by Polly Iyer
Yet.
“So allegedly, Maia Compton drove them in,” he said. “Did she drive them out too?”
“Here’s where it gets a little fuzzy. They vaulted the fence and sprinted to a car they’d parked somewhere on the street, put the metal to the pedal, and took off.”
“Where was the guard?”
“Apparently, he didn’t notice them until they were over the fence. He’s more concerned with people going in, not going out.”
“So who brought them in?” Lucier asked.
“A patrol car caught them tearing down Canal Street toward Convention Center Boulevard like they had a jet engine under the hood. When they started ranting about Compton, the officer brought ’em here.”
“Where are they?”
“Interrogation. They’re so psyched both are going to need tranquilizers. I can’t understand what they’re trying to tell us, but their story sounds like they’ve seen aliens from outer space.”
“Shit. I’ve had enough of Silas Compton, his wife, and Brother Osiris to last me till I’m on Depends.”
Lucier peeked through the one-way glass of the interrogation room.
“The older one’s Johnny Meade,” Beecher said. “He’s got a few marks, mostly mischief, a couple of drunk charges. Nothing serious. The jitterbugger is Antony Hall. He’s clean.”
Meade hunched motionless over the table, his head buried under a tangle of long, stringy hair and arms, one of which was decorated with a barbed-wire bracelet tattoo. Hall, a smorgasbord of Louisiana ethnicities, fidgeted in his chair, every part of his scrawny body in motion―tapping or rocking or jerking. Both men snapped to attention when Lucier and Beecher entered.
Meade catapulted off his chair. “You’ve got to protect us,” he said. “There are freaking monsters in that house. They came after us.”
Hall jumped at Lucier at the same time, grabbing his shirt and pulling him close. “Yeah, brother, put us in protective custody, witness protection, or something. I ain’t going out there again.”
Lucier wanted to assure them that breaking into Compton’s house guaranteed they wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. “Okay, calm down. Tell me what happened.”
Both started talking at once.
“Hold on. Meade, you go first.” He pointed Hall to his seat. “You’ll have your chance after.” Hall opened his mouth, but one look at Lucier and he clamped it shut.
“I met Compton’s daughter in a bar. She―”
“Which daughter?” Lucier interrupted.
“Maia. She came on to me like I was Brad Pitt or someone. The―”
“What bar?” Beecher asked.
“Juno’s in the Quarter. A lot of hot women go there after work.”
Beecher snickered.
Lucier took a seat on the other side of the table. “Was she alone or did she come in with someone.”
“She always came in alone, ordered that pink drink. What’s the name of it?”
“Cosmopolitan?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Okay, go on.”
“This woman is blonde, beautiful, and built. I didn’t know who she was, I swear. She never told me her last name until later. Shit, I didn’t care. When a broad like that hits on you, you don’t ask questions. You go with the flow, know what I mean?”
“You mean like how come a gorgeous babe would hit on a skank like you?” Beecher said.
Meade jerked his head back and stuck out his chin. “Hey, I don’t need the insults. A lot of women come on to me. I got sex appeal.”
Beecher snorted, glanced sideways at Lucier.
If this concerned anyone other than Compton, Lucier might have found the humor. But it did, and he didn’t. “She came on to you and then what happened?”
“We got to talking. I couldn’t get my eyes off her…you know. She kept pushing those babies in my face like I was supposed to do something with them. I wanted to, you know.” Meade looked at both cops as if he expected agreement. “Anyways, we met a few times at the same bar, and one day she brought up her father’s art collection. She said she hated her old man―something to do with her mother―and this was the best way to get at him because he loved his paintings more than his kids. It was worth a fortune and she knew someone who’d pay a lot of money for whatever she could get her hands on. Oh, Jesus.”
Meade ran his fingers through his greasy hair while he kept his eyes steady on Lucier. Sweat trickled down his sideburns to his neck and onto his tee shirt, already ringed with dark underarm stains. “Look, before we say anything more, if we tell you what we saw, you’ll give us a deal, right? I mean, we didn’t do nothing. You can’t put people in jail for thinking about doing a crime, can you?”
Hall bobbed his head in agreement, muttering something under his breath.
The two didn’t have half a brain between them, Lucier thought. “Depends on what you tell us, and if Ms. Compton backs up your story.” But why would Maia Compton admit to robbing her father? Two facts bolstered their story. First, the two jerkoffs couldn’t have passed through the gate without help. And second, why would anyone admit to attempted robbery unless they were telling the truth? Logic told Lucier that Maia Compton did what they said, but why? The security tapes might shed light on the answer. If he could get his hands on them―which he seriously doubted.
“Start from the beginning,” Lucier said.
Hall pushed Meade aside. “The woman, Maia, said no one’d be home. We got inside, and while Johnny checked out the paintings, I thought I heard music coming from the basement. Not music, really, but like the music I heard in church when I used to go, but different.”
“Different how?” Beecher asked.
“Like, I don’t know, like chanting kinda, but not the same thing.”
Lucier and Beecher exchanged glances. “What happened then?”
“I opened the door and went down the stairs. It was dark except for red lights, like a brothel.” He caught himself. “N-n-not that I’ve ever been in one.” He rubbed the sweat off his forehead. “When my eyes adjusted, it looked like fucking Halloween down there. People with masks like monsters. They were in a circle around something in the middle. I couldn’t see what. Shit, I didn’t want to see; I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I started to creep back up the stairs when one of ’em saw me. He pointed and everything stopped. I spooked and leaped the stairs three at a time, yelling to Johnny to let’s get the fuck out of there.”
All during Hall’s version, Johnny Meade sputtered and stuttered, waiting his turn. “I thought he was kidding. Then one of the monsters burst through the door after Tony. I didn’t wait another second. I shot out of there like a cannon and even passed Tony.”
“Yeah, almost pushing me to the ground.”
“Calm down,” Beecher said. “We got time.”
“Did anyone say anything? Yell at you to stop?”
Both men ranted at the same time. Words ran over words into a cacophony of confusion. Lucier couldn’t keep track.
“Yeah the guard yelled something like stop or I’ll shoot,” Johnny said, “but I don’t think he had a gun. Anyways, I wasn’t about to turn around to find out. We just ran the hell down the street.”
Then both said different versions of “I’ve never been so fucking scared in my whole life.”
“Okay.” Lucier stepped in between them, hands raised in a cease-fire. “One at a time. How many people would you say were there?”
“I don’t know,” Hall said. “A dozen, maybe. It was too dark, and I wasn’t about to count heads.”
“Where was Maia during this?”
Sweat dripped off Meade’s nose and on to his soaked T-shirt. Both men reeked, and Lucier thought he would retch from the smell.
“I don’t know. One minute she was standing right beside me, but when Tony came running and yelled about monsters, she disappeared. I wasn’t gonna hang around to see where she was neither.”
“Me either. I was too busy running for my life,” H
all said. “The guard in the gatehouse was facing the street and didn’t see us until we’d climbed over. He tried to stop us, but we were gone.”
“I’d never run so fast in my life,” Meade said. “You can’t let them get us. Them people in there are crazy.”
Lucier would have thought their story fantasy, except for the red lights and the chanting. The image eerily mirrored Diana’s dream. He’d filled Beecher in on the dream and caught him nodding as he recognized the same scenario.
“You said you went there in Ms. Compton’s car. How did you get away without a car?”
“Johnny went with her. I followed in his car. I don’t have one.” He stopped at Lucier’s expression. “I have a license, though, in case you’re thinking I don’t.”
“Driving without a license is the least of your problems,” Beecher said. “Keep going.”
“I parked his car a couple of streets over in the Quarter,” Tony said, “then got in hers. We hid in the back seat, hidden by the dark windows.”
“Okay, guys, sit tight,” Lucier said. “Someone will be in shortly to take your statements. Tell him everything you told us, without the hysterics. What the people looked like, the music, everything. Understand? I’ll be back later.”
“You’re not gonna let us go, are you? We need protection.”
“Oh, don’t worry. You’re not going anywhere.”
They were still yammering when Lucier closed the door. He and Beecher stood at the glass and watched the two men. He flicked on the speaker and heard them rant about monsters and chanting and the double-crossing Maia. He shut it off.
“What do you think?” Beecher asked.
“They saw what they saw. They’re too scared and stupid to make that up.”
“They walked into a satanic meeting?”
“Sounds like it. Bottom line is that Silas Compton is free to have any kind of meeting he wants in his own house. That’s a right guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. We might not like what he practices, but he has every right to practice it.”
“Yeah, I see what you mean.”
“I have to approach this need carefully. I don’t want the department slapped with a harassment suit.” Lucier shook his head in disgust. “Diana just about accused Compton of complicity in a satanic cult the other night, and that implicated him to the kidnappings. He wasn’t happy then; he’ll be pissed when this lands on his doorstep, especially with these two involving his daughter.
“What do I say to him? ‘Um, excuse me, Mr. Compton, but does your daughter hate you enough to hire two nitwits to steal your paintings?’ Can you imagine what Compton’s lawyers would do with those two? By the time they finished questioning them, they’d be ready for a padded room.” Lucier headed toward his office. “There’s only one way to clear this up.”
“What’s that, Ernie?”
“Maia Compton.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The Age of Defiance
Maia Compton stared straight ahead, avoiding the glaring eyes of her stepmother. She hated Selene even more than she feared her. She hated Selene’s parents, too, the king and queen of evil who spawned the princess witch. And she hated her father for being so weak. Hate worked both ways. Selene hated her. The feelings had been mutual from the beginning. Dione felt the same way, but she kept her loathing private, playing the role of obedient daughter.
Both had been indoctrinated into the “culture.” Maia conformed, contributing to the group’s master race―until she found out about the kidnappings. Now her unforgivable acquiescence tore her apart. She’d rebelled by needling her father about her brother, a retarded child who died in a tragic accident. So much for the Comptons’ superior bloodline. The petty provocation left her feeling more guilty than victorious.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Selene said.
“No one was supposed to be home,” Maia replied.
“That makes it right? Bringing two outsiders into the house is against all the rules, and for what? To steal millions of dollars of your father’s art collection. What happens if they go to the police and bring you into their story?”
Maia kept silent. Her father’s fury showed red on his face, and his jaw worked as he clenched his teeth, but he spoke not a word. Selene ran the show, as always, even before the day her mother, in a desperate state of depression, threw herself out the window of a sixteen-story hotel. Silas had never been discreet. How much did his betrayal contribute to her mother’s suicide?
As soon as Silas’s public grieving subsided, his relationship with Selene went from gossip to front-page news in the society section. Silas possessed all the attributes the Cranes sought, primarily a brilliant opportunist who’d do anything to get what he wanted. They tempted him with more riches than their young, beautiful daughter. Silas didn’t stand a chance. What man would? Even Diana Racine’s cop lover fell under Selene’s spell. Five minutes alone with Lieutenant Lucier in the bedroom, and Selene would have him panting for more. The psychic saw it too.
Maia looked at her father and thrust out her chin in defiance. Silas Compton personified the iron man―the big Libertarian industrialist and philanthropist. If people only knew that Selene had his dick tied around her little finger and tugged him along like a lap dog. To Silas’s credit, if she went too far, he stopped her, creating a tug-of-war control game that appealed to them both. Selene used sex to get what she wanted, from whomever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and Silas got his rocks off watching. From the moment she became Mrs. Silas Compton, she taught Maia and Dione to do the same. Her own children, secret to the world except for the group, didn’t stand a chance. Selene and her parents taught them from birth, then sent them off to the compound. But Selene couldn’t get rid of Silas’s young daughters as easily. They were a known fact of life.
Maia closed her ears to Selene’s verbal lashing. Silas sat tight-lipped. Maia braced herself for when he calmed enough to speak.
Why didn’t she go to the police the moment she learned about the first kidnapping? Why enlist Johnny and his twitching friend to do something so stupid? Even now she couldn’t believe it had ever entered her mind.
Now what? She’d certified her own exile. They would send her to the compound and put her through a series of indoctrination exercises. Only this time they’d keep her there, like Martin Easley’s son, Cal, and like Anat, the only one of Selene’s daughters with an independent streak. How Maia envied their courage and wished she were like them. She’d have her chance now, because she’d be with them, ostracized from society.
Silas would explain her absence by saying she was troubleshooting his business problems. That’s what he did whenever Maia and Dione went to the compound. Why not? Who would Silas send if not his own daughters? Both women were brilliant, knew the business inside out, and favored by the Middle Eastern men with whom Silas did business.
Maia tuned back in. Selene moved to Silas, ran her fingers through his thick salt and pepper hair, and whispered something in his ear. Then she spoke loud enough for Maia to hear. “We must send her away, Silas? After what she pulled, what’s to stop her from exposing us?”
“How could you, Maia?” Silas said, speaking for the first time. “You leave me no choice, especially now with the Racine woman and her police lieutenant in the picture.”
“Not to go over this again, darling,” Selene said, caressing his shoulders, “but you should have listened to me. Drugging Diana Racine before she got to the house was stupid. She’ll never come for another reading now. I told you to wait until―”
“Shut up, Selene. She’ll come. She’s too curious not to.”
Bristling at Silas’s tone, Selene quickly recaptured her composure. “Yes, but not without the cop. She―”
“I said, shut up.”
This time Selene froze, cheeks flushed. A momentary wave of triumph filled Maia when her father showed some balls. It wouldn’t last. Not after Selene unzipped his pants. Her stepmother knew what to do. She eased her b
ody into his, rubbing, undulating.
“She goaded us in front of my parents and everyone else. They didn’t like that.”
“Tell her, Maia,” Silas said. “Tell her you won’t say anything.”
“I won’t say anything.”
Selene glared at Maia but held her voice steady. “At least speak with some conviction, dear. What will you say when the cops come to the door and ask about the two men you invited to our home, huh, Maia?”
She should have said it with more assurance, but she couldn’t. The thought of begging to Selene made her stomach turn over. She’d rather be banished. “What men? It’s their word against mine, isn’t it? Who’ll believe two street bums over Silas Compton’s daughter?” She purposely didn’t say Silas and Selene Compton’s daughter. She wasn’t Selene’s daughter. Never was.
“This is a question for the group,” Selene said. “She put us in jeopardy. We all should decide what to do.”
Selene nuzzled her face into the crook of Compton’s neck and ran her hand down his torso and over his crotch. She smiled smugly at Maia and left.
Silas, his face flushed, seemed flustered, then rallied his self-control. “Why, Maia? You have everything you could possibly want. Why endanger the group like that?”
“You really don’t know, do you? You’re so blinded by that woman you can’t see what you’ve done. What did Phillip Crane offer you all those years ago besides his daughter, Father? Was it money or sexual pleasure that made you drive my mother to suicide and sell your soul and the souls of your children? Tell me, because I have to know.”
The strike across her face came swiftly and forcefully, knocking Maia into the table and onto the floor. Her stinging cheek brought tears to her eyes.
“You will never speak to me like that again, do you understand?”
Compton approached her, offering his hand to help her up. She shrugged him off.
A pained expression twisted his face, and he stepped back. “I’ve never told you this―you and your sister were just children at the time, toddlers―but your mother was a disturbed woman, unable to handle the pressures and guilt born along with a retarded child. From the moment we found out Crane wasn’t normal, she blamed herself, thinking she’d done something during her pregnancy. She slowly sank into a far-off place, unable to give you and Dione the attention you deserved.”
