Chapter Five

The Nine Circles of Hell

"Hi, Maggie," Will said as he stepped out of the doctors' lounge, jacket draped over his shoulder and a medical bag in hand. "I'll head over to the 21th precinct. I'll grab a bite to eat on the way back."

"I'll notify Choi you might be a little late," she said kindly.

"Thanks, I appreciate that," he said.

"Will?" Maggie called as he was about to leave. "I might not know Voight well but I respect and appreciate that Intelligence is there for us whenever we need the police. Please let me know how he is doing."

"I'll let you know as soon as I get back," he promised.

"My father says Voight is a piece of work," Dylan Scott said with a smirk as he walked up to Maggie. "But I don't know him personally so I can't judge."

Maggie chuckled and shook her head. "You don't want to step on Voight's toes, that's for sure. However, Sergeant Voight as an ally is beneficial. He never makes any promises he can't keep. In fact, he did help me when I was arrested-,"

Dylan gave a low whistle. "Have you been arrested? Seriously Maggie."

"I know but it's true. There was a commotion in the ED several years back. A cocky cop put the safety of a patient in danger and I stepped in between. You might feel conflicted about that since you've been in the force and the guy was suspected for a hit and run."

"Let me guess, they wanted to have a blood sample? Possibly to confirm a drink and drive?"

She nodded.

He sighed. "As former police officer, I do see the point, but as a doctor I do know why you acted the way you did. It takes guts to go against the police."

"It's apparently called obstruction of justice," Maggie drawled lightly.

"Don't worry. I won't hold it against you," he said with a teasing smile. "Now, do you have any patients for me or can I actually go and have a cup of coffee?"

"You know, it's fairly quiet today," she knocked on wood and smirked. "Why don't you bring me a latte and I'll steer whatever case that comes in within the hour in other directions?"

"You are the best charge nurse around Maggie," he said with a smile.

"Yeah? Get out of here before I change my mind," she replied cheekily.

OOOOOO

Doctor Ethan Choi frowned as he spotted Goodwin coming his way. It looked like she was on her way out on an errand. "Miss Goodwin," he acknowledged. "What can I do for you?"

"I am coming from a board meeting," she said. "The chairman felt there were some things that needed to be addressed after the tragical events in the service elevator. I thought I'd swing by and see how the victims were faring?"

"Conditions vary from critical to stable. I've been on the phone with the CDC lab to get some clarity and to try and find out how to best treat this condition but-" he paused and sighed in frustration. "It's a slow process. They've narrowed it down to some extremely rare herbs, plants and some poisonous snake venom. It's not derived from pharmaceuticals so it can't be traced to any factory."

"And so far, there is no hope for an antidote?" Sharon guessed dejectedly.

"I am afraid not," he replied and then hesitated, looking thoughtful for a moment, before weighing his words carefully. "I can't help but to wonder. Whoever did this, did that person want all those people to die?"

Goodwin looked like she'd aged several years just hearing the question. "I don't know Doctor Choi," she said softly. "But we are going to do anything in our power to keep all of them alive."

OOOOOO

"Dale Rogers," Ruzek informed as he attached a picture of a middle-aged man on a new whiteboard situated next to the one with the cult information in the bullpen. "This is the man caught on the CCTV at Gaffney. He's an entrepreneur, working with refurbishing. He won the contract to renovate the east wing and has a legitimate cause to be at the hospital."

"I don't believe he just happened to be there," Kim said. "From what I understand, he's not very active when it comes to actually refurbishing. He's more of a manager and purchaser."

"This is interesting," Hailey mused as she stared at her screen, scrolling down through a document from the department that register corporations. "Says here that Rogers' firm was filed for bankruptcy two years ago and that he went out of business."

Adam called up his financials and travel documents. "Looks like he disappeared completely for the duration of an entire year. He paid a deposit for his apartment but his credit card was never used. Unless he can live on air, there is something very weird going on here."

"So, we wind forward a little," Hailey suggested. "Then voilà, Rogers is active again and the business has been restarted."

"Wow," Kevin spoke up. "From where did he get the money to do that?"

Jay's fingers flew over the computer board, his eyes narrowing as he searched the registers. "From a donation most likely," he offered.

"A donation?" Voight voiced skeptically.

Kim nodded. "Apparently Rogers used to be pretty famous amongst the rich people on the Gold Coast. He poses on several pictures from various fundraising events-," she tensed.

"What is it?" Adam asked.

Kim zoomed in on the picture. "It is a picture taken at Gaffney," she said thoughtfully and narrowed her eyes. "You'd never guess who's standing next to Rogers."

"Rosa Don Levy," Voight deadpanned.

The team looked at their boss in surprise.

"The woman who was murdered along with her family?" Atwater asked for clarification, although he already knew the answer.

Voight nodded. "The Don Levy's were amongst the richest families in Chicago. They donated large amounts of money to charity and argued loudly for everyone's right to public healthcare."

"Didn't they give a large sum to Gaffney last year?" Kevin asked.

"I think I heard Will say that some of the money went to the refurbishment of the east wing," Jay said.

"So, now I am confused," Adam spoke up as he rubbed at his forehead. "Are you saying that Rogers somehow went past regular channels and was able to restart his firm and get the job at Gaffney due to his connections with the now deceased Rosa Don Levy?"

"Doesn't make any sense," Jay protested. "Why would a refurbisher with a good reputation, who is involved in charity, suddenly decide to kidnap nine people, injure them and put them in a service elevator at the hospital?"

"Beats me," Kevin said with a shrug.

"What happened?" Hailey wondered aloud.

"It's a little unclear," Kim stated as she scrolled down on her screen, searching various files at the same time.

"Well, let's make it clear," Voight commanded.

"Still ordering people around I hear," a deep voice said from the edge of the staircase. "Sergeant Platt let me in."

"Ben," Hank waved lazily at him. "Welcome to Intelligence."

Jay, Hailey and Kim stood up to greet the professor as he came up to Jay's desk where all of them were more or less gathered.

"Professor Franklin," Voight rasped. "This is Detective Halstead, Detective Upton, Officers Burgess, Ruzek and Atwater."

"A pleasure," the man said kindly as he looked at each one of them before his focus returned to his old friend. "Hank, you look terrible."

Voight's dark brown eyes filled with mirth. "Always straight to the point. That's what I like about you," he replied casually. "Anyways, we've been working a case lately – actually – we thought it was finished. However, certain events in the past few days do make me wonder if we might have missed something."

Franklin nodded at the whiteboard behind Voight. "Would it be somehow related to a cult?" he guessed.

The door suddenly opened again and Sergeant Platt called from below; "Jay, your brother is here!"

Voight narrowed his eyes at his detective but said nothing. He had a fairly good idea about why the doctor would come for a visit.

"Jay didn't call, sarge," Kim said softly as Will came up the stairs and headed for the group. "I did."

The doctor hesitated. "Huh, if this is a bad time-," he began, afraid of interrupting police work.

Hank motioned for him to sit. "If it's me you're looking for, you'll have to wait," he said and motioned for the burly guy with a slightly wrinkled suit. "Doctor Will Halstead meet Professor Ben Franklin."

The professor smiled. "Detective Halstead and Doctor Halstead," he said. "I do see the resemblance. I am afraid you ended up with a bit of bad luck. You arrived just in time for a lecture."

Will smiled. "As long as I am not sworn to secrecy or killed if I attend, I don't mind," he replied.

"Here," Adam offered. "Grab a chicken wrap."

Hailey stepped up to the whiteboard to lead the presentation. "It's called the Dark Demon Cult," she began to explain.

The name made the hair at the back of Will's head rise.

"To make a long story short. A few months ago, our presence was requested at a family home downtown. A highly respected charity person and her entire family had been brutally murdered."

Will suddenly stiffened. He knew who they were talking about – Rosa Don Levy. She was a rich upper-class society woman who used to mingle around at the charity events at Gaffney. He was fairly certain she had been an old friend of the chairman of the board. It wasn't common knowledge what had happened to her, the media had only speculated. In the end it had been written off as a tragic accident. Will sighed, he should have known better.

Hailey continued. "It so happened that the oldest son in the family had been drifting for a longer period of time. He disappeared a little over a year ago. The family did everything they could think of to try and get him back home. They hired a private detective."

"Now, the private detective was found murdered in a park just south of their neighborhood," Jay filled in. "They quickly hired another one while the robbery and homicide division opened up a case; to try and find out what had happened."

"Did they?" Will heard himself asking.

"The private detective was a grizzly veteran of Chicago PD. His name was Mike Hogan," Voight rasped coldly. "I can assure you; no one ever got the upper hand on him. So, for someone to kill him-," he let the sentence hang in the air, the indication clear to the rest of them.

"Not even you, sarge?" Ruzek asked.

Will had a hard time stomaching the rawness of the police humor at times. They were talking about someone who had been murdered and here they were, trying to joke about it. It was too much for the doctor. He felt queasy.

To his credit, Voight fixed Ruzek with a glare that told him to back off.

"Anyway, there was a message carved into Hogan's back," Voight continued darkly. "It was the number seven enclosed with a ring. We thought nothing about it at the time, didn't get the meaning of it. Now, I am thinking; the seventh circle."

The professor suddenly brightened.

"The seventh circle of what?" Will asked.

"Of hell," Franklin enlightened him.

Voight nodded.

Hailey pointed to a photo of a book cover displayed on the board. She suddenly understood why Voight had put it there. "The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri," she said. "The nine circles of hell."

Will found himself wondering what kind of sick and twisted people his brother and his team got to deal with on everyday basis.

Professor Franklin rubbed his hands together with excitement, this was his field after all. "You have to keep in mind that when Dante fabricated all this about hell, the world was not as enlightened as it is now. People didn't know things the way we do, didn't understand the universe the way we do."

"Some still doesn't," Ruzek interjected.

"Many believe that Dante fantasized about what the inner layers of earth looked like. He thought there were nine stages; nine rings of hell. The further down you got, the narrower it got. At the ninth stage you'd reached the inner core of earth. From there comes the expression 'hot as hell'."

"That makes sense," Atwater concurred.

"I am sorry for getting carried away," the professor apologized. "I know you'd like to get straight to the point, Hank, but sometimes a little history and religion is good to know."

Voight just shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. He was too tired to argue with anyone at the moment.

"Hell formed when the angel Lucifer fell from the sky," Franklin continued and then shook his head. "Okay, I'll stop right there. You look white as a sheet, Hank."

Will's eyes followed the professor's gaze to the man in charge of the intelligence team. He needed to examine him sooner rather than later. However, he knew better than to interrupt the lecture so he sat back and waited for it to end.

"To get back to the topic," Voight said. "The murder of the private detective could be traced back to a cult. The Dark Demon Cult."

Hailey nodded. "The missing son of the Don Levy's could also be traced to the particular cult," she explained. "We started surveillance, tried to dig into it, find as much information as we could about their members."

Kim continued as she took the last bite of her chicken wrap. "A week ago, we zeroed in on the leader. We raided the house and brought him to custody for the murder of the private detective and the Don Levy family."

"What about the Don Levy son?" Franklin asked curiously.

"He joined the other members, those who we were able to detain, in custody, awaiting psychological counseling and help to readapt to the normal society," Jay explained sadly. "It's sad really. It's like he doesn't care about what happened to his real family; he lives in total denial."

"They are really creepy," Adam added. "All of them."

"Which finally brings us back to what I wanted to talk to you about," Hank said as he looked directly at Ben. "The cult itself. I mean, we detained the leader. We raided the house and we disbanded their gathering. A few days ago, we closed the case thinking everything was over and done with."

"Now, it seems the cult is active again," Jay added seriously. "The day before yesterday we found a bunch of people rounded up, bundled together in a service elevator at Gaffney Medical Center. All of them had injuries that is consistent with injuries Dante envisioned you to have for the sins in hell."

Will suddenly had goosebumps all over his arms. Voight had been amongst those rounded up in the service elevator. It was obviously no coincidence. He wasn't sure he wanted to know why the rest of them were there and what they'd done to end up there.

Voight leaned forward in the chair, arms on the tabletop. "Tell me something? Because it's a little unclear to me. Normally, a cult follows a leader and when that person is apprehended or removed from the equation the cult is disbanded?"

"Yes, that is a possibility," the professor reasoned. "However, as you well know, a cult is

a group or movement held together by a shared commitment to a charismatic leader or ideology. If that ideology is strong enough the leader can be replaced."

"So, there can be a – let's say – a mutiny amongst the group and the people will chose a new leader but still follow the old set of rules and the same ideology?" Halstead asked.

Franklin nodded. "As with everything else in life – nothing is straightforward when it comes to these sorts of social groupings," he replied seriously. "To be able to understand, one must ask what are the meaning of a cult? What are the tactics of a cult?"

The team waited for the professor to continue.

Franklin walked around the desk and ended up next to the whiteboard. He pointed at the leader as he began to speak again. "Cults use techniques like sleep-deprivation, alternate states of consciousness, repetition, and thought-stopping to overwhelm someone's cognitive resources and critical thinking skills. They destabilize your view of reality. And when your mind is under threat, you keep returning to the safety and love of your leader."

Atwater involuntarily shuddered at that.

"You say a cult is developed around a particular charismatic person and that he or she is never to be questioned," Voight reasoned. "In this case we apprehended the leader, put him in prison to await trial. Now you're telling us the cult is still active because of its ideology? If that is true someone must still lead the others."

"I would still call upon the ideology," Franklin said. He had an enigmatic expression on his face as he looked from the whiteboard to Voight and then back again and pointed at the written word 'cult'. "What are the 4 characteristics of a cult?" he asked.

Kim shook her head. The professor was good and he obviously liked teaching.

"Sorry, they don't teach us that in the police academy," Hank drawled.

"They are," Ben grabbed a pen and began to scribble. "A group that is focused on a living leader to whom members seem to display excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment. A group of people preoccupied with bringing in new members but also very interested in making money. Whenever a person within the group has doubts and questions about the means and purpose of the cult they are usually discouraged or punished in a suitable way to dissuade people from leaving."

"Sounds lovely," Ruzek remarked.

"The leader is apprehended," Voight reminded his old friend.

"I was getting to that," Franklin assured him kindly. "When said charismatic leader is no longer present and the ideology has been strongly incorporated into the poor souls of his or her followers then the cult can live on. As long as there are strong beliefs and someone else is ready to step up -someone who is seen as a natural successor - then all you have done is to remove a part of it that is no longer necessary for its survival."

As the other members of the intelligence unit shared troubled looks, Voight let his head come to rest in his palms, his fingers covering most of his face.

No one said anything for a while then Voight suddenly straightened in his chair and nodded at the professor. "Thanks Ben. I am not sure I've gotten any wiser. We'll most likely get back to you with more questions."

"Sure," he said. "No problem, Hank. Just – huh – a word of caution. These people have been brainwashed. Our reality is no longer their reality. They are unstable and unpredictable and, most likely, capable of everything. Whatever their agenda is – it's not good."

"Thanks for coming Professor Franklin," Kim said with a smile and motioned for the stairs. "I'll follow you downstairs."

Will took that as a cue to walk up to Voight. "How do you feel?" he asked carefully as he knelt next to him. "And I don't accept the phrase 'I am fine'."

The statement actually elicited a tight but amused smile on the older man's lips but the mirth didn't reach his eyes. "You want the truth, huh?" he whispered. "Feels like my heartbeat is irregular. I have trouble breathing, I'm freezing but my skin feels warm to touch, my head feels like it's going to explode."

"You have a naturally high threshold for pain," Will said with concern. "And you have great body control and a will of steel obviously. A normal person would probably be curled up in a fetal position on the floor right about now or be passed out on the sofa."

The rest of the team tensed at the doctor's words. They saw their superior officer, they saw that he didn't look well but he was sitting up, he appeared to be clearheaded and able to make conversations so they'd thought his condition had improved – not the other way around.

Voight's eyes were slightly glazed as they focused on Will. "I am going to the hospital?" he guessed dejectedly.

The doctor nodded. "I am sorry," he said.

"Okay, give me a moment. I need to fix some things."

"No, there can be no more delays," Will protested. "I'm calling an ambulance-,"

"No ambulance," Voight quickly corrected him as he stood on shaky legs. "My team can take me there."

Without a word Atwater walked over to him and scooped him up.

If Voight hadn't been so sick Jay would have laughed at the priceless look on his boss' face as he found himself in the arms of one of his officers. The fact that the sergeant didn't flail his arms and legs was cause for concern. However, the man still had it in him to let out a verbal protest.

"You'd better take the backdoor to the garage unless you'd want to get busted all the way back to the police academy," he threatened.

"We'll be with you soon," Hailey called after them.

"Absolutely not," Voight replied steely even though his energy seemed to drain from him for every second that passed. "You have work to do."

"Okay," Kim said softly as she appeared next to them. "Kev and me then," she reasoned and, although her voice was soft, it was also firm and determined; leaving no room for discussion.

"Why do you have to be so stubborn," Voight whined uncharacteristically.

"What's that sarge?" Atwater spoke up innocently as he made his way down the stairs. "We've learned from the best."

Voight closed his eyes and sighed. He might survive the condition but he would never survive the embarrassment of the situation.

OOOOOO

To be continued