Ruiz shook his head. “There’s no way to know.”
“She was obviously talking about herself,” Martinez said. “She knew what was about to happen and was begging for God to protect her soul.”
“Then wouldn’t she have said protect
Ruiz shook his head. “Sofie was her only friend back then. And Sofie’s long gone.”
Maybe so, but if Gabriela had gone to all the trouble to say what she’d said-had even scribbled it in a book- then it obviously meant something to her.
Something important.
Callahan thought about the T-shirt and the verse on the wall and Ruiz’s remark that Gabriela had been obsessed with
Could they mean something as well?
Getting to her feet, she headed toward the bedroom, Ruiz and Martinez following behind her, Martinez saying, “What? What is it now?”
Callahan ignored him and moved through the closet to Gabriela’s prayer room. Grabbing the book, she leafed through it until she found the verse again, then continued turning the pages, finding more highlighted passages- each one as impenetrable as the last. Milton may have been a genius, but accessibility was not his strong suit.
Gabriela’s notes seemed to be confined to the eleventh chapter-or Book XI. On some pages, only individual words had been highlighted and the notes scribbled in the margins did little to illuminate what might have been going on in the pop star’s mind. Numbers and letters were written down and crossed out, then written down again, as if she were trying to puzzle something out. Break some kind of code.
But in
That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And Callahan again wondered if the girl had gone looney tunes.
“Look at this place,” Martinez said, taking in the altar and symbol on the wall. He picked up the copy of
Ruiz swiveled his head toward him, his face tight with anger. “Say that again and you’ll be looking for a new job before the day is over.”
The threat must have carried weight, because Martinez practically swallowed his tongue before shaking his head in disgust.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he said to Callahan. “We all know what happened to Gabriela, and the more we follow this road, the more dangerous it gets.” He turned, headed out the door. “I’ll drop your bag at the hotel. You can find your own way there.”
Then he was gone.
Fine, Callahan thought, no big loss. And Ruiz certainly didn’t seem too broken up about it.
She gestured to
“No,” he said. “And I have to admit, I’ve never read it. I tried a few times, but it was beyond me.”
Except for a few religious scholars, a handful of uptight literary types-and maybe Gabriela herself-the same was probably true for most people.
Callahan thought about the facts surrounding this case. An improbable death, phantom gasoline smells, a victim who looked like barbecued roadkill, a satanic symbol burned into the floor of an otherwise untouched room, a secret prayer sanctuary, the strange, obsessive scribblings in the margins of an epic poem about the fall of Satan . . .
And, of course, the message in both the book and on Ruiz’s cell phone.
Maybe Martinez was right, after all. There was enough weird going on around here to attract a bucketful of goth nerds, with a side order of religious fanatics. Something had been going on in Gabriela’s life that was far beyond her role as a Christian pop star.
Something that had gotten her killed.
And call Callahan crazy, but she had a gut feeling that it somehow related to those two words, and the book she held in her hands.
But her knowledge of these things was far too limited for her to even begin to figure it out. What she needed was the help of an expert. Someone on call. A Milton junkie, religious historian and occult specialist all wrapped into one-assuming such an animal existed.
There was one sure way to find out.
Dropping the book to the prayer desk, she excused herself, then pushed past Ruiz and went back out to the living room.
She snatched up her phone, punched in the security code and was about to hit autodial when it buzzed in her hand. Checking the screen, she immediately put it to her ear. “I was just about to call you.”
“We had a look at the data you uploaded,” a voice said.
It was the same cold, disembodied voice she always heard when she dealt with Section. The agency wasn’t big on formalities like names or ranks or identifying information in case you were unfortunate enough to one day find yourself compromised.
It simply gave orders. If you didn’t follow them, you risked losing your job.
Or your life.
“I’m thinking I need a specialist,” she said. “Somebody at the top of his game.”
“We’re a step ahead of you. Proceed as usual and we’ll contact you when the arrangements have been made.”
Then the line clicked.
12
It was nearing midnight when the trouble started.
Batty hadn’t dragged himself out of bed until late in the afternoon, and had spent the first few hours of the new day fighting a raging hangover. By the time he had purged himself of the previous night’s toxins, he was ready to start anew and didn’t waste any time getting over to Bayou Bill’s.
Bill’s was busy as always and Batty was working on boilermaker number three (feeling generally sorry for himself that the redhead had once again failed to show), when the door blew open and a guy who may as well have had the word
He wasn’t the source of the trouble, however. Just a curiosity that got Batty’s attention right before the trouble began.
It was a hot night and the tourist was sweating like a man who wasn’t used to the weather. But the moment he locked eyes with Batty, his entire demeanor changed, as if he’d found what he was looking for and was grateful to have it over and done with.
Batty half expected him to head straight to the booth. He was wondering what this was about and why he was about to be approached, when the guy surprised him by averting his gaze and taking a stool at the bar instead.
Batty watched old Bill put a bottle of beer in front of him and wondered if he’d been imagining things.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
And a moment later, he was too distracted to care.
The trouble-when it finally came-came from the parking lot, just outside a window across from Batty’s
