Hard Spell (22 page)

  "–has got the same markings as the first vic." Karl's forehead wrinkled. "So, maybe this fucking ritual, whatever it is, requires some kind of repetition, only… Fuck, I dunno."

  Lacey was looking at me. "There's something else that doesn't fit," she said. "Now that you mention it. The M.O."

  "All the M.O.s have been different," Karl said. "I mean, that's part of the pattern, haina?"

  "I think maybe I see what she's getting at," I said to him. "It's not weird enough."

  She nodded slowly. "Yeah, exactly. My guy had been done by a silver garrote, and in your two, the perp used–"

  "Charcoal bullets and a silver-coated blade," I said. "Wooden stake through the heart, it's, I dunno, too
conventional
."

  "Okay, I'm with you now," Karl said, "but it still doesn't tell us shit. We don't know why the perp would all of a sudden start using the tried-and-true method of killing a vamp, but we don't know why the fucker's doing
anything
he does."

  "Yeah, but I wonder..." I let my voice trail off. "Look, we should get out of here so the coroner can take the body away. They're probably waiting for us."

  As we shuffled back out the door, I said, "Besides, there's something I wanna look at in the car."

  "What's that?" Karl asked.

  "My laptop."

Karl was just slipping into the passenger side as I reached under my seat for the slim laptop computer. I heard the rear door open and close as Lacey scrambled into the back seat.

  I opened up my computer, logged on, then passed it to Karl. "Here," I said. "You're better at this stuff than I am."

  "What stuff?" Karl asked.

  "Searching the Internet."

  "Ah, hell. It's not all that hard to find porn." He glanced over his shoulder at Lacey. "Not that I would know."

  "If not, you're the only guy in the world who doesn't," Lacey murmured.

  "So what am I looking for, Stan?" Karl said.

  "Images of the symbols that were carved into the first victim."

  He looked at me. "Scranton PD never released that information. Neither did Wilkes-Barre."

  "No, they didn't," I said. "But it's funny how much confidential stuff gets on the Internet without being officially released. I want to know if somebody outside law enforcement could've known what those symbols looked like."

  Lacey leaned over the front seat. I could feel warm breath on the back of my neck. "You're thinking copycat?"

  "Maybe," I said. "It would sure explain a few things that don't otherwise make much sense."

  Despite his modesty, Karl was good at nding stuff online besides porn. His fingers were flying over the keyboard, and I could hear him swearing softly as his search efforts came up empty, one after another. Then he stopped, stared at the screen, and said, "Jesus fucking Christ on a goddamn bicycle."

  "What?" I asked, although I thought I knew the answer.

  "This," Karl said, and turned the screen to face me.

  And there they were.

The website described the photo as showing "Actual Occult Symbols Carved into Murder Victim in Scranton PA!!!" The idiot who put it up there explained that this was somehow a sign of the oncoming Apocalypse.

  Whoever he was, I hoped he was wrong.

  "How the fuck did some asshole get hold of these?" Lacey said from the back seat.

  "Lots of possible ways," I said. "Somebody at the coroner's office, a guy doing night shift at the morgue, the funeral home people – could've been anyone. Almost everybody's got a cell phone these days, and almost every one of those has a built-in camera."

  "Yeah, be a piece of cake," Karl said. "All you'd need is some decent light and about a minute of privacy."

  Lacey had her forearms crossed over the back of the front seat, her chin resting on them. "So some 'fearless vampire killer' decided to make his work look like it was done by Sligo – or whoever's been going around knocking off vamps – to throw us off the scent. That what you're saying?"

  It was quiet in the car for a few seconds.

  Lacey bit her lower lip for a second or two, then shook her head. "Doesn't make any sense, Stan," she said. "Mostly these Van Helsing types want publicity for their deed, if not their name. See themselves as big holy heroes. They wouldn't want a serial killer to get the credit."

  "Yeah, I know," I said. "It doesn't fit the pattern. If it's a vigilante, that is."

  "But what's left?" Lacey asked. "If it's not the wizard, or a fucking vampire slayer...?"

  I looked over at Karl and raised my eyebrows. He saw me, and nodded slowly.

  "Lacey, listen: far be it from me to tell the great Michael Twardzik, Lieutenant, Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Investigation Division, how to run one of his cases."

  "Apart from the fact that he'd tell you to fuck off as soon as you opened your mouth," Karl said.

  "There's that too," I said. "But he seems to like you, Lacey. Kind of."

  "He's got fantasies about getting in my pants," she said, "which should be filed under G for 'Good fucking luck.'"

  "Whatever the reason, he at least lets you talk to him," I said. "Which is more than Karl and I can say."

  "I know about you and the academy thing," Lacey said, "but what did Karl do to piss him off?"

  "Guilt by association," Karl said, with a grin.

  "Anyway," I said, "the next time you have the lieutenant's ear, you might whisper in it that he should take a good hard look at the kid's parents."

  Lacey just stared at me.

  I said, "If it were me, I'd want to know where both parents were at the kid's time of death, whenever the coroner says that was," I said. "I might also check trash cans and storm drains in a ten-block radius, looking for some bloody clothing that somebody might have tried to get rid of. And check the sink traps in the house for blood residue – you know the routine."

  "'Course I do," she said, "and I'm aware that in most murder investigations you look at family first. But why...?"

  "When we were in there, I counted six nails sticking out from the walls with nothing hanging from them, and those people are too neat just to leave nails there for no reason. That's where they hung the crucifixes, the paintings of the Sacred Heart, the little frescoes of the Virgin Mary, all that. If you looked, you'd most likely find all that stuff stashed in a bureau drawer. And I'll bet that all of it will be back on the wall tomorrow, or the next day."

  Lacey shook her head again, but not as if she was disagreeing with me. "I can imagine how hard it is to deal with someone in your family who's been changed," she said. "But to off your own kid in cold blood..."

  "You're Catholic, aren't you, Lacey?" I asked her.

  "I was raised that way, but I'm in recovery," she said with a tiny smile, which is all that old joke deserved.

  Karl turned and looked at her. "You're shittin' me," he said. "How can anybody do this kind of work and not believe in God?"

  "I didn't say I don't believe in God, Karl," Lacey said. "Although, if you ask me, all supes prove is the existence of the devil. I just walked away from all the Catholic bullshit. No offense, if that's your thing."

  "Even so," I said, "you know the Church's views about supes – vamps, weres, goblins, the whole crew."

  "
Anathema
," Karl said. "The pope says they're cursed by God, all of them."

  "Yeah, and that's one of the reasons I took a hike," Lacey said. "Give some old man a tall hat, and all of a sudden he speaks for God? I don't think so."

  "You may not be with the program any more, Lacey," I said, "but I'm betting the Dwyers were. From all indications, they were hard-core Irish, and, especially in this area, that means hard-core Catholic."

  "You think they drove a stake through their own kid because some fucking priest told them to?"

  "Possible, but it didn't have to happen that way. If they figured the Church would have wanted him dead, that might have been enough. It would be, for some people I grew up with. They probably told themselves they were saving his soul." I turned my head and looked at the night as it pressed against the car windows. "Who knows? Maybe they were."

We were approaching the on-ramp for 81-North when I whacked the steering wheel with one hand and said, "Damn!"

  Karl was bent forward, fiddling with the radio. "What? What's wrong?"

  "Just remembered something else the Staties ought to be doing: check the computer in the kid's room."

  "For what – to see if he was downloading vamp porn?" I couldn't see Karl's smile in the dark, but I knew it was there.

  You can find porn catering to every taste on the Internet – most of it legal, some not. Where there's a niche market, somebody will come up with product to fill it: gay, straight, bi, gimp, albino, human, nonhuman. It's all there someplace, and I guess vampire porn's been around the Internet as long as all the other kinds. I once had to check some of it out for a case I was working. I hope never to have to look at it again.

  "No," I said, "I'd be more interested in finding out whether any Google searches had been done for those symbols we found carved on our first vic. If it was Mom or Dad, or both, who carved them in the kid, they had to find them first."

  "Yeah, that could be useful," Karl said, "although there's no way to tell who was doing the search, if there is one. Hell, the kid could have done it."

  "Not if it took place during daytime, he didn't. Anyway, it's kind of a reach for the kid to be researching symbols that later end up carved on his own corpse, isn't it? I'm pretty sure he didn't carve himself."

  "You got a point there." Karl found a radio station he liked and sat back. "But what you did back there with Twardzik was pure fucking genius, Stan."

  "Thanks. Too bad they don't give out Nobel Prizes for conniving."

  All I'd done was suggest to Lacey that she tell the lieutenant that I was convinced James Dwyer was the latest victim of the serial vamp slayer, and in my opinion the investigation should focus on that aspect of the case and exclude all others.

  Which guaranteed that Twardzik, while following the vamp slayer angle, would also spend plenty of man-hours treating the case like just another homicide. If there was any evidence of the parents' involvement, he'd find it. And then figure out a way to let me know about it, bless his little head. Both of them.

We were about a mile out from Scranton when Karl said, "Getting late."

  I glanced at the dashboard clock. "Yeah, double shift is almost over. The chief won't pay for triple overtime, even if I had any energy left to do it. Which I don't."

  "Yeah, I guess what-his-name, Jamieson Longworth's 'pad' will have to wait until tomorrow night." Karl scratched his chin. "Unless he has his pet wizard drop a boulder on us while we're asleep."

  "If he was able to do that, he'd have done it by now."

  "You hope."

  "Yeah. I hope. But if you think about it, he probably hasn't–"

  The police radio crackled into life. "Car 23, car 23, this is Dispatch. Do you copy? Over."

  Whoever's riding shotgun handles the radio, so Karl reached out, snapped off WARM 590 AM, and picked up the mike.

  "This is 23," he said. "Copy just fine. Over."

  "That isn't Sergeant Markowski, is it? I'd know his voice. Over."

  "No, this is Renfer, but Markowski can hear you. He's driving. What's up? Over."

  "I've got a phone call just come in for Sergeant Markowski. The lady says it's urgent. Do you want me to patch it through to your vehicle? Over."

  Turning my head a little, I could see Karl looking at me. "Ask if she's got a name," I said, "or knows what it's about."

  "Did the caller ID herself?" Karl asked. "Over."

  "Affirmative. Says her name is Joanne Gilbert."

  "Doesn't ring a bell," I told Karl. "Have her leave a number, and I'll–"

  The radio dispatcher spoke again. "Caller says she's Rachel Proctor's sister."

  I checked the mirror, then put my foot on the brake and began easing us over to the shoulder of the road and a complete stop as I said to Karl, "Tell them to put her through."

"Hello? Hello?"

  "This is Detective Sergeant Markowski speaking."

  "Oh. Uh, hi. My name is Joanne Gilbert. Rachel Proctor, who I guess works with you, is my sister."

  Her voice did resemble Rachel's. Joanne Gilbert sounded like someone who was trying very hard to stay calm.

  "Gilbert would be your married name, then," I said.

  "That's right. I live in Warwick, Rhode Island, but I've got a... message... for you from Rachel."

  "Is she there with you now?" My fingers were suddenly tight around the microphone. "Because I really need to–"

  "No, sir. I haven't seen Rachel in a couple of years. We were going to get together at a big family thing last Christmas, but then one of my kids got sick... you know how it is."

  "Yeah, I guess I do. So, how did Rachel get in touch – email, phone call, what?"

  Silence. I let it go on for a little bit, then said, "Mrs. Gilbert? You still there?"

  "Yes, I'm here. It's just that this is a little... what happened was, Rachel got in touch by making me write the message down with my own hand."

  This time the silence was on my end. Joanne Gilbert didn't let it last long. "Detective, if you work with Rachel, I guess you must know something about witchcraft."

  "More than I ever wanted to," I muttered.

  "Excuse me? What?"

  "Sorry, Mrs. Gilbert. I got distracted for a second. Yes, I'm pretty familiar with witchcraft."

  "Then you know that the basic Talent is genetic. You're either born with it, or you're not."

  "Yeah, I'm aware of that."

  "But the Talent itself is practically useless," she said, "unless you get training in how to use it."

  "Right."

  "Rachel made the decision to develop her Talent. I didn't. I wanted a normal life. But we've both got it. The Talent, I mean."