Sacrifice (5 page)

Two other detectives pulled into the parking lot and promptly pretended to be engaged in a conversation when Malloy looked their way. He opened his car door and sat behind the wheel.
What do these bastards think they know?

But he knew the taint of the Dale McCarthy case hung over him. He and his partner had been the only detectives Mike Torres allowed in after Harry, Trina, and the Lincolns had come undone following Dale McCarthy’s shooting. He had been side-by-side with the detectives when they walked out of the house after half the precinct had seen them lying mutilated on the floor. They all wanted to know what had happened, and no one believed the official reports, but Malloy stuck to the story he and Mike had worked out. Blood from one of Dale’s victims had been all over Harry and Trina. The two detectives had merely been unconscious. No one could argue against the very compelling evidence of Harry and Trina’s health, despite the Lincolns’s repeated claims Dale had resurrected them all.

Extraordinary rumors floated around the precinct regarding the details of the case, and most were true, though Malloy would never admit it. Now any weird case he pulled brought back memories of that sick fuck and what he’d done to Harry and Trina. He carried it around with him every day. He would until the day he died.

The sun had not set yet and it was still nearly one hundred degrees outside. He winced as the sunlight lanced his retinas and reached for a pair of “Loc” style sunglasses in his breast pocket. He liked the way they hid his eyes and made him look like a serious badass, like an O.G.

He started his vehicle and drove out of the parking lot, preparing for what was bound to be one hell of a long night. All the weird cases came in August. The heat made the city mean.

The drive to the ME’s office was overpopulated with vices and temptations: casinos, bars, liquor stores, fast food joints, strip clubs, porno shops, peepshows, and drive-thru marriage chapels. Not to mention the prostitutes already walking the boulevard, competing for the rush-hour crowd, the husbands out for a quick after-work blow job before they had to go home to the wife and kids and bitching and nagging and foreplay and missionary position if they were lucky and their wives weren’t on the rag. Malloy was glad he wasn’t married. He’d heard rumor of happy marriages, but he’d never actually seen one. To him they were urban myths, like interest-free loans, job positions with great advancement opportunities, and women who had orgasms during anal sex.

Malloy pulled up in front of the medical building, noting how ironic it was that the drive along the “avenue of sin” ended at the morgue. He steeled his nerves and entered the building. Finding his way to the basement postmortem room was as easy as finding his own kitchen. It was a well-worn path.

Dr. Medoff was hunkered down over the remains of a prostitute who’d been badly beaten and carved on. Many of the wounds were old and yellowed.
Those had probably come from her pimp,
Malloy thought. The bruises around her face were a livid red, blue, and a purple that was almost black. Her eyes were swollen shut and her nose was shattered and smeared across her face as if she’d been in a heavyweight boxing match. Her throat had been cut so deep she’d nearly been decapitated. And there were other cuts on her face, breasts, abdomen, and vagina. Those were most likely postmortem.

Dr. Medoff caught the detective looking over his shoulder. “The guy did a real number on her. Definitely a sadist, probably a serial killer or well on his way to becoming one. Is this your case?”

Malloy was curious. It almost looked like something Dale would have done, except this guy used his fists to batter the woman before slitting her throat. Dale had done all his work with a knife. But Malloy couldn’t really afford to let himself get distracted by anyone else’s mess. He wondered how many serial killers were working Vegas. It seemed like a new one popped up every year.

“Nah, Doc. There’s not quite as much left of my victim.”

“Oh, you poor fuck. You must be here for Mr. Martin. What the hell happened to that guy?”

“That’s what I came to ask you.”

“Well, hell, I don’t know. That guy was eaten alive. Not just by the dogs and cats and rats. That’s obvious. Though there’s really not enough left to determine the exact cause of death. This guy was being eaten by parasites and scavengers that shouldn’t have been anywhere near his body for days. Beetles, spiders, millipedes. And besides the hundred or more bee stings and other insect bites I found all over the victim’s body, I found maggots. Live maggots! I got the body down here two or three hours after the reported time of death and it was already covered in maggots. No way there should be maggots on a body this fresh. The parents would’ve had to’ve carried each larva over to the body and dropped it on him, or the larva would’ve crawled over to the bodies themselves from wherever they were nesting. Eggs just don’t hatch that fast.”

Dr. Medoff walked over to the table where a few misshapen lumps beneath a blanket were the only indication that there was anything beneath it. He pulled back the blanket with a flourish. The piles of bloody pulp lay in several trays on the table along with the head that had been rescued from the victim’s dog. All of it was covered in maggots.

Malloy covered his face and dashed out of the room. He didn’t make it to the men’s room. He regurgitated right in the hallway while two nurses he’d been hitting on for months looked on in disgust. Malloy didn’t give a fuck about whether or not he ever got to sleep with either of them. He wasn’t sure he’d ever sleep again.

They were wheeling in the body of the Great Dane, who’d been at least partially responsible for the vermin-ridden ruin on the autopsy table. As much as he wanted to know if the dog had truly eaten its master, Malloy didn’t trust his stomach enough to risk a trip back in there. He decided to wait for the report. Malloy wished Trina was here. She almost seemed to get a kick out of this type of stuff. Malloy just couldn’t take it.

That night, Malloy crawled under the covers with a cold beer and the TV remote. His massive Rottweilers Athena and Hercules leapt on to the bed to nestle in beside him, the spot they’d slept since he first brought them home from the no-kill shelter as six-week-old puppies.

Tonight, however, Malloy wasn’t in the mood for company. He kept thinking about how that poor bastard’s Great Dane had bitten off and devoured the hands, arms, legs, and head that had fed him. Hercules and Athena were as docile and domesticated as two vicious attack dogs could get. They ate out of his hand, and he could remove food right out of their mouths while they were eating. They were the best friends he’d ever had. Still, he felt more comfortable with them locked outside his bedroom. At least for one night.

Chapter 8

“Normally we’d bring you to one of our services, but that might be too much for you right now. So we thought we’d just introduce you to Delilah privately,” Linda said, bubbling with excitement as they climbed into her Lincoln Navigator and took off from her condo.

Linda had been April’s best friend since grade school. Linda was the reason April had chosen to go to college in Las Vegas. They’d been roommates right up until Linda had hooked up with Matt and fallen head over heels like the fawning couples she’d always made fun of. She was a spoiled rich kid who lived off her daddy’s trust fund, but she was anything but a snob. She liked everyone. She had never had any reason not to. Her life had always been perfect. April was always amazed she didn’t hate the girl.

Matt was a one-night stand Linda picked up at a bar a year ago. That’s what he was supposed to have been anyway. He was a pretty boy, the type who thought every girl wanted him. Linda loved fucking guys like that. She loved crushing their egos and making them feel used when she kicked them out of her house after putting them through their paces.

“It’s how I keep the universe balanced,” she’d say. “Women always wind up feeling used when they sleep with guys. Not me. It’s the guys who end the night feeling like cheap pieces of meat when I’m done with them. You should see some of the things I make these idiots do. You have no idea what a guy will go through for a piece of ass. And when they find out my parents have money, suddenly it becomes more than a piece of ass for them. All of a sudden they want to fuckin’ get married. Then, when I kick their stupid asses out without as much as a phone number, they spend the next few weeks questioning their manhood. It serves the bastards right.”

April wished she could be that confident about her sexuality. But sex to her was something abhorrent, and she couldn’t imagine doing it with some stranger she felt nothing for.

Somehow Linda’s plan had failed when she met Matt. He had taken her to see Delilah that very first night. They left the bar together, but instead of taking her to his place he’d taken her to some kind of prayer session. After that night, Matt was all Linda could seem to talk about. She had broken her own rule and given him her phone number. They’ve been dating ever since. Linda attributed it all to that voodoo witch Matt had introduced her to.

“You really have to meet her to understand. I have never felt so loved, so free, as I did the night I met Delilah. I used to make fun of people who were in love, remember? That’s because I was jealous and afraid. I had built up a wall around myself. I was so full of hatred back then. Delilah took all that away.”

April hated to hear Linda talk about Delilah. She sounded like some fucking Jesus freak whenever her name came up. Her eyes would glaze over and she’d get this dopey grin on her face like she was high or something. It was the way you talked about someone you were in love with. April noticed that the man she was supposed to be in love with never seemed to bring out quite the same degree of adoration. She was affectionate with Matt and they were so sweet to each other it made April’s teeth hurt, but the way Linda’s entire demeanor changed when she spoke of Delilah was so much more intense. It almost made April envious in a way that seeing Linda grope her boyfriend never had. April thought she should at least see what the woman was all about. If she could turn someone like Linda around, maybe she could help April too.

“And this chick Delilah is like the leader of this cult thing?”

“It’s not a cult, April. Voodoo is a religion, but it’s not like what you see on TV. I mean, there are angels and demons and there’s God of course, but we worship love. That’s what Delilah gives us. She gives us love. She takes all the pain away.”

“Whatever.”

It sounded like what alcoholics said about hard liquor. April leaned her head against the passenger-side window and stared out at the shops along Eastern Avenue as they whizzed by, trying to hide the fact that she was terrified.

They continued up Eastern into Seven Hills, past a huge golf course into a small gated community of big custom-built mansions. Linda and Matt were chatting excitedly as they navigated through the perfectly maintained streets about how beautiful Delilah was and how she was such a wonderful loving human being and how much she’d helped them.

“She’s the most gorgeous person you ever saw,” Matt said in an awed whisper.

“Damn, Matt. Aren’t you supposed to be in love with Linda? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were fucking this voodoo chick.”

Matt and Linda both fell silent and looked away.

“Whoaaa! Are you?” She looked questioningly at Matt, who stared right back at her, shrugging and blushing. Then she turned to look at Linda, who was smiling sheepishly as well.

“Are you fucking her too? What the fuck? Okay, let me out right now. What the fuck are you guys trying to get me into here?”

“It’s not what you think. Just trust us. Come on, April. I’ve known you since we were little girls. Would I drag you into something that wasn’t cool?”

“I’m telling you right now, Linda, the first sign of any freaky shit and I’m out of there, and then I’m going to kick both your asses.”

They pulled onto a long driveway and followed it up a quarter of a mile, winding through a landscape of thick trees and shrubs that were unusual for Las Vegas, which is little more than a desert. The trees parted as they pulled into a circular driveway in front of a house that looked like something from
MTV’s Cribs
; Delilah’s home was enormous. The entire front was covered in decorative rock, and green and gray slate with thick veins of blue and purple ran through it. The windows were tinted, and roses of every color bloomed everywhere on the expertly manicured landscape. The house was surrounded by thick twenty-foot evergreen trees on all sides. More than an acre of land surrounded the estate.

The front door was eight feet tall, made of carved wood, and inset with stained glass. The hinges and doorknob were fashioned in an ornate black iron.

Matt walked up to the door, turned the knob, and entered. The women followed. The interior was every bit as impressive as the front of the house.

“This is where she lives?” April marveled. She had been expecting a hut in the middle of the desert. Maybe on a farm surrounded by chickens and goats. This place was absolutely amazing.

“Yeah, it’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Linda said.

April looked at the cherry wood staircase that led upstairs, the marble floors, the massive chandelier that hung above their heads, and she whistled softly in amazement. She’d thought Linda’s parents’ house was impressive. This place was a palace.

“It’s … wow. And she lets you guys just walk in here whenever you want? She doesn’t lock the doors? Isn’t she afraid of robbers and home invasion?”

Linda laughed. “Of course not. This place is protected. No one would break in here.”

“We’re always welcome here,” Matt added. “Once you meet her she’ll welcome you too.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“Just go on upstairs. She’ll be waiting for you.”

“There’s no fucking way I’m walking up there by myself to meet some strange chick the two of you are having some kind of me‚nage a trois with. Either you guys come with me or take me home right now.”

They walked up the stairs, and April continued to study the elaborate furnishings that decorated the enormous house. Priceless antique furniture, paintings, and sculptures filled every corner. Ornate woodwork adorned the ceilings and floors, and the walls were painted with an opulent faux finish. Religious artifacts lined the walls. Portraits of Catholic saints, ornate crucifixes, and old black and white photographs of black people April assumed were Delilah’s ancestors hung from elaborate gilded frames. Some wore feathers in their hair or crow’s feet around their necks. There were even photographs of actual voodoo rituals in progress, half-naked black people dancing and contorting. They looked wild, taboo.