Satan’s Lambs

by Lynn Hightower

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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF LYNN HIGHTOWER

  “Lynn Hightower is a major talent.” —Jonathan Kellerman, New York Times–bestselling author

  “Hightower is a writer of tremendous quality.” —Library Journal

  PRAISE FOR THE SONORA BLAIR MYSTERIES

  Flashpoint

  “Diabolically intriguing from start to finish.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Miraculously fresh and harrowing.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Rings with gritty authenticity. You won’t be able to put it down and you won’t want to sleep again. Riveting.” —Lisa Scottoline, New York Times–bestselling author

  Eyeshot

  “Hightower has invented a heroine who is both flawed and likeable, and she knows how to keep the psychological pressure turned up high.” —The Sunday Telegraph

  “What gives [Eyeshot] depth and resonance is the way Hightower counterpoints the murder plot with the details of Sonora’s daily life in homicide.” —Publishers Weekly

  No Good Deed

  “Powerful, crisply paced.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Refreshingly different … A cracking tale told at a stunning pace.” —Frances Fyfield

  The Debt Collector

  “Hightower builds the suspense to an almost unbearable pitch.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Well-written and satisfyingly plotted. Best of all is Sonora herself—a feisty babe who packs a red lipstick along with her gun.” —The Times (London)

  PRAISE FOR THE ELAKI NOVELS

  “The crimes are out of The Silence of the Lambs, the cops out of Lethal Weapon, and the grimy future out of Blade Runner … Vivid and convincing.” —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “One of the best new series in the genre!” —Science Fiction Chronicle

  Alien Blues

  “Hightower takes the setup and delivers a grittily realistic and down-and-dirty serial killer novel.… Impressive … A very promising first novel.” —Locus

  “Brilliantly entertaining. I recommend it highly. A crackerjack novel of police detection and an evocative glimpse of a possible future.” —Nancy Pickard, bestselling author of I.O.U.

  “[The] cast of characters is interesting and diverse, the setting credible, and the pacing rapid-fire and gripping.” —Science Fiction Chronicle

  “An exciting, science-fictional police procedural with truly alien aliens … An absorbing, well-written book.” —Aboriginal Science Fiction

  “Truly special … Original characters, plot twists galore, in a book that can be enjoyed for its mystery aspects as well as its SF … A real treat.” —Arlene Garcia

  “Hightower shows both humans and Elaki as individuals with foibles and problems. Alien Blues provides plenty of fast-paced action.… An effective police drama.” —SF Commentary

  “Hightower tells her story with the cool efficiency of a Mafia hit man.… With its lean, matter-of-fact style, cliff-hanger chapter endings and plentiful (and often comic) dialogue, Alien Blues moves forward at warp speed!” —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “A great story … Fast and violent … Difficult to put down!” —Kliatt

  “An intriguing world!” —Analog Science Fiction and Fact

  Alien Eyes

  “Alien Eyes is a page-turner.… Fun, fast-moving … A police procedural in a day-after-tomorrow world.” —Lexington Herald-Leader

  “Hightower takes elements of cyberpunk and novels about a benevolent alien invasion and combines them with a gritty realism of a police procedural to make stories that are completely her own.… A believable future with a believable alien culture … Interesting settings, intriguing ideas, fascinating characters [and] a high level of suspense!” —Turret

  “Complex … Snappy … Original.” —Asimov’s Science Fiction

  “The sequel to the excellent Alien Blues [is] a very fine SF novel.… I’m looking forward to the next installment!” —Science Fiction Chronicle

  Satan’s Lambs

  A Lena Padget Mystery

  Lynn Hightower

  This book is dedicated

  to my sister, Rebecca.

  1

  We’re poor little lambs

  Who’ve lost our way.…

  We’re little black sheep

  Who’ve gone astray.

  —“Gentlemen Rankers,” Ballads and Barrack Room Ballads,

  Rudyard Kipling

  Lambs could not forgive … nor

  worms forget.

  —Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens

  Lena knew the doorbell was going to ring. Mendez would come. He would tell her in person. She said “Thanks” softly to the woman on the other end of the phone, then hung up and waited.

  She sat sideways, legs hanging over the arm of the chair, eating potato chips. Reddish brown crumbs had settled in the fur of the cat who slept in her lap when the doorbell rang.

  Lena switched on the porch light and looked through the peephole.

  The man on the steps wore a dark suit and tie, his shirt white and spotless despite the lateness of the hour. His hands were clasped in front of him in a steady formality that Lena secretly found endearing. He wore the ring—black stone, gold filigree markings. She had focused on that ring many times when she could not bear to see what was at hand—her sister, sprawled in the driveway, blood pooling across her belly.

  The man was dark complected, his eyes brown and gentle. There was a scar on his left temple that disappeared under thick black hair. His face was drawn and tired.

  “Sergeant Mendez—Joel, come in.”

  He touched his mustache, smiled at the use of his first name. Sometimes she thought he liked her.

  She was a striking woman, hair dark, coarse, and curly. Her eyes were brown and intense, almost feverish, the lines at the edges small and barely noticeable. She was pale enough that old ladies pinched her cheeks and told her to get a little sun.

  Mendez scanned the living room—a roving, questing scrutiny. He had not been in the house for seven years, had not seen it without the ropes of yellow tape warning that the enclosed area was a crime scene.

  Lena followed his gaze to the floor. The beige carpet, sporting a trail of bloody footprints, had been pulled up and lodged in a police warehouse. There was a new rug now, slate blue, pleasantly framed by the dark wood floors.

  She spent a lot of time in this room now, and she kept it nice. If the rest of the house amounted to closed-off doors and rooms full of dust and memories, if outside the grass was weed choked and high, if chains flapped in the wind where a porch swing had once hung … at least there was one room that was pleasant.

  Mendez walked past the rocking chair and settled on the edge of the couch.

  “Get you something to drink?” She said it because it was the thing to say, and because it would irritate him. Polite chitchat was something he endured.

  “No. Thanks.” Mendez picked up Lena’s book and read the back cover.

  Lena passed him the bag of chips, knowing full well he didn’t like them. Her movements were slow and languid, and she gave the impression of one who does not lift a finger unless absolutely necessary. Mendez took a potato chip and crunched it solemnly, then wiped his hands on his knees.

  “He got it, Lena.”

  “I figured that much when I saw you at the door.” Her voice was husky at the best of times. Right now she sounded hoarse. “Good news and you’d have called.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How’d you find out so fast?”

  “Called in a favor.”

  “A shame it didn’t extend to keeping him in jail.”


  Mendez was silent, and Lena sat down in the chair.

  “Six years don’t seem like much.” She stared at the ceiling. “The baby would be in kindergarten now. And Kevin—he’d be eight. Third grade.”

  A white paw slid out from under the couch and patted softly at the side of Mendez’s black leather shoe.

  “I take it my statement didn’t make any difference,” Lena said.

  “He had no priors, Lena. He has character references. He had the head sales manager of Finard’s Chevrolet promise him a job as a salesman. He wears a suit and tie like he was born in them. He professes to have a renewed faith in God, and his prison record is exemplary.”

  “Six years. He gets two twenty-year sentences, and serves six years.” She shut her eyes tight, then opened them. “That judge was an ass. That judge should have given him the death penalty.”

  “You can’t get the death penalty for first-degree manslaughter.”

  “Manslaughter. It wasn’t manslaughter. It was womanslaughter. Childslaughter. It was murder, premeditated. He came with a gun. That Prozac business was bullshit. The Prozac made me do it, the devil made me do it—”

  “Diminished capacity, Lena. The precedent is solid. The DA did what he could.”

  “Saved the state some money with a guilty plea.”

  Mendez leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. “Don’t do this, Lena.”

  “Okay, you don’t like that subject, how about this? Jeff’s not the only one getting out. Archie Valetta is due out of Eddyville sometime in the next couple of months.”

  Mendez opened his eyes. “Valetta? How did you find this out?”

  “Mice behind the walls, Mendez.”

  “One of your many informants?”

  “They’re not informants, Mendez. Not in the sense you mean. We’re talking about a woman who’s raising her grandchildren and working twelve-hour days doing scrub work at the prison, so let’s not class her with the junkies you talk to, okay?”

  Mendez sat forward. “Good to see you taking this so well.”

  Lena rarely smiled, but when she did it made her seem hugely vulnerable. “Quit. Don’t make me laugh when I don’t want to.”

  “Don’t you ever want to?”

  She would not meet his eyes.

  “Lena, I don’t think you need to worry about Valetta. He was in Eddyville before Jeff killed your sister. He was never part of that.”

  “He was Jeff’s partner.”

  The white paw shot sideways and batted the cuff of Mendez’s pants.

  “They’re convicted felons, both on parole. Any association, and the parole will be revoked.”

  “So you say.”

  Mendez dropped a potato chip in front of the couch. The white paw shot out, cupped the chip, and dragged it out of sight.

  Mendez frowned. “Hayes is another matter. He made a lot of threats. He was white hot about the insurance settlement.” Mendez met her eyes steadily. “I want to know if he calls, comes around, anything.”

  “Worrying won’t keep Jeff from killing me, Joel. He told Whitney he’d kill her; he did it. He’ll come after me if he wants to.”

  “Take steps.”

  “You think a restraining order will stop the bullets?”

  “It’s foolish not to accept help.”

  “What’s foolish is depending on it.”

  He glanced at her left hand. “Are you living alone?”

  “I’m not married anymore. Rick didn’t want to come live here. He thought it would be bad for me.”

  “He was right.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember asking him or you for an opinion.”

  “You shouldn’t stay here wallowing in memories.”

  “God, Mendez, you make me sound like some kind of mournful Pig.”

  “What’s your interest in Valetta?” Mendez waited. She was capable of great stillness.

  Lena swung her legs over the side of the chair. “They made me look stupid, didn’t they? They dug into all that old stuff.”

  “Who?”

  “The parole board. They got into the case files and made me look dumb.”

  “The subject matter makes anybody look bad, until the consequences become overwhelming. I told you that when you and your sister were in my office, that first day.”

  Lena closed her eyes, and she was back in Mendez’s office, smelling stale cigarettes and scorched coffee. She could see the sun slanting in through white venetian blinds, making precise horizontal rows of light on the tile floor. Mendez had met her eyes steadily, hands flat on his desk. It was the image she remembered most, except for the bad ones.

  “I told Whitney not to go in telling all that Satan stuff. She wouldn’t listen, she said somebody better know what’s going on. And it was all true. She never said he had power, or he sicced the devil on her. She just said he—”

  “I know, Lena.”

  She nodded. She had always wondered what would have happened if Mendez hadn’t been there—the only cop with any experience of occult crime, the only cop who had heard the ring of truth in Whitney’s complaints.

  My husband is a Satan worshiper, officer, and he supplies drugs and dirty pictures to other Satan worshipers, and I think he maybe had something to do with a child that was missing. And he hits me, and my son, and claims the boy isn’t even his, which I assure you is patently untrue. I’m divorcing him, but he’s sending me seashells, and that means he’s going to kill me.

  Maybe, the cop had said, he just wants to take you to the beach.

  You don’t understand.

  Lady, we can’t put a guy in jail for sending you a seashell.

  And then Mendez was there, standing silently by the officer’s elbow, casting a shadow across the desk. Let me talk to them, he’d said. And Whitney had been so grateful. Grateful, though the restraining order didn’t keep Jeff from breaking in during the middle of the night. Didn’t keep him from nearly running her down with his new Chevrolet, dealer tags on the back. Didn’t keep the new puppy from winding up dead on the doorstep.

  Lena looked at Joel.

  “You told me you were involved in a lot of this stuff down in Miami. Occult crime. Some of the guys called you the ghostbuster.”

  Mendez nodded.

  Lena reached into the drawer of the side table. It was crammed full of small tools, pencils, pads of paper, sales flyers. She took out a white cardboard box. Inside, on a square of cotton, was a gray seashell, white on the belly. The shell was rough, unpolished, crumbs of sand spilling out.

  “I got this in the mail. Remember? Jeff used to send these to Whitney. It always upset her when she got them.”

  Mendez looked at the shell. He put the box in his jacket pocket and leaned forward, pressing his hands on Lena’s knees. “Jeffrey Hayes has no special power. No magic, no forces of evil, other than what comes from within. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m talking about in the middle of the night, when you hear a funny noise. When you hear that noise, do you believe that Hayes has the powers of Satan?”

  “Hell, no.”

  Mendez pulled back and smiled at her. “Good.”

  “Joel, why did you leave Miami?”

  “Personal reasons.”

  “Such as?”

  “What’s your interest in Archie Valetta? Are you representing a client?”

  “You never heard of client confidentiality?”

  “You’re a private investigator, not a priest.”

  They stared at each other.

  “I’ll let myself out.” Mendez tapped her shoulder. “Be sure to lock up behind me.”

  “Leaving already? I haven’t finished giving you a hard time.”

  He gave her one of his sad smiles, but she wasn’t buying. No sympathy.

  “Joel?”

  “Yes, Lena?”

  “Don’t go buying any cars down at Finard’s.”

  Mendez looked at her. “Cops can’t afford new cars.”
r />   2

  Eloise Valetta nudged the worn down nap of the carpet with the toe of her terrycloth house shoe. The warm, sweet smell of baking was strong.

  “I ’predate you coming over—I got a cake going. I take orders, you know, weddings and all.”

  She was growing out a perm, and thick black hair fell in limp wiggles to her shoulders. She wore navy blue polyester pants, snagged and frayed across her wide, loose backside. Her nose was big and crooked. Lena wondered how many times it had been broken. There were wide white scars on the inside of her right arm and across both wrists. Large red weals spotted her arms, neck, and face.

  “I heard, at the shelter I think, how you quit school and some job you had, and started taking these cases, you know, where women need help. Some of the girls down there call you the equalizer. Like the TV show.”

  Lena smiled. Ph.D. candidate to woman’s equalizer. It would make for an interesting résumé.

  Eloise chewed her lip. “I wasn’t sure if you’d help me. Because of how I used to be married to Archie, and him working with Hayes. But then I figured, you more than anybody would know how serious it is to cross these boys.”

  “I know.”

  “And I didn’t figure you had any love lost on Archie. You might not mind getting back at him some.”

  “Might not.”

  “At least Hayes is locked up.”

  “Not anymore. He just got parole.”

  “But how can that be? He got forty years!”

  “He got two twenty-year terms, to run concurrently.”

  “Concurrently?”

  “That’s both at the same time. He’s served twenty percent of his sentence. He’s out.”

  “After what he did to your sister and her little boy, that was so awful. And her being pregnant.” Eloise shook her head. “I remember reading about it. He ought to have got the death penalty.”

  “Wasn’t possible,” Lena said. “He had a solid out on diminished capacity. He was taking Prozac—that’s an antidepressant. Prescription drug with known side effects.”

  “Like making a man kill his wife and little boy?”

  Lena shrugged. “Says so in the warning on the side of the bottle.”

  “Oh, now. Are you kidding me?”

  “Some.”

  “Maybe what I need is some Prozac. Seems like you can get away with anything in Kentucky except killing a white man or stealing his money.”