THIRTY-FOUR

 

 

September 26th, 2016

Las Vegas, Nevada

 

MIKE SAID THE house was clear after a half hour and then he set up a signal-blocking device so that no one could listen to anything said in the house. Then he set up clean phones for all of them.

That made Julia feel a little better. Not much, but a little. She just kept remembering times that her chief in Reno steered her and her partner in a certain direction off of a missing person’s case.

She felt sick to her stomach with a deep anger she had no idea if she could ever get past. She had trusted him and he had betrayed her.

When Mike was done, he glanced at everyone going over the files on the big dining room table. “You want to tell me exactly what all this is about?”

“These names are all family members and descendants of a hidden cult from almost a hundred years ago,” Annie said, pointing at the boards and then the files on the tables.

“We’re starting to get the idea that this cult has very deep roots in both Reno and Las Vegas,” Lott said.

“You found the person who tipped off Maxwell in Reno yet?” Julia asked.

“Getting closer,” Mike said.

Julia pushed back from the table, standing and going over to one board. She pointed to Norbert’s name. “Look familiar?”

Mike shook his head.

“My old boss, the Reno Chief of Police.”

“Oh, shit,” Mike said.

Julia watched as his eyes got wide as he suddenly realized just what they were dealing with.

“The older couple that we interviewed because they had been neighbors back when Paul grew up?” Lott said.

“Don’t tell me,” Mike said.

Lott nodded and pointed to the top family name on one of the boards.

“We don’t know what’s true and what isn’t at this point,” Annie said. “I have two people searching for any records of that cult that started all this in Florida past the names of the families.”

“How did the cult end?” Mike asked.

“We’re pretty convinced it didn’t,” Lott said. “But we don’t know anything about it other than from what two cult members told us, and we sure can’t trust that.”

“We tried to trace the number I got and had called them on,” Julia said. “It was a burner phone now off and more than likely tossed.”

That simple fact that those two old people had played her made her almost as angry as her old boss being a part of this.

“You got more people you can trust and who are fantastic on computers?” Annie asked.

“I got four,” Mike said, nodding. “And Heather and I will dig in as well.”

“Thanks,” Annie said. “I’ll have my people send you all this when you get back and say you are ready. We need help tracking property owned by these people or by names of these people who are dead. Somewhere in Reno and in Las Vegas, four people are being held. And who knows what these creeps are doing to them.”

Mike nodded and headed for the door.

“Thanks, Mike,” Annie said.

“Thank me when we run these people to the ground,” Mike said as he headed into the kitchen to go out the back door.

Julia felt a ton better with Mike and Heather and his team on board this as well.

Twenty minutes later it was Lott who made another breakthrough.

“I think I found Paul’s real wife,” he said, sitting back, staring at the files in front of him.

Julia stood and went over and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Maxwell is married to Tammy Craig, a descendant of the original Craig family.”

Julia moved away and put Paul’s name on one of the two blank boards they had left. Then beside Paul’s name she wrote Maxwell. And then with a line she added in Tammy Craig.

“Tammy had a twin sister named Wendy Craig,” Lott said. “She’s a real estate agent.”

“The woman we talked to at the house?” Julia asked before marking Wendy Craig’s name up on the board and putting a question mark between her and Paul.

“I’ll have my people pull up her license picture and her address and have them check it all and send it over,” Annie said, grabbing her phone.

After ten more minutes of work, Annie’s phone rang and she held up a picture of Wendy Craig, now married and living under the name Wendy Walter.”

Annie showed it to Lott and then Julia.

All Julia could do was stare. It wasn’t the same woman. Not even close.

So some other woman had been in that house. But who?

“Information coming in about her husband,” Annie said. And then she laughed. “One guess as to his first name?”

“Paul.” All three of them said the name at the same time.

Julia, for the first time in an hour, felt slightly better.