They all needed a few more of those miracles. And suddenly she heard herself saying softly, “God, I lift up Traci, Lizzie, and Mark to You that You might protect them and guide them and bring them all back together safely.”
That was it, just the one small sentence, and she hadn’t even expected to be praying it out loud. Traci had gone very still and after Cindy was done she looked up at her.
“Thank you,” Traci breathed.
Cindy just smiled and squeezed her hand.
Mark woke slowly in the morning, feeling like he was coming out of some hideous nightmare. When he finally opened his eyes and saw where he was, though, he realized that the day before hadn’t been a dream. He shuddered as everything came flooding back.
There were a lot of memories that were ingrained in his mind, burned there, and he was sure they always would be. Others, especially later in the evening, were incredibly fuzzy and he actually wondered if a couple of them were real or hallucinations. He hadn’t actually managed to convince Cindy and Jeremiah to take him home, had he?
Of all the things swimming in his head, though, one was crystal clear. He needed to get hold of Traci. His phone was on the table nearby, charging. He grabbed it and as he pulled it free of the charging cable it began to ring.
It wasn’t Traci and for a moment he thought about not even answering. He did, though. “Hello?”
“Hello, I’m looking for Detective Walters,” a woman said.
“Speaking.”
“Oh, Detective, I’m so glad. My name is Martha and I work at the humane society. I helped you adopt your Beagle a while back during all of that craziness.”
“I remember. What can I do for you?”
“Well, we’ve had...something happen here at the humane society. Something awful, actually. I called the police, but the one I spoke with really didn’t seem to understand the urgency of the situation. And I remembered you were an animal lover and you worked on that case with the dogs of the homeless being kidnapped, so I decided to take a chance and call you.”
“What exactly happened?” he asked.
“Someone broke in last night and they stole several animals.”
“That’s terrible. Any chance that someone just really wanted a couple of dogs and didn’t want to go through channels?”
“No chance, I’m afraid,” she said her voice distressed. “I’m convinced that there is a terrible, sinister reason behind the kidnappings.”
“Why?”
“They only stole the black cats.”
18
“Black cats?” Mark asked, sitting up abruptly.
“Yes, and I’m afraid that I don’t have to tell you, Detective, that there are a lot of sick people out there. We won’t even adopt out black cats during the month of October. We’re all so very worried for their safety.”
“You were right to call,” he said, his mind racing. “I’m going to send my partner, Liam, down there with a forensics team. Please, try to keep people away from the crime scene as much as possible. They’re going to try and get fingerprints, that kind of thing.”
“Bless you, Detective,” Martha said, sounding like she was about to cry. “I’ll do that.”
He hung up and called Liam. Fortunately his partner picked up right away.
“Liam, you’re on. I’m laid up in the hospital for at least a day or two.”
“What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. Right now I need you to grab some forensic guys and get down to the humane society right away. Last night someone broke in and kidnapped their black cats and I think whoever did so could be linked to whoever’s killing these girls and has kidnapped Lizzie.”
“We know for sure that Lizzie’s been kidnapped?”
“Yeah, like I said, I’ll fill you in, but get down there now. Martha will be waiting for you.”
“On it.”
Next Mark checked the number that Lizzie had called in on yesterday. He cursed silently at all the time wasted because of his being poisoned. Next he called the precinct and was shortly connected with Daniels, an officer he’d used before when he needed someone with computer skills.
“Detective, what can I do for you?” the other man asked.
“I’m going to give you a phone number. I need it traced as part of a kidnapping case and I need it five minutes ago.”
“Okay, go.”
Mark rattled off the number and then hung up. He took a deep breath and tried calling Traci’s number. It rang several times, but then went to voicemail.
“I love you, call me,” he said and then hung up.
He leaned his head back. His mind was racing. There was so much to do and he couldn’t believe that he was stuck there.
A few minutes later a nurse came in to check him over and another brought food which was terrible. He forced himself to scarf it down anyway. He wasn’t going to convince anyone to let him out of this place if he didn’t eat. While he was doing so Daniels called him with the disappointing news that Lizzie had called on a burner cell phone which had since been disabled. There was no way to track it. He hung up and went back to eating as he waited for more news.
He had just finished when the door opened and Trina walked in. “Looking better than yesterday, I see,” she noted.
“Certainly feeling better.”
“You’re lucky to be alive. You wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for Jeremiah’s quick thinking and obvious know-how.”
“I’ll be sure to thank him. Did you guys turn anything else up at the house?”
“Only thing of significance was a black cat that had been hiding in that hidden room. He was significantly the worse for wear. We got him to a veterinarian who was able to fix him up and check him over. He had a broken leg, several bruises, and was missing massive chunks of fur. He was also deeply dehydrated. Fortunately he’s already on the mend and he was chipped so his owner will be able to retrieve him shortly.”
“What was the cat’s name?” Mark asked.
“Whiskers. Not terribly original.”
“At least that’s one kidnapped cat found,” he said.
“One?”
“Yeah. Did they find anything on him?”
“There was human blood on his front paws and claws. They’re trying to match it. Hopefully he scratched our killer. Now, what do you mean by one cat found?”
“Another cat from the same neighborhood that belonged to one of the wiccans was kidnapped around the same time as Whiskers. She was also a black cat. Then, the humane society was broken into last night and whoever did it stole their black cats. I’ve got my partner over there now looking into it.”
“Sounds like I’m getting here at just the right time for the info dump,” Jeremiah said, poking his head in the door.
“Yes, come in,” Mark said with a wave of his hand.
The rabbi entered and took a seat. “So, there are more black cats out there that might be victimized by whoever attacked the one we found yesterday?”
“Yes,” Mark said. “And the number Lizzie called in on yesterday was a burner phone that has almost certainly been dumped since then. Other than that, we’ve got nothing new.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Trina said.
“Here either,” Jeremiah answered.
“Okay, Trina you go then Jeremiah,” Mark said, sitting up a little more and pushing his empty food tray farther from him.
“The prayer chain people gathered last night around Samuel and when it was all done he woke from his coma.”
“Were you able to talk to him?” Mark asked eagerly.
“I was.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said that Lizzie cursed him.”
“He actually said that?” Mark asked, startled.
“Yes. Apparently they’d started having fights because he was afraid that her new coven was pulling her to the dark side. She wanted him to join, but he refused. He said that the people in it scared him and that they were into things that made h
im uncomfortable. He finally told Lizzie that if she didn’t understand that, if she continued on the path that she was on, that he didn’t think they could be together.”
“I bet that went over well,” Jeremiah said drily.
“Yeah. Apparently the fight grew to epic proportions and when she stormed out of his place she swore she was going to make him pay. She said he’d see that without her, he had no life at all. It was right at the start of finals week and he said he decided he just had to buckle down and get through his exams and then try to talk to her after she cooled off some.”
“Which he never got a chance to,” Mark said.
“Nope. One day he was studying with his roommate and he just couldn’t keep his eyes open. He thought he’d been going at it too hard, not getting enough sleep. He decided to lay down on the couch for an hour before dinner. As he was drifting off to sleep he heard Lizzie’s voice saying an incantation and he felt all his muscles locking up. He tried to pull himself out of it, but it was like something was physically grabbing him and pulling him down into sleep. He said he could see darkness swallowing him up and the last thing he heard was her laughter.”
“Creepy,” Jeremiah said.
His phone rang and Mark noticed that they all jumped slightly. He snatched it up. “Hello?”
“It’s Liam. We’ve been all over the place, taken fingerprints. Not sure if we’ll be able to pick up anything that way, what with all the volunteers who are touching these cages and things every week.”
“At least we can try.”
“Yes. The scary part is that they didn’t even try to hide what they were after. There was no attempt to even make it look like vandalism or some random act,” Liam said. “Whoever took those cats didn’t care if people knew that was exactly what they were doing.”
“How many cats again?”
“Six. Four adults and two kittens. We’ve got pictures of them all and they’ve all already been chipped so if they show up, we’ll know.”
“No owners, though, right?”
“Nope. These were six cats just hoping for a home.”
“Well, we’ll do what we can to see they still have that chance,” Mark said.
“Time to fill me in?”
“Yeah, come over to the hospital and see me. I’m in Room 311.”
“I’ll be there shortly.”
“Sorry, Liam. Did I ruin your weekend plans?”
“Yeah, but it’s okay. I had a ticket to go see Doctor Geek’s Science Fair, but they’re putting those on in different parts of the country, so hopefully I can see it somewhere else soon.”
“Good, because vacation is officially over.”
“Understood.”
Mark hung up. “Six cats. No leads yet.” He sighed and looked at Trina. “Samuel really thinks Lizzie cursed him?”
“He absolutely believes it,” she confirmed.
“And what do we believe?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” Trina countered, eyes widening slightly.
“Curses? Real? Not?” he let his eyes drift over to Jeremiah. “What about it, Rabbi? Can these things happen?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. My experience tells me no, but I do try to keep an open mind to the spiritual forces at work around us. It could be possible. It’s possible that she didn’t curse him, but that part of him believed it so completely that she might as well have.”
“Great,” Mark grumbled. “Okay, anything else Trina?”
She shook her head.
“Jeremiah, you’re up.”
“One of the girls at church, Brenda, talked to Cindy and Wildman. Turns out she was good friends with Cheyenne, the first victim, and really torn up about it. She pointed a finger at Cheyenne’s older sister, Lacey, saying she was the only one who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt Cheyenne. Brenda said she believed Lacey was the killer.”
“Interesting,” Mark said, narrowing his eyes. “Cheyenne’s parents didn’t even mention that they had another daughter. I wonder if they were thinking the same thing and were trying to cover for her?”
“Worth doing some digging,” Trina suggested.
Mark’s phone rang again and he answered it. As he listened to Liam he felt his blood pressure rising. At last he was off the call and he stared grimly at the other two.
“I have to get out of here.”
Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “We’ve already been through that once, remember?”
Mark shook his head. “You don’t understand. They found another body.”
As Jeremiah drove home that evening he was deeply frustrated. There had been things at the synagogue he’d had to take care of. He’d had to leave the hospital in the middle of Mark trying to persuade the doctor to discharge him. As Jeremiah himself had pointed out, he’d spent the majority of the week at Mark’s work sites instead of his own.
Marie had been in a mood which hadn’t helped and as he took care of all the things that were piled up on his desk he kept thinking that none of them was as important as stopping the monster that was sacrificing young women. Several times he had to take a deep breath and remind himself that he had chosen to be a Rabbi and not a cop and that sometimes he just had to leave things to the professionals.
Trina was interesting. She was hiding something, that much was easy to see. What it was that she was hiding was much more uncertain. Still, he knew that she wanted to catch the person or persons behind these murders just as much as the rest of them.
Mark had called him in the late afternoon. Apparently he had managed to finally secure his release from the hospital, this time with doctor consent, even if it was given grudgingly. He had described the third crime scene for him. This time an abandoned store had served as the scene. All the details about the layout of the body had been the same. The markings appeared to be the same as well. It had also struck Jeremiah that both the second and third location were not that far from the first. He kept thinking there was something significant about that, something convenient for the killer.
Mark had been heading home after the crime scene and had confessed how much he wasn’t looking forward to that. Traci still wouldn’t return his calls. Jeremiah felt for him. Jeremiah promised Mark that he’d try and decipher the markings on the bodies later that night and give him a call in the morning.
After feeding Captain and himself he settled down at the computer with the file Mark had given him with the pictures of the symbols on the first girl’s body. It took hours but he finally was able to get the rough meanings of each of them thanks to a couple of old books he’d carried with him for years and the help of his computer search engine. He had planned to call Mark in the morning with his findings, but as he looked it all over he realized that this probably shouldn’t wait.
“Hello?” the Detective answered the phone, slurring the word. Jeremiah wasn’t sure if he’d woken him or if it was still the ill effects of the poison his body was recovering from.
“I know what the symbols mean.”
“Yeah, what?” Mark said, sounding like he was struggling to pull himself together.
“There are symbols for life and death from various ancient writing systems, but there are also words written in ancient Sumerian that look like they’re appearing throughout the body at regular intervals, almost like an incantation.”
“What does it say?”
“Accept offering one of eight in exchange life eternal.”
“What?” Mark asked, now sounding thoroughly awake.
“You heard me. I want to see a picture of the markings on the second and third girls, but if I’m right, there are five more that are marked for death.”
There was silence on the other end.
“Mark, are you there?”
“Yeah. Meet me at the Starbucks across from the police station in fifteen minutes. We need to get ahead of this now.”
When Jeremiah made it to the coffee house he discovered Mark and Trina already huddled at a table, both looking ashen.
“Is it true what you found?” Trina asked before Jeremiah could even sit down.
He nodded.
“And you’re sure it’s Sumerian?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I’ve heard about a Sumerian spell designed to do what you’re saying, give a kind of immortality but at the cost of eight other lives. I’ve seen references to it in some obscure old manuscripts, but I’ve never seen an actual copy of the spell itself.”
“How would someone even go about finding something like that?” Mark asked, voice full of misery.
“Simple. They either spent a tremendous amount of time looking for it or they stumbled across it by complete accident,” Trina answered.
“What do you know of the spell?” Jeremiah asked.
“Hold it, just one minute. Are we actually saying we believe in magic and spells and all this hoodoo?” Mark asked. “Because, when I asked earlier no one wanted to say so.”
“Whether or not it’s real is immaterial,” Trina said. “Someone out there believes it is and they’re not going to stop killing innocent people until they think they’ve accomplished what they set out to do.”
“Valid point,” Mark said.
“So, back to my question,” Jeremiah said.
“I know only this, that it takes eight people to make the sacrifice and that those eight people have to be connected in some way to the people performing the ritual.”
“What do you mean connected?” Mark asked.
“The sacrifices have to be personal, they can’t be just random people. It was probably an attempt to make sure that there was a great personal cost to this spell so that only those who were most committed would actually follow through.”
“So, Michelle was killed because she was Lizzie’s roommate?”
Trina nodded. “It is possible.”
“So we need to find out who might be the dark witch that’s connected to Cheyenne and then maybe we can follow their trail to Lizzie,” Mark said.
“What if it is her sister Lacey? What if she’s the dark witch?” Jeremiah asked.
“We have to find Lacey,” Trina said.
I Will Fear No Evil Page 16