I step through a shadow and come out in the Vigil HQ across town.
I HEAD INTO the Shonin’s room, but the place is empty. There’s a note taped to the door with a map and a red X over a nearby room. I find it around the first corner. There are heavy curtains over the window in the door. Someone has left a drawing on the clipboard attached to it. It’s a clipping from a newspaper. A butcher-shop ad with a cow sectioned into the different cuts of meat. Someone has drawn a little headstone and Xs over the cow’s eyes. I never knew feds had a sense of humor.
The inside of the morgue is almost as cold as the meat-locker freezer. Wells and the Shonin are there. Wells is reading aloud from the report I sent in last night. Both men look at me and Wells stops reading.
“You took your sweet time getting in today.”
“But it looks like I haven’t missed brunch.”
The room smells of incense. All thirteen bodies from the meat locker are laid out on stainless-steel tables, with their heads propped up next to them. The top of each head has been sawn off, revealing the gray brain matter. Each brain sports three incense sticks jammed right into the head meat.
I look at Wells.
“You give me a hard time and this guy’s one step away from turning these people into bongs.”
“Very funny. This man has been doing real work while you’ve been lying around at home.”
I walk between the tables, checking out the bodies. It’s like a weird corpse maze. Each head has a sigil painted with a brush a little below the hairline. Over their third eye. My guess is that the Shonin has been poking around in some of these dead people’s memories.
I say, “How did you get the bodies? You scoop them up before the cops get there?”
“No such luck. Local law enforcement arrived just as we were removing the physical evidence.”
“Dead people, you mean.”
“Among other pieces of evidence, yes. I’m afraid there was an ugly scene. I don’t enjoy territorial clashes, but I suppose with a crime this large local authorities are bound to be …”
“Emotional?”
“Clingy. However, when I explained the gravity of the situation to the commanding officer, he was happy to allow us to assist in the investigation.”
“You pulled rank, didn’t you? Got all federal. Maybe threatened to bring in Homeland Security.”
“I didn’t have to. As I said, the commander was a reasonable man.”
“LAPD is a lot of things, but I don’t remember reasonable.”
“The chief is Sub Rosa, so he understands how important our investigation is.”
“Having fun, fatty?” says the Shonin. “Does he always waste time like this?”
“He’s a child,” says Wells. “A misbehaving child. That’s why I’m so reluctant to give him this.”
The Shonin laughs a grumbling laugh. Like rocks in a tumbler. I hope I don’t hear him do it again.
“We’re getting early Christmas gifts? Are you my Secret Santa?”
Wells reaches into a jacket pocket and takes out a folded piece of leather. Hands it to me. Inside is a card with my name on it and the Golden Vigil insignia.
“This is official Vigil ID. If a situation develops with local law enforcement, show it to them. It won’t work in little Podunk towns, but it will in L.A. and you’re not going anywhere anytime soon, are you?”
“Not with a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card, I’m not.”
“Do not even begin to think about abusing the authority afforded to you by this identification.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But LAPD does know that I’m a car thief, so the thing might actually come in handy.”
Wells takes back the ID.
“Speaking of your previous criminal activities, understand this. This identification is only good while you work for this organization. My organization. You get cute, you go off the reservation, and I’ll throw you to the wolves. Do you understand me?”
“I’m a team player, sir. I won’t let you down.”
“See that you don’t,” he says, and hands me back the ID. I put it in my pocket before Wells can take it away again.
The Shonin crooks his finger at me and says, “Come over here and see what real mystical forensics looks like.”
I go over. He waits on the other side of a table holding Hobaica’s body.
“The man’s name is Joseph Hobaica. He’s thirty-eight years old, and by the cross around his neck, a good Catholic boy.”
“Wow. You and your mystical powers found his driver’s license and a first communion present. You’re goddamn Kreskin.”
“Language. He runs the distribution company where you witnessed the ceremony,” says Wells.
“Was that even a ceremony? It just looked like some kind of elaborate suicide pact to me.”
“You know damned well it was an Angra offering ritual. Stop being a smartass.”
“What I’m saying is, the all-beef church aside, the whole thing looked kind of thrown together. There weren’t any ritual objects. They didn’t have time to do an invocation before I got there. They didn’t even have decent suicide instruments. What kind of Gods want a life offering made with something you can get at a hardware store?”
“Do you have any brilliant theories?”
“I think they were freaked out and desperate. I could smell it on them. Maybe they were offering themselves to their freaky God, but they were also splitting town. Just like all the other suckers clogging the freeways.”
Wells nods.
“You might actually have a point there.”
“But you’re wrong about there being no ritual objects. Did you see the amputated limbs hanging among the circle?”
“They were a little hard to miss.”
The Shonin goes to a table nearby and throws back a blue hospital sheet revealing arms, legs, hands, a whole buffet of body parts.
“These are what Marshal Wells’s men brought back from the scene. Four arms. Four legs. Four hands. Four feet. You get the idea.”
“Yeah, they butchered two poor slobs or two of them committed suicide before and let themselves be cut up.”
The Shonin shakes his head.
“You were closer to right on your first guess. The marshal and his men saw this collection of wretched humanity and logically assumed that with this particular inventory of parts, they were the remains of two bodies.”
“But there’re more, aren’t there?”
Wells goes to the table and pulls the sheet back over the limbs.
“The Shonin expressed some doubts after examining the remains, so we ran DNA from each limb. There are parts of twelve bodies here. I seriously doubt they butchered twelve of their own members just so that thirteen more could commit suicide.”
“So, what are you saying? They’re part of some kill-crazy Charlie Manson gang?”
“You’d like it to be that simple, wouldn’t you, lazy boy?” says the Shonin.
Wells picks up a manila envelope from a nearby desk.