resulting in action.
Spider Ripley had taken action. The iron box with its welded crucifixes was only the beginning of his preparations. He obviously felt the trappings of Christianity would restrain Diabolos Whistler. Short of the Shroud of Turin and the Holy Grail, Spider Ripley had done his best to create a divine prison that would hold the darkest of the dark ones at bay.
I wondered if Spider had gone down on his knees and prayed in his secret shrine. It wouldn’t have surprised me. Circe had said that her bodyguard was deathly afraid of her father’s powers. Obviously, he believed the things I’d read in those pamphlets handed out by Whistler’s followers-that Whistler’s death would indeed signal the arrival of a new satanic age, and Satan himself would be reborn from the ruin of Whistler’s corpse.
“That’s where you’ve got them fooled,” I whispered to Diabolos. “You’re a bright boy, all right. Getting them to focus on your head. I bet they forgot all about your body. You’re probably busting out of a Mexican morgue right now. You’ll snatch some other corpse’s head, slap it on, buy a Toyota from some surf bum, come north and claim your head like a fallen crown.”
Diabolos only sneered.
“That’s the plan. Isn’t it, buddy?”
I leaned in close. And that was when I discovered the final touch. A silver chain encircled Whistler’s neck, the fine links disappearing between his shriveled lips.
I tugged on the chain and drew another crucifix from Diabolos Whistler’s dead sneer, dislodging several communion wafers in the process.
Free of the crucifix, Diabolos didn’t say a word.
I laughed. He still looked awfully dead to me.
I grabbed the metal box and blew out the votive candles. Darkness closed in.
I might have been in an empty room. A room that was not shaped like a pyramid. A room that held nothing at all.
It was a place I might have lingered.
I couldn’t afford to do that. Not now.
I descended the ladder, leaving the darkness for the light.
I needed other answers, and I wasn’t prepared to leave Spider Ripley’s pyramid until I found them.
I didn’t expect to be disturbed. Spider and his merry band were no doubt busy enough, and I doubted that he’d be heading home anytime soon. With his fear of Whistler’s head, I was sure that Ripley didn’t want to be anywhere near it unless he absolutely had to.
There were two things I needed first and foremost, and both were in Spider Ripley’s bedroom.
A television and a remote. I picked up the latter and turned on the former. It was the top of the hour, so I was lucky. I found a news anchor who didn’t annoy me, and I stuck with him for nearly twelve minutes.
In that time, many of my questions were answered. Number one was the identity of the flayed corpse I’d mistaken for Circe Whistler. The murdered woman was Lethe, Circe’s sister. The network had dug up some footage of her-home video shot at some club in San Francisco, along with a music video she’d made with some abysmal goth band (she was the nun in fishnet stockings). Apart from a pair of blue eyes and several hauntingly familiar tattoos, she didn’t look much like Circe.
Who was said to be in seclusion in San Francisco. This factoid was seemingly verified by a clip of an old Victorian in the Haight. A limo pulled up, and a woman in a black crushed velvet cape got out. The cape had a hood, and the woman was wearing sunglasses, and she had enough bodyguards to handle a visiting head of state.
Circe’s doppelganger disappeared into the old house. A scab-colored door slammed closed behind her. Flash to a nightclub in the Mission District called the Make-Out Room, where a reporter was interviewing one of the owners. Sure he knew Circe Whistler. He knew her well. She’d spent the previous night at his place. They’d heard about Lethe’s murder over breakfast, while listening to the radio in a neighborhood cafe.
I remembered Circe’s comment about her father’s use of doubles back in the sixties. I wondered what the going rate was for a doppelganger these days, especially one that would have to spend a good amount of time under a tattoo artist’s needle.
Whatever the rate, it probably wasn’t as lucrative as the check Circe’s scriptwriter was pulling down. I figured she had to have one of those, too, because the scenario for Circe’s power play was brilliant. Not only had she found a way to eliminate her father and her sister, she was also creating sympathy for her church in the bargain.
She had fashioned a bogeyman-faceless, unseen, scary to anyone with a brain. The suspected killer was a member of the Christian right. Several media outlets had received communiques from a man who claimed responsibility for the executions of Diabolos Whistler and his youngest daughter. He proclaimed his membership in a group called Jehovah’s Hammer, and he said he wouldn’t stop killing until Circe Whistler and her followers were dead in the ground.
This revelation was followed by a background piece featuring old footage of a debate between Circe and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition. That was yesterday’s news, so I started channel surfing. The story was everywhere. CNBC was deep into wall-to-wall coverage, concentrating on the murder-mystery game. The tabloid shows were getting up-close-and-personal, fighting over Lethe Whistler’s ex-lovers-several aspiring musicians, a writer of paperback horror novels, and a cross-dressing basketball player who had dated her during a brief stint with the Golden State Warriors. PBS was there, too, taking the high road. A bunch of talking heads were kicking around the New Hedonism on The News Hour.
That was a little much, so I switched over to Larry King.
He was interviewing an expert on serial murderers.
A man with a terminally pinched expression.
Right off, I recognized my old buddy Clifford Rakes. His voice was calm and considered. Anyone who hadn’t heard him whining to his editor about waterbeds and dust-jacket photos might have been convinced that Clifford possessed a shred of intelligence.
“To deconstruct a killer’s behavior, we must see things through his eyes,” Rakes began. “The how’s of a case like this are obvious-the killer has left ample evidence at each murder. It’s the why’s we need to concentrate on. Perspective is the key to motivation, and motivation is the key to capture.”
I laughed. If Clifford wanted motivation, he could have looked at my bank account. I should have switched channels, but for some reason I wanted to hear him out.
He launched into his profile. I tried to rein in my anger as Rakes pontificated on my probable childhood propensity for bed-wetting, animal mutilation, and arson. My chest tightened when he talked about the sexual implications of a male killer who uses a knife… and takes trophies, namely a male victim’s head.
I held my breath as Rakes made passing references to Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez. But then he zeroed in for the kill, the infobite he’d obviously been saving for last. “Our killer is a religious avenger, a prophet who sets himself above others. He’s part of a cult himself-Jehovah’s Hammer-perhaps even its leader. Who knows how many innocents have fallen under his sway. He believes more will come to him as a result of the Whistler slayings. In the history of serial murder, I can think of only one killer who bears the weight of comparison.”
Blood pounded in my head.
Rakes pursed his lips and continued: “The madman I’m speaking of also headed a cult and saw himself as a prophet. He was responsible for the destruction of a great many lives.”
I aimed the remote at Rakes’s head, wishing it were a gun.
“His name was Charles Manson.”
I pressed a button. The screen went helter-skelter. And Clifford Rakes was gone.
I threw the television against a wall, grabbed Whistler’s head, and left Spider Ripley’s bedroom.
I’d learned all I could from the one-eyed box. After all, network anchors don’t believe in ghosts. They
