“Yes, that Leslie Winchester?”
He sat down abruptly on the corner of his rock-hard bed. I hoped he didn’t have hemorrhoids. “I used to listen to Cinnamon Relic all the time. I had their Greatest Hits record. Nearly wore the vinyl down to nothing listening to it.”
“Well, you’re sounding like a broken record, so there’s some synchronicity there.”
“Har-de-har-har… What’s she doing in Las Cruces?”
“She lives here, well actually in Mesilla, in a castle she had built special.”
“A castle?”
“She’s crazy about them, fancies herself a noblewoman of the middle ages and wants to live as one, or some such nonsense.”
Mike pondered the insanity of aging rock stars for a moment. “I’m keen to meet her, but why are we going?”
“I believe she has the Grail.” I licked my dry lips and repeated, “The Holy Grail.”
Mike shook his head ruefully. “Of course she does. How silly of me not to have known.” He blew a sigh through his nose. “Well, let’s go.”
“That’s it?”
“What?”
I scratched my head. “I thought you’d be more-”
“Flabbergasted?” he asked.
“As good a word as any, but yes.”
Mike fingered his crucifix and stared at the ceiling for a beat. “Listen Jude, I’ve seen you summon elemental beings, use Words that give you amazing abilities, and I’ve read about an amazing device called a molecular knife that you say exists.” Another sigh. “I am quickly running out of skepticism. It seems that my reservoir of disbelief is running dry.”
Good point. Time to reduce the skepticism ratio even more. “Thanks for the reminder.” I fished the knife in question out of my duffel and thumbed the button.
“Is that it?” Mike asked, drawing close, eyes wide.
“Yes.” Approaching the metal box I’d recovered from Earth, I leaned over and drew a line around the edge of the box on the side with the handle. When the minute line met itself, I pulled hard and the handle side came free.
“Wow …” Mike whispered in awe.
I flicked the knife off. “Yeah.”
“Double wow.”
My hands dipped into the box and pulled out fat wads of cash until I had three stacks of ten thousand dollars each. Next came audiotape, the old fashioned reel-to-reel kind favored in the ’70s.
“What the heck, Jude?”
I held up the cash and the audiotape. “The audiotape is an original John Lennon Blues number he recorded in a little dive in New York, the only copy in existence. Combine that with the close to eighty grand I have, she’ll sell the Grail to us.”
“Why would she sell the Grail? It’s worth a heck of a lot more than that.”
“Leslie Winchester doesn’t know she has the Grail. Unless you are one of the few who can see the world as it really is-a magus, for instance-then you would not see the cup of Christ.”
“So how do people see it?”
From my duffel I produced a plastic Wal-Mart bag and stuffed the money inside. “I don’t know, Mike. You might see it as a crucifix, or a dinner plate, and it would feel and weigh like what you beheld, man.” Once I had the contents of the box squared away, I grabbed the keycard to the room. “Walk and talk, Mike. Walk and talk.”
He followed me down the hall to the elevators. “How did you know she had it, if it looks like something different?”
In the elevator I hit the button for the first floor. “A year ago I came into possession of a library belonging to a magus named Edgar Truesdale.” At his skeptical look, I raised my right hand. “I swear it was all legit, part of an estate sale. The old man died of a stroke. With the library came his personal papers.”
“A member of your Family, then?”
I shook my head. “Nope, he was one of the rare ones, a magus born outside of a magical lineage. Anyway, in his personal papers, he documented his sale of a job lot of ancient artifacts to one Leslie Winchester for a serious amount of money. He could have made even more money if he’d been able to establish the provenance of some of the more ancient pieces. It seems he was strapped for cash and sold most of his collectables.”
“I thought you said a magus could make his fortune with just three Words?”
“Good, you’ve been paying attention. Yes, it’s true, but Edgar had only one … Truth, and he wasn’t very good with it, or so I believe.”
“And?” Mike asked as our elevator doors opened.
“And included in his notes was a letter from Leslie Winchester stating that she did not receive the antique gold spoon as stated on the item list; however she said she did like the silver brooch he had sent. From that I put two and two together.”
He nodded. “From that and the pictures of the items no doubt accompanied his personal papers.”
I smiled as we strode briskly down the hall to the front doors. “Very cynical, Mike, but true. Yes, collectors take pictures of all the items in their collections and I had all his photos. One picture showed a small, worn bowl, like those used to drink from, say about two thousand years ago in Judea. Looking at the picture, and reading the letters, I knew straight away what he’d sold. He probably stroked out when he realized what he’d done, poor beggar.” The threadbare hallway carpet blurred by in a nauseating pattern of blue and red. How is it that hotels know how to pick the worst wall-to-wall possible? They must have blind interior decorators working for them.
“How was the camera able to catch the image of the real Grail?” Mike asked, stroking his moustache.
“The Grail fools the mind but cannot deceive film or electronics.”
Glass double doors opened and the semi-warm evening air filled our lungs. “You could be wrong, you know.” Mike sounded almost smug. How unpriestly, I thought. “How do you know so much about the Grail, that it appears as different things to different people?”
I stopped and turned to my friend, who nearly collided with me. “Mike, buddy, when are you going to get it into your head that I once had access to almost limitless data and funds? Think about it, dude, my whole Family knew the secret of the Grail. They’ve been looking for it for centuries.”
He blinked. “Got it. Powerful family, big connections, secret history.”
We resumed walking toward the black Grand Prix parked a short distance away. “Good, you’re getting it. Now, let’s just hope Leslie still has the Grail; then we can figure out if it can destroy the Silver.”
“What if the Silver is more powerful?”
“It isn’t. Trust me, the Grail is the big banana, next to the Ark.”
As we approached the Grand Prix, I held the fob up and pushed the trunk release button. The trunk lid obligingly popped open. When we got to the car, what we saw stopped us short.
“Holy-!” Mile blurted.
“That’s a little disturbing,” I agreed tonelessly.
Inside the trunk was the body of a woman. More of a girl, really, face sliced to ribbons along with her clothes. She had been small, petite, and probably pretty, with a fine bone structure and porcelain skin. Her small breasts as well as her sex had been cruelly slashed and I could tell that the killer had taken his damn sweet time at the job. Long strips of skin and muscle lay around her body like obscene, fleshy streamers. The sheer sadism of the act appalled even my jaded senses.
“This would explain why the demon chose that man,” I muttered as, behind me, Mike became violently sick. The smell of puke mixed revoltingly with the corpse and blood stench billowing from the trunk. “The damn fool was a serial killer.”
“How can you tell?” Mike burbled as he barfed again. His black loafers and the hem of his pants were spotted with his upchuck.
I pointed to the precise, almost surgical, cuts paralleling her face and breasts. “He took his time; he’s done this before. Also, he appeared to have been in his forties, perhaps early fifties, and I’m guessing that would be a late start in the serial killing business. Most serial
killers start when they’re younger. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve read.”
Poor girl, she looked like any young thing fresh out of puberty and ready to face the world with a fresh supply of hormones along with a healthy dose of overconfident rebellion. From the blood that covered her head to foot, she’d been quite alive when that sick fuck had taken a savagely sharp knife to her, obliterating her sense of immortality and infallibility.
“We must tell the police, Jude,” Mike moaned, staring at his shoes. “Her people have to be informed, so she can have a decent burial.”
He was right, the cops had to be told, but the last thing I needed was to be taken into a police station and made to answer quite a few embarrassing questions, not the least of which was ‘What happened to your house?’ If Las Cruces PD was in the loop with decent facial recognition programs, then my Family would know where I was in an instant. We had pioneered the software, after all. That was the reason I avoided all airports. So … no cops.
“We find a burger joint and dump the car there, then make an anonymous call to the police.” I slammed the trunk lid down, hiding the horror within.
Mike was aghast. “We can’t do that!” He used his sleeve to wipe the puke from his lips.
I couldn’t look at him. “It has to be this way. We can’t get involved and maybe, just maybe, when they find this sicko’s ID, they’ll be able to solve other murders he’s committed.”
Swallowing a lump of dread, I turned to see what I had half-expected, a look of disappointment in my friend’s eyes that made me almost wish I had those old, hard calluses on my soul again. “We go to the cops, my Family finds me. Us. After what you’ve read, do you really want to meet Julian?”
Righteous anger, fear and determination warred behind his baby blues for a few moments before his shoulders slumped and he nodded in resignation. It must have been a bitter pill for him to swallow, but at that moment necessity beat out the desire to assist the police and I couldn’t be happier. However it did sting a bit to know how much that admission cost him, how badly it dented his principles.
Despite the blow to civic sensibilities, we meandered around the city until we found a battered blue Ford pick-up with a red and black For Sale sign in the front window. The rusted ’80s vehicle rested on somewhat inflated tires in front of a respectable ranch style with a front yard containing three tons of crushed red and white rock.
When the owner cautiously answered the front door, he visibly relaxed at the sight of a priest on his front step. He was further reassured by Mike’s willingness to pay his outrageous price for the beat-up old truck, although he lowered it a tad in deference to Mike’s collar.
If franchise hotels are like weeds, then fast food joints are like cockroaches; when you see one, you know there are a thousand more just around the corner. Between a Wowzaburger (home of the greasiest cheeseburger in the Southwest) and a dilapidated white crack house lay a broken, dirt-covered drive that suited our needs perfectly. After parking the Grand Prix (carefully wiped of all prints) on the broken concrete, Mike picked me up and we were gone in far less than sixty seconds.
Mike stared out into the darkness, barely illuminated by the truck’s anemic headlights. “Where to?” he inquired in a voice devoid of life.
“Time to see Leslie Winchester,” I replied, more tired than I had been in a long time. When I worked alone, absent friends, the events of the past day wouldn’t have fazed me one bit, but now, with Mike as my own little Jiminy Cricket, my energy levels had dropped somewhere south of zero. Who knew that a conscience could take so much out of you? I stared out of the corner of my eye at Mike as he drove, his jaw set in ferocious determination, and I realized I wouldn’t trade places with my old self-that egocentric bastard-for all the safety and security in the world.
“Is there a Catholic church in Mesilla?” asked Mike.
I nodded. “A rather famous one, San Albino.”
Big hands gripped the steering wheel until the knuckles shone white. “Right. Show me where.”
How could I refuse?
Less than ten minutes later we reached the heart of Mesilla, a large plaza that held more tourist trap shops than you could shake a stick at, most selling ‘authentic’ Native American artwork and knickknacks. Hundreds of luminaria (small paper lanterns made of brown bags and weighted with sand in which a candle was set) were placed along the walkways illuminating the square, as well as the large wood and stucco gazebo in the plaza’s center. Festooned in and around the gazebo were electric Christmas lights, contrasting boldly with the luminaria.
At one end, looming over the plaza like a patient father, stood the basilica San Albino with its twin rectangular towers bracketing the main body, a large white statue of the Virgin Mary out in front of the steps, staring at the stars.
We parked in a narrow lot just off the square and Mike quickly hopped out. “I’ll be back,” he said tersely.
Well, well, well … Feeling like a bad boy forced to stand in the corner for a time-out, I briefly experienced the need to follow. Instead I ground my teeth in frustration, sat on my fundament and waited.
And waited.
In the old days my natural impatience would have had me out of the truck in a hot second. This time, I sat and fumed.
Perhaps an hour went by, maybe more, but I didn’t have a clue because in the middle of my fit of pouting I fell asleep.
Chapter Eleven
Jude
“Wake up, Jude.”
They say you have to wake a trained killer from a distance because his first reaction would be to cause grievous bodily harm to the person doing the waking. In my case, that had been true, but fifteen years of relatively stress-free living had blunted my Spidey-sense somewhat so that I didn’t even register Mike’s presence until his loud voice startled me out of my slumber and caused me to mumble, “Whblet?”
He snorted, face craggy in the pick-up’s overhead light. “Some ultra-dangerous wet work magus assassin you are.” He sounded a lot happier than when he left.
Given enough time, perhaps ten minutes or so, I would’ve burned the flesh from his bones with a scathing remark. “What took you so long, man?”
“Confession.”
Wow. I never studied the workings of the Catholic Church, but it made sense: even priests needed someone to talk to. “Almost wish I’d been a fly on the wall in the confessional.”
For the first time since we’d found the body of the young girl, Mike smiled with genuine good humor. “He did recommend a good psychiatrist.”
We both laughed, then he sobered. “The good father will contact the police anonymously concerning the body,” he said.
Before my mouth could open wide enough to fit my size tens, I gave what he said some serious thought. Even if the police did manage to track the call back to the priest, the seal of the confessional would keep his mouth shut as to his source, so I didn’t have to risk the Voice finding me in a police station. Mike must have seen all this in my face, for he just nodded, inserted the key in the ignition and fired up the tired old truck.
I nodded. “Let’s go see a rock star.” With that, we left the square and its shops made of adobe, brick and wood. The luminaria were a warm fare-thee-well in the rearview mirror.
Full night had descended and a fingernail moon lent scant light to the parched landscape as we pulled up to the estate of Leslie Winchester.
Unlike most construction in that part of the Southwest, the eight-foot wall surrounding the estate was made of large limestone blocks instead of adobe. It was too dark to see the castle; no light shone through any windows, but we did see a driveway guarded by a large wrought-iron gate with a speaker box set on a three-foot pole off to one side.
“What do you think?” Mike asked as we exited the truck parked across the street.
I handed him my duffel with the Silver in its holy water bath. “Let’s ring the bell.” My thumb pushed the button on the speaker box.
No answer. Again I pushed the button.<
br />
Soon after, a squinchy kind of warble came from the box. “Yes?” came a deep, cultured voice with a British accent.
Of course she’d have a butler or valet or major domo or whatever the Brits called them. I was willing to bet his name was Jeeves.
“Yes, sir, father Michael Engle and friend to see Ms. Winchester on some rather urgent business.”
A roomful of snooty came back over the box. Jeeves must have been looking forward to a quiet night. “You must realize, sir, that it is after 8 p.m.”
Tempting as it was to push a load of my own attitude back at him, I kept my voice respectful. “Father Engle desperately needs to talk to Ms. Winchester and it will only take at the most ten minutes.”
“I shall inform the madam.” Jeeves responded blandly. “One moment, please.”
A hard knuckle rapped my arm. “Father Michael to see Ms. Winchester?” Mike sounded a little miffed.
“People respond to priests more positively than just an average Joe off the street.”
“Harrumph.”
I swear he must’ve practiced his ‘harrumphs’ in the mirror every morning.
Minutes later the iron gate slowly started to slide to the right and we strolled on through, up the driveway to the castle. Even up close it was barely visible, registering more as a darkly looming presence than a structure. Off to either side of the driveway I did manage to note that instead of crushed rock landscaping, Leslie Winchester managed to maintain a rather large yard of-if the smell was any indication-very lush grass. Tall trees formed ominous shapes here and there. They were most likely cottonwoods, the heartiest and tallest trees in the region.
Before we could get too close to the castle, floodlights came on with the kind of suddenness that has adrenaline pumping through your body in bucketfuls, and pinned us to the spot. We shaded our eyes to spare them from the blinding light.
Jeeves’ voice emerged from speakers we couldn’t see. “Please raise your hands above your heads and turn around.”
We complied.
“Good enough. Thank you, gentlemen.” With that, the drawbridge lowered.
The Judas Line Page 9