St. Agnes' Eve

by Malachi Stone

  Sheriff’s Detective John Diaz told me the first thing he’d spotted at the crime scene was what looked like two loaves of pumpernickel in a towel basket beside the waterbed. Then it dawned on him that each loaf had a nipple on it. No weapon had ever been found.

  Diaz, like most of the hot dogs in the Sheriff’s Department, knew about Diane. Years later, desperate to solve the cold case one or another of them still asked her every now and then whether she might consider going to the scene or maybe trying on a piece or two of Carla’s costume jewelry. They might have asked her to handle some article of the victim’s clothing, except for the fact that Carla had been working nude the night of her murder. Diaz himself never asked. In fact, he discouraged the others from bothering Diane. I think he liked her.

  Diane always said she couldn’t, meaning she wouldn’t, but one thing she did confirm was that Cootie was innocent—a fact Diaz already knew from independent evidence. Cootie had been reliably placed miles away at an AA meeting from the time Carla clocked in until well after her death.

  It was time to spring the quote on Cootie. We at Mark Kane were not so inflexible as to adhere to a rigid fee schedule. Fees were floating—whatever the traffic would bear. Today I calculated the traffic would bear three thousand dollars up front, for the “best possible deal.” Nobody ever asked how much it would cost for the next-best possible deal. Cootie wrote out the check, which was probably why Artie had brought him along.

  Janis tapped at my door, poked her head in, and said, “Hope I’m not interrupting any guy talk. I just wanted to remind Artie that he has an appointment at Kokker Chiropractic right away. He’s already missed the last two this week. One more and it might jeopardize his work comp benefits.”

  “Kokker’s got me red-shirted. Temporarily totally disabled,” Artie said. “I’m supposed to go there every day for my adjustment. My back’s all out of whack from falling off that defective ladder.”

  “And mine’s all out of whack from doing his damn work on top of my own,” Cootie bitched. “He warn’t too disabled to scare the Depends off them old gals last night, though, was he?” He looked to me, parent-to-parent, for confirmation before handing over the check.

  “My back don’t hurt at night,” Artie said. “That’s when I do some of my best work—at night.”

  “Whyn’t you see if Kokker will release you for graveyard shift, then?”

  Artie said, “I do some of my best work at night in graveyards.”

  Janis shrugged before saying, “Anyway, the appointment’s in less than five minutes.” She had no sooner pulled the door closed than Artie half-turned and lapped the air after her. Cootie reached over and cuffed him on the shoulder.

  “Kokker’s old lady’s carrying around a matched set a’ beer tits on her, too,” Artie went on. “Bet she could keep two grown men fed. Tell me Kokker ain’t a rack man. I bet he’s the Rachmaninoff of the rack men.” Artie laughed the laugh of the behaviorally disturbed, a tweaked-out sheep’s bleat through taut lips chapped from licking.

  “Well, I got news for you,” Cootie said. “I gotta have the truck to pick up some corner bead for a job today. I ain’t got time to set in it for no two hours and wait while you get yourself no overpriced rubdown.”

  “I’ll drop you,” I volunteered, then regretted it immediately. I might have asked Janis, but I didn’t trust Artie alone with her. For that matter, I didn’t trust him alone with me, although he’d been my ice connection for the past two years.

  I took West Main across Belleville. Kokker’s nearest clinic was in the west end. Halfway there, Artie rolled down the power window, stuck his big death’s head out, and hollered a string of obscenities at some schoolgirls. As soon as he retracted his head, I raised the window and set the childproof locks.

  Five blocks later, Artie posed a legal question. “Is it seriously illegal say if I was to, you know, creepy-crawl in through some young chick’s bedroom window at night?” He shot me a sly sidelong glance, then held it while we shared a Charles Manson moment.

  “Seriously illegal.”

  “Speaking of illegal, you interested in doing a little shopping?”

  “I think I’ll pass,” I said. Artie shrugged. I saw every bone in his shoulder move. He said something that sounded like, “Horny sweaty molly pants.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Like they used to say at the old roundtable, ‘Shamed be he who thinks ill of it.’”

  “I didn’t know you’d studied the Algonquin wits.”

  From the periphery of my vision, Artie leered at me. “I study tits, not wits,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not talking that shitty Missouri glass you’re used to.”

  “I’m only used to it because you’ve been selling it to me.”

  “Yeah, well, today only I’m offering to you, my most valued customer, the Dom Perignon of methamphetamines: Crankenstein. Mudflap mojo. Stove top stay-up. Redneck rush. Trailer-park torque. Viagra nasal spray. Wal-Mart wig-out. Truck-stop eye-opener. Hillbilly hyperactivity. Don’t critique it, tweak it. Don’t diss it, you’ll miss it. Don’t deplore it, score it.”

  We passed Seventeenth Street on a green light. Artie wasn’t finished.

  “Ridge-runner Ritalin. NASCAR No-Doz. Ozark octane. Skinhead STP. Don’t malign it, mainline it. Don’t damn it, slam it. Snort it, you’ll exhort it. Inhale it, you’ll regale it. Once you toot it, you’ll wanna shoot it. Don’t object ‘til you inject. All you feel is a tiny little prick.” Artie grabbed his crotch for emphasis.

  “I read somewhere you can manufacture your own crystal meth in a home lab using a few common household chemicals,” I ventured, making conversation. Block after block, Artie’s word salad rap was making me progressively more nervous.

  “Yeah, then light up a cigarette or forget to shut off the pilot light to the water heater and blow your ass off. No way, Counselor. Don’t go setting up your own clan lab. Stick with me. I’m strictly retail. Cash and carry.” We sat in silence, waiting for the light to change at North Belt. Then Artie said, “I’m serious, though. You owe it to yourself to score some Crankenstein, especially being in your profession—not to mention your age.”

  “What’s my age got to do with it?”

  “You’re what, pushing fifty? Crankenstein makes you more loco than a locomotive, able to jump tall bimbos at a single bound. And you, disguised as Ricky Galeer, mild-mannered attorney for a great metropolitan law firm—you get the picture? Once you get amped up on this shit you can service the ladies twenty-four/seven, man, although erections lasting more than four days may require immediate medical attention. And, while limited supplies last, a special introductory trial-size free complimentary sample of Crankenstein is yours for the asking. Operators are standing by.” He tossed a clear plastic sandwich baggie on the console between us, saying, “You can thank me later.” We had pulled into the Kokker Chiropractic lot. Artie was one of those guys who’s half out of the car while it’s still rolling.

  “Don’t do me any favors,” I called out after him, but I wasn’t sure he’d heard me.

  Chapter Four

  Dagger of the Mind

  By the time I made it back to the office, it was nearly ten. My ten-fifteen was already waiting for me in the lobby. Liz Hare. Half of a loving couple I’d done some commercial law work for years ago, back when they were buying their business. A three hundred dollar fee had mushroomed into a permanent retainer—in their minds. Every time a legal question or problem arose, one of them would call me with the other one invariably listening and prompting in the background. Then she’d pass the phone, and I’d have to explain the same thing all over again to her better half. What to do with a twenty-dollar bad check. Whether Illinois law required a return or exchange policy. What would happen if a customer slipped and fell? They’d always begin the telephone conversation by asking whether I remembered them, as though anyone could ever forget Liz Hare and Gwendace Fox, co-proprietors of The Fox & Hare Occult Mysteries Bookstore and Notions. After explaining t
hat a life partner cannot inherit under Illinois intestacy laws, I’d done their mutual wills for them. This time I knew it had to be serious for Liz to have made an appointment rather than calling in for free advice and for her to have shown up alone.

  I liked Liz Hare. She was about my age, but in better shape. A licensed and well-seasoned midwife, she’d home-delivered each of our four monkeys without a hitch. Perhaps because of her early childhood in the former Soviet Union, Diane had a deep and visceral fear of hospitals. We were fortunate there had been no need of one for any of the births. “Very easy birth,” Liz had remarked every time. It was how Liz had come to meet Gwendace Fox over twenty years ago. Liz had delivered Gwendace’s son. As I drove to work each morning, I often saw Liz out jogging before her store hours began, her thin chest heaving, her athletic form bathed in sweat, a bandanna securing her iron-gray wedge cut. Her union with Gwendace had endured longer than most marriages, including my own, although Diane and I were still in the running. Today I smelled Old Spice as she delivered her customary vice-grip handshake and sat down facing me in the chair opposite my desk.

  “Gwendace has disappeared,” she said without preamble.

  “Disappeared? When?”

  “Two nights ago. I’m sick about it. It’s not like her to be gone from home. Something’s wrong, I know it.”

  Trying not to sound condescending, I said, “Why don’t you file a missing person’s report?”

  She looked at me like she wanted to laugh. “You know what the cops would do with something like that? They’d round-file it, figure there’s nothing strange about one dyke running out on the other. I need action now.”

  “No offense, Liz, but we’re not detectives here. That’s what you need in your situation.”

  “Know any good ones?”

  As a matter of fact, I did. John Diaz moonlighted for us as an investigator whenever he wasn’t busy maintaining his reputation as an overtime hog for the County Sheriff’s Department. He could find anybody once he started looking. We used him to serve process, find witnesses and nail them down in signed statements, and run license plates and rap sheets off the record. I always suspected, but never confirmed, that Mark Kane used him as a chaser as well. One way or another, more than our share of the bad accidents in County seemed to wind up in Kane’s office with Kane’s business cards in their hands and “Diaz sent me” on their lips.

  I suggested Diaz to Liz. “I wonder if he’d still remember me after all these years,” she mused.

  “Didn’t know you two had ever met.” She nodded. A grimace crossed her face.

  “Bad choice?” I asked. “I’m sure there are plenty of private investigators in the phone book.” But Liz waved that thought away.

  “I don’t want to involve any more strangers than necessary in my personal business,” she said. “If Diaz is as good as you say he is, I want him on the case right away. You oversee everything for me. Confidentially, of course.”

  “We’ll have to bill you for the time involved, then,” I warned her. “At legal rate for my time, and sixty an hour for his.”

  “No problem.”

  “Am I missing something? A moment ago I could have sworn there was bad blood between the two of you.”

  Liz got a faraway look in her eye. “Bad blood,” she said. “Yes, that’s exactly what was between us.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning he wanted to pin that Carla Tremayne murder on somebody. He kept sniffing around Gwendace and me. Especially me. He said some very rude and insensitive things at the time. You know, politically incorrect things, but it was just his way of trying to use my anger to draw me out, to see if I was guilty.”

  “Then why use him?”

  She shrugged. “I guess because he was like a dog with a bone. What do you call it? Tenacious. He was tenacious where that case was concerned. I don’t believe he ever gives up easily. Besides, I think way down deep he always believed somebody other than me did Carla.”

  I couldn’t resist. “Who?”

  “Just a feeling. Don’t quote me, okay? He’s another friend of your office.”

  The Mark Kane office’s best friend in the world was Dr. Kirk Kokker. Just as that realization hit me, she nodded again.

  “You’ve been fooling around with the occult too long, Liz. You’re developing the power of thought transference.”

  “You never heard it from me,” she said. “I’m not complaining, believe me. He kept Gwendace and me open for business single-handedly the first couple of years until the shop caught on.”

  “You know, I had to go over to his house last night on business.”

  She showed me the same ironic smile as Janis had, then asked, “How was it?”

  “Palatial,” I said.

  “Don’t get too chummy,” she said. “I’m not so sure Diaz was wrong about him. He was into everything back then, running ads in every occult fanzine and antiquarian journal to get the word out that he was interested in buying the Lilith talisman and money was no object. That made him a lightning rod for every charlatan and hustler in the hocus-pocus racket. And believe me, there are plenty of those. Makes it hard for a middle-aged rune-roller like me to make an honest living telling fortunes if the shop were to close.”

  “Why would the shop close?”

  “I can’t do it all by myself,” she said, then quickly added, “but that’s not why I’m trying to find Gwendace. I need to find her again because I love her.”

  “What if she has found somebody else, Liz?”

  “Ricky,” she said, “I’m surprised at you. You sound just like the cops.”

  I apologized and promised to put her in touch with Diaz. Janis was bugging me about my other waiting appointments, but I had to ask. “By the way, what’s the Lilith talisman?”

  “You should come by the shop sometime, Ricky,” she said. “We have a wide selection of books for sale on that very subject.”

  “Come on, I’m serious.”

  “So am I,” she smiled.

  “I just never heard of it before, that’s all,” I said.

  She sucked in her cheeks and raised her eyebrows. The effect was to show me a skull outlined through her clear jogger’s skin. With an amused expression and a fake brogue, she said, “I’ll conjure there’s a faery world of things you’ve never heard or thought of, Ricky Galeer.”

  “No argument there.”

  “The Lilith talisman is the occult world’s Holy Grail. Actually an unholy grail, a legendary sacred—I mean profane—object that reportedly gives its possessor great powers over the Sisterhood.”

  “The Sisterhood?”

  She looked at me like a grade school teacher exasperated by a dunce. “You are ignorant of the supernatural, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose so. I never got around to studying it.”

  “We’re talking about things that study us even as we’re studying them, Ricky. It’s maybe just as well that you don’t know too much.”

  “Come on. What sisterhood? Is it some gay thing?”

  She drew back in mock hauteur; she knew it was my idea of a joke. “I like men, Ricky, I really do. Don’t push it. Are you familiar at least with the Lilith legend?”

  “Lilith was Adam’s first wife,” I said. “Not mentioned by name in the Bible. She wanted equal rights, woman on top, all that, and Adam wasn’t having any. So she packed her bags and cut the honeymoon short.”

  “According to Jewish mystics, she disappeared into the wilderness,” Liz said. “But that’s not the end of the story.”

  “So what’s the rest?”

  “She is supposed to have become the devil’s mate. Lilith is believed to enjoy slipping into the bridal chamber on the honeymoon night to seduce brides before their husbands have ‘come in to them,’ as the saying goes.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re preying on male insecurity.”

  “I’ve made a few males insecure myself,” Liz said, “and awarded a few sets of horns in the process.”
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br />   I knew Gwendace had left her husband and child for Liz. “So how does the Sisterhood fit in?” I asked.

  “I’m getting to that,” she said. “The Sisterhood is an ancient cult. They claim to carry Lilith’s original bloodline.”

  “Like the Templars are the descendants of Jesus? Come on. All this is just a Middle Eastern fairy tale.”

  She didn’t answer right away. When she did, her voice had changed to a low murmur. I could hardly hear her say, “It’s more than that. Much more.”

  I lowered my voice to a conspiratorial level matching hers. “Liz, you don’t mean to tell me you actually believe any of this?”