Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

“There, you see? I was right. What we just heard wasn’t natural. Not even close.”

“Easy now, we’ve got sound and no picture, and that’s a pretty big leap. Someone had to be in that room with her.”

“Nobody human-I can assure you of that. The only voice I heard was hers.”

Callahan was reminded of what Ruiz had told her. About Gabriela hearing voices when she prayed. Could there have been more to it than that? Could she have had some kind of psychotic breakdown and done this to herself?

If so, that still didn’t explain the how . And Martinez was right. On the surface, none of this seemed natural.

But his superstitious hysteria was starting to grate.

“Look,” she said, “let’s come back down to earth for a minute. What I heard on that phone was a woman who was obviously terrified. And despite how it may have sounded, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t alone. I’m guessing the person in that room was someone she knew.”

“Someone we all know,” Martinez said.

Callahan struggled to avoid rolling her eyes and pressed on. “You don’t achieve the kind of stardom or wield the kind of influence Gabriela had without making enemies. And with all the people she was surrounded by, there has to be someone who would want to-”

“De Souza,” Ruiz told her.

They both looked over at him. He was on his feet now, moving toward them, his eyes more bloodshot than ever. “Jose de Souza’s the one you want.”

Callahan was surprised he’d overheard them. “Who’s Jose de Souza?”

“The leader of the Favela Paraisopolis drug cartel.”

“What’s their connection?”

“In the old days, Gabriela did some courier work for him, and she’s spoken out against him many times since. She was pressuring the police to clean up the slums. Even talked about taking a trip there to encourage the children to honor God and stay away from drugs.”

“And you didn’t feel the need to mention this?”

“I told the officers at the scene. But at that point everyone seemed to think that Gabriela had committed suicide.”

“We haven’t completely ruled that out,” Callahan said. “But at least we’re getting somewhere. I take it Gabriela’s interference in de Souza’s life didn’t sit well with him?”

“He threatened her more than once.”

Callahan turned to Martinez. “Your men must have mentioned Mr. Ruiz’s suspicions. Have you talked to this guy?”

She wasn’t surprised when Martinez shook his head. “That’s easier said than done. He rarely leaves the favela . And he’s heavily protected.”

She sighed. “I don’t know how you manage to do it, Detective, but you continue to disappoint me.”

“We can’t just walk in there and demand his cooperation. It would take far more manpower than we can-”

“I don’t care,” Callahan said, “we need to interview him. He’s the best lead we’ve got.”

She could see by the look in his eyes that Martinez was still clinging to his fear. The man was useless.

Having something concrete to focus on gave her hope. But before she approached de Souza, she’d have to reinterview all the witnesses. Maybe one of them would remember seeing him at the concert that night. Maybe he’d been right there in the audience, waiting for Gabriela to go backstage.

Callahan thought about the sound of Gabriela’s voice at the end of the recording, when she’d uttered those last few unintelligible words. It was barely a croak yet somehow purposeful, as if she were trying to send a message.

Was she giving them a name?

The man who had done this to her?

De Souza?

Callahan gestured toward the table. “Don’t touch that phone,” she said, then crossed the room to the foyer where she had left her backpack. Unzipping it, she pulled out her own smartphone and an audio cable, then moved to the sofa and sat.

Setting her phone next to Ruiz’s, she connected one end of the cable to its input, and the other end to the iPhone’s output jack. She had a forensic audio application installed that would allow her to clean up the recording and enhance the sound.

She called it up, then pressed play on the iPhone, transferring the message in real time. When it was done, she called up the audio wav-a graphic representation of the recording-and scrolled to a point near the end, where Gabriela’s whispers were barely more than a few tiny spikes on a straight line.

Callahan isolated this section and normalized the sound, which enlarged the spikes and raised the volume by several decibels.

Then she clicked play, surprised by what she heard.

“ Defende eam ,” Gabriela croaked. “ Defende eam . . .”

The same two words she’d scribbled in the margin of Paradise Lost .

Protect her .

Callahan turned to Ruiz.

“There it is again,” she said. “ ‘Protect her.’ Are you sure you can’t think of anyone Gabriela wanted to protect? Someone in danger? A child, maybe? One of her fans?”

Ruiz shook his head. “There’s no way to know.”

“She was obviously talking about herself,” Martinez said. “She knew what was about to happen and was begging for God to protect her soul.”

“Then wouldn’t she have said protect me ?” Callahan had had about enough of this idiot. She looked again at Ruiz. “You say Gabriela used to work for de Souza. Is it possible she may have been concerned about someone she knew from those days? A friend who’s still caught up in that world?”

Ruiz shook his head. “Sofie was her only friend back then. And Sofie’s long gone.”

Maybe so, but if Gabriela had gone to all the trouble to say what she’d said-had even scribbled it in a book-then it obviously meant something to her.

Something important.

Callahan thought about the T-shirt and the verse on the wall and Ruiz’s remark that Gabriela had been obsessed with Paradise Lost . There had been other notations in the book’s margins. Other passages highlighted.

Could they mean something as well?

Getting to her feet, she headed toward the bedroom, Ruiz and Martinez following behind her, Martinez saying, “What? What is it now?”

Callahan ignored him and moved through the closet to Gabriela’s prayer room. Grabbing the book, she leafed through it until she found the verse again, then continued turning the pages, finding more highlighted passages-each one as impenetrable as the last. Milton may have been a genius, but accessibility was not his strong suit.

Gabriela’s notes seemed to be confined to the eleventh chapter-or Book XI. On some pages, only individual words had been highlighted and the notes scribbled in the margins did little to illuminate what might have been going on in the pop star’s mind. Numbers and letters were written down and crossed out, then written down again, as if she were trying to puzzle something out. Break some kind of code.

But in Paradise Lost ?

That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And Callahan again wondered if the girl had gone looney tunes.

“Look at this place,” Martinez said, taking in the altar and symbol on the wall. He picked up the copy of Forbidden Rites from the prayer-desk shelf. “Look at what she was reading. I told you she was in league with the Devil.”

Ruiz swiveled his head toward him, his face tight with anger. “Say that again and you’ll be looking for a new job before the day is over.”

The threat must have carried weight, because Martinez practically swallowed his tongue before shaking his head in disgust.

“I’ve had enough of this,” he said to Callahan. “We all know what happened to Gabriela, and the more we follow this road, the more dangerous it gets.” He turned, headed out the door. “I’ll drop your bag at the hotel. You can find your own way there.”