“Do you see him?”
“Every time I go down to Albuquerque. He and my grandmother come up for the holidays. My dad lights Chanukah candles for him. It’s really funny because he says the blessing in Hebrew and he can’t make the guttural Ch sound. He’s a cool guy, my grandpa Ed. His own father, my great-grandfather Abe, was a physicist who worked at Los Alamos during World War Two with Oppenheimer and Teller.”
“Wow. You have pedigree. How about your father’s parents?”
“They’re alive. I see them at holidays too.” He turned to her. “What about you?”
“All my grandparents are alive.”
“Good genetics.”
“English, Scottish and Irish and Welsh. Believe it or not, even with that kind of homogeneity, there are blood feuds.”
“The English and the Irish? No!”
“And my Scottish grandfather fights with everyone. We have a rather contentious family.” Her eyes stared straight ahead. The sun was beginning to sink, casting gilt shadows on a gold carpet. “It’s really gorgeous.”
After she finished off the guacamole, Ben got rid of the trash. The road was less populated as the hour grew late. The air was cold and still except for the quaking of the trees. Ro was beginning to shiver.
Ben said, “We can go whenever you’re ready.”
“Just a few more minutes.”
He sat back down. “Habit-forming . . . right?”
“It’s just so peaceful.” She sighed. “It was nice of your mom to invite me for dinner. I really do have plans. We’re all going to the movies.”
“Sounds wholesome . . . except for the inevitable weed and boozing and other things that take place afterward.”
She didn’t deny it. “Ben, why don’t you come?”
“Not a chance.”
“You know, Lisa Holloway really likes you. And she really is cute, despite the Goth thing.”
Don’t say a word. “I’m not interested.” He focused on her eyes. “I know you mean well, hon, but please don’t try to fix me up. And please don’t try to integrate me into your clique. I’m happy with my status. I know I’m a lone wolf—as Lilly tells me all the time. And I always tell her that no great discoveries were ever made at parties unless it was a formula written on the back of a napkin. The truth is, people like me, we live a lot in our heads.”
“I hope it’s a good place.”
“Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s very dark. And when it’s dark, I go outside and see what the sun looks like. And right now, it looks like the sun is going down. We should go. The critters that you don’t see in the daytime are starting to hunt now.”
She stood up and they started walking. The hike down was silent. When they reached the bottom of the trail, the sun was sinking behind the mountains. Ben leaned against the hatch of the Explorer and together they saw the fireworks spread in the sky, a brilliant display of gold, pinks, deep corals, and lavender. By the time he pulled out, the Explorer was the only vehicle in the parking area.
Ten minutes later, on the silent trip home, the stars began to come out. Ro rubbed her shoulder, turned on the heat, and fished her cell from her purse. Ben said, “You might have to wait to get reception.”
She nodded and held her phone in her hand. “Can’t say the entire day was a hoot and a holler, but it ended with a bang. Thank you for what was probably the most interesting time I’ve had since I got here.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You are really an enigma . . . wrapped in a puzzle . . . wrapped in a riddle . . . wrapped in a mystery.”
“You forgot conundrum.” A pause. “And what are you?”
“I’ve already told you that, Vicks. I’m self-centered, egotistical, shallow, competitive, and if I need to be, a real scheming bitch.”
“I don’t see you that way at all.”
“Okay. I’ll bite. How do you see me?”
“You’re lonely.”
“Me? I’m like the most popular girl in the school. I’m around people all the time.”
“Who said you can’t be lonely with people all around?” He was staring out the windshield. “That’s why you talk to me. If you had someone else who you could tell your secrets to, you wouldn’t be talking to me at all. It’s fine, though. I like being your temporary confidant. In a year, you’ll be gone and I’ll still be here and we’ll probably never see each other again.”
Tears formed in her eyes. “You know, Vicks? You have this way of just bringing everything down.”
“Maybe, but at least I don’t find you scheming and bitchy and shallow.”
“Do you like me?”
“Ro, as pretty as you are, I wouldn’t put up with your mouth if I didn’t like you, okay? I think you’re smart and funny and nice to be around. So think about that the next time you get mad at me.”
She didn’t say anything. A minute later her phone sprang to life. Ben knew she probably had a million missed calls and a million texts. She didn’t make any phone calls, but she began to attack the texts.
He wouldn’t know from experience, but he supposed that once in a while it was nice to be in demand.
Chapter 12
Though Ben rarely spoke to Ro at school, she did show the following Saturday to help in his research. This time there was no banter back and forth and no hike in the mountains afterward. She was all business and that was fine with him. In the weeks that followed, she proved to be very helpful. That she was a crime junkie made it easier. Ben no longer felt so ghoulish. They became a good team.
The previous month, he had started searching for murders that occurred near the equinoxes. The first spate of material that he had pulled up mainly referred to a chain of gyms. Then he plugged in “vernal equinox” and “autumnal equinox” and pulled up thousands of hits. Some were names, some were scientific articles, but there were more than a few blogs about things that go bump in the night. He read and he learned. For instance, when the star Algol (known as the Ghoul) was in proper alignment, it was key to mischief and mayhem. He pulled up charts and graphs that reminded him of the Zodiac Killer. And he also got more than a few book titles—Blood on the Equinox, The Equinox Killer, Equinox at Daybreak. There were lots of conspiracy theories and murders—even some terrible mass murders—but nothing that fit the particular patterns Ben was focused on. The vernal equinox seemed to generate more iniquity than the autumnal equinox, although both were popular themes in crime fiction.
The solstices turned out to be different animals. Ben got the conspiracy theories, along with the titles of novels and movies, a few made-for-TV specials, and a couple of true-crime segments.
But Shanks was right.
The solstices appeared to attract a lot of ritualism and witchcraft. Some of the witchcraft was benign—Wiccans celebrating mother earth through dance, song, and orgiastic rituals. But then there were the Goths, and when they were involved, the tenor went from bacchanalia to satanism. Some of the rituals were completely silly. But lots of what he read was disturbing, with rites that included murdered cats. When the talk about animal sacrifices morphed into human sacrifices, it was just plain frightening.
He continued on, compelled by justice, he told himself, but it was also compulsion. He and Ro met every Saturday for two to four hours depending on how much homework she had. She was also studying for the SATs, and whenever she needed math help, he was more than happy to oblige, getting away from all the ugliness. But often they worked straight through until Ro looked at her watch and said she had to head to cheerleading practice, leaving him alone with his witches and warlocks and lovers of Lucifer.
A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, just as their session was reaching the three-hour mark, Ben got a beep on his computer.
Ro looked up from her laptop. “What was that?”
“Hold on.” He clicked a few keys and navigated until he found the site. “A new case.”
“What case? Something related to Ellen?” A pause. Ro got up and read over his shoulder. �
�Where is this from?”
“The Knoxville News Sentinel.”
“A murder in Knoxville?”
“Cosby.”
“Where is Cosby?”
“Tennessee. A girl . . . Jamey Moore . . . seventeen-year-old . . . disappeared two months ago . . . shit. She was abducted on September twenty-first.”
“Yikes. That’s right near the autumnal equinox.”
“Yes, it is.” Ben read aloud. “‘She was from Knoxville . . . possibly a runaway . . . a body was discovered two days ago near Cosby, Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.’”
“I feel faint, Vicks.”
Ben whipped around. Ro was sitting on the bed, sweating. “Jeez, you’re white.” He ran to the kitchen to get some water. When he came back, her head was between her knees. “Drink.”
“I can’t get up without my head tingling.”
He massaged her back while she waited for blood to rush back to her brain. This was all his fault. “Enough of this horrible stuff. I’ll turn off the computer and we’ll go for a ride.”
“You can’t turn off the computer now.” She was still talking with her head between her legs. “This is like superimportant. Go back to the computer and tell me about it.” Slowly, she lifted her head up from her knees. She was still pale. “Go!”
He read the article for a third time, then a fourth. Ro sat up and said, “You know what this means. He’s gone through all the seasons.”
“I know.” Nausea crept into Ben’s stomach. “Ellen’s was the first, three years ago, the summer solstice, then came Katie’s disappearance on the vernal equinox, Julia Rehnquist was a year ago, the winter solstice, and Jamey Moore . . . right near the autumnal equinox. Four murders in three years. He’s completed a cycle.”
“He’s going to repeat it,” Ro said. “And this time he’s going to be more precise.”
As soon as she said the words, Ben knew she was right. He threw his head back, sweating and shaking, in a full-fledged panic. Haley would be fifteen next year. Ripe for the picking. Breathe in, breathe out. “It’s four murders in four locations.” He was trying to calm them both down. But he didn’t believe his own words. “Maybe if he repeats it, he’ll pick a new place. Somewhere he hasn’t killed before.”
“But where?”
“I don’t know, Ro. I don’t . . . since we don’t know what’s going on, exactly, let’s concentrate on what we do have.” A pause. “We have abductions in Knoxville, Tennessee, Berkeley, California, and Albuquerque and River Remez, New Mexico. The first two abductions were here. Then he went west of here. Then he went east of here.”
“You think he picked the places randomly?”
“No, I don’t,” Ben said. “But I don’t know what these four places have in common.”
Ro said, “They’re all close to mountains.”
“Yeah.” Ben nodded. “Good. Right. First point in common. All of the bodies were buried either in or close to state parks. Except Katie. We don’t know where she is officially, I’m thinking she’s probably somewhere in the Sandias. If this monster picks a new place, it’s not going to be in the plains states.”
“Unless it’s the Ozarks,” Ro said.
“Fuck!” He pounded his fist on the desk. It made Ro jump. “What am I missing?”
“How far is Cosby from Knoxville?”
He typed the cities’ names into the computer. “As the crow flies, forty-one miles.”
“How far is it from Berkeley to Mount Diablo?”
Again, he tapped the keyboard. “This site isn’t giving me anything for Mount Diablo. Let me try Alamo.” He made some adjustments. “Sixteen miles from Alamo . . . nineteen miles from the town of Diablo. Let me see if Google Maps . . .”
More clicking.
“To get from Berkeley to Mount Diablo, you take the . . . it looks like the Interstate 80 south to a Highway 24 to Interstate 680 to the town of Alamo. Then maybe you have to take streets—Stone Valley, Green Valley, to Alameda Diablo. There may be a more direct route.” He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up. “Hi. Feeling better?”
“A little. How are you doing?”
“I dunno, Ro. With this new case, it’s getting too close to home.”
“We’re only a little over a month away from the winter solstice. You’ve got to tell Shanks.”
“Let me sort this out first.”
“Vicks!”
“Nothing’s going to happen in a few days. Let me get my head on straight.”
“I’ll give you two weeks . . . to the end of November,” Ro said. “But if you don’t say something by then, I will.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to Shanks.”
“When?”
“Right after Thanksgiving. I swear I will go into his office and show him this article. Just let me get myself organized. Can we go back to what I pulled up in Tennessee? Let me try to make some sense out of . . .” More Google Maps. “Gatlinburg is also in the Smoky Mountains and is much closer to Knoxville . . . ten miles as the crow flies.”
“That’s about thirty miles closer to Knoxville,” Ro said. “So why did he choose Cosby?”
“Cosby is close to Dollywood.”
“What?”
“Dollywood.” He regarded Ro. “You know . . . the Dolly Parton theme park?”
“Who is Dolly Parton?”
“God, you are so city. She’s an old-school country-music star with a great voice. Wears big blond wigs and has ginormous breasts.”
“We have a killer who likes country music? Or maybe ginormous breasts? That would be half the population of the flyover states.”
“Uh, you’re living in a flyover state.”
“Not by choice.”
“Stop being such an elitist. There is something beyond Manhattan.”
“Yeah, there’s Boston, I suppose.”
Ben rolled his eyes and enlarged the map. “Okay . . . here we go. It looks like Cosby is closer to Interstate 40. To get from Knoxville to Gatlinburg might not be as direct. Might be more appealing for him to drive on a big highway. Less likely to be spotted than on some country back roads. But I’m not familiar with the place, so I could be way off.” He rubbed his eyes with his fists. “I can’t concentrate anymore. I’m too shaky.”
“Then let’s quit.” Ro looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go to cheerleading practice. To be honest, I’m glad to be going. It’ll feel very good to do something so insignificant. This is just . . . it’s too big for us to handle, Vicks.”
“I’ll go to Shanks. Just give me . . .” He sighed. “I’m a jerk for dragging you into this. I don’t know why you’re doing this with me, but you’ve been a huge help. Thank you.”
“Wanna pay me back?”
“Anything. What do you need?”
“Homecoming’s in two weeks. It would mean a lot to me if you came.”
He groaned inwardly. “Dorothy, I know you’re going to be homecoming queen. And I’m really, really happy for you.” A pause. “You don’t want to make me suffer, right?”
“No, but I still want you to come.”
“It’s like two weeks away. I don’t have a date.”
“I could get you a date. I’m sure Lisa Holloway—”
“I have no interest in her, okay?”
“What do you have against poor Lisa?”
Keep a lid on it, Ben. “Why is this so important to you?”
“’Cause I like you more than anyone else in the entire school and I want you to be there in my moment of glory.”
How could he resist such a naked plea?
“If it’s that important to you, Dorothy Majors, I will come to see you in your moment of glory.” He grimaced. “Do I have to come to the game and the dance?”
“Yes. I’ll get you a date for the dance.”
“No, I am going stag.”
“You can’t go stag.”
“Then I’ll take Haley.”
“You can’t take your sister. That is so loser.”
He thought a moment. “I’ll take Haley and Lilly.”
“Vicks, they’re fourteen!”
“But together they’re twenty-eight.” He grinned. “If I take Haley and Lilly, I’ll have to take Griffen . . . and then I’ll have to take Ezra for Lilly.”
“So that leaves you stag again.”
“I’m going stag. That is not up for negotiation.”
A sigh. “Okay. Go stag. Sit by yourself in a corner. See if I care.”
“For as much as we talk in school, I might as well be hidden in a closet.”
Ro looked hurt. “I’m not embarrassed to be your friend.” When he didn’t answer, she said, “Maybe it’s the other way around.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I’m always inviting you to be with me and my friends. You never ask me to sit with you. You never ever call me up.”
Ben knew he was trapped. Silence was his best option.
Ro tossed her hair back, waves of golden amber. “Then it’s settled. You’ll be at the game and at the dance for me. No backing out.”
“God. Okay. I’ll go.”
She grinned. “You really are my favorite person.”
“And you’re mine as well. Let’s get married.”
“I’d make you miserable, Vicks.”
“I know. And I’d make you miserable. But it would be fun while it lasted.”
Chapter 13
Thanksgiving, for Ben, was the most tolerable of the holidays because it was filled with relatives and there were no expectations about his behavior. It used to be that Mom hosted the meal, but after Ellen’s death, she lost her flair for cooking and entertaining. No matter. There were plenty of kinfolk to pick up the slack. The Vicksburg and Weil clans were on a rotating schedule. This year dinner was in Albuquerque with Grandpa Ed and Grandma Pauline. Mom came from a family of four children, who in turn produced families of three to four children. Ben’s dad’s parents—Louise and William Sr.—would be coming in from St. Louis. Ben had tons of aunts and uncles and even more cousins—some married with kids of their own. The amount of people varied—never fewer than fifty and sometimes as many as eighty. Henry usually drove down from Santa Clara, often with a kid in tow from one of his ex-wives.
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