The Paradise Prophecy (27 page)

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Authors: Robert Browne

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy
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She was sitting in an armchair playing with her cell phone when Batty returned to their hotel room, and he was starting to wonder if the thing was superglued to her hand. She’d told him about the condition of Ozan’s body, which hadn’t surprised him in the least.
“What kind of problem?”
“According to the police reports, our new victim’s been dead for a while. He went missing four days ago and nobody thought to take a peek into that archive room until a janitor happened by and smelled something sour.”
“Four days,” Batty said. “That means he was killed
before
Gabriela.”
This revelation stirred something at the periphery of Batty’s mind. A thought that slipped away as quickly as it came, leaving him grasping but unable to retrieve it. Something about Ozan, and . . .
. . . and what?
“It also means we’re headed in exactly the wrong direction,” Callahan said. “And God knows who our perp will go after next.”
“I think that’s pretty obvious. Another guardian.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not so sure this whole
Custodes Sacri
thing holds up.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t get a look at Ozan’s personal effects,” Callahan said. “They’d been bagged and sent to storage and the clerk there wouldn’t allow access without one of the investigators signing off on it. So all I have is an itemized list from the file, which isn’t much. But it’s enough.”
“For what?”
She tossed the cell phone to him. No superglue in evidence. He looked at the screen and saw a bunch of Turkish writing. It was a list all right, but not one he could decipher. “You’re assuming I can read this?”
She was surprised. “You mean to tell me I’ve just discovered something you
don’t
know?”
He tossed the phone back to her. “Translation, please.”
“Five items,” she said, and ticked them off on her fingers. “A watch, a pen, a wallet and two rings, one gold, one silver—little more than lumps of melted metal.”
“And your point is?”
“Where’s Ozan’s supersecret decoder badge?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“His Saint Christopher medal. If he was one of these so-called guardians, wouldn’t he have one, too?”
“Missing doesn’t mean nonexistent,” Batty said. “He could have kept it somewhere else, like Gabriela did.”
“Or your whole theory could be hogwash.”
“Then how the hell did I know about Ozan in the first place?”
“That’s a good question. How
did
you know?”
The thought Batty had had a moment ago flickered through his mind again, but continued to elude him.
“How do I know any of it?” he said. “I’m a fanatic. I’ve had a massive interest in this stuff ever since I was a kid. But after Rebecca was taken, I became obsessed with it—just like she was. Spent every spare moment of my time in libraries and private vaults.”
“And you believe everything you read?”
“Of course not. But I found a reference to
Custodes Sacri
and the Saint Christopher medal in a footnote of a book about secret societies, and that led me to explore further.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you knew about him.”
“I tried to locate one of the medallions. I put out some feelers and was contacted by a collector in Jerusalem who claimed he’d seen one. That an antiquities dealer had shown it to him but refused to sell it.”
“Ozan.”
Batty nodded. “The collector knew about the guardians and told me he was convinced that Ozan was one of them.”
“And you never contacted him?”
“He wouldn’t return my calls. After a while I gave up. It was only a peripheral interest anyway. It didn’t really have anything to do with what happened to Rebecca.”
“Yet here we are.”
“Yet here we are,” Batty said. “And if you want proof I know what I’m talking about, what about the crime-scene photos? I can guarantee you’ll find that same mark beneath Ozan’s body.”
Callahan nodded. “I’m not a strong believer in coincidence, so I don’t doubt it. But the photos aren’t in the file yet. And if the symbol is there, all it tells us is that we’re dealing with the same killer. All the rest is speculation.”
“You’re wrong,” Batty told her. “And I’ll prove it to you once we get into that crime scene.”
“We?”
“We’re a team now, remember?”
Callahan seemed amused by this. “In the loosest sense of the word, maybe.”
“Trust me, without my help you’ll have a hard time getting down to where the body was found. You try going in there in the dead of night and even if you get past the alarms, there’s still the security staff to contend with. And they don’t look friendly.”
“I’m not exactly a novice, you know.”
“I don’t doubt that. But why do this the hard way when there’s an easier alternative?”
Callahan leveled her gaze at him. “All right,” she said. “For the sake of argument, let’s pretend I’m listening.”
Batty took two tickets from his pocket and held them up. “Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Broussard are scheduled to attend an auction at eight o’clock sharp tonight, compliments of the Children’s Relief Foundation.”
He could see that she was intrigued by the idea.
“Not bad,” she said. “That gets us through the door without a fuss, but then what?”
“A simple distraction,” Batty told her. “The simplest kind of all. But if we’re gonna do this thing right, we’ll have to go shopping first.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why?”
“The auction’s black tie. And I need a tux.”
 
 
D
espite pouring over the antiquities catalogues whenever he could, Batty was more of an
admirer
of art than a collector, so he’d never been to a real live auction before. And the closest he’d ever come to wearing a tuxedo was back at Terrebonne High, when Angela McGee turned down his invitation to the senior prom, thus sparing him the humiliation of dressing like a blue velvet penguin.
Whoever had invented the tuxedo, he decided, had definitely been a sadist. Probably the same guy who invented the bra and the corset. The tux he’d rented this afternoon felt half a size too small, and the tie Mrs. Broussard had so kindly agreed to strangle her husband with was cutting into his neck like a dog taking to a particularly juicy bone.
Batty was convinced that Callahan was a bit of a sadist, too.
She was also quite a looker tonight. The black strapless gown she’d chosen hugged all the right places in just the right ways, and he wouldn’t be a man if he didn’t take notice. She sat next to him in the middle of the Garanti auction room, and he was fairly certain that she was not suffering the indignity of wearing either a corset
or
a bra.
Considering the size of the building, the auction room was small and intimate, no more than three hundred people of various persuasions crammed into it, sitting on stiff-backed chairs, dressed in their finest, including enough jewelry to cover half the U.S. deficit.
This was one healthy crowd.
Callahan had expressed doubts about Mr. Broussard blending in—but Batty thought he’d cleaned up pretty well. He’d even allowed her to apply a little CoverGirl to his bruises—the same stuff she was using to doctor the circles under her eyes—and if you didn’t look too hard, you might consider him handsome.
“I have one hundred thousand lira,” the auctioneer said into a microphone.
On the table next to him was a vase with a missing piece that was several centuries old. A relic, they’d been told, of the late Ottoman Empire.
“Do I have one-twenty?”
A man two rows ahead of Batty gave a subtle flick of the fingers and the auctioneer nodded.
“One hundred twenty thousand lira from the gentleman in forty-seven J. The bid now stands at one hundred twenty thousand. Do I hear—”
“One seventy-five,” a voice called out.
Although Batty had witnessed some spirited bidding in the last half hour, the crowd seemed subdued. The night’s festivities had begun in the lobby with a short, emotional memorial to Koray Ozan, who, according to the auctioneer, would have wanted them to carry on.
So carry on they did, their enthusiasm tempered by grief. Ozan had been a popular and well-loved figure in the city, a reformed smuggler and black marketeer who had turned his life around and donated millions to charity. This only convinced Batty that the collector he’d spoken to had been right. Missing medallion or not, Ozan had been a perfect candidate for
Custodes Sacri
.
“One hundred seventy-five thousand lira,” the auctioneer said. “The bid is now one hundred seventy-five thousand. Do we have two hundred?”
Callahan touched Batty’s knee and in her best Louisiana accent—which wasn’t half bad—said, “Excuse me, darling, but I need to go visit the little girls’ room.”
This was their signal.
She rose and slipped past him, and he watched her glide up the aisle, lost for a moment in the graceful fluidity of movement. He was seeing her in a whole new light tonight. She stopped briefly to ask one of the auction house ushers for directions to the restroom, then a finger was pointed, pleasantries exchanged, and Callahan pushed through the doors and turned right.
As the doors closed again, Batty returned his attention to the bidding war. It was up to two hundred twenty-five thousand now, and it seemed the value of the vase in question was about to double before everyone’s eyes.
He waited. Knew what was coming.
He’d shown Callahan a sketch indicating that she had three easily accessible choices ahead of her, one of which was conveniently located near the restrooms, and not in the immediate view of any of the guards.
It was a simple but effective distraction. One of Batty’s favorites from his days back at Jefferson Junior High.
Less than a minute later, the building’s fire alarm started to ring.
 
 
A
fter tripping the alarm, Callahan had hustled into the ladies room.
Now she emerged, looking appropriately frightened and harried, as the guards mobilized around her and began herding people out of the building, urging them to “remain calm.”
With their attention on the crowd, it was easy enough for her to slip away and move toward the stairwell, although working in an evening gown was not something she was fond of. She’d kicked off her Dolce & Gabbanas in the ladies’ room, figuring she’d be much better off without the five-inch heels.
A moment later, LaLaurie was beside her, and as they moved wordlessly together down the steps, she had to admit his call for simplicity had been a smart one.
Or maybe not.
Halfway down, they were confronted by a security guard hurrying up the stairwell toward them. He gestured for them to turn around. “No way out down here. Please exit through the—”
Callahan knocked him back, then pulled a travel canister of hairspray from her purse and sprayed his face. He crumpled to the steps, out cold.
“What the hell is that?” LaLaurie asked.
“Something our lab cooked up. He’ll be out for a while.”
They continued down the steps until they reached a dimly lit room, cluttered with antique furniture, pieces of art, paintings, books, and other collectables, some sitting on oblong tables, others peeking out from open wooden crates that were lined up along the walls. The tables were littered with rags and bottles of solvent and toothbrushes and polish, and Callahan realized that this was the staging area, where items were carefully cleaned and buffed and readied for auction.
She and LaLaurie moved through the darkness until they reached a brightly lit hallway, dotted with office doors. Each door had a pebbled glass window that was clearly labeled with the occupant’s name, including one at the far end, marked KORAY OZAN
.
Beyond this was a narrow stone archway that led to another stairwell. A sign above it read ARSIV. The archive rooms.
Callahan signaled for LaLaurie to follow her, and they moved down the steps into darkness. When they reached the bottom, she fumbled for a light switch and flipped it on.
The light was dim but serviceable, revealing another hallway—or tunnel, really—this one made of old mottled stone. It had a low rounded ceiling with light fixtures strung along it and looked like something out of a horror movie. It occurred to Callahan that the auction house had probably been built here after an older structure had been torn down, leaving this part intact.
“Smugglers’ tunnel,” LaLaurie said.
“What?”
“If I’m not mistaken that’s what this was. Ozan was once a black marketeer, so I’m not surprised he was drawn to this place. I’ll bet there was a lot of traffic down here once upon a time.”

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