The Valley of Flames by Eva Chase

Author:Eva Chase [Chase, Eva]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781989096468
Publisher: Ink Spark Press
Published: 2019-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Sherlock

The commander from the local police was one of the more agreeable law enforcement officers I’d spoken to in my time.

“We appreciate you lending your wisdom and experience to this situation, Mr. Holmes and Mr. Lestrade,” the portly fellow said as he flipped through the images of the dark-paned office building that had been damaged by more of the cult’s homemade bombs. “There’ve been some political problems in this country over the years, but we haven’t seen anything quite like this.”

“The perpetrators you brought in—could you confirm them as local citizens?” Garrett asked, leaning forward to study the photographs.

“None of the four of them had any sort of ID, and they’ve refused to give even their names. We were able to match one of the men to a record using photo recognition, but he hasn’t shown any activity under that identity in several years. The others we couldn’t find matches for at all.”

“From what we understand, it isn’t unusual for this cult to keep to themselves and handle even births within their communes without involving any of the standard procedures,” I said, but Garrett was frowning.

“Only four?” he said. “Were there others on the scene who managed to escape?”

The commander shook his head. “All the witness accounts mention only the individuals we brought in. They made no attempt to flee. It appeared to my officers that they wanted to extend the amount of time they could be carrying out their strange ritual with the blood and so on for as long as possible.”

I glanced at the detective inspector. That detail hadn’t stood out to me, but Garrett had been much more heavily involved in tracking the international incidents committed by these people. He might not connect the dots quite so swiftly as I preferred to, but he was still sharp enough that having him here was a benefit.

“Were there more present for the other bombings?” I asked.

Garrett nodded. “Generally eight to ten. Occasionally even more than that. They’ve never needed that much assistance to carry out the explosive aspect, so I’d assumed they wanted as many people involved in the ritual as possible for maximum effect.”

“So it’s odd that they’d hold back here. Unless they’re saving their manpower for future efforts.” Ah, yes, I could see why that possibility would disturb him. It rather disturbed me.

The cultists themselves were difficult to predict given their isolation from regular society. The “gods” they worshipped were inscrutable on an even higher level. With an ordinary criminal, I might have made a reasonably accurate guess as to their next move. In this case, I could think of several equally likely scenarios… and I recognized that the outcome might be none of those.

“Exactly.” Garrett motioned to the commander. “How many of your people can you have monitoring activity in the business district and around those other buildings we’ve pointed out as likely targets? I know it’s a lot of territory to cover, but the change in the pattern makes me concerned about what else this group might have up their sleeve.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.