Bad Karma (10 page)

 “I understand this must be very difficult for you–” Shannon started.

“This is far worse than difficult.” She put a hand to her cheek and held it there gingerly as if she were suffering from a toothache. “I tried going there this morning. They wouldn’t let me see Melissa. They wouldn’t even let me know if she’s still there. I don’t even know if my daughter’s alive.”

“The police checked that your daughter’s okay.” Shannon told her about a phone call he had with Daniels on his way over to meet her. “An officer visited the True Light after you first called them. He determined your daughter was there of her own free will.”

“How could she be there of her own free will? They brainwashed her!”

“Maybe, but she’s over eighteen. As far as the law’s concerned there’s nothing anyone can do.”

“You sound like my husband,” Pauline said. “That’s all I heard for six months.
She’s an adult now. Keep your nose out of it. She’ll leave when she’s ready, you stick your nose in and she’ll stay there forever
.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. I’m sorry I let him browbeat me. I should’ve come here the moment I heard about this. I should’ve done everything I could to drag Melissa out of that cult.”

“These things are hard,” Shannon said. “I was a police officer for ten years. I’ve seen this before. There was probably nothing you or anyone else could’ve done.”

“I don’t believe that.” She bit her lip as she fought to keep her composure. Shannon couldn’t help noticing how tight her skin seemed on her face, as if it could rip if she opened her mouth too wide.

“I need to know that Melissa’s okay,” Pauline continued, a wetness showing around her eyes. “And I need to be able to talk to her, to try to convince her to leave that place. Mr. Shannon, I mean, Bill, please, will you help me?”

Shannon found himself nodding. “I’ll see what I can do. Why don’t you tell me about your daughter. How she joined this cult.”

Pauline fumbled with her handbag as she took out a photograph. Shannon hoped the girl in it would have straight red hair, but instead saw the image of a young blonde girl. Even with a slightly upturned nose she was very pretty and, like her mother, very thin.

“That was taken last summer. Melissa’s a sophomore at the university. The two of us have always been close. I used to talk with her at least once a week.” She bit her lip again and made a weak waving motion with her hand as if she were halfheartedly shooing away a fly. Squeezing her eyes shut to fight back tears, she added, “This was a difficult year for Melissa. Her boyfriend broke up with her right after Thanksgiving and before that she was feeling a lot of pressure at school. She decided to stay on campus during Christmas break instead of coming home. I should’ve come here to be with her, but I didn’t. Fred, my husband, told me I’d be smothering her.”

“When did you last talk to her?”

“January 18th. I knew she was unhappy and I was calling her more often, but most days she wouldn’t pick up.”

“Did she say anything to you about this cult?”

Pauline showed a sad clown’s smile and wiped a bone-thin hand across her cheek. “She told me she had found a group that made her feel accepted. I had no idea what the True Light was. For some reason I had it in my head that they were a religious group, something dealing with Bible study. I encouraged her to go to their meetings and to try to fit in. I thought it would make her happy. Can you believe that? I encouraged my daughter to join a cult!”

She closed her mouth as a look of anguish washed over her face. It was quick, only lasting a few seconds, but during that brief moment Shannon was given a glimpse of what Pauline Cousins would look like in thirty years.

“God, I’m a mess,” she said. “If you can believe it, I used to be a strong person. Six months ago I was running 10K races. Since finding out about Melissa, I’ve lost over twenty pounds. But none of that matters as long as I get my daughter out of that cult and safe.”

“How did you find out she joined them?”

“After a week of Melissa not returning my calls, I contacted the university and found out that she had stopped going to class and that nobody in her dorm had seen her for days. I called the police and told them about the True Light. They called me back later and told me they found Melissa there… that she didn’t want to talk to me … that she didn’t want anything to do with…”

Her mouth closed as she fought to keep from sobbing. She almost won, but a few tears broke loose and ran down her face.

“Are you okay with me asking you a few more questions?”

“I’m so sorry.” She waved briefly again at some imaginary fly. “Yes, of course. I’m being ridiculous.”

“No, you’re not. Under the circumstances you’re holding up damn well. Can you tell me what happened when you visited the True Light this morning?”

“They have an iron fence surrounding their property.” She looked away from Shannon, her face wax-like as she stared out the coffee shop’s front window. “It’s like a prison,” she continued. “I buzzed at the front gate and the girl answering wouldn’t tell me anything about Melissa. I told her I wouldn’t leave until I spoke with my daughter. I kept buzzing until two men came out. They were dressed in silk robes, their heads shaved. They looked so angry. One of them pushed me to the ground, and they threatened to do worse to me if I didn’t leave.”

“Do you want to go to the police?” Shannon asked. “You could file charges against them.”

She shook her head. “I just want to get Melissa out of there. I don’t want to do anything that could complicate that. So Bill, will you try to see my daughter?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She started to fumble with her handbag. “How much should I pay you?”

“Nothing right now,” Shannon said. “I’ll see if I can convince them to be reasonable. If I can, there’s no charge. I’ll just be happy to have helped. If I can’t convince them, then we’ll talk again and work something out.”

“No, really, let me pay you –”

Shannon put a hand out, stopping her. “Please, this is something I’d like to do,” he said.

Looking into his eyes, she nodded and put her bag down.

After getting her cell phone number and the True Light’s address, he told her he’d call after visiting them. “How long do you plan on staying in Boulder?” he asked.

For a long moment she stared at Shannon as if she didn’t comprehend his question. Then a grim determination hardened the muscles along her mouth.

“Until Melissa is safe,” she said.

Chapter 7

Eli held a cheeseburger in his right hand and a napkin balled up in his left which he used to wipe the grease off his chin. His eyes sparkled as he smiled thinly at Shannon.

“I had less than an hour between my two meditation classes to uncover what I did,” he said. “If you worked half as fast you’d have the murders of those two students solved by now.”

“Or if I was half as lucky as you,” Shannon said.

“Luck? As my grandma used to say,
Feh
! There is no such thing as luck, my boy. What you think of as luck is simply the tapping into of your psychic vision.”

“So if I find a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk, I somehow created my luck? That I psychically knew where that ten dollars was going to be?”

“Exactly.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Sounds a bit farfetched to me, but fine, enough lectures for now on metaphysics. Are you going to tell me what you found?”

“Such impatience. First let me enjoy the fruits of my labor.”

Eli started to take a bite of the burger but his eyes glanced towards Shannon and he shook his head, sighed and dropped the burger back onto his plate. “How can I enjoy my food when you’re staring at me with those big, sad puppy dog eyes?”

“I’ll close my eyes. How’s that?”

“Won’t help any.” Eli sighed heavily. He pushed his plate a few inches away. “So you want me to tell you how this
fercockta
cult recruits their members?”

“That’s why I’m buying you lunch.”

“A bargain. Trust me. They do it by running a small yoga studio up on the Hill.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I kid you not. The place is called Vishna Yoga. Notice how close that is to Vishnu, the bastards! Trying to catch the unaware off guard. They have a small storefront on Thirteenth Street.”

Shannon breathed out slowly as he thought about it. “Fucking insidious,” he said.

“It is that. Also a bit ingenious. What better way to find college students who are the most emotionally vulnerable than to set up a business that they’ll seek out. And then you have hours to work on them while they’re putting themselves in your hands. Of course, the so-called yoga classes they’re giving are as fraudulent as a wooden nickel.”

“And how’s that?”

Eli made a face. “The woman I talked with told me what they had her do, and while I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, it’s not yoga. Sounded more like the positions are meant to wear you down more than anything else. So let me guess, after all my attempts over the last five years to convince you of its benefits, you’re finally going to sign up for yoga classes?”

“Well, I guess at least some fraudulent ones.”

***

The Hill section of Boulder was directly across the street from the university and its businesses catered almost exclusively to students. Cheap to moderately priced restaurants, tanning salons, music shops, clothing stores, stuff like that. Vishna Yoga had a basement location in the heart of the Hill—off of Thirteenth Street, sandwiched between a music store and a nightclub. A sushi bar sat directly above it.

The signs in front of the yoga studio were innocuous enough in the way they advertised new approaches to achieving well-being and stress relief. Several blown-up photos showed classes filled with young women, all seemingly in a state of bliss as they stretched in the same manner and direction.

Shannon walked down half a dozen steps, opened the front door and entered a small vestibule where he was assaulted by a pungent overly-sweet odor. The smell seemed like a mix of musk and marijuana. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was more powerful than any incense he had ever encountered and the air was thick with it.

From behind a set of curtains he heard people chanting in a low monotone. Something about Vishna being the one and true source. A woman stepped quickly through the curtains to meet Shannon. She was dark-haired, short, petite, in her early twenties and wearing yellow leotards. Her eyes were wide open and expressionless as she stared at Shannon in the same manner a morgue worker might look over an incoming body that needs to be catalogued. Then, nodding to herself as if she had finished sizing him up, she told him Vishna Yoga would not be for him.

“What?”

“What we do here would not be right for you. I am sorry, but it would be a waste of your money.”

“Why wouldn’t it be right for me?”

“Your energy is all wrong. Please leave.”

“Wait a minute.”

Shannon was taken aback by the woman’s reaction to him. To bide time, he picked up a brochure from the counter and started to thumb through it. Inside was a picture of their founder, Vishna the One True Source. He was a few years older than Shannon, maybe forty, with a shaved head, brownish skin and sharp features that were made even sharper by his piercing black eyes.

Shannon tried to act oblivious to the way the woman was staring at him and read aloud the marketing hype from the brochure. “Stress relief, improving my self-image, better sense of well-being.” Smiling, he added, “This sounds like what I’m looking for.”

“I am telling you this would be a waste of your money. There is nothing we can do for you.”

“It’s my money to waste.”

“No.”

Shannon gave her a hard look. “What if I stay to observe a class,” he said.

“Leave now or I will call the police.”

“I think I can stay for one class.”

“I said leave!”

An Asian woman, also very young, poked her head through the curtains and stared at Shannon with the same empty look in her eyes. With reinforcements now in place, the woman in the yellow leotard bent her knees, tensing, as if she were going to spring at him. A vein had started beating along her neck.

Shannon took a step back. “You know,” he said, “this isn’t doing much to help my stress. Or my well-being, for that matter.”

He got no reaction from either woman. Not even a crack of a smile. Backing up, he left the shop.

He tried the music store first. The kid working the cash register shrugged when Shannon asked him about the yoga studio. “I see some nice looking girls going in and out of there.” He scratched his chin, frowned. “I tried talking to a couple of them. Not the nicest experience.”

“How so?”

“They’re kind of spacey, you know, and not that friendly. One of them wouldn’t even look at me. Made me feel like an idiot. Another, it was like she looked through me instead of at me. I stopped bothering after that. But they are nice to look at.”

Shannon thanked him. As he got to the door the kid mentioned the smell from the yoga studio. “Sometimes it gets in here,” he said. “I think they’re smoking pot down there. Although it don’t smell quite like pot.”

Shannon got less information from the night club. At the sushi bar, the only thing the chef told him was that none of the yoga students ever eat at his restaurant.

“I wanted to put a flyer there offering their students a twenty-five percent discount, but they wouldn’t let me do it,” he complained. “Very unfriendly. Very un-Boulder like. Also smells bad.”

True Light’s compound turned out to be only a twelve minute drive from the yoga studio, but the building seemed as if it were in the middle of nowhere. Located off a new road near the southeastern part of Baseline Reservoir, there was nothing for miles around it. And even though Pauline Cousins had described the compound to him, Shannon still didn’t expect what he saw. The place did remind him of a prison. Not that the building didn’t look expensive, and not that it wasn’t loaded with cathedral ceilings, large bay windows and stone chimneys. Maybe it was the gray stone they used, or that it was so isolated, or the six-foot iron fence surrounding the property—with each iron post topped off with a dagger-like spike. Or maybe it was the way the building seemed to be comprised of several unrelated smaller structures, all jammed together making it less like a house than something industrialized. It made Shannon think of a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of a gothic mansion gone horribly wrong.

After pulling up to the main gate, he got out and rang the intercom buzzer. A woman’s voice asked him who he was. Shannon identified himself and told her he was there to speak to one of their members, Melissa Cousins. The intercom went dead. After waiting several minutes, Shannon realized the woman had no intention of responding back. He rang the buzzer again.

Angrier than before, the woman told him that Melissa did not wish to speak to him and he should leave.

“I’d like to hear that from her.”

“Too bad because you won’t.”

Again the intercom went dead. Shannon pushed his thumb against the buzzer and held it there until two men with shaved heads came out of the building, both of them wearing white robes and sandals, their faces twisted into angry scowls.

“Stop ringing that buzzer!” one of the men yelled at Shannon.

He was the larger of the two, but other than that they were almost indistinguishable. Both had square-shaped heads, flat noses and small, almost baby-sized ears. As the larger man unlocked the gate, Shannon took a step back. He watched curiously as the two men stormed through it, scowls on both faces deepening.

“Are those silk robes or polyester?” Shannon asked. “My guess is polyester. Doesn’t seem to have the texture of real silk.”

The two men came towards him, stopping only when they were a foot away. Up close, they looked vaguely familiar but not as much alike as Shannon had first thought—it was more of an optical illusion caused by their shaved heads and identical outfits. Maybe they were enough alike to be brothers, but not identical clones. They were both young, probably in their early twenties. The larger man had beadier eyes, while his partner had a more angular face. Shannon realized why they had seemed familiar; the larger one resembled Curly Howard from the Three Stooges, while the other could’ve been a young Shemp with a shaved head.

He couldn’t help feeling angry as he thought of these two pushing Pauline Cousins to the ground. Swallowing it back, he said as flatly and evenly as he could that he was there only to make sure that Melissa Cousins was okay.

“Why don’t the two of you back away from me,” he added with a tight grin.

Lips separated from the Curly look-alike showing small white teeth about the size of corn kernels. He threw both hands outward trying to push Shannon in the chest. Shannon sidestepped it and grabbed Curly by his elbow as he stumbled forward off balance, then swung him head first into the fence. Curly’s forehead clanged off of it and he shot backwards as if he had come out of a cannon. As he lay unmoving on the ground, a gash showed over his right eye and blood from it trickled down and stained his robe.

“I hope you don’t try something stupid also,” Shannon told the other man. “Cause as you can see I’m not a ninety pound middle-aged woman. I’m a little tougher to push around.”

As the Shemp look-alike stared dumbfounded at Shannon, his face screwed into a look of fury. He screamed like a banshee and charged forward, throwing a wild uppercut. Shannon blocked it and, in almost the same motion, grabbed him above his wrist and swung him backwards. The man kept screaming until he tripped over his partner and hit the back of his head against an iron post, making the same clanging noise that Curly’s head had made. Then, his eyes rolling inward, he slumped forward and lay crisscrossed on top of his partner. Shannon checked to make sure they were both breathing, then walked through the unlocked gate to the front door.

Like the gate, the door had been left unlocked. Shannon opened it and stepped down into a marble foyer that had been set up as an altar. Facing him was a life-sized painting of the cult leader, Vishna. In it he wore a long, flowing golden robe as he sat cross-legged, thumbs and forefingers touching, hands resting on his knees, his black eyes just as piercing as they were in the brochure photograph. On both sides of the painting were ornamental tables where candles and incense burned, the odor similar but not exactly the same as the one in the yoga studio. What looked like small offerings—flowers, jewelry, silk scarves—lay scattered on the floor in front of the painting.

As Shannon took all this in, a woman with long black hair reaching to the middle of her back entered the foyer. She was wearing the same type of white robe as the two men who had attacked him. Like Melissa and the women from the yoga studio, she was young, petite and very pretty. Also like the women from the yoga studio, her eyes had an expressionless, almost glazed look to them. Still, seeing Shannon standing there, her jaw dropped, although no sign of her bewilderment showed in her eyes.

“What—who are you?” she asked, stammering slightly.

Shannon recognized her voice from the intercom. “The two thugs you sent after me are lying outside your gate. They probably need medical attention.”

She walked past Shannon and looked out the front door. When she turned to face him again, her eyes were wider but still had the same expressionless, glazed quality to them.

“They attacked me,” Shannon told her. “I could file assault charges against both of them, and maybe you also as an accessory. But I won’t. Not if you let me see Melissa Cousins.”

“T-That’s not a decision I can make.”

“Then talk to someone who can.”

She stared blankly at Shannon for a good minute before blinking and nodding her head.

“I’ll take you to a waiting area,” she said

She led Shannon down a hallway decorated with paintings of different Hindu deities. Shannon recognized Shiva holding his trident, the four heads of Brahma, and many of the others from a book Eli had given him on Hinduism. At the end of the hallway was a marble sculpture of the cult leader. From somewhere beyond that, Shannon heard what sounded like sitar music and monotonic chanting.

The woman put her hand out to stop him. “Wait here,” she ordered as she opened a door off the hallway. Shannon obliged and, as he walked into the room and the door closed behind him, saw that there was no doorknob on his side of it. The click of a lock being turned came from the other side. Not that it mattered—without a handle he had no way of opening that door whether it was locked or not.