James Patterson - Gone

“Not funny, Parker!” I yelled. “No girls allowed in the boys’ room!”

A few hours later, after I was allowed to put on some pants and we’d grabbed some breakfast, we were on Interstate 10, speeding west toward LA.

It was a long, strange sort of trip from the air base to the city. First, we went through the edge of the Mojave Desert, then up and down through the San Gabriel Mountains. I didn’t spot one yellow cab or dirty-water-dog/tube-steak cart on any of the blocks. Actually, there weren’t even any blocks.

As we neared the LA city limits, Parker pointed out the spot in El Monte where the two LA County detectives had been gunned down with automatic fire.

I couldn’t believe it. There was a Burger King on the corner, beside a furniture store, and a car dealership across the street. It looked like your typical suburban strip. It definitely didn’t look like a war zone.

As we drove closer to downtown LA, I sat looking out at the blue sky and palm trees, the San Gabriel mountain range now in the hazy distance off to my right. I had actually been to LA once, the summer before college. After watching a bunch of Stanley Kubrick films, me and a buddy of mine had gotten it into our heads that we would come out here, find work, and become either screenwriters or directors.

What happened instead was that we got depressingly drunk for three days in a row in a crummy, run-down motel near Hollywood Boulevard, found no work, and eventually had to have our parents wire us money for a ticket home. Aren’t eighteen-year-olds brilliant?

Watching the glittering downtown LA skyline come into view in the forward distance, I just hoped my second visit to La-La Land would prove more successful.

The task force HQ was set up at the LAPD’s Olympic Station, a new glass, metal, and brick building located on South Vermont Avenue, in the Wilshire neighborhood business district. The multi-agency squad had originally been housed at the LAPD’s Hollywood Station, but the paparazzi and media, who had camped out after the deaths of the rap mogul King Killa Leonard and pop singer Alexa Gia, had been such a nuisance, they had decided to move.

Upstairs, in a conference room, Parker introduced me to FBI agents Bob Milton and Joe Rothkopf. The veteran agents couldn’t have been more welcoming or accommodating in setting us up. They’d already dragged in some desks from somewhere and placed them in the corner, with a couple of computer monitors.

Agent Rothkopf was placing a file about the Mob-boss killing in Malibu on my desk when a group of burly LAPD detectives swaggered in. Coming in from a late lunch , I thought, checking my watch. A semiliquid one from the looks on their red faces.

Parker had already given me the rundown on the task force. There was a large federal presence. DEA, ICE, and even the ATF, but senior detectives from LAPD’s Major Crimes and Robbery-Homicide divisions were running the show. And didn’t let anyone forget it, apparently.

The tallest of the detectives eyed me coldly, then suddenly smiled as he broke off from his buddies and walked over.

“Here we go,” Agent Rothkopf said to me, under his breath. “Hope you’re wearing a cup.”

“I’m Terry. Terry Bassman,” the large thirty-something detective said, shaking my hand too hard. “You’re Bennett, right? Your federal friends here were telling me all about you. They said they were bringing in some more help, and what do you know? Here you are. The guy who lost Perrine in the flesh.”

The cop grinned back like a fool at his giggling buddies as I broke his grip. He was six foot four, about two-fifty, broad shouldered, in good shape. He popped a piece of gum into his mouth, the expression on his lean face that of a man who didn’t take too much shit from anyone. Which was pretty convenient, since he was so big that he probably rarely had to.

But what the hell? I decided to give him some shit anyway.

“It’s true, Terry,” I said, loud enough for everyone in the crowded room to hear. “I lost Perrine. But you know what? I figure it’s better to have caught him and lost him than to never have caught him at all. You know, like you crackerjack LAPD guys so far.”

That stopped the giggling pretty quick. In fact, it got so quiet, you could have heard a firing pin drop. I glanced at Rothkopf, who was biting the inside of his cheek to keep from cracking up.

I stared back at Bassman innocently. I don’t like to bang heads, but, like any cop worth his salt, I can when I have to. With the best of them, actually.

Bassman stared levelly at me, his square jaw working as he chewed his gum. Then he clapped a hand painfully on my shoulder as he smiled again.

“Well, if you need anything, Mr. Bennett-directions to Disneyland, star maps, anything at all-remember, the LAPD is here to protect and serve,” he said.

After that rousing encounter with the welcome wagon, I pored over the case files on all the murders.

The most disturbing photos by far were of the crime scenes at the Licata home and at rap mogul Alan Leonard’s house. The pale and naked bled-out bodies were so chilling, like something out of a documentary about Nazi human experimentation. And we had no idea what had killed them. The FBI lab was still working on the toxicology of the lethal substance.

Parker stared at the horror-movie stills with me.

“I wonder if shock value is the point,” she said, letting out a frustrated breath.

“Probably,” I said. “Things have gotten so bizarre of late that Perrine has to get creative in order to grab people’s attention.”

“He certainly has mine,” Emily said. “I mean, this is simply incredible. I’ve read reports that indicate the cartels turned to all these horrors, like beheadings and body mutilations, after seeing them performed by Islamic terrorists on the Internet.”

“Bull,” I said, turning over a photograph. “Narco traffickers south of the border have always been famous for incredibly brutal killings. Where does the Colombian necktie come from? My pet theory is that this recent, really sick garbage has more than a little to do with Santa Muerte, the spooky quasi-religious death cult that many of the cartel soldiers adhere to.”

“So you’re saying it’s like a cycle,” she said. “The more the cartels rise in power, the more and more its members want to satisfy Santa Muerte’s thirst for blood?”

I nodded.

“That’s a little out there, Mike. Isn’t this about money and drug trafficking, not Perrine’s evil cult?”

“If it’s about just money and drug trafficking, what’s up with all the bodies, Parker?” I said. “Twenty-nine dumped in Nuevo Laredo. Forty-nine in Juarez. They’re hung from bridges. Bags of heads are found along highways. The victims aren’t even cartel members. They’re innocent migrant workers or people trying to cross the border into the US. To kill a mule for stealing a load is one thing, or to go after a witness. I’m telling you, this is new. Or, more accurately, old.”

“Old?” Emily asked.

“Have you ever heard of the Thuggee cult?”

Parker rolled her eyes. “Had a lot of reading time on our hands up there on the prairie, Detective?”

“A little, Parker. Anyway, in India there used to be this criminal cult called the Thuggees. They were a secretive organization of robber-murderers. They’d strangle their victims and then bleed them, offering their blood to Kali, the goddess of death. Some say Santa Muerte is a modern incarnation of Mictecacihuatl, the Aztec goddess of death.”

“So what are you saying? It’s us versus the goddess of death?”

“Kind of,” I said.

“You’ve been watching too much History Channel,” she said.