“Barker canned me yesterday. I apologize for not telling you sooner, but you deserve to know. You also need to know that I’m not shrugging this off and quietly slinking away. No hard feelings if you choose to hang up now.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “How high up does it go? Does it start and stop with Barker?”
“To be determined.”
“Have you taken it to Internal Affairs?”
“No, because I wouldn’t know who among them to trust. Barker’s got some enemies, but also people who kowtow to him, either out of fear or for favors.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Try to gather some evidence. So far, I don’t have anyone to back me up. Only three of us were in Billy’s cell within ninety seconds of Isabel Sanchez finding him. Myself, Billy’s lawyer, now deceased, and Barker’s number one heavy who everyone calls the ogre.”
“And Sanchez? Have you taken her temperature on the matter?”
He told her about his attempt to talk to the deputy. “Somebody scared her into silence.”
“God, I hate dirty cops.”
“Me too.”
Morris took a deep breath, then said, “For the time being, I don’t know you’re rogue, okay?”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“Now that that’s settled,” she said, “the reason I called. I told you we hadn’t found anything to indicate that Larissa Whitmore was into the occult, astrology, etcetera.”
“Did you learn different?”
“From Patrick Dobbs.”
John and Beth looked at each other with surprise. Beth asked, “How’d that come about?”
“As we know, Larissa was living loose, but her parents are devout Catholics. They would have considered anything like that taboo. If Larissa was even dabbling in something, she would have kept it secret from them.”
Beth said, “But she would flaunt it to an older, more sophisticated young man she was trying to impress.”
“Exactly my thought,” Morris said. “I called Dobbs’s attorney and got his permission to speak with his client by phone from the prison. His only stipulation was that he would listen in and caution Dobbs not to answer if what he said had the potential of jeopardizing his appeal.”
“Okay,” John said.
“I asked Dobbs if Larissa had talked to him about anything like the occult. No, he said, but she did have a tattoo on her rib cage beneath her left arm. She told him she got it there because it was beneath her bra strap and her parents wouldn’t see it. But in her teeny-weeny bikini top, which he admitted to untying, there it was.”
“Gayle, I’m dying here,” John said. “What was the tattoo?”
“A red crescent moon.”
“Luna,” Beth exclaimed on a soft gasp.
“What? Who?” John said.
“The Roman goddess of the moon,” Beth said. “She’s symbolized by a crescent moon.”
“She’s right, John,” Morris said over the phone. “I looked it up. If you’re into all that, Luna is a big deal.”
“Ah, most definitely,” Professor Victor Wallace proclaimed when they finally got around to talking about Luna, which had taken much longer than John would have preferred.
Their introduction to him had amounted to him establishing himself as an expert on a number of subjects by talking about his book.
“Ms. Collins, the article you read online was an excerpt from it,” he’d said, smiling at them on the monitor. “It focuses more on the occult and its influence on civilizations throughout history, but I touched on folklore, superstitions, the paranormal. All things mystical.” He’d raised his hands to the sides of his head and waggled his fingers. “Including mankind’s fascination with astrological phenomena.”
“That’s what we’re most interested in,” John had told him. “The mystique surrounding blood moons.”
“A fascinating topic to be sure. One that’s held people in thrall for millennia.”
They hadn’t told the professor why they were particularly interested in Luna, but Beth had eased the moon goddess’s name into the conversation by quoting Gayle Morris. “If you’re into all things lunar, I understand that Luna is a big deal.”
Now, after his exclamation of affirmation, the professor continued. “It’s said that a temple to Luna was built by the Romans in the sixth century B.C. But the old girl had been around for a long time before then. She’s held up well and remains very popular. I referenced her in my book on pages…” He picked up a well-worn paperback and began shuffling through the pages.
He wasn’t as musty as John had expected a professor to be, although his office looked like the set of an Indiana Jones movie. The bookcases behind him were weighted down with old-looking books and artifacts made of various materials.
John wasn’t sure what most of them were depictions of, although one was easily identifiable as a penis, no doubt crafted by a wishful-thinking sculptor. Whether male or female was cause for speculation.
To him it looked like a lot of crap, but he figured the razorback on the wall behind him wouldn’t appeal to the professor.
“Here,” he said. “Pages one sixty-two through sixty-four, in a chapter on festivals and observances of ancient Rome. Luna had one in her honor.”