Chapter Nineteen
It was one-thirty local time when Connie got to her hotel room, nine-thirty in the morning in Los Angeles. She dialed Serafin.
“Serafin,” he answered. She could tell by the sounds of traffic that he was on his commute and using a hands-free headset.
“Richard, it’s Connie. Did you hear anything about the concert?”
“No. How did it go?”
“Something happened. Someone may have died, but there was no body. There was blood all over the floor—enough blood to fill a bathtub.”
“What are you talking about …?Oh great. What’s the problem now?” he cursed, his voice further away and sounding distracted. She guessed it was something with the traffic.
“Richard?”
“Go ahead. I’m stuck in traffic. Tell me everything. How did your meeting with St. James go?”
“Rich, he’s a drunk, and so far he hasn’t been able to get close to these people. This is a bigger story than we thought.” She told him everything that had happened since her meeting with St. James the day before, including Professor Klapp.
“Guttierez is dead?” he said incredulously.
“We don’t know. He disappeared during the mêlée. They found his hat on the floor in a sea of blood?”
“A fucking Druid troll? Are you kidding me? Are you telling me Manny Guttierez and his date were butchered on the dance floor? Do you realize how crazy that sounds? And no bodies or body parts …? Wait a minute. We’re moving again. I’m about ten minutes away from the office. I’ll call you as soon as I get in.”
Connie took a hot shower, trying to wash the stench from her skin and hair. She was still shaking when she got out. She had considered herself a seasoned reporter—she’d covered a riot at a rock festival in Marin County once, and had drive-alongs in college with the Irvine Police. Nothing could have prepared her for that blinding red lake when the lights came on.
She dried herself off and dressed in a navy, velour tracksuit. She switched on the TV and flipped from news channel to news channel, searching for something on the massacre. But who had been massacred, and why?
And where were the bodies?
Connie realized that most of the crowd in front of the stage must have been in on it. They would have had to be. How else to account for the dismemberment and disappearance of two people in the middle of a dance floor? They could have spirited the body parts out—torsos and heads would be the most difficult, but it had been very dark when the crowd panicked and Connie hadn’t noticed people carrying body parts. There had been a mass exodus of undifferentiated people.
How easy was it to dismember a body on a dance floor? A lot easier if helping hands secured them. But it could be done. If David Copperfield could vanish an airliner, the Banshees could disappear a couple of bodies.
Her phone rang. “I’m in my office,” Serafin said. “Do you think Guttierez and his friend were murdered?”
“I don’t know what to think, Richard. I’ve never been in a situation like that. It was harrowing.”
“Did anybody notify the police?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Rich, we were all in such a panic to get out of there. I didn’t think it would do the magazine any good for me to be questioned about a crime that may or may not have taken place.”
“Of course it would,” Serafin said. “What’s the matter with you?”
Connie knew he was right, but she hadn’t been about to subject herself to intense police grilling just to spiff up a story! What had they actually seen? If the story ever got out people would wonder why Connie hadn’t called the police.
I control the story.
She realized Serafin had been talking. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Are you listening to me? What’s wrong with you?”
“Richard, I’ve been up for twenty hours, and I have just been through a traumatic experience.”
“All right, okay. How’s St. James holding up?”
“He’s worthless. He’s a hard-core alky.”
Connie listened to Serafin sigh. “Does Melchior know?”
“I have no idea. That’s not my responsibility.”
“What are you going to write?”
“I don’t know.”
Beat.
“Rich.”
“What?”
“I have photos of the dance floor and the trail of blood leading to the entrance.”
“Send them.”
“What do I do about St. James?”
“I feel he’s valuable to the story. Hang with him. Make him part of the story.”
“My albatross. I have to go to bed now.”
“Will you be able to sleep?”
“I don’t know.”