Ceremony in Death (In Death #5)(42)

Saying nothing, Roarke took the empty tube, slipped it into the recycling slot, and fetched the boy another.

“It was really quiet inside,” Jamie continued as he broke the seal. “Like dead. Dark. I had a minilight, but I didn’t use it. I got upstairs, bypassed the palm plate and the cameras. The locks weren’t that tricky. I figure they didn’t think anybody’d have the nerve to come that far without an invite, you know? I got inside and the place was empty. I couldn’t figure it. I’d seen them go in, I’d seen the light, but the place was empty. So I poked around. They’ve got some screwy stuff in there. And it smelled… off. Sorta like the incense and junk in a Free-Agers’ shop, but different. Just off. I was in one of the bedrooms. There’s this wild statue in there. This guy with a pig head and a man’s body with a really monster c**k at full alert.”

He stopped, flushed a little as he remembered he was talking to females as well as cops. “Sorry.”

“I’ve seen cocks at full alert before,” Eve said mildly. “Go on.”

“Okay. So I was just sort of looking at it, and this guy comes in. I thought, Shit, I’m busted, but he didn’t see me. He got something out of a drawer, turned around, and walked out. Never even looked my way.” Jamie shook his head, sipped deeply, as he re-experienced the bowel-liquefying fear. “I got to the doorway just as he was going through the wall. Secret panel,” he explained with a quick grin. “I thought they were only in old videos. I gave it a couple of minutes and went in after him.”

At this, Eve simply pressed her hands to her face, digging her fingers into the knots. “You went in after him.”

“Yeah, my luck was holding pretty good. There’s this stairway, narrow. I think it was stone. I could hear music. Not really music, more like voices, sort of humming. And that off smell was stronger. The stairway turns and there’s this room. About half the size of this one, with mirrored walls. Lots of candles and more horny statues. It’s smoky. Something’s in the smoke, because it makes me lightheaded. I try to be careful not to breathe too much in.”

He stared down at the drink in his hand. This part was hard, he realized. Harder than he’d thought it would be. “There’s this raised platform, all this carving. Some sort of words, I think, but I can’t make it out. Alice is lying on it. She’s naked. The three of them are standing over her saying something. Singing it, I guess, but I can’t understand them. They’re doing things to her, to each other.”

He had to swallow again. His face was bone white with high, red blotches on the cheeks. “They’ve got like sex toys and she’s… letting them. Both of them. And she lets them, she lets them do her while that Cross bitch watches. Alice just lets them…”

Without realizing it, Eve reached out, took his hand, let him grip her fingers hard enough to rub bone.

“I couldn’t stay there. I was sick, seeing that, and the smoke, the sounds. I had to get out.” His eyes were wet now as he looked up. “She wouldn’t have let them do that if they hadn’t messed with her mind. She wasn’t a slut. She wasn’t.”

“I know. Did you tell anyone?”

“I couldn’t.” He swiped the back of one hand over his face. “It would’ve killed my mom. I wanted to hit Alice with it, hit her hard with it. I was so pissed off. But I couldn’t. I was embarrassed I’d seen her like that, I guess. My sister.”

“It’s all right.”

“I went back to the club a couple nights later and got in.”

“They let you inside?”

“I got fake ID. Places like that, they don’t care if you look twelve if you got ID that says different. Security’s tighter there. They’ve got scanners, electronic and human, every damn where. I spotted Alice with that Lobar creep. They went upstairs, all the way up to the fancy level. I couldn’t get in, but I got close enough to see they’d disappeared again. So I figure there must be a room up there, too. Like the one in the apartment. I was working out a way to get in after hours, then Alice ditched them. She moved in with that Isis character for awhile, got her own place and that job. And she didn’t go to the club anymore, or back to the apartment.”

He let out a sigh. “I thought she’d straightened herself out, that it had gotten through what creeps they were. She talked to me a little.”

“Did she tell you about the people she’d been involved with?”

“Not really. She just said she’d made a mistake, a terrible one. That she was like, atoning, cleansing, that zip brain stuff of hers. I knew she was scared, but she talked to my grandfather, so I figured things would be mellow again. Did they kill him, too?”

“There’s no evidence of that. I’m not going to discuss it with you,” she added when he lifted his haunted eyes to hers. “And you’re not to discuss this with anyone. You’re not to go near that club or that apartment again. If you do and I find out — and I will find out — I’ll slap a security bracelet on you and you won’t be able to burp without a scanner picking it up.”

“It’s my family.”

“Yes, it is. And if you want to be a cop, you’d better learn that if you can’t be objective, you can’t do the job.”

“My grandfather wouldn’t have been objective,” Jamie said quietly. “And now he’s dead.”