A hunter’s moon hung over the ocean as Delaney’s cab pulled up outside the beach house in Monterrey. He paid the driver and waited till he had departed before turning towards the house. At the side of the building the remains of the office extension were silhouetted starkly against the moonlight. Parts of the walls had been left standing, charred but essentially sound. The sloping roof had gone but there were some struts and beams still in place, looming like eerie toothpicks. He had stored everything from the wreckage that looked as if it might be significant in his old pick up truck and parked it a mile up the road in a free public parking lot.
It was too dark to see clearly as Delaney shuffled his way around the remains of the rubble but the ground was black with soot. The side wall of the house adjoining the office was blackened in parts but the door that led from Maria’s den to the main living room was intact.
Emptiness rushed towards him as he stood there looking out over the ocean. It suddenly hit home with a vengeance. He was alone again. Maria would never come back. This was the biggest test of his life. He had convinced himself that human beings somehow transmogrified into some kind of spiritual life or form, for want of a better description, on the basis that their essence or energy could not be destroyed but could be re-formed into some kind of existence we are largely unable to contact.
So Maria was not dead.
She had passed into another dimension where her identity as Maria Montalban was eradicated and whatever nugget or kernel of wisdom her life had bequeathed her was part of her electrical energy wavelength and was carried with it.
In some way she could perhaps be recycled, reborn or reshaped. More than this he could not fathom. Or maybe this was all just psychobabble.
He would cope. He knew that. But the house towered over him like a shroud. Maria’s presence was everywhere. He needed a drink. He went to the front door, unlocked it and stepped inside. He remembered that the answering machine had been a casualty of the fire so there would be no way he could listen to any messages. He was grateful for that. The house was exactly as he had left it except for the usual pile of junk mail. He gathered it up from the mat and dumped it on a side table. He switched on some lights, poured himself a stiff Southern Comfort and went outside on the terracing where he sipped his drink looking at the beach and at the twinkling lights of Monterey harbor. With the help of a couple of more shots, he allowed him himself the luxury and the pain of weeping.
Delaney was up at dawn next morning. He ran two miles along the beach and back, ending with a plunge into the ocean. Then he dried himself off, changed into his workout suit and went through a series of Chi Kung and Nei Kung exercises followed by a hard session combining Tai Chi, karate kicks and punches, some kickboxing and power routines using his old, solid punch bag around the side of the house.
He knew why he was working out so hard and pushing his body to extremes. He had a mountain of pain to release and this was the only way he knew how.
When he finished, he showered, changed and then sat with a straight back on his wooden deck facing the ocean and began to silence his mind, allowing his mantra to take over, until his body temperature decreased and his heart rate slowed. He was drifting into a second stage of meditation when a sound alerted him. He remained with his eyes closed and listened.
There was someone at the side of the house.
No, there were two.
Delaney could hear the muted creak of their shoes and the crunch of their weight on the charred ground. Someone cleared his throat not far from him.
In a smooth movement, Delaney rose to his feet and turned to face the intruders, balancing perfectly on the balls of his feet, his body completely relaxed but ready to explode in an instant.
A tall skinny guy in a creased cream colored suit and black shirt stood watching him with a sardonic expression. He reminded Delaney of a slightly washed out Frank Sinatra. Standing behind him was a stiff looking police officer wearing a San Benito sheriff’s police department uniform. Delaney remembered seeing him before.
“Hope we’re not disturbing you, Mr. Delaney,” said the skinny guy. “We thought you might have been asleep.”
“Who are you?” Delaney asked.
“Dorsey,” he replied flashing his badge. “Lieutenant Raymond Dorsey. I’m a detective with California State Police Department. This is Officer Patrick from the San Benito sheriff’s office. I’ve taken over the investigation into your wife’s death, Mr. Delaney. I’d like to ask you a few questions if I may. And, there have been developments.” It sounded like an insinuation.
“Developments?”
“May we sit down and talk for a while?”
“Of course. I was just about to make some coffee. Would you like some?”
Both men nodded and Delaney walked into the kitchen and set up the percolator. Dorsey and Patrick were looking around the house as if they were measuring distances. Patrick showed distinct interest in the burnt out shell at the side. After a moment, Dorsey and Patrick came into the kitchen.
“Nice place,” remarked Dorsey. “Lucky the fire didn’t reach the main part of the house.”
“We got here in time.”
“So I read in the report. This would be around the exact time your wife met her untimely death?”
“That’s what I’ve been told,” he said, serving coffees on a pine table while all three of them sat down around it. “What developments have there been, Lieutenant?” Delaney wanted to know.
Dorsey cleared his throat and Patrick took out his notepad and pen.
“The coroner’s report has been completed and, as next of kin, you are entitled to a free copy.”
Delaney just stared at him.
Dorsey continued.
“We’ve finished our examination of the murder site, Mr. Delaney and we’ve found your wife’s car. Correction, it’s your car too, I assume?”
“Yes it is.”
“Okay, if you don’t mind I would like to run through the situation as we have it. I apologize if I ask you any questions that you have already answered. It’s just my way of doing things. Your wife’s body was found in a disused chicken shed; a perfect place to confuse forensics, but the shed is actually the old vestry of the Mission of San Juan, to be precise. This is a partly ruined religious building that was abandoned a couple of hundred years ago but there are some structures left more or less intact. There are signs warning people to keep out because it might be a dangerous structure. Some ancient State law ensures it won’t be pulled down, so it just gradually crumbles away. No one ever goes there except to shoot up.It’s one of those remote, forgotten places you have to know is there before you can find it.”
“I’d like to see it?” Delaney wasn’t sure he really wanted to give his emotions even more of a battering but he knew he had to try and be dispassionate if was going to find Maria’s killer.
Dorsey glanced over at Patrick who had said absolutely nothing since arriving at the house.
“I can’t see why not, now we’ve finished with it. I’ve checked your background, Mr. Delaney - Hong Kong Police and US Special Forces. I drew a blank on exactly what section of our military you served in?” Dorsey sipped his coffee.
Delaney knew this was a question and not an idle comment.
“It’s classified. But I can tell you it was called G-Force.”
“That’s what I thought your report said. Thing is, Mr. Delaney, we cannot find one single trace of this so-called G-Force. It’s like it doesn’t exist.”
“That’s why it’s classified,” Delaney told him. “I’m not sure it’s relevant to this enquiry, Lieutenant. I need to see where my wife was murdered. One way or another I intend to find out who did it.”
“I thought that’s what you might say,” said Dorsey. “We’ll come back to that later. The facts are these. An extremely knowledgeable assailant subjected your wife to a brutal attack. She was mutilated, and I’m sorry if this causes you distress, in some kind of religious ceremony and made to make a tape of her so-called confession, again a religious connection. There are no fingerprints on the tape and it’s of a type you can buy anywhere. There are traces of her blood in the vestry but that’s all. We have DNA samples of your wife but absolutely nothing on her killer. Some local farmer had used the vestry to keep chickens until a few months ago and if there were any forensic clues as to the identity of her attacker, they could be virtually obliterated by old chicken DNA. And when she died she was around three months pregnant.”
Delaney said nothing. He just watched Dorsey’s body language.
“The killer must have been able to get your wife to do his bidding and make this tape and leave no clues. There is evidence of some tire tracks in the dust outside the mission but of more than one vehicle. Now to your car, Mr. Delaney. This was found abandoned in the grounds of La Juanita Country Park, about halfway between Monterey and Salinas and about thirty miles from the murder scene. This is a rich man’s golf course and leisure club with acres of ground where people frequently park up and have picnics or go for walks. People do leave vehicles there overnight, there’s no law says they can’t. No one’s going to notice a car has been abandoned for some time. So this is where your wife met her killer and got, or was forced, into his car and taken to the mission.”
“That’s what I’ve just worked out,” said Delaney.
“I heard you were smart,” smiled Dorsey. “Which means, of course, that your wife intended to meet her eventual murderer. Your wife was a journalist. I’ve read some of her stuff. It’s real good. So, the conclusion I draw is that this was an arranged meeting for a purpose and the killer was posing as someone with, for arguments sake, information your wife was keen to receive and this is why she went willingly.”
“I’ve come to that conclusion also, Lieutenant,” said Delaney. “What about the car? Did you get anything?”
“There were prints from both you and your wife and there were numerous other prints which we are cross checking. Has anybody else been in your car around the time your wife went missing?”
“Yes, various friends of ours and, I guess, business associates of Maria’s.”
“If you could give me a list of anyone you think has been in the car recently it would help to eliminate them.”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Delaney and watched Patrick scribbling into his notepad.
“Do you know if your wife was working on anything that would have led to her meeting this person on that day” asked Dorsey.
“No I don’t. I didn’t know much about any of the projects she was working on. She was excited about something but she never told me any details.”
“You were husband and wife, Mr. Delaney, surely she used to confide in you, talk to you about material or stories she was working on?”
“She never did. She kept that side of her life strictly off limits. I think it was just force of habit. Maybe she thought if I knew anything it might compromise her story. She did work on some pretty sensitive stuff. You might try her agent.”
“Hmph!” Dorsey sniffed, not impressed with the explanation. “And there’s nothing here that would give us any clue or indication of her current projects?
“The fire destroyed the entire office, Lieutenant,” said Delaney. “This is another point I also thought about.”
“So, were the fire and the murder connected?” Dorsey squinted and looked even more like Ol’ Blue Eyes. He paused then said. “Your movements are accounted for. You were giving some kind of yoga class on the beach a few hundred yards away when you noticed your house was on fire. We have statements from witnesses. And the fire service says some electrical fault was the cause.”
“So, I’m in the clear,” smiled Delaney grimly.
“Oh, completely,” said Dorsey. “The only way you could be involved is if you hired a contract killer and, having checked both you and your wife’s financial situation out thoroughly, there is nothing to indicate that you could afford to hire someone as sophisticated as this or that you’ve made a sudden large withdrawal. And, it’s obvious you loved your wife, Mr. Delaney. I’ve read through the interviews you gave to Sheriff Nachez.”
“Thank you,” said Delaney.
Dorsey rose to his feet and made to leave then paused. Patrick followed suit.
“Oh, one more thing,” Dorsey said. “We’ve brought your car back. It’s outside. Best you get it into your garage.”
“Thank you,” said Delaney. “So, what now?”
“What now?” Dorsey echoed. “Well, it’s a tough one, I don’t mind telling you. We are looking for witnesses in case anyone saw your wife at the country park. We’ve swept the car for prints and we will try to eliminate them from the enquiry, although I don’t expect that will lead anywhere. The confession tape gives us nothing. So, unless we can find out what your wife was working on that might have a connection we just have to keep the file open in case something turns up. We will have the FBI and other specialists run a sweep of the homicide database for similar perpetrators. There are quite a few religious freaks and body part collectors out there so we’ll see. And, as I’m sure you know, one of them has already confessed,” he grunted at his joke but Delaney had to turn away to avoid his expression being noticed.
“Oh,” Dorsey said turning back. “You said you wanted to find your wife’s killer. That’s our job, Mr. Delaney. I’m sure you will give us your full co-operation and pass on any relevant information that comes to light. Do you have anything in mind?”
“I may as well tell you,” said Delaney. “I know the person who runs Confess-Confess.” A weary smile spread over the faces both police officers.
“Interfering amateurs,” snapped Patrick speaking for the first time.
“We’ve seen the latest edition,” said Dorsey. “ We’ve seen the so-called confession and the sheriff has made a response. We’re keeping an eye on the site as I’m sure you are but it might as well be called blindalley.com. I’d like you to make me your first port of call if you come across anything, repeat, anything, that could be regarded as material evidence or any information you might dig up. Police time is limited and we want to make the best use of it. We’ll probably issue another story to the media. In any case, we’ve appealed for witnesses already so whether you put it on the web or not the story is out. You’ll probably have the press crawling all over you.”
He shuffled a couple of more paces then stopped again.
“You are ex-police and ex-services so you’re not an amateur, Mr. Delaney. We are treating your wife’s murder as a serious homicide. If you choose to use this Confess-Confess site to investigate her murder I can’t prevent you. But, it’s an unofficial operation that, I grant you, has seen some success but has also turned thousands of untrained citizens into unofficial law enforcement officers. Sometimes they might come up with something useful but more often than not they waste police time. I’d just treat that site with caution. That includes crackpot religious nuts with a poetry complex. That’s my advice. Oh, I almost forgot to ask. You seemed to disappear off the planet after you left the army, but I guess that’s your business, eh?”
“That’s correct, Lieutenant,” replied Delaney. “Then I met Maria and it all changed.”
“Well, if you believe in God you’d better start praying we get some clues in this case.”
Patrick then cleared his throat and Dorsey snapped his fingers Sinatra style. He nodded to Patrick.
“There is one more thing, Mr. Delaney,” said the officer. “We’d like to apologize for the time it took to release your wife’s body for burial. It was a complex examination and it just took longer than we expected given our backlog.”
“Thank you,” said Delaney. “There is no need to apologise.”
Delaney let Dorsey and Patrick out by the front door. There were two cars parked outside. The two officers got into Dorsey’s Chevrolet leaving Delaney’s sedan on the drive. When they had gone, Delaney went over the car with an intensity born of experience. He could see small marks where mats had been moved. He checked the trunk, engine compartment and underneath minutely.
Nothing.
Then he went inside and returned with sprays, a bucket and cloths and he cleaned the inside of the car thoroughly. He could still smell the faint scent of Maria as though the imprint of her soul permeated the interior. He would never forget her but sensing her whenever he drove anywhere was going to be painful. He thought about what Dorsey had said. The story was out since Bob Messenger had put the ‘confession’ on the site. It wasn’t going to help Dorsey but it might generate some feedback.
A couple of neighbors came by to ask how he was. Delaney told them he was going into a period of mourning and he hoped people would understand. The neighbors commiserated and said they would tell everyone they knew. Delaney then debated whether or not he should stay in the house. He needed time and privacy to sift through the blackened remnants of Maria’s office. This was his only link to the murder of his wife. No, he decided. He would do it here and now and work through the night. He ran the mile to the parking lot hard and fast and was panting by the time he reached the pick-up. He returned and shuffled the vehicles around, reversing the truck into the garage.
He moved quickly, entering the garage from the inside connecting door. He switched on the light and groaned at the contents of the pick-up. There was a considerable amount of burnt and partially burnt papers, folders, files and generally unrecognizable debris. The wreckage of Maria’s computer was embedded in congealed soot. He had no idea if the hard drive could be rescued. Delaney decided he must first sort the usable from the detritus and totally ruined. There would be time later to evaluate what he had.
Carefully, Delaney began to dissect and sift through burnt documents, letters, emails, photographs and files. He sorted any usable CDs and DVDs. Hours later, covered in dust and grime, he had assembled a stack of black bags filled with trash and a neat pile of potentially usable material that he placed inside a suitcase.
Next, he turned his attention to Maria’s computer, gently removing the soot, grime and broken glass then separated the components of the hard drive’s motherboard. He knew that it might be possible to rescue data and he knew where to take it. Finally, he took the black bags outside and stashed them in the trunk of the car. He took the suitcase back into the house and then returned, moved the pick-up onto the drive and thoroughly cleaned the vehicle and then started on the garage. It was undertaken with military precision and Delaney finished off by inspecting everything minutely. Finally, he drove the pick up back to parking lot, locked it and walked back to the house. By the time he was satisfied, it was past midday so he made more coffee and settled down to examine the contents of the suitcase.
It was a painstaking process. It was dark and the moon was up by the time he had finished. He had rescued pages of Maria’s address book, filled with names, addresses and telephone numbers. He recognized a few but the rest were a mystery. He noticed that Maria had separated business contacts from personal so this helped. There were pages of typescript, articles she had written, most of them incomplete, singed and discolored. He recognized some of the editorial as being published material. There were also some handwritten notes, personal letters and bank statements. Virtually nothing was complete in itself. He could make out sections of stories she had written and he could read some of the notes she had made. But most of the material had been obliterated, ripped, torn and blackened. He couldn’t tell if the material was current or old and dated. The process was proving more difficult than he imagined. It was one thing, he now realized, to be able to salvage readable material, but quite another to understand its possible relevance to her murder.
When he had completed the first stage of assessment he moved to the second. He began to copy down anything that appeared to be unusual or interesting. He copied every name, address, telephone number and email address he could find and tried to place them in some kind of order. He rejected anything that he recognized as being archived material and this left him with snippets of notes, all of which he copied meticulously into a spiral bound notebook. At this point he had decided against inputting anything into his laptop. A few names cropped up more than once, and then he managed to disentangle some papers welded by the flames that revealed some notes that were dated. Delaney breathed a sigh of relief.
At last, a piece of tangible evidence.
The date was recent, only a few weeks before Maria’s disappearance and murder. Delaney was tired and his eyes ached but his instincts told him this could be important. One word appeared several times, once underlined with a row of question marks after it.
The word was Lifeforce.
It meant nothing to Delaney. Then, using a pair of tweezers, he carefully lifted a friable sheet from a congealed mass. What was written on the sheet, even though browned and distorted, leaped out at him. It was headed with the word Lifeforce and under it was a list of names: Lena Maclean, Dr. Ruth Velasquez, Jeff and Geraldine Mason. Only one of those names had a telephone number scrawled by its side.
That name was Lena Maclean.
Delaney sat back and considered the information. He placed everything back into the suitcase and took the notebook over to his travel bag. He cleaned the inspection area thoroughly and then took the suitcase outside and placed it in the trunk of the sedan with the other bags. Tomorrow he would drive to San Francisco with the hard drive and drop off the bags and suitcase in a refuse tip. Then he would call on the specialist he knew in the city who could work miracles with ruined computers. It was a long shot but it was worth taking. After that he planned to drive to the site of Maria’s murder. He needed to see it for himself.
His last task before hitting the sack was to email Lieutenant Dorsey with a list of names of people that may have been in their car going back a few months before her disappearance. He mentioned to Dorsey that this was largely guesswork on his part.
While he was on line, he logged in to confess-confess.com and didn’t have to scroll or link too far before finding the story he was looking for. ‘Journalist slain in ritual killing’ was the headline that jumped out at you. The story that followed was tight and accurate, not sensational. The murder was sensational in its own right. It didn’t need embellishment. Under the lead story was an edited version of Delaney’s story written under Bob Messenger’s by-line. The story was very much as Delaney had written it with the really personal stuff left out. The most compelling piece was the next in sequence, the confession from the person claiming to be the killer. On the screen the biblical quotes and the unwieldy rhyme burned with a life of their own. It was powerful and riveting. The audio clip was not included.
That would have been too much.
Finally, there was a stifled and predictable quote from Sheriff Nachez saying that his department had called in a team of detectives and were conducting a meticulous investigation. He had made a ‘no comment’ response to the purported confession. Then there was an appeal from Bob Messenger who began by summarizing the homicide and its ritualistic, religious aspects. He called for information, particularly if there had been other unsolved murders that bore a resemblance or had an identical M.O. The most potent post came from a new investigator, The Monk- a promise to track down the killer however long it took. Responses had been extensive with speculation rife and a number of amateur investigators coming on board.
As he made himself a nightcap before grabbing some sleep in preparation for an early start next morning, his subconscious began to replay the names of Lena Maclean and Lifeforce in a mental loop. He remembered that his wife’s New York agent Miles Dunning, who had been of great support to Delaney organising the funeral arrangements, had said that the only thing he knew about the project Maria was working on was that it had an environmental angle and was a women’s interest story. Did Lifeforce qualify as environmental? Delaney’s gut instinct told him that these names and the others on that page could have some connection with the story she was working on, a story that must be so incriminating that a killer with a bizarre and twisted sense of religious zeal murdered his wife while another unknown perpetrator tried to burn down his house.
Acting on sudden instinct he went back to his laptop, logged into the site and entered a new post thread under the main story. “Revenge is mine, saith the Monk. I have found clues. I have names and locations. You think I’m kidding? Let me give you one little taster. Who is Lena?” He signed it ‘The Monk’.
This ought to set wheels in motion, he thought as he closed his eyes and slipped into a deep but disturbed sleep.
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