Hollywood Scream (The Hollywood Alphabet Series Book 19) Page 10

  “Maybe Crazy Anne wanted her students to think of her as God,” Joe said. “We need to find the kids.”

  John Greer folded his arms across his muscular chest and nodded. “Let’s organize some groups to search the rest of the property. Maybe there are other buildings where Anne or the kids are hiding out.”

  We paired up and set out to search the rugged hills around the school. Joe and I worked together, taking a path down by the river. We spent the better part of an hour seeing nothing but trees, rocks, and the river.

  “Have the other teams found anything?” I asked when we took a break on some rocks by the water.

  “Nothing. It looks like the Angel and his crazy mama have flown the coop.”

  “And the children.”

  He looked at me. “I hate to say it, but...”

  When he didn’t go on, I said, “You think they could be dead.”

  “Mama maniac didn’t want the staff talking, probably the same thing went for the kids.”

  I released a long breath, my gaze moving off to the water. The thought of more killings, especially involving children, was more than I could bear.

  I looked back at Joe. “Then where do you suppose the bodies are?”

  “Maybe buried on the grounds somewhere. The department has some new hyperspectral imaging equipment that’s used to find decomposing bodies. That will probably be our next step.”

  I’d glanced at my phone as he spoke and didn’t respond to what he’d said.

  “I was trying to impress you, Buttercup. Don’t tell me you missed everything I just said.”

  “Hyper-something imaging, got it.” I looked up from my phone. “I was just thinking Google Earth should have some images of the property surrounding the school.”

  “Anything?”

  I went back to the screen. “Not sure. Give me a sec.” It took a couple minutes, but I finally found images of the school, the cottages, and the dormitory building. “Found it.” I scrolled through the images again, before glancing up and taking a look at the area around us. “It looks like there’s a rock formation about a mile in that direction.” I motioned toward the area I was looking at.

  Joe stood. “Nothing to lose. Let’s check it out.”

  The brush grew heavier as we moved away from the river. We passed by a stand of dogwoods, their leaves turning red, before coming to the rock formation I’d seen on the Internet.

  “Lots of rock,” Joe said. “I’m not sure this is getting us anywhere.”

  “Probably not. Let’s take a quick look, then head back to the school.”

  We spent the next half hour scouring the area around the rocks, before deciding to call it quits. I was walking away when I saw light reflecting off something to the side of me.

  I walked over in that direction, as Joe called out to me. “What is it?”

  “Probably nothing. Let me just take a quick...”

  I stopped talking in mid-sentence and suddenly knew what I’d seen reflecting in the afternoon sunlight. I then said the one word that strikes fear into the heart of every law enforcement officer.

  “GUN!”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Joe came rushing up behind me as I levelled my gun on the man standing in front of me. “Drop the weapon!” I demanded.

  “I don’t even know...” His hands started to shake, and the weapon tumbled to the ground. He then raised his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot!”

  Joe was at my side now and picked up the weapon. He roughly turned the man against the rock formation and cuffed him. When he was under control, I holstered my weapon.

  “Start talking, grandpa,” Joe said, as he turned the man to face us. Our prisoner looked like he was in his late fifties. He had thick gray hair and a stocky build. “And make sure every word is the god-damned truth.”

  Our prisoner stammered, “I...I was just t...told to watch the place, make sure no one interferes with the Infusion.”

  Joe glanced at me, his brow tightening. He looked back at the man. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “The children. I’m their caretaker, until they transform.” He smiled. “Some people think of me as a kind of chrysalis.”

  What he’d said seemed crazy, but I wanted answers. I took a step closer to him. “Where are the children?”

  He cut his eyes toward a nearby rock formation for an instant, then looked back at me. “I can’t tell you. It is forbidden.”

  Joe had him by the collar. “Start making sense, or...”

  “Joe,” I said, interrupting him. “I think he’s talking about the rocks over there.” I pointed to the formation about fifty yards away.

  “What’s your name?” Joe asked the man. He turned him around and began searching him. “Never mind. I got a feeling you’re just a troll, lost in the woods.” He fished a wallet out of his back pocket. He took a moment, looking through the contents, then said to me, “What are the odds? This is Mr. Carson Parker.”

  It was now my turn to grab the little man by his shirt. I pushed him up against the rocks and moved closer, inches from his face. “Tell us what’s going on, or, I swear to God, you’ll end up in the worst shithole prison in this state.”

  Our suspect gasped in a breath. “Okay, just give me a moment to explain.”

  I released him. “Your moment is up.”

  He took another breath. “I’m Anne’s brother. I’m the Keeper of the Children.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Joe said, leaning on the little man.

  “I watch over the children until they’re ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  He sighed and shook his head. “I was afraid this would happen someday. Let me show you.”

  At his direction, we moved forward, toward the rock formation I’d mentioned to Joe earlier. We stopped and saw there was a place where the rocks formed a natural cave.

  “The children are in there,” Carson Parker told us. “I’m not sure how they will react when they see strangers. They might think it’s a hallucination.”

  We stepped closer to the cave entrance, where we found a flashlight. Joe used it to illuminate the cavern as we moved inside. We had only gone about ten yards into the cave when we saw something that was so startling, I had trouble believing what I was seeing.

  Children, maybe a dozen in total, were lying on a platform at the back of the cave. They were naked and huddled together, apparently terrified that we were intruding on their secret place. Their eyes shone as they looked in our direction, giving the impression they were untamed, like wild animals.

  We stopped, and I glanced at Joe and the man who had led us inside. My gaze was then drawn back to the children as I heard their voices suddenly rise up, echoing throughout the cave like something out of a house of horrors.

  They were screaming!

  TWENTY-SIX

  “The children have all been taken,” Anne Parker told her son. The leader of The Realm had pushed her long gray hair up under a baseball cap and was wearing sunglasses. The press had picked up on the FBI raid at her school, and she couldn’t take a chance on being recognized. “The metamorphosis was not completed.”

  “It’s my understanding The Keeper failed us.” Alexander said, his gaze moving off and taking in the street. He was meeting his mother at an outdoor café and was in disguise, having long ago learned that one could never to be too careful. He looked back at his mother. “My uncle never could be trusted.”

  Anne sighed. “He has failed us.” She reached over and touched her son’s hand. “But you have brought me great honor. I’m so proud of you.”

  “Thank you, but the work isn’t finished. After things settle down, I will begin again. It is my duty to protect your power.”

  “Thank you. I am forever grateful.”

  A server came over with sandwiches they’d ordered. They waited until the outdoor patio where they were meeting was empty again. Alexander lowered his voice. “The Prophecy will eventually be fulfilled. I promise.”
>
  “Of course. Someday there will be other children who will be transformed by The Light and help protect me. In the meantime, we must be prepared. He will be coming for you. It’s a matter of time.”

  Alexander raised his voice, his anger surfacing. “And I will kill him, just as it is written.”

  Anne brushed the tears from her eyes. “I have no doubt that you will do what is expected.”

  The duo finished eating and left the restaurant. As they walked to their cars, Anne leaned against her son, placing an arm around him. She glanced at the people passing by and chuckled. They had no idea what was happening. An Angel and his mother were amongst them; powerful, radiant beings ready to fulfill their destiny.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  We spent the rest of the day and part of the night arranging care for the twelve children found in the cave. They ranged in age from five to eleven, and my earlier impression about them being like wild animals had been borne out.

  The children had been drugged, suffered from hallucinations, and were deathly afraid of outsiders. We arranged for them to receive medical and psychiatric care, before attempting to question Carson Parker at the FBI headquarters building in Glastonbury. That interview ended when he refused to waive his rights and lawyered up.

  After getting hotel rooms, we all got some sleep before John Greer’s scheduled meeting with taskforce members at mid-afternoon the following day. All the members of the original taskforce were gathered at the table, including Professor Walling, who had flown in after apparently getting over his earlier snit. After discussing yesterday’s events, Greer decided we needed to put everything we knew about the case into perspective. He asked Hayden Kinnear to summarize the facts, going back to when the Angel began his reign of terror.

  Kinnear took a sip of water, then began an overview of where we stood. “The man who calls himself the Angel began his killing spree approximately ten years ago in the Long Beach area of Southern California. His first victim was Carrie Ann Montrose, age eighteen. She was tortured and bludgeoned to death at home while her parents were away. That murder was the first of three killings in California, before the Angel moved on to Texas, Florida, and then several east coast cities. In almost every case, DNA evidence has been collected at the crime scene, but none of it has been tied to anything in CODIS.

  “A total of eighteen victims have been attributed to the Angel. We were recently able to identify a former inmate named Wade Langston as having contact with a man named Johnny Drake while they were in prison in Florida together. Drake had worked with the Angel at one time, probably helping him find his victims. Before he died, Langston gave up the name Parker as the person Drake had told him about. As we all know, Drake was murdered, probably at the hands of the Angel, who we’ve now identified as Alexander Mathias Parker.”

  Kinnear put up several photographs of Parker in his police uniform on the monitor. I exchanged glances with Olivia, both of us sickened by the knowledge that a former officer in our department was the Angel.

  Greer spoke up again. “We know about his most recent victim, Bailey Sullivan, and how Parker escaped capture, possibly with the assistance of his mother.” He looked at Kinnear. “Let’s pick up the story there and talk about her background.”

  Kinnear began filling us in on our suspect’s mother. “Anne Taylor Parker was born in Dearborn, Michigan, on August 4th, 1960. She was the only daughter of Sheila and James Parker. We don’t know a lot about her early background, other than her father was a college professor. Anne went on to graduate from Fordson High in 1978, before attending college at Northwestern University, majoring in psychology. She became pregnant with her only child, Alexander, after graduating, and he was born in 1983.”

  “And the baby daddy?” Joe asked.

  “The birth certificate lists the father as unknown. We looked at Alexander Parker’s background file when he was hired by LAPD. He stated he was born out of wedlock and never knew his father’s name.”

  “Let’s talk about the school that Parker’s mother founded,” Greer said.

  “I’ll let Eva speak to that,” Kinnear said. “She has the background.”

  Eva shuffled some papers and filled us in. “The Realm was established as a live-in private school for children in the early 1990s. It was advertised as offering instruction from elementary through middle school, using the highest level of instructors. We’ve verified that Alexander was the first graduate of his mother’s school.”

  “The crazy academy,” Joe said.

  Professor Walling apparently hadn’t completely gotten over his earlier dust-up with Joe, and said, “Let’s keep this professional, for once.”

  Joe smiled at him, then told Eva, “Give us a moment while the professor leaves the room, since we’re keeping things professional.”

  Greer headed off the confrontation. “Let’s move on, leave personality issues out of this.”

  Eva continued. “We’ve conducted interviews with some of the former students of The Realm over the past couple of days. What we learned is pretty harrowing. In some cases, parents voluntarily placed their children at the school, but quickly realized Anne wanted total control. She tried to keep the parents from having any contact with the children.

  “In other cases, Anne convinced the parents to let her adopt their child. There are other children who appear to have been kidnapped and kept at the school for years, without the authorities ever realizing what happened. There’s even a couple of circumstances where it appears babies were taken from local hospitals and raised by Anne at the school.”

  “And the drugs?” Greer asked.

  “The former students all say they were isolated and lived in constant fear of being physically abused by Anne and her counselors, as they called her assistants at the school. They all reported being given what Anne called ‘The Light’, which was probably DPT. Many of the former students are still suffering from the effects of the abuse and the forced drug use.”

  “What was the purpose of drugging them?” Walling asked.

  “It appears to have partially been a means of control, but there may have also been a darker, more sinister purpose. Some of the children were told that The Light would eventually allow them to escape.”

  “You mean, escape the school?” I asked.

  Eva shook her head. “To escape this life. They were told that, if they followed the path shown to them by The Light, they would eventually ascend to another place, which may explain the basis of the name chosen for the school.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “The children were told to follow The Light because it would eventually lead them to another world: a place called The Realm.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The room was quiet as we all processed what Eva had said. The depth of the madness Anne Parker had visited upon the children in her school and her son was palpable. What trauma might she have suffered that had caused her to lose her sanity?

  John Greer finally spoke up. “I think we’ve uncovered only part of what’s behind the Angel’s crimes. His mother is obviously insane and probably influencing her son, but her rationale for abusing and drugging her students isn’t completely clear to me.”

  “I agree,” Eva said. “I think we’ve only scratched the surface in understanding these crimes and what’s motivating Anne and her son.”

  Professor Walling gave us his thoughts. “The motivation is an apocalyptic compulsion to kill. Our suspect’s mother believes she’s in touch with a higher power that offers a heavenly refuge from the troubles of this life; a place she refers to as ‘The Realm’. As I previously indicated, these crimes are the work of a visionary killer.”

  “You left out a few details, pops,” Joe said. “Including the kidnapping of children, the use of a mind-altering drug, mama’s psychotic behavior, and her son’s ritual of depraved murder. Eva’s right, we’ve only started to put this case together.”

  “Those details aren’t germane to closing a case that’s remai
ned unsolved due to a lack of competent police work. You people have no one to blame for these murders but yourselves.”

  Joe lowered his baritone voice, his anger surfacing. “Since when are you an expert on police work?”

  Walling smiled. “It looks like I’ve touched a nerve. Perhaps the lack of professionalism and competency of this taskforce needs to be reported to the press.” The professor gathered his paperwork and stood.

  Greer spoke up before he left the room. “What is said in this room is confidential, as per your agreement when you joined this taskforce. If you fail to honor that, I’ll personally see to it that you never work another investigation.”

  Walling started to respond when Joe stood, grabbed him by a belt loop of his pants, and marched him to the door. After tossing him out of the room, slamming the door, and returning to the table, he apologized. “Sorry, but somebody had to take out the trash.”

  After some laughter and a few comments from other agents who said they never wanted to see the professor again, Greer gave us his take on our case. “After taking a victim, the Angel normally kills again within seventy-two hours, then often kills again within the next few days. Given that there hasn’t been another murder since Bailey Sullivan, I believe we have some time before he kills again.”

  Joe agreed. “Parker and his crazy mother are probably regrouping, planning their next move.”

  Greer nodded. “Based on where we’re at, I’m going to form a smaller working group to continue to interview former students at the school. In the meantime, everyone else can go back to their regular assignments. That said, I want each of you ready to reconvene on a moment’s notice. If we get any sign the Parkers are at work again, you will all be notified.”

  Olivia and I learned that we would be on a red-eye flight to Los Angeles at midnight. Joe apparently got wind of our itinerary and called, asking if we wanted to have dinner. I told Olivia about his offer, but she declined, telling me that she wanted to get some rest before the flight. I knew it was her way of giving me some more time to sort through my feelings about Joe over dinner.