“Before. I had a really strange episode at her house. I think she put something in my tea.” I pulled out the packet of herbs and handed it to him, as well. “She called this stuff Life Everlasting.”
“Been around forever. The leaves are harvested from a plant in the daisy family. It may have intoxicating properties when smoked, so it’s now illegal in South Carolina.” He lifted the packet to his nose and inhaled deeply. “Said to cure the common cold. Basically harmless.”
“Harmless? I passed out.”
“Not from this, you didn’t. I’ve had the tea myself to no ill effects. In fact, I found it quite invigorating. Rather like a B12 shot.”
“Then she must have put something else in my tea. Or maybe it was the cookies…except she and her granddaughter ate from the same batch and drank from the same pitcher. So I don’t know what happened, but it was very surreal. Like a dream. I heard her say some truly bizarre things about me.”
He glanced up, his eyes keenly alert. “What things?”
“She said I’ve been to the other side and now my spirit doesn’t know where it belongs.”
“Interesting.” He fingered the gris-gris thoughtfully. “Have you ever had a near-death experience?”
“No.”
“Not even as a child?”
“Not that I know of.”
“What else did she say?”
“She said someone is coming for me. Someone with a dark soul who walks with the dead. Then she gave me the amulet to put under my pillow to keep bad spirits away.”
He passed the amulet back to me and I returned it to my pocket.
“It’s certainly possible she slipped you a mild hallucinogenic as you suspect. It’s also possible you experienced a phenomenon known as hypnagogia—waking sleep. Interestingly enough, this may also account for your shadow beings. A person can be alert and aware of their surroundings, but also in a dreamlike state where the subconscious transmits certain stimuli that can be interpreted as moving shadows or even strange voices. This condition is often accompanied by some very dark feelings—dread and paranoia—and has been used to explain a number of paranormal experiences, including ghosts and alien abductions.”
I gave him a rueful smile as I stuffed the packet of Life Everlasting back into my bag and stood. “There you go again with your logical explanations.”
“Believe me, I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong.” He rose to see me out. “Those cases that remain without satisfactory explanation are what keep me plodding along day after day, year after year. Parapsychology can be a very frustrating, often lonely field of study.”
When he took my hand at the door, I noticed once again the onyx ring on his pinkie. “I’m still fascinated by your ring,” I said. “The symbol is so unusual and yet I feel as if I’ve seen it somewhere before. Maybe on a headstone.”
“It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know the origin. It caught my eye at a flea market one day and I’ve been wearing it ever since.”
At a flea market.
I shook my head slightly at this latest account. “Thank you again for your help.”
“If you experience any more of these events, call me at once. There’s always a chance I could be wrong and you really are being visited by a demonic manifestation,” he said hopefully.
TWENTY-ONE
I took an unfamiliar route home from the Institute and got caught in a logjam near Old City Market. A nightmare for motorists, the place was a tourist’s paradise of indoor and outdoor stalls where one could barter for every Lowcountry souvenir imaginable, from T-shirts to sweetgrass baskets to cornrows.
Wedged between a bicycle taxi and a rusted Toyota, I crept along Church Street, letting my gaze wander to the churchyard at St. Philip’s, home to some of the oldest and most ornate wrought-iron gates in the city, as well as the twice-exhumed body of John C. Calhoun. The gravestones here were in excellent condition, the upkeep impeccable, but what I found most fascinating about St. Philip’s was the unusual layout: it had two separate cemeteries, dubbed “Friendly” and “Stranger,” for those parishioners born in Charleston and those who were not.
The churchyard was said to be haunted by a young woman grieving for her stillborn baby. A number of sightings had been reported over the years by tourists and locals alike, and allegedly her ghostly image had been captured on film by at least one professional photographer. But in all my visits to St. Philip’s, I’d never caught so much as a glimpse of her.
The bicycle taxi slowed to a crawl while his excited passengers snapped pictures with their cell phones. I grew increasingly impatient, wanting to be home where I could spend the rest of the day alone with Google.
Egregores, shadow beings, pareidolia—Dr. Shaw had served up some exotic food for thought and I needed to do some research.
I still wasn’t convinced of his optical illusion and waking dream theories, because I knew better than anyone that logic sometimes had to be taken with a grain of salt. But his explanations were certainly more palatable than the notion of some dark entity coming for me.
All of this rolled around in my head as I sat drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, waiting to make the next turn. As we inched our way down the street, I happened to look out my side window at the very moment Devlin was getting out of his car at a small seafood place with a shaded porch and tropical landscaping.
Until a few days ago, I’d never set eyes on the man and now I saw him everywhere. It was at once a strange, exhilarating and unsettling phenomenon.
All my life I’d been trained not to react to stimuli and not to act on impulse. So it was quite out of character for me to make an illegal turn, circle the block and pull into the restaurant parking lot with a fanfare of sputtering gravel.
Devlin had already been seated on the porch by this time and he glanced up from his menu as I approached his table.
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said with all the ease and confidence of an adolescent confronting her first crush. “I saw you pull up outside and I wondered if I might have a quick word with you.”
“Have a seat.” His expression was completely neutral. I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed, pleased or just plain old indifferent to the intrusion.
The waitress came over to ask if I wanted to see a menu. “Oh, just iced tea for me, thanks.”
Devlin lifted a brow. “You’re not eating?”
“I’m not about to intrude on your meal. I thought we could chat while you wait for your food.”
“Suit yourself.” He turned to rattle off his order—a basket of shrimp, hush puppies and a Palmetto Amber.
While he talked to the waitress, I took the opportunity to study his profile. The nose, the chin, the jawline…that shadowy space beneath his bottom lip. All becoming so familiar to me now. I had even grown accustomed to his scar, and now the deep indention seemed less of an imperfection and more like an intriguing secret.
His white shirt looked stark against his tan, and it made me think of the dream I’d had of him and how I’d admired the contrast of his skin tone against Mariama’s.
I wondered what he thought when he looked at me. Could he see past my reserve, past my sensible-girl trappings? Did he sense the stirring of a dark passion that was as foreign to me as it was forbidden?
He had said something while I indulged in a little fantasy and I blushed. “I’m sorry. My mind wandered.”
“You do seem a little preoccupied.” He searched my face. “What’s wrong?”
I may have grown accustomed to his scar, but the smooth timbre of his lowered voice still had a disconcerting effect on me.
“I just wanted to thank you again for coming to my rescue last night.”
“You don’t have to keep thanking me. You would have done the same for me.”
“Yes, I know. But if you hadn’t come along when you did, I might have been stranded out there for hours.” The images that flashed through my head stripped away my pretended lightness and I shivered in the late-af
ternoon heat. “Anything could have happened.”
“The tow truck would have arrived eventually.”
“Maybe. But by then it could have been too late.”
The low-hanging ceiling fan ruffled his dark hair as he gazed across the table at me. His expression never changed, but I saw a flicker of something I couldn’t discern in his eyes. “You’re talking about that car?”
“Yes. The black sedan that was parked behind me and took off like a shot when the driver spotted your headlights. It was also a black sedan that nearly ran me down the night my briefcase was stolen.”
“Do you know how many black sedans there are in South Carolina?”
“Hundreds, thousands…” I shrugged. “I still think it’s odd.”
He started to respond, but paused when the waitress brought over our drinks. I watched as he poured the beer into a frosted mug. My gaze lit on his hands. So graceful. So steady.
We were seated near the railing, where a row of crape myrtles blocked the traffic. The breeze tousled the flower clusters, unleashing a shower of pink petals that rained down on our table and onto my lap. As I bent my head to sweep them aside, Devlin reached across the table to pick a blossom from my hair.
I froze at his touch. My breath caught. I didn’t look up.
And then it was over.
He leaned back in his chair, cradling his beer, apparently oblivious to the firestorm he’d ignited.
“You were saying?” He spoke casually, but there was a flare in his eyes, a molten gleam, that belied his apathy, and I saw him exhale carefully, as if trying to fortify his guard.
I didn’t quite know what to make of all that, but the notion that he might have to work to keep himself under control with me was thrilling. A little frightening, too, but mostly thrilling.
I swallowed. “We were talking about that black sedan.” Absently, I circled the straw in my glass, trying to recoup my previous thoughts. “I’m starting to wonder if I might have seen something at the cemetery that I don’t even know I saw. Or maybe there’s something in one of the Oak Grove images we haven’t found yet.” I paused, sensing darkness in the breeze now, a harbinger of a distant storm cloud. “What if Tom Gerrity was right? What if my knowledge of cemeteries is the key to finding the killer?”
Devlin had been in the process of lifting the mug to his mouth, but now he set it down with a thud. His gaze hardened and I suddenly remembered what he’d told me about the private detective. A case had gone bad and another cop had been killed because of Gerrity.
No wonder the mention of the man’s name seemed to set him off.
“The minute you start taking Tom Gerrity’s word for anything is the minute you ask for trouble,” he said.
“Was he right about Hannah Fischer?”
Devlin glanced away, eyes glinting with anger.
“He was, wasn’t he?” I pressed.
“Yes, he was right. Mrs. Fischer ID’d the body this morning.” He looked as if it pained him greatly to admit it.
“Poor woman. It must have been so hard for her. I can’t even imagine the horror of seeing your child dead…” I froze.
The anger in Devlin’s eyes vanished, replaced by the dull gleam of something too tragic to contemplate, something too sad to look at. The fleeing vitality made his face go flat and stiff, like a cardboard cutout. I thought if we sat there long enough, every last drop of life in him might drain away.
Already, the circles under his eyes had darkened, the hollows beneath his cheekbones deepened. He looked ghostlike himself now. Pale, gaunt, lifeless.
I glanced away, shaken.
It took a moment for both of us to recover a semblance of normalcy.
“Mrs. Fischer came by the station and gave a statement,” he finally said, his voice strained.
I nodded. “Were you able to talk to her?”
“Yes.” He picked up his beer, his eyes meeting mine over the rim. With some effort, I managed not to look away.
“Did she corroborate Gerrity’s story?”
“For the most part. She did hire him to find Hannah. According to Mrs. Fischer, she’d suspected for some time that her daughter was in an abusive relationship. One of many, apparently, that began with her father.”
“Then whoever she was seeing is a suspect, right? Did she tell you who that is?”
“She didn’t know his name. Hannah never brought him home, never even talked about him. She knew her mother would ‘try to save her,’ is how she put it.”
“Well, that’s not much to go on, is it?”
“It’s enough. I’ve managed to track him down through some of Hannah’s friends. He has an airtight alibi.”
“How airtight?”
“He was in jail during our time frame. The guy’s a creep and I don’t doubt Hannah was scared enough to try and run away from him. But he couldn’t have killed her.”
“So we’re back to square one. And since the rest of Gerrity’s story panned out,” I said slowly, “don’t you have to give credence to what he said about me?”
Devlin sighed. “I don’t want to drag you into this any more than you already are. Besides, Gerrity’s just guessing about the cemetery. He’s not clairvoyant. He wasn’t even a particularly insightful cop.”
“He would disagree with that assessment. In fact, he told me his grandmother thinks he has a gift. That’s why he’s called the Prophet—”
Devlin’s hand shot out, trapping mine against the table and rendering me speechless with shock as he leaned across the table. “Did he tell you to say that to me?”
There was nothing empty about his expression now. His eyes glittered murderously, animating his whole face in a way I’d never seen before.
“What? No. Not specifically. I just assumed everything he told me was part of the message.”
“You didn’t say anything about it the other night at Oak Grove.”
“It slipped my mind.” I pulled my hand from his. “What’s the big deal? It’s just a nickname, right?”
“It’s a nickname, but it’s not his nickname. He used it because he knew it would get to me.”
“Get to you how?”
“It’s not important.” But he appeared to have quite a struggle corralling his emotions. This was yet another side of him I hadn’t seen. The out-of-control side. I shivered.
“You sound so angry when you talk about him. What did he do, exactly?”
“That’s between him and me.” His dark eyes surveyed the traffic. “I’m done with this subject. Anything else you care to talk about?”
“Yes. Can we go back to Hannah for a minute? I know you have limitations on what you can tell me, but if the killer drives a black sedan, I could be in a lot of trouble. There are some things I’d like to know.”
“Such as?”
“How did she die?”
Only a slight hesitation as he contemplated how much to tell me. “Exsanguination. Do you know what that means?”
“She bled to death, basically.”
“Basically, yes.”
“How?”
“I’m not going to give you specifics. That’s something you don’t need to know.” When I started to protest, he lowered his voice. “That’s something you don’t want to know.”
I felt a tremor of dread. “What was the cause of death in the Delacourt case?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you said she died in such a way that the end was a long time coming.”
“That’s what I heard. I wasn’t a cop back then. I relied on rumors just like everybody else.”
“But you’re a cop now. Can’t you look in the file and find out?”
“That file is sealed. No one can touch it without a court order.”
“Is that normal?
“It happens in cases where a minor is involved.”
“Do you think that’s why this file is sealed, or is it because someone in power doesn’t want it released? You said there was a concentrated effort to keep the inv
estigation quiet by some pretty important people. The society you told me about—the Order of the Coffin and the Claw—if they were responsible for Afton’s death, then the members who were involved might now be in those positions of power. It’s like a circle. A never-ending cover-up.”
“That’s why groups like the Order are so effective. The members have to protect each other. If one falls, they all fall.”
“Then how would you ever be able to prove anything? They’ve stacked the deck.”
He glanced around, his manner suddenly uneasy. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves, anyway. We don’t know that anyone in the Order did anything wrong. There were a lot of rumors flying around back then, including some pretty disturbing talk about Rupert Shaw.”
“About Dr. Shaw…” I brushed another petal off the table. “Let me just say that I still don’t think he did anything wrong. I can’t imagine him having anything to do with that girl’s murder. I just can’t. But…” I glanced up. “There is something that’s been…not bothering me, but puzzling me.”
“I’m listening.”
“He has this ring. Very unusual and ornate. Silver and onyx, I think, with some sort of emblem on the stone. I don’t know what the symbol is, but it looks familiar to me. I think I’ve seen it somewhere before. Anyway…what’s really strange is that he keeps changing his story about where he got it. The first time I noticed the ring, he said it was a family heirloom. Then he told someone else it had been a gift from a colleague. This morning he told me he bought it at a flea market. I feel silly even bringing this up because I’m sure it’s nothing. But in the interest of full disclosure, I needed to get it off my chest.”
“Anything else you want to get off your chest?” He said it so smoothly I almost didn’t notice the steel in his voice.
“Uh, no. That’s it.”
Deliberately he slid his glass aside and folded his arms on the table. “What about your visit with Essie? In the interest of full disclosure, why didn’t you tell me you saw her yesterday?”
All the air swooshed from my lungs. For a moment, I could only gape at him in awkward silence. Then I rushed into an embarrassed justification. “It wasn’t planned. I didn’t go down there to see her. I didn’t even know about her. We met in the cemetery…” I trailed off at the look on his face. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
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