Name of the Devil Page 19

  “I’d invite a man up onstage and tell the audience I was going to control him with my mind. Volunteers would put earplugs in his ears and make sure he couldn’t hear a thing. He was behind a table with a bunch of props and I’d then stand at the foot of the stage and show a series of signs, only to the audience, explaining what the man was going to do under my control.

  “One sign might say ‘He’s going to choose to put on a green hat.’ The man would then pick up a green hat from all the others and place it on his head. The next sign would say something like, ‘I’m now going to make him pour out the glass of beer or stand on one leg.’ He’d do everything as I commanded it, without me asking him directly.

  “The table holding the props had a big cloth over it. People would assume there was someone hiding underneath telling him what to do, so the next sign would say he’s going to yank it away. You get the idea.”

  “Sounds clever.”

  “It was hideously boring. But it was deceptive. Nobody knew why he did the crazy things that I predicted he would do. But there’s a reason that they never saw.”

  “What was the method?”

  “We just had little signs on the back of all the objects telling him what to do. ‘Step one: put on the green hat. Step two: pour the beer onto the ground.’ There was more to it, but you get the idea. It was stage cuing.

  “The problem was that it was dull, and the participants kept looking to me to make sure it was okay to go on to the next step. That’s what your reverend looks like. He’s waiting for his next instruction.”

  Exactly. I couldn’t put a finger on it, but Grandfather nailed it.

  “Was there anyone cuing him?” he asks.

  “I think we’d know. There was an audience there. Someone would have seen something.”

  “Not all cues are visual. He did a bit of cold reading on people, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. He’d tell them the names of their children and stuff.”

  “That’s a lot to remember. Remember when Randi exposed that televangelist on Carson?”

  “The one using the earpiece with his wife?”

  “Yes. That’s the one. Do you think this man had one of those in his ear when he killed himself?”

  Did anyone bother to look? “I can ask the coroner. If he did, someone could have been talking to him via radio. But still, how do you get someone to kill himself on live television?”

  “When we did ‘The Antics,’ we tried a lot of different gimmicks. Some people did anything we asked, including undressing and waving around prop guns. But if someone doesn’t do what you ask, what’s your next step?”

  “You threaten them.”

  “Exactly. Would you put a gun to your head if you were afraid someone you loved was about to be killed?”

  “I’d have to believe the threat was real.” Would I do this for Grandfather? Ailes? Gerald, even? I think the answer is yes. What about Damian?

  “Was the reverend close to someone?”

  “His wife.”

  “Where was she at the time?”

  I think back to notes taken by the officer on the scene. “She said she was in a different part of the building.”

  “Why wasn’t she in the audience, or in the studio?”

  Good question. “Or was she?”

  “If he’s using a radio to do his mind-reading bit, there needs to be someone somewhere feeding him answers.”

  I think about the layout of the studio. At the back there was a large mirror.

  I’d ignored it when I saw it. But it could have been a one-way window. “Grandfather, you’re brilliant.”

  “I know.”

  I GIVE DETECTIVE Stafford in Georgia a call, and ask him to pull up the file on Groom and pay a visit to the studio again.

  Two hours later he calls me back. “All right, Blackwood, care to tell me how you guys figured this out?”

  “Actually, it was my grandfather. What do we know?”

  “When Groom was examined, they removed a hearing aid from his ear and returned it to his wife. I checked and there is no record of him having a hearing problem. So I asked around the station. They were kind of cagey on the matter until I made some threats. They were afraid to admit what they knew about the mind-reading act. The station manager showed me the closet where Groom’s wife would hide during the broadcast. The mirrored window looks right out onto the audience and the stage.”

  “After Groom went onstage, someone could have been on the radio telling Groom he was in there with her and was going to kill her if he didn’t say what he told him?”

  “Possibly . . .”

  “She would have never known what was going on.” Up there onstage, all he had was the voice in his ear. I think about what would tip him over the edge. “Groom was a tormented man for a long time. It could have been the voice of Azazel telling him this . . .”

  “Maybe. If Azazel uses a cell phone with a Mexican long-distance plan,” replies Stafford.

  “Pardon me?”

  “After I found the earpiece you told me to look for, I sent one of our techs to the studio. We found a small antenna in the ceiling, almost impossible to see. Connected to it was a box with a transmitter and a cell phone.”

  “A cell phone?”

  “Yeah. And a thick battery. The last call to the phone was from Mexico. The whole thing was done remotely.”

  “Wait, did you say Mexico?” Groom was being communicated to from miles away. Someone used his little earpiece against him.

  “Yes.”

  “Was it from Tixato, Mexico?”

  “Hold on. Let me check the area code. Yes. We traced the tower to there. How did you know?”

  My pulse is pounding. “Long story. Send me everything you got.”

  Tixato!

  What the hell is it with that town? Why is someone from there killing these people? And why do they want to kill me?

  35

  AT AROUND FOUR - THIRTY yesterday morning, local time, Esteban was taken from the secure wing of the La Palma Mexican Federal Penitentiary, a prison used mainly for police employees and judges caught taking bribes, and led to the secure block’s holding cell, which adjoins a hallway to the main prison.

  Someone—a trustee, a guard, maybe the warden, who knows—left the door to the main block unlocked. At 4:44 a.m., Esteban was found stabbed over a hundred times. His head was nearly severed from his spinal column. The trail of blood traced back to the cell of a seventeen-year-old inmate who’d been in La Palma for all of seven days. He had just four months left on his sentence. He was a member of X-20.

  Under intensive questioning, all he would, or could, say, was that he’d received orders to murder Esteban on a folded piece of toilet paper placed under his pillow. The instructions simply said to kill the man at the other end of the doorway at the allotted time.

  Esteban was the last living witness who could reveal a connection between our case and X-20. During his incarceration he’d been kept away from the other prisoners because he was a cop and a potential witness against the cartel, but all it took was one prearranged “screwup” to get him sent to the wrong holding area and shanked by a seventeen-year-old.

  Someone involved with X-20 is behind it. This much we know. Everyone I’ve encountered who was associated with the gang is no longer living. Although the last group, my “rescuers,” were likely killed thanks to Damian’s hands.

  Damian . . .

  I dial the last number he called me from.

  “Assistant Director Breyer’s office. How may I direct your call?” replies Breyer’s front-office assistant.

  Brilliant. Damian is forwarding any calls to that number right back to my boss. A man-in-the-middle hack. “Sorry, wrong number.”

  I could call Max and ask him for “Freddy’s” current contact information. Before I have the chan
ce, my phone rings.

  “Hello?”

  “I wish you’d call more often,” Damian says in his chipper voice.

  “Hold on.” Per procedure, I send a text to log the call.

  “Aren’t we ever going to have any moments just between us?”

  “I hope not.” At least, that’s what I tell myself.

  “That’s no way to ask for a favor.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “First a thank you, and now an apology?”

  “The army unit in Mexico . . .”

  “I never met them.”

  I don’t press him on that detail. Is it because I don’t want to corner him in a lie?

  “If someone you know did, by any chance did they take anything off of them?”

  “Besides their heads?”

  “Ugh.” I suppress a shiver. “There is nothing funny about this conversation.”

  “There’s nothing funny about what they wanted to do to you, Jessica. We live in a wicked, wicked world where evil men walk among the innocent.”

  “The difference between the good and the bad is the law.”

  “No, Jessica,” Damian replies sharply. “The difference is that the good look out for the innocent and protect them from the wicked.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “If I were to break a law, it would only be of the kind that are designed to inconvenience. Law, like God, is only real when people believe in it. When you know the truth—that it’s really just the good and bad we do to each other that really matters—you see things differently.”

  “Sounds perfectly amoral.”

  “No. Amoral implies I have no morals. I do. But they’re not yours, or anyone else’s. Legalities are like speeding on a desert highway when you know you’re alone at night.”

  “Enough. Tell me about the Mexican militiamen. Their phones. None were found on the scene. Did you take them?”

  “Their phones? Why would you be interested in those?” There’s a touch of mischief in his tone.

  “I want to know who they talked to. Did you take them?” I ask him curtly.

  “I deny everything. Although you may have just won an eBay auction you didn’t realize you were bidding on.”

  “Come again?”

  “Buyer pays shipping,” he replies.

  “What?”

  “All right. You’re a tough customer. Just leave me a good star rating and I’ll FedEx them for you.”

  A text alert from eBay pops up on my screen. I click the link in the message to read the lot description:

  FIVE USED CELL phones. Perfect for narco trafficking and receiving orders for assassination attempts. Complete call log included. Previous owners physically incapable of using them. May be bloodstained. Actually, definitely bloodstained.

  Auction ended 1 minute ago.

  Seller: EternalUndyingLOVE

  Bidder: MagicGirlDangerLover

  “DAMN YOU, DAMIAN!”

  He’s already ended the call.

  My phone rings again. “Agent Blackwood?” I recognize the voice of an FBI agent from our call center.

  “Yes. Where’d the call come from this time?”

  “The Vatican.”

  FEDEX DELIVERS THE package to my motel the next morning. Inside are five cell phones wrapped in plastic. Conveniently enclosed with each one is a printout of all the data on its SIM cards.

  Damian not only went through the trouble of printing the information out for me, he also circled all the calls to the United States. He has drawn stars next to one number in particular.

  The rest are to Mexican border states. This number’s area code is in Virginia.

  Like the phone found in the TV studio, these are all throwdowns designed to be untraceable to an owner. They would only have been used to call other burner phones, which would also be tossed aside after a few days.

  It’s a well-known fact that the prepay segment of the telecom industry, which makes and provides services for “dumb” phones just capable of calls and texts, is heavily supported by drug trafficking. I’m sure lots of regular people use these phones too. They just don’t buy a new one every week.

  The number he circled isn’t traceable to any person in our database. Through an FBI records request made via a DEA task force, I am, however, able to get a cell tower log that tells me where the phone was located when the last call to it was made.

  Not in Hawkton, surprisingly. A town in Virginia called Redford, about thirty miles from Quantico.

  At least six calls were made from the militia phone and this number while it was in that area. The militia that tried to kill me must have been pretty high up in the X-20 org chart, and it doesn’t surprise me that someone at that level would be running a contact stateside. I pull up an online map that breaks down cell towers by zip codes and addresses.

  A Federal watch database shows me a list of convicted felons registered at addresses within the area of the calls. There are several dozen—too many to sort through. Trying to trace an untraceable call to an untraceable person is as hard as it sounds. Tapping phones only works when your suspect can’t just walk into a 7-Eleven, drop fifty dollars and walk out ten minutes later with a new phone.

  On a whim, I type the block of zip code addresses tied to that tower into an internal database of news reports.

  Redford is a small town. Too boring to get much attention. The biggest item is the suicide of a former Air Force specialist two days after the Hawkton explosion. I click on the link to see if anything stands out.

  Interesting. The victim had a technical background working on avionics and explosives.

  Rene Deland has no obvious ties to organized crime. Dead of a drug overdose that coincided with a despondent text message sent to family members, there isn’t anything overtly suspicious about his passing.

  Except . . .

  His job description is a little peculiar. According to the local paper’s obituary, his family said he worked as a private security consultant overseas. People who handle private security and have serious drug problems often work for clients who are on the other side of the law. It’s a red flag.

  Deland suddenly interests me. If I was a lieutenant for a narcotrafficking organization who was placing calls to the US, they’d probably be to someone like him.

  “I need to go to Redford, Virginia, to check on something,” I tell Ailes over the phone.

  “What have you got?” he asks.

  “A wild hunch. Real out there . . .”

  “How far out there?”

  “One of our decapitated soldiers may lead to our sixth man . . .”

  36

  RETIRED ARMY SERGEANT Charles Conner, who lives next door, pulls open the wooden gate to lead me inside Deland’s compound. Dressed in a polo shirt and shorts and unfazed by the cold wind, Conner still has a military bearing about him.

  “Deland sure liked his privacy,” I remark as I notice the entire property is encircled by the wooden fence. A long driveway ends at a garage set apart from the house. Deland’s pickup truck is parked in the well-kept grass between the two buildings.

  The grass still looks fresh underneath. This doesn’t appear to be the usual place for the truck, but the first responders could have moved it—or Deland, for unknown reasons. I file that observation away.

  “Quiet guy,” replies Conner. “Gave me a set of keys for when he was out of town. His sister is coming next week to take care of the place.”

  “Did you talk much?”

  “A beer every now and then. He’d come over to the house for a barbecue when we had them.”

  “Ever see anyone else here?”

  “A few times. Usually his only company were the strippers he’d date.” He shakes his head a little.

  “Strippers?” There’s a correlation between m
en in high-testosterone lines of work and women in adult industries. I’m not sure what to make of it.

  “Good looking, but lots of mileage.” He pauses for a moment, looking at me sideways as he wonders if he’s said something politically incorrect.

  You don’t last long in my field calling foul every time some guy talks like he’s in a locker room. I give him a pass. “Did he ever talk about his work?”

  “Said he did avionics consulting. A lot of people around here do consulting work they can’t talk about. Nobody presses them.”

  “The coroner’s report said he died of a drug overdose. Did you know he was a user?”

  “Sometimes he’d have bloodshot eyes. Some of the girls looked like they were. He didn’t come across as hardcore. I was surprised to see the needle in his arm when I found him. But not shocked.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Once you open that door, anything can happen.”

  Again with the doors.

  I notice Conner answers my questions like they’re checkboxes on a tax form. They’re all “yes” or “no,” without any elucidation.

  “I’ll leave the keys with you,” he offers. “Just put them in my mailbox when you’re done.”

  I LET MYSELF into Deland’s home. The police had done a quick check, I’d learned, but nothing thorough. Without any reason to suspect foul play, this wasn’t treated like a crime scene. His death seemed pretty straightforward, with no reason to think it was anything other than an overdose.

  After I got off the phone with Ailes, I’d called the investigator in Redford who’d handled Deland’s case. I was curious if they’d found more than one cell phone among his belongings. If the phone the Mexican soldier used could be matched to a phone in Deland’s possession, we’d have a clear connection. Unfortunately, the only phone they catalogued among his possessions was the one found in the bedroom, which he’d used to send his final text message before he died. But they weren’t really looking for a second phone.