Welcome to Witchlandia

by Steven Popkes

  “Thanks,” Dooley said at last. “Let’s get started.”

  “Plante was killed in a loft over on Melcher Street last night about eleven o’clock,” Rush said softly. “The equipment was set up by an assistant, named Roche, before Plante was due to get there. Roche was hired locally by Plante’s agent, a Frieda Wilcox. Roche was at a party last night and there are witnesses. He has an alibi.”

  “Wilcox?” I asked.

  “In New York. That’s where Plante is based these days,” Hoffman continued. “Cause of death was a quick and very accurate wound to the heart. Hickey’s initial opinion is the wound was produced by a similar weapon as killed Wallace. Unofficially, he says he thinks it was committed by the same person.”

  Hoffman nodded. “Did we get anything from the Missouri records?”

  “Yes,” said Dooley. “But it took a little wrangling. Fortunately, Katelin has family there and they were able to help.”

  “What did that cost us?” Hoffman watched Katelin.

  “It didn’t cost you anything.” I tapped my fingers on the table in agitation. “I had to promise my family a week’s visit.” Deep breath. “Mr. Wallace owned a plastics factory. Devout. Went to church twice on Sunday and a couple of times a week. But that wasn’t enough for him. He went in for scourging.”

  “Meaning?” Hoffman raised his eyebrows.

  “Meaning the torture in the examiner’s report was self-inflicted before he came to Boston. Apparently, it started about six years ago. His wife persuaded him for a voluntary commitment. He spent some time in Mid-Missouri Mental Health Center convinced the treating doctors were demons. They treated him anyway. He got better just in time for his wife to have him declared incompetent and take the business. Wallace didn’t fight it. He just left the hospital and disappeared.” I wound down.

  Dooley chimed in. “Reappearing at The Church of the Living Christ a year later. He’s been in Boston ever since.”

  Hoffman thought for a moment. “Did you check with the wife?”

  I nodded. “She hadn’t spoken with him since 1998. Just before he disappeared. Apparently, this makes her life difficult, but I wasn’t clear on the legal issues.”

  “There’s not much a homeless evangelist and wealthy juggler have in common. Likely, the killer knew both of them.” Hoffman leaned back in his chair. The chair protested. He nodded across the table. “You looked into Wallace. Did you find any friends? Any connections?”

  Dooley pulled out his notes. “MacIlvey didn’t find anyone that knew him in Kennedy. The only real friends Wallace had were in the church. The pastor, Tim Rabbitt, knew him. Other members of the congregation might as well, but we haven’t had a chance to interview anybody.”

  Hoffman nodded again. “Plante had a girlfriend and a business as well as an agent. We’ll check into that.”

  “Loquess and I would like to continue checking the church angle.” Dooley smiled.

  Hoffman stared back without a shred of human feeling in those unblinking black eyes.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “Like I said, you two did a good job on follow-up. I’ll send a couple of uniforms over to run down Plante’s building.” Hoffman glanced down at the pictures. His voice changed. “It’s a damned shame, really. I saw Plante last year at the Colonial. He was amazing. It was like he was defying gravity.”

  “He was,” I said quietly.

  “Excuse me?” Hoffman turned his flat eyes on me.

  “Plante was a telekinetic. He used it in his act. It’s part of why he was so good.”

  “He cheated?” Rush sounded infinitely disappointed.

  “Of course not,” I said in a sudden fury. “You wouldn’t expect a pitcher to use only one leg, would you? A catcher to use one eye? He used his gifts—all of them.”

  Hoffman ignored us both. “Crap. This means the federal regulations apply. We have to rule out the crime was related to Plante’s paranormal standing or it could be a fucking civil rights violation.” He rubbed his face. “Okay, Dooley. That part of it’s going to be your job.”

  Dooley nodded.

  Hoffman watched him for a moment. “I’m not doing you any favors. Ruling out paranormal connections is just a bump and grind: a lot of wasted time.”

  “I understand.”

  “Good.” Hoffman shrugged. “It was a hell of a show, any way he did it. Hell of a shame. Let’s go.”

  Hoffman rose and Rush followed. As he left, Rush shot me a sad glance.

  Watching him, Dooley said with a soft chuckle, “Damn, Loquess. You should never tell someone there’s no Santa Claus.”

  oOo

  Once Hoffman and Rush left, Dooley said, “Plante was a paranormal. Think Wallace knew it?”

  I stared at him. “What if he did?”

  “Plante was using his gifts in his act. It’s clear from Rush’s reaction it was not common knowledge. Do you think it was something Plante was keeping secret?”

  I thought about it for a long moment. “You mean you think Plante was passing for normal?”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I can’t. Anybody looking up can figure out what I can do.”

  “True enough.” Dooley leaned back in his chair. “But you chose to work in the police department, a profession well known to protect its own. Your work gives you a certain kind of anonymity. As you say, your… ability can’t be masked. But you’ve chosen a profession that both defends and hides you.”

  “You’re saying I’m passing?”

  “I’m asking for your insight. If you could do what you love without revealing your gifts, would you be tempted to? By extension, would Plante?”

  I tamped my temper down. Dooley had a point. Boston was easier than Missouri by a long shot, but it was never easy. “Maybe.” I ticked objections off on my fingers. “For the idea to hold water Wallace would have to find out. He would have to want to try to hold it over Plante. And Plante would have to be threatened enough to kill over it. Not to mention we don’t know if there is a connection between them. That’s four points you have to make.”

  “Hickey thinks they were killed by the same weapon in the same manner.” Dooley tapped the examiner’s report. “He’s pretty certain.”

  “It still seems pretty thin. Even if there is a connection, there are three points left.”

  “Just clutching at straws.” He thought for a moment. “Which brings us back to the only obvious connection: the murder method.” Dooley looked in the folder. “Wallace’s test scores aren’t here.”

  “We can look on line.”

  “Could there be more of a long shot?”

  “You’re the one trying to make detective. I’m just trying to help.”

  Dooley sighed. “Go on. I’ll drink my coffee and watch.”

  The paranormal registry was voluntary—as much an article of pride as anything else. Nobody had to be on it. You could always request not to be placed there, and as long as you weren’t in a sensitive position the federal government obliged. There were probably some conspiracy nuts that thought being on it was tantamount to registering guns, but it was unlikely they had the aptitude anyway.

  Most paranormals, in point of fact, had a fondness for the U.S. government. After all, it was government-sponsored research of the forties and fifties that discovered how to refine our abilities out of raw aptitude. Rather than thinking of the feds as Big Brother, most of us thought of them as Big Coach.

  The feds, for their part, considered the paranormals in the same ambivalent light they would consider any other public asset, like an educated electorate or a raft of draftable young men.

  That said, the registry was, like many government lists, not easily open to public scrutiny. Looking up somebody else was intentionally gated the same as birth records, arrest warrants and school grades. But law enforcement, intelligence and Homeland Security agencies had unfettered access.

  All I needed was Wallace’s social security number, supplied by the Missouri records. Bring up the website, enter it
in and wait for his scores to appear.

  Dooley drummed his fingers on the table. “It looks like magic.”

  “What does?”

  “What you all do. Your flying. His juggling. Making fire come out of a rock.”

  “But it’s not.”

  “What does that matter? Why wouldn’t someone think that it all comes from the devil or something?”

  “You make me tired.” I leaned back in the chair. “Sure, people think that. There are church sermons against abortion, evolution and paranormals.”

  “Evolution doesn’t look like magic?”

  “Check out some of those weird insects in the Amazon and tell me that.”

  Dooley leaned forward. “But do you ever think there might be something to them?”

  I stared straight at him. “You’re on to me. I have to sacrifice a Christian baby every full moon to keep flying. FAA regulations. Section twelve.”

  “Come on!”

  “People still plant corn by the moon and let astrology rule their lives. It’s not magic, Dooley. Any more than Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps or Albert Einstein.”

  “Anybody can run. Or swim.”

  “Not everybody can even think like Einstein.”

  Dooley looked away. “You got me on Einstein.”

  I leaned towards him. “Look, every one of us has spent their entire lives fighting, denying or ignoring people who think we’re magic. Or witches. Or possessed by demons. It’s not magic. It’s just a skill.”

  Dooley nodded. “Okay. But people act on what they fear. Maybe whoever killed Wallace thought he was paranormal. They knew Plante was paranormal.”

  Wallace’s scores appeared and I turned back to the screen, grateful for an excuse to drop the conversation. I ran my finger down the column. They were all depressingly normal. “Normal.”

  “It was a long shot, anyway.”

  “Maybe.” I drummed my fingers on the table. Damn it. He got me thinking. “It’s not the real score, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I stretched my back against the chair and sighed. “Did you ever take the initial aptitude tests?”

  “Of course.” Dooley shrugged. “It’s just a word association test. I took it in school like everybody else.”

  I looked at him. “In school? In Missouri it’s voluntary and online.”

  “It’s voluntary and online here, too. Now. But when I was a child, back in the Cretaceous, there wasn’t much of an internet. If you wanted to take the test, you waited until after school and sat in a classroom with a number two pencil. Voluntary or not, everybody took it. Who wants to give up the chance you might be Superman?”

  I laughed shortly. “Hardly.”

  Dooley nodded. “I know that now. But that’s not something you can tell a ten-year-old.”

  “You got a score back?”

  “In the mail. Along with the analysis—it looked something like the SAT scores. This much is your score. This is your percentile. This is the bottom score for possible paranormal aptitude. Mine was not above that bottom score.”

  “Yeah.” I picked up a pencil from the desk and twiddled it between my fingers. “My initial test was online—a word association test just like yours. It might even be the same test Bosch himself invented back in the thirties for all I know. My scores warranted a secondary test held up at the University in Columbia. I had to get my older brother to drive me. After that there are some further tests. If you pass those, you get skill training if you want it.”

  “So?”

  “The initial test determines possible aptitude. The secondary tests show applicable aptitude. Here. Let me show you.” I pointed at Wallace’s scores. “See? Only one set. Big blank section over here. Now, I’ll bring up my scores.” I did and the blank section filled in. “Here are the kinetic scores. Thermal scores. Field scores.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Kinetic scores are those that involve direct manipulation of kinetic energy. Speeding things up. Slowing things down. Levitation. That sort of thing. Thermal is heat—fire creation, fire suppression. Field scores are direct manipulations of things like electricity. Magnetism. There aren’t many of those.” I pointed at my scores. “That’s what they test for and so that’s all they find. It’s because of the horizontal whisky problem.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Something Sam called it.” I didn’t say anything for a moment, remembering him. “He said if someone only had a talent for teleporting whisky from someone else’s glass to our own, we’d never see it on any tests. Without knowing a talent for whisky teleportation exists, it’s impossible to find.”

  “Telepathy?”

  “There’s never ever been any proof of telepathy. Or evil spirits. Or demonic possession. Dooley, we had this conversation.”

  “Just asking.” Dooley looked cross. “What’s that have to do with Wallace?”

  I leaned over the keyboard and brought up my scores. I pointed at the screen. “Look. It says ‘raw’ on my initial scores.” I brought up Plante’s scores. “Here it is again. ‘Raw.’” I brought up Wallace’s single page and pointed. “See? It says ‘adjusted’.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that the aptitude showed something but not anything they understood. So they adjusted the scores to show normalcy.”

  Dooley thought for a moment. “Bring up my scores.”

  He gave me his SSN. Normal scores with the word “adjusted” next to them.

  “Son-of-a-bitch. Why the hell would they do that?”

  “Look. There could be some freak circumstance where you might do something out of the ordinary but they don’t know what it is. And without training, it’s highly unlikely you’d know what to do even if it happened. And if you did it by accident, in all likelihood you’d never know what it was you did. Hell, Dooley, for all intents and purposes you and Wallace are normal.”

  “I sure as hell would have liked to know about this when I was ten.” Dooley finished his coffee, crumpled the cup and dropped it in the trash. “Wallace was homeless. Plante was wealthy. Wallace had been tortured. Plante is in perfect shape. Wallace’s only friends were in a little church on the bad side of Boston. Plante was the toast of New York. Both were killed in the same way as to suggest the same person.” Dooley fell silent for a moment, considering.

  I looked at him. “Wallace is normal. Plante is paranormal. When we know method, motive and opportunity, we’ll see that paranormality has nothing to do with it. This—” I pointed at the screen “—is just a mark on the checklist so we can say we conformed to the regs.”

  “Any common ground is better than no ground. Maybe we should talk to Rabbitt again just to see if we missed a possible connection there between Wallace and Plante. Who would we talk to about paranormal aptitude tests?”

  I sighed. “Somebody down at the federal building? FBI? Don’t we have a federal liaison or something?”

  “Come on, Loquess. Let’s try to make something interesting out of this. You must know somebody.”

  I smiled at him sourly. “You mean because I’m paranormal I must know about this sort of thing.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “With your vast experience—”

  “Can it.” I laughed. “Matter of fact, I do know somebody and this is as good an excuse as any to see him. His name is Eli Boor. The Bosch Institute has an office in McLean. That’s where he works. He lives up in Salem. I can give him a call.”

  “You do that.”

  “You can’t think we have a paranormal killer.”

  “Of course not. Are you stupid? We can go see Boor after we see Rabbitt.”

  I looked at him. “You do know we can just talk to him on the phone.”

  “I like to look them straight in the eye.” He pointed two fingers first at my eyes, then at his own. “It’s more detective-ish.”

  oOo

  I called from the car. Tim Rabbitt didn’t answer his phone. Nor was he at the church. B
ut Boor answered his phone by the second ring.

  “Katelin!” he boomed over the phone. “It’s been months. How are you?”

  “Not so bad, Dr. Boor,” I said, a sudden smile on my lips. I always liked Eli.

  “I’m hurt. You used to call me Eli.”

  “This is official business. I’m investigating the murder of Oscar Plante.”

  “Ah. I heard. Poor Oscar. How can I help you?”

  I looked over at Dooley, driving. “I think it’s better we speak in person.”

  “Hm. Let me check my schedule.” A long pause. “I’m back to back here at McLean. But I have a private up in Salem at three. I can meet you up there by four thirty. Will that do?”

  “Perfect.”

  I closed my cell phone.

  We drove over to the church. Rabbitt was nowhere to be found, and the church was locked tight.

  I stood outside. “It’s an hour to Salem if we left right now.”

  Dooley shook his head. “I want to drop back by the office and see if Hoffman and Rush have anything. Maybe go over the case file again to see if I missed anything. Then, I planned to drive up there.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll meet you.”

  Dooley glanced up from the file folder. “What? You’re going to see some other juggler? We don’t have enough murders?”

  I tapped my fingers on my knee in agitation. Shook my head. “I haven’t really flown in nearly two days. Like any muscle, it’s use it or lose it.”

  “You have a flying muscle?”

  I punched him gently on the arm. “You’re an asshole. I’ve got to work out. A couple of hours might even make me human again.”

  “I live in hope.”

  I reached in the back seat and got my stick. As I unfolded it I said, “I’ll see you in Salem at four.”

  “Where?”

  I gave him the address. “Town center. You can’t miss it.” I adjusted my helmet, settled my ass on the stick and hovered for a moment, getting my balance right.

  “You are a spawn of Satan,” Dooley said quietly. “You do know that, don’t you?”

  “You say the nicest things to a girl.”

  I rose vertically and pitched east as soon as I was above the low buildings, keeping my climb until I was skirting the tops of the hotels. I hovered over Exchange Place in a cloudless blue sky. I could see the mouth of the Mystic River and a good portion of the Charles River pouring its heart into Boston Harbor. The water was rippling with sailboats even this late in the season. So clear that I could see the ring of hills around Boston and beyond them the horizon tints of taller hills beyond. Another thousand or two feet in altitude and I would have been able to see the mountains of New Hampshire, fifty miles away. The air was fall brisk and the light October golden.