Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

“I’m working on it. By the way, what about the body in the river? The FBI is treating it as one of the series.”

“Yeah, they are, even though there were no drawings found on the vic. The guy was a farmer from Iowa whose twins went missing here last winter.”

“Twins?” I repeated.

“Yeah… So?”

“Jesus,” I said, hairs rising on my neck. “Twins could be the key.”

“You mean, the twin weapons?”

“Maybe, but not only that. Nikolaus Rothmann didn’t just experiment on twins with Mengele. He had twin children of his own.”

That made the detective’s jaw plummet.

Peter Sebastian got to the office not much after six in the morning. He’d had a call from his boss late the previous night that had disturbed him. He wasn’t used to being pressured from above, and he didn’t like it, especially since he’d been told that there were to be no more occult killings if he wanted to keep his job. He had spent hours with the case files before sleep finally overtook him, and he’d woken long before it had any beneficial effect. His wife just shook her head and turned in the opposite direction when he was getting dressed. He knew this had to be the best day’s work he had ever put in and he’d asked all the members of his team to come in early.

Dana Maltravers appeared at the open door, carrying two mugs.

“Come in,” Sebastian said, with a wave. “I need you.”

“Hot and fresh,” his subordinate said, handing him a mug. Not for the first time he wondered if she had designs on him, but dismissed the thought.

“Anything on the tarot murder?” he asked.

“The medical team did the postmortem overnight. The report’s on its way, but I’m told there are no surprises.”

“So the chopsticks were the murder weapons?”

Maltravers nodded. “They did some major damage to the brain.”

“What did the crime-scene technicians come up with?”

“You mean, apart from the Matt Wells prints? Nothing conclusive. Some fibers and some soil traces, but they’re unlikely to give us a big break-standard clothing and local dirt.”

“Canvassing?”

“The team’s on it as we speak. So far, nothing, apart from the not-very-brave citizen who lived below the vic.”

Sebastian ran a hand across his limp hair. “What about document analysis?”

“Similar ink and paper. They reckon the drawings were done by the same hand. They still haven’t any idea about the meaning or meanings.”

“Jesus, Dana, who is this guy? The Invisible Man? Somebody has to have seen him.”

“Sir?” Maltravers said, her eyes on the wall above him.

“What is it?” Sebastian said, recognizing the tone. She thought he had screwed up.

“Do you think we should have taken the D.C. detectives off the cases?”

He frowned. “Given that the order was mine, yes, I do. Obviously.”

“Yes, but…they have local knowledge.”

“So do our people, Dana.” He looked at her and realized she hadn’t finished. “Go on then, spit it out.”

“Well, I spoke to a contact in MPDC last night. He reckons that Simmons and Pinker are still working the cases in their own.”

Peter Sebastian’s face flushed. “Are you sure about that? Chief Owen assured me they weren’t.”

Maltravers raised her shoulders. “I can’t be a hundred percent certain, sir. Anyway, they might find something we could use.”

“They’d better not. We’d look like major losers then. Now sit down. I want to run through all the murders and update my orders.”

He did so, Dana Maltravers writing copious notes and giving her thoughts. The problem was, neither of them thought that the new orders would result in anything earth-shattering.

“What about Matt Wells, sir?”

“Keep the full alert in operation.”

She nodded. “I agree.”

Sebastian eyed her dubiously. “At the very least, we have to rule him out.”

“Right, sir. About Richard Bonhoff-how much do you want to release to the press?”

“Everything.”

“Including the fact that he was looking for his missing children here?”

“What?” Sebastian peered at the relevant file. “I didn’t see anything about that.”

Maltravers gave a thin smile. “Oh, sorry, sir, that report mustn’t have got through yet. The wife confirmed it yesterday evening. Gwen and Randy are their names. Apparently they’re twins.”

“Do the D.C. detectives know about that?”

“I don’t know.” The young woman looked surprised at the question.

“Find out.” Sebastian stared at her. He could see she wanted to know why he was so interested, but she didn’t have the nerve to ask why. He watched her leave, then closed the door behind her.

Peter Sebastian needed to make some rather delicate calls. Roasting the Hate Crimes department for their slow response to his inquiry about the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant’s threatening of Professor Singer was one thing. Trying to discover why the CIA was putting the squeeze on his FBI boss was another. And finding out just what Clem Simmons and his partner were doing was the last. Then he could get back to catching the killer.

I was in the back of Clem’s car, keeping my head down.

“We should be working on the explosion,” Pinker said, glancing over his shoulder at me blankly. He had made it clear that he didn’t approve of me being involved.

“We know who’s responsible for that,” I said, even though I knew I wasn’t expected to speak.

“So where are their names, addresses and contact numbers?” Pinker demanded. He shook his head when I didn’t answer. “Asshole.”

“What Matt means is that the same people who don’t want him to get any closer killed Joe Greenbaum, Vers,” Clem said, keeping his eyes to the front. We were parked on a roadside in northwest Washington.

“Oh, excuse me,” his partner said sardonically. “I forgot that the Secretary of State had ordered diplomatic immunity for limey number one here.” He turned to Simmons. “Jesus, Clem, have you lost it completely? This guy’s a suspect in at least two murders.”

“Back off,” the big man said. “We’re not investigating those cases now, not officially. I’m only interested in making sure there are no more murders in this city.”

“And exactly how is cozying up to this shithead going to achieve that?”

I leaned forward. “We’re going to ask your friend Gordy Lister some awkward questions, Versace.” Clem had told me about the newspaperman. I reckoned he must know plenty about Larry Thomson’s and about Woodbridge Holdings’s activities.

The detective turned his head toward me. “You don’t get to call me that, jailbird. You gotta earn the right.”

I smiled. He reminded me of my friend Dave, small of frame but large of spirit. That could only be to my advantage-if he didn’t cut my balls off first.

“There he is,” Clem said.

I watched as a skinny man in a brown leather jacket and cowboy boots came down the steps of a town house. Apparently Lister rarely used the place, but he’d been keeping clear of his usual haunts.

“Oh, shit,” Pinker said, reaching for his weapon.

Three men built like top-weight wrestlers came out after Gordy Lister and formed a defensive wall around him.

“We still going for it?” Pinker asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Clem said, a smile on his lips.

They both got out. I stayed where I was-as they told me-but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be there for long.

Clem walked behind the group as they headed for a large black SUV. When he called out Lister’s name, the group stopped and Lister’s face appeared between the solid sides of two of his bodyguards. I couldn’t hear the discussion, but it was pretty obvious Lister wasn’t interested in cooperating. The big men closed around him again.