The Skull Ring (12 page)

She gazed, but didn't melt. She hoped someday soon she would be able to melt again, but not tonight. "It's important, Mitchell."

He sighed and drained his glass, tapped it until the waiter brought more. "It's like I told you, not much new. I got hold of the detective who worked the case, a Lieutenant James Whitmore, he's retired now, but I served on a Chamber of Commerce committee with his sister, so he was easy to track."

Mitchell fumbled in his jacket pocket, brought out a small sheaf of papers. "Got these at the records division. The case is still officially open, of course, but several hundred people have disappeared since then. Yesterday's news."

Julia scanned the documents. The basic details were unchanged: Douglas Arthur Stone, age thirty-six, reported missing on the morning of September 28th. He'd called the police to his house for an emergency. Stone's four-year-old daughter was found outside the house, confused, bleeding from cuts on her belly, and asking when her father would be back. The front door was unlocked, none of Stone's clothes appeared to be missing, his car still in the driveway. Credit-card and financial records had gone unchanged. The few distant relatives lived on the West Coast, and had heard nothing from him. And that was that.

Strange that, for years, all she could remember of that night was standing barefoot in the grass. Now, Dr. Forrest had led her to the memories that had been lost for so long.

"What did Whitmore say?" Julia asked, after reading the neighbor's unrevealing statements.

"Said he remembers following up leads at the school where your father taught. All dead ends. The case got buried pretty fast." Mitchell leaned over the table and held her hand. "Why don't you just let it go?"

She pulled her hand away. "I can't."

If only she could tell him about the image of the Black Mass, the recovered memory, the only piece to this puzzle that she had. However elusive that memory was, at least it was something. But part of her was afraid that Mitchell would be shocked, view her as damaged goods, and once and for all decide that her "behavioral disorder" was no longer just a cute little quirk and decide to cut his losses. Though she was unsure what place she had in Mitchell's life, she couldn't bear the thought of being without him and the secure future he offered. The other part of her was afraid that Mitchell would laugh in her face.

Dinner came, and they ate over small talk of Mitchell's legal cases, local politics, how Julia should re-invest the small inheritance that her adoptive parents had left. It was easy for her to fall into the role of sympathetic listener, nodding and affirming Mitchell’s rightness in all matters.

Mitchell walked her to a downtown hotel and rode the elevator with her. “Your skin smells sweet,” he said at her door, his breath on the soft nape of her neck.

“You feel good,” she said, her arms embracing his familiar and comforting form. He took that as an invitation and dug his fingers into her shoulders. She dodged his next maneuver, a nuzzle under the ear. He hadn’t changed his repertoire in her absence.

He would follow his instructional manual by rote until Tab A was inserted into Slot B. Part of her wanted to surrender, through the genetic instinct that needed a mate and provider, but her head was swirling so much she wouldn’t have been able to derive any pleasure. And though Mitchell was certainly not afraid to indulge himself irrespective of her response, she wasn’t up for a game of false enthusiasm.

She kissed his cheek and danced away from his grasp. “Not tonight, honey. But soon.”

His face darkened. “As soon as you’re better?”

“You’ve always said you don’t want half a woman.”

“I don’t want half, but I could at least get a piece.”

“Mitchell.”

“If I didn’t have so much invested in you . . . ”

“If you really love me, it’s worth the wait.”

“I can’t wait forever,” he said, anger flushing his cheeks red, portraying emotion he would never let loose in a court of law. “I’m under a lot of pressure. I’m out on the gangplank with some creditors, and these people play for keeps. Once we’re legal, I can get your money for you. For
us
.”

“My inheritance wouldn’t even cover the down payment on a house, much less bail you out of big trouble. And I’d give that to you right now if you ask.”

“Never mind,” he said. “I’ve got people to see.”

He gave her a kiss and pressed a slip of paper in her hand. He hurried down the hall, giving her a terse wave as the elevator swallowed him. She put her fingers to her lips, about to blow him a kiss, but he was gone before she could float the gesture his way.

She looked down at the paper. It was James Whitmore’s phone number. Beneath it, in Mitchell’s neat, obsessive-compulsive writing, was written: “Sweet dreams, Jooolia.”

CHAPTER TEN

Julia met James Whitmore at the hotel bar. She picked him out immediately. He'd told her to look for the man who didn't belong, and that would be him. Whitmore sat on a stool, three hundred pounds, his bald head reflecting the neon beer signs. His face was wrinkled with great folds of ebony skin, but his eyes were clear. He was drinking milk, and a milk mustache contrasted with his broad lips. He nodded at her in the bar mirror as she sat beside him.

"Mr. Whitmore?"

"My, haven't you grown up," he said.

She realized he must be comparing her to the four-year-old Julia, the one whose father disappeared one autumn night long ago.

"Thank you for coming down. I know you don't owe me anything, and you probably had plans for the evening."

"A drink with a pretty lady? Sounds like a plan to me."

The bartender came, and she ordered a gin gimlet. The strong bite of the alcohol kicked away some of the day's accumulated weariness. "I know Mitchell Austin talked to you about my father's case, but I was hoping you might remember something he overlooked."

"Doubtful," Whitmore said. "Lots of people owe him favors. If he asks for something, he usually gets it. You with him?"

"Excuse me?"

"You his girlfriend? Wife? Or, what do they call it now, significant other?"

"We're engaged," she said, taking a second, larger swallow of the gimlet. "Could you please go over the case for me? Just one more time, and I promise I'll leave you alone."

"Not much to add. I wasn't the lead, that was Lieutenant Snead. I was just part of the investigating team. You've seen the case files and the incident report. We put out an APB, sent photos to the FBI and the state agencies, dug into his background to see if anybody had a grudge."

He looked down at her. "We talked to you, too, of course. But you were so confused, you didn't know what happened. My, you were cute. We felt so sorry for you, losing your Dad like that. And the deep cuts on your belly, from the broken window in your room. You must have tried to crawl out."

"The reports said that, besides the broken window, there was no evidence of forced entry and nothing was taken."

"As far as we can tell. Of course, he might have had a million dollars in a paper sack, for all we know."

"He was a high school teacher."

Whitmore looked at her over his glass of milk. "Some people don't like to hear bad stuff about people they thought they knew. What about you?"

"Try me," she said. "I've probably imagined worse things than you can come up with."

He smiled, eliminating the fierceness that would otherwise show in his bold features. "I suppose you have. Well, he could have been into drugs, maybe he was dealing. Couldn't find anybody who dealt with him, but it's not exactly the kind of information you volunteer to the police just to be a good citizen."

The night's band was setting up on the stage at one end of the room. A stringy-haired teenager plugged in a guitar, one of the legion of fast-fingered guitarists that wandered through Memphis on their way to nowhere. Julia had watched them all her life, marveled at the endless power that dreams held on people, dreams that let them lie to themselves about the odds of making it. Or of being happy.

Whitmore's bulbous eyes took in the scene. "Your father was pretty white-bread plain, as far as we could tell. Could be that he tried real hard to make it look that way. Wouldn't be the first."

"No plane tickets, no cab calls, car sitting in the driveway. Anything turn up on his driver's license or credit cards?"

"Nothing. In a missing person case, you retrace the victim's steps over and over, trying to find the point where the trail veers off. The day he disappeared, Douglas Stone taught class, dropped you off and picked you up at daycare, took you to the library and the park, fed you at McDonald's. Apparently tucked you in that night. Then just up and walked off the face of the earth."

The teen played a blues lick, not bad but nothing special, and began helping the drummer put her kit together. A tall man with a bass guitar strapped across his shoulder began running cables. It would probably take another half-hour before sound check, and Julia wanted to be far away before the first out-of-tune chord screamed.

Julia finished her drink, closed her eyes, and tried to summon details from her dreams and hypnotism sessions. What would Dr. Forrest ask her to look for? "What happened to his personal effects?"

"They were held in the evidence locker for two years then sold at public auction. The money went to the foster home where you were staying."

"Any valuables or personal effects?"

"Men didn't wear much jewelry back then, not like they do now. But I remember something that I thought was strange. Didn't Mitchell tell you about the ring?"

"The ring?"

"Yeah. Big silver thing, shaped like a skull. Had two tiny rubies set in the eye sockets."

The ring. The one on the hand that held the knife. Julia's stomach tensed, and a shiver of remembered pain ran up the twin scars on her abdomen.

"That's kind of how we figured the disappearance wasn't in connection with a larceny," Whitmore continued, studying her face. "That ring was probably worth a few grand."

"Did that get auctioned off, too?"

"Yeah, as far as I know."

"Any records of sale from the auction?"

"Probably someplace, yeah. That was more than twenty years ago, before computer databases, and paper records have a way of falling through the cracks sometimes. But you might go down to the Records Division and take a look. They'll probably put up with you for fifteen minutes before they run you off."

He finished his milk. A man at the end of the bar lit a cigarette. Whitmore glared at the smoker, who promptly picked up his drink and ashtray and went to find a booth.

The bartender came by, Julia ordered a second gimlet, Whitmore passed on more milk. "Can I ask you something, Mr. Whitmore? And you don't have to answer, because you don't owe me anything and, as you said, some people don't want to hear bad stuff about people they thought they knew."

"Ask away," he said, glancing at his watch, and then at the band in the corner.

"Were there any reports of Satanic activity in Memphis around that time?"

The corners of Whitmore's lips lifted a little as if he were about to laugh, but realized she was serious. He must have seen his reflection in the bar mirror. He covered his mouth, wiping away the milk mustache. "There's always talk of that kind of thing," he said. "And, no, I don't believe the devil popped up and dragged your daddy down to hell through the bathtub drain."

"I don't, either. But some people apparently take it deadly seriously."

"We've had our share of mutilated animals," he said. "Most of it was just high school kids with too much time on their hands and too many people to impress. As for an organized effort, we don't have any Church of Satan branches here or anything. Who was that guy that started that mess out in San Francisco?"

"Anton LaVey? The guy who wrote the Satanic Bible?"

"You really
did
study up, didn't you?"

"Even better. I work with a guy who did. He's either the world's leading expert on Satanic ritual or else he ought to be writing horror novels. But LaVey was nothing but a glorified carnival barker. I'm talking about the real thing, people who are into it so deeply that they're willing to kill to protect their secrets."

"Well, there was a lot of talk a few years back, claims of Black Masses and that sort of thing. Mostly came out of psychiatrist's reports. You know, ritual child rape, child sacrifice, chronic abuse. Cops watch the news and read the papers, just like everybody else. Sometimes we'd see things that made us wonder, but there was one big problem with all those reports."

"Let me guess." Julia took a large gulp of her drink. "Same as with my father. No hard evidence."

"If even a dozen kids were sacrificed every year, they would have been noticed. Sure, Memphis has a lot of runaways just like everywhere else, and probably more kids run
to
here than away from here." Whitmore nodded his head toward the girl sitting beside the sound board, a pale, trembling fifteen-year-old blond. "It's either music or go into the trade. Sometimes both."

"So you don't think it's possible for a huge, organized, underground cult to exist without being discovered?"