Crashing Heat

by Richard Castle

  She exhaled. Patience was sometimes hard to come by, especially when she was on the verge of a solve, but like a word on the tip of her tongue, it was just out of reach. “Shoot.”

  He held out his hands, balling them into fists. “Two organizations,” he said, lifting one fist, then the other. “They’re separate, yet connected. If one feeds into the other, it will happen within an accepted organizational structure.”

  “I get it. Like the salesperson who reports to the manager who reports to the VP who reports to the president,” she said.

  “Precisely. In our case, we have three groups: Tektōn, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati. A new recruit in Tektōn isn’t going to have any knowledge of the group’s connection to the Freemasons. Likewise, a Tyler isn’t going to be the conduit to the Illuminati. There is a hierarchy.”

  “So only someone in the upper level of Tektōn would have anything to do with the Freemasons,” she said slowly, “and only an officer in the Freemasons would have anything to do with the Illuminati.”

  “Which means there is a chain of command,” he said.

  The solution was forming. “Which also means only a few people have the power to call the shots.” She thought of the mystery man who’d paid Joseph Hill to steal the notebook. She hadn’t recognized the voice on the other end of the phone in the police station, but it could have been disguised. She thought of the poem—the call for Chloe’s death.

  They looked at each other, and then spoke at the same time. “Holz.”

  Murder came before food, but there was always time for coffee. They swung by a local café. “New York food trucks win, but this coffee is pretty damn good,” Heat said, sipping her usual nonfat sugar-free vanilla latte.

  Rook raised his cup in a toast to Cambria coffee as they mapped their way from downtown Cambria, where they’d been headed, to the Masonic Lodge. Heat texted Ian to meet them there. At the lodge, they were greeted by a young man who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. Nikki sized him up. He was a Tyler. Low man on the Masonic totem pole.

  “Can I help you?” the man asked.

  Rook held out his hand. The young man hesitated, but then took the proffered hand. It started like any handshake, but Rook shifted by pressing the top of his thumb hard against the first knuckle joint of the kid’s first finger. Again, the boy hesitated, but then he threw his shoulders back and returned the grip.

  “Jameson,” Rook said.

  “Garrett.” Rook lowered his chin and raised his eyes, and the boy filled in the missing information. “Charles. Garrett Charles.”

  “You’re a new member?” Rook asked.

  Garrett Charles’s face fell. “Is it that obvious? Was my handshake wrong? I thought I got it right. Too much pressure? Not enough?”

  “Garrett—” Rook said, trying to cut him off, but the kid was on a rant.

  “I’ve been practicing. I really thought I had it.” He looked up at Rook, eyes imploring. “Can we try it again before Mr. Holz gets back? I wanted to impress him.”

  “Garrett,” Rook said again, and this time the kid met his gaze. “Let’s do it again, and I won’t tell.”

  They went through the handshake a second, then a third time. After the fourth go, Rook gave his approval. “Perfect.”

  Garrett beamed. “Thanks, Mr. Jameson.”

  Rook didn’t correct him on the name. It was better that way. But then his face fell. “So Holz is not here?”

  Garrett sensed Rook’s disappointment and quickly checked his watch. “He’ll be back soon. Like forty-five minutes, probably?”

  From the lilt of his voice, Heat knew they held the cards. They just had to play them right. She lifted her hand as if she’d just remembered something. “Of course. He’s at the—”

  “Right,” Rook interrupted, realization lighting up his face.

  Garrett leapt right into the web they’d spun. “Do you want to wait?”

  “Absolutely. We’ll be in the ceremonial room,” Rook said, already striding across the hall.

  Garrett looked from Rook to Heat. “Is...is that allowed?”

  Rook stopped, slowly turning around. “Son, how long have you been a member?” He went on before Garrett could answer. “Longer than me?”

  Heat was impressed. Rook had phrased the questions ambiguously and, just as he’d intended, young Garrett mistakenly assumed that Rook was actually a Freemason. “Oh no, Mr. Jameson, I never meant to—”

  Rook waved his hands, stopping him in his tracks. “Don’t worry. It’s no problem.” He held open the door to the ceremonial room and Heat passed through. “Let us know when he’s back,” he said without a backward glance.

  “Nicely done,” she said once the door closed behind them.

  He tipped an imaginary hat. “Thank you, Captain Heat. A high compliment, indeed.”

  They strode side by side up the center aisle of the room toward the Worshipful Master’s chair. It sat on a double platform on the eastern side of what Nikki thought of as the altar. The chair sat atop a ten-inch platform that sat atop another larger one. When the Worshipful Master climbed up the two steps to his throne, he had to look like a king readying himself to face his subjects.

  “I keep coming back to the lion’s den,” she said, slowly turning and looking at the room with fresh eyes. If there were a secret room, there would be a secret entrance, which would require a secret lever of some sort to open said door. She said as much to Rook.

  “Now you’re thinking like a conspiracy theorist,” he said with a grin.

  “Oh no. I’m thinking through the problem logically.” She looked at the medieval tools adorning the walls, and then studied the floor. She remembered what Rook had said about the black-and-white checkerboard pattern representing the dark and light in each of us—or perhaps the light symbolized the Freemasons, while the dark signified the secret faction that was connected to the Illuminati.

  “Everything has meaning,” Rook muttered.

  “Everything has meaning,” she repeated, looking at the tools of the craft again. Holz had described the square of morality, the compass, and the plumb rule. She walked over to the wall and stretched her arm up. The tools were out of reach. Too high on the wall for any to serve as a trigger for a secret passageway.

  Her gaze traveled around the room again, landing on the two stones, each on its own pedestal. She took out the notebook she always had with her, flipping back to the pages of notes she’d taken when they’d first visited the lodge. The stones represented man. The transformation of man from apprentice to his improved version. That could mean the moving from Freemason to Illuminati. “Sacred stones,” she said aloud. Rook joined her. “Holz didn’t want you touching them.”

  They looked at each other, then at the stones. With a smile and a nod, they each reached a tentative hand out, Rook toward the rutted stone, Heat toward the smooth one. Their hands hovered above the stones for a beat before they lowered them down. Heat pushed hard, but nothing happed. The stones didn’t budge.

  She sighed. “Should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.”

  “You’re not throwing in the towel already, are you, Heat?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good,” he said as he circled the pedestals, sinking to his haunches and stroking his chin at one point. He studied them from every angle, finally turning to her. “I guess we’re reading too much symbolism into it,” he said, putting one arm out and resting his hand on the raised edge of the inch-tall platform on which the rutted stone sat.

  Heat heard a faint click at the same time Rook jumped back. “It moved,” he said. Heat scanned the room, hoping something would open, but everything was still. As he went back to examining the rocks, Heat faced the paneled wall behind the throne. She ran her palms across the wall, the pads of her fingers playing across the cool wood as if it were the keys of a piano. She felt along the beveled edges of each section. Nothing.

  She was on to the next section when Rook let out a whoop and a “Yes!” Heat
whipped around just as the gold velvety throne lurched. She froze as it moved again. Finally, the square platform it sat on started rotating. “What did you...how did you...what the... ?”

  “The smooth stone,” Rook said. His face showed a mixture of bewilderment and excitement. “I felt around the base of it. There was a little gap. I worked my finger in and hit a button. And voilà!” He pointed to the moving platform. “There’s a gap between the two steps.”

  He bent down to get a closer look at the mechanism, but Heat had already walked around to the other side of the throne. “Rook,” she said, staring at the dark space below. They’d been right; there was a secret room, and they’d just found it. “Come here.”

  He must have sensed something in her voice, because he was by her side in an instant. “We were right,” he said as the moving throne revealed an opening beneath the chair. Once again, Heat and Rook faced a dark stairway down into the depths of the unknown.

  Heat led the way down, shining the flashlight from her phone in front of her to light up the steps.

  “Concrete,” Rook said. “How pedestrian.”

  “You got your crumbling dungeon stairs at Cam U.”

  “When you’re talking secret societies, you can never have too many crumbling dungeon staircases.”

  She took the last step, spotted a light switch, and flipped it up, drawing in a breath. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it wasn’t this. She’d thought the symbolism in the ceremonial room above had been thick, but this far exceeded it. The tools of the craft were present, as was the same black-and-white checkerboard floor. A large square table sat in the center of the room. The throne, more ornate than the one above them, faced the table on one side. There were chairs, but instead of being in orderly rows, they were in three groups, each facing the center of the room.

  Rook bypassed her and moved past the groups of chairs to the table. “Fascinating.”

  “It’s a table.”

  “In a room with a throne.” He pointed. “And the symbol of the Illuminati.”

  She followed his gaze to the center of the table. There, in the middle, was an eye with a delicate swoop coming from the inner corner, which was inside a triangle, which was inside of a circle. Around the perimeter were the words NEW WORLD ORDER.

  “It’s like a huge sweeping crash, Heat. Three rivers converging. This is it.”

  “The three rivers being Tektōn, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati.”

  “Of course.”

  She leaned against the table. “A new world order. There has to be someone connected to Tektōn that ushers the apprentice members through the channels. The Worshipful Master of the Freemasons is just a man, after all. So whoever is the true head honcho, over even the Freemason master, he’s also just a man. But he’s a puppet master.”

  “Makes sense,” Rook said. “So we’re looking for someone who wields power at the university, who knew Chloe, and who has a connection to the Freemasons.”

  A memory skirted along the edges of Nikki’s brain. “Christian Foti’s tattoo,” she said.

  “The Illuminati.”

  “Could he be the man in charge? Responsible for his own daughter’s death?”

  “No,” Rook said. “Holz was in charge, not Foti.”

  “Does he have a connection to the university?”

  Before they could consider the question, they heard a noise. Footsteps. Garrett Charles stopped halfway down the stairs. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

  Heat stood, quickly surveying her surroundings. There was a door at the back of the large room. Other than the stairway, it was the only way out. Garrett seemed harmless enough, but Heat never took chances. “What happens down here, Garrett?” she asked.

  He looked over his shoulder, back up the stairwell, then back at her. “I didn’t know it was here.”

  “The Worshipful Master must spend time down here. Have you seen Mr. Holz—”

  “Mr. Holz isn’t the Worshipful Master,” Garrett said, his brows pinched.

  Heat and Rook shared a glance. “We assumed,” Heat said.

  “Christian Foti isn’t—” Rook said.

  “The Worshipful Master? No.”

  “He has the tattoo,” Heat said, touching the inside of her wrist.

  “All the leaders have one.”

  “Always on the inner wrist?”

  Garrett descended the rest of the steps. “As far as I know. It’s part of the brotherhood.”

  “Not the Freemason order, though.”

  He stopped, thinking about this. “Not all the Masons have one.”

  Just the leaders. Heat thought back to when she and Rook had first met Chloe. She’d been so determined to meet Rook. There had to be a connection to the university, she thought. Someone had to feed the beast. Her thoughts crashed as she realized that she’d caught a glimpse of a tattoo that could be the same as Foti’s. She’d seen just the edge of it more than once over the years. She shot a glance at Rook before she asked the question she didn’t want to hear the answer to. “The Worshipful Master, Garrett. Who is it?”

  Garrett’s face had lost all its color. “This is about Chloe, isn’t it?”

  “Did you know her?” Heat asked.

  “Sure. She came around to see her dad.”

  “What about from school? Have her in any classes?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  The most obvious question came next. “Garrett, do you know who killed Chloe?”

  Heat thought there had been an infinitesimal beat before he answered, but she couldn’t be sure. “I wish I did,” he said.

  So did she. Heat directed the conversation another way. “How did you become a Freemason?”

  Once again, he looked over his shoulder and up the stairway. “We shouldn’t be down here.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his concern, instead staying on point. “Were you recruited?”

  “If Mr. Holz finds—”

  “Garrett,” she said, “were you recruited into the Freemasons?”

  Slowly, he nodded. “That’s the only way to join. Sponsorship, they call it.”

  Rook had walked across the room and stood by the door in the back of the lodge, but now he turned back to them. “Who is your sponsor?”

  “Michael Warton. He’s the editor in chief of the Cambria Journal.”

  “We’ve had the pleasure,” Heat said.

  Rook came back next to her. “Michael wanted Chloe’s story,” he said to her, his voice quiet. “He knew she was on to something. If he alerted someone higher up—”

  “But not Holz,” Heat interjected. “He’s not connected to the university and he’s not the Worshipful Master.”

  “Which is why it would be someone like Holz, if not Holz himself. Warton may be on a path to the next level, but he’s still a newbie.”

  “He was tapped almost two years ago,” Garrett said. “He was one of the youngest recruits, he said. Usually you have to be a senior.”

  Power, Heat thought. This faction of the Masons leading into the Illuminati was all about power and control. Why would the order bring Michael Warton into the fold early? There was only one reason she could think of. “Was he already editor in chief when he was recruited, or did that happen later?”

  “This is his fourth semester as chief, so I guess he was appointed to the position not too long after he became a recruit,” Garrett said. He tried to usher them toward the stairway. “We should go up.”

  Rook was walking around the room again. He examined the adornments on the walls, taking his time as he absorbed the details of each one. “Who’s Michael’s academic advisor?” he asked.

  Heat followed his train of thought. Chloe had had Jennifer Daily. They’d formed enough of a connection that Chloe had come to her. Whoever Michael had formed a connection with could be the missing link they needed. Becoming a Freemason was different from being selected as one of the elite Masons.

  “I don’t know if he’s Michael’s advisor, but I know he
’s really tight with Professor Lamont.”

  Rook drew in a sharp breath. “Raymond Lamont might be Michael Warton’s academic advisor?”

  Garrett shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t know for sure. I just know that they spend a lot of time together.”

  “The tattoo,” Heat said, remembering the glimpse of ink she’d often seen on Lamont’s inner wrist. It was the same arm, and the same location, as Christian Foti’s. “Does Michael Warton have a tattoo?” she asked Garrett.

  “Yeah,” he said, after thinking about it for a second. “Inner wrist.”

  Bingo. “A triangle?”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he sounded uncertain. “I don’t work with him too much, so...”

  “What do you know about him?”

  Garrett ticked off on his fingers as he named a few things. “Big ego. Was pre-med before switching to journalism. Never seen him date. His life is the paper. That’s about it.”

  “The handshake,” Rook muttered. “Of course. How could I be so stupid?”

  “The handshake?” Heat asked, not sure where he was going.

  He turned to her. “Remember Holz and Foti?” When he held out his arm to her, she clasped her hand in his. Then he placed his other hand on her forearm, wrapping his fingers around and almost meeting his thumb on the other side. “Now you,” he directed, and she did the same, encircling his forearm with her free hand.

  “Remember who else did that?” he asked her.

  She did remember, because it had been only a day. “Raymond Lamont and Kaden Saunders.”

  “It’s a higher-level handshake,” Rook said.

  “Lamont has a tattoo on his inner wrist. He tries to keep it covered, but—”

  “It’s probably the same as Foti’s.”

  “The Illuminati,” they said in unison.

  Behind them, Garrett started muttering under his breath. “This is about Chloe?” he asked shakily, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He turned and stumbled up the stairs and out of sight.

  Heat debated going after him, but she left him to his shock. Their time was limited. She checked her watch. They likely had only another fifteen minutes before Holz returned.