Paul Johnston - Maps of Hell

He drank from a bottle of water. Soon he would have to draft a report for his boss, and the FBI director himself wanted to be copied on it. That didn’t make him feel good at all. The simple truth was that he didn’t have anything significant to report about the occult killings. The only progress his team had made regarded the dead man in the river. Richard Bonhoff’s wife, Melissa, had been interviewed. She had come to Washington and Sebastian had met her, though it was Maltravers who took her statement. He’d been surprised by the woman’s coldness-she hardly seemed to care that her husband had been murdered. At least she’d supplied a lot of information about her twin children, Randy and Gwen, who didn’t come home three months ago, having been on a trip to D.C. last winter. She had demanded that the Bureau find her children, something that Sebastian could hardly prioritize. It didn’t help that the newspaperman Gordon Lister, who had looked after the twins when they won a competition in the Star Reporter, was nowhere to be found. The people at the paper seemed to be as much in the dark as anyone as to his whereabouts.

At last the people in Hate Crimes had woken up, but they hadn’t been any use. As far as they knew, the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant had been defunct for decades. They were of the opinion that some far-right lunatic or lunatics had dug the name up as cover. As for the investigations on the ground, all witnesses had been questioned again, all medical and CSI reports had been collated and double-checked, and all leads had been followed-without a hint of the murderer’s identity. Sebastian simply had nowhere else to look.

He got up and went over to the conference table. Maltravers had taken out books from the Bureau library on satanic thrash metal, voodoo, the kabbalah and tarot, as well as ordering up reports on previous occult investigations. They had been through them all, examining illustrations, comparing themes and motifs, trying to make connections. They could have spent years doing that and been none the wiser about who the killer was. He wondered if they were being too subtle. Maybe their man just hated the paranormal; maybe he was just a sad fuck obsessed with the number two-though even that wouldn’t explain the drawings attached to the bodies.

The only thing that Sebastian knew for sure was that the twin weapons used in all the murders were significant in some way. If he’d been able to talk to Richard and Melissa Bonhoff’s kids, maybe he’d have gotten some insights. As it was, the Bureau psychologists had given him a standard briefing about the complexities of didymous children, as they called them. What was he meant to do now? Go out and arrest every set of twins he could lay his hands on?

After a few minutes of such thought, the phone rang. Wearily Sebastian picked it up. It was the supervisor of the Document Analysis Unit. She’d had an idea about the diagrams.

At last.

The woman was young-around thirty. She had short brown hair and a face that I would have found alluring if she hadn’t been pointing a matte black pistol at my chest. She was wearing a black trouser suit and a white blouse.

“Matt Wells,” she repeated. “Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.” She waved me inside with the gun. “Please don’t do anything stupid. I’m one of the best shots in the country.”

The air of certainty with which she made that statement struck me. Did she shoot professionally?

The small hallway opened into a huge room that must have taken up half of the penthouse. The lights of Washington spread across an enormous picture window. Pieces of antique furniture were dotted about the carpeted floor like elephants on the savannah. The works of art on the walls were large and looked both genuine and somewhat familiar.

“Over there,” the woman said, pointing to a pair of sofas arrayed in an L-shape by the window. As I approached, another woman got up and turned to face me. She was tall and gray haired, with a striking aquiline nose. I caught the resemblance to Larry Thomson immediately.

“Mr. Wells, what a pleasure,” she said, with old-fashioned politeness.

“I wish I could say the same, Ms. Thomson.” I sat down without being invited.

The woman smiled humorlessly. “I don’t use the surname my brother decided on.” She offered me a cigarette from a silver case.

I raised my hand to decline and saw the younger woman’s pistol follow the movement. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite,” I said, reaching for the open bottle of red wine on the table and pouring myself a glass. The last thing I was going to do was show these Nazis any respect.

“That is debatable,” the Fuhrer’s sister said, sitting down opposite me. She was wearing a gray trouser suit that was considerably better cut than the uniforms at the camp. “We have read your books and done additional research. We know exactly what you’re capable of. You have escaped from us once already.” She raised her glass. “Bravo.”

The young woman smiled. “I can assure you that you won’t escape again.” She moved behind the older woman and I saw that the line of her jaw was almost identical, but she had escaped the beak of a nose.

“Mother and daughter,” I said. “Where’s Larry, to complete the happy family?”

“Otherwise engaged,” the seated woman said. “You can call me Irma if you like.”

“I don’t,” I said, swallowing what was a very good Merlot. “You were born Fraulein Rothmann and that’ll do for me. Or did you take your husband’s name?”

They both laughed.

“I do not have a husband anymore, Mr. Wells,” said the concentration-camp doctor’s daughter. “A necessary phase so that I didn’t remain childless, but he is long gone. He had the right breeding, but he was weak. Of course, I never took his name.”

I hoped the poor guy had survived the encounter. “What about you?” I said to the younger woman. “I’m guessing you have an anglicized name.”

“Correct.”

I waited, and then laughed. “But you don’t care to share it with me. All right, let’s try a different tack. You’re comfortable with that pistol and by your own admission you’re a champion shot. The Glock semiautomatic is standard law-enforcement issue. So what are you? A local cop or a Fed?”

“Everybody hates a smart-ass,” the woman said, aiming the pistol at my groin.

“It’s all right, Dana,” the older woman said. “There’s no reason to be coy.” She turned to me. “Mr. Wells, this is Special Agent Dana Maltravers of the FBI violent-crime team. She’s been working very hard to find you.”

I remembered Clem having mentioned that name. “You work with Peter Sebastian?”

The young woman looked surprised, which was what I wanted.

“Could it be that you’re the one who made sure my prints were at two of the occult-murder scenes?”

I seemed to have scored another hit, though the FBI agent was still as cold as a glacier. I needed to antagonize her more, make her drop her guard. “Interesting name,” I said. I had always been fascinated by what people were called and used to spend hours with encyclopedias on the subject. Fortunately, that part of my memory seemed to be accessible. “Dana is the feminine form of Daniel, isn’t it? Rather a Jewish name for your sort, don’t you think?”

“It was chosen deliberately,” she said, glancing at Fraulein Rothmann. “To divert suspicion.”

“It certainly worked for me,” I said, with an ironic smile. “As for Maltravers, well, mal is evil, so that seems appropriate.” Their faces were stony. “And travers means a crossing, doesn’t it? Particularly an oblique one.”

“You’ll soon be wishing you never crossed me, Wells,” the young woman said, raising the Glock to my face.