by J W Kiefer
“Honestly, I don’t know. I do know that God says you don’t need to worry, you are not being punished.” Jared started to say something, but Jeremy interrupted him. “Oh, and you’re not going to go to hell, either.”
He just stared at Jeremy, his mouth open in shock. “How...”
“How did I know you were going to ask me about hell? Like I’ve been telling you, God talks to me and He knew you were going to ask that. Look, man, I don’t have any answers for you about what’s happened, but what I do know is that you’re not evil and you’re not just some executioner. The sword may have a mind of its own, but there is a reason God pairs it with a human soul. What that reason is I don’t know, but I have to believe that it is for good and not for evil.”
Both men fell silent. Seeing that Jared was lost in thought, Jeremy decided to close his eyes for a few minutes. But sleep found him quickly and before long he was snoring. Jared sat in silence, not wanting to disturb his new friend.
Strangely he did not feel tired at all. Perhaps he did not need sleep. It was a strange concept for him, and he wondered if he would ever sleep again. One of the great things about sleeping was that it gave you a temporary reprieve from the problems that life brought. It kept a person sane. Would he stay sane?
“No, not in the mortal sense,” came the voice in his head. The voice was somehow not as intrusive as before, so Jared didn’t fight it. “You will, however, eventually decay.”
“What do you mean?”
“No mortal can be Justice forever. Their soul cannot bear the burden.”
Jared grimaced. “Great.”
“You cannot truly sleep, as you are not truly alive, but I can help you rest, if you like.”
Jared shifted to relieve the tightness from sitting in one place for too long. He was not really uncomfortable, but his mind felt like he should be. It was still responding to the echoes of his former life. “Tzedakah, how long will it take for me to... decay?”
The ring was quiet a moment. “The length of time is different for each bearer. So I cannot say.”
“What happens when I do? Do I die? I mean, for real this time.”
“He will come for you when it is time.”
Jared screwed his face up in confusion. “Who will come?”
The ring was silent again. Jared was beginning to get impatient, but before he could lash out, the ring said, “We will talk of this another time. For now, you should rest.”
“I don’t want to rest. I want to know...”
Before Jared could finish his sentence, his consciousness simply shut down and he was thrust into a state of oblivion.
Thirty-Two
Dana lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. Her eyes were red and bloodshot from crying and she was completely disheveled. It had been a week since Jared had died and the tears were still flowing. She wondered if she would ever stop crying. Everyone told her that in time the pain would lessen, and she would be able to move on with her life. The hole in her heart told her differently.
She covered her eyes with her arm and sighed heavily. Sleep had eluded her this past week. She had slept a total of five hours, maybe. Her brain screamed at her to sleep, but she ignored it. Thankfully the captain had given her the week off to recover, but she did not care if she ever went back. In fact, she had been contemplating resigning from the force altogether. She could not imagine going back there without Jared. As soon as the thought of quitting hit her brain, she shut it down and scolded herself for even entertaining it. She was a good cop and she loved her job and she was not going to let this tragedy define the rest of her life.
Her nose was running again so she reached for a tissue from her nightstand. She still had one arm over her eyes, so she had to use muscle memory to find the box. It was still where she left it, but it was empty. Groaning, she batted it to the floor and decided to wipe her nose on her pajama sleeve instead. It was crusty from all the previous times she had done so, but she did not care.
She had been wearing the same set of pajamas since she had returned from the funeral and they were very ripe. She was ripe as well, but she could not bring herself to take a shower. All she wanted to do was lay there and die. She realized she was being dramatic again, and mentally chastised herself. Her stomach grumbled at the hollow pit inside. Ignoring it, she hugged her pillow harder.
Her eyes fell on the alarm clock next to her bed. 11 p.m.
What day is it? she wondered.
Who cares?
She was not going to go anywhere anyway. As she lay there, a thought managed to make its way through the pain.
Is this what Jared would want?
Of course this was not what Jared would have wanted. No, he would want her to go on, to live her life.
But Jared was not there. He was dead.
He had left her, and she was furious at him for it. The vehemence of the thought startled her. Was she really angry? How could she be angry at him? After all, it was not his fault that he had been murdered. No, she was angry but not at Jared. She was angry at the whole goddamned world, but not him. She was angry at herself for being too late to stop it. She was angry at the NYC police who were obviously too inept to find out who did it, and she was angry at Steve.
Yes, but why?
Something in the back of her mind was screaming at her. Something was wrong, but she could not put her finger on it. What was it about Steve that made her skin crawl? She slammed her palm against her forehead to knock free whatever was hiding there. All she received for her efforts was a headache.
She gritted her teeth in frustration and screamed, “What are you trying to tell me?”
With a suddenness that took her breath away, the memory of her last moments with Jared flooded to the forefront of her mind. He had been trying to tell her something, but what was it? She had convinced herself that he was trying to tell her he loved her, but now she realized that she had missed something important.
The shock and grief of the moment had caused her mind to shut down, but somewhere deep in her subconscious the detective in her had been present and it had observed something. It was that ever-rational part of her that was trying to warn her, but about what?
Think! she told herself. Get yourself together and think like the detective you are.
She quieted her mind and went through all the details of that night. She recalled holding Jared and shouting for someone to call for help. She remembered him reaching up and pulling her close to tell her something, but his lung had been punctured by the killer’s knife. He was unable to get enough breath to speak.
Frustrated, she closed her eyes and focused hard on that memory. No words had come out as his lips trembled, but something she had said… had struck a chord in him and made him frantic. What was it?
Retracing her movements from that night, the only thing she could remember saying to him was that he would be all right and that Steve had gone for help. It was then that it hit her. It was the mention of Steve’s name that had gotten the reaction out of him. Why? Did he want her to tell him something? Perhaps he had been simply trying to tell her to tell his brother that he loved him.
No, that could not be it. Jared did love his brother, but she doubted his last thoughts would have been about Steve. Why then had he reacted so strongly at the mention of his name? Had he been trying to warn her about him? After all, he was already there on the scene when she had arrived. Why had he not been considered a suspect in both murders? She had been so filled with grief that she had simply taken his word about what had happened that night.
Come to think of it, even the NYC police had quickly dismissed him as a suspect. If this had been any other case, she would have instantly considered Steve as the prime suspect. Why had she simply dismissed the idea offhand? Sure, they had all grown up together and he was Jared’s brother, but it would explain Jared’s behavior at the mention of Steve’s name.
Of course, no weapon had been found at the scene by the police, but had anyone searched Steve that
night? She could not recall if they had. Of course, she was so overcome by grief and shock that she really would not have noticed. A peculiar haze seemed to be draped over her memories of that night, and up to this point, she had chalked it up to grief. Now she was not so sure.
It was more than unusual that absolutely no evidence had been found at the scene. No fibers or fingerprints. No shoe prints or any other evidence of any kind. Of course, Steve’s fingerprints would have been all over the scene since he was the person who had discovered the bodies, but they would have been dismissed instantly. Still, there was the problem of the murder weapon. As far as she could remember, when she had arrived on the scene, he had not been holding a knife.
Of course, she had been so fixated on Jared that she most likely would not have noticed if he had. He could have easily hidden it upon her arrival, but surely the police would have searched him at the scene. Every time she tried to recall anything about Steve from that night and what he had done or said, the memory was foggy and blurry. She remembered in vivid detail everything else about that night, except Steve. It was as if someone had gone into her mind and had tampered with just that part of her memory that pertained to Steve.
Also, there was that eerie moment at the funeral when his eyes seemed to glow. Her rational mind would not accept that his eyes had indeed glowed red, but perhaps it was her subconscious’s way of warning her about him. She had certainly not been thinking rationally at the funeral, and it was perfectly conceivable to believe that her mind could have conjured up such a thing to try to reach her through the grief.
Moreover, when Steve had passed her while carrying Jared’s coffin, she was sure that he was smirking. At the time, she had convinced herself that her grief had been causing her to misinterpret things. Now she was not so sure.
Something was off about Steve, and she was going to find out what it was.
With a renewed purpose she got out of bed and went out into the kitchen. She ignored the food in her fridge and grabbed a diet soda instead. How long had it been since she’d had something to drink? God, had she been like this since the funeral? The thought of the funeral caused the pain to come surging back, but this time she suppressed it. If she allowed herself to feel the grief again, she would be crippled, and she had no time for that right now.
No, she scolded herself, why should she suppress her feelings? Her old martial arts instructor had taught her that emotions had the power to either cripple or propel you. She was done being crippled by grief. Now she would use that grief as fuel.
She thought of Jared, of how much she had loved him. How he’d been taken away from her before they had even had a chance to begin. The pain that had constricted her heart turned into fury. She had never been that helpless little girl type, not since her mother had left her and her father when she was ten. No, she was done wallowing. It was time for action. When she thought of Steve, a wave of anger swelled that was every bit as ferocious as her grief. If he’d had a hand in Jared’s death, she was going to find out and bring him to justice.
No, she corrected herself. No, I am going to kill him.
The cop inside of her screamed in protest, but she shut the voice up. If she found out that Steve had killed Jared, there would be no arrest and no trial, only vengeance. She would have to be absolutely certain of course before she acted, but when the time came, she would act.
She was getting ahead of herself. First, she would need to investigate and find out what had really happened. Perhaps she was wrong about Steve and her grief was playing tricks on her, but deep down inside she doubted that. She finished off the soda and set the empty can down on her coffee table and looked around for her phone.
After a few minutes, she found it on the charger where she had left it and turned it on. She saw that it was Saturday and realized that she still had a few days left of personal time before she had to be back to work. She decided that she would go back to New York to where Jared had been killed and investigate the scene herself.
Of course, the NYC cops would probably not like her snooping around their territory and might take offense at her intrusion into their investigation. Even though she was a police officer, she couldn’t expect them to allow her to look at any evidence they may have collected from the scene.
If she was going to do this, she needed to find a way around all the bureaucratic red tape. Since she had turned on her phone, it had blown up with missed calls and new messages and texts. Her most recent voicemail was from… Agent Johansson. What was he calling her about? Maybe he’d found out something about the family in the locket picture. She cued up the voice mail and put the phone on speaker.
“Hey, Dana. I just wanted to call and see how you are doing. I know we haven’t known each other for very long, but I wanted to give my condolences and let you know that if you ever need anything, I am there. Anything, that is, except the truth about who really killed JFK. That I just can’t tell you about.
“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know I was sorry. Jared was a good man. Well, take care of yourself, and hopefully, we will run into each other again. Oh, wait, before I go, we got nothing on that John Doe you guys got up there. It was a dead end. Looks like he was an immigrant or tourist or something who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Anyway, you take care of yourself, Dana.”
Well, the John Doe was a dead end. That was not surprising with all of the people immigrating to the US of late. It was nearly impossible for the government to keep track of everyone coming in, and a lot of those people slipped through the cracks, with no electronic or paper trail. He most likely belonged to someone who was afraid to come forward and claim him due to their fear of being detained or deported.
Wait a minute, she thought. Johansson worked for the FBI. If anyone could get her around the proverbial red tape, it was him. He might even have information about the case the NYPD did not. The incident was, after all, very similar to the killings by the Eastside Stalker. Maybe it had been red-flagged by the FBI and he was already on it. If so, then he would have access to the crime scene and any evidence discovered. Of course, he’d not mentioned anything about the case in his message, so maybe she was just grasping at straws. But what did she have to lose by asking?
She ignored the countless text and messages from condolence givers and pulled up Johansson’s contact information. Just as she was about to dial the number, her phone buzzed to life with an incoming call.
It was her captain.
Curses.
He knew she was still on leave, so why was he bothering her? She almost ignored it, but then thought he wouldn’t have contacted her during leave unless it was important.
“Hello, Captain, what can I do for you?” she asked.
“Dana,” the man said in his deep baritone voice. “Sorry to bother you during your time of grief, but I have a case that I thought you might want to look into.”
She gritted her teeth. It took everything in her not to snap at the man. She did not need this right now. She needed to talk to Johansson and get to the city as soon as possible. The longer she waited, the colder the case would get. “I am sorry, Captain, but I am very busy. Perhaps you can give it to Handley and Winder instead.”
“Dana,” he said, “I am not telling you to come in. I wanted to give you the opportunity to come in.”
Dana closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her free hand. “What could possibly be so important about this case that would make me want to come in right now?”
“The body of a young woman was found in her apartment this evening by a maintenance worker. The apartment where she lived was the unit directly across from Jared’s.”
Dana was stunned into silence. What did he just say?
“They have not moved the body yet, but the officers on the scene said, by the look of the body she has probably been dead for quite some time. In fact, the only reason she was found at all was that the maintenance man was responding to a complaint about a bad smell. Of course, he cannot be ru
led out as a suspect, but the management has backed him up on why he was in the apartment. I thought you might want to be in on this case since it hits so close to home. I don’t think it is related to what happened to Jared, but with all of the homicides lately, you never know.”
Dana was already halfway up the stairs. “I will be there as soon as I can. Who is on the scene right now?”
“Officer Small and Hernandez. The medical examiner is on route and should be there momentarily. Do you need the address?”
She threw her phone onto her bed and stripped off her pajamas. “No, I know where it is. Thanks for the heads-up, Captain.”
“Of course. Let me know what you find, and Dana, let me know if you need anything else. We are all here for you.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that.”
“Any time. I’ll let the officers on the scene know you are on the way and to wait for you before they do anything. Let me know what you find. Bye, now.”
Dana pulled on her shirt and a pair of jeans. She looked at herself in the mirror and realized that she appeared a bit rough. But there was no time for a shower or makeup, so she just threw her hair up in a ponytail, grabbed her phone, and practically ran down the stairs.
What is the world coming to? she thought. Being a homicide detective, she dealt with death on a daily basis, it was her job after all, but now it seemed to her like her whole world was being swallowed up by it.
Thirty-Three
Jared’s consciousness flooded back. Something was wrong. Tzedakah glowed fiercely in his hand and the radiance from the blade illuminated the small hotel room. His new eyes did not need the light to see and he did not notice anything out of the ordinary. Jeremy was soundly asleep on the bed, his soft snoring reminding Jared of a cat’s purr. All seemed well, but his sense of danger increased.