Evil Dark (4 page)

  "They all do white magic only – supposedly." That was Sefchik, Aquilina's partner.

  "And we're all old enough to know what 'supposedly' is worth," McGuire said. "Besides, even those that stay on the right-hand path might have heard something about one of their brethren who's been walking on the wild side."

  "And it's not just the wizard," I said.

  McGuire looked at me. "What do you mean?"

  "There's other people involved, too. Somebody is operating the camera while the wizard is conjuring – we saw it move while he was still chanting."

  Aquilina brushed hair out of her eyes and said, "He could've done it himself, using a remote to move and focus."

  "In theory, yeah," I said. "But in practice, no way. Any wizard with experience – and it looks like this guy's got plenty – knows better then to split his attention during a conjuration. The cost of fucking up is just too damned high."

  "So to speak," Karl said. He's always finding puns in my speech that I didn't intend to put there.

  "So there's two of the fuckers, at least," Pearce said. His nose has been broken so many times, he looks like a dumb pug. He's neither one.

  "Two, and probably more," I said. "They're snatching people without being seen, then disposing of the bodies afterward. Could be that the wizard doesn't stoop to do that kind of work himself, so that means more guys are involved."

  "Good point," McGuire said. "And let's not forget the people on the retail end. Somebody's got to make copies of each video, and somebody's gotta sell them. You don't buy this kind of shit at Vlad-Mart."

  "Not yet, anyway," I muttered, just loud enough for Karl to hear me.

  "All right, everybody, hit the street," McGuire said, just as our PA, Louise the Tease, approached him with a sheet of paper. He read it, and his face got even tighter than usual.

  "Renfer, Markowski," he said, "Stick around a minute."

  Karl and I traded looks. It's like when the principal tells you to stay after school – it's never for anything good.

 

Once the other detectives were gone, McGuire said, "There's been another witch burning."

  I felt my stomach drop like a runaway elevator. "Do they have an ID?"

  "No, but if you're worried about Rachel, she's still in San Diego at that Wiccan conference. Not due back for a few more days."

  I felt better, but only a little. Rachel Proctor, the department's consulting witch, wasn't the only magic practitioner I knew, although she was the one I knew best.

  "If they don't know who she was, how do they know she was a witch?" Karl asked.

  "Looks like the same M.O. as last time," McGuire said.

  Four nights earlier, a woman had been found tied to a telephone pole in Sturgis Park – or what was left of her had been found. She'd been burned beyond recognition. But the next day, a guy named Martin Allerdyce filed a missing persons report on his wife, Brenda, who was a practicing witch. She did white magic, of course – the black kind's illegal.

  Nobody thought it would serve any useful purpose to have Allerdyce attempt an identification of the charred thing found in the park. But he did provide two items, upon request: a brush containing a good quantity of his wife's hair, and the name of her dentist.

  Both dental records and DNA analysis confirmed Brenda Allerdyce as the victim. I wasn't exactly surprised to hear that the funeral had been conducted with a closed coffin.

  One of the fire marshals said that gasoline had been used as an accelerant, and Homer Jordan at the ME's office told me that the level of free histamines in the tissues meant that Brenda Allerdyce had been alive when the fire was lit. She must've died screaming, an ugly fact that her husband was probably all too well aware of.

  And now the sick fuck responsible had done it again.

  "Where's this one?" I asked McGuire.

  He looked at me for a second before answering. "Lake Scranton," he said, and his voice contained no inflection at all.

  Next to me I heard Karl mutter, "Well, damn."

  Lake Scranton is a man-made reservoir just south-east of the city. A few months back, Karl and I, and some others, had spent a very long night in its pump house. Several people had died there, and the survivors would never be the same again. That was especially true of Karl, who'd started the night as a human and finished it well on his way to becoming a vampire.

  "Tell me it's not the pump house again," I said.

  "Not even close," McGuire said. "The vic was found tied to one of the trees along the shoreline. Somebody whose house overlooks the lake saw the flames and called the fire department."

  "Are you sure you want us on this?" I asked. "The Feebies seem to expect us all to be out beating the bushes for whoever's been making those snuff films." I can take as much horror as anybody on the job. But after watching that video tonight, I wasn't eager to look at a charred corpse, and to inhale that distinctive odor that smells so much like roast pork that I haven't eaten any in fourteen years.

  A couple of months ago, I'd spent one of my rare nights off having a few beers with Homer Jordan. He'd told me, as if I wanted to know, about some scientific paper he'd read that compared the pain involved in the various ways people die. The paper had concluded, Homer said, that burning to death was the hardest way there is to check out.

  Me, I would have said that being tortured to death by somebody who enjoyed his work would have been a contender for the number one spot, but that's kind of like debating which is the hottest corner of Hell, and those kind of arguments don't interest me.

  I suppose that the study Homer was talking about had made some kind of valuable contribution to medical research. But I wouldn't want to be married to the guy, or woman, who wrote it.

  "I don't think the FBI expects us to abandon our regular case load just to help them with this thing," McGuire said. "And if they do, then fuck 'em. Now get moving."

  We got moving.

 

As I drove out of the parking lot, Karl said, "Think it's those fucking witchfinders again?"

  "Well, it's not Crane and Ferris, that's for sure." The last two witch-smellers to visit Scranton had died right here in this parking lot, their necks broken by a vampire named Vollman, and good riddance.

  "I figure there's more where those two clowns came from," Karl said.

  "I'm sure," I said. "But they're supposed to check in with the local police, whenever they come into a town – just like private eyes do."

  "
Supposed to
, huh?"

  "Yeah, all right," I said. "But what those bastards do is legal, unfortunately. If they'd burned a witch, they wouldn't disappear – they'd call a fucking press conference."

  "Good point. So what do you figure – some lone psycho?"

  "Let's wait 'til we get there," I said. "It's a mistake to theorize in the absence of data."

  From the corner of my eye, I could see Karl turn to look at me. "You've been reading Sherlock Holmes again, Stan?"

  "Why not?" I said. "If you can memorize all the James Bond books, I can at least read some Conan Doyle once in a while."

  "I don't have 'em memorized," he said. "I'm not some geek fanboy."

  "Sorry, my mistake," I said – then asked him, "What's the last line of
From Transylvania with Love
?"

  Without hesitating, he quoted, "
Bond pivoted, drove the wooden stake through Rosa Klebb's heart, then slowly collapsed on the blood-red floor
." After a second's pause, he said, "Hey – no fair.
Everybody
knows that one."

  "Everybody," I said, nodding. "Yeah, you're right. My bad."

  A few minutes later we reached the turnoff for Lake Scranton. It got quiet in the car as the flashing red and blue lights up ahead reminded us why we were here.

 

There's a jogging trail that goes all the way around the lake, but it's not wide enough for cars. Neither are any of the gates leading to it. That's why the two black-and-white units and the ambulance were parked outside the north gate. All three had their red and blue lights going, creating an effect like a madman's vision of Hell. Considering what I figured was on the other side of that fence, the madman would have been right on the money.

  Karl and I parked and walked to the gate, which had a uniform standing next to the strip of yellow crime scene tape that blocked it. The cop was a patrolman named Dougherty. We knew each other.

  "Where is it?" I asked him.

  He pointed. "Down the path and to the right. You'll see the lights."

  "Is the ME here?"

  "Yeah. It's what's-his-name, Jordan."

  "How about Forensics?" I asked him.

  "Showed up about five minutes ago."

  "Amazing."

  Dougherty was right – the crime scene was easy to find. There was no sense in tripping over something on the way, though, so Karl went first as we followed the jogging path. He can see pretty well in the dark these days.

  There were no electrical outlets down here, but somebody – probably the forensics guys – had brought along three battery-powered lamps on tripods. A couple of other cops held big flashlights, their beams moving around restlessly but always returning to the charred thing that had once been a human being. Lights flashed erratically as somebody took photos of the scene.

  A couple of EMTs stood patiently nearby, the stretcher they'd brought leaning against a tree. I didn't envy them the job of carrying the body all the way back to the ambulance. EMTs are tough, and they see a lot of bad shit almost every day. But what they had to transport this time would probably have given Caligula nightmares.

  A guy in plain clothes stood among the uniforms, and as we got closer I recognized Scanlon from Homicide. He made lieutenant not long ago, which means he doesn't have to go to crime scenes anymore. But he still does. I wondered if he was regretting that he went to this one.

  The smell of burned flesh was strong now, and if I let myself focus on it, I'd probably puke. So I focused on Scanlon, instead.

  "Well, look who's here," he said. "The Spook Squad."

  "Two guys doesn't make a squad, Scanlon – even a guy from Homicide should know that." I looked toward the tree and what was tied to it. "They called us because this one is supposed to be similar to the witch burning we had Wednesday night."

  "Yeah, same M.O.," Scanlon said. "Such as it is. Human female, although I'm guessing on the sex, based on the remaining hair and body size. Placement of the rope is the same as last time. The knots look similar, although I'm no expert. Same accelerant, too – there's a definite gasoline smell, when you get up close."

  "I'll take your word for it," I said. "You sure she's human?"

  He shrugged. "Not too many species of supe fit the profile," Scanlon said. "A werewolf would have transformed and broken the ropes with no sweat. A fairy would have just vanished. She's too small for an ogre and too big for a troll or goblin." It sounded like he had been reading the manual.

  "How do you know it's not a vampire?" There was something in Karl's voice that I caught, even if Scanlon didn't.

  "No fangs," Scanlon said. His face, what I could see of it, was expressionless. "I had the forensics guys check, even though it's not their job." I was betting that none of them had given him an argument about it, either, although putting your face close enough to that corpse to see its teeth could be nobody's idea of a good time.

  "No reason she couldn't be a witch, though," I said. "Like the last one."

  Technically, witches and wizards are considered supernatural beings, or supes, but they're also human – most of them, anyway.

  "No, I guess not," Scanlon said. "But why somebody who can work magic would let herself be abducted, then burned alive, is more than I can figure."

  Maybe he hadn't read the manual, after all.

  "Witches don't wear magic like body armor," I said, "and they can't use it instantly, like karate. Working magic takes preparation."

  "Remember that guy, Kulick, a few months ago?" Karl asked. "He was a wizard, and a good one. But he was taken by surprise – and you saw what happened to
him
."

  George Kulick had died hard, although it had taken a while for his spirit to move on to the Great Beyond, whatever that was. Personally, I hoped the bastard was roasting in Hell.

  "But they can do defensive spells, can't they?" Scanlon said.

  "Sure, if they have a reason to." I glanced toward the charred figure tied to the tree. "And if it turns out that this vic is a witch, too, I bet every practitioner in town is going to have a defensive spell in place within a few hours of getting the news."

  "Which means this one should be the last," Scanlon said. "They'll be ready for him, next time."

  "They fucking well better be," I said.

  Homer Jordan lumbered over. He nodded to Karl and me but spoke to Scanlon. "Well, I pronounced her, Lieutenant, which shouldn't come as a surprise. Cause of death's pretty obvious, too – but I'll check the internal organs to see if she was poisoned or drugged, first."

  "What about T.O.D.?" Scanlon asked.

  Homer shrugged his big shoulders. "Time of death's a bitch with burn victims, Lieutenant. I'll do the best I can."

  "The guy who called it in said he could see flames," I said.

  "The time of the call is probably a good indication of when she died, give or take a few minutes."

  "That's good to know, thanks," Homer said. "I'll check the police report." He looked around at the dark trees. "Good thing we've had a lot of rain lately. Otherwise, the motherfucker could've started a forest fire, on top of everything else."