No, she was just going to have to wait for the car to get done or figure out an alternate plan. She could call Daddy and wail. In which case he’d be on a plane for New Orleans in no more than an hour and here in about… ten. The thought was immensely reassuring but she couldn’t do that any more than she could call Mark. She was a big girl and she was the one who had just up and left for the weekend. It was up to her to get out of the town.
Preferably alive. If she knew she was in danger she’d pick up the phone. Then again, if Detective Lockhart was sure she was in danger, he’d carry her out of the town in an instant.
“You talk to your boss?” she asked when she was done with the phone.
“Yeah, Lieutenant Chimot,” Kelly said, frowning. “I told him what seemed to be going on and he agreed it was suspicious. I also told him I was going stay on overnight and come back in the morning. I don’t think the good deputy is going to show.”
“Neither do I,” Barbara said, grimacing. “What are you going to do now?”
“Ask around,” Kelly said. “See if I can find anybody who doesn’t give me the run around.”
“Lieutenant Chimot, my name is Augustus Germaine.”
Chimot had received a call from the director of the FBI explaining that one of their consultants was coming over to see him and that he should listen to what he said and believe it. “No matter how strange it seems, believe it.”
The FBI and local police had a so-so relationship. In certain cases, and kidnappings were one of them, the FBI had override authority. That meant that some snot-nosed punk straight out of the academy could order around anyone on the case, up to and including the chief of police. Generally they were polite about it but enough had been right pains in the ass that local police rarely looked forward to the FBI poking its nose in. They had excellent support and the manpower was often useful, but truth be told most of the cases the FBI ended up “supervising” were solved by some local detective who actually knew the area and the players involved.
The FBI hadn’t taken over the Ripper case, but Chimot knew it was close. He suspected that the “consultant” was going to tell him that. Just what he needed to hear from some closet academic.
Germaine, though, was something different.
“Mr. Germaine,” Chimot said, standing up and offering a hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“I doubt that,” Germaine said, bluntly, giving the hand a quick but firm shake. “Your department has had more than a few run-ins with the FBI and the Justice Department and there’s not much love in either direction. But that’s not important in this case, what is important are the Special Circumstances.”
“What… circumstances?” Chimot asked, sitting down. He cocked his head in interest at the tone; the capital letters had been noticeable.
“There are certain investigations that take on odd hues,” Germaine replied, taking his own seat. “And I’m going to explain to you what is really going on in this one. At the end of the conversation, you’ll realize that you can’t pass it on to anyone because they would assume you’d cracked under pressure. And if you decide to chance it, don’t. Because we don’t let this information get out. Period. Understand me?”
Chimot looked at those piercing black eyes and nodded, a cold chill running down his back.
“That’s a little blunt,” Chimot said. “And aren’t people usually asked if they want to know stuff like this?”
“No,” Germaine replied. “Because if they have to know, they’re told. And they generally keep their mouths shut for reasons that will become obvious. Is that clear enough to start?”
“Yes,” Chimot said.
“You’re a smoker, Lieutenant,” Germaine said, quirking one cheek in a grin. “Please, light up. Cigarette smoke does not offend me.”
“This is a no-smoking building,” Chimot said.
“You have a smokeless ashtray in your bottom left-hand drawer,” Germaine replied. “And you usually open the window to make it less obvious. Please feel free to light up. But you probably want to save a hit from the bottle of Jim Beam next to the ashtray until after the conversation.”
Chimot glared at him but fished out the ashtray and lit a Marlboro.
“Go,” he said when the cigarette was lit.
“The FBI gets involved in most serial killing investigations since they almost always involve kidnappings. And ones that do not rarely matter to them, but they do to us. Most serial killers are simply evil humans that enjoy the power rush involved in the killing and control of their victims. But a few do it due to Special Circumstances. Special Circumstances is the FBI’s cautious euphemism for the supernatural. Shall I continue?”
“Go ahead,” Chimot said. “If you were nuts, the director wouldn’t have called me.”
“I am the European and American head of a group that supports the investigation of Special Circumstances. We have an arrangement to share information and assist in investigations with the FBI. There is a similar arrangement with Interpol, Scotland Yard, what have you. We also have worked with local authorities from time to time. In this case, we were uninterested until the FBI crime lab identified one of the semen samples as construct DNA. That is, the DNA of a supernatural being that had manifested on earth. The scale, which was not lost by the way, we have it, is from the avatar of an entity named Almadu. Are you familiar with the name?”
“No,” Chimot said, his head reeling from more than nicotine. “You’re serious.”
“Very,” Germaine said. “Almadu is a god who was first identified by the Babylonians, one of the eleven monsters summoned by the dragon goddess Tiamat in her battle with Marduk. There are indications that he was listed as a daevas in the Zoroastrian religious tracts that were destroyed by Alexander in Persepolis. Possibly associated with Lilith who may, in fact, be Tiamat/Kali. A water god, usually depicted as looking like a cross between a fish and a dragon. He requires human sacrifice and often engages in sex with the sacrifices. Occasionally he will reproduce with a human female and create an amphibian cross species. They don’t look very human but can pass for it in a bad light. The last manifestation of Almadu was in the 1920s in Massachusetts and involved a colony of such crosses. It was, we believed, wiped out and Almadu was dispelled. He apparently has been brought back from the nether realms. It is he who has been gutting your victims.”
“You’re telling me there’s some fish god going around screwing hookers and then murdering them?” Chimot asked, shaking his head. “You’re right, I can’t tell anybody this. They’ll think I’m nuts. I’m not too sure about you.”
“Lieutenant, in the… very long time that I have been in this organization, I have seen things that would drive you mad,” Germaine replied, calmly. “Almadu isn’t even close to the worst. Almadu is, however, very bad. A full physical manifestation requires enormous power, more than I’d have thought he could gather. Either he has a large group of worshipers, numbering at least in the tens of thousands, or there have been far more murders, sacrifices, than you suspect. I’ve run a match on the criminal database and I think that some sixty street ladies have disappeared in one place or another in the Louisiana and Mississippi area. It’s hard to tell, obviously — people just disappear from the street, change their names, what have you — but that would explain the full manifestation far better than five. However, with the full manifestation, he can begin using powers that he would not have without it. And I would anticipate his numbers of worshippers would grow. I suspect that he’s soon going to leave these parts for somewhere he can gather sacrifices without so much oversight. And we dearly want to prevent that, for obvious reasons.”