A couple of minutes later, Lacey came through the door, looking like something no self-respecting cat would drag in. Her blonde hair hadn't been washed in a while, she was pale, and I was betting that her blue eyes were bloodshot.
As she sat down opposite me, I saw that I'd been right – if her eyeballs contained any more blood, she'd have every vampire in the Valley hitting on her. How much of the redness was due to crying, and how much from vodka, I wouldn't even try to guess.
I stifled the usual "How're you doing?" I didn't need any more comebacks about rhetorical questions. Instead, I just said, "Hey," and got the same in return.
She was sitting there, elbows on the table and head in both hands, her eyes closed against the fluorescent glare, when the waitress came over and asked her about coffee.
Without moving her head an inch, Lacey said, in that flat, scratchy voice, "Do you have cyanide?"
"What?"
"I asked if you had cyanide on the menu."
"Why… of course not!"
"Then coffee will have to do."
The waitress looked like she wanted to give Lacey some shit, but the realization that she'd be taking her life in her hands must've sunk in. She just turned and stomped away.
"So, what–" I began.
"Not yet," she said, not moving anything but her lips. "Coffee first, then talk."
The waitress didn't waste any time bringing coffee. After she finished pouring, Lacey said, still without moving, "Thank you."
Looking at me, the waitress asked, "You folks want menus?"
I knew better than to ask Lacey about food, so I told the waitress, "Just coffee, for now."
Lacey took hers black, and, as usual, there was no nonsense about waiting for it to cool. She'd blow on it, take a sip. Blow on it, take a sip. Lacey Brennan could finish a cup of coffee before most people would dare start one.
When her cup was empty, I gestured the waitress over. She refilled Lacey's cup and warmed mine up without a word. She didn't bother to ask about menus again.
I figured rather than ask any more questions, I'd let Lacey talk when she was ready. After a couple of fearless sips from her new cup of java, she did.
"What do you know," she said, "about the people who made this… video?"
"On that subject, facts are few, but theories abound," I told her.
"Start with the facts," she said.
"Maybe the most important fact is that there are four others – at least."
"Four other versions of… what you described for me the other night?"
"Almost exactly the same," I said. "Only the victims differ."
She closed her eyes for several seconds, then opened them and asked, "Why did you say, 'at least'?"
"This isn't the kind of… product… that you can put on the shelf at Target," I said. "It's sold clandestinely, so the FBI – they're running the case, supposedly – had to rely on snitches and CIs for the copies they have. There's no way to know if there are others that haven't floated up out of the sewer, yet."
"Dear sweet fucking Jesus," she said softly. "This is a – a business? I was assuming it was just the latest wrinkle in serial killer perversity. Most of them take trophies of one kind or another, and I figured that one of the sickos had decided to sell a video version of his fun. But people are doing this for… money?"
"That was the assumption the FBI was making – still is, I guess."
She pressed her hands against her head again, as if to keep it from exploding. Then she put her hands down and said, "The way you just put that suggests an alternate assumption. Is that where those 'theories' you were talking about come in?"
"Yeah. One of them, anyway."
Lacey turned her head slowly and looked out the window. There wasn't much to see. Plenty of parked cars and trucks, a couple of guys poking around under the hood of a big Peterbilt, a young couple holding hands as they walked toward the diner's front door, a stray mutt wandering around the parking lot sniffing the trash.
Maybe Lacey needed to remind herself that there was another world out there – one where people weren't abducted and tortured for the amusement of some and the profit of others.
Then she turned back and glanced at her near-empty cup. "We need more coffee."
We each put away three more cups over the next half hour while I told Lacey what I knew, and what I suspected. I made a mental note to leave the waitress an especially good tip – she'd done a lot of running back and forth for what was going to be a pretty small check.
"The Church of the True Cross," Lacey said musingly, when I was done. "I don't think I've heard of them before."
"I probably wouldn't, either, except that they're based in Scranton, for some reason. Their head honcho, or whatever they call him, is an excommunicated bishop named James Navarra. Maybe I'll know more about him and his church after I talk to the Jesuit expert tonight."
"So these guys are trying to start Helter Skelter by killing humans to make the supes mad, and killing supes get them pissed off at humans? It's crazy, Stan."
"No argument from me, Lace. But then, Charles Manson was crazy, too."
"But if the idea is this huge worldwide struggle, with supes and humans at each others' throats all over, they're sure as shit not gonna cause it from Scranton, for Chrissake."
"Maybe it's a pilot project," I said. "Try it on a small scale, and if it works, then go national – or bigger."
"Sort of like a weed in your garden. First there's one, and after a while there's a bunch of them – unless you stamp out the first one before it has a chance to spread." Lacey drank the last of her coffee. "I want you to keep me informed of developments in this case, Stan."