had been set up as an altar. Facing him was a life-sized painting of the cult leader, Vishna. In it he wore a long, flowing golden robe as he sat cross-legged, thumbs and forefingers touching, hands resting on his knees, his black eyes just as piercing as they were in the brochure photograph. On both sides of the painting were ornamental tables where candles and incense burned, the odor similar but not exactly the same as the one in the yoga studio. What looked like small offerings-flowers, jewelry, silk scarves-lay scattered on the floor in front of the painting.
As Shannon took all this in, a woman with long black hair reaching to the middle of her back entered the foyer. She was wearing the same type of white robe as the two men who had attacked him. Like Melissa and the women from the yoga studio, she was young, petite and very pretty. Also like the women from the yoga studio, her eyes had an expressionless, almost glazed look to them. Still, seeing Shannon standing there, her jaw dropped, although no sign of her bewilderment showed in her eyes.
“What-who are you?” she asked, stammering slightly.
Shannon recognized her voice from the intercom. “The two thugs you sent after me are lying outside your gate. They probably need medical attention.”
She walked past Shannon and looked out the front door. When she turned to face him again, her eyes were wider but still had the same expressionless, glazed quality to them.
“They attacked me,” Shannon told her. “I could file assault charges against both of them, and maybe you also as an accessory. But I won’t. Not if you let me see Melissa Cousins.”
“T-That’s not a decision I can make.”
“Then talk to someone who can.”
She stared blankly at Shannon for a good minute before blinking and nodding her head.
“I’ll take you to a waiting area,” she said
She led Shannon down a hallway decorated with paintings of different Hindu deities. Shannon recognized Shiva holding his trident, the four heads of Brahma, and many of the others from a book Eli had given him on Hinduism. At the end of the hallway was a marble sculpture of the cult leader. From somewhere beyond that, Shannon heard what sounded like sitar music and monotonic chanting.
The woman put her hand out to stop him. “Wait here,” she ordered as she opened a door off the hallway. Shannon obliged and, as he walked into the room and the door closed behind him, saw that there was no doorknob on his side of it. The click of a lock being turned came from the other side. Not that it mattered-without a handle he had no way of opening that door whether it was locked or not.
The door was solid oak. No chance of breaking it down with his shoulder. Maybe he could kick it down, but not without at least splintering his shin. He was in what amounted to an eight foot by eight foot cell with no furniture, nothing but a small half-moon shaped window on one wall and it wasn’t nearly large enough for him to crawl through if he had to. He walked over to the window and tapped on it. It made the dull sound of Plexiglas. For the hell of it he smacked the glass hard with the edge of his hand. While it gave a little, it didn’t break.
Shannon sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. Taking out his phone, he prayed that the cult hadn’t thought enough ahead to have the room insulated with copper. A gnawing in his stomach grew until he saw that he had a signal to call out on. Feeling some relief, he tried Eli’s number at the Center and left a message, asking that his friend call him back as soon as he could. After ten minutes of waiting he considered whether or not to call Mark Daniels. A half hour later his internal debate had grown more serious and as he was making up his mind to try Daniels, his phone rang. It was Eunice Carver asking whether they were going to pay her.
“Excuse me?”
“
It took him a few seconds to remember what she was talking about, “I don’t know yet. I have a call in and I’ll get back to you when I hear from them.”
Within seconds of hanging up on her, his phone rang again. This time is was Eli.
“What’s so urgent?”
“Not much,” Shannon said. “Only that I’m sitting in a cell inside of True Light’s compound.”
“What do you mean a cell?”
“Just what I said. I’m alone in a room about the size of a prison cell. Door’s locked on the other side and the window’s too small even for Houdini to crawl out of. But that’s moot since it’s covered by Plexiglas.”
“Jesus, is there any way for you to get out of there?”
“Not that I can see.”
“I’m calling the police!”
“No, not yet. But do me a favor. Call me back in fifteen minutes. If I don’t answer send the police here.”
“Bill, I don’t like this.”
“Neither do I. Next thing I know they’ll be pumping poison gas into this room.”
“Shit, you’re scaring me.”
“I’m a little scared myself. This place is a fucking freak show. You hit it on the head the other day when you talked about cults in Boulder. The guy who runs this one is a pure megalomaniac. You walk into the compound and the first thing you see is an altar to him. Then the hallway leading from the altar is lined with paintings of Hindu gods, and of course, residing alone at the end is a marble sculpture of this megalomaniac. The one god I saw missing from the hallway was Vishnu.”
“Jesus, the reason for that is because he’s replacing himself as the supreme being. Sonofabitch. It’s no accident he named himself Vishna.”
“My thoughts exactly. By the way, I stopped off at their yoga studio before coming here. Not only wouldn’t they let me sign up for classes, but the girl working there-all five foot and one hundred pounds of her-looked like she was going to try to physically throw me out.”
“That is interesting.”
“I guess I didn’t fit the profile of what they’re looking for.”
“Or the girl could’ve had very good radar and picked up that you were a cop, or at least used to be a cop.” Eli hesitated, added, “Bill, you’ve got me worried. Why not call the police now?”
“I could, but I came here to talk to my client’s daughter. I still want to give that a shot.”
“Bill, if your life is in danger-”
“I don’t want to be too melodramatic about this. I don’t think I can make a claim at this point for false imprisonment since I was asked to wait. And to their credit, they did provide me nice plush carpeting to sit on. Let’s just give it another fifteen minutes. See what happens.”
A loud, unhappy sigh came from Eli’s end. “Alright,” he grumbled. “I’ll wait fifteen more minutes, but if you’re still locked in there I’m calling the police no matter what you say.”
“Deal.”
After talking with Eli, Shannon sat quietly and took deep breaths as he tried to calm the tension squeezing his gut. He had two reasons for calling Eli. First, he really was unnerved about being locked away in the room, which he assumed was the point of them doing it, and second, in case the room was bugged and he was being eavesdropped on, he wanted them to know he couldn’t be fucked with. Or at least make them think he couldn’t be fucked with.
Nine minutes after Eli had called back and almost an hour after being locked up, the door opened and two men walked in. These two were a different breed than the robe-wearing stooges he had encountered earlier. One was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, the other had on slacks and a light sports jacket. There was a hardness about both men. The one in the sports jacket was in his forties and looked solid, as if he were a weightlifter, his hair cut close to his scalp and scars running down both cheeks. His nose had been flattened a number of times and was now smeared sideways across his face. He smirked at Shannon, his small gray eyes as dull as sand. When he undid the buttons to his sports jacket, he unveiled both a Tony Bahama Hawaiian shirt underneath it and the handle of an automatic that stuck out from his waistband. From the shape of it, Shannon guessed it was a.45 caliber.
His companion was younger, maybe early thirties. He was also taller and lankier, and had the wiry look of someone you didn’t want to mess with. He started laughing an ugly laugh as he pointed towards Shannon’s damaged hand.
“He must be nervous,” he said, wheezing from his laughter as he elbowed his associate. “Look, he chewed his fingernails to bone.”
“Is that right,” the other man asked Shannon. “You nervous?”
“Nervous as all hell,” Shannon said.
