“Hopefully, they try it today and our hidden marshals can arrest them all,” I said.

  “That would be ideal. What kind of man takes payment to gang rape another man’s wife?”

  “When you catch them, ask them,” I said. “I’ll be at a hotel tonight. Lucas has gone to my house to get me clothes.”

  “We’ve had no luck finding Bruno Clooney. It’s like he fell off the face of the Earth,” Gabriel said.

  “Maybe he’s dead,” I suggested.

  “Do you want to bet someone’s life on it?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “I will be at our offices all night if you need me,” Gabriel said. “Lucas has been assigned to the DeLong residence in case he returns there.”

  “And Lydia Rolf?” I asked.

  “Lydia Rolf is not adjusting well to being surrounded by psychopathic women who she can’t manipulate,” Gabriel said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Good!” I replied. We all hung up and I laid down on the hotel bed. The NSA had secured my room before I arrived and the USB monitoring device was already plugged into the smart TV. I considered turning it on and decided against it. Oh, how quick the mighty fall. The NSA had also left a file for me in my room. It outlined all the evidence against me in the Brogdon case, including payments into an account in the Cayman Islands. It wasn’t in my name, but that of my brother. That had been the smartest thing they had done. If it had been in my name, it would have been flagged by the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency. However, someone had gone to the Cayman Islands a few months ago and made a withdrawal from it. The bank said they didn’t have a photo of the account holder and by extension refused to turn one over to the NSA and CIA, but both agencies were positive the bank had a photo on file for the account holder. Eric’s fake account, or rather my fake account, was oddly tied to a bank account in the name of Ressla Daniels, one of Ivan’s children. Transfers from Eric’s account to Ressla’s were plentiful. We had learned I’d been in the process of being set up for close to two years by someone within law enforcement, not for murder but for working for Brogdon. It would have negated all the cases I’d been involved in, including the prosecution of a hitman known to work for the Brogdon organization. I needed to go through my case files and figure out what I was doing two years ago to figure out why they had decided to target me. Although Peter West thought it was just a matter of convenience. I was known and at any moment the SCTU might have turned their powers on organized crime and its bosses, like Yuri Brogdon.

  I felt as though I ought to be doing something, but I didn’t know what that something was. After some minutes of lying on the bed not sure what to do, I pulled up Safari on my phone and Googled Children from the Future. I texted Lucas and asked him to make sure he grabbed my laptop. I wanted to see the police files on the cult, not just the crap on the internet. To my surprise, Google brought back an active homepage for the cult. I checked the bottom and it said it had last been updated December of the previous year. I clicked on the About Us link. It immediately brought up a picture of Lydia Rolf, which surprised me even more than them having a webpage. Under the picture was a bit about Lydia Rolf, who could not mate with human men even though the only thing she really wanted in this world were children. No doubt to abuse, neglect, and use as props, I thought cynically as I continued to read.

  Toward the end of her spruced-up bio it said, “Like most great prophets, Lydia Rolf has been unjustly persecuted by the American government and has been imprisoned. But we continue her teachings and prepare for her return to us.” Then it had contact information for her in Lankford prison with wording that encouraged people to put money in her prison account as well as send her letters and emails. But we had moved her to The Fortress, and monitoring of money placed in those accounts was handled by the US Marshals, and all her letters and emails would be photocopied and sent to the NSA before being sent on to her. Prisoners in The Fortress were monitored just as intensely as members of the SCTU. It was meant to prevent them from organizing copycats to try to get out of prison. It was surprisingly effective, and I was still continually shocked by the number of people who offered to commit copycat murders for the serial killer of their dreams.

  Lucas texted back and said he was on his way and had my laptop as well as my portable hard drive full of movies and TV shows. The NSA had reserved me a very nice room in a very nice hotel. There was a restaurant, a bar, and a room service menu that didn’t seem to match the menu of the restaurant or bar. The restaurant was Asian Fusion food. I placed a dinner order with them and paid extra to have it delivered to my room. I ordered a dish called Phat See Eui fajitas and crab Rangoon dip with wonton chips. I was close to downtown in a hotel that had 14 floors and a view of Union Station, where just six months earlier the SCTU had been the first to respond to an active shooter situation. It was still under construction and renovation from that event and I could see the exterior scaffolding from my room on the fourth floor.

  That day I learned that if I never had to respond to another active shooter situation again it will still have happened too many times for me. I preferred my psychopaths to not have assault rifles. I wasn’t a gun control nut; if Mr. DeLong hadn’t had a gun, Ivan’s kids might not have survived, but after seeing an assault rifle in the hands of a pissed off psychopath, I understood why people were constantly screaming for more gun control and in many ways I agreed with it. The majority of people in this country did not need access to assault rifles or handguns and rifles that could be converted to fully automatic. Even as a member of the SCTU, my primary handguns were not full automatics. There was a knock at my door and I got up to answer it, aforementioned handgun drawn despite the fact that I was expecting both Lucas and food delivery to my room.

  Lucas walked into my room with a suitcase and a book bag. He sat both down on the bed.

  “You look tired, but you had a case involving children, so you’ll end up with nightmares tonight, which is why I brought the hard drive of movies,” Lucas said instead of hello.

  “Thanks, nothing like ‘you look like shit and are going to sleep even worse tonight’ by way of greeting,” I said.

  “Instead of working, you should put on some happy, feel-good movies and try to get extra sleep. I’ll be back at 8 a.m. to get you unless you are needed before then.”

  “How’s my house and houseguests?” I asked.

  “Interesting.” Lucas pursed his lips. “People are putting thank you cards, apology cards, bouquets of flowers, and containers of desserts like cookies and cakes in your front yard. Nadine said five casseroles have shown up.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Trying to appease their guilt,” Lucas said and reached for my book bag. He then unzipped the front pocket and pulled out a couple of the cards. “Gabriel wants all of them inspected along with the food, but I think they are genuine. I think the people of the neighborhood feel bad for assuming that as a member of the SCTU and a psychopath you must be the bad guy instead of the bad guy being a local crooked cop.” He handed me a card. It was hand-drawn; I thought it was supposed to be flowers.

  “That’s weird,” I said and teared up. “Now, go watch the DeLongs and call me the instant there is anything to be done.”

  “You don’t have a car here,” he reminded me.

  “True, but there are two US Marshals in the parking lot downstairs and there was an NSA agent in the lobby reading a book when I checked in,” I said. “When I ordered my dinner, I sent sampler platters to be delivered to all of them.”

  “That’s kind of Beverly Hills Cop,” Lucas said.

  “I figure they are here for my protection; I should at least feed them.” I shrugged and wiped at the tears that had formed because of the stupid cards.

  “By tomorrow you might be able to furnish a bake sale at your house.” Lucas smiled at me. “Get some rest, Marshal Cain, that’s an order.”

  “Pity you aren’t my boss.”

  “This is true, I’ll have your boss call and order it, too. Even if they hadn’t tried to frame you for working for Yuri Brogdon, today would have been an exceptionally long day for you.” My food arrived as Lucas was leaving. I brought it in, set it at the small two-person table, and tipped the guy who brought it. He ensured me the downstairs folks would be getting their food soon, so I tipped for that as well and then dismissed him and plugged the hard drive into the TV. I put on Beverly Hills Cop because it had been a long time since I’d seen it and sat down to eat. My food was delicious. It had included an Asian cabbage slaw, white rice, an extra spicy sauce, crushed peanuts, and wonton strips with the Phat See Eiu as well as tortilla shells. The dip was just as good and I was stuffed long before I had eaten even half of it. I’d even eaten a couple pieces of the tofu. I wasn’t a huge fan of tofu, but I had also not wanted beef or pork. The nice thing about Thai was that I could get it with practically any protein I wanted. If I’d wanted to splurge, for an extra $10 I could have gotten my Phat See Eiu with lobster.

  I’d finished dinner when my phone rang. It was Gabriel. No doubt calling to order me to rest.

  “How are you feeling?” Gabriel asked.

  “Tired,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, it’s not every day you learn a mobster and a police captain have been conspiring to frame you for years,” Gabriel said. “Not to mention the morning’s adventure. The NSA is sending someone to get your body cam footage from today since you didn’t return to the office and plug it in for download. Have you looked through the file they created for you?”

  “I glanced at it. I figured I’d read it after our serial killer was captured.”

  “Your life is in that file and you want to capture the serial killer first.” I heard him chuckle. “That sounds like you.”

  “I have to go read up on the Children from the Future cult and Lydia Rolf,” I told him.

  “Why?”

  “She seems like the most likely suspect.”

  “Why?” Gabriel parroted his previous question.

  “Have you met her?” I asked.

  “Not in the flesh.”

  “She is your stereotypical psychopath. She gets her kicks out of successfully getting others to do her bidding. She spent most of the ride trying to convince one of the men to take her side, and when Lucas refused to rise to the bait or let any of the others she told him he must be gay,” I said. “Now, granted he is, but she immediately turned to insults when her plan failed, which is what I would expect from someone like her.”

  “How did she react to you?” Gabriel asked.

  “I had to offer to break her legs to get her to do what I asked.”

  “Huh, I expected you to actually break something on her. She is claiming the cut on her head was your fault,” Gabriel told me.

  “Predictable.”

  “We already got the footage from within the tactical vehicle and it plainly shows her trying to stand up as the vehicle hit the squad car and as a result, she hit her head on the cage. I laughed when you almost immediately pointed out you didn’t do it because there was no doubt she would accuse you of it. Then she did just as you said she would.”

  “She’s lucky I was in a good mood and didn’t break her legs when she refused to get off the floor of the tactical vehicle, because my instinct was to grab my baton and go ahead and break one of them, then warn her I’d do the other if she didn’t crawl to the cage and get in like a good girl.”

  “Indeed, now get some rest, that’s an order.” He hung up on me.

  Twenty-Five

  When Beverly Hills Cop ended, I loaded up the mini-series version of Pride and Prejudice, which was my feel-good book and movie of choice. Jennifer Ehle did an amazing job as Elizabeth Bennet, and Colin Firth was an equally amazing Darcy. I read all the police files and the FBI report on the Children from the Future with as little eye rolling as I could possibly manage. Lydia Rolf had been born in 1962 in Pennsylvania. She had grown up in an Amish community and when Rumspringa had come around she had shed her bonnet and their quaint ways almost immediately upon exiting the gates. She’d knocked around Pennsylvania for a while before following a crappy punk band to Ohio. In Ohio, she met a man involved with the reorganized Church of Latter-Day Saints. They’d gotten married and he’d decided to move his family to Liberty, Missouri. Lydia had flourished in the RLDS, where women played a larger role than in the regular LDS. The majority of the world does not consider Amish, Mennonite, or Latter-Day Saints to be cults. I’m not in the majority. Certain religions, no matter how large, had very cultish teachings, and the Amish and LDS were among those. I felt Lydia Rolf had spent her entire life training to be a cult leader as a result.

  Unfortunately, religion, sex, and wealth were the primary motives for murder although infamy was rising. The question was, did Rolf believe in her own religion so much it was worth killing for? I didn’t think she did. Although, I did believe she was narcissistic enough to murder others who made her unhappy. Her cult teachings were all about sacrifice. Only through constant denial and sacrifice could one achieve enlightenment. Oddly, she encouraged the fulfillment of sexual appetites, and she universally encouraged them among all her followers regardless of gender or age, which was a problem. The more I read, the less original all her teachings became. I could see elements from most mainstream religions, as well as some cults and less mainstream religions. There were even aspects of Voodoo and Satanism in them. By midnight, I realized she had taken the worst parts of every religion she could find and rolled them into one weird religion in which she was an alien sex goddess and her husband needed to impregnate as many pretty young girls as possible, not to mention steal the children of her followers and encourage them that the ultimate sacrifice of their own lives was required to attain enlightenment.

  I had seven pages of notes and a small list of possible followers of the Children from the Future. I also had a list of dead cult members. It was surprisingly longer than the list of possible living cult members. I wasn’t sure why this surprised me. It had been a doomsday cult, after all. After shutting down my computer for the night, I was on the third episode of Pride & Prejudice, which was where the story started to get really good. Charlotte Lucas was married to Mr. Collins and Lizzy was to go see her at her cottage near Rosings. This was where Mr. Darcy would propose to her for the first time. I watched part of it while playing a match three game on my tablet. Nope, it didn’t matter to me that the NSA knew nearly everything I did. Right now, some poor analyst was typing up a report that Marshal Cain was playing a game and watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice. I smiled at this thought and clicked the link for their sale on cool stuff to help you along in the match three game, to let the NSA know I occasionally spend money on worthless power-ups too. I bought the exceptional “sale” package for $7.99. Now, I’d be able to fly through levels for a day or two. Since I rarely played and did occasionally buy stuff, I was offered “sales” on items nearly every time I booted the game. I only played when I was in a hotel. At home, I only used my tablet to read books. I beat 11 levels before I got stuck and had to restart a level, at which point I put it away for the night.

  At this point, Elizabeth and the Gardners were on the way to Derbyshire for summer travel, and soon, Mr. Darcy would be renewing his attentions to her and then Lydia would run away with Wickham and bring disgrace to Longbourne, which would set Darcy out to restore the family’s honor so that Bingley could marry Jane and he could marry Elizabeth. For someone that was not romantic, it was strange that Pride and Prejudice was among my favorite books ever and that I loved the BBC production so much. However, I understood it, even though to others it would seem strange. Everyone gets exactly what they deserve in the story. Jane and Elizabeth, who are both good, end up married to good men of large fortune. Lydia, who is a moron, ends up married to a cad. The only one who doesn’t get what they deserve is Charlotte. Poor, practical Charlotte ends up with the obsequious, sniveling Mr. Collins, who might have redeeming characteristics but not enough to make their marriage and life happy. Also, it’s a comedy. It’s not ha-ha funny as modern people expect things to be funny, but it is delightfully hilarious when you understand the time. Like when Mrs. Bennet insists Lizzy and Darcy must be married by special license. She only insists on this because of Darcy’s income, but that’s not what a special license was for and since Mrs. Bennet’s father had been a lawyer, she should have known this and doesn’t, proving she is completely brainless.

  I got up and turned out all the lights, then I curled up under the covers and positioned myself to finish watching Pride and Prejudice. I checked my phone to make sure it was still working. It had been hours since it had gone off for any reason; no texts, no alerts from local dispatch police, and no phone calls. I lay in bed long enough to watch Colin Firth exit the water of his lake at Pemberley and run into Elizabeth Bennet, and then I got up and went to the window. I looked out, searching for strobing emergency lights, and saw none. Traffic trundled down the road without congestion. A handful of people walked along the sidewalks, probably leaving the bars and heading to their cars. Nothing nefarious outside the window either. I sighed, gave up, and went back to the blanket and pillow that were waiting for me on the bed. Lizzy was reading Jane’s letter about Lydia running off to Scotland with Wickham. I settled back into bed. Then I got back up and walked to my small suitcase that Lucas brought. No doubt there was a sleeping pill in it. Xavier kept packing them for me. I am an insomniac by nature. Being on a case makes it worse. I could take one and get four or five hours of sleep, I told myself. I found a small bottle with six in it inside the interior pocket. I put them on the nightstand and then got a small cup of water and put it on the nightstand as well. I was intentionally stalling going to sleep and I knew it.

  I was trying to avoid the nightmares that would no doubt plague me tonight. Whenever we had a case that involved children, regardless of whether they were found dead or alive, I would dream of their faces floating mere inches below a branch, barbed wire wrapped tightly around their necks; and Mr. Callow standing below them looking up at their nude bodies, laughing or worse. Sometimes in my nightmares he was also nude and masturbating. However, if I took a sleeping pill, I probably wouldn’t dream. I rarely did on them, but if I did, the dreams were even more vivid, which was why I hadn’t just gone ahead and taken one of them. I texted Gabriel to ask if the predator from that morning was ever arrested, his name had been replaced by those of his victims chained in the basement.