The Demon Pool (28 page)

As soon as Jim ended the call with Saffi, his phone
rang. Pedro de la Garza’s number showed. Jim hesitated for a moment, but
decided to take the call. De la Garza was not the kind of man who would call to
engage in idle chatter.

“Trooper Demore,” Jim answered flatly.

He liked Pedro, but the situation with Carl left
him with little enthusiasm for the Briggs case. Unlike Briggs, Carl was still
alive.

“Señior Demore, it’s Pedro de la Garza.”

Even the sense of urgency in Pedro’s voice failed
to move Jim from his ambivalence. Briggs was worm food. Carl still had a
chance.

“Señior de la Garza, I’ve been pulled from the
Briggs case.” Jim said it as a simple, matter-of-fact statement. “I’m away from
my office, but I can call you later with the name and phone number of the new
investigator.”
Like that’s going to help anyone.

“Señior Demore...”

“Right now,” Jim replied, not waiting for Pedro
to finish, “I have something else I am working on and I really need to get back
to that.”

“Señior Demore,” Pedro continued, his voice firm
and adamant, “I saw the Government Man’s car. I saw it today and I am sure it
is the one that killed the two people. He was not the driver that night, but it
was his car.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. de la Garza,” Jim tried to sound
sympathetic, “but, like I said, that’s not really my case anymore. I can pass
your information onto the new investigator. That’s all I can do now. I’m
sorry.”
Damn sorry.

“He is evil, Señior Demore,” Pedro replied. “He
and his friend. They are like devils.”

“What friend? Was there a woman?”

“No, señior. No woman. Men. Two men. The
Government Man, big, kind of fat, and his small companion. The small man had an
evil look and a gun like yours.”

Jim knew that he should hang up, let Agent Joyce
deal with it, but Pedro had sucked him in.

“What did the little man look like? How was he
dressed?”
What the hell. Maybe after the situation with Carl was resolved?

Jim could almost hear Pedro’s mind sorting
through the details.

“He wore a leather belt,” Pedro continued. “It
looked like the belt you wear, Señior Demore. Only it did not fit him so well.
He was holding the gun in one hand and holding the belt up with the other.”

Jim had a thought and it quickly connected with
his memory of the video on his phone.

“Señior de la Garza, give me just a second.”

Jim scrolled through the phone’s menu until he
found the video function. His phone had only one video stored, Carl Johns tied
up and being tased. Jim played the video and watched the small screen. The hand
of Carl’s tormentor reached out and applied the Taser. It was not an FHP police
model. Carl jerked and spasmed. The video pulled back and Jim hit the pause
button.

The frozen frame was dark, not very clear, but
Jim could see well enough what was missing. Carl was not wearing his utility
belt. No gun, no holster, nada.
Did Bruce York and his companion kidnap
Carl? And if they did, how? And for God’s sake, why? Why would an obviously
successful, federal bureaucrat kidnap a Florida State Highway Patrol Trooper?
That made no sense at all.

Carl was a big, powerful guy, who, to the best of
Jim’s knowledge, had never lost a fight. Jim had sparred with Carl a few times,
both as part of their training and just as friends. The man was a human tank.
Bruce York was a human marshmallow and de la Garza had described his companion
as a small man. How did they get the drop on Carl? And why? That was the
twenty-million-dollar question. Jim closed the video and spoke to de la Garza.

“Where are you?” Jim asked.

“I am just west of the estate, Señior Demore,”
Pedro said, “Those men are evil, Señior Demore. Possessed by devils. You may
not believe it, señior, but
es verdad. Veridico.
I have a meeting with
the Government Man. Tomorrow, six p.m., at the Pit Stop. Do you know it?”

Jim had no experience with supernatural devils,
but he knew the human kind, and evil was evil, no matter what the source.

“We need to meet,” Jim said, “before tomorrow.”

“Sí, señior. Where?”

“I have a friend. She works at the crime lab in
Ft. Myers. We’ll meet at her apartment.”

Jim gave Pedro the address and some directions.

“She’s expecting me. I’ll call her back and let
her know to expect the both of us.”

“I will be there, señior.”

The call disconnected.

***

The night around Pedro’s truck was dark. The entire sky
was a black hole that could suck the soul right out from the body. An
overwhelming sense of gloom and malice, some malevolent and evil cloud, had
descended upon the truck. A weight pressed into Pedro’s chest, making it hard
to breathe.

He hit his high beams and drove toward Ft. Myers.
The darkness surrounding the truck seemed to deaden his headlights. He reached
into the center console and retrieved a compact disc, glanced at it, and put it
back. He did this three more times until he had the right one.

The music on the CD was Spanish Gospel. He put the
compact disk in the truck’s CD player and turned the volume low. Just loud
enough to push back against the black shadows that seemed to swirl around the
truck.

Saffi had herself barely presentable when her doorbell
rang. Jim had told her twenty minutes, but almost half an hour had passed since
he had hung up. She was thankful for the extra time. She looked in the bathroom
mirror.
Presentable, maybe even pretty, and that is as good as it gets
tonight.

She made her way into the apartment’s small living
room. The furniture sprinkled around the room was minimalist, but tasteful. The
decor was mostly white with a splash of pink and aqua here and there. It was
neat, clean and cute.

The doorbell rang and she checked the front door
peephole. Jim stood at the entryway, in uniform, looking serious. She opened
the door and watched him try to smile.

“Hi Jim,” she said. “Come in.”

“Thanks.”

He appeared distracted as he looked around at the
small living room. She closed the door and moved past him, toward the kitchen.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, sounding as distracted as he
appeared. “That sounds good.”

He stood in the kitchen doorway and watched as
Saffi moved between the different cupboards and drawers. She pulled together
the trappings for a cup of instant coffee.

“You don’t have a coffee pot?”

“Nope,” she replied. “Takes too long. Besides, I
think you will like the way I make this.”

He had a “yeah, right” look on his face.

“You mean there is more than one way to make
instant coffee?” he asked.

The sarcasm was not lost on Saffi.

“I guarantee you will like it,” she told him, “or
I’ll refund the cover charge.”

Jim’s face went from smirky grimace to mildly
amused smile.

“Okay,” she continued, “That was weak, but I
still guarantee you will like my coffee. Go ahead, sit down. I’ll be done in a
second.”

Jim parked himself in a chair. Saffi put a cup of
coffee, complete with spoon and saucer, on the coffee table in front of him. He
picked up the cup and let it float below his nose while he tested the aroma.
The coffee was Saffi’s special blend, rich with just a hint of spice. She
watched as he allowed the world to slide away, if only for a moment. She took a
seat across from Jim as he tasted the coffee.

“Do you like it?” Saffi asked.

Jim nodded as he put the cup down. Their eyes
met.

“It’s good. Really good,” he said.

He picked up the spoon and stirred the coffee. He
looked down at the black liquid swirling about the spoon for a moment and then
looked back up at Saffi. The spoon continued around and around in the cup.

“I have a friend, another trooper, in serious
trouble. Deadly serious trouble,” he told her. “I think because of me.”

She could see that he was struggling with the
situation. She leaned forward and gave him her full attention.

“Someone besides me has to know, but I can’t go
to my command or my friend is dead.”

He stopped stirring the coffee.

“I trust you,” he said.

It was the first time since they had met in class
that Saffi had seen him look anything even close to vulnerable. Even after the
Trooper Gone Wild story, he had maintained an image of tough, even angry,
defiance. If the situation did not seem so serious, she would have described
the shadow of vulnerability on his face as cute, but there was nothing cute
about a State Trooper with his life in danger.

The voices in Kevin’s head screamed at him in a
relentless cacophony of insults, threats, and accusations. What had he done
wrong?

“You screwed up.”

“She’s mad at you.”

“She will destroy us.”

“You are as worthless as your father said you
were.”

“Moron.”

“Idiot.”

“Dumbshit.”

All that and worse. It was as if they were
pounding and kicking the already twisted, damaged, gray matter inside of his
skull. Kevin grabbed his head in both hands.

“Why are you doing this to me? What did I do?” he
shouted.

He stomped around, holding his head, screaming
aloud at his accusing tormentors.

“Shut up. Leave me alone.”

***

Kevin’s cries reminded Bruce of a wounded animal,
caught in a hunter’s trap. Unsettling. Bruce sat in an eighteenth century,
Louis XV antique chair, near the big bay windows in the front room of the
house. He found it hard to believe what he had — correction, what Kat had —
gotten him into. He watched Kevin do his spastic, agonizing dance, bopping
around the room to his own screaming, grunting, and groaning. Watching Kevin’s
tormented gyrations unnerved Bruce. He wanted to get up and do something about
Kevin, although he was not sure what, when his phone rang. Kat’s number showed
on the caller ID.

“Kat, what kind of nutcase did you send out here?
Listen to this guy.”

Bruce pointed his phone toward Kevin. Kevin was
moaning and begging someone to shut up, to leave him alone. Bruce put the phone
back to his ear.

“What is that about?” Bruce asked.

“Kevin has problems,” Kat said, “but he’s
useful.”

The tone of Kat’s voice left no room for
argument.

“You need to be useful too, Bruce. Give Kevin the
phone.”

Bruce blinked, again and again.

“I don’t think he can take a call right now,”
Bruce said flatly.

Kevin put on quite a show, although Bruce was not
enjoying it. Kevin muttered, yelled, and, sometimes, blubbered.
The guy is
bat-shit crazy.

“Bruce, listen to me,” Kat told him.

“Listen to her, Bruce.”

A single voice spoke to him. He looked around. Kevin
continued his dance, now making unintelligible noises. Bruce realized that the
voice he’d heard had not come from somewhere in the room, but, again, from
inside his own head. The voice prodded him.

“Do what she tells you.”

Bruce sat still and wondered how someone else’s
voice or voices had taken up residence inside his head.
Great. The crazy
shit is now in my brain.

“You invited us, Bruce. Remember?”

Bruce did not remember. At least not clearly. And
who is us?

Something had happened to him the last time he
had been with Kat. Something more than just the violation of his ass. But,
hearing voices? That was nuts. Bruce contemplated the insanity of his situation.
A dead girl, kidnapped cop, and hearing voices in his head. A situation as
crazy as Kevin himself, who danced in and out of Bruce’s field of vision around
the trussed-up cop.
Crazy, crazy, shit.

“Bruce. Bruce.”

Kat’s voice was a razor cutting through the thin,
Kafkaesque veneer of his current reality.

“Listen to her.”

The voice again.

Listening to the voice, listening to Kat,
watching Kevin, Bruce found it difficult to exert his own will. He realized he
was in some deep, deep shit. A soothing, almost cooing voice spoke to him.

“We will help you. Just do what she tells you.”

Bruce sensed that everything he had worked for,
the life he had carefully constructed, now flopped around in a pit of deep,
dangerous crapola and he was in it up to his neck. The voice whispered a
promise.

“Listen to her. You can keep it all. You want to
keep all, don’t you?”

“Yes, damn it, I want to keep it all,” Bruce
whispered. His voice sounded foreign, distant. “I need to keep it all. Help me
keep it all,” Bruce begged.

“Talk to her. Do what she wants. We are all with
you.”

“Bruce. Talk to me. Right now,” Kat ordered.

Bruce put the phone back to his ear. He watched
Kevin drop to his knees and roll onto his side. Kevin whimpered as he curled
into the fetal position and rocked.

“I’m here, Kat,” Bruce finally answered. “What do
you want me to do?”

Resignation coated Bruce’s words. The voice in
his head cooed approvingly.

“Good, Bruce. Very good.”

“Like I told you, Kevin has problems, but he is
useful,” Kat repeated. “He has a phone call to make.”

“I don’t think he can do that right now,” Bruce
said honestly. “He looks a little preoccupied. Actually, I think it’s more like
he’s gone completely freaking nuts.”

“Kevin is like an overactive child. We need to
restore him back to his normal condition,” Kat said.

“I’m not sure his normal condition is much
better,” Bruce said.

“Just go over to him Bruce.”

“Cooperate with her, Bruce.” Another voice spoke.
“Unless you want to join him.”

The threat, combined with the general insanity of
the situation, melted away the last bit of Bruce’s resistance. A deep sigh
signaled his final answer.

“Okay.”

He left the chair and walked heavily toward
Kevin. He glanced at the Highway Patrolman, bound to a similar chair,
strategically placed in the center of the great room. The trooper looked like
he had recovered from the Taser. He stared at Bruce with an intense hatred.
Bruce knew that they had no choice but to kill him. He stopped next to Kevin.

“Now what?” Bruce asked.

“You’re going to conduct a ceremony, Bruce,” Kat
replied. “Like a high priest.”

In spite of the day’s madness, Kat’s words gave
Bruce a lift. High priest. Kat’s high priest.

“Sounds interesting,” he replied.

“It’s more than interesting, Bruce,” Kat said,
her voice both affirming and empowering. “There is a source of perfect power,
Bruce, if you are willing to give yourself to it. I’ve only given you a taste
so far. However, you must give yourself completely. Without reservation.”

The voice whispered the question to him before
Kat could ask it herself. “Do you want the power, Bruce? Do you want to keep
everything?”

“Yes,” Bruce told the voice.

“Do you give yourself?”

“Yes,” Bruce said again.

“Completely? Without reservation?”

“Yes. I want it. Give me the power. Give it to
me.” Bruce replied, like a lover begging for penetration.

“Reach out and touch him, Bruce. Place your hand
on Kevin.”

Bruce knelt down and obeyed.

“Now, call his name.”

Before Bruce could mouth the word “Kevin,” Kat
spoke again.

“Not his given name, Bruce. As a high priest, you
must use his spiritual name.”

“His spiritual name,” Bruce said, quietly echoing
her words. “Yes, tell me his spiritual name.”

Kat’s answer was almost a hiss.

“Legion, Bruce. Call him Legion.”