ONE MONTH TO MIDNIGHT-CHAPTER 5

MONDAY, AUGUST 8th

DENT SAID TO THE GUY, “Hey, you know where I can find Storm Hall?” Lost as hell on the San Diego State campus, but thinking he was in the general vicinity.

The guy—dark-skinned and looking like he’d look perfect wearing Newhouse’s Cheyenne war bonnet, a regular White Buffalo-look-alike— he said, “I’m not sure. I’m just visiting myself,” in a weirdly sophisticated Spanish accent before walking away. Dent shrugged and kept asking.

Turned out Storm Hall, where Ben Stack’s office was located, was the building they’d been standing before, an unimpressive, un-Storm-like building with half-dead ivy in the flower beds.

Dent punched the second floor button. When the elevator-door opened, Lucy Blackfoot looked Dent dead in the eyes.

“Oh brother, I’m being stalked by Barney Fife.”
Very deadpan.

Dent said, “And I’m thinking the same thing . . . Except I don’t know any famous anthropologists besides that guy Leaky.”

“Stick to corpses, Vince, you’d never make it in comedy.” Lucy smiled a little. “You’re not really following me are you? Because I’d like to know if you are so I can try to ditch you . . . find some tunnel and lose you like in The Third Man.”

“You know The Third Man?”

“Joseph Cotton’s best. I fit stuff like that around F-Troop and other great westerns.” Lucy smiled. “You’re here to see Ben. C’mon, I’ll take you up.”

Boarding the elevator, she waved the paper in her hand. “I’m applying for a job. One of Ben’s colleagues is starting a project in New Mexico. State needs something on file to pay me.”

“Digging for pots?”

Lucy nodded. “Hope Ben can help. He’s busy researching a legend that has the Incas sailing to Asia in the 14th century, meaning they discovered Asia a hundred years before Columbus discovered the New World.”

Lucy led them to an office within which a big bearded guy hung upside down, like a giant bat, wearing gravity boots and throwing balls at a bucket; balls surrounded the bucket. He threw one more and said, “You wanna hand me a couple of those?”

Dent handed balls to the guy he assumed was Dr. Benjamin Stack, noted anthropological genius and bat. Stack hit one of three and said to Lucy: “ Forget the application?”

Lucy shook her head. “I was helping this gentlemen find you. Dr. Ben Stack, Detective Vince Dent.”

Stack reached up a hand. Dent took it as the guy said, “So you’re the cop Lucy was talking about. What’s the deal, you harassing her, following her around or what?”

Saying this upside down in a serious tone and making it work.

Lucy said, “It’s okay, Ben, he’s not bothering me.”

Ben Stack grunted, unhooking his gravity boots, and landing on his feet. Stack was 235 and maybe 6'5", late forties. He said to Lucy. “You sure he’s not some kind of stalker?”

Lucy laughed. “As you can see, Ben’s protective. Sometimes a little too protective.”

Stack said, “Lotta weirdoes out there, Luce. Like your last guy.”

“He wasn’t my last guy, Ben.”

Stack shrugged. “I assume this is about Celeste Parks? I’ve been out where they don’t cover the news so well, in the Andes, but Lucy filled me in. What can I do?’

Dent detailed what Newhouse had said about the masks.

“Sounds pretty thorough,” Stack said, slipping on a work boot. “Though he didn’t mention that dancers wearing the masks were believed to become the spirits with all the commensurate powers.” Stacked shrugged, slipping on another boot. “As far as who you’d sell the stuff to, I wouldn’t have the foggiest. I’m not involved in the miserly hoarding of history’s relics.” Stack crossed the office, picking up balls. “I’m of the opinion they’re more suitable for public consumption than private . . . That said, I’ll get down off my soapbox.”

“You know anything about numerology?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Whoever killed Mrs. Parks removed her face and cut pentagrams into her skin.”

Placing the bucket of balls on a pile of books rising from the floor, Stack said, “That’s not numerology, Detective. That’s witchcraft.”

Dent nodded. “But the pentagrams are comprised of five cuts radiating in twenties down the limbs, four hundred cuts in all. Also, he severed her arms and legs but let them be. Does that mean anything?”

Stack frowned. “You looking for a ritual or what?”

“I’m looking for something to work with. Whoever murdered Mrs. Parks knew something about Indians because he knew about the masks. So, yeah, maybe this is a ritual of some Indian tribe or something that this wacko’s replicating.”

Stack shook his head. “From what you’ve told me, it sounds more like the Aztecs. But I’ve never heard of a ritual like you’re describing.”

Dent said, “The Aztecs were the ones cut out their victms’ hearts, right?”

Stack’s eyes refocused on Dent. “Among other things. Brutally militaristic, brave and arguably ancient history’s greatest warriors. They worshipped Huitzilopochtli, the war god. Myth has it that his mother, after giving birth to the moon and stars, made a vow of chastity but became miraculously pregnant with Huitzilopochtli. His sister, the moon goddess, gathered the other gods to kill mom but one god ran ahead and warned Huitzilopochtli, who burst from her womb, fully armed. He killed the moon and brought day. So Huitzilopochtli had the strength to chase off the night and bring day— thereby avoiding Armageddon— his priests fed him a steady diet of human blood and hearts. Worshipping him, the Aztecs seized an empire bigger than Italy, still growing when the Spanish arrived in 1519. Funny thing is, the Aztec priests in fact believed they were in the final world and that destruction was imminent. Montezuma allowed Cortez to destroy everything with only 600 men and a few rival Indian tribes because he believed Cortez was the god Quetzalcoatl returned from across the sea and because destruction was the Aztec’s destiny. At its fall, the Aztec’s capital was bigger than the biggest city in Spain at the time, capital of a vanquished civilization that once numbered over six million.” Stack smiled. “The Reader’s Digest condensed history.”

“But is there a connection?”

“Perhaps. After a victim’s heart was cut out, the Aztec priests tossed them down the steps of the Great Temple, hacked the limbs off and spread them around. Were there any bite marks?”

“No. Why?”

“For Aztec warrior societies, eating human flesh at feast was a celebration.”

“Jesus. What about the number of cuts on the body?”

Stack tugged at his beard. “You know, the numbers are divisible into twenty. The Maya used a twenty-based number system, the visegimal system, where ours is based on ten.”

“A colleague mentioned that. Think it means something?”

“Probably just a coincidence. Two different civilizations, the Maya and Aztecs.” Stack sighed.

“Listen, I’ll see what I can dig up. Probably nothing to it, but who knows.”

LUCY AND DENT were in the Sprint, headed for the Pit where Lucy was parked.

Dent saying, “Thanks for waiting, but you didn’t have to.”

“I know.”

They stopped at a crosswalk, two college kids, in some animated conversation, crossing.

“You like old sci-fi movies, Vince?”

“Favorite movie as a kid was The Blob. Why?”

“I saw a flyer for a showing of 2001 on campus tomorrow night. We could meet.” Lucy pointed at a red Jeep. “That’s me.”

Dent angled towards it, nodding. “Sure. I’m game.”

Lucy took a pen and a piece of paper from her purse. “In case something comes up, here’s my number. Least I think that’s it. I just moved.”

Dent watched her climb into the jeep. Looked down at the piece of paper — actually a business card, phone number on the back— and turned it over. Lucille M. Blackfoot, PhD.



THEY WERE ROLLING down Garnet in Pacific Beach, McClain gazing out the passenger window. They’d discussed the Parks and Mirabella cases on the ride up I-5, but passing the shops and the bars, silence reigned— McClain staring at beach bunnies on Roller blades and mountain bikes, occasionally commenting; Dent was thinking about Lucy.

McClain broke the silence with, “So who’s better, Captain Kirk or Jean Luc Picard?”

Dent said, “On Star Trek?” making a right onto Mission Beach Boulevard, heading north.

“Yeah.”

“Better as in tougher or smarter?”

“Both.”

Dent shrugged, glancing at a surf shop had a couple of girls in bikinis dancing in the window.

“Physically, Kirk’d beat Picard nine times out of ten. He’s got the judo moves.”

McClain had noticed the girls too, head swiveling as they passed. “Yeah, but they’re bogus. The two-handed club on the back, the karate chop to the neck . . . that shit doesn’t work.”

“You ever try it?”

“In junior high I did. Got my ass kicked s’what happened.”

“Is that right? Well still, Kirk’s bigger, more of a bad ass than Picard . . . Picard’s just a skinny little rat. And he never does any fighting, not like Kirk.”

“Picard doesn’t need to. Picard’s smarter.”

“Give me a break. Look at the stuff Kirk got the Enterprise out of. Remember when the Enterprise went back in time and they took out that guy wanted to start a nuclear war? Mister Seven? Kirk always had a plan.”

“So does Picard. And he’s erudite.”

“Erudite?”

“Erudite. That’s a new word Katey taught me. Means educated.”

“Why not say ‘Educated?’”

“It’s good to use big words. You come across as smarter.”

Dent smiled. “Junior, it takes more than big words to make you smart.”

“Yeah, alright. Point is, Picard could out-think Kirk in a minute. He’s a better captain.”

“Yeah? Well let me put it on your level. Who gets more women?”

McClain slowly turned his head to look at Dent. Smiled, acknowledging defeat. Crossed his legs, left ankle on right knee, and looked back at the road. “Okay, who’s the better science officer, Data or Spock?”



THEY WERE IN MIRABELLA’S HOME OFFICE, Walt Bishop slipping on a pair of gloves and saying, “I’ll bring up the DOS shell first and see what we got . . . Uh-oh.”

The screen was black except for white letters stating: “Hard Drive Unformatted- Format Hard Drive (y/n).

McClain said, “What’s that mean?”

“It mean’s whatever resided on the hard drive’s been wiped clean.”

Dent said, “Can you fix it?”

“I can reformat the hard drive, but the drive’s been wiped.”

“Maybe the Windows part is corrupted,” McClain said, “like what that dude from Comp USA was talking about. Maybe it’s a virus.”

“Nope. Someone manually entered commands to wipe the drive.”

Dent said, “Mirabella’s killer wiped the files after because Mirabella had something on his computer we weren’t supposed to see.”

“That’s not exactly right. You remember how you told Jerry not to touch anything?”

“You’re kidding me,” Dent said. “He screwed up the drive?”

Shaking his head, Bishop said, “No, but Jerry just got a computer and you know how expensive software is. He was looking to see if there was anything on here he needed. Maybe make a copy, save a couple a bucks. You know Jerry. Thing is, I told him to shut it off, on account of what you’d said about the golf clubs and he shut it right down—” Bishop snapped his fingers “—just like that.”

“Walt, you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Bishop nodded. “It was formatted when we left. Somebody came after and cleaned it.”

Dent stared at the computer, at the brains and the blood, until McClain said, “Might not be a problem. The laptop at CompUSA, remember? Whoever ‘86'ed Mirabella probably doesn’t know it exists.”



THERE WERE NO SPACES out front CompUSA, so Dent parked on the grass.

Getting out, McClain said, “So how many parking tickets you got?”

“Couple.”

“Right,” McClain said, “and since I’ve known you, you’ve gotten twenty easy.”

“You counting?”

“If I was I’d give you an exact number.”

Electronic doors slid open as Dent said, “Being the erudite kind of guy you are.”

There was a customer service counter with a couple teens behind it and, before it, a line of angry folks clutching computers and boxes of software; validating Dent’s basic belief that computers were crap.

Flashing badge, Dent said, “San Diego PD. We need to talk to Benny.”

Benny was an Asian kid with a pierced eyebrow they took outside. Under that blazing sun, Dent asked, “So you took the computer in from Mr. Mirabella?”

“Yeah. He was really angry about his laptop not working, he’d just bought it. Said he wanted his money back and all this stuff, but the thirty-day guarantee was up, so all we could do was guarantee he’d have his laptop back within 72 hours.”

“How’d Mirabella seem to you emotionally? He seem frantic at all?”

Shaking his head, Benny said, “No, just really pissed. Yelling and telling my boss to fu—” Benny caught himself.

Dent said, “He told your boss to fuck off?”

“Yeah. Right.” Benny shrugged. “I ran a diagnostic in DOS and saw some corrupted files.

Made a copy of his hard-drive in case something went wrong, then I reloaded the Windows files and the whole thing took maybe an hour. Then I called Mr. Mirabella.”

McClain said, “Benny, you go into Windows to make sure everything worked?”

“I always do.”

“What kind of files were on it, what kind of programs?”

“I couldn’t look at his files. They were encrypted. Never seen an encryption program like that, it seemed pretty hard core.”

Dent looked at McClain and smiled. “Bingo.”



DENT CHECKED THE LAPTOP in with Lou Cano down at the evidence cage. Then, upstairs in Homicide, he found the fax from Newhouse on his desk. He started dialing through the numbers of the antiquities houses. Two thirds down the list, he’d basically uncovered nothing except that most people knew Celeste Parks but hadn’t spoken with her in a while.
At three o’clock, Dent dialed Gideon Pope.



GIDEON POPE SAT in a booth reading a menu, clad in the uniform of the Federal Bureau of Investigation: dark blue suit, striped regimental tie. His hair was parted sharply on the side, his face creased with smile lines. 19 years Pope had spent with the FBI, three as Special Agent In Charge of the San Diego office; Dent had known him for the last eleven. Pope looked up as Dent sat across from him.

“Why is it when you buy lunch, we end up at Denny’s and when I buy, you say you want Italian and we eat at Stephano’s?”

Dent smiled. “Because Feds make all the money, Gid. What’re you getting?”

“Superbird no mayo.”

A busboy set a couple waters on the table as Dent said, “How’s Margie?”

Pope shrugged. “She’s driving me crazy with this floral arrangement class she’s taking. She’s always asking my opinion about what looks good and what doesn’t.”

“So what do you think?”

“I don’t know flowers except that they grow on bushes and die. Then someone sells them to Margie for about a dollar a piece and she asks if they go together.”

Dent ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a coke. “So what’s doing with the Hoover boys? Anything interesting?”

“We’re working on a cocaine-smuggling operation involving the chief of Tijuana PD.”

“Sounds like DEA more than you guys.”

“You haven’t heard the kicker.” Pope leaned back, seeming to consider what he was saying.

“Vince, if we hadn’t been friends for so long, I’d never tell you this, but I’d like someone inside SDPD I can trust.” His voice dropping, Pope said, “There’s involvement from San Diego PD.”

“How high up we talking?”

“Our snitch says it goes clear to the top, but we’ve got conflicting details that make it sketchy. You know these guys, they think they can cut a deal by telling pretend stories.”

“You’re certain SDPD’s involved, though?”

“We’ve got independent confirmation.”

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Keep an eye out. Flashy cars, new suits, something indicating a significant source of new income. If you catch something—” The waitress dropped off the burger and Superbird. When she was a suitable distance away, Pope said, “Call me from outside SDPD. If they’re in this deep, you don’t know what these cops will do. So don’t play the cowboy.”

Dent nodded, pouring ketchup and thinking about what Pope was saying . . . Coke-dealing cops. . . The world’s going to hell fast.

Pope said, “People never get things right these days,” scraping mayo off his Superbird. “So tell me about this case you’re working on. This is the Parks’ case, correct?”

Dent stuck a fry in his mouth. “Right. I’ve got a copy of the case file—” sliding the file across the table “— I want your profiler to look at. Tell us about who we’re dealing with.”

Pope opened the file, glanced at a couple pictures, frowning, and closed it. He shoved his Superbird aside. “Thanks a lot,” he said, frowning distastefully. He took an experimental bite of Superbird. Then pushed it away again. “Look, I’ll fax this stuff to Quantico and see what they come up with. Those guys love the elaborate nuts, it gives them more to work with. And judging by this—” tapping the file “—they should be able to work up a regular treatise. Probably tell you if the bastard prefers Coke or Pepsi.”