Der Schädelring: Thriller (German Edition)

organized effort, we don't have any Church of Satan branches here or anything. Who was that guy that started that mess out in San Francisco?"
    "Anton LaVey? The guy who wrote the Satanic Bible?"
    "You really did study up, didn't you?"
    "Even better. I work with a guy who did. He's either the world's leading expert on Satanic ritual or else he ought to be writing horror novels. But LaVey was nothing but a glorified carnival barker. I'm talking about the real thing, people who are into it so deeply that they're willing to kill to protect their secrets."
    "Well, there was a lot of talk a few years back, claims of Black Masses and that sort of thing. Mostly came out of psychiatrist's reports. You know, ritual child rape, child sacrifice, chronic abuse. Cops watch the news and read the papers, just like everybody else. Sometimes we'd see things that made us wonder, but there was one big problem with all those reports."
    "Let me guess." Julia took a large gulp of her drink. "Same as with my father. No hard evidence."
    "If even a dozen kids were sacrificed every year, they would have been noticed. Sure, Memphis has a lot of runaways just like everywhere else, and probably more kids run to here than away from here." Whitmore nodded his head toward the girl sitting beside the sound board, a pale, trembling fifteen-year-old blond. "It's either music or go into the trade. Sometimes both."
    "So you don't think it's possible for a huge, organized, underground cult to exist without being discovered?"
    Whitmore shrugged. "Hey, I was a cop for thirty-five years. I know anything's possible. But, you'd think at least one or two of the cult members would eventually become . . . now, what's that word I'm looking for? Disillusioned, maybe?"
    "'Disenchanted' might be more appropriate."
    He laughed. "Maybe you ought to be a writer or something."
    "Or a reporter, maybe. So nobody ever came forward?"
    "Not in my experience. But looking back, there's maybe a handful of unsolved cases that still give me the Creeps. The Mississippi floats up something ugly once in a while."
    "Like an eviscerated corpse?" She told him about the Elkwood victim, and Whitmore's eyes opened wider.
    "We had a couple of cases like that," Whitmore said, his voice soft. Julia had to lean forward to hear him over the noise of the gathering crowd and clinking glass. "Cut up just as you described," he said. "Come to think of it, one of them turned up a month or so before your father disappeared. Of course, there was no connection between the two, and no reason to think there might be."
    "You've got a good memory."
    He looked down at the bar, at the streaks of light in the polished oak. "A detective never forgets the cases he doesn't solve. Because, deep down inside, he never stops trying to solve them."
    The guitarist had cranked his amplifier and strummed an ominous minor chord. The audience hooted, whistled, and drank. The drummer played a fill, checking the angles of the drum heads and cymbals. Ten years ago, the anticipation would have Julia electrified and ready to dance all night. Now, she preferred a radio so she could control the volume.
    Whitmore looked similarly pained. "That's my cue," he said, heaving himself from the stool.
    Julia gathered her purse, finished the last sip of her drink, and paid her tab. She walked Whitmore to the sidewalk and thanked him again.
    "Doubt if I helped you any," he said. "Probably just made you more troubled than you already were."
    "Trouble is only what you make of it," Julia said, reciting one of Mrs. Covington's mountain sayings. It sounded alien in that world of concrete and steel.
    "I won't tell you that you'd be better off just letting the past alone, and getting on with your life," he said. "I'll bet you hear that enough already."
    She smiled. "A detective never stops trying to solve them, right?"
    His teeth gleamed in the streetlights. "Keep my number and give me a call if anything turns up."
    She shook his hand and went up to her room, slightly woozy from the drinks. She lay on the bed and listened to the steady throb of traffic, the city's blood pumping through its monstrous asphalt veins.
    Why hadn't Mitchell told her about the ring? Surely he knew that James Whitmore would mention such an unusual item. But he could have easily withheld Whitmore's number from her, he could have failed to mention the detective at all. She may or may not have found Whitmore through her own efforts.
    By the time she fell asleep, fully