Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

“Voices?”

“God. Angels. She was regular Joan of Arc.”

“She told you this?”

He nodded. “Late one night, in a moment of weakness. But when I pressed her about it, she pulled away as if she realized she’d just revealed some sort of state secret.” He paused. “Things were never the same between us after that.”

“And this didn’t worry you? Make you wonder if she had mental problems?”

Ruiz shook his head. “A lot of people hear voices when they pray, Agent Callahan. Especially people as blessed as Gabriela was. These last few months, she had a glow about her that’s hard to describe. A sense of purpose.”

“I can tell that you loved her very much.”

“Ever since she was seventeen years old,” he said. “Back when I had my own ministry. I still remember when she was busking on street corners, playing her music for spare change, struggling to overcome her addiction. I often thought she was in too deep to ever find the light. But she did.”

Callahan thought of Martinez’s cover story. “Do you think her addiction may have played a part in her death?”

“Not a chance. I saw how devastated she was when her friend Sofie died. She would never go back to that. Not after everything we’d accomplished.”

“So what do you think happened to her?”

“I wish I knew. I just know she couldn’t have done this to herself.”

Callahan nodded. “In your statement to the police, you said you smelled gasoline, right before you and her bodyguards found her.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure about that?”

“Yes.”

“This was just before you heard Gabriela’s screams, right?”

He closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“How long had she been missing at that point?”

He thought about it a moment. Shrugged. “Three, maybe five minutes. Nothing more.”

“And between the time you heard her screams and found her in the storage room?”

“No more than thirty seconds or so. And by that time she was already . . .” He stopped himself and stared at the floor, looking as if he were about to be sick.

“I’m sorry to keep pushing, Mr. Ruiz, but I want to be absolutely certain that you smelled gasoline.”

He looked up sharply. “You think I’m lying?”

“I think you could be confused. How far away were you when you smelled it?”

“Pretty far. Gabriela was down a long hallway, around a corner. But there’s no confusion.”

Gas fumes are strong, Callahan thought, but would Ruiz have been able to smell them from that distance? And why hadn’t any of the bodyguards corroborated his statement?

Could he have imagined it?

Ruiz slumped against the door frame, and she could see that grief was weighing him down. “Can we be done with this, please?”

“Just a few more questions,” she said, then gestured to the wall behind the prayer desk. “You say you’ve been in here before. Do you have any idea what that symbol represents?”

Ruiz glanced at it and shook his head. “I probably should, but I don’t recognize it. I’m sure it meant something special to Gabriela. Her faith was deep.”

“I think that’s a pretty safe assumption,” Callahan said, then showed him the highlighted passage in Paradise Lost . “You say she was obsessed with this book. What about this note in the margin-is this Gabriela’s handwriting?”

“Yes.”

“ Defende eam means ‘protect her.’ Do you have any idea who she was talking about?”

Another shrug. “Could be anyone, I suppose. Gabriela dealt with a lot of people. Fans. Charity volunteers. Bible students.”

“What about crew members?”

He nodded. “We’re well staffed.”

“Do you know if any of them practice the occult?”

He seemed affronted by the idea. “Of course not. Everyone on Gabriela’s team has found the Way, including her bodyguards. Why would you ask such a thing?”

So he hadn’t seen the mark on the floor.

And nobody had bothered to mention it to him.

“My job is to look at all of the possibilities,” she told him. “Do you know anyone with the initials CSP?”

He thought about it and shook his head.

Callahan dropped the book to the prayer desk and gestured to the Saint Christopher medallion. “Any idea who gave her this?”

He looked at it. “It’s probably just one of her trinkets from the auction house. Are we finished yet?”

“Just one more thing. What about your cell phone? Were you able to find it?”

He nodded and reached into his robe pocket, pulling out an iPhone. “I spend half my life on this thing, but I haven’t touched it since Gabriela died.”

“Then you haven’t checked your voice mail?”

He waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “I’m sure there are dozens of messages. People calling with condolences. But I haven’t had the energy.”

“What about the one from Gabriela?”

His gaze snapped to Callahan’s. “What are you talking about?”

“The outgoing calls on her cell phone show that she dialed your number just before she died. She may have left you a message.”

His face went pale. “What?”

He looked down at the phone and, as Callahan watched, he immediately touched the screen, pulling up his voice mail application. He quickly scrolled through several dozen messages until he came to one marked Gabriela .

He stopped. Stared at it.

“Oh my God,” he said quietly. “Oh my God.”

Before Ruiz played the message, Callahan asked him to bring the phone into the living room. She wanted Martinez to listen in. It seemed like the right thing to do, considering this was allegedly his investigation.

Moving to the sofa and two chairs near the center of the room, they all sat, then Ruiz placed the phone on the coffee table, touched the speaker icon and pressed play .

What they heard was a surprise to all of them.

It began with a loud clattering sound, as if the phone had hit the floor and rolled. Then Gabriela’s voice echoed, her words unintelligible. She seemed to be babbling incoherently, but it was impossible to tell. She started to cry, her voice blurred by tears but rising in volume and intensity-

– “No . . . Stay away from me!”

The plea had been directed at someone, yet there were no other voices in the room.

She began to cough now, violently, sobbing, struggling to breathe, begging to be left alone. This was abruptly followed by a commotion-feet shuffling, stumbling, crashing, Gabriela crying and coughing and gagging, continuing to beg.

Another crash was followed by a long silence, interrupted only by the sound of her rapid breathing, a cough or two.

She was close to the phone now, and after a moment she said something, then repeated it twice. But the words came out as little more than a croak, barely audible, her anguished whispers too soft to be understood.

Then, after another moment of silence, she began to scream.

Ruiz cut the message off mid-scream. He looked at Callahan with wounded eyes, then quickly averted his gaze, as if he couldn’t quite handle the human connection. He’d be exposing too much.

“I can’t believe I wasn’t there for her when she called.”

“Don’t blame yourself. Phone service is always spotty in places like that. There was nothing you could have done anyway.”

Ruiz just stared at the floor.

Callahan felt for him. Even for a detached outsider like her, that hadn’t been easy to listen to.

She glanced at Martinez, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking more rattled than usual, then got to his feet and gestured for her to join him over by the piano.

She followed him, bracing herself for whatever it was he had to say, knowing she probably wouldn’t like it. She studied the Gustave Dore illustration as he spoke, keeping his voice low.