Page 45 of Investigation of a Quest

“I’ve always assumed so,” Em said. “Why?”

“So, you don’t know what happened on his trip?”

“Not at all.”

Bel cursed under her breath. They were so close. This was why men were dying, but the answers might as well have been a million miles away. “Would anyone else know what happened to your nephew?” she asked. “A friend? A therapist?”

“His therapist, Dr. Gail Linda,” Em said. “What if he’s staying with her? I hadn’t even consider it, but if there’s anyone he trusts, it’s Dr. Linda.”

“Let’s go.” Bel pulled out her phone and dialed Griffin as she and Olivia charged from the apartment. “Hey,” she said without waiting for her boss to say hello. “I need a warrant.”

“You are correct; Leo’s trip to Mexico twenty years ago is what triggered his agoraphobia.” Dr. Linda handed the detectives delicate teacups filled with steaming peppermint. After Bel’s call, Griffin checked the flight records, which confirmed that Leo Craven had been in Mexico at the same time as Jack Samuel, Frank Calon, and Oscar Zoroaster. That, combined with Leo’s disappearance, convinced the judge to sign a rush warrant for Dr. Gail Linda to share her knowledge of Craven’s trip, which was why the partners sat in her calming home office. Unfortunately, she wasn’t hiding Leo, but they might finally get answers.

“Did he share what happened with you?” Bel asked.

“He did,” Dr. Linda said. “Or at least what he believes happened.”

“What do you mean?” Olivia asked.

“You’ll see,” the doctor said. “Leo flew to Mexico to solo backpack around the country, but he met three other men traveling alone. The four hit it off in a bar, so they teamed up. During a rainstorm, the foursome waited out the weather in a small village, where the locals urged them not to hike the trail they’d mapped out as the next leg of their journey. At first, the locals refused to explain the warning, but the men eventually convinced them to share. The villagers claimed a lost, cursed temple lay deep in the jungle, and all who traveled that trail met a dark fate. They believed the path somehow touched the unholy land. Leo’s travel companions pressed them for more information, but they stopped talking except to repeat that the trail should be avoided at all costs. The group agreed to map a different route, much to Leo’s relief, but once the storm cleared, his new friends reneged on their promise. Leo has always lacked assertiveness, so he went along with their plan despite his reservations, but he figured it was just superstition. They hiked without issue, but problems arose when the other three decided to search for the temple ruins. It started as an innocent hunt, but after a few hours, they became hopelessly lost. Panic set in, and that’s where Leo’s memory cuts out. He remembers nothing about the next hours or perhaps days. No matter how I’ve worked with him, he cannot recover that missing time.

“The next thing he remembered was waking up on the temple grounds. He doesn’t know how they got there or where it was, but he remembers the crumbling ruins, the stones so ancient that they might collapse into dust if breathed on. What he remembers most, though, is the bricks with their faint, unusual yellow tint. The group had never seen anything like it, and they couldn’t help but take pictures.”

“And souvenirs.” Bel pulled out the evidence bag holding Leo’s chipped fragment.

“Oh my God.” Dr. Linda leaned forward so quickly that she almost fell off her chair. “Is that it? Is that really a piece of the temple?”

“We believe so,” Bel said. “We’ve identified the other three men from the Mexico trip. They’re all dead, and they all had either photos or pieces of this brick. This one is from Leo’s apartment, so you can understand why we obtained a warrant for this information. We’re worried he’s next.”

“Oh my God,” the doctor repeated. “Someone’s killing the men from that trip?”

“It appears so,” Bel said.

“Why?”

“That’s what we’re hoping this story will tell us. What happened after they woke up at the temple?”

“That’s the thing,” Dr. Linda said. “Leo doesn’t know. No amount of therapy has unlocked his missing memories. He remembers waking up at the ruins and then nothing until they were eventually found. Based on their injuries, dehydration, and starvation, they’d been wandering the jungle for weeks.”

“Flight records confirm the four men were in Mexico for an extended period,” Bel said.

“Leo remembers nothing, but they were clearly lost for a long time,” Dr. Linda continued. “They were bloody and gaunt. All four of them ended up in a small local clinic.”

“Hence the lack of medical records,” Olivia said.

“Probably,” Linda said. “And the memory loss didn’t just affect Leo. They didn’t tell the authorities that they’d found the temple ruins. They simply claimed they got lost hiking, but none of them knows what happened during those weeks. So when they were released from the clinic, they vowed never to speak of it again or contact one another. Ironic, because their murders proved they all ended up living within half an hour of each other.”

“What does Leo think happened to them?” Bel asked.

“That the locals were right. He believes they disturbed an ancient evil, and it punished them for trespassing. He was so afraid it would find him and finish the job that he locked himself inside his apartment and never set foot outside again.”

Olivia glanced at Bel, but she didn’t meet her partner’s eye. They both knew Leo’s theory was right. They had disturbed a great power and were now paying the price for that desecration. But Bel didn’t want to alert the therapist that she, too, believed something was hunting these men.

“What do you say happened?” Olivia asked. “Did those four find an ancient evil?”

“No,” Dr. Linda laughed. “Leo’s story is a defense mechanism. I doubted the temple was even real until you showed me that yellow brick, but then again, that rock could be random debris he fixated on. Monsters and ancient devils don’t exist in this world. Superstition is just the human mind’s self-preservation. The reality is that Leo and his companions got lost in the jungle with limited provisions and no true survival skills. The things they probably had to do to survive. The way they probably treated each other. They survived hell, and they undoubtedly had to do the unthinkable to stay alive. Leo couldn’t reconcile with the savagery, so his brain created a fantasy to protect itself. It’s safer for him to blame his sins on an entity than for him to admit he committed them willingly so he could live.”

“How long have you been working with Leo?” Bel asked.