The Paradise Prophecy (12 page)

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Authors: Robert Browne

BOOK: The Paradise Prophecy
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Another occult sign?
Callahan had no idea what it meant, but seeing as this was a prayer room, there was obviously religious significance to the symbol, a notion bolstered by the lines of verse written directly below it in bold black letters:
Darkness ere Dayes mid-course, and Morning light
More orient in you Western Cloud that draws
O’re the blew Firmament a radiant white
And slow descends,with somthing heav’nly fraught.
.
11:204—07
 
A biblical verse?
Callahan didn’t think so.
She was reminded of the quote on Gabriela’s T-shirt and again had that vague sense that she knew it from somewhere. Not so much the words themselves, but the sound of the language. Its rhythm and tone.
Pulling out her phone, she took several shots of the room, including close-ups of the symbol and the lines of verse, and added them to Gabriela’s dossier.
Section would undoubtedly want to see them, so she immediately uploaded the additions to the server and flagged them a priority. Since she was obviously operating in need-to-know territory, she wondered if she’d get any kind of reaction.
With Section you could never tell.
Moving to the prayer desk, she studied the altar atop it. A thin leather strap hung from the cross, a small, circular medallion attached, about the size of a quarter.
Feeling a small stab of pain in her chest, Callahan took hold of the medallion and rubbed it between her fingers. Her father had given her a necklace very similar to this one for her fifth birthday. She’d worn it almost every day that year, until about three months after Dad died, when her stepmother had tossed it out, along with half of everything Callahan had owned.
This one was old, however, and probably a lot more valuable—monetarily, at least. Etched into its surface was the figure of a man carrying a child on his shoulders.
Saint Christopher. Patron of safe travel.
Turning it over, Callahan found another etching on the back—a beetle with the intials
CSP
engraved beneath it.
So who or what was CSP? Was this just another artifact Gabriela had procured, or was it more personal than that?
Making a mental note to check into the initials, Callahan released the medallion and shifted her gaze to a shelf beneath the top of the prayer desk.
There was a small stack of books there, their spines jumping out at her:
The Lesser Key of Solomon
,
Forbidden Rites
,
Angels, Incantations and Revelation . . .
All of these seemed like unusual choices—especially in a prayer room—but it was the book at the very top of the stack that most caught Callahan’s attention. A battered, well-thumbed paperback she remembered from one of her college literature classes. And all at once she knew where the lines of verse on the wall—and the quotation on Gabriela’s T-shirt—had come from.
Paradise Lost
.
Callahan’s memory of the book was spotty. It was considered a classic and had something to do with God and Satan, but in college she had found it extremely difficult to read, its language so impenetrable that she’d been forced to seek out the CliffNotes version just to make sense of it all.
Picking it up, she stared at the cover, which featured the same Gustave Doré etching that hung above the piano. She leafed through the pages and toward the end of the book she found that several of the numbered passages had been carefully highlighted, notes scribbled in its margins.
Shifting her gaze to the verse on the wall, she checked the citation—
11:204–07
—then quickly found the passage.
Sure enough, those same lines were highlighted in blue. And in the margin next to them, written in black ink, were two words:
Defende eam
.
Callahan’s Latin was a bit lacking, and the best translation she could come up with was . . . “protect her.”
A curious little notation, but what did it mean? Who did Gabriela think needed protection? Was she concerned about someone she knew, or—
“That book was her obsession,” a voice said.
Startled, Callahan turned to find a young man with bloodshot eyes standing in the doorway. He wore a robe, cinched at the waist.
Alejandro Ruiz.
“She took it everywhere we went,” he said. “Every country, every city. Was always telling me what a work of genius it is. A gift from God, second only to the Bible.” His eyes shifted, staring at nothing. “A lot of good it did her.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ruiz.” She offered a hand to shake. “I’m Agent Callahan.”
Ruiz didn’t seem to notice the offer. He was looking around the room, taking it in. “She didn’t know I knew about this place. Thought she could hide it from me, but she didn’t even bother to put on a lock on the door.” He paused. “The knowledge always felt like a betrayal, yet here you stand, exposing her secrets.”
Callahan ignored the jab. “Maybe she trusted you.”
He smiled. “Gabriela had high hopes for humanity, and a lot of big plans, but her trust was reserved for the voices inside her head.”
“Voices?”
“God. Angels. She was regular Joan of Arc.”
“She told you this?”
He nodded. “Late one night, in a moment of weakness. But when I pressed her about it, she pulled away as if she realized she’d just revealed some sort of state secret.” He paused. “Things were never the same between us after that.”
“And this didn’t worry you? Make you wonder if she had mental problems?”
Ruiz shook his head. “A lot of people hear voices when they pray, Agent Callahan. Especially people as blessed as Gabriela was. These last few months, she had a glow about her that’s hard to describe. A sense of purpose.”
“I can tell that you loved her very much.”
“Ever since she was seventeen years old,” he said. “Back when I had my own ministry. I still remember when she was busking on street corners, playing her music for spare change, struggling to overcome her addiction. I often thought she was in too deep to ever find the light. But she did.”
Callahan thought of Martinez’s cover story. “Do you think her addiction may have played a part in her death?”
“Not a chance. I saw how devastated she was when her friend Sofie died. She would never go back to that. Not after everything we’d accomplished.”
“So what do you think happened to her?”
“I wish I knew. I just know she couldn’t have done this to herself.”
Callahan nodded. “In your statement to the police, you said you smelled gasoline, right before you and her bodyguards found her.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“This was just before you heard Gabriela’s screams, right?”
He closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“How long had she been missing at that point?”
He thought about it a moment. Shrugged. “Three, maybe five minutes. Nothing more.”
“And between the time you heard her screams and found her in the storage room?”
“No more than thirty seconds or so. And by that time she was already . . .” He stopped himself and stared at the floor, looking as if he were about to be sick.
“I’m sorry to keep pushing, Mr. Ruiz, but I want to be absolutely certain that you smelled gasoline.”
He looked up sharply. “You think I’m lying?”
“I think you could be confused. How far away were you when you smelled it?”
“Pretty far. Gabriela was down a long hallway, around a corner. But there’s no confusion.”
Gas fumes are strong, Callahan thought, but would Ruiz have been able to smell them from that distance? And why hadn’t any of the bodyguards corroborated his statement?
Could he have imagined it?
Ruiz slumped against the door frame, and she could see that grief was weighing him down. “Can we be done with this, please?”
“Just a few more questions,” she said, then gestured to the wall behind the prayer desk. “You say you’ve been in here before. Do you have any idea what that symbol represents?”
Ruiz glanced at it and shook his head. “I probably should, but I don’t recognize it. I’m sure it meant something special to Gabriela. Her faith was deep.”
“I think that’s a pretty safe assumption,” Callahan said, then showed him the highlighted passage in
Paradise Lost
. “You say she was obsessed with this book. What about this note in the margin—is this Gabriela’s handwriting?”
“Yes.”
“
Defende eam
means ‘protect her.’ Do you have any idea who she was talking about?”
Another shrug. “Could be anyone, I suppose. Gabriela dealt with a lot of people. Fans. Charity volunteers. Bible students.”
“What about crew members?”
He nodded. “We’re well staffed.”
“Do you know if any of them practice the occult?”
He seemed affronted by the idea. “Of course not. Everyone on Gabriela’s team has found the Way, including her bodyguards. Why would you ask such a thing?”
So he hadn’t seen the mark on the floor.
And nobody had bothered to mention it to him.
“My job is to look at all of the possibilities,” she told him. “Do you know anyone with the initials CSP?”
He thought about it and shook his head.
Callahan dropped the book to the prayer desk and gestured to the Saint Christopher medallion. “Any idea who gave her this?”
He looked at it. “It’s probably just one of her trinkets from the auction house. Are we finished yet?”
“Just one more thing. What about your cell phone? Were you able to find it?”
He nodded and reached into his robe pocket, pulling out an iPhone. “I spend half my life on this thing, but I haven’t touched it since Gabriela died.”
“Then you haven’t checked your voice mail?”
He waved a hand, dismissing the notion. “I’m sure there are dozens of messages. People calling with condolences. But I haven’t had the energy.”
“What about the one from Gabriela?”
His gaze snapped to Callahan’s. “What are you talking about?”
“The outgoing calls on her cell phone show that she dialed your number just before she died. She may have left you a message.”
His face went pale. “What?”
He looked down at the phone and, as Callahan watched, he immediately touched the screen, pulling up his voice mail application. He quickly scrolled through several dozen messages until he came to one marked
Gabriela
.
He stopped. Stared at it.
“Oh my God,” he said quietly. “Oh my God.”
11
 
B
efore Ruiz played the message, Callahan asked him to bring the phone into the living room. She wanted Martinez to listen in. It seemed like the right thing to do, considering this was allegedly his investigation.
Moving to the sofa and two chairs near the center of the room, they all sat, then Ruiz placed the phone on the coffee table, touched the
speaker
icon and pressed
play
.
What they heard was a surprise to all of them.
It began with a loud clattering sound, as if the phone had hit the floor and rolled. Then Gabriela’s voice echoed, her words unintelligible. She seemed to be babbling incoherently, but it was impossible to tell. She started to cry, her voice blurred by tears but rising in volume and intensity—
—“No . . . Stay away from me!”
The plea had been directed at someone, yet there were no other voices in the room.
She began to cough now, violently, sobbing, struggling to breathe, begging to be left alone. This was abruptly followed by a commotion—feet shuffling, stumbling, crashing, Gabriela crying and coughing and gagging, continuing to beg.
Another crash was followed by a long silence, interrupted only by the sound of her rapid breathing, a cough or two.
She was close to the phone now, and after a moment she said something, then repeated it twice. But the words came out as little more than a croak, barely audible, her anguished whispers too soft to be understood.
Then, after another moment of silence, she began to scream.
Ruiz cut the message off mid-scream. He looked at Callahan with wounded eyes, then quickly averted his gaze, as if he couldn’t quite handle the human connection. He’d be exposing too much.
“I can’t believe I wasn’t there for her when she called.”

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