“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He was the one looking to get answers, not give them, but he felt an overwhelming urge to be honest with her. It made sense. After all, if this was her area of expertise maybe she could help shed some light on things. And if there was even a remote chance she could help find Lizzie he had to try.
“It’s my sister-in-law, Lizzie. A couple of years ago she announced to the family that she was going to become a wiccan. She told us what you did, about it being a religion and it was about harming no one and being a responsible citizen and getting in touch with nature, a lot of that.”
“And that caused a problem?”
“No, actually. My wife’s family isn’t religious. Neither was mine. So, while it seemed odd to everyone, it wasn’t like anybody was overly upset about her choice. Honestly, the way she talked about it, it just sounded like a lot of hippie talk to me which actually fit with her personality. It was like she was taking it one step further and finding a religion in it instead of just a lifestyle.”
“Hence your correlating what I was saying with wiccans all being hippies?”
“Exactly,” Mark admitted. “That and I was provoking you a bit,” he said, shocked to hear himself say it.
“I know. But back to Lizzie. I take it something changed?” Trina guessed.
“Yes, after a few months she started to change. Her wardrobe, her attitude, everything became what I can only call ‘dark’. I teased her at one family gathering that she looked like a Goth and she got offended. Then when she was talking to my wife, Traci, she started telling her that she was learning so many new things and that she was getting things out of it. She was talking about doing spells to get more power. She even said she’d put a curse on her ex-boyfriend.”
“Yeah, definitely not playing by the Wiccan rulebook anymore. It sounds like she was falling in with a dangerous crowd,” Trina said.
Mark nodded. “Traci told her she was worried about her, and Lizzie pretty much cut her out of her life at that point. Traci tried to reach out several times after that, but nothing. Their older sister Amber retained some contact, but even that was a lot less than it once was, and if Traci was going to be at a party or something that pretty much made it a guarantee that Lizzie wouldn’t show.”
“That’s actually not a bad thing,” Trina said softly.
“In what universe is that not a bad thing?” Mark asked bluntly.
“Her discomfort around Traci indicates that deep down she knew that what she was doing was wrong, and she didn’t want people in her life who would remind her of that fact. If she’d gone completely over to the dark side she wouldn’t have cared at all what Traci thought or said.”
“So, maybe there’s hope for her?” Mark asked. For Traci’s sake he wanted to believe so.
“There could be.”
Mark cleared his throat. There was one burning question that needed to be asked. “Do you think it’s possible that she’s involved with whoever killed Cheyenne and Michelle?”
Trina picked up her cup of coffee and took a deep breath. “I think she might be, yes.”
Mark swore softly.
“It’s possible that she doesn’t realize what her new friends, her new coven are really up to. She could be just a pawn who doesn’t even know the extent of what the others are doing.”
“Yeah, but what are the odds of that?” Mark said with a shake of his head.
“Actually, not horrible. I’ve seen it before. Several times actually. A couple of powerful and persuasive dark witches have a goal that requires more people to accomplish. They recruit, oftentimes going after the disenfranchised or unempowered. Even frustrated Wiccans who wish they had more power or more control or have a desire for something that would break their own belief structure can be targets. It could be that’s exactly what happened to Lizzie. For all we know they preyed on her anger toward her ex-boyfriend. Any chance we know who he is, by the way? I’d like to talk to him.”
“We don’t, but I’ll check with Amber and see if she ever knew his name.” He found himself pulling out his phone. “Actually, let me do that right now.”
“Excellent,” Trina said, sitting back in her seat and taking another sip of her coffee.
Fortunately Amber picked up on the second ring. “Mark, have you found Lizzie?” she asked, voice full of worry.
“No, but we’re working on it. Listen, not last Christmas but the one before I think it was she had recently broken up with an ex-boyfriend.”
“I remember, she told me she put a curse on the guy. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous?”
“Yeah, well, any chance you know who he was, a name, a picture?”
“Let me think. She brought him over for dinner once before they broke up. He had reddish colored hair. His name was...Samuel, that was it.”
“Did you hear a last name?”
“I think she said, but I can’t honestly remember.”
“That’s okay,” Mark said, struggling to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Do you know how they met?”
“Yes, I think he was in her Wicca coven.”
“Thanks, I’ll keep you posted,” he said before hanging up. He wished he had known that last night.
“He was from her coven?”
“Good ears,” Mark commented.
Trina shrugged.
“Only there were no guys there last night with red hair and I got the impression that all the members were present and accounted for.”
“So, maybe one of them knows more about him.”
“That’s what I’m hoping,” he said as he pulled his notebook out of his pocket and looked up Sweater Girl’s phone number. Fortunately she picked up right away, too.
“Hi, this is Detective Walters, I got your message.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get any contact information for you,” she said.
“It’s okay.”
“Did you tell the other officers to be on the lookout for black cats?”
“No, but I will. I actually had a couple of follow up questions for you, though” he said.
“What are they?” she asked.
“I’m trying to locate an ex-boyfriend of Lizzie’s. I think he might have been part of the coven. His name was Samuel and apparently he had red hair. Do you know him?”
“I know him,” she said, her voice tight.
“Is he still a member of the coven?”
“Not really, no.”
It seemed like an odd answer. “Do you by any chance know where I can find him?”
“Yes. At the hospital here in Pine Springs. He’s been in a coma for almost two years.”
11
“Whoa, what happened to him?”
“No one knows. We all did our best, tried everything we could think of, but nothing helped him. We finally had to give up. It was shortly after that Lizzie left the coven.”
“Do you know what his last name is?”
“Bannerman.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Detective, I hope you find Lizzie. She used to be nice. I wish I knew what it was that happened to her.”
“Me, too,” he said before hanging up. Used to be nice. Even her former coven had noticed the change in her.
“So, Lizzie left the coven shortly after her ex-boyfriend, Samuel Bannerman, ended up in a coma. Apparently, he’s still in the coma.”
Trina nodded as though she wasn’t particularly surprised. She drained her coffee, tossed some bills on the table, and stood up. “Let’s go visit him, shall we?”
Mark followed her out to the parking lot. “We’ll take my car,” he said.
She nodded and a minute later they were on the road. “I didn’t mean to open up so much back there,” he said, feeling a bit embarrassed as he thought about it.
“It’s okay. I guess I have one of those faces. People tend to want to tell me things.”
“That must make the job easier.”
“It can,” she ad
mitted. “And in this case, I’m sure it will. If we’re going to solve this we can’t be holding out on each other. If you hadn’t told me about Lizzie then we wouldn’t know to go visit Samuel.”
“Yeah, a lot of good this is probably going to do us. Guy’s been in a coma for a couple of years, I don’t think he’ll have much to say.”
“You might be surprised,” she said cryptically.
“You’re a little weird, you know that?”
She laughed. “You’re not the first to think so, but most people don’t actually say it.”
“Well, you know, in the spirit of not holding back.”
“Funny.”
“So, how many cases like this one have you worked?”
“A few. It’s always tricky. The most recent one was in New Orleans, boy that was a mess.”
“The city of superstition? I bet you couldn’t swing a black cat without hitting a dark witch,” he joked.
“That’s one of the things that’s bothering me.”
“What?”
“What was that girl from the coven saying about looking out for black cats?”
“Apparently both her cat and her neighbor’s cat went missing and they were both black cats. It is getting close to Halloween and there are a lot of sick people out there. I hate to say it, but I think something like that happens every year.”
“It does, unfortunately, but these are people who would have been aware of the danger, and presumably, keeping closer tabs on their cats because of it. I just find it odd that two people had their cats stolen on the same night.”
“They never said stolen.”
“No, but I’d be willing to bet they were.”
“The coroner did say that he found some cat fur at the first crime scene. I had just assumed that it was old or from stray cats breaking in to forage for mice.”
“I think where this case is concerned it’s better to suspect everything and assume nothing,” she told him.
“The voice of experience?”
“Exactly.”
“Whatever you say.”
A few minutes later they were pulling up outside the hospital. Inside they were directed to a ward where there were a couple of patients in comas. None of them, though, had been there more than a couple of days with the exception of Samuel.
They had been standing at his bedside looking at him for less than a minute when a doctor appeared, having been alerted to their presence.
“Detective, Agent,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’m Doctor Wilson. How can I help?”
“We’d like to know more about this patient,” Trina said.
“He was brought in almost two years ago in the exact condition you see him in now. He was already in a coma when his roommate found him and called an ambulance.”
“What caused it?” Mark asked.
“That’s the strange part. We can’t tell. We’ve run every test possible on him and medically speaking, there’s no obvious cause. He didn’t play sports, hadn’t received any bumps to the head, hadn’t suffered from oxygen deprivation. They had been in the apartment all day, studying for finals. Apparently he had laid down on the couch before dinner to take a nap. When the pizza got there his roommate tried to wake him and couldn’t. After trying for a minute with no luck he called 911.”
“It’s not normal for someone to just take a nap and not wake up,” Mark said.
“No, it isn’t, but, like I said, all tests have proved inconclusive. We have no idea why this man slipped into a coma and no idea why he’s stayed there.”
“If you can, Doctor, we’d like to get his roommate’s name and contact information.”
“I’ll give you what I have, but the guy graduated college in the spring. He had come by about once a week just to check in. I was there on his last visit. He’d been accepted to a graduate school back east. I think he left a number, asked to be notified if there was ever any change. I’ll see if I can find it for you.”
“We appreciate it,” Trina said.
The doctor walked off, ostensibly to track down the number for them. Trina turned and put her hand on Samuel’s forehead.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked.
“Thinking,” she said.
“You’ve got a strange way of thinking.”
“Would you be quiet for a second?”
She was getting weirder and it made Mark uneasy. He took a step backward even as he found himself wondering what her deal was. He watched as she closed her eyes. She kept her hand on Samuel’s forehead and her lips were moving ever so slightly. Maybe she was saying a prayer over him or something. He knew some people did that.
Finally she turned, removing her hand from the guy as she did so. “Do any of the local churches have faith healers?” she asked.
“Uh, I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” he said, taken aback. She must have been praying for the guy. “Why?”
“Can you find out for me? I want to get some people out here to pray over this guy.”
“Seriously?” he asked.
She raised one eyebrow. “You heard the doctor, medical science has no idea what’s wrong with him or how to fix him. Don’t you think it’s time to let someone else have a try?”
“Um, okay. I know some church people. I’ll ask them.”
“Ask them now,” she said, her voice lowering slightly.
He found himself pulling his phone out of his pocket almost before he knew what he was doing. He called Cindy at her work number.
“Hello?”
“Cindy, Mark. Strange question. Is anyone over there at First Shepherd into faith healing?”
She paused. “We’ve got a prayer chain and several of the people in it are definitely prayer warriors. I’ve never heard any of them claim to be healers, though.”
“Could you ask around and find out for me? There’s a guy here in the hospital who’s been in a coma for a couple of years. Doctors have no clue why. The F.B.I. agent I’m working with on this wants to see if any of the local churches have someone they can send out to pray over him, you know, just to cover our bases, I guess.”
“Well, I know I can send some people out to pray for him.”
“That might be good enough,” Trina spoke up, clearly overhearing.
“Good, could you do that, sooner rather than later? His name is Samuel Bannerman.”
“Okay, I’ll have some people out there this evening.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up the phone.
“She’s a good friend,” Trina noted.
“One of the best. Even when something scares her silly she’s still there, trying to help.”
“For a man who’s not religious you seem to have surrounded yourself with a circle of people who are.”
“Yeah, it’s funny how things work out sometimes,” Mark noted.
“I want to be here when they’re praying over him,” she said.
“Add your voice to theirs?”
“Something like that,” she said with a smile.
The doctor came back and handed them a piece of paper with the contact information for the roommate. Mark called, but had to leave a message on the man’s voicemail.
“Some people from First Shepherd will be coming this evening to pray over this man,” Trina informed the doctor.
He nodded. “Not much on prayer myself, but I have seen it do things I couldn’t explain, and this poor guy could use all the help he can get.”
Cindy made one phone call and was able to set in motion the prayer chain. Twenty minutes later she got a call back saying that about fifteen people would be there at 7 p.m. to pray for Samuel. She called back Mark and let him know. That done, she got back to work trying to get the information to Geanie that the other woman needed to put together the Sunday bulletin.
Wednesdays were the day that she put them together for the pastors to look over on Thursday before they got printed on Friday. Some weeks it felt a bit like an assembly line, but at least it got done. It was one jo
b Cindy was grateful that Geanie took care of. She always managed to find enough room for all of the announcements without having to change the format or anything. Whenever she was out on vacation it was the one part of her job that Cindy dreaded doing.
She had just about sent Geanie everything when the phone on her desk rang. She could tell by the tone that it was an internal line. She glanced over and saw that Dave was calling. It rang a second time and then stopped.
She pulled her hand back and glanced over at Geanie. “Who was it?” the other woman asked, looking up, forehead crinkling in concern.
“Dave,” Cindy said, already standing up and heading for the door.
They had a policy that two rings and a hang up meant that someone needed assistance, but couldn’t necessarily talk on the phone for some reason. They used it kind of like an emergency paging system, but it was rare that it actually happened.
She made her way quickly to the youth room where he had his office. Once inside she saw that he was in the office sitting on the couch next to a teen girl who had buried her head in his shoulder. He looked up at Cindy as she entered the room, his eyes full of distress.
“Brenda, Cindy’s here,” he said.
The girl turned and Cindy recognized Brenda Parker, one of the highschoolers that she actually knew. The girl’s family was desperately poor and she was the only one of them who came to church. A couple of years earlier Cindy and some of the high school girls had been delivering Thanksgiving dinner to the Parker family, not realizing until it was too late that the reason Brenda insisted on staying in the car was because it was actually her family that they were delivering the charitable meal to.
Brenda stood up and crossed over to Cindy and threw her arms around her as she continued to sob.
Bewildered, Cindy held the girl while she cried and looked at Dave, wondering what on earth was wrong.
“She just found out that a friend of hers, Cheyenne, was killed a couple of days ago,” Mark said softly.
Cindy’s heart constricted when she heard that and she could feel tears forming in her own eyes. Brenda’s life was hard enough without having to deal with such a tragedy at her age. Cheyenne was the girl who had been murdered in the basement of that terrible house. It wasn’t even like she’d been killed in a car accident. No, what had happened to Brenda’s friend had been unspeakable and there was a good chance that Brenda would carry the scars of that the rest of her life.
I Will Fear No Evil Page 10