They stood staring from the kids to the remains of the victim.
“We need to round these kids up and question them; technically they’re all suspects.”
“Yeah, let the uniforms take care of the interrogation. We’ve been through this shit before. The kids won’t remember anything.”
Malloy nodded. “You still want to get Emily involved in this craziness?”
“I said I don’t want to talk about it! Why do you keep asking me that? Back off, John. Seriously. Back off, man.” Mohammed hung his head and began fidgeting with his tie. He looked up with a sigh and straightened his collar and then his sleeves, rolling them both up like he was preparing to do some heavy lifting. “What else can I do, John?”
Malloy shook his head and pointed at the skeletal remains decorating the front of the car, still set upon by scavengers. Most of the insects that had filled the air were gone now, but there were still hundreds of them crawling over the corpse. The rats were finally beginning to leave as well. Three or four dozen cats and dogs milled about, snarling menacingly. Beside them, faces and hands smeared with blood, were more children, some looking as young as six, some as old as thirteen. Malloy’s eyebrows furrowed.
Did these kids really help tear this guy apart like the kids at the Learning Tree School?
He turned back to his partner. “You’re still willing to get yourself mixed up with that cult? Even after all this?”
There were tears in Mohammed’s eyes. It made Malloy feel helpless and uncomfortable. He felt bad for the guy. “You do what you think is right, Mo. I know you will. But every time I hear someone talk about how this woman is helping people, all I can think about are missing girls and half-eaten corpses.”
More police vehicles showed up, along with EMTs and animal control. It was pandemonium, and all the while, Malloy knew Mohammed was thinking of one thing: get to the Wellses, get Delilah’s information out of them, and get Emily over there to see the woman who could take all her pain and fear and anger away.
They got out of the car.
Malloy looked over at the corpse, who was now being attended to by police officers. Other officers were dutifully stringing crime scene tape around the vehicle, forming a tight perimeter. Malloy and Mohammed’s car was now a crime scene. It would be several hours before they saw Mr. and Mrs. Wells. Beside him, Malloy watched Mohammed swat a fly on his neck and cringe.
Malloy walked over to the driveway, where the victim’s tattered clothing had fallen, and dug through the pants, removing a wallet. He flipped it open and pulled out the driver’s license.
“Terrance Taylor.”
“Terrance Taylor? Seriously? Let me see that.”
Malloy handed Mohammed the wallet. “Holy shit. You know who this is?”
“The name sounds familiar.”
“Terrible Terrance Taylor? Triple T? He was a big college football star. First round draft pick. He never really did much as a pro though and got traded a few times before he left football and became a boxer. He wasn’t a bad boxer though. He even fought for a title. Got knocked out in the first round by that big British dude with the dreadlocks. Fuck. You know what kind of publicity this thing is going to get?”
“More than this?” Malloy asked, pointing skyward at the two news helicopters circling above and then down the street at the three news vans stuck on the freeway onramp. The stalled traffic was the only thing holding them off. It was the first time Malloy could remember being grateful for a traffic jam.
“I hope the ME’s van can get through,” Mohammed said.
“It’ll get through.”
“We’re going to have to give them a statement eventually.”
“And say what? Let the captain handle that. He gets paid to deal with these assholes. We don’t.”
He waved one of the police officers over and pointed to the kids who were being corralled by a group of officers. Some of them had already begun to cry. They huddled against their parents, those whose parents were present. Others were already being consoled and questioned by officers.
“I want all these kids and their parents questioned. Find me as many witnesses as you can. I need to know what happened here.”
“Yes, Detective.” The young officer had just turned away when Malloy spotted a familiar face among the crowd of children. Mary Wells. He motioned to Mohammed and saw his eyes widen.
“Is that …?”
“I think it is.”
Together they walked over to where Mary Wells stood with the other children.
A fly buzzed past Malloy’s ear, and he swatted at it and fanned himself frantically, trying to chase away any other insects that might have been fluttering around him. The idea of any of those things landing on him after they’d fatted themselves on Terrance Taylor’s flesh made Malloy’s skin crawl.
Chapter 30
“Why are you here again? I’m calling my lawyer!”
“We’ve got a warrant to search your place. You’re welcome to have your lawyer present if you want. Go ahead and call him,” Mohammed said.
Malloy handed Frank Wells the warrant and pushed past him into the house, followed by six uniformed officers. Three patrol cars with their lights flashing were parked in front of the house. That had been Mohammed’s idea. He knew the Wells’s were all about status, and having their home searched by cops would be a serious blow to the prestige of the neighborhood and their reputation. Mr. and Mrs. Wells were already looking up and down the block to see which of their neighbors was watching. All of them were.
More than a dozen neighbors had assembled across the street, and doors continued to open as the curious wandered from their homes to see what the commotion was about. Others peered out from windows, some discreetly, some brazenly. Cell phones rang and gossip spread like wildfire.
“Now look what you’ve done! The neighbors are going to think we’re suspects!”
“You are, Mr. Wells. You both are.”
Mohammed gestured toward one of the officers, who opened the back of his squad car. Out stepped Mary Wells.
“Funny how you never thought to ask if we’d found your daughter. Did you forget about her? Anything more you want to say before we question her?”
Mr. Wells hung his head. He and his wife walked over to the hollow-eyed young girl and wrapped their arms around her. They both began to weep. The little girl barely seemed to notice them. Her eyes were soulless, empty. Whatever she had been through had completely drained her.
Mohammed and Malloy had decided to bring Mary with them directly from the crime scene to see what effect her presence would have on her parents. She hadn’t been seen by a doctor yet, and Malloy worried that if something happened they’d both be blamed. Mrs. Wells hugged her daughter, kissed her face, and stroked her hair.
“It’s okay now, Mary. Everything’s okay. Mary? Mary? What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she say anything?”
“We need to get her to a hospital to be checked out. We thought one of you might want to go with her while the other stayed here while we searched the house,” Malloy said.
Mrs. Wells spoke up immediately. “I’m going with my daughter.”
Mr. Wells looked torn, but he obviously didn’t want the police tearing through his house unsupervised. “Can’t you do this search later? I’d like to be with my wife and daughter.”
“I’m not stopping you, sir. I just know that most people like to be there when the police are rifling through their underwear drawer. But we can do this with or without you here. We just have to do this today. The warrant has a date on it - today’s date,” Mohammed answered. He looked at Malloy, who was doing his best not to grin. He knew they had them. Once they had Frank Wells alone, they’d grill him mercilessly until he gave up Delilah’s address, and once they had that, they could set up their undercover operation and take the whole thing down.
“I’m taking her in my car. She’s not under arrest. I don’t want her riding in the back of a police car like a criminal. Where am I going?”
“Saint John’s Memorial. I’ll have one of the officers escort you, ma’am,” Mohammed said, gesturing to the female officer whose vehicle the girl had been in. The officer was a tall blonde in her thirties with large breasts and wide hips. Not Malloy’s type, but definitely Mohammed’s flavor.
“Yes, Detective?”
“Ummm … ahhh … Officer … ummm?” Mohammed looked at her name tag to catch her name and then realized he was staring at her breasts. He snapped his gaze back to her face and continued to stutter and stammer nervously, looking around, irrationally afraid Emily was watching him.
“Officer Daley. Trisha Daley.” She held out her hand, and Mohammed looked over his shoulder again before shaking it.
“Uhh … ummm … Officer Daley, would you escort Mrs. Wells and her daughter to Saint John’s?”
“No problem, Detective,” she replied. She winked at Mohammed and smiled.
He turned quickly away. Malloy was watching the entire exchange, and Mohammed caught him smiling. Mohammed wanted to explain himself but decided to let the whole thing drop. He knew Malloy wouldn’t judge him. If anything, Malloy would encourage him to go for it, which was something else he didn’t need right now. The way he and Emily had been arguing lately, it wouldn’t take much more than a smile from a pretty woman and a little nudge from his best friend to push him over into infidelity, and that wasn’t something he wanted on his conscience. He shook the thought from his mind and went back to the suspects.
“Are you leaving too, Frank?” Mohammed asked.
“You stay, Frank. Make sure these bastards don’t break anything or plant evidence or something. I’ll stay with Mary,” Aida Wells replied before her husband could respond.
“Oh … okay. Call me from the hospital, okay?”
“I will.”
Frank leaned over and gave his wife a long kiss and then knelt down and hugged and kissed his daughter. She remained unresponsive, unaware of him. Frank let her go and looked up at the detectives. “What’s wrong with my daughter?”
“I think you know. Let your wife get her to the hospital. We can talk while the officers finish the search,” Mohammed said.
“What exactly are you looking for?”
He pulled out the photo of Delilah he’d taken from the Neilson’s home. “We’re looking for this woman. We’re looking for anything that’ll tell us where Delilah is and what she’s doing to these kids. This
is
Delilah, isn’t it? Do you know who those other two people are with her? Have you seen them around before? At one of your little cult gatherings? Because, coincidentally, their little girl went missing too.”
“I don’t know either of them,” Frank Wells answered. The lie was obvious in his voice and expression.
Malloy stepped forward and put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. “I want you to think real hard about how you answer these questions. This is some serious shit you’re involved in here.”
Mohammed pulled out his handcuffs. Holding them in both hands, he unlocked them then slowly click, click, clicked them closed. Frank Wells stared at the cuffs and his eyes widened. Malloy saw his bottom lip tremble.
Malloy said, “We’re going to ask you a few more questions, and if I don’t get the right answers, you will be arrested for interfering with an investigation, endangering the welfare of a child, accessory to murder, and anything else I can think of.”
They watched Mrs. Wells leave, followed by Officer Daley, before the three of them walked back up the front steps and into the Wells’s home. Mr. Wells took a seat in a recliner, leaning forward with his face in his hands. Mohammed sat across from him, notepad and pencil in-hand. He placed a small digital voice recorder on the table between them. Malloy remained standing, glaring down at Frank Wells with practiced and somewhat exaggerated disgust and disdain.
“I should be with my daughter. Something’s wrong with her. She looked like she was catatonic.”
“When we found her, she was among ten other kids who’d just helped rip a guy to shreds. There was a giant swarm of insects half a block long around the guy. Pets, birds, little kids. They ate the guy alive. The kids actually bit and clawed the guy to death right along with the damn animals - and your daughter caused it all. Now we need to know
why
. We need to know how. And we need to know where to find Delilah!” Mohammed said.
The search had moved upstairs, and above them, something heavy fell and shattered.
“What the hell was that? They’re destroying my home!” Wells stood, and Malloy stepped up to him and put a hand on his shoulder again.
“You can end this right now, Frank. Just tell us where Delilah is. Tell us all about her little cult. Cooperate with us and we’ll leave and you can go be with your wife and daughter.”
Frank collapsed back into the recliner, dropping his face into his hands. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”
“Do you want your lawyer present?” Mohammed asked.
Frank shook his head, wilting into the chair, defeated. “A lawyer can’t help me. God can’t help me.”
Chapter 31
April couldn’t sleep. She watched Delilah slumber soundlessly beside her, a sleep so deep it resembled death. The rise and fall of Delilah’s chest with each breath was so shallow it was barely perceptible. April was afraid the strain of her “gift” had finally overcome her. She laid her head on Delilah’s frail chest. The priestess’s heartbeat was faint but steady. April stroked her lover’s face and was relieved when Delilah stirred. She had been afraid her beautiful lover had slipped into a coma or worse.
April wondered how the woman could sleep knowing what she’d done to that young girl. Every time April closed her eyes, all she could see was the terror on that child’s face, and April wondered where she was now and what she was going through. She couldn’t imagine.
Delilah stirred from her death-like slumber smiling, and she wrapped her arms around April and pulled her closer. “Hello, my beautiful one. I’m glad you’re still here. I was afraid you would leave me.”
April stroked Delilah’s long locks and returned her smile. “I can’t leave you. I guess you know that. But I can’t sit by and watch you hurt any more children.”
Delilah smiled nervously, her eyes sparkling with unspilled tears. She caressed April’s slender neck and shoulders and drew her close. “I love you.”