Danger in Numbers

by Heather Graham

  “He’s a specialist in ritualistic killings and extremists and the occult,” Hunter could hear John explain. “Hunter came down here because the governor asked him to. Our governor called the FBI’s main offices. You remember our governor, right? The guy who is at the top of our food chain?”

  “Ha ha, yes, I remember our governor,” Amy replied. “I just... Look, we are competent here. Our department is good.”

  “Good enough to know when to accept help.”

  “John, we’ve barely had a chance to begin,” Amy protested.

  “You just don’t like him.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’m just... Come on. Our state has problems, but we’re good at what we do, John. How does one just assume these murders are part of a major plot of some kind?”

  “But if they are?”

  “Okay, but—”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “I can’t dislike him. I don’t know him.”

  He heard John’s booming laugh.

  “That doesn’t mean a thing. You didn’t like me, remember?”

  “No, I had nothing against you. You felt you were saddled with me.”

  “Guilty as charged, but don’t go thinking everyone is an old chauvinist like me.”

  “I’m just lost as to why the feds are in. He made it from the Micanopy area almost as fast as we did from Orlando.”

  “Not much difference. And you know Florida, it can be thirty minutes, or two and a half hours, from place to place in certain areas—”

  “Depending on traffic. Yes, I know.”

  Hunter knew he was standing in the hallway eavesdropping.

  He pushed open the door to the conference room.

  He’d known John a long time—almost a decade, since he’d come into the bureau. They’d met under similar circumstances when the head of a land-grabbing company had created their own form of a twisted Voodoo-Santeria cult, terrifying the downtrodden into murdering their neighbors.

  John was a good investigator.

  About this new young partner of his...

  Hunter forced a grim smile. She’d just have to live with the chain of power that was going to come down. Live with it—or leave.

  Standing, she was about five-ten. He’d thought at first she might have been wearing heels; but no, sensible shoes for wherever one might find themselves walking for the day—or for crawling around in the muck on the edge of the Everglades.

  Her hair was a deep glossy brown, held back in a sleek low ponytail.

  She couldn’t have been more than twenty-eight or so, but he thought at least that, because agents with the state department had to have four years of other police work beneath their belts. But she had the look of a college kid—not that looks meant anything, which he damned well knew.

  She also seemed severe. Hair so tightly tied back, straitlaced suit—of course, they almost all wore them. She had fine features, but bold, striking green eyes with just a touch of gold at the center.

  And she was looking at him as if he might be the Antichrist himself.

  She and John had already set up a board to work with. Crime scene photos were displayed, along with what initial observations Dr. Carver had been able to give them.

  Questions were written in marker on the erasable surface.

  Identity?

  From where?

  Next of kin?

  Groups/cults with which she might have been involved?

  Previous murder—associated? Same killer/killing duo or group?

  “Hunter, hey, thanks for getting here so quickly,” John said, rising to shake his hand again. “We’ve gotten called out on some weird-ass stuff. Hell, you know, this is Florida. When we don’t breed our own wild ones, they find us the same way the tourists do.”

  Hunter walked to the board, setting the folder he carried, with facts and figures from what he considered to be the initial case in the investigation, on the table.

  He studied the photographs on the board, and then turned to Amy Larson, who had yet to speak and hadn’t risen when he’d entered.

  He smiled inwardly, thinking he could make up a few labels for a board regarding her.

  Young. Suspicious. Ambitious? Resentful of the FBI coming in on what she might see as a Florida case?

  She was silent, but watching him—waiting?

  He was trying to play well with others. Her turn to lower her guard.

  “May I see your sketchbook again?” he asked Amy.

  She pointed. It lay on the table by a folder.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She spoke at last. “What were you talking about, regarding the little horse? ‘Death rides a pale horse’? I do realize you’re talking biblical, and about the Apocalypse, but I’m not sure how you’re so convinced so quickly.”

  “The slashes on the face of the victim.”

  She arched a brow, waiting.

  “About fourteen years ago, there was a cult leader named Thorne Logan. He started up in the northwest, then brought his family down to farm country on the border between Florida and Alabama.”

  “You think he did this?” John asked.

  Hunter shook his head. “Logan is dead. He fired on one of our agents, who fired back. It was one of my first field experiences. Logan was down on any of his ‘harem’ straying in the least. To be fitting sacrifices, their faces were slashed. Physical beauty needed to be blotted out because the soul needed to shine in death. And in his teaching, only death cleaned a dirty soul. His principles were...long and involved.”

  “I remember the case. The media had him billed as Father Killer,” John said.

  “I do remember something in the papers,” Amy said.

  “You would have been about ten,” John said.

  “Seventeen,” Amy said, “and I was horrified, but...sounded like they got him. And at the time, it brought up stories of so many other bad cult situations, so it became one for the books.”

  “Right. It was a big case, but there were others,” Hunter agreed. “Many more that didn’t end with so much death and weren’t as well-known.”

  Amy’s brows were knit. “But if this man is dead,” she said, “it can’t be him. You think it was someone who was part of his family or congregation, or whatever you call followers like that?”

  Hunter nodded. “You know there are many people—and many religions—that believe in the Apocalypse, right?”

  “Of course,” Amy said. “There’s all kinds of speculation about the Apocalypse, the End of Days, all that. Different religions, sects, ethnic groups. Some people thought the world was supposed to end in 2012, according to the Mayan calendar. I’ve heard it could have meant the end of one era, the beginning of another. And you get groups who believe comets are omens, or that a certain politician in power means the end is coming. People who have dosed themselves with poison to die ahead of the bloodshed and violence. That’s the kind of thing you’re talking about?”

  “More or less.” He indicated the folder that lay on the table. “I was called down to Maclamara to work a murder. It’s a little township outside of Micanopy. They’re so small up there that any murder is handled by FDLE. I’ve worked with the detective there before, and when he saw his victim, he called me immediately. And then the FDLE called the FBI and asked for me specifically because I have had some experience with this type of thing. We don’t believe the victim was local—no missing person reports from anywhere near the area match up with what we know.”

  “We?” she asked pleasantly. “As in you and the local authorities?”

  “Yes—we—as in me and other authorities on the case.”

  Amy looked at John, clearly oblivious to the fact Hunter had heard her speaking just moments ago. There was a query in her eyes. He could almost hear her question to her partner.

  One murde
r—and a fed is called in?

  He waited for her to speak.

  “You said that murder was similar...or a practice for this?” Amy asked. Her fingers were moving around the paper coffee cup in front of her. She seemed to remember she had the coffee, and she took a long sip of it while she awaited his answer.

  He opened the folder, pushing it toward her.

  The first photo was of the Maclamara crime scene.

  The victim had been stripped and her face had been slashed. But nothing protruded from her chest, though it was a bloody mess.

  Amy Larson was appropriately grim and ashen, he thought, even after the day they’d endured.

  There was a fine line to tread when working with violent crime. You couldn’t let it get under your skin too deeply. You’d be worthless at work from the nightmares that plagued your sleep and kept you up.

  But to forget humanity was just as bad. You forgot why you were doing what you did, trying to stop the worst monsters before they did more damage. And every life was sacred, from that of a top scientist or scholar to that of a homeless person on the street.

  Hunter knew it was likely that the first victim—the woman in the photograph he was showing John and Amy now—had been a prostitute. Dr. Levy—one of the state’s most experienced medical examiners up in the northern counties—had informed him she’d been a drug user and showed signs of habitual sexual abuse.

  He’d believed her to have been about twenty-one years old.

  “Practice?” John muttered. He looked at Hunter. “The slashes...yeah, they’re almost the same.”

  “More than just the same,” Hunter told him.

  “How so?”

  He gave John a grim smile and looked back at Amy. “You can’t see it as much in the photos... Well, I saw the first girl in situ. I didn’t see the victim today, but Amy’s sketch shows something that the flatness of the photos didn’t.”

  Both John and Amy studied him.

  “You caught it clearly with your pencil,” he told Amy. “The slashes are enhanced—they weren’t just wild. Yes, quick slashes down the cheeks with a sharp blade. Dr. Levy suggested a scalpel might have been used for such clean, deep cuts. But see...on your sketch. That wasn’t done with one swipe. There are little hooks curved into the upper end, by the cheeks.”

  They all studied Amy’s sketch. Even Amy, who had done it.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “They almost resemble...”

  Her voice trailed; she was lost in a memory.

  “What?” John pressed.

  “I’m not sure if it’s relevant or not. I had a cousin who was rammed by a bull on the expressway,” she said. “West Broward ranch and farm country, at the time. Anyway, his description to me was he thought a demon was coming after him. All he saw at first were two red eyes and horns and...”

  “The little curves look like they could be ‘horns’ sketched in, and if you look at your drawing, it’s almost like a dot on the eye in the center of the hook.”

  “The eyes...the horns and eyes of a demon?” John asked.

  “Possibly. It’s all possibly right now. We think the first victim was a street kid, engaging in sex work for survival—the kind of young down-and-outer who might easily do so for the leader or recruiters from a commune, or a cult. I believe the young woman today might have been basically seduced the same way.”

  “Why not a single fanatical killer?” Amy asked.

  He shrugged and grimaced. “The way the killing was done. and with what was done to the body... It was as if she was killed as part of a rite. To me, it has the markings of a cult.”

  “But...the white horse?” Amy asked.

  They were all seated at the conference table, and he leaned back, looking at them, studying them.

  “The white horse—the first horse. I think we’re looking at someone who is playing on the fears of others, fashioning his own religion. And now he’s getting people to kill with great ritualistic savagery. He’ll be convincing them they’ll be saved, because the blood they reap is a sacrifice, and their victims will be cleansed by their actions. And because of it, they’ll be welcomed by God and heaven, and all must be prepared for the coming of the Four Horsemen and the coming of the Apocalypse. The first horse—pestilence and conquest. The pestilence might not be something as literal as locusts, but rather what lies in the mind or the body.” He hesitated. “Bear in mind that, sadly, there are people who believe themselves better than others, and anyone who infringes on them or their world might be considered no better than an insect or a pest. And there might be a leader who can convince others that sacrificing such interlopers can give them souls or raise them from the dirt to the clouds.”

  “Yeah,” John said dryly. “They are out there—people who would squash others just as if they were bugs.”

  John’s phone started buzzing and he answered it quickly. After listening a moment, he said, “Cool, thanks—can you bring it all on in?”

  Whoever he was speaking with agreed. John ended the call.

  “Can we put the pictures away while we keep discussing this?” he asked. “I’ve ordered a couple of pizzas. Sorry, I haven’t had a meal all day. This one here—” he nodded toward Amy “—seems to go on youth and adrenaline, but I need more. I have been at this a long, long time—still don’t like pictures out while we’re trying to enjoy Orlando’s finest pizza.”

  John swept the pictures into his folder just as one of the office workers came to the door, lugging bags and two boxes of pizza.

  Amy leaped to her feet to help, grabbing the bag that contained their drinks while John handled the boxes, bringing them to the conference table.

  “Pizza!” Amy chastised. “John, you know that—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to be on a more healthful diet. I’m watching it, kid, I promise. Usually. This is just for today.”

  Amy groaned, shaking her head as she looked at him.

  “Just today!” he promised.

  She dug into another bag, finding a cardboard box of coffee, cups, water bottles and paper plates and napkins. With his pictures carefully secured, Hunter set out a few of the plates.

  Amy poured coffee, and they each took a healthy slice of pizza. Hunter noted that Amy watched John, worried, it appeared, over his healthy appetite for the greasy slices.

  But John was undaunted. “Special Agent Forrest, please, fill us in on everything. Start with this Logan guy—now dead—who had followers who killed in the same way.”

  “From the beginning. We were on the Alabama border—one of the bodies discovered had a limb across a state line, so both states wound up involved, along with the federal government. We’d already been in contact with Alabama. They’d found three women, all garroted, set against trees, bound by rope available at thousands of stores. The killing mechanism had been created from hangers, also available at thousands of stores and possibly found in just as many hotels. But the slashes on the face were like those found at the site just across the border in Florida. Naturally, we looked at all possible suspects, but Logan’s cult had been intriguing the DEA and the FBI for quite some time. One woman had managed to disengage herself from the cult before complete indoctrination. She didn’t know about killings, but she knew the man believed himself to be a great father. All children in the ‘most holy family’ must be his. He therefore had several wives. Men were welcome in the family, but if they had wives or girlfriends, they could only keep them if Logan granted them that right. Our witness only went to three meetings. She was due for her ‘baptism’ when she found out Logan had chosen her to be one of his brides, and she must have realized she wanted something else out of life.” He shrugged with an odd grimace. “Not that I’m judging, but she was young, and Logan, at the time of his death, was in his late fifties.”

  “Did he have children? Could it be one of his actual family who might be doing thi
s?”

  “I doubt it. His children were young, all under five years old, and the five of them wound up being taken by child welfare services.”

  “Crazy,” John said, the word muffled around his pizza. “Two murders, at least two hundred miles apart. In, what—three days total?”

  Hunter nodded grimly. He looked at Amy. “Do you see why we all need to be on this?”

  “Yes. He had five children, by five mothers?”

  “Three—two of them each had two children.”

  “Where are the mothers? Have they been released?” Amy asked.

  “No.”

  “Then?”

  “They drank the juice. Although it wasn’t juice—they had cyanide capsules. And no, I don’t know how they got them.”

  “And other members? I mean...men in this group. It was okay with them if their wives were taken away? The men stayed?”

  “Four men were arrested and tried. They, too, were doing prison sentences.”

  “Were?”

  “They took their poison and left notes as to how they’d be with Logan and sit among the angels.”

  Amy looked over at John, obviously somewhat incredulous, and then at Hunter.

  “How?” she murmured. “How does one person manage to brainwash so many others?”

  “I’m sure you know the basics,” Hunter said. “Cult leaders look for the down and out or the disenfranchised, those who are miserable with their lives. Those who have no family. They give them a family, a reason for being and probably, most importantly, faith. I have several books and tapes I can give you. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I have studied cults and I’ve been on any number of cases that revolved around them. I can give you plenty of reading material.”

  “That would be good,” Amy agreed.

  John stood, rolled up his paper plate and said, “We’ll get on this fresh in the morning. I’m guessing you two haven’t noticed, but it’s getting late and we need to be back down south for autopsy in the morning. We should be on the road by seven. We’ll compare notes and make a plan of action tomorrow—if that’s all right. Do we concentrate in Maclamara, or to the south? Both victims were found in areas not heavily traversed, so God alone knows where the killer—or killers—will strike again.”