Shannon’s hard smile turned harder. “Don’t worry, boys. I’m leaving on my own. No reason to get your heads banged up again. Just make sure you keep your paws off me, okay?”
He walked past them and out of the room. He didn’t bother turning around-he could hear their breathing behind him as they kept pace. “Quite an arrangement you have here,” Shannon said. “Just the two of you, plus the great all-powerful Vishna, and all these nice-looking girls. Is that how he pays you? He lets you spend quality time with them?”
“Shut up!” the Curly look-alike barked.
Shannon passed Paveeth’s marble statue, gave it a short salute, and turned down the hallway of Hindu gods. “Not that I could blame the two of you,” he said. “In the real world neither of you would have a shot with girls like these. But I guess having them brainwashed levels the odds, huh?”
“I said shut up!”
“Hey, come on, don’t be so touchy. I’m only trying to figure this out. Of course, it’s not just you two and the almighty Oz. Those Russians who were here the other day, they’re allowed to sample the goods also, right? Let me guess, sometimes they bring friends along?”
Shannon had walked through the marble foyer and stood waiting for Shemp to unlock the door. Neither cult member bothered to answer him. After he stepped outside, both of them pushed past him in a rush to the gate. Curly’s face was a mask of fury as he unlocked it and swung it open. Shannon was barely past the gate when Curly slammed it shut.
Shannon turned to face him through the metal posts. “Whatever’s going on in there will come out, and when it does, the situation is going to be flipped around. The boys in prison are going to have the same sort of fun with both of you that you’re having with these girls. Call it karma.”
The smaller one was nearly epileptic. His hands and face shook visibly and it looked as if it took every ounce of willpower he had to keep from swallowing his tongue. A dark storm brooded over Curly’s round angry face. “We will live our lives in bliss,” he spat out. “Bliss! Under the warm guiding light of the one true source. You, though, will suffer in blind ignorance forever!”
With that, the two of them hurried back to the house and disappeared within it.
Shannon stood quietly as he considered Anil Paveeth and the True Light cult. The place was worse than wrong. There was no doubt in his mind that Paveeth was nothing but a narcissistic fraud, and Shannon was convinced that he was using the girls there for something more than just his personal harem. He wondered whether the place could be operating as some sort of exclusive whorehouse. These girls would be different than the typical prostitute, blindly following whatever orders Paveeth gave them. There would be a clientele for that type of slave-like subservience, and maybe that clientele would be well-heeled enough to pay for Paveeth’s temple and all of his excesses. Shannon decided he’d have to watch the place, see who came and went. As remote as the compound was, he’d have to camp out in the open. Paveeth would most likely end up sending his Russian thugs after him to dissuade him. Shannon smiled thinly as he thought about that, the muscles tightening along his jaw. Maybe that would give him a chance to kill two birds with one stone.
Jesus, he wanted a cigarette badly right then. A tremor shook his hands as he thought about it. He got in his car and sat immobilized. For several minutes all he could think about was lighting up a cigarette and breathing the smoke into his lungs. Deep down in his throat he could almost taste it.
Then he started laughing bitterly, disgusted with himself.
It must’ve been the incense. The smell of it must’ve triggered something in him.
He stared straight ahead and tried to clear the impulse to smoke from his mind. After a minute or so of deep breathing, he felt calmer, the impulse gone.
He had turned off his cell phone earlier when he entered the True Light compound. He turned it back on and saw he had a message from Maguire wanting to let him know that the second round of photos came off without incident. He got in his car and headed towards downtown. On the way, he called Maguire back.
“I’m at my condo,” Maguire told him. “Right now I’m printing out the photos. Same number of women left the place as went in. I hung around until three thirty when a black Mercedes 500 SEL pulled up in front and picked up three of the girls from inside. The car windows were too dark for me to get a good picture, but I think the driver was one of the Russians you warned me about.”
“Any chance you took a picture of the license plate?”
“Let me check.” The phone on Maguire’s end was put down. A minute later he came back on, his voice more downbeat. “I didn’t get the license. Shit, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll be over in fifteen minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll be waiting.”
Shannon did a U-turn and headed back to True Light’s compound. He pulled up in front looking for a black Mercedes, but the driveway wrapped around the building. Most likely there was a carport behind the compound, and if there was a Mercedes parked there he’d have no way of knowing it. For all he knew there could’ve been a helicopter pad back there.
On his way to Maguire’s condo, he called Pauline Cousins at the Best Western and told her that he had talked with Melissa.
“My daughter is alive then,” she said, her voice faltering and sounding as if she were on the verge of tears.
“She is and she appears healthy.” Shannon hesitated. “She refuses to see you, though, which is what we should’ve expected. Pauline, I’ve dealt with cults before and this is common.”
“But she does seem healthy?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God for that,” she said. “What next? How do I get Melissa out of there?”
“I have an idea of something to try, but you’re going to have to be patient.”
“What could you possibly try?”
“It’s probably better if I don’t tell you about it. Please, trust me about this.”
“But what if it doesn’t work?” she asked. Panic had crept into her voice. “What do I do after that? Do I need to hire someone to kidnap and deprogram her? I’ve found ads for people who do that. Oh God, is that what I need to do?”
“Right now you need to take a deep breath, try to relax and give me time to see if what I have in mind works.”
Pauline started sobbing then. Listening to her breaking down brought a knot to his stomach. He didn’t want to tell her that kidnapping Melissa wasn’t even an option-that that only worked when cult members were brought into the public, usually to panhandle for money or recruit new members. With Melissa locked away inside True Light, there would be no way to get to her.
“At least we know Melissa is alive and healthy,” Pauline conceded when she could, still sniffling heavily, her breathing ragged as she tried to hold back more tears. “At least that’s something.”
“It is,” Shannon said. “It’s more than we knew yesterday. And keep the faith. I’m not abandoning her. I’m not abandoning you.”
She told him she would try to, and thanked him for everything he was doing for her and Melissa. “We still haven’t talked about your fee. I’d like to pay you for what you’ve already done.”
“We can talk about all that later,” Shannon said. “After Melissa is out of there and safe with you.”
Maguire was grinning from ear to ear when he greeted Shannon at his door. Perspiration showed on his forehead and neck, his shirt looking soaked around the collar and underarms. “I’ve got some pictures for you,” he said with a wink.
Bob Segar’s ‘Her Strut’ played in the background. When they got to the living room, Shannon saw that the room had been cleaned up. It still needed work, but the litter had been picked off the floor and trash bags were stacked in a corner. Windows had also been opened to air the place out.
“You’ve been busy,” Shannon said.
Maguire’s grin turned self-conscious. “Yeah, well, I decided to turn over a new leaf. And you were right. When I was cleaning up in the kitchen I saw some mouse droppings. I’ll buy traps later.”
