Dantes' Inferno (6 page)

As suddenly as it had begun, the apparent seizure ended. Dantes stood with the aid of the officers. As the inmate was
led from the visiting room—and out of camera range—Sweetheart shifted on the tatami, relaxing almost imperceptibly. He took a sip of green tea from a raku cup before punching a button on a tiny keyboard.

The monitor responded with a new image, which was provided by a second camera at MDC. Sweetheart was now watching the Bureau of Prisons correctional officer Deborah Florette, hunched despondently in a chair inside a security office located in Metropolitan Detention Center's administrative wing.

As the professor adjusted the volume of the audio feed, a disembodied male voice became distinguishable: “Who gave you the money, Florette?”

“I don't know who he was,” Florette mumbled, shifting uncomfortably. “I never saw him.”

“But you were paid to courier contraband to Dantes. What'd you take him?”

Florette's mouth set in a obstinate line. She shook her head, crossing her arms, every inch of her body language screaming emotional lockdown.

“How are your math skills, Florette?” A red-haired man stepped into the range of the camera's lens, half filling the monitor. LAPD detective Red Church settled on the corner of a desk. “You're looking at twenty years, two decades, ten-and-ten behind bars.”

Mutely, CO Florette shook her head.

“C'mon, Deb.” Church sighed, his eyes sad. “A smart, pretty woman like yourself, two little ones, it's a damn shame and a waste. You want to let the state raise your kids?”

“They were pictures,” Florette whispered. She dropped her chin, shielding herself from view, surrendering. “That's all.” She looked up, dark eyes flashing. “Like baseball cards,
that's all
. He's a celebrity, right? Dantes is on those serial
killer baseball cards. And this guy just wanted autographs.” Florette's voice rose to the edge of hysteria. “This is
Holly
wood, right? Listen, if you want to go after somebody, go after the guys who make those cards in the first place!”

“Yeah,” Red Church said quietly. “We found it when we shook down his cell. And damn it, Florette, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.” Church leaned in close to the woman. “Tell me you didn't know you were carrying a message.”

“I swear it—you've got my word of honor—I didn't know.”

Sweetheart gazed down at the words transmitted and printed out from his computer twenty minutes earlier—a copy of the communication discovered in Dantes' cell while Dr. Strange kept him busy.

dear friend

thru me the way into the woeful city

thru me the way to eternal pain

sacrifice the children of heathens

until no innocents lay claim

first circle broken

8 circles remain

I do your bidding faithfully

M—

A cold rage slowed Sweetheart's blood. The second and third lines—the beginning of Dante Alighieri's third canto of the
Commedia
—took him back to the Getty bombing and the obscure scratches on the end cap of pipe bomb. A child dead, his own flesh and blood—
“sacrifice the children of heathens.”
Eight days to the anniversary of the bombing—
“8 circles remain.”

After the Getty, he'd led the pursuit to track down
Dantes. The evidence had been good—a detonating chip traced to a single manufacturer, a transport trail that led straight to Dantes.

Had it been too good? Had his lust to bring in Dantes blinded him to the possibility of a collaborator? If a collaborator existed, Sweetheart wanted his head.

The FBI would be monitoring the movements of the psychologist, Dr. Strange. She'd passed the profiling project's security protocol, her credentials seemed clean enough, but the timing of her visit to Dantes was going to interest them keenly. He imagined they would keep an agent on her for the next twenty-four hours.

Sweetheart had his own way of tracking human subjects.

He shifted his body to face another monitor, this one a flat screen mounted directly on the white wall. He typed in a search string for Strange, Sylvia.

The computer fluttered its eyelashes—flirting with offers of infinite data—the blink-blink of information flashing across the screen. Within forty-five seconds he was looking at
M
ultiplex pr
O
files
S
ystems
A
nalys
I
s
K
it data.

MOSAIK was his baby; her specialty was agent-based, multitiered profiling.

Quickly, he screened past the basic (and now familiar) biographical data, which included medical, academic, professional and legal records, as well as geographic and personal history. Bits of information registered:

Ht: 5 feet, 9 inches; Wt: 141; eyes: brown; hair: brown; skin: olive; scars: left eye, left hand; tattoos: NA; moles: right shoulder, right breast

Profession: psychologist, forensic

Marriage status: divorced

LINKS: relationships, personal

LINKS: history, sexual

Heritage: Irish, Italian

 

hospitalizations, general: tonsillectomy, 1977

hospitalizations, psychiatric: 1981, Los Angeles, CA

LINKS: evaluations, psychiatric.

The data flow was never-ending; it documented her extensive research on prisons, on attachment disorders, on psychopathy; the foster daughter who had been rescued from a barrio on the border of Mexico and Texas; the love affair with a psychiatrist now dead of cancer; her engagement to an investigator with the New Mexico State Police; a long-ago marriage so brief it hardly registered; the tentative relationship with her mother; the father who had deserted his wife and daughter many years ago.

Sweetheart gave MOSAIK a verbal command and a new screen appeared:

Father: Strange, Daniel, Danny; born 1940, CO, Colorado Springs

REMARKS: missing person

LINKS: Strange, D, military; Army service record

LINKS: training record CLASSIFIED

LINKS: Vietnam; Cambodia

LINKS: Strange, D, POW

LINKS: covert operations; special ops

LINKS: CIA

LINKS: Strange, D, missing person

LINKS: global tracking, current status CLASSIFIED

He was fishing.

As he stared at the screen, he calculated which pieces
of information would provide him with the most leverage.

Sweetheart knew Strange was investigating her father's whereabouts—she'd hired a private investigator named Joshua Harold. She'd even visited morgues to eliminate the possibility that Daniel Strange was a John Doe. With one command, Sweetheart could pull up the entire file . . .

He scrolled past screen after screen, ignoring data on DNA and voiceprint and fingerprints, momentarily excluding the photo library, video storage, linguistic samples, GIS mapping of mobility.

He reached into a glazed ceramic bowl and selected a salted plum candy. The soft tech hum provided background for his thoughts.

Sweetheart typed in a new name:
Carpenter, Mona Suzanne
.

He added relationship modifiers: client; deceased.

He gave a verbal command.

As new information filled the screen, Sweetheart thought of Dr. Sylvia Strange, the catalyst. It interested him . . . this connection between Strange and Dantes had just taken an unexpected turn: suicide; two women separated by three decades; each had taken her own life. Dantes' mother. The doctor's client.

This morbid connection between Dantes and Strange made her valuable—it also made her vulnerable. Especially if another bomber was loose in LA.

10:09
A.M.
Sylvia hunched inside the leathery cave of the Lincoln nursing the last of a cigarette.

Ten minutes earlier, she'd stepped out of MDC's artificial womb into searing Los Angeles sunlight. Half blind and conscious only of the sign for the car park on the side of the large concrete structure ahead, she'd stumbled across
Alameda, a wide downtown boulevard surprisingly free of traffic. The sun had assaulted eyes already glazed and heavy lidded from stress and chemicals. And fear. Dantes had made her afraid.

It almost felt good—that forced exile from a deadened world
.

She exhaled smoke, studying the cigarette she gripped between taut fingers. The ragged, charred edge of tobacco had almost burned down to the yellowed filter. She opened the door of the Lincoln just long enough to jab the cigarette butt on the pavement, then she jerked the door shut and set the locks. Shaking off the fear and a fleeting sense of doom, she turned the key in the ignition. The engine awoke with a powerful growl.

She followed the I-10 west until it slapped smack up against ocean. The Pacific shone with the watery blue of ink. It stretched and rolled and heaved its weight against the wide lip of sand. With Missy Elliott singing about D.C., Atlanta, and LA from the radio (volume cranked), Sylvia watched lunar magnetism muscling the tides.

Traffic was backed up two blocks in front of the neon entrance to Santa Monica Pier. Inching toward the intersection, and finally turning north onto Ocean Avenue, she caught a catty-corner view of the restaurant where she was due to meet Leo for dinner. The Lobster, a glaringly white beach-box structure, stuck out like a swollen jaw on a neck of stilts. A banner advertised Thursday evening concerts on the pier; next week, oldies by the Velvet Underground.

Joggers, sunbathers, tourists, and street people shared the slice of green known as Palisades Park. As she drove past the looming, funky deco prow of the Shangri La Hotel, she tried to reach her fiancé in New Mexico by cell phone. Matt England didn't answer but his machine managed to cut her off just as she told him she loved him. She left a
message for Leo Carreras—moving their meeting up to three o'clock. She tossed the phone onto the passenger seat as she drove past Wilshire and Montana, finally turning right onto Marguerita Avenue.

She parked the Lincoln in front of the property owned by Leo, and she stepped out into a balmy ocean breeze. Carrying her briefcase, garment bag, and overnight case, she crossed manicured grass skirting lemony tufts of daffodils until she reached the tiny yellow thirties-style bungalow that was one of a quartet. Leo's stark and glassy condominium occupied the south end of the large lot. He rented the cottages to various LA standards: a television writer, a character actor with a fondness for Irish whiskey, a waiter/singer. The last bungalow, Numero Quatro, was reserved for Leo's visiting colleagues. Over the past two years, Sylvia had stayed here on consulting trips. The key was under the familiar ceramic pot that overflowed with night-blooming jasmine.

Inside, the house smelled of old wood, salt, the faintest hint of ocean mildew, and perfume. She located the source of the sweet fragrance immediately, a fat ocher-tinted porcelain vase filled with white, yellow, and lavender orchids, gracing an antique writing desk. She experienced a moment of pleasure tinged with uneasiness knowing Leo had chosen the flowers especially for her; breaking off one delicate blossom, she pressed it to her cheek. The petals felt silky against her skin.

The bungalow had been built around a simple rectangular floor plan: kitchen and dining nook, living room, bedroom, bath—and tiny sitting room, which functioned as an office—all connecting around a compact central hall.

After cracking louver blinds in the living room, she moved to the bedroom, where she tossed her bag on the
nubby white spread. Pulling out shorts, T-shirt, cross-trainers, and her blue Dodgers cap, she stripped off her work clothes—she'd been wearing them since 4 A.M. in New Mexico—and quickly changed into running gear. In the kitchen she poured herself a tall glass of tap water, draining it in seconds. Then she was out the door.

In the middle of the concrete overpass that traversed Highway 1 and allowed access from the cliff park to the beach, she missed her sunglasses. She'd left them on the floor of the visiting room at MDC.

Fine, she thought harshly—let Dantes add another item to his trophy collection; he was eating up shrinks left and right.

She ran for several miles, heading north, parallel with the shore, barely evading the foamy salt water as it licked creamy sand beneath her feet. Here and there she passed other runners, beachcombers, and the yellow all-terrain trucks owned by the state of California.

A hundred yards offshore, surfers bobbed with seals, both species catching modest waves. After the first few miles her muscles loosened up; by the fourth mile she felt herself sprint clear of the chemical cloud induced by the morning's dose of benzodiazepine. She quickened her pace, sweating, breath fast but regular. The sun warmed her skin, and she knew she'd end up with a slight golden hue to her olive complexion. She set her sights on a small but rugged peninsula ahead—her turnaround point. Time evaporated beneath her legs, and it seemed she reached those volcanic rocks in one minute instead of thirty. She cut to a fast walk, working out a cramp in her left calf, opting for an interval of cooldown before her return. The geologic evidence reminded her she was standing on the continental shelf, on a young and tumultuous formation. This was the meeting place of two tectonic plates; grinding and chewing into the
earth beneath her feet, they were ripping fault lines all across California.

Pacing herself as she retraced her own trail back toward the pier, she let her thoughts flow in tandem with her legs. Her encounter with John Dantes had been a failure—no tests, no results, nothing to score or evaluate.

Tomorrow she would flee to the desert—she could catch the early flight on Southwest, go standby if they were booked. She wanted out of LA.

The sprawling metropolis represented her past. The city never failed to catch her in its grip when she returned; it stirred memories of another time, another life, when she was raw, a dangerous shadow of herself.

LA, City of Id, jarred; it seduced in the most threatening ways.