The Green Lama: Crimson Circle (28 page)

“Another cannibal killing?”

Caraway hesitated. “No… It’s—It’s Jean.”

Jethro could hear the anxiety in Caraway’s voice and something inside Jethro’s body shut down. “What about her?” he whispered, suddenly feeling very cold.

“She…” Caraway paused to clear his throat. “We’re at the theatre…”

Jethro stumbled and grabbed onto Tsarong. “John, is Jean okay?”

“I… They don’t—”

“John,” Jethro repeated, his tone commanding despite the apprehension wracking his mind. His fingers dug into the wall, cracking the wooden paneling. “Where is Jean?”

There was silence on the line.

“John?”

“You’d better get down here…”

• • •

LIGHTS AND SIGNS reflected off the taxicab window, a kaleidoscope of flashing advertisements for everything from peanuts to cigarettes to Broadway shows. Men and women, dressed to the nines, walked arm-in-arm along the sidewalks while trolleys rattled along their tracks down the street. Save for the small army of police officers around the Palace Theatre, it looked like a normal evening in Times Square.

A pit had formed in the center of Jethro’s stomach and he was overtaken by a sense of unreality, a waking dream. The cab pulled up in front of the Palace Theatre and Jethro absentmindedly handed the driver a twenty. He climbed out of the car and stumbled toward the entrance, suddenly feeling lightheaded. There was a collective chatter bubbling around him; the cacophony of camera flashes and people shouting his name. Somewhere in the haze he heard someone tell him the theatre was a crime scene. Holding back the mass of reporters, photographers, and onlookers were uniformed police officers in their double-breasted blues, faces he was sure he would recognize if he rose above the numbness enveloping his consciousness. His gaze trained on the theatre entrance, the periphery of his vision suddenly blurred and tunneled. His feet seemed to turn to liquid and he tumbled forward, catching himself on a stanchion. Someone placed a hand on his shoulder and he heard Caraway’s gravelly voice saying his name.

“Where is she?” Jethro asked absently as he kept moving forward.

“She’s not—She’s not here. At least they haven’t found her yet,” Caraway admitted under his breath.

“‘They haven’t found her.’” Jethro repeated, with a growing sense of despair. He stopped short and swallowed the lump in his throat. He turned his head to Caraway, but kept his eyes trained on the theatre entrance. “What happened?”

Caraway shook his head. “They’re not exactly sure yet, but it isn’t pretty. The entire cast and crew—”

“How many people?”

“Fifteen at last count; but they keep finding more.”

Jethro’s eyes steeled over. More than fifteen innocent people dead. “Take me inside.”

“Are you sure?” Caraway asked but Jethro’s expression spoke volumes. Caraway put his hand on Jethro’s shoulder. “Okay, let me just clear it with the boys.”

“It’s my theatre, John,” Jethro whispered.

“Excuse me?”

Jethro ran a hand over his face. “The theatre. It’s mine. Wouldn’t they want to speak to me?”

“Okay. Let me take care of it.”

Jethro reached over and gripped Caraway’s hand. “Thank you, John.”

Caraway gave him a ghost of a smile. Jethro nodded, and waited for the nightmare to end.

• • •

DETECTIVE CREVIER paced the stage, looking over the dozen or more bodies laid out before him while unconsciously running his thumb over the scar on his right cheek. His head felt like it had been left to soak in a pickle jar. He had barely slept a full night’s sleep in weeks, having been wracked with recurring nightmares of people getting split open and eaten alive in front of him. The dreams left him sitting up in bed, drenched in sweat. Fulton had noticed Crevier’s exhaustion, though whenever he asked, Crevier would just shrug and say his bed was “a-rattlin’.” Let his partner think he was knocking boots with some dame, even if that was the farthest thing from the truth. Fulton was descended from the Puritans, so anything remotely related to sex turned him redder than an Indian.

A young woman’s body—still unidentified—lay at his feet, a deep knife wound stretched across her throat, sliced through to the spine; her auburn hair knotted with dried blood. He scribbled down her description in his notebook. It was his and Fulton’s job to catalogue the bodies, note their injuries and see if they had an identification of them in hopes of figuring out a motive. Not that Crevier was holding out any hope. Whoever was behind this—and Crevier was guessing at least six, if not a dozen men—they were very good at their job. Aside from the knife wounds, there were no clues to go on. It was almost as if they had all been killed by the invisible man.

He glanced up to the back of the theatre and saw Caraway enter alongside a familiar handsome man. Crevier recognized the face immediately, having seen it plastered on hundreds of tabloids and in dozens of newsreels. “Hey, Jeff, is that Jethro Dumont Caraway’s talking to?”

Fulton looked up from the body of the show director and squinted his eyes as he gazed toward the back of the theatre. “Jethro Dumont, as in:
The
Jethro Dumont?” he asked, putting on his glasses.

“Didn’t know there were others to be compared to. Ridiculous name like that you’d figure there’d only be one.”

“Jesus, yeah,” Fulton said as he stood up. He patted the dust off his pant legs. “That’s Dumont, all right.”

“Shit,” Crevier said with a grimace. “I read in the papers that he and Jean Parker were supposed to be engaged or something.”

Fulton winced. “Fuck.”

Crevier shook his head mournfully. “Damn shame, too. I hear she had a great ass.”

• • •

COMMISSIONER WOODS stood at the far end of the stage, watching his men move ladders over the blood-soaked carpet. There were still a few bodies hanging overheard—three men and two women—looking more like cattle in a meat locker than human beings. Wayland and Heidelberger were cordoning off the backstage area where they had found evidence of a gunfight. All in all, it was a horror show. With the Cannibal Killer still at large and now this, Woods knew his days were numbered. If the mayor didn’t kick him out first, the press would surely eat him alive.

It was several minutes before Woods realized all work had stopped, the theatre suddenly silent. He whirled around, ready to holler at his men, when he caught sight of Jethro Dumont and Caraway standing at the back of the theatre.

“Mr. Dumont!” Woods called as he ran over, his face beet red. “Mr. Dumont!”

“Commissioner,” Jethro said as Woods rushed toward him, ignoring the other man’s extended hand.

Woods glanced down uncomfortably and cleared his throat. “Mr. Dumont,” he began, withdrawing his hand. “I’m so sorry you had to find out about this whole affair in such a traumatic fashion. We only learned about the tragedy recently ourselves and we had hoped to contact you once we had a clearer picture as to what had happened here.” He then angrily eyed Caraway. “And while he is aiding in this investigation, Mr
.
Caraway acted on his own accord. I will make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“On the contrary, I appreciate that John brought this horrible crime to my attention before I read about it in the tabloids,” Jethro shot back with more venom than he intended. Right now there was very little separating the playboy persona of Dumont and the pain that was overflowing inside the Green Lama. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to talk to John alone.”

Woods scowled when he noticed every eye in the theatre on them. He took a long, steaming breath in and nodded in reluctant ascent. He stole one last spiteful glance at Caraway before he walked away in a huff.

Jethro looked over to the bodies lined up on the stage. “How were they murdered?” he asked Caraway after Woods was out of earshot.

“Their throats were slit; a clean cut straight through. If that didn’t kill them right away I’m sure they bled out. It’s a hell of a way to go.”

“No bullets,” Jethro commented under his breath. “With Theodor there was only one bullet; easy enough to cover up. But there were too many people this time; so he kept it clean. No way to track him.”

“Jethro, you’re not suggesting…”

“You know who did this,” Jethro said, unconsciously clenching his hands.

Caraway frowned and shook his head. “There’s no way of knowing—”

“It was him,” Jethro hissed. “The same man who killed Theodor; who took Gary. He killed everyone here and now he’s taken Jean.”

“We don’t know that yet,” Caraway said calmly. “This could all just be some crazed lunatic—”

“He’s coming after me, John,” Jethro said. “Don’t you see? He’s taking us out, one by one, working up the ladder until he has me, killing anyone who will stand in his way.” Jethro glanced down at his clenched fist and saw it was beginning to glow, his veins pulsating all the way up his arm. He closed his eyes and took a long breath in, and whispered: “
Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha!
” The energy radiating in his hand faded like a dimming light, but the distended veins remained. He looked over the theatre, the sight of the blood and the bodies hitting him hard in the chest. Jethro shook his head and looked Caraway in the eye. “He’s striking at the heart.”

Caraway furrowed his brow in disbelief. “‘Striking at the heart?’”

“The rules are different now,” Jethro said as he spun on his heel and began marching out of the theatre. “You won’t find any clues here. We’re fighting a phantom.”

“Jesus, Jethro, where are you going?”

“To save the woman I love,” Jethro growled in reply as he stormed out of the theatre and into the night.

Chapter 11
: Interrogation

JEAN DIDN’T pass out, though she wished she had. Dazed, she had been gagged and blindfolded, her hands tied behind her back before she was dragged out of the theatre and carelessly thrown into the trunk of a car. She landed on her dislocated shoulder, her screams of pain muffled by the cloth and metal encasing her. The car rumbled to life and sped out to destinations unknown. She tried to call attention by kicking the side of the trunk as hard as she could but the glass shards digging into her skin forced her to stop as quickly as she started. She was able to work off the blindfold, not that it helped in the pitch black of the storage compartment.

This was not the first time Jean had been kidnapped, having long ago accepted it as something of an “occupational hazard.” But after everything she had done over the last few years she had hoped she had become experienced enough to prevent it from happening again. But, then she had never faced anyone like Omega before. She could still see the bodies of her cast mates—her
friends—
bleeding from the ceiling. She could have saved them, she told herself. If only she had arrived sooner, she could have fought back, they would have stood a chance and maybe they would still…

A tear rolled down her cheek.

Who was she kidding? No matter what she would have done, he would have overpowered her and still killed everyone else, if only to prove a point. But now was not the time for self-flagellation. She steadied her breath the way Jethro had taught her and slowed her heartbeat to a manageable rhythm. If she was going to survive this, she needed to be calm. She had dealt with cold-hearted bastards in her time, murderers who would gun down women and children just to avoid capture, undead Nazis bent on world domination, but there was something bone-chillingly wrong about Omega. She didn’t doubt that he was human—she had seen him bleed—but that was what made him so much more terrifying; a perverse detachment from any form of empathy that was almost robotic.

An hour passed, maybe more, the car swerving left and right at irregular intervals making it near impossible for her to visualize the path they had taken—not that she was particularly good at that, but she had been getting better. He was taking her somewhere far from the city, that much she had been able to determine. Where their ultimate destination would be, she could only guess. Just as long it wasn’t New Jersey, she thought with a bit of gallows humor.

The sound of dirt and gravel running under rubber resounded beneath her, a discordance of sound that was almost deafening. After what seemed like another hour, the car rolled to a halt and the engine shut off. Jean turned her body as best she could, aiming her feet toward the back of the car, guessing where Omega’s knees might be. If she acted fast enough, she could hopefully incapacitate him long enough to make an escape. She firmed her lips in anticipation and squinted her eyes, preparing for the blast of light that would momentarily blind. The sound of keys clinked against the car’s exterior, the trunk lock clicking open. The cargo cover swung up and Jean caught a glimpse of Omega’s knees and kicked both her feet out with all her might.

But Omega had anticipated her attack, smoothly taking a step back just beyond Jean’s reach. Defeated, she started to scream through her gag, hoping that someone would hear.

Omega gave her an amused lopsided grin. “Oh, hush, Miss Farrell,” he said, patiently placing his hands behind his back as he watched Jean kick and scream. “There is no one for miles.” He waved over the thicket surrounding them. “Besides, I can barely understand you with that gag on.”