The Diviners (38 page)

“Isn’t that what got you in trouble in the first place?”

“But that was Ohio! This is New York City. If girls can dance half-naked in nightclubs, I don’t see why I can’t do a little divining.”

“People aren’t afraid of half-dressed girls in nightclubs.”

“You think people would be afraid of me, then?”

“People always fear what they don’t understand, Evangeline. History proves that. I suppose if people were drinking…” Will didn’t finish his thought. “And you say you had one of these… episodes with Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle?”

Evie nodded. “I saw a terrible room and a large furnace and the outline of a man, I think. But it was only a silhouette, a shadow. I can’t be sure.” She shook her head. “Do you think what I saw was related to the murder?”

Will’s expression was grim. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think I should tell the police?” Evie asked.

“Certainly not.”

“But why not? If it would help…”

“Most likely they’d think you were some sort of crackpot. Or worse—a fame-seeker trying to get her name in the papers. Terrence and I have been friends for some time. I know how the police think.”

“But if I could read something else from the murders, something belonging to Tommy Duffy, for instance…”

“Absolutely not,” Will commanded. “I don’t think you should touch anything having to do with these murders.” Will sprang up from his chair and paced the length of the parlor. Midway, he stopped to tap his ash into a tall silver ashtray beside a navy-striped wingback chair that looked as if it had never been sat in. It was as if Will’s coiled energy didn’t allow him to sit long enough to make an impression on the cushion. “We are going to catch our killer with good old-fashioned detective work, even if we have to go through every occult book in the museum’s library.”

“So… I can stay?” Evie asked.

“Yes. You can stay. For now. But there will be new rules. There will be no further cavorting in speakeasies. And you will be expected to help out around the museum.”

“Of course.” It was better than a train back to Ohio. And once she proved to Will how indispensable she was, he’d have to keep her on for the long run. “Thank you, Unc.” Evie threw her arms around Will, who stiffened and waited for her to withdraw.

In the doorway, Jericho cleared his throat and waited to be recognized. He dropped the late-edition paper on Will’s desk. “You might want to read this.”

“ ‘Exclusive to the
New York Daily News
, by T. S. Woodhouse. Museum Makes a Pentacle Killing,’ ” Will read aloud. He frowned and waved the paper about. “What’s this?”

Evie snatched the paper away and kept reading. “ ‘New York City, that bustling metropolis, is no stranger to violence. Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, and the rest of the Brownsville Boys of Murder, Inc., have kept the bodies piling up faster than the cops can take bribes to look the other way. But the Pentacle Murders have given even hardened New Yorkers the heebie-jeebies. Mothers won’t let their children play stickball on the streets after dark. Shopgirls spend their hard-earned dough on taxis straight home to their cold-water flats in Murray Hill and Orchard Street. The Sultan of Swing, Mr. Babe Ruth himself, has promised a five-hundred-dollar reward for information leading to the capture of the foul fiend. But in the midst of this Manhattan murder mania, there is one joint that’s raking it in—the Museum of American Folklore, Superstition, and the Occult. That’s the Museum of the Creepy Crawlies to you folks in the know.’ Unc, the museum made the papers!”

Evie continued. “ ‘Their business is anything spooky, and anything spooky is good for business. On a recent Friday, this reporter witnessed a mob scene parked outside the doors of the old Cornelius T. Rathbone mansion near Central Park. That’s because the curator of the museum, Professor William Fitzgerald’—oh, Unc! That’s you!” Evie exclaimed. “ ‘… is helping the New York boys in blue figure out what makes this diabolical killer tick in the hope of finding him before he strikes again. He’s aided in his work by his niece, Miss Evie O’Neill, late of Zenith, Ohio, a comely
seventeen-year-old Sheba who knows her onions about everything from witches’ coifs to the bones of Chinese conjurers. But when this reporter tried to get the goods on the hunt for a killer, the dame played coy. “I’m afraid I can’t comment on that,” she said and batted those baby blues. Fellas, start lining up. There’s more than one killer in this town.’ ”

Evie tried to keep the grin from her face. T. S. Woodhouse had come through after all.

“Evangeline, did you speak to this Woodhouse fellow?” Will demanded.

Evie’s eyes went wide. “Unc, I had
no idea
he was a reporter! He was a paying customer. I gave him the tour. When he started asking questions, I stonewalled him. He played me for a chump, that cad!”

“You have to be more careful. Develop a New Yorker’s skin.” Will tapped a second cigarette against the table, packing down the tobacco before lighting it. “Whatever happened to objective, truthful reporting?”

“Haven’t you heard? It doesn’t sell papers,” Jericho said.

“You’re so right, Unc. That Woodhouse is a rat. But he
did
mention the museum, at least,” Evie said. “Do you know what this means?”

Will blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. “Trouble,” he said.

The phone rang, startling them all. Will took the call, his expression hardening. “We’ll meet you there.”

“What is it?” Evie asked.

“The Pentacle Killer has struck again.”

Will and Evie were met at the front door of the Grand Masonic Lodge by a small man with a thin mustache whose round black spectacles magnified his eyes into two large, blinking blue orbs that made Evie think of an owl.

“This way,” the man said nervously. “The police are already here, of course.” He led them through a wood-paneled hallway to a plain door. A brass plaque designated it the Gothic Room. The small man opened the door into a stuffy antechamber before opening a second door into a large room like a church’s sanctuary. The smell hit Evie right away—a terrible, cloying odor of smoke and cooked flesh that sat at the back of her throat.

Evie’s eyes focused first on the grandeur of the room: the high, wood-beamed ceilings and large chandeliers. At one end was a pipe organ; at the other was the letter
G
placed inside a sun. In the center of the room, a phalanx of cops and a coroner surrounded a small altar. They moved aside and Evie gasped. On the altar was the badly burned body of the Pentacle Killer’s latest victim.

“One of our Brotherhood found the body this morning around ten o’clock,” the blinking man said. He stumbled over the word
body
and his mustache crinkled in distaste. “The Most Worshipful Grand Master has been notified by cable. He is away with his family.”

“The deceased is Brother Eugene Meriwether—” Malloy said.

“He is a Junior Warden,” the owlish man interrupted.

“Was,” Malloy said, letting the little man know just who was in charge here. “He was working late in the office last night. Left around eight to have dinner with a coupla Masons at a restaurant over on Eighth Ave. They said good-bye at about ten or so, and Mr. Meriwether came back here alone. The killer took the feet this time.”

Evie’s eyes reflexively glanced at the rounded nubs of the man’s legs, and she felt a wave of light-headedness roll over her. She grabbed the edge of a chair to steady herself and shut her eyes, but the afterimage remained.

“He left the victim with the same pentacle brand. It’s the only part of his body not burned.” He pointed to a spared circle of flesh on the man’s torso.

“May the Great Architect watch over us all,” the owlish man said solemnly.

“Doors were locked from the inside.” Malloy pinched the bridge of his nose. He squinted at the owlish man. “You got anyone in the Brotherhood who’s got a score to settle? Or maybe somebody who’s a little over the edge?”

“Certainly not.” The man’s giant eyes did not blink behind his spectacles. “George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Jacob Astor, Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, Francis Bellamy—the author of the Pledge of Allegiance, the very pledge, sir!—these are our
Brothers, great men all. This country could not have been founded, nor would it continue to flourish, without the Masonic influence.”

The man and Detective Malloy began to argue, their voices rising in the defiled room.

“We are all a long way from home and weary,” Will said at last.

The owlish man stopped his indignant lecture and smiled. “I didn’t know you were a fellow traveler, sir. Forgive me, Mr…. ?” He moved in for a handshake, which Will avoided, keeping his focus on the body.

“Did the deceased have any enemies?”

“Mr. Meriwether? No. He was highly regarded.”

“Well, somebody didn’t like him,” Malloy grumbled.

“He might have been Most Worshipful Grand Master one day. His speech to the Kiwanis Club last year was very well received. Very well received.”

“We’ve got nothing, Will. Christ.” Malloy kicked at a chair in frustration.

Despite their work, they were no closer to catching this madman. A sense of despair lingered in the room, along with the cloying smoke. Evie began inching closer to the dead man. The body had been burned to a blue-black color, with peeks of raw, weeping red flesh beneath. His hands were contorted and his head was arched back, as if to let loose an agonized scream. The fear and pain he must have experienced were unimaginable. And if Evie did what she was thinking of doing, she might very well learn just how awful it was. Her heart raced as she felt the idea hardening into resolve. Eugene Meriwether’s Mason’s ring had molded to his blackened finger, but it might still give her a reading.

Uncle Will stood talking to the owlish man and Officer Malloy. The other officers canvassed the room, taking notes. No one
was paying a bit of attention to her. It was now or never. Evie breathed through her mouth and closed her hand around Meriwether’s. As her fingers brushed the Mason’s finger, the skin crumbled slightly under her touch, and she bit down on the scream clawing its way up her throat. Tears pricked at her eyes and her breath caught in her chest.

She couldn’t do this; it was too awful. She lifted her hand from the victim’s and sought the comfort of her coin pendant, and a memory came to her.

“Why do you have to go?” she’d asked James through tears that day in the garden.

“Because, old girl,” he’d said, wiping her tears away, “you’ve got to stand up for what’s right. You can’t let the bullies win.”

Evie took three deep breaths, closed her eyes, and clamped her hand firmly around the partially melted ring and the Mason’s crumbling flesh. She was vaguely aware of grinding her teeth as the images came down across her closed eyelids like a spotty rain getting heavier:

Eugene Meriwether polishing the ring with a cloth. His pride in it. A day at the beach with a friend. Sun glinting on sand. A lemonade—Evie could feel its refreshment. But none of these memories would catch a killer. Evie pressed harder, willing the ring to give up more, but the images remained faint and flickering, photographs shown too quickly for the viewer to hold on to anything meaningful in them.

Breathe
, Evie told herself.
Slow down. See everything.
But she was distracted both by the horrible condition of the body and by her own nerves. She lost the connection and had to fight to get it back. And then she heard it: whistling. It was the same tune she’d heard when she’d touched Ruta Badowski’s shoe buckle. Evie was conscious of her heart rate picking up. In her dreamlike state, she
was suddenly with Eugene Meriwether as he made his way down the darkened corridor toward the golden light spilling out from the Gothic Room. His hand reaching. The shining brass of the knob. The door opening…

“What are you doing?” One of the officers took firm hold of Evie’s hand, breaking the connection. He stared at her in disgust.

“I… I…” Evie whispered. “I was praying,” she managed to say. She’d been so close—one more moment and she might have seen the face of the killer. Tears of frustration streamed down her cheeks, and the cop softened.

He patted her shoulder. “Come away from there, now, sweetheart.”

She let herself be led. She’d definitely heard something. Was it important? Had the whistling come from the killer, or from somewhere else? Was it the same tune? It was. She was certain of it.

A crew of cleaning ladies in starched aprons arrived with mops and pails of soapy water. “Don’t touch anything!” Malloy and Will yelled at the same time. The owlish man shooed them away with a flick of his soft fingers and they retreated into the gray of the antechamber to await further instruction.

“We got ourselves a bad one, Will,” Malloy said.