I Will Fear No Evil (Psalm 23 Mysteries Book 10) (22 page)

“Which he never got a chance to,” Mark said.

“Nope. One day he was studying with his roommate and he just couldn’t keep his eyes open. He thought he’d been going at it too hard, not getting enough sleep. He decided to lay down on the couch for an hour before dinner. As he was drifting off to sleep he heard Lizzie’s voice saying an incantation and he felt all his muscles locking up. He tried to pull himself out of it, but it was like something was physically grabbing him and pulling him down into sleep. He said he could see darkness swallowing him up and the last thing he heard was her laughter.”

“Creepy,” Jeremiah said.

His phone rang and Mark noticed that they all jumped slightly. He snatched it up. “Hello?”

“It’s Liam. We’ve been all over the place, taken fingerprints. Not sure if we’ll be able to pick up anything that way, what with all the volunteers who are touching these cages and things every week.”

“At least we can try.”

“Yes. The scary part is that they didn’t even try to hide what they were after. There was no attempt to even make it look like vandalism or some random act,” Liam said. “Whoever took those cats didn’t care if people knew that was exactly what they were doing.”

“How many cats again?”

“Six. Four adults and two kittens. We’ve got pictures of them all and they’ve all already been chipped so if they show up, we’ll know.”

“No owners, though, right?”

“Nope. These were six cats just hoping for a home.”

“Well, we’ll do what we can to see they still have that chance,” Mark said.

“Time to fill me in?”

“Yeah, come over to the hospital and see me. I’m in Room 311.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

“Sorry, Liam. Did I ruin your weekend plans?”

“Yeah, but it’s okay. I had a ticket to go see Doctor Geek’s Science Fair, but they’re putting those on in different parts of the country, so hopefully I can see it somewhere else soon.”

“Good, because vacation is officially over.”

“Understood.”

Mark hung up. “Six cats. No leads yet.” He sighed and looked at Trina. “Samuel really thinks Lizzie cursed him?”

“He absolutely believes it,” she confirmed.

“And what do we believe?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” Trina countered, eyes widening slightly.

“Curses? Real? Not?” he let his eyes drift over to Jeremiah. “What about it, Rabbi? Can these things happen?”

Jeremiah shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. My experience tells me no, but I do try to keep an open mind to the spiritual forces at work around us. It could be possible. It’s possible that she didn’t curse him, but that part of him believed it so completely that she might as well have.”

“Great,” Mark grumbled. “Okay, anything else Trina?”

She shook her head.

“Jeremiah, you’re up.”

“One of the girls at church, Brenda, talked to Cindy and Wildman. Turns out she was good friends with Cheyenne, the first victim, and really torn up about it. She pointed a finger at Cheyenne’s older sister, Lacey, saying she was the only one who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt Cheyenne. Brenda said she believed Lacey was the killer.”

“Interesting,” Mark said, narrowing his eyes. “Cheyenne’s parents didn’t even mention that they had another daughter. I wonder if they were thinking the same thing and were trying to cover for her?”

“Worth doing some digging,” Trina suggested.

Mark’s phone rang again and he answered it. As he listened to Liam he felt his blood pressure rising. At last he was off the call and he stared grimly at the other two.

“I have to get out of here.”

Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “We’ve already been through that once, remember?”

Mark shook his head. “You don’t understand. They found another body.”

As Jeremiah drove home that evening he was deeply frustrated. There had been things at the synagogue he’d had to take care of. He’d had to leave the hospital in the middle of Mark trying to persuade the doctor to discharge him. As Jeremiah himself had pointed out, he’d spent the majority of the week at Mark’s work sites instead of his own.

Marie had been in a mood which hadn’t helped and as he took care of all the things that were piled up on his desk he kept thinking that none of them was as important as stopping the monster that was sacrificing young women. Several times he had to take a deep breath and remind himself that he had chosen to be a Rabbi and not a cop and that sometimes he just had to leave things to the professionals.

Trina was interesting. She was hiding something, that much was easy to see. What it was that she was hiding was much more uncertain. Still, he knew that she wanted to catch the person or persons behind these murders just as much as the rest of them.

Mark had called him in the late afternoon. Apparently he had managed to finally secure his release from the hospital, this time with doctor consent, even if it was given grudgingly. He had described the third crime scene for him. This time an abandoned store had served as the scene. All the details about the layout of the body had been the same. The markings appeared to be the same as well. It had also struck Jeremiah that both the second and third location were not that far from the first. He kept thinking there was something significant about that, something convenient for the killer.

Mark had been heading home after the crime scene and had confessed how much he wasn’t looking forward to that. Traci still wouldn’t return his calls. Jeremiah felt for him. Jeremiah promised Mark that he’d try and decipher the markings on the bodies later that night and give him a call in the morning.

After feeding Captain and himself he settled down at the computer with the file Mark had given him with the pictures of the symbols on the first girl’s body. It took hours but he finally was able to get the rough meanings of each of them thanks to a couple of old books he’d carried with him for years and the help of his computer search engine. He had planned to call Mark in the morning with his findings, but as he looked it all over he realized that this probably shouldn’t wait.

“Hello?” the Detective answered the phone, slurring the word. Jeremiah wasn’t sure if he’d woken him or if it was still the ill effects of the poison his body was recovering from.

“I know what the symbols mean.”

“Yeah, what?” Mark said, sounding like he was struggling to pull himself together.

“There are symbols for life and death from various ancient writing systems, but there are also words written in ancient Sumerian that look like they’re appearing throughout the body at regular intervals, almost like an incantation.”

“What does it say?”

“Accept offering one of eight in exchange life eternal.”

“What?” Mark asked, now sounding thoroughly awake.

“You heard me. I want to see a picture of the markings on the second and third girls, but if I’m right, there are five more that are marked for death.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Mark, are you there?”

“Yeah. Meet me at the Starbucks across from the police station in fifteen minutes. We need to get ahead of this now.”

When Jeremiah made it to the coffee house he discovered Mark and Trina already huddled at a table, both looking ashen.

“Is it true what you found?” Trina asked before Jeremiah could even sit down.

He nodded.

“And you’re sure it’s Sumerian?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I’ve heard about a Sumerian spell designed to do what you’re saying, give a kind of immortality but at the cost of eight other lives. I’ve seen references to it in some obscure old manuscripts, but I’ve never seen an actual copy of the spell itself.”

“How would someone even go about finding something like that?” Mark asked, voice full of misery.

“Simple. They either spent a tremendous amount of time looking for it or they stumbled across it by complete accident,” Trina answered.

“What do you know of the spell?” Jeremiah asked.

“Hold it, just one minute. Are we actually saying we believe in magic and spells and all this hoodoo?” Mark asked. “Because, when I asked earlier no one wanted to say so.”

“Whether or not it’s real is immaterial,” Trina said. “Someone out there believes it is and they’re not going to stop killing innocent people until they think they’ve accomplished what they set out to do.”

“Valid point,” Mark said.

“So, back to my question,” Jeremiah said.

“I know only this, that it takes eight people to make the sacrifice and that those eight people have to be connected in some way to the people performing the ritual.”

“What do you mean connected?” Mark asked.

“The sacrifices have to be personal, they can’t be just random people. It was probably an attempt to make sure that there was a great personal cost to this spell so that only those who were most committed would actually follow through.”

“So, Michelle was killed because she was Lizzie’s roommate?”

Trina nodded. “It is possible.”

“So we need to find out who might be the dark witch that’s connected to Cheyenne and then maybe we can follow their trail to Lizzie,” Mark said.

“What if it is her sister Lacey? What if she’s the dark witch?” Jeremiah asked.

“We have to find Lacey,” Trina said.

“Way ahead of you,” Mark answered as he whipped out his notepad. He’d had his hands too busy to follow up on the Lacey lead earlier and now he was regretting it. A minute later the phone over at Cheyenne’s parents’ house was ringing. The mom answered, clearly having been awoken.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, this is Detective Walters. I apologize for calling so late. It’s very important that I speak with your daughter Lacey, though.”

“Then I suggest you call her,” the woman said, sounding upset.

“If you would be so kind to give me her phone number and address I’d be happy to contact her directly.”

“Just a minute.”

Five minutes later she finally came back on the line and he copied down the information she gave him. He hung up and grabbed his coffee. “She lives in an apartment complex just off campus. Let’s get over there and see if we can’t stop ourselves a witch.”

They all piled in Mark’s car and he used the lights and siren to blast his way across town. He turned them both off when he got a few blocks away from the apartment building.

“No need to let her know we’re coming,” Mark said.

Minutes later he was parking in front of her building. “She’s apartment 312. Should be on the third floor,” Mark commented as he headed for the stairs. He was moving slow. He had to admit that he still wasn’t operating at full capacity. He refused to go as far as admitting that the doctor would have been right to force him to stay in the hospital another day or two. He didn’t have time for that. He had a killer to stop and a wife to get back.

As Mark passed beneath one of the street lights a blond haired girl walked by him, wearing a gray university sweatshirt. She gazed at him with abnormally large eyes that matched the color of the T-shirt. She smiled at him and kept walking.

He, Trina, and Jeremiah made it to the stairs. Trina started up, followed by Jeremiah. Something was bothering Mark, though, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He stayed at the bottom for a moment, hesitating with his foot on the stair. It was more than just the fact that he was tired and didn’t want to climb.

“What is it?” Jeremiah asked, turning around.

That’s when it hit him. “Freaky Eyes,” he blurted out.

“What?”

“That was the girl Lizzie told her roommate about.”

He turned and sprinted back toward the parking lot, eyes darting back and forth as he looked for the girl in the sweatshirt. Jeremiah passed him easily and Mark came to a halt as he watched the rabbi run partway down the street in one direction then turn and run back. He shook his head and Mark cursed. She was gone and he had no idea which direction to even look for her. Furious at himself he headed back to the apartment building, Jeremiah a couple steps ahead of him.

When Mark finally made it up the three flights of stairs he was dizzy and out of breath. He probably should have stayed in the hospital and trusted Liam to be his eyes and ears. That was part of his problem, though. He always preferred to do things himself when he could. That drive had led him back to that basement and caused Traci to leave him.

He tried to push those thoughts from his mind. They weren’t helpful at the moment and he needed to focus.

Trina and Jeremiah were already inside apartment 312, although he did not ask how. Trina was holding up a cloak and what looked like a ceremonial dagger. Jeremiah on the other hand appeared to be transfixed by something on the television.

“This is her place,” Trina said.

Mark swore. “We missed her. She was the girl in the sweatshirt who walked right past us. How are we supposed to find her now?”

“That’s not our only problem,” Jeremiah said quietly.