Saturday night, late
Sophie wanted to head straight to the old church and burial ground. Jackson was the one to remind her that they needed to have legal entry.
“And we can have it by tomorrow,” Bruce said.
“But if we went out now—”
“We have no tools. We can’t just dig around blindly,” Bruce said.
“Sophie, don’t forget, I did ask that my LA office have agents do sweeps around that area tonight, watching that it stays quiet,” Jackson said.
“If we went prowling around and accomplished nothing—and Sabrina Hayes found out—she’d be furious. She’s been cooperative,” Bruce said, “but that can change. We can do it right in the morning. If you just go in and by some legal flaw get evidence thrown out when it comes to court, the DA’s office would have your head. And if we’re wrong, we’ll have to access other tombs—and that missing part of the foundation that seems to have disappeared after the quake,” Bruce reminded her.
“Sophie, I’ve never seen anyone with more pull than Adam Harrison—the man who is the real head of the Krewe,” Jackson said. “We’ll get access, bright and early.”
“You don’t think that the killer will have figured out that we’re onto him?” Sophie asked. “Oh, stupid question. Cops flooded the place. But if there is anything there, he might get in and try to get rid of it by tomorrow.”
“The cops searched—and found nothing,” Bruce reminded her. “He won’t think that we’re going back. And the first search was LAPD. The second search will be FBI.”
“Besides,” Jackson said softly, “once we find his killing field...well, there will be no way for him to get rid of that much blood. He must have instruments down there. He might have been able to keep the studio and the dump sites clean, but I don’t believe he could have murdered the girls with such savagery—and left nothing.”
They were right, Sophie knew.
They reached her house; Jackson was heading immediately back to the hospital.
When Jackson had gone, Bruce pulled out the plans to the old burial ground and studied them, as well.
“Johnstone—they must have been an influential family. They have a huge family plot, except that the plot goes way underground. Look!”
He was sitting on the sofa, and she’d curled up comfortably next to him.
“I saw that,” Sophie said. “I think that there is some kind of entry at either the foot or the head—I mean, the way the coffins are stacked... I don’t think there could be an entry through one of the coffins. No room. But the way they’re stacked, it looks as if there could be a doorway at either end of the pyramid stacks.”
“And it could go deep.” He was quiet a minute. “It could even connect.”
“Connect to?”
“The missing chunk of foundation—or, what’s missing when you see plans of the cemetery that were drawn up after that quake.”
They heard a car, and then a knock at the door. Brodie was back from his turn on guard duty at the hospital.
He sat and listened as they told him about the Hollywood Hooligans, the performance, the fact that a slew of people might have masks, and that Jackson was arranging to get them back into the church and graveyard. He reminded them that Jackson had just come to the hospital to relieve him, so Vining was caught up as well, and still chafing to get out of the hospital.
“That’s a print of the plans Angela sent? Can I see?”
“Of course,” Sophie said, handing them over.
He studied the plans, and agreed with Sophie’s theory. “Johnstone. I think you have something there. Of course, with anything that old, it’s still a long shot,” he said.
Then Brodie yawned mightily.
Sophie realized that they were sitting where he slept, and she jumped up. “We’ll take this up in the morning!”
“Bright and early,” Brodie said. He stretched out the minute they vacated the sofa.
“Brodie, there are sheets and pillows!” Sophie said. “They’re just folded—”
“Good night. I could sleep sitting up right now,” he said.
Bruce shrugged and urged Sophie down the hall.
As they went into her bedroom, it occurred to Sophie that they had already acquired a weird little ritual. First thing—guns. They went on each bedside table, snug in their little holsters.
Then...
They looked at one another. There could have been a discussion about whether they needed sleep most, or if anyone was in the mood, if...
No discussion.
Sophie practically flew across the bed into his arms. He kissed and touched her, and they were back to their other ritual, busy discarding one another’s clothing, and their own clothing, and creating wild piles of fabric wherever.
Then they were tight to each other’s bodies. And lips, fingertips, were everywhere on flesh, and some caresses were tender, and some were passionate, until they were fit together, locked together, rolling, whispering, laughing...and then just moving, writhing, arching...and feeling.
But that night, when she lay in his arms, she couldn’t help but wonder. What was she going to do when it was over? She hadn’t felt this alive in so long she couldn’t remember when.
All she knew for certain was that no matter what the future brought, they had to find this killer. Tomorrow, they’d revisit the graveyard. And this time, they would find out what was going on.
She lay next to him, trying to cherish the time when they just rested, so close.
Finally she slept, and didn’t dream, until her phone rang. She woke up, startled. She knew, instinctively, that it wasn’t a waking-up-time of morning.
She glanced at the bedside alarm clock. Four a.m.
She fumbled for her phone.
She saw that the call was coming from Kenneth Trent and answered it immediately.
“Kenneth. What’s wrong?”
“She’s missing!” he said.
“Who’s missing?”
“Grace—Grace Leon.”
Her heart thudded, but she remained calm and logical. “Kenneth, we just saw Grace. She was in your show.”
“But she didn’t turn up after the performance...she wasn’t where she said she’d be. What if she...what if she fell for something, auditioned after the show, more than auditioned for another show—for a golden opportunity.”
That puzzled Sophie. It wouldn’t be an unheard of thing that Grace had more than “auditioned” or that there had been more to her audition than just some line reading. It wouldn’t have been with Kenneth, of course.
Kenneth Trent was gay, and he had a partner; from everything they had seen and heard, he had a sound relationship.
There really shouldn’t be any kind of audition she would have gone to after the show—that late at night. True, there were so many different kinds of projects that went on in LA, and perhaps even late at night, but, at this point in time—would Grace have fallen for anything happening at odd hours?
Bruce was up, leaned on an elbow, watching as she spoke.
“Kenneth, where was she supposed to be?”
Kenneth hesitated on the other end. Then he began to talk. “She...okay, so, when I did the casting for my show, I was torn—it might have gone to Grace, but it could also have been another girl who auditioned. Except Perry—Perry Sykes, he played Dudley tonight—had a thing going with her. Grace, I mean. He talked me into taking Grace. I mean, she was good, but it was between her and the other girl, and Perry said that it should be Grace. They were meeting after the show—Grace and Perry—and with the cleanup and the wind-down...and we finished at eleven, and they were both still chatting with different people after. We had some agents there tonight, and a few directors and producers. But Perry had taken a room at a hotel back here in LA...that new boutique place on Sunset, kind of between the Mondrian and the Best Western. Something really special, something to celebrate opening night, her first role...and the two of them. But she didn’t show. Perry went to her house, but she wasn’t there. Oh, and she had texted him at midnight. ‘I’ll be right there. Can’t wait.’ Detective Manning, you don’t write a text like that and then...don’t show. Or don’t be anywhere. She’s missing. I know she’s an adult. I know the rules are that you’re not missing until twenty-four or forty-eight hours or whatever, but please! Help me...help us!”
“Okay, I’m getting up. We’ll get right on it. What kind of a car does she drive? I’ll get an APB out on her right away. We’ll find her, Kenneth.”
“After what happened to Lili, I’m so worried about Grace. Please, I’m so scared.”
“I’m on it, Kenneth. Her car?”
“An old Ford...wait... I’m with Perry.”
The phone was handed over.
“This is Perry. I have her license plate number.”
“You do?”
He cleared his throat. “I paid a ticket for her.” He rattled off the number. Sophie scrambled to the bedside table for a notepad.
Bruce saw what she was doing.
He was dialing Jackson before she finished writing.
“I’m back at the hotel. It’s called Sunrise, Sunset. We’ll be here, I guess. Unless we can do something else.”
“Just stay where you are. We’ll call the Malibu police,” Sophie said. “We’ll get in touch with you as soon as possible. Stay where you are. If something did happen—maybe Grace lost her phone—she might still come to you. Don’t move.”
Perry agreed.
Sophie didn’t really think that Grace Leon was going to show up at the hotel.
She didn’t want Perry Sykes—who sounded so frantic—out on the road.
Bruce was already up, reaching for his clothing, cell phone pressed to his ear with his shoulder as he dressed and spoke to Jackson at the same time.
Sophie called Captain, waking him, to report Kenneth’s call. “I’ll get cops in Malibu searching right away, since that’s where the show was,” he said. “But, Sophie...maybe this girl just decided to do something else tonight.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.”
“Okay, I’ll take care of official channels.”
“I’m going back to the graveyard.”
“Sophie, we searched.”
“Yes, yes, we did. But, Captain, you won’t believe it. I can already hear someone screaming from that graveyard—I can hear them all the way over here.”
She quickly hung up; she wasn’t going to give him a chance to argue.
She turned and looked at Bruce. He didn’t try to argue with her, either.
“Let’s go,” he said.
She was ready.
They ran out to the living room. Brodie was already up, too. “Good thing I didn’t put on my pajamas. Where are we going?”
“You—back to the hospital,” Bruce told his brother and added, “Please. Jackson is the official one here, so if you don’t mind.”
“I live to serve!” Brodie promised.
He was out the door before them.
Both cars revved at the same time. Sophie was grateful they were all on the same page, moving at top speed.
She didn’t need a ghost at the moment to tell her that they were going in the right direction. Cop’s gut instinct.
Something was going to happen.
Something that would take them in the right direction, closing in on the killer.
Sunday, the wee hours
The traffic was light—still existent, of course—it was, after all, LA.
But it was an easy drive, comparatively, to leave Sophie’s place in Los Feliz and head to the old church.
Bruce reckoned that he’d also gotten good at maneuvering around LA. Then again, he’d spent most of his adult life in DC and the surrounding communities; the Beltway could be a nightmare.
It was barely Sunday morning.
And, yet, like Sophie, he believed that their killer had struck again.
They were halfway to the church and graveyard when Sophie’s phone rang; it was Captain, reporting that Grace Leon’s car had been found.
Her car was found parked in a lot—not back in Malibu, but off Sunset.
“She must have left the inn, headed in to meet Perry Sykes as she said she was going to—and then been waylaid,” Sophie said. “Bruce, Henry was at the play. He drove there with Lee Underwood and Dr. Thompson.”
“And they all had plenty of time to get back here. An hour out to Malibu, maybe, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less,” he said. “Any of them might have taken Grace.”
“How could she have been fooled by any of them? And why in God’s name—knowing what happened to Lili Montana and Brenda Sully—would she go with anyone?”
“Maybe he’s changing up his operation,” Bruce suggested. “We know that Brenda and Lili were lured first to the studio. Then, they were taken for their ‘audition’ to the graveyard.”
“How the hell does this guy have a key?” Sophie murmured.
He glanced her way. “How the hell did he have a key to your apartment?”
“Because he is someone I work with,” she said.
They had reached the graveyard. He barely drew the car to a halt; Sophie was out of it.
She was already heading toward the place in the old stone wall where they had gone over before.
He had to hurry to get the key out of the ignition and run to her side. She was waiting; he hopped up and reached down for her.
They made it up on the wall and then hopped down into the graveyard. As they made their way through the shrubs and broken stones toward the church and the Johnstone set of family tombs, Sophie was whispering urgently.
“Michael! Ann Marie! Where are you?”
She stopped dead, staring at the Johnstone tomb.
“Michael!”
Bruce started studying the tomb. It was possible that there was some kind of a secret closure on one of what appeared to be cement sarcophagi—but it did seem that they were solid and aged. They had figured that the opening had to be at one of the ends.
He started to move around the tomb, but the ghost of Michael Thoreau—hand in hand with the ghost of Ann Marie—was hurrying toward Sophie.
“Hey!” Michael said.
“What’s gone on here tonight?” Sophie asked.
Michael looked at Ann Marie, shrugging as he looked back at Sophie.
“Um—nothing,” Michael said.
“That we know about,” Ann Marie said.
“There haven’t been any screams? Nothing? Did anyone open the gate?” Sophie demanded.
“Um...” Michael said.
“We didn’t hear any screams. We would have heard screams,” Ann Marie said.
Michael admitted, “We weren’t by the gate. We were...we’ve been talking and working on...”
“He’s been teaching me how to concentrate and appear—to those who can see us. We’ve been very busy,” Ann Marie said.
“No screams,” Sophie said, and she appeared to be perplexed. “Oh, Bruce, if I am wrong, if there’s nothing out here, no one out here...”
“No screams,” Bruce said. “But if Michael and Ann Marie weren’t paying attention...”
“Damn, we’re so sorry,” Michael said, horrified. “But honestly...”
“What if he has another girl?” Ann Marie asked, stricken.
“Still, we should have heard,” Michael said.
“Not if he was quick—as he would have been,” Bruce said. He looked at Sophie, and she knew that she was really worried.
For Grace Leon, first.
And then, of course, if she didn’t find anything here, her credibility would wind up being in question.
“We’re going to find something,” he said, determined. He gave her a serious nod. “We will find something. We will find Grace.”
Alive! he prayed.
As he made his way around the steps, he forced himself to use logic. Grace Leon was missing—and she should have been with Perry Sykes.
But then again, they didn’t know Grace.
Maybe she’d changed her mind.
Maybe she had gone to the home of a girlfriend.
But she wasn’t answering her phone. She wasn’t responding to texts. And her car had been abandoned.
Bruce could hear a car door opening and closing from somewhere; Jackson and the FBI or more members of the police department must have arrived.
He was at the head of the tomb. He scanned it, then began to touch it. The damned thing just appeared to be sealed cement.
“Bruce!”
Sophie called out to him from around the other end of the stacked tombs.
“Bruce!”
The last call of his name sounded...breathless.
Almost...
Strangled off.
He ran around the tomb as quickly as he could.
Well, he hadn’t found the entrance. Sophie had.
She’d pushed...and the wall of “cement” had swung inward, revealing...
Steps.
Down into stygian darkness.
But...
No Sophie.
She had disappeared. Right down the flight of stone steps that led into that hellhole of black.
* * *
Sophie gasped, trying to regain her breath. She felt like an idiot; she’d pushed hard—and fallen.
The impetus of her own weight had brought her careening down the stairs.
She moved each of her limbs; she was all right. She fumbled in the darkness, finding her penlight.
Even as she did so, she was aware of an odor. It was an odor of rot and decay, an odor of the earth...and more.
It was the smell of rot. Rotting, putrid blood.
She sat up and leaped quickly to her feet, looking around. At first, her little light did little. She saw the death of decades; family members in broken, rotting coffins, the stacks inside the catacomb built to align with the steps outside and above the ground. Some had been interred and then cement closed over the coffin slots.
Some...just lay there.
A bony hand, barely connected to bony arm through mummified flesh, dangled from one. The rot had touched everything.
That was time. The ravages that time played upon human flesh.
She heard a squeal; a rat raced over her foot.
She played her flashlight more deeply into the tomb.
And then, she saw her.
A woman, alive, her clothing half ripped from her body, and tied down on what should have been a cover to a tomb. Her hands had been stretched high above her head and tied, her feet had been trussed together, and then tied to some kind of stakes that protruded from the makeshift marble bed.
“My God!” Sophie breathed. She started to race forward; she stopped, going for her gun, and then waving her light around the place.
“Sophie!”
She heard Bruce; he was calling to her frantically.
“Here! I’m here,” she cried. “Hurry!”
She could hear his footsteps on the stone stairs that led down.
Having sent her light over the space and finding no one else—no one living at least—she hurried toward the woman who was tied to the slab.
It was Grace. As she reached her, Grace started to scream.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” Sophie said. “It’s Detective Manning. You’re all right.”
“No, no, no, no!” Grace cried, ripping against her restraints. “Help, oh, God, help me, help me, help me!”
“I’m trying to help you!” Sophie declared.
Grace looked at Sophie. Her eyes were wild and disoriented.
Sophie dug in her pocket for a knife and slit the bindings holding Grace; she had managed to cut her arms free when Bruce reached her. He pulled his pocketknife out and freed her from the ropes about her legs.
Grace tried to sit up. Sophie reached for her; Bruce dialed for an ambulance, but of course, by then, it seemed that sirens were screaming all around the street.
“You...who...oh, God, oh, God, where am I?” She looked around, and a scream tore from her lips.
She started to fight Sophie. “No, no, no, please, God, don’t hurt me, don’t...”
“It’s Detective Manning, Grace. I’m not going to hurt you. But who did this? Who brought you here? Please, Grace...”
“My car... Perry... I have to meet Perry... No, no, no... I don’t know...”
“We’re not going to get anything from her right now. Maybe later,” Bruce said. “Sophie, she has to get to a hospital.”
“Of course,” Sophie said. She tried to help Grace. She was strong, but Grace was dead weight, barely coherent, and fighting her, though Sophie doubted that she meant to.
Bruce stepped in.
As he lifted Grace up, Sophie saw that she was covered in earth and dust and...something red.
And then she realized. It was the blood she had smelled.
Not so fresh, after a week.
Blood.
Blood...probably belonging to Lili or Brenda.
Sticky...dried, rotting...
She swallowed hard.
She had to remember that they had just found Grace alive. And finding the young woman alive...
“Let’s get her up,” Bruce said.
“They’re coming.”
The sirens were now almost deafening.
Sophie used her light to illuminate the steps first for Bruce, who made his way up carrying the wildly mumbling and flailing Grace Leon. She followed behind him, but then paused.
They’d found Grace.
Thank God, they had found her alive.
But they had found her alone.
There was no trace of the killer.
How the hell had he gotten Grace down there—and how the hell had he gotten out and gotten away so quickly?
They reached the top step and were back out in the night air—air that now seemed incredibly cool and sweet.
The police had simply used a metal cutter on the gate; cops, forensic people and others were quickly flooding the graveyard.
Luckily, paramedics were already with them. Bruce handed Grace over to one of the young men; he quickly laid her down while his partner joined him, calling in to speak with a doctor as others came forward with a gurney.
Jackson Crow stood at the no-longer hidden door to the tomb.
“Anything?” he asked Bruce.
Bruce shook his head. “Sophie?”
“No. She thought I was going to hurt her.”
Bruce shook his head. “Don’t know with what, don’t know how badly, but this time, she was drugged. She may know something, but I think that she was attacked, and didn’t see whoever took her, and I think she was just coming to when Sophie went flying down into the tomb.”
How did he know that she hadn’t simply walked down the steps? Ah, probably the dust and grime and tomb rot that was surely covering her now.
“I’ll go to the hospital with Grace,” Jackson offered.
“Sophie may want—”
“No,” Sophie said quickly. “I need to get back down there, Bruce.”
He looked at her. “I intend to search, you know.”
One paramedic was receiving instructions from the doctor who would meet them at the hospital. Sophie heard him giving details about Grace’s pulse and other vital signs.
Then they were carrying her away to the waiting ambulance.
Jackson hurried after.
Captain Chagall had arrived and hurried over to Sophie.
“You found her! Alive. Is the killer here?”
She shook her head. “He’s got to be somewhere close. But I don’t know where. I’m going to get back down there. I need a floodlight.”
“Floodlight!” Chagall called out.
An officer, grim and pale, hurried over to her with a large floodlight. She turned, allowing the light to flood the tomb.
“More lights!” Chagall called out. “Sophie, careful what you touch. McFadden, will you go with her?”
“Yes, Captain, of course!” Bruce said, following Sophie down.
Someone from the forensic team, a paper mask over his nose and mouth, gloves on his hands and paper booties over his shoes, came hurrying after them.
“Detective Manning!”
It was Lee Underwood. She had a feeling that he’d just been dragged out of bed to be here.
“Gloves, Sophie, Bruce.”
Sophie accepted them, sliding them on quickly.
Another light flooded the place.
Chagall was descending the stairs with his own flashlight.
Sophie began to explain. “We found her on that slab. It’s been set up on broken tombstones. And there...not sure what those spikes are at each end. Her hands were tied over her head, the ropes attached to that spike. Her feet were bound together, and then attached down there, to that spike.”
“Son of a bitch,” Lee Underwood swore. He’d backed into an old coffin, right at the place where an earthquake had broken up the concrete seal. The coffin bounced out and to the floor.
A skeleton, with partially mummified skin and tattered remnants of clothing, burst out of the decaying coffin.
“Underwood. What the hell?” Chagall said.
“Captain, not his fault—it’s all decayed down here,” Sophie said.
“There’s blood all over. We need samples, tons of them,” Chagall said. “We need fibers, hair, you name it. Underwood, get your boss, get everyone—and quit knocking the long-dead around, all right?”
“Yes, sir!” Underwood said.
Someone else was coming down the steps, an officer, with yet more light.
He was followed by Henry Atkins.
“Grace Leon, alive. Thank God.” He saw Sophie and beamed. “You saved her—I just got the call from Captain.”
“Kenneth Trent called Sophie,” Bruce explained.
“But...how did he know?” Henry asked, bewildered.
“He just knew that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be,” Bruce explained.
He was studying Henry.
It appeared that Henry had just been awakened.
As they all had been.
“Where did he go?” Sophie murmured. “The killer...he got her here. And then...where the hell did he go?”
“Sophie, you’re something. How did you find this place?” Henry asked.
“It’s getting crowded down here,” Chagall said, ignoring Henry. “I’m moving out. Manning, McFadden, do your looking, then let the forensic team do their jobs before we turn the whole damn thing into a pile of bone and ash.”
There was really nothing else to see. Whoever had brought Grace there was gone.
Their hopes of catching him lay with the forensic team.
“Water—where did he get the water to wash the bodies?” she asked. “And his tools—where are the tools he used to slash them and bisect them?”
“I don’t see anything,” Underwood told her.
Henry Atkins was already busy setting up his camera.
“Let’s head up. With all the commotion, he’s probably long gone. He might even have left Grace here alone for hours, and been nowhere near here when we arrived. But maybe we’ll find something in the graveyard,” Bruce said.
She nodded. But as Bruce headed toward the stairs, he suddenly stopped and looked back at the tomb slab where Grace had been tied down.
He walked back toward Sophie and the slab.
Sophie was next to him, but he was seeing just beyond the slab. She moved slightly to manage to get to his range of vision.
And she saw what he had seen.
Tiny, and hard up against the shored-up earth wall at the rear of the large catacomb.
It was a boutonniere. A boutonniere like those worn by the “guests” who had attended the night’s performance by the Hollywood Hooligans.
Its petals were smashed.
Petals could have been smashed on any of the roses worn that night.
But this rose was different.
The petals weren’t just red, as most of the boutonnieres had been. They were hybrid, red and yellow. Just like the rose she had seen on Henry Atkins.