The Prophet (Ryan Archer #2) (9 page)

Archer’s cell phone rang and he retrieved it from the passenger seat.

“Archer,” he answered.

The voice on the other end was hesitant. “Uh, are you the guy from last night?”

Archer did a quick mental search and identified the male voice immediately.

“Glen, is that you?”

“Yeah.”

Cecile’s fiancé, the weed dealer.

“Glad to hear from you. Did Cecile make it home last night?”

There was another long hesitation. “No, actually, she didn’t,” Glen said.

“Did she call?”

“No, dude. Her mother called about an hour ago and said the police are at her house. That’s Cecile’s legal address. She still technically lives with her mom. So, the police are there and her mom’s like all crying and upset and stuff. It sounds like Cecile might be in trouble.”

Archer changed lanes, cutting through traffic as he accelerated.
 

“What are they saying, Glen? What are the police there to tell her? Is Cecile okay?”

“I don’t think so, dude. Her mom said something about an overdose, but that’s crazy. I’m kind of worried, dude.” His tone was rising. The weed was probably making him paranoid.

“Are the cops still there?”

“Here?”

“At the mother’s house.”

“Don’t know, man. Don’t know. I’m kind of trip’n!”

“I’m sure you are. Listen, Glen, pour yourself a glass of water and sit down. Try to relax. Where does Cecile’s mother live?”

Glen gave him the address.

When Archer got there, two LAPD cruisers were parked on the street. He peeled the paper towel off his arm and tossed it into the backseat of his truck. A couple of officers in uniform were standing on the porch.
 

“Who’s in charge?” Archer asked them.

“Who are you?” one of the uniforms asked.

“Ryan Archer. The daughter’s boyfriend told me she might be in some kind of trouble.”

“I recognize you,” the other uniform said. “You used to be a Fed, right?”

Archer nodded.

“I’ve heard stories about you. You have quite a colorful history.” The cop was smiling.

“Everyone has a history,” Archer replied. “Mine is just mine.”

“This guy is kind of a legend,” the cop said to his partner.

His partner noticed the scrapes and blood and grinned. “Looks like you went down a water slide with no water.”

“Where is the girl?” Archer asked, looking past them into the house.

“Dead,” the first cop said. His badge said Fisher.

His partner, Archer’s fan, was named Lewis.

Archer touched a hand to the cut above his eye, looking past them into the house where more cops were gathered. “You’re sure?”

Fisher nodded. “She was found on a park bench in Elysian Park this morning. Somebody called nine-one-one. Looks like she probably died late last night. Had a syringe sticking out of her arm. Looks like a heroin overdose.”
 

Archer remembered Glen mentioning the overdose, then stating that that was crazy. He would have to follow-up with Glen and find out more about Cecile’s habits and why he would so readily reject the possibility of an accidental overdose.

“Who found her?” Archer asked.

“Apparently, some random concerned citizen. The responding officers found her sprawled on the bench like she was sleeping. I don’t really know why anyone might’ve thought any different, but it was probably that needle sticking out of her arm. That would be enough to get my attention.”

“How is the mother?”

“In meltdown,” Lewis said. “What are you doing now, anyway?”

Archer ignored the question. He wanted a few minutes alone with Cecile’s mother. Maybe it didn’t matter, Cecile was already dead.

“Did you know you’re bleeding?” Fisher said.

Archer went back to the truck and made a U in the middle of the street with Fisher and Lewis watching. He called Glen and got Cecile’s last name and what little personal information about her he was willing to pass along. Then Archer called Webb to have him start reaching out to his contacts inside the LAPD and find out the specifics about her death.

“She had never done heroin in her life,” Glen had told him during the brief conversation. “I would know,” he had said. “She wasn’t a junkie. She barely liked pot,” he insisted. “If they found her with a needle in her arm, there is no way Cecile put it there. No way in the world.”

Archer believed him.

* * *

Archer stood with his shoulder against a wall and watched the morgue technician pull a drawer from the cooler. The body was in a plastic bag. The technician pulled the zipper. The room was cool enough that Archer had his arms folded over his chest. He watched the guy shuffle around the drawer. There were bodies on tables around the room. Death and its many faces. Archer had seen plenty of death during his life. When he was young it was startling, but the shock had worn off decades ago. He could look on it with detachment now. At least to a point.

“Here you go,” the technician said.

Archer stared down at the face in the bag. Cecile Espinoza had been a pretty girl. Dirty blonde hair and blue eyes. Her high cheekbones had probably looked really great with makeup. In death, with her color drained, she looked more like a wax sculpture.
 

Archer took a good long look. Then he nodded at the guy in the lab coat and turned for the door. He had seen enough to believe Glen was right. Cecile hadn’t been a heroin junkie. She hadn’t OD’d on that shit.

* * *

Silas Sawbridge hadn’t slept in two full days. This wasn’t unusual for him. He had never required a normal amount of sleep. This was one of the reasons he had been able to accomplish such an incredible amount during his lifetime.

The jet was owned by the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who had flown Silas to Chicago for a private consultation. It was a luxury he was accustomed to. This kind of treatment had become a familiar aspect of his life as a renowned spiritual teacher. The CEO was a personal friend and had spared no expense to have Silas spend a few short hours at the headquarters of his company. Silas’s books had all been worldwide bestsellers, and his week-long conferences had been attended by tens of thousands each year for the past forty years.
 

Silas was seventy years old, though he could have passed for fifty-five. He was tall and lean and muscular. His hair was thick and long, swept back in a wave of silver. His face was tan and his eyes were grey. When he stood, his six-foot-five frame was an intimidating presence. He still ran five miles a day and carefully monitored every bite of food he took into his body. His health was of utmost importance to him. He had been a vegetarian from the time he was a teenager and had never eaten sugar. His father had died when Silas was an infant, and his mother had turned to the church for help in raising her son. The clergy of the church had taken the young boy under their wing and had instilled in him the value of a deeply spiritual life. But from the beginning, Silas had found something lacking in the environment of his upbringing, and soon ventured outside the church walls to try to discover what it was that his intellect and his soul was still lacking.

Much like Jesus, there was a gap in Silas’s life that was mostly unaccounted for by any official record. He simply disappeared for a period of years and had never been forthcoming about where he’d gone or what he’d done, though clearly it had been a time of immense spiritual exploration and discovery. Shortly after his return, he founded the Church of the Narrow Gate, the official doctrine of which was a closely guarded secret, doled out to the Gate’s followers in small, cryptic doses throughout the pages of Silas’s many books. The exact mission of the church was a hotly debated topic.

Silas watched as the city of Los Angeles swept into view from his cabin window. Wisps of cloud floated by as the city shimmered in the sun far below. He was a man of incredible ambition and vision. Very few born as mortals shared the scope of his vision for the earth. He held a leather satchel on his lap, and inside the satchel was the completed manuscript of his latest work of genius. He was exhausted from the writing of it. The work had consumed him the past three years. Putting words to paper had felt like writing with blood squeezed from his soul. He had put his life into the work. Soon he would be able to share another small piece of his life’s message with his faithful followers.

The sun was in his eyes so he pulled the shade and relaxed against the headrest of his seat. The young girl filled his thoughts. Tatum Cloud. She represented an important part of his grand scheme. She was a blessing to the church. He had waited many years to find someone like Tatum. Silas had big plans for her.

FIFTEEN

Archer sat on the hood of his Land Cruiser and unwrapped a burrito from a lunch truck. He had learned in the Marines to eat when he had a chance even if he wasn’t hungry, because you never knew when you might get another opportunity. The burrito was still hot. It was stuffed with beans and beef and chili peppers. It was spicy as hell. His eyes watered as he took a bite and stared off across the heat of the city.
 

He was parked across the highway from a UPS sort facility. Dust from the road swirled as traffic sped by. The hood of his truck was warm and he could feel the sun on his forearms and on the back of his neck. He finished the burrito and unwrapped another, diving right in and stuffing his face. He needed every calorie he could get.
 

He was thinking about the girl in the morgue. Cecile Espinoza had died with a needle in her arm, but he didn’t believe she had put it there. Not a chance. Someone else had been involved. Someone who wanted her dead. Or
needed
her dead. Archer triangulated the location where the cops had found her body with regard to her mother’s home and the duplex she shared with Glen, the fiancé. There was no relationship between the three that seemed obvious or apparent, but that didn’t matter.

Cecile had been a pretty girl. Archer wondered why she had planned to waste her life with a pothead loser like Glen. She could have easily done better. Much better. At least based on looks. She must have seen something in him, or maybe she was simply a pothead like him and no longer had the brain capacity to notice the obvious. Or maybe it had been a self-esteem issue. Pretty girls weren’t always aware of their power or choices. Cecile likely hadn’t been too bright. Archer’s interest wasn’t in her choice of men or her looks. He was only interested in the circumstances surrounding her sudden death. He wasn’t buying the overdose.

He finished the second burrito. The Mexican who owned the lunch truck was an illegal named Felix. Felix knew Archer knew he was an illegal, so lunch was always on the house. Archer loved the burritos and appreciated the free meal, but never abused the privilege. He liked Felix, though the short, brown-skinned man only spoke enough English to dole out warm food and make correct change. Archer was satisfied with lunch and the sun on the back of his neck was making him want a nap. He turned his head and spotted a trash can on the sidewalk outside a gas station fifty yards away. He palmed both wrappers and slid off the hood.

Gravel crunched underfoot. A small pickup was parked at the pumps. A hatchback was parked at the front near the door. Archer watched two young men get out of the hatchback, glance around quickly, then go inside. He watched the door lazily swing shut, afternoon light glinting off the glass. There was something about the look in their eyes. He dropped the wrappers on the ground and stopped short of the windows, shading his eyes from the sun so he could see past the glare off the glass. The two young men had drifted to the rear of the store. Archer felt the familiar twist in his belly that never lied.
 

He went inside. A bell chimed as the door closed behind him. A small Korean man with thick glasses stood behind the counter, busy at the register. Archer dropped his hands into his pockets and walked directly past the register toward the restrooms in the back. There were three aisles evenly dividing the sales floor. The two young men from the car were at the opposite end of the second aisle, one of them holding open the door to a cooler, staring in at cartons of milk and bottles of chilled energy drinks. His buddy was bunched close to him, whispering in his ear. Both of them looked nervous, Archer decided. He had noticed that they looked nervous the instant they stepped out of the hatchback in the parking lot. It didn’t take a lot of training or education, formal or otherwise, to notice the signs. The punks had plans, and those plans involved the Korean behind the counter and his money in the register.

Archer went to the restroom, turned the knob, and opened the door. Then he bumped the plastic trash can over with his foot to hold the door open. Through the gap in the door he had a partial view of the sales floor. He took a step back. The same view was available in the streaked mirror over the sink. He stared at the mirror.

Another customer wandered in from outside. Archer heard the electronic chime. He watched the mirror, waiting for activity from the middle aisle. He turned his head and saw a mop bucket parked in one corner of the restroom. He leaned toward the corner without taking his eyes off the mirror and took hold of the mop handle. He applied enough resistance against the bucket to unscrew the plastic handle from the mop head, spinning it counterclockwise until it disengaged. A mother held the outside door open for her small child as sunshine fell across the scuffed tile. Archer blinked once. Twice. Then he saw the first young man drift toward the sales counter.

Archer grasped the mop handle in one hand and nudged the restroom door open with his left shoulder.

The second punk appeared at the mouth of the small hallway that led to the restrooms. Archer ducked away and touched the light switch. The restroom went dark except for some fluorescent spill from the hallway. He held his breath, watching the punk through the gap between door hinges. The punk gave a passing glance toward the hallway but wasn’t interested in anything in that direction. He was focused on the Korean at the register. Archer spotted the gun shoved down the back of his pants. It bulged out from under his T-shirt. Archer figured the punk at the counter was similarly armed.