Sacrifice (7 page)

Delilah ran her hand around the back of April’s neck, and April resisted as the woman pulled her closer. Her resistance lasted a fraction of a second. She allowed herself to be pulled into Delilah’s embrace. The woman’s body felt good against April’s skin. She felt safe in Delilah’s arms. She felt the strength of the woman but could also feel Delilah’s love like a physical force, like an energy radiating from her flesh.

Delilah tilted April’s head up so their eyes met. Then the woman kissed April.

The kiss was soft, warm, wet, just like any other kiss but so different. A dizzying confusion of emotions swirled through April’s mind as she allowed herself to be kissed by this black woman, this cult leader she barely knew.

Delilah’s tongue skipped tentatively into April’s mouth and flicked lightly at April’s tongue, coaxing it back into Delilah’s mouth. April kissed her back and felt a surge of desire flood her. She pulled away, breaking the kiss, but remained cradled in Delilah’s arms. The young priestess smiled at her. The smile looked hurt.

“Will you love me?” Delilah asked, and April could feel something new coming from the woman now. It was fear. Fear of rejection. April knew what the woman was asking. She could feel Delilah’s lust as powerfully as her love and her strength, and April had never been with a woman before.

Still, there was no denying what she’d felt when Delilah kissed her. April nodded. “Yes.” She leaned forward again and kissed Delilah’s soft lips as the woman began to undress her.

Chapter 9

Malloy’s partner, Detective Mohammed Rafik showed up bright and early, and so did the coroner’s report. The dog had about ten pounds of partially digested human flesh in his belly. Open and shut case. The dog did it. But something about it still didn’t feel right to Malloy. He decided to hold on to the file for a few more days.

Mohammed was the opposite of what his name would have led one to believe. When people heard his name they inevitably pictured some combination of Malcolm X, Eldridge Cleaver, and Isaac Hayes. Then when the skinny, bespectacled, conservative gentleman who sometimes stuttered when he was nervous walked into the office and introduced himself, you almost wanted to laugh. He couldn’t have been further from Eldridge Cleaver if he’d been Drew Carey.

He was raised Muslim but was now a rather militant atheist. His father taught him martial arts and boxing as a kid, expecting his son’s size and strength to grow to match his own chiseled six-feet three-inch, two hundred forty-seven pound physique. Unfortunately for the elder Rafik, Mohammed stopped growing at age fifteen and stood at five-feet ten. He never was able to get his weight over one hundred fifty no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t take a punch and had more of an affinity for a good book and a cold beer than for sports or exercise.

After high school, Mohammed enrolled in college for computer programming and criminal psychology to the chagrin of his parents who wanted him to study sociology with an emphasis on some nebulous field called “Black studies.” Mohammed viewed that as a sentence to either spend his life as a teacher being harassed by gun-toting juveniles who could care less about who Marcus Garvey or Huey P. Newton were or in some other dead-end profession that had nothing to do with his field of study. The job opportunities for a young black man with a BA in Black studies were limited at best. Mohammed had no desire to join the ranks of the chronically unemployed. It would have been a total waste of time and the twenty-thousand-dollar-a-year tuition. Since he was working his way through college with little help from his parents, he chose his own path. After college, Mohammed joined the police force.

Mohammed Rafik was raised to be a freedom fighter for a black revolution that never came, but he had grown up to be a republican cop with an admitted affinity for white girls - which also did not exactly endear him to the elder Rafik. Malloy was glad Mohammed had made that career choice. He was one hell of a cop.

“Mo! You feeling better, brother?”

“My dad would lose his lunch if he heard an ass-kicking Irish cop like you refer to me as his brother.”

“The same way he did the day you were sworn in? What, did you have the flu or something? You never take a day off.”

“I know. The missus pointed that fact out to me just before she insisted I stay in bed.”

“You still look like shit.”

“Fuck you very much, Malloy.”

“So what do you think about this case of ours?”

“What case? Close the book on that shit. The dog did it.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Fuck being sure. You did all the right investigative work and it all turned out to be a dead end. The only evidence we have that points to a killer is the fact that his dog was found using his owner’s head as a chew toy and he had half the guy’s body running through his colon. The dog did it!”

“Ten pounds of meat is not exactly half the guy’s body. There’s at least another hundred and fifty pounds unaccounted for. And the dog had no motive.”

“No
what?
It’s a fucking dog! Dogs don’t need motive!”

“Why would a well-fed, obviously well-treated domesticated animal suddenly rip its owner to shreds? They found no evidence of rabies or any other disease or illness and nothing to suggest the dog had been abused in any way. In fact, he appeared to have been rather pampered. Groomed, manicured. The dog even had his teeth cleaned regularly. He had teeth whiter than mine. Crime Scene found two Water Piks in the house - one for Martin and one for his dog. They also found raw hamburger in his stomach as well. This dog ate well. So why did it go berserk? And what about all the other animals that attacked him?”

Mohammed shook his head and lit a cigarette, taking a long drag and blowing it out slow. “Fuck it. Move on. We’ve got cases piling up by the truckload and more on the way. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done and be glad we got another case off the boards. We’ve got a lot more shit to worry about. Another little girl went missing today.”

“Another one! What does that make it now, six in one month? Is this one like the others?”

Mohammed nodded. “Seven now.”

Six girls had gone missing last month only to turn up weeks later half-starved and in shock, unable to speak. They had all been around the same age, and their parents were upper-class to upper-middleclass. There had been no ransom notes and no signs of breaking and entering at any of their homes. Some of the parents knew each other but some didn’t. There had been talk about child abduction rings, satanic cults, and sex slaves but it had all been speculation, and rape kits on the girls had turned up negative. Missing Persons was brought in by the FBI to help but hadn’t gotten anywhere. The most curious thing was that none of the parents would submit to lie detector tests, and two had lawyered up and refused to talk at all once they discovered the FBI was involved.

“It’s the same MO. I heard it on the news on the way to work, and by the time I got here the file was on my desk. It’s a little girl named Marsha Wells. Captain wants us to handle it. We need to go interview the parents.”

Malloy could only imagine the looks he’d be getting from the other detectives. They’d drawn the worst case possible - a child abduction.

“Why us? I thought Missing Persons was handling this?”

“Jennie Brown, the third victim, died in the hospital early this morning of starvation. They had her on an IV all night, but her organs just shut down. They think she hadn’t eaten or drank hardly anything since she went missing a month ago. Somebody starved her to death. That makes it homicide and that makes it us. We’re now considering all of the missing girls as possible homicides and the ones that have turned up comatose are being classified as attempted murders.”

“Fuck. So where do we start?”

“First we need to interview the parents of the latest victim. Then we need to start checking into the ones who are still missing. There’s one who went missing exactly one month ago today. If the pattern holds she should be turning up any day now.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mary Nielson.”

“Any leads on her?”

“Not a one. That trail went cold almost immediately. That’s why we need to get moving on the Wells kid now while everyone’s memories are still fresh and there’s a chance of recovering her alive.”

Marsha Wells was the sixth little girl who’d disappeared from the Green Valley area in four months. Four had already turned up filthy, catatonic, near dead from exposure, but with no external injuries or evidence of any kind of physical or sexual assault. Just that vacant stare and a total lack of stimulus response. It was creepy as hell. Now one of the four girls who’d been recovered was dead and two more, three including this new one, were still missing.

Detectives Malloy and Rafik each hoped this one would be different, that they’d be able to find her before whatever happened to those other girls happened to her. But Malloy knew how this type of thing went. Unless one of the girls turned up in good enough condition to give a description of her attackers - or better yet, an address or a license plate number, or someone spotted them snatching a kid off the street - the likelihood of them being caught anytime soon was slim.

The two detectives went to interview the parents. Both secretly hoped one of the parents was guilty of something. Abductions by strangers were the hardest.

“I hate when there are kids involved. Starve a kid to death? Who the hell would do such a thing?” Mohammed said.

“I just keep thinking about Bruce Martin.”

“Who?”

“Bruce Martin. The guy who was eaten by half the pets in the neighborhood. What the hell would make an animal do that?”

“Let it go, Malloy! We’re working on a possible kidnapping now.” Mohammed shook his head and glanced at his partner. “I dunno, man … some kind of brain disease? Just because the ME didn’t find anything in the dog’s stomach doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. It could be something new, maybe a congenital illness, some sort of canine antisocial disorder or something. Fuck, I don’t know. Let the shit go.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t just his dog. Everything was attacking him. As near as I can tell every living thing within a stone’s throw of his house had taken a piece out of him.”

“Look. Forget about it. That case is closed. New case now. Stay on task. We’ve got a child abductor to catch.”

Malloy shook his head, trying to rattle the image from his skull, but visions of that maggot-covered corpse kept swimming through his mind. He couldn’t think about anything else.

They pulled up to a guard gate and rang the home of Deborah and Frank Wells. Almost every new community in Vegas was gated. It provided a fragile illusion of safety while in reality doing little more than slowing the response time of emergency personnel.

A trembling voice answered after the second ring. “H-h-hello?” Her voice shook with emotion as she spoke. It was obvious the woman had been crying.

“Las Vegas Metro, ma’am. We need to talk to you about your daughter.”

There was a long pause. He could hear Mrs. Wells breathing followed by muffled whispers, as if she had been covering the phone.

Both detectives strained to hear what was being said but couldn’t make out a single word. The tone of voice, however, was clearly agitated. For a moment Malloy was worried they were going to have to get a warrant. Then the buzzer sounded and the gates began to slowly part.

Minutes later they pulled their Crown Victoria up into the Wells’s driveway. The young couple opened the door and ushered them inside before they had a chance to ring the bell. Something about the couple immediately struck Malloy as odd. The woman did not have the bloodshot eyes of someone who had been crying all day, although she was making quite a show of it now. Her makeup was perfect except for around her eyes where she had left off the eyeliner, shadow, and mascara as if in anticipation of a makeup-ruining crying jag. She looked entirely too put together for someone who had just lost her child.

The husband appeared annoyed, as if he was being kept from some pressing appointment. He wasn’t checking his watch, but it was obvious he wanted to because he kept touching it and rubbing his wrists, as if physically restraining himself from looking at it.

Mohammed was looking around the room and frowning. There was something not quite right about the scene.

“Come in, Detectives,” Mr. Wells said, looking thoroughly put out by their unexpected visit.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wells, my name is Detective John Malloy, Las Vegas Metro Homicide division, and this is Detective Mohammed Rafik. We won’t take up much of your time. We just wanted to ask you a few questions concerning the night your daughter first disappeared.”

“We’ve already told this story a dozen times to you guys,” Mr. Wells said.

“I’m sure you have, and we’ve looked over the file from Missing Persons, but I’m hoping you might remember something you perhaps could not recall earlier. A different person asking different questions, phrased differently - it might cause you to remember something that slipped your mind before.”

“Slipped my mind? Do you know how many times I run that night over in my head? All day. All night. Every single day! Nothing is slipping my mind!” Mrs. Wells shrieked and tears began to flood down her face as her eyes blazed with an unnerving combination of fury and sorrow.

Mr. Wells put his hand on her shoulder and patted lightly. Almost immediately the tears stopped. “We’ll try to help you gentlemen in any way possible, but I honestly don’t think there’s any more we can tell you.”

“Let’s start with the day she disappeared. Was she wearing the same clothes she was found in?”

“Yes, I bought her that blue sweater the night before. That was the first day she wore it. She had on a plaid skirt and patent leather shoes with white knee highs.”

“Okay. Where exactly were you when she disappeared?”

“I was in the kitchen cooking. I could hear her outside playing. I would look out the window and check on her every now and then. Then Frank called, and he and I were talking for, I don’t know, less than five minutes. When I hung up I couldn’t hear Marsha outside anymore. So I leaned out the window to look for her but didn’t see her anywhere. I figured she’d just followed her friends to the pool or went to one of their houses or something. She knows not to leave the block without asking, but you know kids; sometimes they forget.”