The Paradise Prophecy (13 page)

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Authors: Robert Browne

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy
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“Don’t blame yourself. Phone service is always spotty in places like that. There was nothing you could have done anyway.”
Ruiz just stared at the floor.
Callahan felt for him. Even for a detached outsider like her, that hadn’t been easy to listen to.
She glanced at Martinez, who shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking more rattled than usual, then got to his feet and gestured for her to join him over by the piano.
She followed him, bracing herself for whatever it was he had to say, knowing she probably wouldn’t like it. She studied the Gustave Doré illustration as he spoke, keeping his voice low.
“There, you see? I was right. What we just heard wasn’t natural. Not even close.”
“Easy now, we’ve got sound and no picture, and that’s a pretty big leap. Someone had to be in that room with her.”
“Nobody human—I can assure you of that. The only voice I heard was hers.”
Callahan was reminded of what Ruiz had told her. About Gabriela hearing voices when she prayed. Could there have been more to it than that? Could she have had some kind of psychotic breakdown and done this to herself?
If so, that still didn’t explain the
how
. And Martinez was right. On the surface, none of this seemed natural.
But his superstitious hysteria was starting to grate.
“Look,” she said, “let’s come back down to earth for a minute. What I heard on that phone was a woman who was obviously terrified. And despite how it may have sounded, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t alone. I’m guessing the person in that room was someone she knew.”
“Someone we
all
know,” Martinez said.
Callahan struggled to avoid rolling her eyes and pressed on. “You don’t achieve the kind of stardom or wield the kind of influence Gabriela had without making enemies. And with all the people she was surrounded by, there has to be someone who would want to—”
“De Souza,” Ruiz told her.
They both looked over at him. He was on his feet now, moving toward them, his eyes more bloodshot than ever. “José de Souza’s the one you want.”
Callahan was surprised he’d overheard them. “Who’s José de Souza?”
“The leader of the
Favela Paraisópolis
drug cartel.”
“What’s their connection?”
“In the old days, Gabriela did some courier work for him, and she’s spoken out against him many times since. She was pressuring the police to clean up the slums. Even talked about taking a trip there to encourage the children to honor God and stay away from drugs.”
“And you didn’t feel the need to mention this?”
“I told the officers at the scene. But at that point everyone seemed to think that Gabriela had committed suicide.”
“We haven’t completely ruled that out,” Callahan said. “But at least we’re getting somewhere. I take it Gabriela’s interference in de Souza’s life didn’t sit well with him?”
“He threatened her more than once.”
Callahan turned to Martinez. “Your men must have mentioned Mr. Ruiz’s suspicions. Have you talked to this guy?”
She wasn’t surprised when Martinez shook his head. “That’s easier said than done. He rarely leaves the
favela
. And he’s heavily protected.”
She sighed. “I don’t know how you manage to do it, Detective, but you continue to disappoint me.”
“We can’t just walk in there and demand his cooperation. It would take far more manpower than we can—”
“I don’t care,” Callahan said, “we need to interview him. He’s the best lead we’ve got.”
She could see by the look in his eyes that Martinez was still clinging to his fear. The man was useless.
Having something concrete to focus on gave her hope. But before she approached de Souza, she’d have to reinterview all the witnesses. Maybe one of them would remember seeing him at the concert that night. Maybe he’d been right there in the audience, waiting for Gabriela to go backstage.
Callahan thought about the sound of Gabriela’s voice at the end of the recording, when she’d uttered those last few unintelligible words. It was barely a croak yet somehow purposeful, as if she were trying to send a message.
Was she giving them a name?
The man who had done this to her?
De Souza?
Callahan gestured toward the table. “Don’t touch that phone,” she said, then crossed the room to the foyer where she had left her backpack. Unzipping it, she pulled out her own smartphone and an audio cable, then moved to the sofa and sat.
Setting her phone next to Ruiz’s, she connected one end of the cable to its input, and the other end to the iPhone’s output jack. She had a forensic audio application installed that would allow her to clean up the recording and enhance the sound.
She called it up, then pressed
play
on the iPhone, transferring the message in real time. When it was done, she called up the audio wav—a graphic representation of the recording—and scrolled to a point near the end, where Gabriela’s whispers were barely more than a few tiny spikes on a straight line.
Callahan isolated this section and normalized the sound, which enlarged the spikes and raised the volume by several decibels.
Then she clicked play, surprised by what she heard.
“
Defende eam
,” Gabriela croaked. “
Defende eam . . .”
The same two words she’d scribbled in the margin of
Paradise Lost
.
Protect her
.
Callahan turned to Ruiz.
“There it is again,” she said. “ ‘Protect her.’ Are you sure you can’t think of anyone Gabriela wanted to protect? Someone in danger? A child, maybe? One of her fans?”
Ruiz shook his head. “There’s no way to know.”
“She was obviously talking about herself,” Martinez said. “She knew what was about to happen and was begging for God to protect her soul.”
“Then wouldn’t she have said protect
me
?” Callahan had had about enough of this idiot. She looked again at Ruiz. “You say Gabriela used to work for de Souza. Is it possible she may have been concerned about someone she knew from those days? A friend who’s still caught up in that world?”
Ruiz shook his head. “Sofie was her only friend back then. And Sofie’s long gone.”
Maybe so, but if Gabriela had gone to all the trouble to say what she’d said—had even scribbled it in a book—then it obviously meant something to her.
Something important.
Callahan thought about the T-shirt and the verse on the wall and Ruiz’s remark that Gabriela had been obsessed with
Paradise Lost
. There had been other notations in the book’s margins. Other passages highlighted.
Could they mean something as well?
Getting to her feet, she headed toward the bedroom, Ruiz and Martinez following behind her, Martinez saying, “What? What is it now?”
Callahan ignored him and moved through the closet to Gabriela’s prayer room. Grabbing the book, she leafed through it until she found the verse again, then continued turning the pages, finding more highlighted passages—each one as impenetrable as the last. Milton may have been a genius, but accessibility was not his strong suit.
Gabriela’s notes seemed to be confined to the eleventh chapter—or Book XI. On some pages, only individual words had been highlighted and the notes scribbled in the margins did little to illuminate what might have been going on in the pop star’s mind. Numbers and letters were written down and crossed out, then written down again, as if she were trying to puzzle something out. Break some kind of code.
But in
Paradise Lost
?
That didn’t make a whole lot of sense. And Callahan again wondered if the girl had gone looney tunes.
“Look at this place,” Martinez said, taking in the altar and symbol on the wall. He picked up the copy of
Forbidden Rites
from the prayer-desk shelf. “Look at what she was reading. I told you she was in league with the Devil.”
Ruiz swiveled his head toward him, his face tight with anger. “Say that again and you’ll be looking for a new job before the day is over.”
The threat must have carried weight, because Martinez practically swallowed his tongue before shaking his head in disgust.
“I’ve had enough of this,” he said to Callahan. “We all know what happened to Gabriela, and the more we follow this road, the more dangerous it gets.” He turned, headed out the door. “I’ll drop your bag at the hotel. You can find your own way there.”
Then he was gone.
Fine, Callahan thought, no big loss. And Ruiz certainly didn’t seem too broken up about it.
She gestured to
Paradise Lost
. “Do you have any idea
why
Gabriela was so obsessed with this thing?”
“No,” he said. “And I have to admit, I’ve never read it. I tried a few times, but it was beyond me.”
Except for a few religious scholars, a handful of uptight literary types—and maybe Gabriela herself—the same was probably true for most people.
Callahan thought about the facts surrounding this case. An improbable death, phantom gasoline smells, a victim who looked like barbecued roadkill, a satanic symbol burned into the floor of an otherwise untouched room, a secret prayer sanctuary, the strange, obsessive scribblings in the margins of an epic poem about the fall of Satan . . .
And, of course, the message in both the book and on Ruiz’s cell phone.
Protect her
.
Maybe Martinez was right, after all. There was enough weird going on around here to attract a bucketful of goth nerds, with a side order of religious fanatics. Something had been going on in Gabriela’s life that was far beyond her role as a Christian pop star.
Something that had gotten her killed.
And call Callahan crazy, but she had a gut feeling that it somehow related to those two words, and the book she held in her hands.
Protect her.
But her knowledge of these things was far too limited for her to even begin to figure it out. What she needed was the help of an expert. Someone on call. A Milton junkie, religious historian and occult specialist all wrapped into one—assuming such an animal existed.
There was one sure way to find out.
Dropping the book to the prayer desk, she excused herself, then pushed past Ruiz and went back out to the living room.
She snatched up her phone, punched in the security code and was about to hit autodial when it buzzed in her hand. Checking the screen, she immediately put it to her ear. “I was just about to call you.”
“We had a look at the data you uploaded,” a voice said.
It was the same cold, disembodied voice she always heard when she dealt with Section. The agency wasn’t big on formalities like names or ranks or identifying information in case you were unfortunate enough to one day find yourself compromised.
It simply gave orders. If you didn’t follow them, you risked losing your job.
Or your life.
“I’m thinking I need a specialist,” she said. “Somebody at the top of his game.”
“We’re a step ahead of you. Proceed as usual and we’ll contact you when the arrangements have been made.”
Then the line clicked.
12
 
HARRISON, LOUISIANA
 
I
t was nearing midnight when the trouble started.
Batty hadn’t dragged himself out of bed until late in the afternoon, and had spent the first few hours of the new day fighting a raging hangover. By the time he had purged himself of the previous night’s toxins, he was ready to start anew and didn’t waste any time getting over to Bayou Bill’s.
Bill’s was busy as always and Batty was working on boilermaker number three (feeling generally sorry for himself that the redhead had once again failed to show), when the door blew open and a guy who may as well have had the word
tourist
stamped across his forehead stumbled in, looking lost and concerned and generally discombobulated.
He wasn’t the source of the trouble, however. Just a curiosity that got Batty’s attention right before the trouble began.
It was a hot night and the tourist was sweating like a man who wasn’t used to the weather. But the moment he locked eyes with Batty, his entire demeanor changed, as if he’d found what he was looking for and was grateful to have it over and done with.
Batty half expected him to head straight to the booth. He was wondering what this was about and why he was about to be approached, when the guy surprised him by averting his gaze and taking a stool at the bar instead.
Batty watched old Bill put a bottle of beer in front of him and wondered if he’d been imagining things.

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