63

LD Gaudet was crying softly as Heather and I slipped into the two chairs across from her desk. After a while, she opened a drawer and pulled out a Kleenex to wipe her eyes and her nose.

Finally she said, “I’m a mess, and not just what you’re seeing here on the surface.”

I nodded. I knew the feeling. “I’m not here to dig into your past, LD.”

“But you have, you must have, to say what you said just now about my past.”

“A private investigator I contacted in New Orleans knew about your family. About your father. And about Delbert Baldou, your uncle, who took you in when your father died. I just put the pieces together. But some pieces are still missing.”

She opened her mouth, and at first nothing came out.

I didn’t say a word, but I had a good idea what was coming.

LD said, “We came to New Orleans to stay for a few months over the summer with Uncle Delbert. My father had a new construction job and he would be traveling a lot. Dad took us to Six Flags down there as a treat because he was leaving the next day to head back north. I was in the girls’ room when . . . when Lucinda wandered off to look at something. And disappeared. Oh, poor Lucinda, she just vanished.”

As LD struggled to keep her composure, I gave her time.

After a moment, she continued. “My dad and I pushed the police to find out what was going on. There was talk among the detectives who were doing the investigation that her killing might involve some mysterious group. Abductions of girls. Human slavery. Even cult sacrifice. You can imagine my horror. . . .”

“Just barely . . .”

She kept talking. “I thought at the time, that if I ever do anything in life, it’s going to be in law enforcement to make a difference. To put a stop to this kind of evil. No more lives destroyed. Like Lucinda was. Like my family was.”

There were so many things I wanted to say but wondered where to start. Heather said them for me.

Heather was weeping softly, and her voice was broken when she said, “We are so, so very sorry for what happened to your family. Our hearts break for you. And please forgive us for having to bring up those painful memories.”

“I’m fine,” LD said. “I got counseling for a couple of months after it happened,” she said. “After they found Lucinda’s remains in the bayou.” She paused for a short, heavy-laden moment and added, “I’ve moved on. I guess.”

I said, “I know there’s an internal affairs team investigating the identity of the insider who’s running Chicken Fox Videos. And the possible connection between that criminal scheme and the deaths of Jason Forester and Paul Pullmen.”

Her eyes were clear of tears by then, and she was watching me closely.

I continued. “I know all the legal ropes the DOJ has tied around you in terms of confidentiality. But I also know that those rules might not stop you from bringing in outside consultants. So treat me as your consultant. You can talk to me within the scope of that consulting relationship. Right?”

LD was still studying me.

“I’m not new to this. I had that kind of relationship with Detective Dick Valentine at the NYPD.”

“Yes, I know,” she said.

“Of course, that’s right; you already talked to him.”

She tipped her head in a slight nod. “You really do have it nailed down, don’t you?”

“Not nearly enough. You mentioned ‘death by voodoo’ in your call to Dick, which is where this all started for me.”

“That’s because I knew the two of you had a relationship. I was hoping he would bring you into this.”

“But the voodoo connection . . .”

“As part of the team, I saw the actual FedEx letter that Jason Forester received. Remember, I may have been born up in Connecticut, but I spent a lot of time later in New Orleans with Uncle Delbert. I know voodoo when I see it. All the symbols. It’s all right there if you can recognize it.”

“And Paul Pullmen’s death?”

LD said, “I think you’re onto something about the manner of his death. The voodoo subcult of Palo Mayombe certainly fits.”

Heather jumped in. “But of course, nobody in the federal law enforcement field is ever going to hint about being a follower. . . .”

“Right,” LD said. “Which brings us to current status. Our team is getting bogged down. Maybe even blocked. As a result, we haven’t located the evildoer inside the federal system. Call it desperation, but that’s why I reached out to you via Dick Valentine.”

“Hence the digital voice distorter, so you could keep your distance.”

“We had one lying around in an evidence locker.”

“There’s a rush on this,” I said. “I heard the bad actors are going to ship all their female captives out of the United States soon.”

She was nodding. “And even more Internet chatter as of yesterday. We think it’s going to happen in the next twelve to twenty-four hours.”

It shouldn’t have hit me that hard, actually hearing the timeline narrowed down like that. But it did. “Anything else you can give me? Anything?”

She paused. “Okay. So, you’re here. You found me. Impressive. You’ve passed the test, consultant.”

I grinned.

She said, “Here goes. . . . I’ll share some intel with you. First, a code we’ve discovered.”

“Digital coding?”

“Yes.”

Heather jumped in. “You’re talking about the dark web? The networks that are sharing these child porn videos?”

“Exactly,” LD said. “I’ve been working with some Internet steganography experts, and we’ve located a code fragment that has appeared on the network protocols used by Chicken Fox Videos. It showed up three times. Used, I believe, as a type of kill order. It first appeared twenty-four hours before the death of Jason Forester. Then a day before the murder of Paul Pullmen. And after that, just before the very recent death of a Louisiana local that was contrived to look like a suicide.”

Heather said, “Henry Bosant. In Port Sulphur. A hanging.”

“That’s the one,” she said. “Meanwhile there are other code strands we think might also be kill directives. We’re still trying to decipher those.”

“What’s the code that you’ve identified?” I asked.

LD snatched up a pen, wrote something down on a small piece of notepaper, and shoved it over the desk to me.

Adj111C62

I asked the obvious question. “Any idea what it stands for, or is this just an operational cipher?”

“Haven’t the faintest. We located the code yesterday and our encryption guys are working on it.”

I wanted to know if she had something else to share, anything that would help me tag the culprit.

“Yes. One other thing,” she said. “Our foreign agents have picked up this one word in the dark net chatter. We think it’s linked to Chicken Fox Videos.”

“Just a single word?” I asked.

“Yes. The word was Matamoros.”

Heather asked, “The city in Mexico?”

“That’s one possibility,” LD said. “It popped up each of the three times that the kill-order protocol code also appeared.”

I wondered out loud if there was a deeper significance for the word.

Heather chimed in. “Matamoros is a Spanish word. It has something to do with a vision experienced by a Spanish king. As a result, during a war he ordered the slaughter of thousands of Moors.”

LD gave an admiring nod of the head. “Father and daughter. You guys make an impressive team.”

I said. “She’s the smart one. Me? I’m just persistent.”

“There’s another possible meaning too,” Heather said. “It has to do with a cult leader and drug dealer in Mexico by the name of Adolfo Constanzo. He was known as ‘the Godfather of Matamoros.’”

I asked LD whether his name rang a bell, but she shook her head no.

I had one last question. “The internal affairs task force looking into all this, is Gil Spencer in DOJ part of it?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone from the US attorney’s office for the District of Columbia part of the group?”

“No.”

“How about the attorney general himself, George Shazzar? Is he part of the team?”

“Nope,” she said with an air of certainty.