Dantes' Inferno (9 page)

“I'm sorry,” M apologizes to the corpse as he lets it sink to earth. Then he whispers to himself: “The city is so beautiful
by daylight. It's only the night that makes her ugly.”

He turns his back and slowly begins his ascent to the world.

Tonight, his job is finished—the second circle is complete.

Tomorrow he has a big day ahead. Tomorrow he will work in daylight.

He is used to destructive premonition. He can see the future as clearly as if it is stretching behind him, a trailing past, already written, book closed. A cataclysm will strike this city. Fire will sear her skin and engulf her features; the force of two atomic bombs will rip out her bones and sever her limbs. She will go blind and deaf and dumb, and her breathing will cease. She will be the sacrifice.

Tomorrow they will all face the third circle.

The Pope was right, a monster is on the loose.

The monster is John Freeman Dantes.

Or is it me? he wonders.

It is us
.

Yes
.

We are the monster
.

Most of the bombcops I know, they answer the door, open every package with the thought, Shit, this could be it—kaboom.

Edward “Boomer” Toms, Folsom Prison inmate

Tuesday—5:00
A.M.
The knock was loud.

Groggy, and emotionally and chemically hungover, Sylvia peered through the peephole in the front door of the bungalow to find herself eye to eye with law enforcement insignia.

“Dr. Strange?” There was some shuffling on the outside stoop; two faces appeared—one, then the other—in front of the peephole.

Groaning, Sylvia cracked the door, safety chain still fastened, taking a closer look: badges advertised the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Los Angeles Police Department. They were shiny, and they looked real.

“I'm Special Agent Purcell.” The woman wore her hair buzzed, her milk chocolate face squeaky clean, and her affect flat. She looked so buff she'd bounce.

Next to the woman, the man loomed. In order to meet his dead-on gaze, Sylvia had to raise her chin, an action that only made her headache worse. When he introduced himself as Detective Church, LAPD, the words rumbled in his
throat. “Yesterday you were at Metro Detention Center,” he told her, voice stalling out on the final syllable.

Sylvia flicked her hair from her face. Her heartbeat slowed a tad—this didn't concern New Mexico or her family,
thank God
. She croaked out the beginning of a question: “What's this a—”

“You had an interview with John Dantes,” Church finished. He smiled without showing teeth; his eyes were sharp. “Do you mind if we step inside?”

“I do mind,” she said slowly. For fifteen seconds, she stood unrelenting. Nobody budged, nobody spoke. Then Sylvia blinked, and they won the first round.

Reluctantly, she released the security chain, watching as they entered; first the agent, then the detective. They couldn't be more different: Mutt and Jeff. Only their grave expressions were congruent. She was flanked by law enforcement—one five foot five, the other six foot two.

“Dr. Strange, what exactly did you want with John Dantes?” The LAPD detective's gaze, openly assessing, stayed pinned to her face.

“You just told me what I wanted,” Sylvia answered quietly. She felt as if the detective could see straight through her. “An interview.”

She tightened the belt of her terry robe until her stomach ached. She knew she looked wild; her mouth tasted of sand. “I met with Dantes to complete a series of psychometric inventories—
tests
—for a federal profiling project.”

“And did you complete the inventories?” Purcell asked.

“No.”

“Did you complete
any
tests?”

“No.”

“Not even one?” Church crossed his arms, eyebrows raised. Without appearing to do so, he was scoping out the interior of the bungalow.

“Not even one, Detective.” Sylvia was beginning to regain enough sense to feel annoyed. “Maybe that omission is unfortunate, but as far as I know, it's not a crime.”

“You need to come with us,” Purcell stated firmly.

“Oh,
no
.” Sylvia raised her index finger and squared her shoulders. “There's been some mistake—my work in LA is finished.” When neither agent looked convinced, she expelled air in a huff, adding, “I don't know what's going on, but I've got a plane to catch.” As if on cue, the alarm clock in the bedroom began to shriek.

“Sorry, Doc,” Detective Church drawled. “Your country needs you.”

Eight minutes later Sylvia slid into the back of the dark unmarked Ford while the two investigators took the good seats for the drive over to the FBI's Wilshire offices.

She still felt like hell—probably
looked
almost as bad as she felt—but at least her teeth were brushed and she was fully dressed. She tucked her white shirt deeper into the waistband of her jeans. The smell of coffee, the two Starbucks cups on the dash, made her nose itch. No one offered her a sip.

During the drive, she had the opportunity to study her escorts. Behind the wheel, Purcell was doing a passable imitation of a tough guy. The special agent might qualify for that category of female cop obsessed with keeping up with the boys. If Purcell was out to cut some notches on her belt, Sylvia didn't plan to be one of them.

Filling the passenger seat with a cell phone in his lap, Detective Church was large and rangy, and he had the air of the chronically rumpled; his shiny suit clung to his body like a hungry orphan. His hat, a molded fedora, seemed to have taken root over a thatch of red hair. Freckles dotted his thick nose, turmeric sprinkled on a carrot. If he
detoured to central casting they'd hand him a Scottish kilt and bagpipes.

Something had hold of Sylvia thoughts, tugging like a small dog on a sleeve:
an LAPD detective who worked on the Getty investigation . . 
.

“Oh, come on,” Sylvia protested, coming back to reality. Purcell had just cruised past the Westside offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they were still headed east on Wilshire Boulevard. “Where the hell are we going now?”

Church answered. “Roybal Federal.”

Sylvia plunked back in the seat, arms crossed. Staring out the window, she felt LA's international airport growing more distant by the mile. “Roybal Federal—that's right next door to MDC.”

“Right next door,” Purcell said, eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.

“So, what am I doing here? How long will this take?” Sylvia shot out questions, rat-a-tat. “Am I under arrest?”

“For what?”

“You tell me. Jaywalking? If not, I've got a ticket back to New Mexico, and I'd like to use it today.” For an instant, she thought Church was going to apologize.

Instead, he said, “We need input on your interview with Dantes.”

“Why didn't you just say so in the first place?” She ran the back of her hand across her mouth. Her stomach rumbled from hunger, her headache was worsening, and she wished she had her sunglasses to ease the glare. “We could've covered this back in Santa Monica. The entire session is on tape if you can straighten out jurisdiction. The profiling project is federal anyway—” She was cut off by the bleat of a cell phone.

Church answered, shifting into listening mode for thirty
seconds. He hung up with a casual, “Okay, Sweetheart.”

Sylvia rolled her eyes. “Can't your girlfriend wait until you're off the clock?”

Purcell snorted, and Church shot her a dirty look before he returned his attention to Sylvia. “How did you feel about your meeting with Dantes?”

“I wasn't prepared for him.” Sylvia felt the energy coming from Church—the detective had eyes that penetrated like sharp blue darts. She watched his mind work; he was putting together pieces of a puzzle, matching color, texture, pattern, nuance.

Well, so was she.

“So . . . you've got another bomb, right?” she asked slowly.

Church didn't move a muscle. “What are you, bomb squad?”

“I'm not stupid.” Sylvia felt herself mirroring the investigator's tension, told herself to breathe. Inside the vehicle, the level of mistrust was palpable. She stared back at Church. “You were part of the Calbomb Task Force. Detective Red Church. You helped track down Dantes.” Her eyebrows arched. “You even made
Vanity Fair
. Not a very good picture.”

“Nobody said you were stupid,” Church said finally.

She glanced at her wristwatch, then the sky, depressed by the sight of a distant metal bird climbing toward the clouds.

Church followed her gaze. “They all look alike.”

“Fuck,” she whispered.

6:05
A.M.
Flanked by Purcell and Church, Sylvia crossed the already warm asphalt of Alameda Street. The route was becoming familiar. She couldn't resist looking up as they passed by the Metropolitan Detention Center. The narrow vertical windows caught the sun's rays, measuring the hour
with light. Dantes was there somewhere. She shuddered at the thought of him.

Just fifty feet beyond MDC, they entered the dimly lit, almost deserted lobby of Roybal Federal Building, passing quickly through the security checkpoint.

On the fourth floor, Sylvia followed the investigators through a maze of hallways lined with glass cubicles. It was too early for most employees to be at work, but computer monitors glowed green, and the clatter of fingers across a keyboard echoed across the floor.

Sylvia felt comforted by the human sound. Her stomach hurt, her hands were shaking from caffeine withdrawal; when she glanced down she noticed one shoelace was untied.

The investigators led the way into a long, narrow conference room. A wall of tinted windows offered a view of downtown. A twelve-foot-by-six-foot aerial map of LA covered the opposite wall. The air was too cold, the overhead lights had been dimmed. At the far end of the room, light emanated from a suspended white screen. Sylvia heard the hum of a projector but couldn't locate the source; her eyes were still adjusting to artificial twilight.

There was a soft
whir
followed by a
click
.

An image appeared—two paragraphs of enlarged black type projected starkly against the white screen.

“Yesterday while you were with Dantes,” Detective Church began, “a CO discovered a threat communication in his cell. Look at the paragraph on the left.”

Sylvia studied the message:

dear friend

thru me the way into the woeful city

thru me the way to eternal pain

sacrifice the children of heathens

until no innocents lay claim

first circle broken

8 circles remain

I do your bidding faithfully

M—

Church cleared his throat and said, “A second communication—apparently written by the same individual—arrived at FBI offices with yesterday's mail.”

dear feds

babbel, babbel, babbel

no more Limbo

2nd circle soon complete

release yr prisoner DaNTes, prophet apocryphal

or hungry for next

Vvv

M—

“You were close to the money when you said we've got ourselves another bomb,” Church said. “We've had initial contact from a possible bomber-extortionist.”

“And his name is M,” Sylvia said quietly. She almost asked what Quantico's psycholinguistic experts had to say about the content of the extortion notes: the literary and religious references.

But she stopped herself.

Her entire body was mobilized for fight or flight; she ignored the juvenile urge to cover her ears with her hands. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Your credentials checked out for BPP, or, trust me, you wouldn't be sitting here,” Purcell said.