“Why was that easy?” I ask.
“Martin has a tattoo of a clover on his arm and a horseshoe on his ankle. He talked about luck all the time. I put it in and the blog popped up. Most of the entries were videos. I watched the first one and it was so strange, I didn’t watch any more of them. That’s it,” she tells me.
Dean, Sam, and Eric stuff up close around me so they can look at the screen with me. I press the play button, and Martin’s face appears. He looks like he’s in a small, dimly lit room, maybe even a closet. His eyes are wild, and he looks unkempt. The audio isn’t good. It crackles and fades in and out as if the recording itself was done on a faulty microphone, but I can catch some of what he’s saying.
“Today, I come to you again to document the revolution. These videos must remain secret for now, but there will come a day when they will be used to tell the greatest story of our time… All will learn of Lotan and his awesome power… educate all people to what he has done and the world he is creating… privileged to be among his chosen and will follow where he leads… the power of Lotan is unlike anything… bow to him…”
I tear my eyes from the screen and look at Sam, Eric, and Dean in turn.
“Lotan will guide the way… Lotan is everything… bow to him… Lotan shall bathe the Earth in blood and fire. See the glory of chaos.”
Chapter Twelve
“What did you find?” Sam asks, coming into Greg’s room with coffee.
Dean comes in behind him with three covered breakfast platters from the cafeteria. He hands them out, and I thank him, opening a package of plastic silverware and sliding out the black fork.
“There are apparently a couple of fringe celebrities with the name, but nobody significant enough to even be on my radar, much less be deserving of slavish devotion. It sounds like a cult.”
“So, still no idea,” Sam says.
I pry the top off my plate and chew through a few bites of scrambled eggs.
“Not necessarily. Eric is back at headquarters running the name to see if anything else pops up. If there are any known criminals or investigations with that name, he’ll find it.” I point to the screen with a piece of potato pierced on the end of my fork. “But there’s also this.”
“What is it?” Dean asks.
“A website about Hebrew lore,” I explain.
Sam leans around me to read the description.
“According to this, Hebrew lore refers to a seven-headed sea monster named Lotan, who fought against the god Baal but was defeated. Lotan is often considered the beginning of the concept of Leviathan, a sea monster in Hebrew tradition.”
“And a whale to Christians,” Dean points out.
“Like the postcard from Catch Me,” I say. “The whale exhibit from the Smithsonian.”
“So, Martin was ranting about his devotion to a sea monster?” Sam raises an eyebrow. “I’ve heard of some incredibly ridiculous cults before, but nothing like this.”
I shake my head.
“I don’t think it’s an actual sea monster,” I say. “It means something. He’s talking about Lotan like a person, but he’s not saying it like a name. Think about Murdock. It’s not a name. It’s a title, a descriptor. Lotan is a specific entity, and apparently, Martin believes whoever Lotan is has a tremendous amount of power and is going to take over the world.”
“He must have missed the detail that Lotan was defeated,” Sam points out.
I keep reading, hoping for further details that might help me understand.
“One thing I’ve learned is cult followers rarely make sense when you really dig down deep into what they say. On the surface, it can seem extremely well-thought-out and precise, but when you start peeling back the layers, the cracks appear. Martin is devoted because he was told to be devoted. He’s blinded by his commitment to the power this person has over him. Something convinced him Lotan deserves his total adoration and willingness to do anything to show it,” I say.
“Does anything else about it make any sense? Does it mean anything to you?” Sam asks.
I shake my head slowly.
“No. Wait.”
“What is it?” Sam asks.
I read through the information again. Before I can answer him, my phone rings, and I see it’s Eric calling.
“Did you get anything?” I ask as a way of greeting.
“No,” he sighs. “I went through every record, cold case, and investigation database I have access to. I might have gone through a couple I don’t technically have access to. Nothing with the term Lotan came up.”
“Try Leviathan,” I say. “Catch Me sent a postcard with the whale exhibit from the Smithsonian. It said it was good to be home. I thought that was just pointing to him being here. But what if it’s more than that? I’m sure there are plenty of postcards he could have chosen from. It would seem a fairly miraculous coincidence he chose the specific one that has links to the words Leviathan and Lotan.”
“I’ll look into it,” Eric says.
I hang up and open the screen Paula showed us again.
“Let’s find out what else Martin has to tell us about Lotan,” I say.
The rest of the videos are just as confusing and broken up as the first one we watched. We watch through each of them, turning the volume up as high as we can without alerting everyone on the floor to what he’s screaming. Parts of what he says blank out, but they are all similar.
“More of the same,” Dean says after the fifth video. “Nothing he says makes sense. He’s just ranting and rambling about the same things. Lotan being all-powerful. He’ll bring about a new world. Chaos and destruction.”
“Bringing about a new world,” Sam says like he’s thinking through the words even as he says them. “Isn’t that like that Society cult you infiltrated?”
“If by
