreadlocked teenagers in big thrift store coats. Runaways and addicts, drawn by the magic of the town, the hippie dream. So many of them. So seemingly invisible to the affluent Christmas shoppers.
It is these waifs that occupy the social worker’s attention.
She has a photo she is showing to the huddled groups of teens on the street. Cara must give her credit: the street kids show very little wariness at her approach. The woman knows how to talk to them: she maintains an intent focus on their responses, is easily able to solicit information with a few words. A natural in this environment. Comfortable on the street. She can move here almost without notice.
And she is closing in on her prey.
Cara watches and follows, feeling a convergence of destiny.
For the first time, she sees the glimmer of a way out.
Chapter 62
The three agents sat in one of the conversation clusters, glasses of wine on the geometric curve of table in front of them. But the wine had gone untouched.
Instead, the agents were fixed on the television screen,
watching news images of reporters standing on street corners, beside statues of saints surrounded by offerings.
Different reporters. Different cities. And the same shrines, over and over again. Appeals to Santa Muerte.
“That’s it,” Roarke said. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. “It’s gone viral.”
But for the first time in days, he also felt the stirrings of purpose. He rose and walked the room, too tired to sit, too wired to stand still. “We have to regroup. Right here, right now. We can’t solve it all. It’s too much.”
His agents looked at him, shocked—and wary. He’d probably never said anything like it, officially, in his life. But given what Singh had outlined about the various new blogs trumpeting the “call to arms,” given what they were seeing on television, he knew it was true.
“It’s too many jurisdictions already. We can only focus on what we can control.” He spread his hands. “So what can we do? What’s the most important thing?”
In his own mind he saw Rachel’s wall of lost girls. And across from him Singh and Epps looked at each other and spoke in one voice, without hesitation. “Jade.”
“Exactly,” Roarke said. “Jade.”
Everyone in her life had failed her. All of society had failed her. But against all odds, this lost girl had decided to strike back.
“We have to . . .”
Stop her wasn’t what he was thinking at all. What he wanted to say was: Save her. Pull her back from the brink. He didn’t know if it was possible. Maybe they were past the brink already.
But he looked across the room at his agents, and he knew from their faces he didn’t have to say it.
“Do right by her,” Epps said softly, and Singh looked at him, without moving, but Roarke had the impression she had just reached over and touched his hand.
“Right,” Roarke said. “So from here on in, that’s what we’re doing.”
They ordered dinner in from a Thai restaurant, with Roarke and Epps watching the clock; Mills had called the stakeout for ten thirty that evening. Mills and Jones would be working Inty; the detective had given Roarke and Epps the Tenderloin beat to give the agents more time off before they had to report.
Singh was curled on a sofa with her long black hair down and her legs tucked up under her. Epps sat back in an armchair next to her.
The two of them did not touch, but there was no way for Roarke not to notice the way they looked at each other in the low light.
It’s not some office thing. This is the way it’s supposed to be. And what he felt was pure envy.
But also, he was experiencing a welcome sense of relief. The air had cleared between the three of them. The interpersonal tension was gone, and they finally had a laser focus: Find Jade.
The question was, how?
“If we can separate out which killings are hers . . .” Singh suggested.
“We don’t even know that she’s done any of them, let alone all of them,” Epps pointed out.
The three of them sat in silence, looking at one another.
Dead end? Roarke fought a sick feeling of despair. Was there really no place for them to go?
Epps spoke suddenly. “Here it is. Let’s place our bets.”
Singh tilted her head to look at him. “You mean, guess?”
“Educated guesses,” he told her.
She considered, and nodded. “Yes. I see.” Roarke did, too. They needed a breakthrough, and they needed a plan. Sometimes you just had to roll the dice.
Epps started. “The Salinas kills are Cara’s. We can take those off the table, at least.”
Roarke said slowly, “Jade killed DeShawn Butler. She had motive. And the timing—she disappeared that night and he ends up dead. It’s too precise.”
“Agreed,” Epps said tensely.
Singh spoke next. “Goldman, the john in the Tenderloin, was a rapist. And Hungman—Wilson—places Jade there on the street cruising the night of his death. I believe that killing was Jade as well.”
Roarke nodded, but he had a sick feeling. Two men that she had killed, almost certainly. How they were going to keep her out of prison for life was a question he didn’t want to contemplate.
“Agreed,” Epps said. “Those two.”
“And the pimp shot in his car last night?”
“Not Jade,” Singh said, and Roarke saw her look toward her altar with the statue of Kali. “The gun and the offerings are completely different in those killings.”
Roarke spoke slowly. “Wait a minute. Let’s think this through. We know Cara did the Salinas kills, at the truck stop. And I think that was partly because of Jade. She was covering for her. Getting us away from the city and away from Jade; confusing the investigation by adding similar murders to the mix. And the second Inty kill, the john, is also classic Cara. She killed Danny Ramirez because of Jade. Now she’s covering for her.”
Epps looked at him. “You’re saying last night Jade shot the pimp, and then Cara killed the monger and left the offerings to confuse the issue.”
Roarke paused. The gun was the one thing he wasn’t sure about.
“Jade could get a gun,” he argued. “Anyone can get anything on these streets. It’s a hell of a lot easier to kill someone with a gun than with a straight razor. And why would Cara leave the offerings if not to cover for Jade?”
“Perhaps to confuse things in general,” Singh said. She turned away from the statue to face the men. “So let us not allow ourselves to be confused. We have multiple killers. I believe there is a mature woman—or women—with a political purpose, who could be Erin McNally, or the blogger, or someone else entirely.”
“And she’s the shooter, you mean,” Epps said, and Singh nodded toward him.
“Yes. She, or possibly they, shot the pimp in the alley and left the offerings to tie that killing to Santa Muerte. Then there is Cara, with her own motivations. And there is Jade. A young girl who has been wronged in the extreme and is fighting back. We must focus on Jade only.”
Roarke realized she was right.
Singh continued. “DeShawn Butler. The Tenderloin trick, Goldman. They are men Jade knew, men who had abused her. Those two are not random targets. They are personal.”
Roarke looked to Epps, who nodded tensely. “Agreed.”
“Which means if she kills again, it is likely to be someone she knows,” Singh summed up.
Suddenly Roarke remembered. “Rachel said something about teachers. That Jade is good at math, and a teacher would remember a girl with her looks and math skills.”
Epps shook his head. “And how many teachers are there in the California school system? How many kids?” The same question Mills had asked. “It’s a needle in a haystack.”
“Perhaps not so difficult,” Singh said. “There are teacher forums online. Listservs as well, where we could post queries to teachers and librarians.”
Roarke sensed Singh was right, and it was a shortcut to what Mills had been unable to find out. At the same time, he had a sinking feeling.
“We don’t have that kind of time.”
The agents looked at one other, at a loss.
So what now? Roarke thought. What the hell do we do now?
Chapter 63
The fog drifts sluggishly between the gleaming vehicles. The air reeks of exhaust and the stench of malevolence.
He stands in the shadows, smoking, waiting.
Another bus will be here soon, and he is on the lookout for flesh.
They flock to this town, the young ones with their backpacks and their hope and their desperation. So easy. Easy to spot, with the marks on their bodies and on their souls. With their tentative steps when they stagger on travel-numb legs toward the street.
Easy pickings.
He waits and he watches.
He does not know he is being watched, too.
Tonight, the moon sees him.
He never sees it coming.
Chapter 64
Roarke stood in Singh’s granite-tiled shower letting water pour over him, as hot as he could get it. A desperate attempt to freshen up—to wake up—before the stakeout. For better or worse, they had not come up with an alternate plan.
By the time he had dressed and walked back into the living room, Singh was on the phone, while Epps paced tensely.
She listened to whoever it was on the phone, and her eyes were darker than night. She spoke into the phone, “Thank you. I will call back.” She disconnected and looked to the men.
“It is the Santa Cruz police department. A man has been discovered dead at the bus station downtown. His throat was slashed.”
The three looked at one another.
“It is two hours out of town. Cara?” Singh asked.
Is it? Roarke wondered.
“Or—” Epps started, then stopped. None of the three agents wanted to say it.
Or are the Santa Muerte murders spreading?
Roarke had a sudden, awful vision of copycat killings popping up in multiple states.
And yet . . .
“Santa Cruz,” Roarke said aloud. “It’s a magnet for runaways. Homeless kids. Kids like Jade.”
And where there were homeless teens, there was prostitution; there was rarely any other way for runaway kids to make a living.
“Guy was killed at the bus station,” Roarke added. He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Bus stations were classic trolling grounds, a preferred pickup spot for pimps everywhere. They cruised the stations, grabbed runaways right off the bus.
“So this could be Jade.” Singh’s face was tense.
“Or Cara could be trying to draw us away from the stakeout again.” Roarke looked at Epps, knew the other agent was considering the same thing.
“I say we go,” Epps said suddenly.
Roarke turned to Singh. “You’ll have to explain to Mills.”
Cold Moon (The Huntress/FBI Thrillers Book 3) Page 27
