The Hell You Say (13 page)

“It’s a gift,” I said. “A before-Christmas gift.”

“Adrien,” Lauren said quietly, “do we need to call Daddy?”

“Caaa --” I sounded like Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda. “No. Seriously.”

Naturally I couldn’t say aloud, And don’t tell my mother! But I telepathed for all my life was worth.

They looked unconvinced. I couldn’t look at the cops. Then Natasha exclaimed,

“Christmas! We haven’t talked about Christmas yet!”

“Oh, my gosh!” Lauren responded without missing a beat.

Ad lib or did they rehearse this stuff?

“We’ll talk,” I assured them. They were making protesting noises as I grabbed the book bag from Velvet, pushed it into Emma’s hands. I gestured for the coppers to follow me.

They followed, unspeaking, footsteps heavy on the wooden floor. I led them into the backroom, shut the office door firmly.

“What did you need?” It came out abruptly. I was angry with Jake, angry to find myself in this position -- and I was apprehensive.

“I’m sure you’re aware that we’ve arrested Angus Gordon?” Rossini said.

I nodded. Glanced at Jake, then looked away. Easier if I didn’t look at him. If I pretended he wasn’t there at all.

Abruptly, I remembered the first time I’d met him. Even less happy circumstances than these. We’d sat in this same crowded office with him asking questions about a murder. Today the other cop -- Rossini -- did most of the talking. I answered mechanically. They showed me photos of Kinsey. She was a year or two younger and a lot cleaner in the photographs.

I admitted I had seen her before, that she had come into the store asking for Angus. I admitted I had given Angus money when he had expressed fear over harassment from fellow students.

Rossini was inclined to follow this line of questioning. He began to ask about my relationship with Angus.

“Safe to say, Gordon was more than an employee?”

I opened my mouth, but Jake cut in. “We’ve already established Mr. English’s role.”

78 Josh Lanyon

This breach of etiquette naturally irritated the other detective. He tapped his pencil on the edge of the desk as though trying to recover his train of thought.

“For the record, Mr. English, what were you doing last night from the hours of, say, six p.m. to ten p.m.?”

Ten p.m. So she hadn’t been dead for long when I walked in. I wondered if she had been killed at the house. Looking back from a safe distance, I thought that -- considering those terrible wounds -- there hadn’t been as much blood as you’d expect at the crime scene.

Which isn’t to say that it hadn’t been plenty gory…

Once again I was standing in that dark hallway staring at the broken bloody corpse lying in the tumbled bed clothes.

I wondered what would have happened if I’d walked into the house forty-five minutes earlier.

I swallowed hard. “I closed the store around five-thirty. I ate dinner here --”

“What’d you have for dinner?” Rossini interrupted genially.

“Uh…a kind of Lean Cuisine thing.” That was the truth; it was the question itself that gave me pause.

He didn’t speak, so I went on. “I host a weekly writing group on Tuesday nights. They met from seven to nine. After that I did paperwork, and at some point Angus called.”

“At what point? What time exactly?”

“Eleven-ish. Eleven-thirty at the latest.”

No comment. He could verify the time, and certainly would, if he was any kind of cop at all. It didn’t matter; this was all basically true. “I went to bed after leaving the message with Detective Riordan.”

I thought it was a pretty tight alibi -- assuming I actually needed one. Maybe it was remotely possible that I could have hunted Kinsey down and murdered her in the hour after Partners in Crime dispersed -- or killed her before everyone arrived and then calmly discussed sentence structure for a couple of hours before carting her corpse over to Angus’s --

but I was betting on Rossini’s commonsense. (Although the guy did wear red socks with blue trousers.)

Where my story fell apart was after the time of the murder. Hopefully no church ladies selling raffle tickets or Girl Scouts peddling cookies had turned up banging on my door after I split for Angus’s. Hopefully, the police had no interest in my actions after the hours of six and ten.

Rossini made a note.

“The message you left was regarding this phone call from Gordon?”

Jake’s silence was like a fourth person in the room, a formidable presence.

“Right.” It took willpower not to look toward Jake. Why would Rossini ask that?

The Hell You Say

79

“Why again did you think Detective Riordan should investigate Gordon’s house?”

He was a smart cop. He had good instincts. He knew something was fishy with my story, but the fact that Jake, in essence, vouched for me, made it awkward.

“I guess the…fear factor,” I said. “Angus sounded terrified. He sounded in fear of his life. Besides, Detective Riordan had told me to get in touch with him if he -- Angus --

called.”

I cast a look at Jake, wondering if it had occurred to him yet that Angus was unlikely to back our strangers-in-the-night scenario.

His eyes met mine, sheared off. His lips were tight, all feeling held in check.

“You had no idea why Gordon was terrified?”

We had already been over this, so I wasn’t sure why Rossini was angling around again.

I said, “I thought I had a pretty good idea. I was wrong. I thought he was being harassed, bullied by other kids. I assumed it was student hazing, something like that. I had no idea that it might tie into this…thing in the papers.”

This multiple homicide thing in the papers, that is.

“You thought he was the victim of hazing? But he was a grad student. He was working as a teaching assistant. How likely is it that someone like that would be targeted that way?”

Rossini must not have gone to college. “It happens,” I said.

“Oh, for Chrissake, Rossini,” Jake said, bored. “English acted like a good citizen. Why are you giving him a hard time? Look, we’ve got places to go and perps to talk to.”

This was so far out of line that Rossini almost couldn’t swallow his anger. He stopped writing. He didn’t tap his pencil, he didn’t move a muscle. I was guessing that he was the senior officer in this investigation. He could probably have Jake removed from the case if he chose.

I said, “I admit I didn’t think it through. I just threw money at the problem.”

Rossini snorted as though this were a common mistake that led to countless cult murders.

He asked me a few clipped questions about my encounter with Kinsey, which I instinctively downplayed. Rossini resumed jotting his notes.

There was a lull in the questioning. I said, without thinking, “Do you think any of this has to do with Gabriel Savant’s disappearance?”

They scrutinized me.

Rossini said, “Gabriel who?”

“The mystery writer who disappeared a couple of days ago,” Jake supplied without inflection.

“Why would there be a connection?”

80 Josh Lanyon

I had already explained all this over the phone to the cops handling Savant’s missing person case. They hadn’t been impressed with my story, and I had to admit, hearing myself now, it did sound like I might be the kind of guy who wore aluminum foil hats in the privacy of my own home.

“He writes about the occult. When he did a signing here last Friday night, he announced that his next book would be an exposé of a local cult.”

I saw the first glimmer of humor on Rossini’s morose puss.

“And you think the secret cult snatched this Gabriel dude?”

“I don’t think anything.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. “He thought it. I mean, he seemed fearful that something like that might happen.”

“He expressed to you a fear that he might be kidnapped?”

“Sort of. Nothing that concrete. He said stuff that --” I caught Jake’s chilly eye and stumbled. “He mentioned a group called Blade Sable.”

“Say what? Black Sable? Sounds like a cartoon character,” Rossini commented. Adding,

“I think we’ll leave your mystery writer to the boys in Missing Persons.”

My face must have made my thoughts clear. He said affably, “You have to understand, Mr. English. Cults are like big business. What we’re looking at here is more of a mom-and-pop operation.”

There was a quaint analogy. Murder, Inc.

“You’re not exploring the possibility that these murders are cult-related?”

“We’re taking a look at a couple of scenarios. But you’ve got to remember that there are more movies about cults than there are genuine real live cults. You can’t hide a whole cult,”

Rossini explained. “Nowadays you can’t really hide anything,” he finished, and glanced briefly at Jake.

Something in that quick look, in the mildness of his tone, made me uneasy.

He asked more routine questions, while Jake preserved impassive silence, then finally slapped shut his notebook, stood, and thanked me curtly for my time.

I moved to the door. Jake followed Rossini out without a backward glance.

I didn’t think much about Jake. I didn’t even worry much about whether I had managed to convince Rossini that I was a harmless goof. My attention zeroed in on the sight of Velvet hurrying up the aisle toward the front desk.

The self-conscious line of her back, the guilty haste with which she moved, gave me the distinct impression she had been hovering outside the office.

Had she been listening through the door?

The Hell You Say

81

“So they’ve arrested Angus,” Guy remarked at last.

I nodded, selected another home-baked chip from the sandwich basket.

We had agreed to meet for a late lunch at the Corner Bakery Café in Westwood. Guy had an hour and a half before he had to head back to UCLA for his evening course on the

“History of Terror: Mystics, Heretics, and Witches in the Western Tradition.”

We’d ordered at the counter, found an empty table in the corner, wasted about ten minutes in awkward small talk before Guy got down to it. I didn’t particularly mind. The café smelled of warm baking bread, and the muted Christmas carols playing in the background were sort of soothing. I was dead tired and glad for a moment’s respite.

I asked, “Did you know Kinsey Perone? The girl Angus is accused of murdering?”

“Know her? No.” Avoiding my gaze, he said, “She could have taken a class or attended a lecture series. Her picture looked familiar, but then, they all look alike after a while.”

I described Kinsey’s accomplice right down to her pink heart-shaped glasses. “She was in that lecture you gave on the occult in popular film and fiction.”

Reluctantly, Guy said, “It sounds like Betty Sansone.”

Betty? What kind of evil henchgirl is named Betty?

“Why?” Guy questioned, his gaze finally direct on mine.

I told him why. Sort of. I told him that Kinsey and Betty had paid me a visit the day before. I left out how I spent my evening.

“That doesn’t sound like Betty. She’s smart and focused. I wish I had more like her.”

I let it go. “Guy, would you have a list of the students who were in the Practical Magic class you taught a year or so ago?”

82 Josh Lanyon

“No,” he said crisply. “As I explained to that cop investigating Tony Zellig’s death, roll books are turned in at the end of the semester. I’ve got enough to do keeping my current class load straight without hanging on to out-of-date seating charts and test scores.”

If by “that cop” he meant Jake, I had news for him. Nothing stopped Jake. He’d go straight to the college administration to get what he needed.

I could be stubborn too, but I didn’t have Jake’s resources.

“Well, when you said you had talked to the kids who you believed were involved in harassing Angus, who did you talk to?”

He shifted in his chair, an unconsciously evasive movement. “I spoke to one former student. He denied any involvement, and I believe him. I gave his name to that asshole cop, but I’m not comfortable sharing it with you. I feel that would be a breach of ethics.”

By which, I deduced, the student was someone with whom Guy had remained friendly.

I sipped my cappuccino, wondering if Jake had talked to this former student, and what the result had been. It was a sure bet that he wouldn’t rely on Guy’s endorsement.

A group of students sat at a table close to us. I lowered my voice. “Have you ever heard of a group called Blade Sable?”

“Blade what?”

“Sable.”

“No. What is it?”

“I don’t know. A secret cult?” I was smiling, and he laughed.

The laugh seemed genuine. Maybe Blade Sable really was a figment of Gabe Savant’s vivid imagination.

“You realize that Christianity was once a secret cult,” he remarked.

We ate in silence for a few moments, then Guy said, “I don’t believe that Angus is capable of…that.”

“Of murder? I think everyone is capable, given the right set of circumstances.”

“Of killing, yes. Of murder, no.” Those jade green eyes studied me. “I don’t believe you, for example, are capable of murder.”

“You haven’t seen me when someone’s check bounces or customers put books on the wrong shelves.”

His lean brown cheek creased in a smile. “Terrifying to behold, no doubt. But in fact, I wasn’t thinking of murder. I was thinking about this whole situation. Angus is a follower. It’s not in character for him to strike out on his own.”

No pun intended? I said, “I agree. Granted, my ego is involved. It’s hard for me to believe that I could have employed a serial killer for a year and never noticed any of the symptoms.”

He forked a pile of greens neatly into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

The Hell You Say

83

“Maybe Wanda’s the mastermind?” I suggested, joking.

Guy made an expression of distaste. “Wanda’s sole interests are getting high and getting laid. I can’t picture her wasting valuable stoner hours on murder.”

I selected another chip, then tossed it back in the basket. I didn’t know Wanda well, but I thought his assessment accurate. She seemed to be strong-willed, but all her will was concentrated on partying. I expected serial killers to have more of a work ethic.