No Place Like Hell (35 page)

Two large windows remained: one was dark, the other was the lighted window at the corner of the house. I couldn't see or hear anything in the darkened room. I slid past to the lighted corner window.

A window shade was drawn three-quarters down, leaving a couple inch gap at the bottom. A desk lamp did little to light the room, which seemed to be some kind of office or study. No one spoke, but fabric rustled.

Someone wearing dress slacks and a formal cotton shirt passed by the window so close that I jumped back. I froze while I waited to see if I'd been discovered. The midriff crossed again going the opposite direction.

"Sit down, Newell. Pacing won't help," a voice said.

I knew that voice. It was Chief of Detectives Lenny Greene. Greene must have addressed Tad. The pacing figure was too tall and thin to be the mayor. I edged close to the screen and tried to see whether anyone else was in the room.

"I should have told Nicky everything."

"If you'd told her, you'd be locked in an asylum now," Greene said.

"She's smart, an excellent detective. She would have figured out the Slasher's identity if she'd just had my diary."

"And she'd be dead like your secretary," Greene added. "Don't you see? We can't stop what's coming."

"This is wrong," Tad said. "We're helping a murderer."

"Don't you forget it. If we don't help, we'll be the next victims."

Their conversation left me confused. Was Tad working undercover for Greene? Why hadn't the two men kicked out the flimsy window screen and escaped?

Tad strode to the desk and yanked open the top drawer. He pawed through the contents.

"What are you doing?" Greene asked.

Tad pulled out a letter opener and tested the flexibility of the blade. "Someone has to stop this madness."

He tucked the blade in the waistband of his slacks, under his shirt. He checked the remaining drawers before returning to his pacing.

"Psst, Tad," I whispered, afraid I might be overheard by Bronski or the man who'd entered the house.

Tad's surprised face appeared at the gap under the shade.

"Nicky? What are you doing here?"

"Everyone's looking for you." I ran my hands around the edges of the screen. "We have to get away and find help."

Greene moved beside Tad. He looked different, although I couldn't say why. He still wore the black suit he had on at Dave's funeral. His mouth was opened in surprise, and one hand splayed on his chest.

Tad raised the blind and unlatched the hooks that held the screen in place. I lowered the screen to the ground. Tad grabbed the edge of the window and raised a foot to the sill.

Greene grabbed Tad's arm. "You can't go. You know what will happen."

Tad's lips set in a hard, thin line. "For once in my life, I'm going to do the right thing. Stay if you want, but I won't be part of this anymore."

Anymore? How was Tad involved with the Slasher? And what was Greene afraid of? None of it made any sense. The place still seemed as lifeless as a tomb, but that might not last. We needed to move.

Tad clambered through the window and straightened beside me.

"Where is everyone?" I asked.

"I heard the commune members are on a pilgrimage to some ruins in Mexico. I don't know who else is here," Tad said. "How did you know where to look for me?"

"Sleeth and I followed Colleen Hobert—until he ran into a trap just like the one that killed Dave."

"Sleeth's here?" Tad's face paled in the dim light from the window.

"That's right," said a voice from behind me. "I finally have the hellhound."

I turned around to face Maggie Tisdahl. Her pistol pointed at my chest.

60

"You work for Holmes," I said when I'd recovered my voice. "You're helping the Slasher?"

Maggie's eyes blinked, and a change came over her. Her head tipped forward, a smile curved her lips, and her posture relaxed.

"I
am
Holmes." Her voice had deepened and taken on an East Coast accent. "Maggie and I have shared this body since she released me. Lucky for me she found that old book and used its contents as part of her meditation chant."

A frightening intensity came over the personality who looked at me through Maggie's eyes. "Tomorrow, after I have sacrificed Sleeth to destroy Hell, you and I will get better acquainted. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed the entertainment of a woman."

She'd had some kind of personality split, or a psychotic break. I had no sympathy for her. I wanted to plant my fist in Maggie's face, scratch out her eyes, make her suffer the way I'd seen Dave suffer.

"You're the one who killed Dave," I said, my voice flat. My hands clenched at my side.

"It's your fault he's dead. If you'd done as you were told and stayed away from Sleeth, Dave would still be alive," the voice of the Holmes personality said. "I never wanted to hurt your partner, but I had to have Sleeth. He's the hell mouth. Rupture him to rupture Hell."

Criminals always blamed others for their actions, but some part of me still cringed with guilt at the accusation that I'd killed Dave. I diverted the guilt into rage and focused it on Maggie.

I jerked a thumb at Tad. "And will it be Tad's fault when you kill him? What about Chief Greene? What sin did he commit that entitles you to murder him in cold blood?"

Maggie laughed, a sound that chilled me with its madness despite the warm night. She flicked the gun barrel at Tad. "Go ahead, tell her who you are."

Tad's brows pulled down, and his hands rubbed his pant legs. "I'm sorry, Nicky. I should have told you sooner, but I didn't think you'd believe me. I didn't think
anyone
would believe me. They'd say it was because I banged my head in the accident.

"I'm Bill Decker. Tad Newell died when he was hit by the car, and I stole his body."

Tad was right; I
did
think he'd hit his head too hard in the accident.

"All I wanted was to get out of my contract with Calderon." Tad's eyes filled with sorrow. "When she contacted me, I thought I was buying a new identity, a new life somewhere that Calderon couldn't find me. I didn't know she intended to murder me or anyone else. None of us did."

My eyes tracked from Tad to Maggie to Greene, who leaned out the window. I waited for Greene to say something, to refute the madness.

"When you tried to warn me about the Slasher, you said he was a man. But I'd spoken to a woman," Greene said.

"She won't help you," Maggie said, her voice back in its normal range.

She
who?
Maggie and I were the only females present. She couldn't mean—

"I hadn't intended to take Greene," Maggie said. "He's small potatoes, not the kind of rich and powerful associate I prefer. But Calderon helped the hellhound. That had to stop, and Greene had the authority to do it."

I stared at Greene. "You ordered the raid at the Luna Azul."

"She has my heart," Greene said. "If I don't do what she says, she'll kill me."

"What about the innocent victims caught in the crossfire?" I asked. "You swore to protect them when you took the job."

"She swore nothing," Maggie said. "Nicky Demasi, meet Deborah Peck."

My eyes widened, my lips parted, and my breath stuck in my chest. Greene ducked his head. His ruddy face flushed. Was I the only sane person left on the planet?

"If you'd just shot Sleeth at the freight warehouse, this would all be over," Tad murmured at my shoulder, his voice laden with regret. "She can't hold the ceremony without him."

The porch light blazed. Warner banged through the screen door and joined Maggie on the grass. The light revealed dried blood on Maggie's hands. My stomach churned. Was it Sleeth's?

"Hobert's resting upstairs," Warner said. "Frank Zachary finished his shower, and Bronski gave him his sedative. He'll be out soon."

"Good. Time's running short. We need to get them back to their ritual locations," Maggie said. She nodded at me. "Put her in the basement."

The strange shift came over Maggie again, and the deeper Eastern voice spoke. "I want her secure but comfortable. When you're done, you and Bronski go after Judge Innes. Take Peck with you. The judge will open the door if he sees his ol' buddy Chief Greene."

Maggie looked at me with a sad smile. "Another failure to add to your list, Nicky. If you hadn't let Sleeth take Matthew Shertleff's soul from Judge Richards' body, I wouldn't need a replacement."

Warner pulled his pistol from his belt and stepped over to me. He grabbed my arm in a grip as tight as a vise and jerked me toward the back door. Inside, we crossed the kitchen to a locked door.

Warner dug a key ring from his pocket without releasing me. The door yawned open to dark stairs leading down. He flipped a switch, and a bare bulb hanging overhead came on. We headed down.

We stopped before a second locked door at the bottom. My captor used a different key to unlock this one. It swung open on well-oiled hinges. Warner turned on another light.

The room encompassed half the footprint of the house. Ceiling-mounted fixtures cast light on a scene that made me stop in my tracks.

A steel table, the surface of which sloped to a drain at one end, stood in the space closest to the door. Straps hung from the edges. Beside the table, a tray displayed gleaming surgical instruments laid out in neat rows. Beyond the table, chain manacles hung from a ring set in the concrete wall.

At the far end of the room, a huge brick furnace took up much of the remaining space. It had a small metal door near the floor and a larger door at waist height. A chimney rose in an L to vent the furnace out the side wall.

No one needed a furnace that size to heat a house in Southern California. It looked more like— My throat closed.

Warner dragged me to the wall and fastened manacles around my wrist. They bit into my skin. He glanced at the furnace, which had captured all my attention, and then looked at me.

"Don't worry," he said in a gravelly voice. "By the time you go in there, you won't feel a thing."

61

I sat on the cool, hard concrete floor, my arms stretched over my head, my wrists already raw from the rough edges on the cold iron bracelets. I should have jumped Warner before he brought me down here. I'd rather be shot than face my dark future on the dissection table.

How had I missed Maggie's severe mental illness? How had she sucked so many other people into her delusions? How could I stop her from committing more murders?

She'd been after Sleeth all along, and I hadn't seen the significance of it. We could have set a trap using Sleeth as the bait. Maggie would have come to us. If we had, we wouldn't both be her prisoners now.

The door opened, causing me to jump. I discarded my regrets, scrambled to my feet, and faced Warner.

The hoodlum crossed to me at a brisk pace. He pulled handcuffs from his trouser pocket and fastened them on my wrists before removing the manacles. The gun was tucked in his waistband. I thought about making a grab for it, but he never gave me the opportunity.

We climbed the stairs, exited the kitchen, and emerged in the yard. Despite my feeling that endless hours passed while I was chained to the wall helpless, stars still twinkled overhead. The thinnest line of light lit the eastern horizon.

We walked to the packing shed, a two-story metal-sided building with two large delivery doors and a smaller door for foot traffic. Inside, a single bulb beside the door did little to light the cavernous, echoing space.

Slatted wooden crates were stacked in a jumble along the wall to my right. Two refrigerators, a stove, and worktop demarked a kitchen area to my left. I made note of it. Kitchens were usually stocked with knives.

At the back of the space, pinpricks of light flickered. Warner pushed me across the open expanse of concrete floor.

When we were closer, the pinpricks resolved into candles, five of them in a circle. A naked body lay spread-eagled in the center of a rune-inscribed spiral. It was the man who'd entered the house earlier and I now knew to be Frank Zachary, the last of the members of Calderon's cult.

A second man struggled against the ropes that held him to an old army cot placed at the outer edge of the spiral. Even with the tape over his mouth and the poor light, I recognized Judge Innes. His eyes rolled my direction, filled with terror and pleading wordlessly for help.

They'd ripped open Innes' shirt to bare his chest. A glass bottle of clear fluid hung upside down from a stand, and a tube trailed from it to his arm.

Bronski waited next to Innes. An overturned crate beside them held a rubber tourniquet, an Ambu bag, and a filled syringe. A defibrillator stood beside the crate.

Maggie stepped from a dark corner to meet me. Her face glowed with excitement, and her eyes shone too bright. She wore a long black robe that smelled of blood, and she carried a white-handled knife, the quintessential lunatic executioner.

"Welcome to the Temple of Enlightenment," she said. "It's unfortunate that I'll have to use the same site twice. It drains the power. But Lt. Mack seems to have listened to you after all when you told him about your map. He's staked out the site I intended to use for Mr. Zachary's transfer. Unfortunate, but our five damned souls should be sufficient to overcome any difficulties."