Name of the Devil Read online

  “I was delighted when you called!” she effused. “I wish I saw more of you socially, Peter. I always think our banter makes for so much fun!”

  “Yes, our encounters are lively,” replied Grandfather stiffly, trying to avoid a confrontation.

  “So what is it that Peter Blackstar the Magnificent needs from Julia the Merely Interesting?” She grabbed his hand and slowly turned it palm up. “Come for a reading?”

  Grandfather jerked his hand away. “Not quite.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “Contagious charlatanism,” he muttered. Dad gave him a nervous glance.

  Julia’s loud laugh nearly shook the chandeliers. “Oh my, Petey. You have such a wit. Why waste your time with the magic baubles? I think you missed your true calling.”

  “Perhaps.” I could tell coming to her had been very difficult for him, and she knew it. She was reveling in the moment that was, for him, a humiliation.

  “Seriously then, what can I do for you? Or is this to be the first of many friendly visits?”

  Grandfather ignored her last comment, folded his hands under his arms, and stared at the floor. “I know we have our . . . professional differences . . .”

  “What was it you said on Merv Griffin? Oh, yes, you accused me of being a fraud and a cheat, I recall. You said I fleece the innocent. You must know that my lawyers are always after me to take you to court. But I say, ‘No, leave poor Peter alone.’ What would be in it, anyway?” Her eyes narrowed as her tone changed. “A ramshackle house? Some moth-eaten magic things. No, Peter, I don’t let those things get to me. I’m better than that.”

  “Better than that?” asked Grandfather, his voice rising.

  Dad shot him another look from across the room, and Grandfather tried to regain his composure.

  “We have very different ways of looking at things,” he finally said, in his most diplomatic manner. “I can be blunt . . . I don’t think you’re an evil person.”

  “That’s a relief! Especially coming from a man whose posters depict him with devilish imps sitting on his shoulders.”

  Grandfather shook his head, barely controlling his anger. I could tell he was on the verge of giving up, but then he glanced toward me in the corner. His face softened. “I won’t pretend I don’t like what you do. But . . . I know there’s a good side to you.”

  “Likewise,” she replied halfheartedly. “But you’re not here to mend fences. You’re certainly not asking for a loan. Are you? Oh, how I’d love that.”

  Grandfather bit his tongue. “They’re threatening Jessica.”

  Julia’s face slackened. She turned to me, then back to Grandfather. “Who?”

  “Brutani’s outfit. It’s complicated.”

  “With him, I would imagine it is. Whyever would he hurt that precious little girl?”

  “Because of me.” Dad spoke up for the first time. “He invested in a show that fell apart. He wants his money back and we don’t have it right now.”

  “Oh, dear.” Julia seemed sincere for the first time since she’d greeted us at the door. She smiled sadly at me. “Do you need money?”

  “No!” Grandfather replied sharply. “We’ll settle that ourselves. We just need some time, a way to talk to his people before things get out of hand. When Brutani’s kid came out here he didn’t say it was mob money he was loaning us, or we never would have touched it. Now we’re in this pickle. I was hoping you might know somebody. Someone we could talk to.”

  “Someone who Brutani answers to?”

  “Yes. Maybe help us set up a meeting.”

  “He’s East Coast. I don’t really know anyone out there. I don’t run with those types anyway.”

  “You don’t have anything?” Grandfather pleaded.

  Over the edge of my book I watched Julia’s face soften. She could tell how hard it was for him to ask this. She also keenly understood the value of a favor. “Maybe . . .” she replied, with her finger in the air. “I have a friend who might know something. Sometimes we exchange information about clients.”

  Much later, I realized she’d been obliquely referring to the psychic mafia, a tight-knit group of mediums who exchange inside information on their clients in order to better fleece them. There’s a book: a directory of the wealthiest clients and their dark secrets, the triggers to pull. As people hop around from psychic to psychic, they are consistently astonished at how much each one already knew about them.

  The truth of the matter is that the moment the appointment is booked, the psychic will be on the phone with a colleague gleaning as much information as they can. This isn’t something they do for garden-variety readings with bored housewives. This is what they do when they had real whales, clients who had too much money and spare time.

  “I might be able to help you,” Julia continued, after thinking it over for a moment. “But I’ll want a favor.”

  “What?”

  “An endorsement.”

  “Out of the question.” Grandfather stood up and motioned to me and Dad. “Time to go.”

  She tried to reason with him. “Just words, Peter.”

  He shook his head. “Words are everything. Can’t you understand that? If you don’t speak truthfully, where is your integrity?”

  “Integrity? I’m not the one in deep shit with the mob.”

  Grandfather made a show of taking my hand as we headed toward the door with Dad in tow. I looked back at her and waved, then followed him out the door.

  “Dad,” my father said as we walked to the car.

  “Not now,” Grandfather growled.

  “Dad!” he insisted.

  “Get in the car!”

  I buckled myself into the backseat as we headed down the long driveway. When we reached the gate, it refused to open.

  “For Christ’s sake!” Grandfather got out of the car to try to pull it.

  In the headlights I saw a flash of gleaming diamonds as Julia ran up to him. They quickly exchanged words, then she pushed something into his hand before retreating back into her house. The gate opened and Grandfather climbed back into the car.

  “What was that about?” asked Dad.

  “The old broad took pity on us. She said to talk to Father Devalo. She gave me his number. He’s a former priest and a spiritualist. Brutani’s uncle goes to him. The uncle is the real weight in the family. Julia said that if we can get Devalo on our side, then maybe we can get Basso, the uncle, to leave be.”

  “A spiritualist?” Dad asked.

  “Basso goes to him to hear from his dead mother. If we can get Devalo to invite me to the séance, maybe we can ask Basso’s mother to forgive the debt.”

  “Are you goddamn kidding me?” snapped Dad. “This is the plan? More mobsters?”

  Grandfather shot him a deathly stare. “This is the mess we made.”

  “What if she says ‘no’? Christ, what am I saying, she’s dead.” He turned back to me. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I’m sorry your pop is such a screwup.”

  22

  WHAT WAS GROOM’S sin? Why did he have to kill himself in such a public way? I’m hoping the church, which is actually a run-down television studio on the outskirts of Atlanta, can give us some clue. Agent Knoll was able to hop on a flight out of Reagan with me, with the promise we’d get him back to DC that night. Ailes pulled him off the sheriff manhunt to help me out—and, I suspect, keep me out of trouble.

  While the local detective assisting us talks to the station manager about turning on the floor lights, Agent Knoll stands behind the podium inspecting the scene of the death. Sitting in the front row of chairs set out for the live audience, I watch him search for some physical clue: A piece of tangible evidence that ties what happened here to what happened in Hawkton.

  Knoll looks like he’d be more suited to leading a platoon of soldiers than detailed investigative wor
k. Appearances are misleading. I’ve seen how his mind works. He’s not known for sudden flashes of insight; instead, he builds the whole case together in his head and then surprises you with the most minute, but key, observation that everyone else had missed.

  I’m afraid there won’t be a breakthrough piece of evidence like our muddy footprint on the tree. The autopsy report already came back negative for the chemical we found in the sheriff’s tissue. Whatever happened to Groom was psychological in origin. Or, if you believe the religious rumormongers, supernatural.

  Reverend Groom’s suicide has made national news. Not quite supplanting the “Zombie-Sheriff-on-the-Run” story, but definitely enhancing it. Once it got out, his Hawkton connection was too powerful to ignore. The claim of possession made it so sensational that it was impossible not to sensationalize it even more.

  The lights in the studio finally come on as Knoll leans down, flashlight in hand, to have a look under the podium. How Groom got the gun is still a mystery. Not licensed in his name, it’s an artifact that came out of nowhere. Forensics found only his fingerprints. The bullet casing and everything else was clean. He only touched the gun when he removed it and placed it in his mouth. It’s as if the gun didn’t exist before that horrible moment.

  Knoll stands up and crosses his arms. I can tell he suspects something else is at play here. “What do you think?” I ask.

  Knoll wrinkles his brow and stares at the floor. “I think it was planted. He could have just brought his own gun. The placement here? It’s like someone else put it there.”

  I agree. The problem is that the studio has an audience of a hundred people during their broadcasts. Probably a thousand people go through here every week. Bussed in or lined up at the door, there’s no record of who has been here. They have footage of all the people in each audience, but there’s no way to stop someone from walking in with the crowd and leaving before the show starts.

  Detective Stafford, an affable cop from the local police department who met us here, takes the seat near me. “You folks need to see anything else?”

  “What kind of man was Groom?”

  “A bit churchy, of course. Not as much as some of the other folks here. It’s a bit of a racket,” he continues, apparently not afraid of being overheard. “They get old folks in here and work them for donations. They do okay with the call-in contributions, but the real money is when they bring in their ‘special guests’ and pray over them.”

  “Sounds sleazy,” I reply. In both my former life and my current one, my history with these kinds of people goes way beyond my first encounter with Julia Vender.

  “It is. Nothing we can do about it from a legal point of view. Groom got involved years ago. He helped build up the church. He was doing healings and claiming God was speaking through him. Sometimes he’d tell people stuff about them he couldn’t have known. That was a big draw.”

  “A faith healer,” grumbles Knoll, who’s been listening.

  “When it’s fashionable. He started doing more of that lately. Ratings, I guess.”

  “Nobody noticed anything odd about him recently?” I ask.

  “People here say he kept to himself. He’d show up for his tapings, do a meeting or two, then just go home. He’s a private man.”

  “Any chance his so-called ‘sin’ might be something criminal?”

  Stafford shakes his head. “He doesn’t have a record other than a couple DUIs. Which is bad enough, but he never hit anyone or did damage. He doesn’t have a reputation, like some of them do, for engaging in the kind of behavior they admonish.”

  I look over my shoulder. The three of us are alone for the moment. “What’s the word around here? Why do the employees think he did it?”

  Stafford scratches behind his right ear and makes an earnest face. “Hawkton. He knew those folks. It was just too much for him. Some think he had a devil in him. Others think he was afraid of the devil and just went nuts.”

  “Did any of the people here say anything about him witnessing strange things, like we’ve been hearing out of Hawkton? Maybe like he was being followed?”

  “No. None that I spoke to.”

  If Groom was a private man, he probably would have kept that to himself anyway. With the multiple DUIs, he’s apparently got an alcohol problem. From wrestling with some inner turmoil?

  “What about his regular followers? Did anyone have a grudge against him?” asks Knoll.

  “There were complaints from the families of some of the viewers they fleeced. Angry children who found out their parents had given up their inheritance to the church. But nothing I’d think would lead to anything like this.” Stafford pauses for a moment. “You think there’s something more to this suicide?”

  “While it appears open and shut,” I reply, “we’re having a hard time closing the book on Hawkton. Our sheriff is still on the loose and we think others may be involved.”

  Stafford looks at me. “Do you know what caused the explosion?”

  “We’re still working on that. It looks like a gas explosion.” I don’t tell him the latest setback, which is that we can’t conclusively prove it was propane. The lab results have yielded some crazy findings.

  “Could you see if Groom made any 911 calls from his cell phone in the past few weeks? Just look for outbound. He may not have left a name.”

  “Sure. I can get that in a few minutes.” Stafford gets up and walks over to a corner of the studio to make the call.

  I join Knoll onstage and look out into the empty studio. The chairs are cheap fold-up aluminum ones, the type that makes your ass hurt after ten minutes. I can’t help but notice that all the chairs onstage have plush padded pillows. “What are you thinking?”

  “A bat,” he replies.

  “A bat? The thing I saw in Tixato? What was stalking the people in Hawkton? Maybe he was being surveilled?”

  “Maybe. We’re getting more of that kind of thing.” Knoll is methodical. He doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with me on my leaps, but during the Warlock case we developed a mutual respect. Coming to Atlanta was a favor on his part as well as Ailes’s. Knoll has his own cases, but he’s always ready to roll his sleeves up.

  Stafford lowers his phone. “Well, that’s odd.”

  “Anonymous reports of being followed? Noises around the house?” I suggest.

  “Yes. Yes, indeed. There’s a photo too.”

  “A photo?” My ears perk up.

  “Someone calling from Groom’s number reported something was following him as he drove home. A deputy answered the call but couldn’t find anything. Just to be safe, he went to a convenience store on the route and pulled the security footage from that night. It ended there. They’re sending me the photo now.”

  “A photo? Of what?” Knoll asks.

  “What they saw on the footage from the night Groom says he was followed,” responds Stafford, who is just as confused as we are. “They say it looks like a demon.”

  23

  AS SOON AS Detective Stafford receives the file, we sit around the studio trying to decipher the image. Opening the file on his phone, he’d revealed a single frame from a time-lapse video showing the street in front of the convenience store. In the darkness, the only light on the street came from an overhead source mounted somewhere high.

  Grainy, hard to see for sure, but it’s there and it’s got a defined shape. A big shadow with wings. To my eyes it looks like a bat. A large one—as wide as a car.

  “Things weren’t this weird before you came along,” Knoll whispers to me.

  “Or as interesting,” I shoot back.

  Stafford zooms in on the image then opens a browser. “You have other sightings of this?”

  “Possibly,” I reply. “We haven’t made it public yet for obvious reasons.” I’m not even going to go into my Mexican misadventure.

  “Yeah, I don’t think we
need to tell people there’s a flying demon on the loose that chases people before they die.” Stafford holds his phone screen up to me. “Have a look.”

  It’s a picture of a drone. Similar in shape to the shadow, but not quite the same. Close, though. The image and its caption confirm my earlier suspicions.

  “We used ones similar to this for recon when I served in Afghanistan,” he explains. “That was a long time ago. Who knows what they look like now.”

  “Let’s forward this to one of our military experts,” suggests Knoll. “Some of the newer ones look more and more like real creatures.”

  “Good thing demons aren’t real creatures . . .” Stafford offers.

  “Maybe we could tell people it’s an angel?” jokes Knoll.

  “Remember, only two creatures have wings in the Bible: birds and demons,” I point out.

  “Well, if they’re fallen angels, how do they get the wings? You’d think those would keep them from falling.”

  I take one last long look around the studio before going to the car to call Ailes. I’m sure there’s something more here that I’m not noticing. Maybe not a physical clue, but I can’t forget the way Groom kept looking around the studio. His last moments play over and over through my head. All I can see is the three cameras, the glass-walled control booth, and a mirror on the back wall. If someone had been standing there, threatening Groom, someone else would have seen him.

  “Are you two sitting down?” asks Ailes over speakerphone.

  Knoll glances at me from the driver’s seat and shrugs. He doesn’t like what we’ve heard so far. The forensics lab was finally able to make progress on the source of the explosion, but the answer just leads to more questions.

  “The explosion has all the hallmarks of a gas explosion,” Ailes explains. “A distributed agent that was able to push out on all sides with enough force to rip the church apart, as opposed to a pipe bomb or a high-yield, which pushes with more force on one part than another. So we know that is what we are looking for.