by R. L. King
Chapter Nine
Cheng’s information arrived the next day in a thick, padded overnight envelope delivered to his townhouse. The brief note (typed, Stone noticed, with no signature or letterhead) read: Call me if you see anything that looks interesting.
He took the envelope up to the study, where he opened it and stacked the contents on his desk, shoving aside the untidy pile of books that had all thus far proven unhelpful in translating the strange sigils around the bodies.
He forced himself to examine the papers in order, rather than giving in to his compulsion to spread them all across the desk and scan them for anything that might jump out at him. By nature his thought processes tended to be mercurial and unpredictable, making wild leaps of logic from one bit of information to another; often that approach came to nothing, but occasionally it provided him with a connection a more methodical researcher might have missed. However, when necessary, he could focus in with the best of them, and in this case, he thought it was necessary. At least at first.
The first pages were a report on the scene, written in the dry, just-the-facts style of policemen everywhere. The victim’s name was Dennis Arturo Avila, age thirty-four. He lived alone in an apartment in east San Jose, and his occupation was listed as “construction worker.” As Cheng had said, he’d been found slumped over the breakfast bar in his apartment with his throat violently slashed and the remains of a fast-food meal in front of him. The weapon, a common carving knife taken from a rack on the kitchen wall, was clutched in his right hand. The only prints on the knife were Avila’s, and no other footprints, fingerprints, or other signs that another person had been in the apartment had been found.
When questioned, his boss and coworkers all told the same story: he’d been running a backhoe to dig a foundation for a house to be built in Milpitas, same as he’d done for the past several days. He’d left work on time and didn’t seem ill or upset, though one man indicated that it was odd he didn’t join them at the bar to drink beer and watch baseball after work as he usually did.
The report noted that a male feline had been found inside the apartment as well, unharmed but nervous. A plate on the floor with the remains of another burger and an empty Burger King bag indicated Avila must have returned home from work and shared a meal with the cat. The feline, the report also noted, appeared to have licked up some of the blood on and around Avila before the body was found. It had been placed in the care of one of Avila’s friends.
Stone skimmed ahead—he didn’t really care about the cat—until he found the mention of the carved box. It had been found in front of Avila, open, as if he’d been examining it shortly before his death. The contents, a red cloth and a wooden cross, were next to the box, and all three items were covered in blood, no doubt from the spray issuing from Avila’s slashed throat. As Cheng had said, the box was found on a newspaper along with a small quantity of fresh dirt. The report listed evidence tag numbers for the box, cloth, cross, newspaper, and other items near the body.
Following the police report in the stack were several photos of the crime scene. Stone examined them, noting Avila’s position relative to the box and the cross. The close-up photo of the knife didn’t interest him: as noted on the report, it was a standard-issue cheap carving knife, unremarkable other than being stained with blood. He slipped it to the back, along with a shot of a large, rangy tabby cat.
Ah, here we go. The next photos, seven in all, were what he was looking for: four of the box, two of the cross, and one of the cloth.
The box photos showed details of the lid, two sides, bottom, and interior. As Cheng had indicated, it appeared to be made of some kind of stone. The spray of blood had reached the sides and the inside, but the chipped, intricate figures carved into the sides stood out clearly: crosses, angels and figures dressed in clerical robes, and decorative flourishes. Definitely very old, and definitely some kind of religious item, or at least it had belonged to someone to whom religion had been important. Stone wondered how devout Avila had been.
He set the four photos aside. Next, he glanced at the one showing the cloth but didn’t linger on it long. As far as he could see in the photo, there was nothing remarkable about it. Perhaps he could tell more if he had the actual item in his possession, but given recent events that wasn’t likely.
Finally, he spread out the two images of the cross, and tensed. Now we’re getting somewhere. He pulled the shot of the front side of the object closer and squinted down at it.
The reference ruler placed next to it indicated that it was about six inches tall and four inches wide. It appeared to be made of simple wood, with no decoration carved into it and no Christ figure. The only thing that differentiated it was a series of swirling figures carved along both the vertical shaft and the crossbar.
Almost without realizing what he was doing, Stone pulled his desk lamp closer and made a beckoning motion. A magnifying glass sailed from a shelf across the room and slapped into his open hand. He hunched over the desk and peered through the glass at the figures.
“Well…” he murmured. “This is interesting…”
Unlike the crude sigils around the body, which had almost made him physically uncomfortable to look at, these figures had an odd, soothing feel to them. Beautiful and symmetrical despite the crudeness of the carving, they possessed a certain completeness that would likely come through even to someone who had no idea what they were.
Stone knew exactly what they were.
He’d seen variations on the carved characters many times in his studies. Though he didn’t recognize these specific figures, he could follow them well enough to understand both their origin and their purpose.
He swapped the magnifying glass for a jeweler’s loupe and leaned in even closer for a better look, occasionally pausing to jot notes on a pad.
He’d have to consult his library back home for details, but he knew enough to go forward: the language was a variation of Enochian, considered by some early occult experts to be the language of the angels—and the message was a warning.
He leaned back in his chair, removing the loupe and setting it next to the photos. Things had indeed gotten more interesting, because he was almost certain of one other thing as well:
There had been something else in the box, and whatever it was, it had been the reason for the warning.
He needed to find out what else was inside that box.
He picked up the phone and punched in Johnny Cheng’s cell number. It rang three times and then the voicemail message picked up.
“Bugger,” Stone muttered. After the beep, he said, “I need to talk to you about something related to the subject we were discussing previously,” he said carefully. “Call me back at your earliest convenience, please.”
By late that evening, Cheng still hadn’t called back. It was a Saturday, though—even police detectives took time off occasionally and didn’t answer their work phones. Maybe the guy had gone off wine-tasting or had a date or something. After all, he hardly expected Cheng to know his former occult contact had been spending the better part of the day impatiently waiting a return call.
In the meantime, Stone had dug out a couple of books with references to the Enochian language, and spent the afternoon catching up on it. Discovered (or invented, depending on who you asked) by John Dee and his colleague Edward Kelley in late sixteenth-century England, it was supposed to be the language God used to create the world. Stone rather doubted that, but he didn’t doubt its mystical properties. An entire branch of magic, also called Enochian, had developed around the language, and while it wasn’t popular among modern mages, it could still be used to work powerful magic by those familiar with its techniques. Stone had studied it during his apprenticeship, but it had never resonated with him in the same way as some other Hermetic practices had. He supposed it was because his inherent agnosticism made it difficult for him to accept the core tenets of the system—if you did
n’t believe in God and angels, it was difficult to make magic based on them function correctly.
Somebody obviously was doing just that, though. Stone wondered how old the box was, and where Dennis Avila had obtained it. It seemed odd to him that the man had it sitting on his table where he’d apparently been examining it while he ate his dinner; did that mean he’d only obtained it recently? Did the dirt indicate that he’d dug it up at his construction site, perhaps finding it intriguing and bringing it home to see if it might be valuable? If so, Stone would have to find out where that was and investigate. Perhaps there were more such items buried at the site, though after a month it was quite likely the construction project had proceeded far enough it would be difficult to discover anything.
He had so many questions, and many of them would require a deeper knowledge of Dennis Avila and his habits to answer. Was the man a devout Christian? The police report had mentioned his friends being surprised that he hadn’t shown up for beer and sports after work the night he died. Perhaps if Stone could locate one or more of these friends, or find out where Avila worked, he might be able to question them. Cheng had told him to stay away from crime scenes, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ask around a bit.
Regardless of all that, though, Avila had clearly not placed the wooden cross carved with Enochian script inside an old stone box brimming with religious symbology. And if he hadn’t, who had? What else had been inside the box that had required the equivalent of a tiny magical ward carved with mystical Keep Out signs to guard it?
The most obvious explanation was that Avila had acquired the box somehow—either someone had given it to him or he had found it—and opened it. He’d removed the cross, thus breaking whatever enchantment had guarded the mysterious other item inside. But why hadn’t the other item been found at the scene as well?
Stone pulled the photos back into view again and examined each one with more care, but saw nothing unusual anywhere near Avila’s body. Unless the box had contained a half-eaten carton of fries from Burger King, Stone didn’t see what else could have been included. The knife was too big, and everything else on the breakfast bar looked like it belonged there.
Of course, there was another big question to answer as well: did the box, its contents, and Avila’s strange death have anything to do with the other murders? Currently, Stone saw no connection. Avila hadn’t been killed in the same way as the other victims, nor had he been skinned or drained of blood. The Enochian script on the cross had nothing in common with the vile sigils around the bodies—other than that one was supposedly angelic in nature while the other, Stone was fairly sure, was demonic. Still, that wasn’t enough of a link to support even one of his usual leaps of logic.
Nonetheless, he was convinced that the two were related. He didn’t know how or why yet, but he’d do his best to find out.
He pulled his notebook closer and scrawled a few more notes about his next steps: find one of Avila’s friends or coworkers to talk to; figure out where the box was now and see if he could find a way to get the police to let him examine it; figure out where Avila’s job site was and check it out; head home to England through the portal and check his more extensive library for any other information about either the demonic sigils or the Enochian script.
He was about to write “Call Cheng again in the morning,” when his phone rang.
He frowned. It was after eleven o’clock. He did occasionally get calls this late, but not often. Perhaps it was Cheng, after returning from wherever he’d been and finding the message in his voicemail. “Yes, hello?”
No one spoke.
Stone shook his head, disgusted. It was far too late for the kind of robotic sales calls he occasionally got, and even the nutters like the lady with the murderous Chihuahua usually had the grace to call at reasonable hours. He was about to hang up when an amused voice said, “Stone…”
Stone’s hand tightened on the receiver. “Who is this?”
The voice chuckled. “I wanted to hear your voice. I’ve already seen your photo in the newspaper. It’s a terrible likeness, isn’t it? They didn’t get your best angle.”
“Who is this?” Stone demanded, louder. Something in the voice, pleasant but with a kind of oily, creepy quality, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
“Oh, I won’t tell you that just yet. I’ve heard you like puzzles, so you can try to solve this one, if you can. I’d advise against it, though. And I’m afraid if you choose to ignore my advice, you’ll have to do it without your sidekick.”
Stone’s body went still, his mind racing. “You’re the one who’s killed those men,” he said in a flat tone.
“Very good.” The voice still sounded amused. “But not terribly difficult. I expected better of you, Dr. Stone, given your reputation. But that isn’t why I called.”
“Why, then?” Stone closed his eyes and focused his senses, trying to pick out anything useful in the voice or the background. Other than a slight unidentifiable accent, he heard nothing. Wherever the man was calling from, he’d ensured there was no background noise.
“I told you—I’m giving you a warning. Stay away. Go back to your students and your research and leave this alone. Things have been set into motion, and you will be powerless to stop them. If you continue, it won’t go well for you, I promise.”
Stone shook his head. “If you know me at all, whoever you are, you know I can’t do that. And I will find you.”
“We’ll see,” the man said. He didn’t sound worried. “Where’s your friend, Dr. Stone?”
“What friend?” A nasty tingle traversed Stone’s spine and settled at the base of his neck.
A chuckle. “You’ve been waiting for him to call you. I wonder why he hasn’t. That’s most unlike him, from what I’ve heard. Where could he be, I wonder…?”
The nasty tingle increased. “What have you done with Detective Cheng? Have you done something to him?”
“Now, why would you accuse me of that? I only have his best interests—and yours—in mind. I’ll tell you one more time, Dr. Stone—stay away. Let this go, or things will get unpleasant for you very quickly.”
The connection broke, leaving Stone with a dead receiver in his hand, a cold knot in the pit of his stomach, and a dismaying certainty that he would not see Detective Johnny Cheng alive again.
Chapter Ten
By the next day, Stone was no closer to finding Cheng. He’d tried the detective’s cell again after the strange caller had hung up, but once again he got voicemail. He hunted through the phone book, but there were too many J. Chengs to start casting about that late at night when he had no idea which one—if any—was the one he wanted.
Unable to quiet his mind enough to sleep, he spent most of the rest of the night pacing the townhouse, periodically pausing to jot down everything he could remember about the call—what the man had said, what he’d sounded like, any subjective impressions. It wasn’t much. He was certain he’d never heard the voice before.
It had to be someone connected with the murders, calling to taunt him, but even that didn’t answer many questions. He was convinced some sort of demonic entity was behind this, but was it here already? Could it make phone calls and sound like a modern-day man? It hadn’t spoken in old-style English, used odd phrasing, or done anything else that might be indicative of a hundreds- or thousands-of-years-old being that had recently been awakened or released from captivity.
If not the demon, then one of its henchmen? Stone was further convinced that the thing had not committed the murders alone—in fact, it might not have even been present for them. It might have hired, coerced, or otherwise obtained flunkies to do the actual deeds, with instructions for how to prepare the bodies, leave the sigils and other marks, and harvest the blood and skin. It was a lot to ask, but Stone had no idea where it might have obtained its assistants.
Finally, at about two a.m., he gave up and
called the San Jose Police Department. He might get in trouble for this—hell, he might get Cheng in trouble—but he couldn’t live with himself if he later found out he could have prevented harm to the detective.
A bored-sounding desk sergeant answered. “San Jose Police Department, Sergeant Plumm. May I help you?”
“I’m looking for Detective Johnny Cheng.”
“He’s not on shift right now. He’s day shift.” There was a pause and the sound of rustling papers. “And he’s off tomorrow. Can someone else help you?”
“No, I need to talk with him as soon as possible. It’s quite urgent. Is there a chance someone could contact him and ask him to give me a call?”
The sergeant sounded suspicious. “We’re not gonna get one of our detectives out of bed because some guy calls in the middle of the night wantin’ to talk to him. Either tell me what this is about, or call back Monday. He comes on shift at three p.m.”
Stone sighed. He didn’t want to do this, but he didn’t see an alternative. “Sergeant, my name is Alastair Stone. Up until a few days ago, I was consulting with Detective Cheng regarding a couple of murder cases. I’ve reason to believe he might be in danger.”
There was a pause. “Danger.”
“Yes. I’ve received a phone call from someone I believe might be connected with the murders he was investigating. Would it be possible for me to speak to one of his superiors?”
Another pause.
“Listen, Sergeant—I’m not one of your nutters. If you check, you can verify that I was working with Detective Cheng, until I was asked not to. Please—I’ve been trying to call his mobile phone, but he’s not returning my calls.”
The sergeant’s silence stretched out again, against a low murmured background of other voices and the occasional far-off buzz of another phone. “Hold on,” the man finally said. “I’ll give you to the lieutenant. For your sake, I hope you’re not a flake—he eats flakes for breakfast.” The line went to hold.