The Summerland (29 page)

For one thing, he knew his friends would rather die than lay on the ground naked, even for the mother of all pranks. And the man on the ground was just that, a man. A man with a hell of a hard-on, from what Tobey’s detached mind pulled in.

He stumbled back, clawing his way through the groping fingers of the bracken, his gorge rising as he pictured the dead man again and again. He lurched around in the maze of underbrush for what seemed like forever and was just ready to start screaming his fool head off, prank or no prank, friends or no friends, when he tripped, literally tripped, over the snoring deputy.

* * * *

It was a circle jerk, pure and simple. Bill had known deep in his bones that things had been too damned quiet for too long. He knew Halloween gave the local nuts a chance to howl, but he’d never imagined that the conclusion to their missing person/kidnapping/murder case would end in quite this manner.

“
Goddamn it, I know he’s dead. I saw the body myself, all right? I also saw the goddamned video, all right? What I want to know is how a woman who weighs a buck fifty soaking wet can drive up to a police-cordoned line and lug a 230 pound man fifteen yards into the underbrush without breaking a branch or alerting our deputy. That’s what I really want to know.” He knew he was yelling into the handset of the telephone, but he was past caring about that.

* * * *

The call had come in at three a.m., waking Bill out of a sound sleep.

He recognized him the second he saw him, even though it had been over a month since they’d worked together on the case. How the hell he had ended up dead without a mark on him and a flaming erection was more than Bill could figure out. His bemused eyes skimmed over the victim and his indisputable hard on, which was not as surprising or amusing as it first appeared. He’d seen the same thing on a heart attack victim back when he was still on Homicide.

Grainy-eyed and haggard from lack of sleep, he nonetheless slid into investigation mode without a hitch, his brain cataloguing each piece of the scene, picking it apart, turning it in each direction for a closer look, then putting it back together.

Adam Porter. The crime scene he had just helped to analyze. His obvious state of arousal. Not a mark on him.

Remorse and quiet despair washed through Bill in a wave. Turning to Stumpy, he ordered him to contact dispatch and have a deputy sent to the coven. If Porter was dead because he had involved him in this investigation, then Josie could be next. Or even worse, could have already been attacked. Then he told the big deputy to haul ass to Adam Porter’s house, sit tight and touch nothing.

He and Doug Brewster quickly marked the scene, eyeing the uneven ground before them through the powerful but inadequate illumination of their MagLites. What they saw turned Bill’s stomach.

As in each of the other deaths, a complete ritual had been performed, down to the remains of candle wax and the wilted crown of herbs. This case differed in one respect—the granite stone carrying the sign of the sigil was not buried, as it had been in the other cases. It was sitting right next to Porter’s head, the candle still seated in it. It seemed to say, “Here he is, do what you will.”

He pulled Doug aside, squatting on his heels next to his truck. “Can you handle this for now? Until one of the guys gets up here with the kleigs and Whelan with the meat wagon, there’s not much to do but contain this. I’m gonna head over to Porter’s house, see what the story is there. I probably should’ve gone there first, but he’s been here for a good hour at least, maybe even since the shift change when Stumpy came on at one.”

Shaking his head, he headed to the truck, leaving Doug in charge of the new scene and the two hysterical kids who’d stumbled upon yet another body and needed to be questioned.

Cashing in every single chip he had with Judge Meecham, he headed to Porter’s home, meeting a sleepy clerk from the county court halfway.

The redwood and glass castle that Dr. Adam Porter had called home was situated about ten miles as the crow flies from their original crime scene. Translated into roundabout, rutted roads, his body was at least thirty minutes from home.

He pulled into the generous driveway, noting that for once, Stumpy had followed directions and stayed in his truck. Pulling up next to the deputy’s vehicle, Bill told him to cover the outside of the dwelling while he served the search warrant he’d so recently obtained. Climbing out of the department Explorer, he scanned the hillside the house was built upon, looking for any obvious signs of disturbance. There was nothing to see.

As he walked from his truck, Bill noted that the bottle green Jaguar the doctor often drove in town was still parked in the carport, but the silver Landcruiser he favored in the winter months was missing.

Paperwork in hand, he ascended the bank of redwood deck stairs to the massive front door, ringing the chimes as he stood, waiting for an answer he was sure would never come.

Bill slipped a pair of latex gloves out of his windbreaker pocket, protecting both himself and any case they may hope to build. As he slipped the gloves on his hands he had an absurd flashback to an
X-Files
episode where Mulder had looked at Scully and asked quizzically, “prophylactic?” At the time it had cracked him up. Not so now.

Pushing open the door he called out. “Hello. Hello, anyone home?” No surprise there, he thought.

He began a quick but thorough initial sweep of the house, noting the fine furniture and fripperies that a man could collect if his paycheck supported him. Jesus, he thought as he entered the home theater, there had to be at least fifty grand in equipment in the room. He enviously eyed the state-of-the-art DVD player and VCR sitting side by side. In an enormous glass enclosed built-in cabinet to the right of the video equipment were a mind-boggling number of videotapes. The absolute magnitude of the collection defied description. Bill had never seen anything like it. They were labeled by date only, the six digits written on plain white labels in a crisp, neat hand. The dates spanned back more than a decade.

Leaving the multimedia room for the moment, the Sheriff continued his search, stopping long enough to answer his cell phone and find out that Whelan had just finished taking his sixth body from the same spot in less than a year and wasn’t very happy about it. Shit, he harrumphed to himself, like this was the way he wanted to spend the wee hours of the morning.

The ground floor was spacious, a palace in all but name, and certainly too ritzy for the likes of a Mariposite, doctor or no. Adam Porter had obviously liked the finer things in life.

Passing a magnificent grandfather clock, he headed down the hallway, bootheels cracking off the parquet flooring like gunshots. He checked each door as he proceeded down the long corridor, noting that the last one in the procession was slightly ajar. Each door offered nothing new, nothing of particular interest. A powder room here, guest suite there.

He caught a whiff of something, an odor he couldn’t quite put his finger on, a compelling combination of fragrance and smoke. Pushing open the last door he stopped dead in his tracks.

It was a nice room, simple really. Too simple for a house like this. His mind automatically dropped into categorization mode, cataloguing each and every item in the room without ever stepping foot inside. His eyes glanced off of the green walls, ceiling, and bedspread. Darted to the massive row of books directly opposite him. Froze on the screen partially hiding the commode and sink.

There, for God and anyone who knew anything about Wicca to see, was a depiction of the Great Rite. And directly below it, the enigmatic symbol that had haunted his dreams since the first week in July.

He stepped back from the doorway, making a beeline for the front entrance. He stepped through the massive portal, walking a short distance down the deck before pulling open his cell phone and dialing Doug.

“
Doug, get your ass over here now.” He blew out a shaky breath. “We’ve got a whole new problem to deal with. Shit, it’s really an old problem. Never mind, just get over here. Who’s there with you? OK, leave Hendricks then. Stumpy’s with me we’re containing the scene here. On your way throw up a roadblock into the Basin. I’m calling Dispatch and getting everyone back out here tonight. We’ll divvy the squadroom up between scenes evenly.”

He disconnected the call, tapping the antenna against his chin as he paced the long porch in front of the house, absently waving Stumpy up from his truck. He knew the next step; he just wasn’t very pleased to be making it. Pulling a card out of his wallet, he took another deep breath.

“
Yes, I’d like to speak with or page Special Agent Frank Drebin please. Yes ma’am, I do realize that it’s only eight a.m. Eastern Time. It’s four a.m. here. Please just page him and have him call Sheriff Bill Ashton at this number.” With a sigh he disconnected that call, then started calling his deputies in for their third true crime scene investigation in six months.

* * * *

“Jesus, I don’t believe this,” breathed Bill. He and Doug Brewster were watching the last videotape in the sequence. It had still been in the VCR, and had recorded Adam Porter’s last moments with high-definition clarity.

They’d fast-forwarded through the final, sexual moments of his life, then slowed the playback for the last bit of action on the tape.

Samantha Henning, and there was no doubt it was her, stood before the camera, shimmering with a mystical, primal beauty. Adam Porter lay on the bed behind her, dead of who knew what, but obviously dead. From the unearthly, serene shine beaming out of Samantha Henning’s eyes, Bill wasn’t taking any bets that they would figure it out to his satisfaction. You didn’t have to study Wicca very long before you began to wonder about some of the things the covens claimed they could do. Just as that doubt began to ripple through his mind like an undercurrent, Samantha began to move.

She pointed her index finger to the screen depicting the Great Rite and the sigil and began to walk counter-clockwise until she was back where she started, in front of the camera, her circuit of the room complete.

She stood there, majestic in her nakedness, and spoke directly to the lens.

“
The Circle is open but unbroken, the Great Rite complete. The Eight-Fold Path has been traversed. I am Diana. An it harm none, do what ye will.” With that she took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a brief moment, and then opened them. Smiling beatifically, she turned to the recumbent form of Dr. Adam Porter. And picked him up as easily as a child.

* * * *

The pow-wow in session in the rented trailer-turned-conference room was in full swing when Frank Drebin arrived. He was tired and cranky. The Bureau didn’t usually send it’s agents for follow-up like this, but he’d made the request and it had been grudgingly granted. Officials much higher up the food chain than he wanted to see just how royally the small-town department had fucked up.

From what he had read in the documents faxed to D.C. before his departure, Dr. Adam Porter fit his profile perfectly. Unfortunately, for the Mariposa County Sheriff’s Department, he was an upstanding community member and a renowned psychologist to boot.

It would be very interesting to see what had been left behind in addition to the videotapes. Surely a mind that methodical, that egocentric would keep his own private records glorifying the hunt, the kill. And that was what he really wanted to see. What drove a mind like that to do what he had done?

Heads swiveled as he entered the stuffy trailer. Though quite large, it seemed tiny, claustrophobic, with piles of videotapes stacked like little towers of Pisa throughout the room.

Bill Ashton sat at the head of the table, right next to the television and VCR. He looked like shit. He held Drebin’s gaze with shell-shocked, red-rimmed eyes. A smoldering cigarette dangled from his fingers. Drebin didn’t remember him smoking before.

“
Agent Drebin, please join us. We were just reviewing what our resident “expert” was videotaping while he was helping us profile his victims.” Bitterness and downright weariness coated his voice, making him sound old and washed-out.

“
Here.” He tossed a small leatherette binder at Drebin. “This should interest you. It’s his fucking diary. He not only taped them, but took notes. There’s gotta be a hundred of them over in those boxes. Ten years, ten goddamned years he was doing this.” Bill slumped forward in his chair, his hands hanging loosely between his legs, his shoulders drooping in defeat.

“We all marveled at his amazing insight into Kimmie’s mind, the way he could read Samantha so well. Insight my ass.”

“
Take a good, long look at me sitting here Drebin, because sure as shit I’ll be unemployed tomorrow.” He sat up a little, then drew deep on the cigarette, coughing a little as he exhaled, grimacing as the burning tobacco left a trail of fire down his throat. “I quit smoking these goddamned things years ago, and now, here I am, back on the stick.” Coughing harshly, he crushed the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray, then turned to fully face Drebin.

“
Arden’s on her way up from L.A. to positively ID Samantha. She should be here any time.” As a prideful man he should have been angry to see the brotherly, understanding compassion in Drebin’s eyes, should have hated the fact that a peer was here to see him when he was at one of the lowest points in his life. But he was too damned tired to be a stupid manly man, so instead he drew on that well of empathy, unconsciously straightening his back.