THE MASK

by Tim Wohlforth

Waves smashed into nearby rocks. A dense fog, typical of Half Moon Bay , blocked out the sun. Victoria Renard stood on the thin strip of sandy beach as two seagulls in front of her fought over a piece of clam. Cormorants like morticians with their long black necks and sleek bodies watched the battle from perches on the rocks. The fog had soaked into Victoria 's rich brown hair ruining her coif, while the cold wind heightened the coloring of her bronze features. She bet her nose was red. Not a pretty sight, but it couldn't be helped.

She stared at the high cliff above her. At the top of that cliff was her story. She'd find a way up somehow, because nothing ever prevented her from getting to the scene of a crime. If the police radio was to be believed, this crime could be the most bizarre of her career. Fabulous.

“What now, Victoria?” Joe Hamell, her cameraman, asked. “We take our clothes off and skinny dip in 50_ water?”

“I'm game.”

“You would be, but seriously if we don't do something soon we'll have no choice. The tide is coming in.”

“On top of that cliff is the story of a lifetime.”

“All your stories are stories of a lifetime.”

“That's what makes me a great TV crime reporter.”

“But it doesn't get us up the cliff.”

The wind swept Joe Hamell's disheveled hair, sending his shirttails flapping. His dirty jeans were now wet at the bottoms, and his freckled face had formed into a pout. She was amazed her favorite cameraman agreed to climb down to the beach. How was she going to get him now to scale a cliff? Or for that matter how was she going to make it herself?

“See that?” she said.

“What?”

“That crevice. We could kind of crawl up it.”

“You're not serious.”

“Worth a try.”

“You go first. I'll watch.”

“Then you follow.”

He shook his head. But he would. Joe wouldn't leave her hanging by herself off a cliff, waves smashing on rocks below. Or would he? She felt surf break around her ankles. The sea was busy absorbing the beach. Any minute now and they would have no choice.

She walked through the frothy water and sand to the cliff face. Luckily she kept a set of sweats and Nikes in the KBAY-TV van and had changed before the hike down. If she didn't get a chance to change back, Hamell would have to zoom in on her face when she made her pitch for the 6 O'clock. By then her hairbrush and a little make-up would transform her into her usually gorgeous self.

She grabbed a protruding edge of rock above her and hoisted herself up digging one foot into the crevice. She clutched the cliff's face and wedged her other foot in the crack, while raising the first foot higher up. Her hold on the cliff face helped little. The trick, she soon found, was to throw her weight against its surface and onto her feet while she inched her way up the crevice. Luckily the wind was to her back, pressing her in. She was making progress.

Her knees began to shake, her grip loosened on the rock. Shit. She commanded her feet to stop shivering, pressed her body against the rock, and would have prayed if she was the praying type. Maybe Joe was right. Stupid idea. A hell of a way to die.

Not moving for a moment, she regained her balance and forged ahead. The crevice widened. Thank God. It became, if not a path, a narrow passageway carved by the flowing water of a small stream. The water cascaded over her, soaking her, but her grip was better. She was going to make it. Victoria began to move faster.

She looked back. Joe was filming her with his pocket-size mini-cam. Probably waiting for her to fall so he would have great footage for the 6 O'clock. Then a rogue wave struck him full force knocking him over.

“Fuck,” he shouted. He stood up, looked around, fright etched on his face. He began to scramble up the cliff behind her.

She made her way up the crevice and then to a shelf, about three inches wide. Clinging to the side of the cliff, she moved gingerly along the ledge. It widened. She breathed a sigh of relief. She continued along the ledge as it meandered up to the top of the cliff. She grabbed the cliff's rim and pulled herself up. What a mess she was, soaked completely through. But she had made it.

Victoria glanced behind her. Joe, huffing and puffing, was following her route. His hand came over the top of the cliff. Victoria grabbed his arms and pulled him up and over. He collapsed on the tall grass beside her.

“That was the stupidest stunt you've ever pulled,” he said. “We could've slipped and been crushed on the rocks below.”

“But we made it,” she said. “You have your mini-cam?”

“Of course. It's in my pocket. Why, Victoria ? Why did you risk our lives? What the hell is that important up here?”

“You saw those cop cars in front of the resort, the yellow crime scene tape. No way were they going to let us in the front door.”

“So you do a couple of interviews with the cops, I shoot it, and we go home.”

“We've got to get inside that cabin. Since we can't go in the front door, we'll have to go in the back window.”

“What's inside?”

“Two dead young women, masks on their faces.”

“Shit.”

“I'm going to see them, you're going to film them.”

“KBAY will never let you show the clip.”

“We'll worry about that later.”

Victoria stood up and looked eastward, trying to penetrate the fog. She made out the outlines of the cabin, a white clapboard affair with a picture window facing the ocean. Great view if one was lucky enough to rent the place when the fog lifted. No way could the cops spot her in this weather. And they certainly wouldn't expect anyone to be foolish enough to climb up the cliff. They didn't know Victoria .

“Come on,” she said, as she took off towards the structure. He stood up, shaking himself all over like a dog, and slowly followed her. The cabin sat on cinder blocks. She spotted a small window on the left and approached it. She gave the frame an upward push, the window opened. For once she was in luck.

“You're not?” Hamell said.

“I am. Give me a hoist.”

He cupped his two hands, she stepped into them, and pulled herself up and peered into the window opening. She saw a tiny kitchen. She shimmied herself in and then turned to help pull Hamell through. No easy feat. The guy needed to lose a few pounds. They both stood for a moment dripping water onto a discolored, chipped linoleum floor.

Victoria crept to the opening that led into the combination bedroom-living room. She peeked through. No one. The cops must be busy out front beating back the other reporters, while the CSI crew and coroner had yet to arrive.

“All clear,” She whispered into Hamell's ear. She gave his hand a squeeze, “You're the greatest.”

“ Victoria , I assure you it's not your pretty face, and certainly not your winning personality. For some damn reason I can't fathom I like you.”

She gave his hand another squeeze and tiptoed into the next room. She gasped. Lying faces up on top of a perfectly made queen-sized bed were two young women, she guessed mid-twenties. Each wore only a tee shirt and panties and had a black garbage bag duct-taped around her head. Their hands were behind their backs. Duct-taped like the bags over their faces? The back of their legs and their entire feet had turned a deep purplish-red.

Placed on top of each face bag was a grinning white ceramic Kabuki-style mask. Narrow slits for eyes, black eyebrows high on the forehead, puffy face, black lips curled upward at the corners. Were they laughing at death? Reminded her of the Day of the Dead village celebrations she had seen as a child when visiting her mother's native Mexico . Life defying death. But in this case it was the dead defying the living. Perhaps someone had placed the masks as a kind of mockery of the young women. Or was it all part of some weird cultic practice gone awry? The single queen-sized bed? A lesbian couple? Perhaps it was a hate crime.

All Victoria knew at this point was that she had one hell of a story. Masked deaths and Halloween was only two weeks away. She felt that rush that always came to her at such moments. Sensational. Well worth the climb. A different, stronger emotion replaced her first reaction. It wasn't that she felt for those two women as she knew she should. Empathy wasn't her strong suit for reasons that continued to worry her. She had earned at KBAY the deserved title of Ice Princess. Bitterness came as close as any word to covering the emotion that not coursed through her. It was as if someone or some god was laughing at these two young women, so close in age to herself. She had no problem with laughing at death but she drew the line at laughing at the person or persons who had died. That wasn't right. She was determined to get to the bottom of it all. It had become more than a story to her.

“Shoot, damn you,” she shouted at Joe, “before the cops come back in.”

“And what are you going to say when they do turn up?”

“I'll take care of them. You film.”

He did as instructed. Joe was the best. He had just finished two zoom-ins on the faces, when a detective entered the room. Hamell immediately stopped shooting and stuffed his camera into his pocket before the cop could see it. Victoria recognized the detective. Hal Crawford of the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office. Big guy, wide shoulders, all muscle. He wore a slicker. Not a bad cop, but a stickler for the rules.

“What the hell? Renard, how did you get in here?”

“Walked right in the front door,” she lied. “How else could I possibly have managed it?”

“This is a crime scene. You're breaking the law.”

“How was I to know that?”

“The yellow tape.”

“Couldn't make out a damn thing in this fog. The door was open.”

“I had a patrolman stationed there.”

“Didn't see anybody. Maybe he had to pee.”

“Renard, I don't believe you.”

“Well, then tell me how else I got in here? I'm no angel so I don't have wings to fly up from the beach.”

“Get the Hell out of here. I'll deal with you later.”

“I have a couple of questions.”

“No questions.”

“How about an interview out front? Prime Time News. Reach a million viewers.” She had to break down this guy's resistance. Usually camera time did the trick.

“You lost your chance for that when you barged in here.”

“Sorry Hal. I didn't touch anything. Just one little question and then I'm out of here. The hands were duct-taped behind their backs?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks.” She brushed past him, just a little too close, and then out the door with Hamell trailing behind. She didn't need the interview. What Joe had in his mini-cam was worth a hundred interviews.

* * *

“Gruesome enough for you?” Hamell asked as they drove down Highway 92 heading for the East Bay .

“On my case again? Not saccharine enough for you? Want a couple of crocodile tears?”

“Maybe real ones for a change.”

“Joe, you're pissing me off. You just don't get it. It's not just me that is fascinated by death, it's our culture. Why do you think crime, the more sensational the better, drives ratings up on local news? Because I'm a cold bitch? It's because we live in an ice world where the number one TV show goes out of its way to show gore. And people take it all in, complain about the ‘ghastly' things they just witnessed, then rush right back to the tube to pick up the next blood-dripping detail. What makes me different is that I recognize the ghoul within me. I don't sugarcoat it.”

“So you claim people just don't care.”

“I never said that. Caring and being drawn to death are two different emotions. Both human.”

“Maybe you lack the care gene.”

“Maybe. Never claimed I'm normal. But it could be I just don't wear my emotions on my sleeve. Those two bodies in there did affect me. Death I can handle. It was the masks. I felt someone was mocking those two young women. That I find unconscionable.”

“This is a new side of you.”

“Stick with me, Joe, and God knows what you'll discover.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Hamell said, battling for control of the van as he drove around a curve just a bit too fast. Joe had his own way of defying death, Victoria thought, as she clung to the door handle.

* * *

Victoria sat in her little cubicle at KBAY-TV at Oakland 's Jack London Square at 5:30 a.m. the next morning. She liked to get in early, check all the police bands, read the local papers, listen to the morning news broadcasts on AM radio. Last night the 6 O'clock had gone perfectly. When she had gotten back from Half Moon Bay , Victoria made some phone calls to sources she had cultivated in the San Mateo City Sheriff's Department. She learned the rudiments of the story that Hal Crawford had held back from her. The two young women were Cindy Johnson and Eva Sanchez. They came originally from Long Beach but had been living in Oakland for the last four years. Active in gay circles. Cindy was a veterinarian's assistant while Eva was a nurse at Alta Bates.

Victoria stressed in her report the mystery, the weird masks, the connection to Halloween, the lesbian couple. Al Richardson, her producer had allowed her to use a thirty-second snippet of Hamell's tape showing a pan of the death scene, then ten seconds of a close-up of one of the masks. Richardson had given the network a heads-up and had produced a minute spot featuring Victoria and the film clips with a Halloween emphasis. Made National Evening News.

She had given Hal Crawford a plug, hoping to mend fences. Much of her life these days was devoted to mending fences. But she needed to break fences down to get to her stories. Sensational. She had done it again, scooped the competition. Even Mary Quan, her boss and rival, had called after the show to congratulate her. The national spot would reflect well on Quan as well as Victoria.

Her phone rang. She picked it up to hear Hal Crawford say, “You're wrong.”

“What are you talking about? I gave you credit for leading the investigation.”

“And that's precisely what I've been doing while you have been spinning a yarn. We contacted Cindy's parents. It appears the young woman was subject to depression and made an attempt on her life six months ago. Eva's parents hadn't heard from her in two years. They didn't approve of the lesbian thing. Everything fits. Murder-suicide.”

“All I did on TV was raise questions, but I saw the scene. For me it doesn't fit. Okay, say Cindy tapes a bag over Eva's head. Then ties Eva's hands behind her back with duct tape so she can't take the bag off. She places the mask on Eva's face. Then what? Let's say Cindy lies down on her side of the bed, places the plastic bag over her own head, tapes it airtight, then reaches to the mask she had previously placed beside her and puts it on her own face. Now what? Tied her own hands behind her back with duct tape while gasping for air? All the time somehow not disturbing the mask on her face? I doubt if even Houdini could handle it. I challenge you. Give it a try.”

“I admit it wouldn't be easy, but it's not impossible to do. There was no evidence of foul play. No one at the resort reported seeing anyone enter the place.”

“In the fog, who could see anything?”

“And no suspects.”

“The whole scene shouts murder,” Victoria said.

“You can shout whatever you like on KBAY. You're into sensation. We will stick to the facts, which means the parents' testimony – suicide.”

“Thanks for the call.”

“A lot of good it did. You've got your mind made up.”

“Hal?” Victoria said.

“What?”

“Sorry about this morning,” she said, so contrite she almost fooled herself.

“That means you won't do it again?”

“It means how about lunch sometime?” she asked in her sexy voice.

“I'll call you when this is all over.”

“You've got a date.”

Hal hung up. All the guy would get was company for lunch. However, it always helps to keep hope alive. Victoria would need the fellow in the future.

Hal's phone call had left Victoria in a pissy mood. She turned on KCBS radio news. The suicide story was the lead. It wasn't like Hal gave her an exclusive.

She knew what she was supposed to do. A couple of calls down to Long Beach to talk with the parents. Then have Richardson call KANG-TV, their LA affiliate, to arrange on camera interviews with the parents. She would prepare a wrap-up for the 6 O'clock. Suicide took the mystery out of the story. Still, it had been a pretty damn good one. Now she'd milk the grieving parents, maybe call some people she knew in the gay community for a comment. Even in tolerant Oakland , it wasn't easy to be gay. Good angle for her audience.

Damn it, she knew what to do, but she had no energy to do it. She wanted the mystery, not the suicide. Was it just a matter of which made a better story? Perhaps. But there was something else. She didn't believe a young woman, with a bag over her face, suffocating, could tie her own hands behind her back with duct tape. The problem with suicide is once the cops focus on it, they stop thinking, stop digging. So they miss whatever forensic evidence might be at the scene that doesn't fit the suicide scenario.

No breaking news this morning. Just a couple of crashes on I-880. Not even a fatality. Victoria would do a little digging around to see if she could find evidence to controvert the suicide scenario. She'd check out the women's apartment, talk to neighbors, friends. A little too early to get started. She took a sip of her latté. Didn't help. She began to doze off. She'd been sleeping only four or five hours of late.

The phone rang. “This Victoria Renard?”

It was a woman's voice. Her voice was rich, seductive with a touch of an accent. Not Spanish. She would know. Slavic.

“Yes. Who are you?”

“A good friend of Cindy and Eva.”

“Ah.”

“You heard the morning broadcasts?”

“Of course. The cops say it was suicide.”

“It wasn't. No way.”

Suddenly Victoria was wide awake. She sat bolt upright at her desk almost spilling her coffee.

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Did you talk to the cops?”

“I have my reasons for not talking with them. I liked your broadcast last night. You were asking the right questions.”

“Who are you?”

“Meet me at Gaylord's on Piedmont Avenue in 15 minutes. I'll tell you everything.”

“How will I recognize you?”

“I'll be wearing a kabuki mask pin.” She paused. “And I'll tell you something else. There are more deaths coming.”

* * *

The Gaylord's crowd was enjoying the rays outside the establishment, sitting at tables, leaning against the brick wall holding mugs of latté, camping on the curb beside Golden Retrievers and Labs. It seemed as if the entire Piedmont neighborhood, or at least its single component, had settled in. Victoria scanned for a single woman wearing a kabuki mask pin. She spotted her, a statuesque blond with a figure to die for, wearing tight low-cut blue jeans, bare midriff and a tank top that must have been shrunk at the factory onto her fabulous torso. Not quite the image she had in mind for a friend of Cindy and Eva's.

“Have a seat, Victoria ,” the blond said. “Want a latté?”

“No thanks, I just finished one. Wired enough. You do have a name?” Victoria settled into the metal chair opposite her.

“Renee.”

“Renee what?”

“Just Renee.”

“Tell me your story.”

“No cops.”

“Okay, no cops. What's your problem with cops?”

“They're a professional hazard. I am a working girl with a bit of a record.”

“So what was your connection with Cindy and Eva?”

“I used to be Cindy's lover. Believe me, if you knew men the way I do, you would prefer women.”

“That why you're so convinced she didn't commit suicide?”

“There's more, a lot more. You may find some of what I'm about to tell you hard to believe. When I look back, I have difficulty believing that I could have been so damn stupid.”

“Try me.” Victoria was hooked. She couldn't take her eyes off this gorgeous creature, mounds of long silky blond hair like the models in L'Oreal ads, perfect complexion, soft blue eyes, sensuous full lips, sexy touch of an accent. Victoria had met her match. If it wasn't for a not so small matter of her rather deeply rooted sexual orientation, she could fall for this lady.

“Ever heard of Angels Church?” Renee asked.

“No.”

“Few have. One of the girls I occasionally work with told me about the group. Headed by a priestess named Angie. We used to call ourselves Angie's Angels. The Church was made up only of women. Angie told us that God was a woman who sent Mary Magdalene, Her daughter, to earth to save us. Mary recruited Jesus. Jesus betrayed her to Pontius Pilate. Men are not to be trusted. It was Mary who was crucified, and who then rose and returned to Mother God's bosom.”

“And you believed her,” Victoria said.

She supposed Angie's religion was no more farfetched than the Angel Moroni's plates. And more liberating for women. She had gone to school in San Diego with Mormons who never questioned any aspect of their religion. She didn't argue with them. She was her French existentialist father's child when it came to religion. Victoria had yet to experience God through plates, or prayer, or revelation. Therefore for her God didn't exist.

“Yes. That's the hard part to explain now.” Renee took a deep sip of her coffee. “I guess you would have had to have been there to understand. I was surrounded by all these believers, wonderful, normal young women. They believed so I believed.”

“Including Cindy.”

“And Eva. Then there was the sex.”

“Ah.” This religion was getting more interesting. Victoria had a very high regard for sex.

“We would gather together in the basement of this cottage in Rockridge. Maybe twenty of us. We wore white lace and silk gowns. Nothing underneath. The room was lit only by candles, burning incense wafted through the air, a CD of nuns singing Gregorian Chants played in the background. Each of us wore a kabuki mask, like this one,” she pointed to her pin. “We didn't know who was who. We saw only bodies, marvelous female bodies. Then we paired up and fucked each other. One monumental orgasm pounded through all of us at once. I had never experienced anything like that in my life.”

“Sounds fantastic.” Victoria was definitely into pounding orgasms.

“It was fantastic. Angie told us that each of us had been specially chosen to be part of the church. We were, she convinced us, immortal angels living in the bodies of mortal women, sent as Mary Magdalene had been, to save the sinful world. I knew something about the sinful world, working even at that time in the trade. Angie told me my profession didn't matter. God forgave me. Mary Magdalene had had to give her human body to men to serve God's purposes.”

“So what happened with Cindy?” Victoria asked.

“We were supposed to have anonymous sex with everyone, no one special, no attachments. Our love was group love, through the Church, for the Church. But Cindy and I hit it off. We didn't want to have sex with others. Even with the masks, we could spot each other. We knew each other's body so well.”

“Angie didn't like that.”

“She didn't know at first, but you can't keep secrets in such a small group. Angie had this thing for Cindy, wanted her all to herself.”

“I thought selfish love was barred.”

“Nothing is ever barred for a priestess.”

“Gotcha.” Special rules for the cult leader. David Koresh and Jim Jones had had their pick of the young girls. Why not give a lady guru a chance?

“I was reprimanded, expelled from the Church, then shunned.”

“End of story?”

“I wish it was. Last week Cindy came to me in tears. She said she was afraid. Angie had insisted that the angels give her all their worldly possessions. She promised to donate these funds to Katrina victims. The angels, having fulfilled their mortal task of helping to save humankind, would then return to Heaven to join the other angels and Mother God.”

“Shit. A suicide cult?”

“Worse, since Cindy had become Angie's confidante she learned Angie had no intention of joining her disciples in Heaven. She planned to stick around and use the Church funds to ‘do good.'”

“Good for herself,” Victoria said.

“Cindy figured that much out and she didn't want to die. That's why she came to me, but there was Eva.”

“Her new lover?”

“Eva had become too numb for love, even lost her desire for sex. She was small, attractive, easily dominated. She had been used by all of them. Eva was Cindy's friend, someone she tried to protect. Cindy felt she had to go back to that house and rescue Eva. Told me she planned to take her to Half Moon Bay to a cottage she remembered from her childhood.”

“And you figure Angie caught on, followed them there, killed them.”

“Yes, and now she plans to kill the others.”

“Are you sure she hasn't done so already?”

“It's possible, but I don't think so. Angie told Cindy they would all ascend to heaven the day after a full moon. That's today. She had to act prematurely with Cindy and Eva to protect her scheme.”

“Let's go.” Victoria stood up. She knew from the masks that someone had preyed upon those two young women. Then laughed at them. That person, who she now knew was Angie, intended to kill others. Not if Victoria could stop her. And there was the story. Victoria 's ticket out of the Bay Area to LA and beyond. She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket. Renee grabbed for it.

“I told you no cops.”

“I understand. I'm calling my cameraman. I need an address.”

Renee obliged and rose from her seat. Victoria made the call.

“Is this Angie the violent type?” Victoria asked.

“Possible.”

Victoria shrugged her shoulders. “Anything for a story.”

But for some time now the masked deaths had been more than a story. Dead bodies never phased her. She was attracted to them. It was the idea of vibrant live ones unnecessarily culled before their time that was fucking her mind.

* * *

Victoria pulled her BMW up in front of 1221 Manila , a gray stucco cottage surrounded by bright purple bougainvillea and red rose bushes. Such a quiet neighborhood. She ran towards the front door. Renee followed. No sign of Joe Hamell, but she wasn't waiting. There were lives at stake.

She had no intention of knocking. She pushed on the door. Locked. Shit. Well, she had experience crawling in back windows.

“We go in the back,” she said to Renee. Renee smiled at her, beautiful face flush with excitement.

“You lead, I follow,” Renee said.

Victoria headed for the back. With Renee giving her a boost, she looked into a side window and saw a rather large kitchen. No one in sight, but she could hear chanting in the background. Must be that nun CD. She hoisted herself up and through the window, landing softly on the floor. Renee followed suit.

Renee held a finger to her lips and gestured towards a closed door leading to the remainder of the house. Victoria positioned herself on one side while Renee grabbed the handle, turned it, and swung the door open.

Victoria stared into a darkened room, candles flickering, bunks beds lining both sides. On each bed lay a young woman on her back wearing a lace and silk gown, hands behind her back, black plastic bag taped over her head, kabuki mask. Twenty identical white ceramic puffy faces with black lips grinned back at her. The feelings she had had when she first confronted masked death in Half Moon Bay came over her again. She battled to control her emotions. This one time when coldness could be helpful hatred welled up so powerfully inside her that she began to shake. It was as if she were witnessing her own death multiplied by twenty. She would use this hatred, let it drive her as for so long her ambition had, drive her to save those who could be saved.

Dashing to the first figure, she flung the mask to the floor – it shattered – and ripped the bag off her face. Labored breathing, must be drugged, but still alive.

“Help me,” she shouted at Renee, but she needn't for Renee was already at work ripping off bags.

She spotted a large lady standing in the far corner – purple hair, pink muumuu – preparing to tape the last victim. She held a pair of scissors in her hand. Must be Angie. There was a wild crazed look in her eyes.

Angie screamed, “I carry out Mother God's work. You cannot defy me.”

She ran towards Victoria . Victoria continued to rip off bags. She heard banging on the front door.

“Joe,” she shouted, “back window.”

Victoria caught a glimpse of Angie from the corner of her eye. She turned to face scissors thrusting towards her chest. Victoria grabbed Angie's hand and attempted to bend it back. But she was a huge powerful woman. The scissors point continued to move ever closer.

The scissors morphed into a knife in her mind. She was back in middle school in San Diego . Six girls had jumped her. They resented her, hated her, because she was smart, because she didn't fit in. One of them had had a knife, pressing like now towards her chest. She beat them back that day by fighting dirty. They hadn't expected that from a nice girl like Victoria . But she wasn't nice. Not then, not now.

Victoria took her perfectly-manicured nails and dug them into Angie's eyes. Angie yowled and for a brief moment loosened her grip on the scissors. Victoria smashed her fists into Angie's immense breasts. Then she bit the hand holding the scissors just as she had bitten the big girl with the knife in San Diego . The scissors fell to the ground. Victoria picked them up.

Joe ran into the room from the kitchen and tried to grab Angie. She bashed him in the face and sprinted towards the front door. Victoria heard banging, and then the sound of splintering wood. Joe must have called the cops. Angie ran smack into three cops, guns in their hands. Angie plowed right through them only to be stopped by a baton-wielding fourth cop in riot gear. He cuffed her.

Joe joined Renee and Victoria, ripping off bags. Sirens. The EMS units must be on the way. Would they all live? So far the women she had liberated were breathing. The Emergency Medical Technicians in white jumpsuits poured in. One called on a mobile phone for more help.

Renee smiled at Victoria , ”We fixed that priestess bitch.”

“I didn't call the cops. My cameraman must have.”

“No problem. If you ever want to change careers and earn some big bucks look me up. When I'm not working, I hang out at Gaylord's.” She ran out the back door.

Victoria collapsed onto the floor, staring at the scissors still in her hand. She wasn't thinking of Angie. She was thinking about all the bullies she had come across in her life, all those who tried to dominate her, who resented her for being smart, who ganged up on her. Scraps of black plastic, duct tape, and ceramic shards were strewn around her. For the first time in her career as a TV crime reporter she had forgotten entirely about reporting, filming. But not for long.

“Joe, get your damn camera,” she commanded. “Start shooting before the cops chase us out.”

One of the victims near her fluttered her eyelids, then smiled. The nuns chanted on.