Play With Fire

by Justin Gustainis

  “I’m not likely to forget,” Libby said, with a shiver.

  “Maybe that’s who we’re looking for,” Morris said. “Somebody who isn’t a practitioner but can work a little magic in specific situations if a professional prepares it for him.”

  “Which means you’ve just narrowed the field of suspects to all humans who don’t practice magic. That’s a pretty large group, I understand.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, Morris grinned at her. “Sarcasm does not become you, Ms. Chastain.”

  “I was trying for irony. But, either way – we’d better have some way of narrowing the field a little more, or we’re going to be at this a long time.”

  “I actually had some thoughts on that,” he said.

  “Please do share.”

  “Well, clearly, this job wasn’t done by just any civilian. In addition to the magical feat of getting past that ward, he – or she – was able to get in there, diddle with the video surveillance system somehow, get past these sets of locks, and get out again, without being seen by anybody. Sounds like professional work to me.”

  “Professional, as in burglar,” she said.

  “Yep.”

  “Professional, in the sense of somebody who’s for hire.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  “Somebody who’s good at breaking and entering, and also skillful enough to overcome magical defenses,” Libby said. “That’s a pretty unusual skill set.”

  “Offhand, the only one I know who’s good enough is me, and I’ve got an alibi.”

  “I’ve never heard of anybody like that either,” she said. “But maybe I know somebody who has.”

  “You’re thinking of the Sisterhood?”

  “As one possibility, yes. And it occurs to me that you probably know a few people who might’ve done business with somebody like that. Assuming he or she exists.”

  Morris could see the sign for the Best Western up ahead. “So maybe we ought to spend time making some phone calls tonight,” he said. “And if that doesn’t turn up anything, maybe I should go back to New York with you tomorrow, so we can have a word with a guy who doesn’t like to talk on the phone.”

  “You mean Barry Love,” she said.

  “That’s the fella. But first, I figure we ought to attend to more important matters.”

  She looked at him. “Such as what?”

  “Such as dinner,” he said. “That steak house across the street from the motel looked pretty good. Care to give it a try?”

  Twelve

  ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO does not have a large Jewish population, but their numbers are sufficient to support a single synagogue, Temple Beth Israel. The synagogue’s congregation was just big enough to afford the services of a single Rabbi, and David Feldman had that honor – and all the responsibility that went with it.

  This Tuesday evening, Rabbi Feldman was tired. This was not unexpected, since his day had started at five thirty a.m. and here it was approaching ten at night and he was still in his office, working.

  He had promised his wife that he would start getting home at a decent hour – at least early enough to help her tuck their two children into bed at nine, but what can you do when people need you? He had taught two classes at the Hebrew school this morning, visited a member of the congregation too old and frail to attend temple, counseled a young couple contemplating marriage, had long phone conversations with three potential donors to the Building Fund, interceded on behalf of a congregant who was having trouble getting an auto loan, and here he was working on Saturday’s sermon when what he really wanted was a comfortable chair, a decent meal, and a few hours spent in the comfort of his family. Was that too much to ask?

  For a second, he fancied that he could hear the voice of God in his head answering, Yes, David, some days it really is.

  Feldman’s fanciful conversation with the Creator brought a smile to his lean face. He shook his head and returned to work on the sermon. He had just figured out a good way to develop his theme of “serving God often means serving each other” when there was an urgent knock at his office door.

  He looked at the clock: ten fifty. Whatever the knock on his door might mean at this hour, it wasn’t likely to be anything good. Feldman sighed, put down his pen, and went to find out just how bad the news was going to be.

  Thirteen

  ENGULFED IN GREEDY flames, the building that had once been Temple Beth Israel burned like a Nazi wet dream. About a dozen nearby homes were evacuated, and the black swirling smoke made the air virtually unbreathable for a radius of three blocks. The flashing red lights of the responding fire trucks and police cars combined with the flames and smoke issuing from the synagogue to produce a hellish vision that Hieronymus Bosch might have envied.

  Lieutenant Ramon Gutierrez, commander of AFD Fire Response Unit number six, clambered into the cab of one of his team’s fire trucks and pulled the door shut behind him. Only then did he remove his helmet, then the oxygen mask. Gutierrez spent a few seconds savoring the experience of breathing air that had not been processed through a filter, then opened the snap pocket in his yellow slicker to produce his two-way radio. Within moments, he was talking to his boss.

  “We’ve got it under control now, sir.” He spoke loudly, so that Captain Benson on the other end could hear him – there was plenty of competing noise coming from outside. “It won’t spread beyond the building – but the synagogue itself is a total loss. It was fully involved by the time we got here.”

  With his free hand, Gutierrez pulled a bandana from his pocket and used it to wipe away some of the sweat and soot that covered much of his face. “I’m thinking that some kind of accelerant was used, Captain, but we won’t know for sure until the fire marshal’s guys make their report, and my guess is they won’t even be cleared to get in there until sometime tomorrow.”

  He listened for a few seconds, then said, “Yes, sir. The rabbi in charge of the place is named David Feldman, F-E-L-D-M-A-N. I asked HQ to locate him, but nobody seems to know where he is. They called his wife, and she says he hasn’t come home yet. He was expected several hours ago, I gather. The wife says she called him a bunch of times, starting around ten o’clock, but he never answered. She’s pretty hysterical at this point, I understand. Hard to blame her.”

  Gutierrez listened some more. “Yes, sir, we’ll know for sure in the morning, once the structure is safe to enter – or what’s left of it is. But if the Rabbi’s in there, my guess is we won’t find much left. It’s a damn hot fire, sir, with no chemicals or other hyper-combustibles to explain it. That’s why I’m thinking it was arson.”

  He listened briefly and said, “Yes, sir, I’ll keep you informed, and I’ll bring the day watch commander up to speed when he comes on duty. Gutierrez out.”

  Lieutenant Ramon Gutierrez slipped the radio back into his coat pocket, replaced his oxygen mask and helmet, and went back to fight the conflagration engulfing what had once been Temple Beth Israel.

  Fourteen

  “COULD BE A coincidence, I suppose,” Colleen O’Donnell said.

  “Because last time it was Catholics, and this time it’s Jews.” Dale Fenton nudged a piece of charred wood with his foot. “That what you mean?”

  “The differences in faiths, yes,” O’Donnell said. “Then there’s the geographical factor. Duluth, and then Albuquerque? If they wanted to burn down a synagogue, there’s plenty of them closer to Minnesota than this one. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through.”

  “Assuming that’s all they had in mind, I’d have to say you’re right,” Fenton said.

  “Which means, either it’s not the same guys...”

  “Or it is, and there’s a common factor that we don’t know about yet.”

  “I hate it when that happens,” O’Donnell said.

  “Yeah, me too, and besides – uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?”

  “Look yonder,” Fenton said, pointing with his chin.

  O’Donnell
turned and saw that an ambulance had pulled up as close to the wreckage as it could get. Its red light was not flashing – apparently nobody was in any hurry.

  The FBI agents watched as two EMTs brought out a stretcher from the back of the ambulance. A man in a fire marshal’s uniform went over and spoke to them briefly, then they followed him, toting the stretcher, into the ruins of Temple Beth Israel.

  A few minutes later they emerged. There was something on the stretcher now, covered by a sheet and the EMTs moved gingerly through the ruins in the direction of the ambulance, where Fenton and O’Donnell were waiting for them. The men and their burden were about fifty feet away when Fenton sighed and said to O’Donnell, “Odds or evens?”

  “Evens.” O’Donnell counted out loud “One, two...” On “three” each of them stuck a hand out. O’Donnell was displaying two fingers. Fenton showed two, also. “Damn,” he said softly. “Well, guess I get the nightmares this time.”

  When the EMTs reached the ambulance, Fenton was waiting for them. He displayed his ID, nodded toward the stretcher and said, “Mind if I take a look?”

  The EMTs looked at each other, and then one of them shrugged and pulled back the sheet to reveal what lay underneath it. Fenton had his look, swallowed hard and said “Thank you.” He returned to his partner as the stretcher was being loaded into the back of the ambulance.

  “Burned beyond recognition,” Fenton said. “If anything was done to the poor guy before the fire got him, the M.E. is going to have a hell of a time proving it.”

  O’Donnell nodded slowly. “That leaves the incendiary devices, assuming there were any.”

  “I’d say the chances are pretty good,” Fenton said. “I talked to one of the firemen who was here last night, and he said the fire burned hot and fast. Too fast for accidental ignition, in his opinion.”

  “So if there were incendiaries, and they’ve got the same signature of the ones used in Duluth, we could be onto something.”

  “Yeah,” Fenton said. “But what?”

  “That’s a question for–” The phone in O’Donnell’s pocket made a beeping sound. She pulled it out and looked at the screen. “Text from Sue. She wants us to call in.” O’Donnell used her thumb to scroll down the rest of the text message, her lips flattening into a thin, straight line as she read. Then she shut the phone down and looked at her partner. “Looks like we’ve got a problem.”

  Fifteen

  PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR BARRY Love could usually be found, when he could be found at all, on Ninth Avenue just off Forty-Eighth Street. His office was on the fifth floor of a brick office building that had probably been built when America still liked Ike. Love specialized in cases involving what he called “the weird shit,” so it was inevitable that he would cross paths with Morris and Chastain sooner or later. A couple of years ago, they had sought Love’s help on a case, and in the process had helped him out with a small demon infestation.

  Love’s work had made him twitchy and paranoid, perhaps with reason. Consequently he rarely would talk on the telephone, and never made use of email or text messaging. He’d once said that such technologies made it too easy for “them” to find out what he was up to. So Morris and Chastain had to come to him.

  They were trying to identify someone with a skill set that would have allowed him to steal the well-guarded Corpus Hermeticum and get out again undetected. Their phone calls from Montana had produced nothing useful – but if anybody would know such a person, it would be Barry Love.

  Making an appointment was, of course, out of the question, which explains how Morris and Chastain found themselves outside the heavy wooden door that read “Barry Love Investigations.”

  The door had been plain, unadorned wood the last time they’d visited, but since then a number of designs had been drawn on the door in various colors. Some others were actually carved into the wood.

  Morris stared at them. A few of the designs looked familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember from where. Pointing with his chin, he said to Libby, “Think Barry’s got him some vandalism problems?”

  Libby looked at the door for a few seconds. “Not unless there’s a gang of witches in the neighborhood, and we tend not to go in for tagging much.” She shook her head. “Those are wards. Pretty sophisticated, too.”

  “If he’s home, we can ask about them,” Morris said, and knocked on the door. He waited, got no response, and knocked again, with the same result.

  “Well, shit,” he said.

  Libby Chastain shrugged. “We knew it was a toss-up as to whether he’d be in or not.”

  “Yeah, it always is, with Barry.”

  “Let’s go find dinner someplace close by,” Libby said. “Then we’ll come back and see if he’s here. If he’s still not around, you can crash on my couch tonight, and we’ll try again tomorrow.”

  “If there’s a better idea than that, I can’t think of it,” Morris said. “I noticed an Italian place down the street that might–”

  The clanky old elevator that had brought them to the fifth floor was moving again, the sound of its operation was loud in the quiet building. The arrow above the elevator shaft showed that the car had been summoned to the ground floor.

  “Could be Barry’s about to save us some trouble,” Morris said.

  Libby was watching the floor indicator. “Seems likely,” she said. “I don’t imagine this building sees a lot of traffic after five – or even before five, for that matter.”

  They both jumped a little when the door from the stairway burst open to reveal Barry Love, who began to walk rapidly along the hall toward them.

  “Haven’t seen you guys in a while,” he said by way of greeting, while still thirty feet away.

  “We figured you were on the elevator,” Morris said.

  “I sent it up here,” Love said. “Misdirection.”

  Morris and Libby exchanged looks, without being obvious about it. Same old paranoid Barry.

  Barry Love was just under six feet tall, and wiry. There was quite a bit of gray in the brown hair, even though Love had not yet reached forty. His face had the careworn look of a man who doesn’t sleep much, and who has bad dreams when he does. His arms were not visible under the sport coat, but Morris knew that they were covered with tattoos designed to be sigils against demons.

  Love unlocked the two deadbolts that kept his office secure, flicked on a light, and motioned them inside. Then he closed the door behind them and relocked it. “I don’t mean it the way it sounds,” he said, “but I wish you hadn’t come. Not now, anyway.”

  The two windows in Love’s office had their shades drawn. He went to the nearest one and used a finger to move the curtain aside a couple of inches, allowing him to look out and down. What he saw didn’t seem to reassure him.

  “Are you having trouble with demons again, Barry?” The last time they’d been here, Love’s office was being attacked by a trio of demonic creatures. Morris and Chastain had helped him handle the situation.

  “Yeah but not like last time. Sit, if you want.”

  While they eased into the visitors’ chairs, Love sat down at his desk, which was covered as usual by books, files, random sheets of paper, and fast food wrappers.

  “What’s your problem now, Barry?” Morris asked.

  Love shrugged his bony shoulders. “Apologies to Robert Johnson, but... I’ve got a hellhound on my trail.”

  Libby sat up a little straighter. “Do you, now?”

  Love nodded wearily. I’ve been catching glimpses of it for the last week or so. I think it’s waiting to catch me alone, at night, in an unprotected place.”

  “Is that what the stuff on the door is for?” Morris asked. “Wards against the hellhound?”

  “They’ve worked pretty well,” Love said. “So far, at least. It can’t get through the door – I’ve heard it trying. But I can’t live my whole life in this office. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Who set it after you?” Morris asked.

  “Don’t know for
sure. I can think of at least three people in the city with the skill – and the motivation. I tend to piss off a lot of left-hand path types in my job, know what I mean?”

  They both nodded. Love was probably the city’s foremost occult detective – as such, he made a lot of enemies.

  “But that’s my problem, and I’ll deal with it,” Love said. “Meantime, what can I do for you guys? I assume this isn’t a social call.”

  “No, afraid not,” Morris said. “We wanted to–”

  “Wait!” Libby held up a hand. “I’m trying to think.”

  She sat with eyes closed and brow furrowed for half a minute or so. Then she looked at Barry Love and said, “I may be able to help with your hellhound problem.”

  She picked up her big purse and began to sort through its contents. Without looking up she said to Morris, “I’m not exactly tooled up for complicated working. Got anything on you, Quincey?”

  Morris carried a switchblade, which made him a criminal in New York State. But this weapon had a silver plated blade that had been blessed by the Bishop of El Paso. It had saved his life, and Libby’s, more than once. He pulled the knife from his pocket and clicked it open. “Only this. Sorry.”

  “Um,” Libby said. She looked around at Love’s office, whose shelves were covered with books, religious icons, and all manner of occult bric-a-brac. “Maybe you’ve got what I need here, Barry.”

  Love spread his hands. “Try me.”

  Libby closed her eyes in concentration.

  “Sea salt,” she said.

  “Absolutely,” he told her. “Regular table salt, too.”

  “Honey.”

  “Hmmm. Yeah, I think I’ve got some packets left from that breakfast takeout last week.”

  “Sulphur.”