Maps of Hell

Thirty-Nine

“You think we screwed up letting Gordy Lister go?” Clem Simmons asked as he drove toward central Washington.

I shrugged. “Maybe. We had to make a deal with him to make him talk. And he did give us the twins. He’s not stupid. He’d have understood if we made empty promises.”

The detective nodded. “I guess so. I’m not sure we’ll be seeing him again, though.”

I felt the same, but I’d meant what I said to the newspaperman. If we found anything that linked him to Joe’s death, I would get to him, no matter how long it took.

“You sure you want to do this?” Clem asked.

“It’s our only option. You’re never going to get a warrant to search the Woodbridge building.”

“Nope-not unless we find something that ties Thomson or his people directly to the murders.”

He grunted. “Know what I think? Larry Thomson’s got someone in the FBI.”

“Are you serious?”

“Wouldn’t be the first big-ass businessman to buy his way in.”

I thought about that. It squared with the finding of my fingerprints at the two murder scenes. The FBI had taken my prints after Karen’s disappearance. Some asshole from the Bureau could have planted them at the scenes.

“It’s not like they’ve made much progress with the investigation, is it?” Clem said.

“Is their agent in charge trustworthy?”

The detective raised his shoulders. “Peter Sebastian? They call him Dick, as in Dickhead. I’m not sure. He is the deputy head of Violent Crime, so he should know what he’s doing.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He grinned. “I know that. Look, I’ve no idea, man. He’s a conceited bastard, but most of those guys are, even the straight ones.”

We fell silent as we approached the center, the illuminated dome of the Capitol shining like a huge beacon. My heart began to hammer. What we were about to do was as unconstitutional as it got.

Clem parked the car on the street about five minutes’ walk from the Woodbridge building. It was after ten, so there weren’t many people around. I took the bag I’d filled at Versace’s sister’s house and joined the detective on the pavement.

“I could do with a weapon,” I said, still regretting that I’d left all of mine at the hotel.

“You’re not getting my piece.” I was pretty sure he wouldn’t have gone ahead with the scam if I’d been armed with anything more than a handful of screwdrivers. After all, I was still officially under suspicion of murder. “I’ll do the talking,” he said, as we approached the steps outside the building.

“Okay,” I said, smiling nervously. “I’ll just sneak.”

The glass doors were locked. Clem showed his badge to the security guard inside, while I loitered by a pillar. When the door was opened, I kept behind the detective.

“You’ve got a breach in your system,” Clem said.

The guard, an earnest-looking young man, whose jacket almost obscured his heavy biceps, frowned. He went over to his desk and checked the console. “There’s nothing showing here.”

“Well, you’ve got an even bigger problem than I thought,” the detective said. “Downtown, we’re showing an entry at the rear of the building.”

The security man looked as if he’d been asked to solve a complicated piece of algebra. “I didn’t even know you guys were connected to our system.”

“Of course we are,” Clem said impatiently. “You’re a few minutes from Congress. There’s nothing we don’t know.” He stood with his arms akimbo. “Are we going to check the rear with your help or on our own?”

The guard’s hand was hovering over a phone. Clem’s tone convinced him to play ball. “All right,” he said. “This way.”

I followed them as far as the elevators and then hung back as they went down to the lower mezzanine. As soon as they were out of sight, I slipped through the door leading to the stairwell-I wasn’t going to risk meeting someone in the confined space of an elevator. I checked the dimly lit stairs and started to climb. There were helpful signs on each landing. The first four were marked “Star Reporter” and the next five were different departments of the holding company-Accounts, Property, Personnel and so on. Things got interesting on the tenth floor. It was marked “Group Management,” as were the next three. I was heading for the very top. There was no reason Woodbridge Holdings would be different from every other hierarchical business building-the bosses would be in the penthouse suite. Except that, when I got there, I discovered that there was no sign at all. It seemed the Fuhrer wasn’t ready to make himself obvious, even in his own headquarters.

There was a Plexiglass window in the door. Through it I could see a wide passageway, with artwork on the wall. I shrank back as a man with biceps even larger than the main guard’s walked past with a menacing gait. That was both good and bad news: there was someone worth guarding up here, but I had to figure out a way of getting at them. I took a long screwdriver and a chisel with a narrow point from my bag and waited for the gorilla to pass again. He did so two minutes and fifteen seconds later. Assuming he was regular in his actions-something you would guess a boss who called himself the Fuhrer might demand-I had that long to get in and hide myself; assuming there was only one guard. I decided to go for it.

I knew more than most people about breaking locks thanks to my friend Andy, who learned at the sharp end on the streets of New Jersey. My on-off memory also obliged by coming up with the main points. One-ensure any alarm system is disabled: I was relying on Clem to have done that during his time with the guard downstairs. Two-ensure no obvious damage is left. I jimmied the door with the screwdriver, trying not to leave any scratch marks-I didn’t want to land Clem in trouble if everything went to hell. The only problem was, the door was resolutely not opening. That was when I saw the pressure pad between the jamb and the top edge. Shit. It was electrically controlled from the other side. I had no choice.

I looked around and saw a fire extinguisher on the landing. Checking my watch, I waited for the guard to appear again. Then I gave him another minute to make sure he wasn’t close. The door gave way with the first blow of the extinguisher. Unfortunately, the noise was enough to wake the dead. I sprinted down the corridor and took refuge behind a desk that was set in an alcove, not bothering to conceal myself. The gorilla was on the other side soon afterward. He saw me immediately.

“Get up,” he said gruffly.

I did what I was told, putting the bag on the desk between us.

“What’s in there?” he demanded, his eyes locked on mine.

I smiled. “A bomb.”

His eyes immediately dropped, as I knew they would. I punched him hard on the side of his jaw. I was in luck. The other side of his face smashed against the wall and he dropped to the floor. I dragged him behind the desk and secured his hands and legs with the plastic restraint cuffs Clem had given me. I was home free-as long as there weren’t any more goons on the loose.

I took the bag and walked to the end of the corridor. There was a set of double doors there, the only entrance I’d seen since I broke in. I hoped the birds hadn’t flown after the noise I’d made.

Just as I was about to slide the screwdriver into the lock, there was a loud click and the doors opened inward. I stood there like a schoolboy outside the local brothel, unsure whether to stay or go. Then a female voice put me out of my misery.

I went in to meet the woman who called me by name.

Peter Sebastian was still at his desk, having told his wife that he wouldn’t be home till further notice. He was sinking in quicksand, and everything he did seemed to make things worse. He’d even bawled out Dana Maltravers for the first time ever, and sent her home. He wasn’t sure if she’d be speaking to him in the morning and he couldn’t blame her. He’d been treating her as if she was his slave, rather than a special agent on the fast track to the very top.

He drank from a bottle of water. Soon he would have to draft a report for his boss, and the FBI director himself wanted to be copied on it. That didn’t make him feel good at all. The simple truth was that he didn’t have anything significant to report about the occult killings. The only progress his team had made regarded the dead man in the river. Richard Bonhoff’s wife, Melissa, had been interviewed. She had come to Washington and Sebastian had met her, though it was Maltravers who took her statement. He’d been surprised by the woman’s coldness-she hardly seemed to care that her husband had been murdered. At least she’d supplied a lot of information about her twin children, Randy and Gwen, who didn’t come home three months ago, having been on a trip to D.C. last winter. She had demanded that the Bureau find her children, something that Sebastian could hardly prioritize. It didn’t help that the newspaperman Gordon Lister, who had looked after the twins when they won a competition in the Star Reporter, was nowhere to be found. The people at the paper seemed to be as much in the dark as anyone as to his whereabouts.

At last the people in Hate Crimes had woken up, but they hadn’t been any use. As far as they knew, the Antichurch of Lucifer Triumphant had been defunct for decades. They were of the opinion that some far-right lunatic or lunatics had dug the name up as cover. As for the investigations on the ground, all witnesses had been questioned again, all medical and CSI reports had been collated and double-checked, and all leads had been followed-without a hint of the murderer’s identity. Sebastian simply had nowhere else to look.

He got up and went over to the conference table. Maltravers had taken out books from the Bureau library on satanic thrash metal, voodoo, the kabbalah and tarot, as well as ordering up reports on previous occult investigations. They had been through them all, examining illustrations, comparing themes and motifs, trying to make connections. They could have spent years doing that and been none the wiser about who the killer was. He wondered if they were being too subtle. Maybe their man just hated the paranormal; maybe he was just a sad fuck obsessed with the number two-though even that wouldn’t explain the drawings attached to the bodies.

The only thing that Sebastian knew for sure was that the twin weapons used in all the murders were significant in some way. If he’d been able to talk to Richard and Melissa Bonhoff’s kids, maybe he’d have gotten some insights. As it was, the Bureau psychologists had given him a standard briefing about the complexities of didymous children, as they called them. What was he meant to do now? Go out and arrest every set of twins he could lay his hands on?

After a few minutes of such thought, the phone rang. Wearily Sebastian picked it up. It was the supervisor of the Document Analysis Unit. She’d had an idea about the diagrams.

At last.

The woman was young-around thirty. She had short brown hair and a face that I would have found alluring if she hadn’t been pointing a matte black pistol at my chest. She was wearing a black trouser suit and a white blouse.

“Matt Wells,” she repeated. “Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.” She waved me inside with the gun. “Please don’t do anything stupid. I’m one of the best shots in the country.”

The air of certainty with which she made that statement struck me. Did she shoot professionally?

The small hallway opened into a huge room that must have taken up half of the penthouse. The lights of Washington spread across an enormous picture window. Pieces of antique furniture were dotted about the carpeted floor like elephants on the savannah. The works of art on the walls were large and looked both genuine and somewhat familiar.

“Over there,” the woman said, pointing to a pair of sofas arrayed in an L-shape by the window. As I approached, another woman got up and turned to face me. She was tall and gray haired, with a striking aquiline nose. I caught the resemblance to Larry Thomson immediately.

“Mr. Wells, what a pleasure,” she said, with old-fashioned politeness.

“I wish I could say the same, Ms. Thomson.” I sat down without being invited.

The woman smiled humorlessly. “I don’t use the surname my brother decided on.” She offered me a cigarette from a silver case.

I raised my hand to decline and saw the younger woman’s pistol follow the movement. “Don’t worry, I won’t bite,” I said, reaching for the open bottle of red wine on the table and pouring myself a glass. The last thing I was going to do was show these Nazis any respect.

“That is debatable,” the Fuhrer’s sister said, sitting down opposite me. She was wearing a gray trouser suit that was considerably better cut than the uniforms at the camp. “We have read your books and done additional research. We know exactly what you’re capable of. You have escaped from us once already.” She raised her glass. “Bravo.”

The young woman smiled. “I can assure you that you won’t escape again.” She moved behind the older woman and I saw that the line of her jaw was almost identical, but she had escaped the beak of a nose.

“Mother and daughter,” I said. “Where’s Larry, to complete the happy family?”

“Otherwise engaged,” the seated woman said. “You can call me Irma if you like.”

“I don’t,” I said, swallowing what was a very good Merlot. “You were born Fraulein Rothmann and that’ll do for me. Or did you take your husband’s name?”

They both laughed.

“I do not have a husband anymore, Mr. Wells,” said the concentration-camp doctor’s daughter. “A necessary phase so that I didn’t remain childless, but he is long gone. He had the right breeding, but he was weak. Of course, I never took his name.”

I hoped the poor guy had survived the encounter. “What about you?” I said to the younger woman. “I’m guessing you have an anglicized name.”

“Correct.”

I waited, and then laughed. “But you don’t care to share it with me. All right, let’s try a different tack. You’re comfortable with that pistol and by your own admission you’re a champion shot. The Glock semiautomatic is standard law-enforcement issue. So what are you? A local cop or a Fed?”

“Everybody hates a smart-ass,” the woman said, aiming the pistol at my groin.

“It’s all right, Dana,” the older woman said. “There’s no reason to be coy.” She turned to me. “Mr. Wells, this is Special Agent Dana Maltravers of the FBI violent-crime team. She’s been working very hard to find you.”

I remembered Clem having mentioned that name. “You work with Peter Sebastian?”

The young woman looked surprised, which was what I wanted.

“Could it be that you’re the one who made sure my prints were at two of the occult-murder scenes?”

I seemed to have scored another hit, though the FBI agent was still as cold as a glacier. I needed to antagonize her more, make her drop her guard. “Interesting name,” I said. I had always been fascinated by what people were called and used to spend hours with encyclopedias on the subject. Fortunately, that part of my memory seemed to be accessible. “Dana is the feminine form of Daniel, isn’t it? Rather a Jewish name for your sort, don’t you think?”

“It was chosen deliberately,” she said, glancing at Fraulein Rothmann. “To divert suspicion.”

“It certainly worked for me,” I said, with an ironic smile. “As for Maltravers, well, mal is evil, so that seems appropriate.” Their faces were stony. “And travers means a crossing, doesn’t it? Particularly an oblique one.”

“You’ll soon be wishing you never crossed me, Wells,” the young woman said, raising the Glock to my face.

I tried to ignore that. “Oblique as in underhand or askew,” I continued. “Like your sense of ethics?”

“That will do!” Fraulein Rothmann had finally showed some emotion. “What we need from you is a list of all the people with whom you have shared information about Woodbridge Holdings, my brother, the camp or anything pertaining to it.” She laughed sharply. “And if you’re waiting for your Negro detective friend to rescue you, don’t bother. He has been restrained and will shortly be on his way to the river.”

My stomach pole-vaulted.

Jesus, Clem. What had I got him into?