Page 174 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Slow Burn

I pondered the profound philosophical implications of that for
about three seconds. No, I decided, Galactomalt could not be
charged as an accessory to murder if Quarles Carbone were the guilty
party.
“Who’s next?”
Labelle, who had been driving west on 5th Street, turned left and
headed south. “Quincy. He’s the only one to have been affected by
religion, as far as I can tell. His parents sent them all to church a few
times before they gave up on spiritually developing their sons. The
other four simply misbehaved; Quincy picked up a few pointers for
later use.”
“Don’t tell me: he posed as a minister and defrauded elderly
women out of their life savings.”
“No—and don’t give him any ideas, please. Fraud was his most
recent crime, however: mail fraud. As a minor he avoided serious
penalties, primarily owing to his failure to collect any significant
money from his victims. The scam was probably inspired by a chain
letter the family received, the kind that spring up sporadically around
the country. You, the recipient of such a letter, are supposed to send
a dollar to the first name on the list, then remove that name, copy the
list with your own name added at the bottom and mail it on to
others. By the time your name comes to the top, the number of
letters will be in the hundreds or thousands, depending on how long
the list of names is and how many people actually follow the
instructions. It is a type of pyramid scheme, in which the originator
reaps great rewards and the last people to sign on get nothing.”
“And that’s illegal, just asking for money?”
“It is, depending on how it is worded. The typical chain letter lists
supposed fortunes collected by this or that person, and calamities
which befell those who broke the chain. Those disasters have a
supernatural ring to them, and that is what young Quincy picked up
on. If people could be impressed by that sort of dire prediction, then
why bother with the success stories? He turned the chain upside-
down and fashioned a letter purporting to have been written by the
Order of the Pentacle, a satanic cult. It claimed to present a list of
potential victims for sacrifice in a black mass. You, the letter’s
recipient, were first on that list, having moved up slowly, one name at
a time, from the bottom of someone else’s list—an unknown enemy.

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