Cult of Death: A Lance Chambers Mystery

By Jason E. Thummel

Mr. Cooper took a moment to compose himself. He spread his withered hands out flat on the desk, forcing them down hard to gain control of their shaking.

"My daughter has been kidnapped, Mr. Chambers, and I am running out of time."

Catherine Cooper is missing, pulled into the clutches of a mysterious sect. To find her, Investigator Lance Chambers will have to navigate through the hidden and dangerous world of the occult. A world of power-crazed sorcerers, deadly curses, ancient evils, and demonic powers beyond understanding. But is Catherine Cooper really a victim in need of saving as her father proclaims, or is she a willing participant in something far more sinister?

Lance Chambers is about to risk his life to find out. Because once they become aware of you, there is no escaping the CULT OF DEATH.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason E. Thummel
• Release date: Oct 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301315741

Jason E. Thummel

Jason E. Thummel's work has appeared in Black Gate magazine, Flashing Swords, The Town Drunk, the anthologies Rage of the Behemoth and Magic and Mechanica, as well as in many other venues both online and in print. His contemporary flash fiction story "Contact," which was part of the charity project 100 Stories for Haiti, was later translated into Portuguese. He is the author of two hard-boiled, occult detective novels: The Spear of Destiny and Cult of Death, as well as a collection of 13 short stories of Heroic Fantasy titled In Savage Lands, the novella length collection The Harsh Suns, and the novel The Bladewitch.

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Copyright © 2012 by Jason E. Thummel

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved.

September 2012

Cover Art © M.D. Jackson

This novel is dedicated to

my family.

For your love, kindness and understanding

and for making me what I am today.

CONTENTS

Cult of Death

Dedication

Copyright Information

About the Author

Other Works by This Author

ONE

The Brass Club is old money. You don’t go there to drink, you go there to flaunt your wealth, plot your hostile take-over, and pump your ego. If you aren’t on the list, or the doorman doesn’t know you—yeah, the Brass has one of those—you’re better off not even trying.

I don’t go there. No one I know goes there. We couldn’t get in if we did.

But today was different. I was wearing a nice Armani three-piece suit, charcoal grey with faint pin striping and dark blue tie with matching silk in the breast pocket. I’d replaced my over-stuffed wallet with an understated money clip. And I had six magic words to mutter to the doorman.

Lance Chambers to see Randall Cooper.

The doorman’s face went from smug and unflappable to courteous and polite. Of course, sir. He opened the door with a crisp white glove and motioned me in.

Thanks, I said.

The doorman’s smile said it all, his magnanimous tolerance of a poor country bumpkin about to be tossed to the wolves. Here he was opening the door for me, but looking down on me all the same. Some people. I guess acknowledging his existence and saying thank you tipped him off that this wasn’t a world to which I belonged.

There was enough leather in the lounge that you would think you’d stepped into a fetish club. Nothing that could be upholstered had been neglected, every conceivable surface covered with dark-stained leather held by glistening brass tacks. Any remaining surface, the walls, and the ceiling, were rich, highly-polished mahogany.

The light fixtures looked antique, doling out low wattage light that was barely enough to navigate the room. Mood lighting, the club probably called it. I’d say a way to hide the dirty deeds of their patron’s professions: lawyers, CEO’s, politicians, and who knew what other blue-blooded gents. The few men that I did see in the overstuffed, high-backed chairs fit the décor to a tee as well—antique.

The Brass was an anachronism, a museum, a testament to ‘the good life’ that I couldn’t ever imagine being even tolerable, let alone good. Money and power might bestow privileges, but this place sure as hell couldn’t be counted among them.

A rail-thin man in his mid-forties with graying hair and close-trimmed mustache materialized out of the dimly lit gloom. He extended a hand.

Mr. Chambers. I’m Richard Thorpe. We spoke on the phone. He pumped my hand with practiced confidence, a firm grasp. He wasn’t trying to impress me by breaking the bones in my hand like so many of the guys I meet during the course of business. It’s so good of you to join us. I’ll take you to Mr. Cooper.

Apparently the small, dark alcoves, with their clusters of two or three chairs around a table, were too social for Mr. Cooper. Thorpe led me past all these, through billowing clouds of cigar smoke, the heady scent of bourbon, the flutter and wheeze of whispered conversation, to an almost invisible door set in the wall.

Please go in, Mr. Chambers.

After you, Mr. Thorpe.

Mr. Cooper has asked to see you alone. Mr. Thorpe surveyed the room we’d just passed through, looking to see if anyone had taken note of our passing, then opened the door and gestured for me to enter. He was just another doorman, I guess, only higher on the food chain.

I gave him a nod, but didn’t say thanks. The doorman had taught me well.

Randall Cooper didn’t look up when I entered. He was behind a large desk, staring at the monitor of a laptop computer, and the angle hid his eyes. He was dressed in yachting casual, although the nearest body of water was probably thirty miles away and a lake at that. He looked like someone had slapped a fresh coat of paint on a dilapidated building, but the spit and polish wasn’t enough to hide the truth: Randall Cooper looked haggard, tired, and defeated. He looked like a man barely hanging on to life.

Find a chair, Mr. Chambers, and have a seat. He glanced up with rheumy eyes and a lifeless smile, then returned to looking at the monitor.

There were two chairs facing his desk. I grabbed the one on the right and pulled it farther right so I could see his face, then rotated it so I had a view of the door. I didn’t want the door or the waiting Mr. Thorpe blindly at my back. There was no reason to get sloppy just because this was a high-class establishment.

Mr. Cooper watched my antics with narrowed eyes, his breath coming out in hard snorts. I took it to mean that most people didn’t dare rearrange his furniture and he found it presumptuous. Or maybe it was just the situation, that he was slumming with the common folk.

A drink? he asked as I got settled.

No, thank you. I pulled out a small notepad and pencil. Mind if I take some notes?

Not at all. I’m surprised you don’t use a recorder, Mr. Chambers.

"Just a precaution, Mr. Cooper. Depending on the nature of the case, or if I don’t take it, I don’t want to walk out of here with you thinking I’ve got something incriminating to you personally, on the record. My hand-written notes won’t pose the same issue." I was careful to avoid the word threat.

Bobby said you were a careful man. I like that. He waved his hand in a Carry-on sort of way toward the notepad I was holding.

Randall Cooper sat back in his chair and sighed. He sat slumped; his rounded shoulders and emaciated face gave him the look of a vulture, but his heavy-lidded eyes held the predatory glint of a raptor. He pushed the laptop from in front of him, placed his hands on the desk with fingertips touching, and leaned toward me. The oversized rings that dangled from every finger of his left hand shifted with the movement.

We’re both busy men, Mr. Chambers, so I’ll make this brief. He stretched his arms forward and put his hands back on the desktop. The move pulled his sleeves back and I saw a bracelet on his left wrist. Something about the design was a bit off. My eyes were drawn to it again.

Randall Cooper was a good man. Upstanding and respectable. I admired him. Just being near him gave me a sense of well-being. I needed to help him if I could.

I closed the notepad and struggled to pull my eyes away. It wasn’t easy, but eventually I was able to focus on my left kneecap. There was a moment where it felt like someone set a firecracker off in my brain, and then the pain passed.

Randall Cooper was a prick.

I stood to leave.

I’ve not yet begun. Won’t you hear me out, Mr. Chambers? he said.

I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, Mr. Cooper, but screwing with me, that’s not the kind of thing I look for in a client.

Whatever do you mean? I don’t—

"Cut the bullshit Randall. You’re using a worked bracelet. Don’t pretend you aren’t, or that you don’t know what I’m talking about. That kind of thing might fly with your cronies, but in case you didn’t notice, we don’t run in the same circles. Pulling shit like that is a fatal mistake where I come from."

I was just testing your—

Save it. You were trying to mind-fuck me. You probably think it’s par for the course to mess with people’s heads, to manipulate them to get what you want. It isn’t, and in this case, it backfired.

Okay, I can get a little profane when I’m angry.

You have my apologies. Please, sit down Mr. Chambers and hear me out. Please. His voice cracked.

I turned around at the door. Randall Cooper was sagged over his desk with his face pressed into his palms, weeping. His breath was ragged, uneven and wet, and his shoulders shuddered with grief. He was a broken man.

Please, he whispered.

I’m a decent judge of character. You have to be in my line of work. It looked sincere, but I’ve been fooled before. I kept my hand on the knob and waited.

I am sorry. Mr. Cooper removed a kerchief from his shirt pocket and dabbed his eyes and nose. I have no idea what I’m doing anymore. The truth is I need your help. I couldn’t risk your refusal, or bear the thought of what might happen if... He didn’t finish the thought, as if to finish what he was saying might make it real.

Mr. Cooper took a moment to compose himself. He spread his withered hands out flat on the desk, forcing them down hard to gain control of their shaking.

My daughter has been kidnapped, Mr. Chambers, and I am running out of time.

Okay, I’m a softy. I didn’t open the door and storm out.

Take that thing off and put it away, I said. The rings too. Who knew what the hell the rings were capable of?

Randall Cooper nodded and put them all in the desk drawer. I’m so sorry. After talking with Bobby, I knew you could help. I just couldn’t risk your saying no. Not with what’s at stake. Surely you understand? He looked at me, waiting for a word of understanding that he wasn’t going to get.

Just so we’re clear, Mr. Cooper. If you do anything else like that, we’re done. I walk. Do you understand?

Cooper needed me so I had the leverage to push a little, to bring him down and level the playing field, or at least decrease the slope of it a bit. It wasn’t as heartless as it seems. I only had his word to take for anything and at the moment, given what he’d just tried to do, his word wasn’t worth much.

Yes. Yes, of course. He was all eager to please for now, which was good, but it wouldn’t last. He didn’t get to where he was in the world by staying back on his heels.

I returned to my chair and sat.

Let’s try this again, Mr. Cooper. Your daughter has been kidnapped? Have there been any demands? It would be easier to get him talking with some of the nuts-and-bolts particulars that didn’t involve directly discussing his daughter, to give him time to get a grip on his emotions and loosen up. And, if there were demands, a negotiator would be a better choice.

It’s not like that exactly, he said. There have been no demands. I don’t know what he wants.

You say ‘he.’ You know who you’re dealing with, then, Mr. Cooper?

I know who he is, in a way. But I don’t know him personally. Have you ever heard of the Society of the Higher Self?

No.

"That doesn’t surprise me. The Society is very secretive, and counts some very powerful people among its members, I believe. I have no proof of course.

It proclaims to be an organization whose purpose is the pursuit of egalitarian ideals, of manifesting them through all aspects of one’s life, and to obtaining purity of the soul by rejoining it to the Oneness, the Ultimate Truth, thereby making oneself truly whole.

Sounds lovely, I said. The dogma didn’t sound any different than a lot of other ‘religions’ I’d heard.

"It is gilt on the rotting ideology of a dangerous cult, Mr. Chambers. Or should I say the ideology of a very dangerous man. For make no mistake, sir, it is one man alone behind all the new-age mumbo-jumbo rhetoric. It masks one man’s true agenda. The rest of the Society are merely fools."

And this man kidnapped your daughter?

His name is Lucien Montfeu. He has no known birth certificate. He doesn’t even seem to exist until he shows up fifteen years ago in Alabama. There’s no information before then, although by that time he already had a core group of followers. They called themselves the Eye of Light then, and they were experimenting with drugs and sex. Talking about compassion and salvation. Much the same then as now.

You seem to know a lot about them.

It’s all in here. He reached into a drawer, pulled out a thin manila folder, and tossed it on the desk. Take it, if it will help.

Why the file? Curiosity got the better of me and I leaned over and slipped it off the glass-polished desktop.

I am not going to lie to you, Mr. Chambers. You’re not the first investigator I’ve hired for this case.

I flipped open the folder and looked at the report. It might prove useful.

Basic background information, a summary, a few photos. Some of the pictures had been blown up so large that they were too grainy to make much sense of without details. I flipped one over; there were notations on the back, written in a meticulous hand.

Did you hire the investigator before Catherine’s abduction? It could be that Cooper’s poking around in this Lucien’s business was what prompted the abduction of his daughter. People with dark secrets tend to take that sort of thing personally.

No. Strictly to resolve Catherine’s kidnapping.

So who was this previous investigator and what happened that they aren’t still on the case?

His name is Simon Cleeves, out of Maryland. Highly recommended. He tossed a photo on the desk. "Here’s his picture, for what that’s worth.

As soon as I found out Catherine was missing, I contacted him. He phoned me a week ago and said he’d made contact with my daughter. She wanted out. He told me he’d have her back home in a few days and that he would call again with more details. I waited and waited.

Cooper dragged his eyes from staring at his hands and looked at me. Do you have children, Mr. Chambers? he asked.

No.

You cannot know the anxiety of waiting, of spending every minute by the phone, of answering every call with a mix of hope and dread, not knowing what the news might be. It is a terrible thing, Mr. Chambers. Terrible.

Looking at him, I could believe it. Cooper’s eyes were getting misty and threatening rain; his ears turned pink and the blush began to spread down along his neck. For a moment, he was alone with his memories, and they were none too happy.

So what happened? I prompted.

Pardon me, he said, sounding startled. There was a slight tremor in his hand when he covered his mouth and cleared his throat. Nothing. I never heard from him again.

I made a note to contact Simon Cleeves’ office and see if they’d heard anything. My guess was they hadn’t. That could mean any number of things, but if Cleeves had a decent reputation, none of them were good.

I finished my note. You said, ‘She wanted out.’ Sounds like your daughter wasn’t kidnapped, Mr. Cooper. From what you say, it sounds like she’s a member.

I don’t know. Mr. Cooper’s face reddened. He reached up and loosened his collar. Catherine and I haven’t always been on good terms and there’s a lot of her recent life that I know nothing of. He reached back into his desk and retrieved another file, tossed it next to the first. The information is in here. This will do a better job than I could for the facts.

I didn’t open this file, just kept staring at Mr. Cooper. Silence can be a great tool during interrogations or interviews. People get uncomfortable and feel the need to fill it with something. They’ll just start blathering on, and if you’re lucky they sometimes slip up and say something interesting.

You must understand, Cooper said. His eyes were roaming the walls above my head and his voice became hesitant, uncertain and sad. "After Catherine graduated from college she drifted away. I don’t know if it was my name, my money, or my power. Something in her changed, and she just... She tried to create some distance. Obviously she was quite successful."

He locked eyes with me and the sadness of his voice was replaced with anger.

But I can tell you that she’s too damned intelligent to get involved in some shyster’s cult. An open hand slammed the desk for emphasis. "Any involvement, and I’m not saying there is any, was just a way to get back at me.

But Catherine told Cleeves that she wanted out. That is sufficient to tell me that she is being held against her will, Mr. Chambers, and to me that means she has been kidnapped. Plain and simple.

Plain and simple things are usually anything but. Now didn’t seem like the time to point that out, though.

Did Mr. Cleeves give any indication where your daughter is being held, Mr. Cooper?

No.

I opened the second folder. The report used the same paper stock and formatting as the previous one. Another Simon Cleeves special. Also like the first, it contained preliminary background information.

There was a list of Catherine’s current and past addresses, including what appeared to be a key to her apartment, known associates and friends, banking and credit card information. There was a driver’s license scan that was several years out of date, and some additional photographs. Two were slightly blurred, the stills probably made from pausing a digital film, likely a camera and not a cell phone given the high resolution.

One showed a woman in her mid-twenties, maybe thirty, with a round face framed by a short bob cut. Dark brown hair. Large, twinkling, dark brown eyes. She was smiling and looked happy and slightly mischievous. The second was the same woman in extreme close-up. Her cheeks had definition; she’d lost weight. Her hair was longer and unkempt. She was looking back over her shoulder, and the twinkle in her eye had been replaced by shadows and worry.

Do you know where he got these pictures? I held them up, but Cooper didn’t even look. Maybe he couldn’t bear to.

No, he said.

Did you give him any family footage, videos, films?

Not that I am aware of. You should ask Mr. Thorpe. He dealt with Mr. Cleeves on several occasions. He handled the particulars. Perhaps he can help you.

I will.

Does that mean you will accept my offer? Will you get my daughter back, Mr. Chambers?

For a minute I paused. Was that what my question meant? I hadn’t been aware of making a decision, but maybe I had.

I ran through the pros and cons: the missing investigator, the way Cooper had tried to manipulate me, the fact there were several other requests for my services that required little work, with far less risk, but for my usual pay—which was substantially less than Cooper’s offer.

There was every reason to say ‘No,’ damned few to say ‘Yes.’

I looked at the second photo, at Catherine’s haunted face.

I’ll look into it, Mr. Cooper.

Thank you. Thank you. Cooper pressed a button under the desk and I heard an electric door latch click open. Thorpe will take care of anything you need. Anything, Mr. Chambers.

Before I go, I said. If I contact your daughter and she tells me she doesn’t want to leave?

Randall Cooper leveled a cold, hard gaze at the desktop. His hands balled into fists. A slight tremor seemed to run through his entire body.

She gets out, Mr. Chambers. Willing or not. No matter what, Catherine gets free.

TWO

When I entered the office, the phone was ringing.

Lance Chambers speaking. One of these days, I was going to have to come up with a name for my business, something snappy and memorable. But the only advertising I did was word of mouth, and so far my name had been enough to keep the bills paid and food on my plate.

Hi Lance, it’s Samantha.

Hiya, Sam. The sound of her voice brought a smile, then I glanced over to where she used to sit and it went away. You know the phone message light is flashing on your desk and my computer’s giving me fits. When are you going to come back to work?

Look Lance, Bret still needs some help with things. The doctors say he’ll make a full recovery, but it’s slow going. He needs me right now, and I... Her voice trailed off, uncertain, waiting for me to fill in the blank. A blank I’d filled in more times than I cared to remember. I did it anyway.

Feel responsible. I know you do, Sam, and you know I think that’s a load of crap. It’s the guys that jumped him’s fault. Besides, I need you more. Just come back. Part time is fine, if that’s what it takes.

"You know I can’t right now, Lance. And that’s why I’m calling. You don’t have to keep paying me, you know. I’m not working. I realize in an office that size, the whole one room of it, that it might be hard to notice an empty desk, but it is empty."

I looked back at her desk, the only other one in the room. It looked how I felt: lonely.

You know, you’re right. It is empty. I’ll be damned.

Probably, she said. Some detective you turned out to be. But seriously, Lance, I don’t feel right about it.

"Listen Sam. You’re the best assistant I’ve ever had. Now’s a bad patch with Bret and your mother. I realize that. But