Carnival Charlatan

by Skeeter Enright

  I held my hands out from my sides with the palms up in supplication. “Wise King, we are here only for our lost Amanda. How could your sylphs be of concern to our quest? If we came to steal the sylphs, why would we stay past their release when we could leave so easily? Why would I only injure rather than destroy your guard who attacked me without provocation?”

  The King frowned at the elves. “You were to be brought before me without harm.” The lead elf ducked his head, not meeting the King’s gaze. The king abruptly gestured to Sham, “Bring my daughter here.”

  Sham bowed and hurried from the room. I moved over to lean against the table, hiding the bundled Zach from casual observation. I managed my breathing and slowed my heart. The elves watched me like hungry cannibals. Tom was still jittering fractionally. At least he was keeping his mouth shut.

  It seemed like a decade before Sham escorted Amanda in. She immediately went to the King and gazed adoringly up at him. He looked at her with what, to me, seemed like genuine affection.

  “Daughter mine,” he cupped her cheek in both hands and gently blew a breath into her face. He released her slowly. She blinked and shook her head slightly. She looked around the room, taking in the elves and Sham with alarm. When she saw Tom, the alarm fell away, and joy took its place. She screamed, “Tommy,” and leapt into his arms. Tom hugged her and buried his face in her hair. They rocked gently side-to-side, murmuring inarticulate endearments.

  Watching them made me ache in a place I seldom looked at in my psyche. I was raised by women. The men in my life had always been transient and incidental. Yet somewhere in a primal, echoing corner of my brain, I wanted what Tom and Amanda had.

  The King watched the scene with no expression. His eyes met mine, taking in the brightness of my unspilled tears. His eyes narrowed. He gave a tiny quick nod. I saw some echo of my own emotion in his alien eyes. He turned abruptly and strode from the room, gesturing to the elves. After they all left, Sham shut the door gently.

  I breathed regularly again. I started to turn away as Tom and Amanda broke their clinch. She looked at me and held out her arm, “Airy, you came for me.” She began to sob.

  “Of course we came for you, you dope,” I said and hugged her. I felt a pang of guilt for my doubts about coming to get her. Was it just a few hours ago? We had been here less than a day. It felt like forever. I looked out the narrow window. The sky was just darkening. As we broke the hug, Amanda wrinkled her nose and sniffed. Her eyes widened when she saw Sham, who had been standing quietly next to the door. She backed further into Tom’s arms.

  “It’s all right. He’s a friend,” Tom said, giving her a squeeze.

  I said, “Sham, you’re starting to stink up the place. Can you show your true self?”

  He dropped his glamor, and my beautiful brother appeared. Amanda gasped.

  “We’ll explain later,” Tom said. “Airy, lets get the hell out of here.”

  “No problem.” I gathered up Zach, who croaked weakly. With a word, I opened the way, and Tom and Amanda immediately stepped through. Sham met my eyes. “Are you coming?” I asked.

  “Am I welcome?”

  I shrugged. “Come on.” It looked like I had a brother.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Craig Darren was really pissed. He was also in dire need of coffee. Caffeine made most people nervous, but it always seemed to relax him. He had a solid lead on a serial killer, but the agents in the Cleveland office refused to see it. The Lieutenant was inordinately pleased to bring up the fact that he was only an analyst and not a field agent.

  He headed for the coffee machine with his What’s Life Without a Little Coffee? mug in his hand. When he heard the laughter rolling out of the break room, he stopped.

  “He insists random deaths in three states are the work of a serial killer. I think we have a computer geek with delusions of grandeur on our hands, boys.” The laughter continued.

  Craig couldn’t place the laughter. He did recognize the voice of the self-righteous dip wad who ridiculed him. Walrus-faced Bailey had no business saying anything about him. Craig had closed as many cases with his computer as Bailey and his partner had chasing around the countryside. They were all in the FBI, for Pete’s sake.

  Craig turned silently and went back to his office, his coffee cup unfilled. So what if he wasn’t a “guns and car chase” kind of guy? He was a great analyst. Screw them, the closed-minded sycophants.

  He did not see how anyone could deny the calligraphy on the parchment paper from the murder of the Meyers woman in Cleveland was identical to the murders in New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania. The murders had to have something to do with Exodus 22:18—the Biblical verse about witches. They had to be connected. So what if the paper was different. The killer could buy paper anywhere. Changing paper might even be part of his ritual. Granted, the methods of the murders were different—two hangings and three immolations. The profilers say serial killers don’t change their technique, but profiling is not an exact science.

  He didn’t care what the those laughing assholes thought. He was going to find a connection. He’d started building a database with all the information he could find about the victims. Most agents thought a database was a wasted effort. They worked out of notebooks and made lists on legal pads—the dinosaurs. His database would cross-reference every fact in an instant. He could use similarities to find out if other crimes were related. If not…when more victims turned up, he would put their information in the database, and the connections would pop up like rodents in a Whack-A-Mole game.

  The trick to a good database was massive amounts of information. He started with time and manner of death, and he added all the crime scene details. He then added personal physical attributes, including jobs and known acquaintances. Few connections showed up. Elizabeth Meyers was a reader advisor. She was taken from her shop in the early evening and found chained to a telephone pole in Lakeshore Park, burned so thoroughly that only dental records identified her. The coroner’s report said she was alive as she burned. Angela Davies in New Hampshire also burned alive. George Burroughs in New Hampshire was an amateur magician and clown who worked out of his house. He was hanged from a tree in his backyard in a quiet neighborhood. There was no obvious occult connection to three of the murders. Davies was a fifty-four year-old housewife, Burroughs was in his sixties, and Meyers was only twenty-five. A couple of calls confirmed two were regular churchgoers. There had to be a connection. He just had to dig deeper to find it. He sat down at the computer and started his search. Facts rained into his database.

  Craig’s eyes were sandy, and the coffee had started to wear a hole in his stomach when he came across a tenuous lead between the murder victims. Angela Davies had blogged about being descended from a woman who was hanged as a witch in Salem. George Burroughs had blogged he was named after an ancestor condemned as a witch in Salem as well. A few phone calls confirmed Elizabeth Meyers also had a Salem connection. All the murder victims were descendants of Salem witches—a shaky correlation, but it was something. He could imagine how hard Bailey would laugh if he presented that connection. He needed more.

  Invigorated, he researched the Salem witch trials and found most of the witches were hanged, but one guy was pressed. A particularly nasty death, which involved piling rocks on a board laid on the body until the person underneath suffocated, because they didn’t have the strength to inflate their lungs. He shivered a bit when he read this little tidbit. None of the Salem witches were burned, but during the inquisition, it had been one of the favorite methods for dispatching the “Spawn of the Devil”. Germans were big on burning witches too…go figure. Some suspected witches drowned during the test to see if they were witches. The irony was if they actually drowned, it proved they were innocent. Too bad…they were still dead.

  “Jesus, Craig. It’s nine o’clock. You need to get a life, man.” The janitor’s gravelly voice boomed as he came into the office.

  Craig’s heart bobbled in his chest. He stalled
the reflexive grab for his gun to a mere twitch. “Hi, Tim. Just burning the midnight oil.”

  Tim looked so comfortable in his tennis shoes and jeans, Craig loosened his tie.

  “Over-achiever,” Tim said, sauntering over to empty the trash. He leaned in to look at the picture on the screen. “What you up to?”

  “Just a little background. Probably nothing.” Craig sighed and leaned back. He rolled his head back and stretched his arms back to ease the ache in his shoulders.

  “FBI chasing witches now? My mom knows everything about witches. She did one of those genealogy searches and found out our family goes back to Puritans who lived in Salem back when they were burning witches,” Tim said.

  “They didn’t burn witches in Salem. Besides, we’re not chasing witches. Like I said, just background. You never know what some crazy will use as an excuse.” All Craig needed was people thinking he was part of the whoo whoo squad.

  “Yep,” Tim said. “My old dad used to say there’s a lot of crazy people in the world. Just try not to be standing next to them when they go off.”

  “You got that right.” Craig wasn’t exactly sure what Tim meant, but it didn’t seem to matter, because Tim lost interest and moved off to finish his chores.

  Genealogy? He muttered, “Thank you, Tim,” and started another search. He found a couple dozen references for people who claimed to have Salem witch ancestors. Jackpot! Three of them had died under unusual circumstances. Two had burned in house fires, and one died by autoerotic asphyxiation, which was essentially by hanging. The first burning would have started the series of murders. They all died in Pennsylvania, and the timing was between the New Hampshire and Cleveland deaths. The calligraphy could have burned in the houses or been overlooked by careless, small town constabulary. It would be easy for the locals to miss a slip of paper with the hanged guy. Considering the obvious sexual circumstances, small town cops might have overlooked details. Craig couldn’t think of a more embarrassing way to go out than by accidentally hanging yourself while whacking the weasel. He sang a bad rendition “Boys just want to have fu’un”, as he added their details to the computer. A geographic pattern began to emerge. The recent murders were moving west, along the 80-90 turnpike.

  The next search he made was witch genealogies. He found an organization—the Associated Daughters of Early American Witches—that had all kinds of genealogies. He ran a cross check of the names and found that in the past three years, two had drowned, one died in a fire, and another was a suicide by hanging. All died in New England. Pulling the file on the deaths, at least one of the drowning victims had a piece of parchment paper in their clothing. The water had washed away any writing, but…he added more to his database.

  The next day, he presented the new information to the boss. The lieutenant didn’t dismiss him out of hand this time. Twelve deaths, no matter how tenuously connected, was not something he could brush off.

  Craig waited until he was back in his own cubicle before he grinned. The boss gave him leave to check out hotels along the turnpike to see if any suspicious characters were there before Elizabeth Meyer’s murder. He flagged the rest of the people on his newspaper and genealogy lists to see if any were in the vicinity of the murders at the time, or if any had been threatened. He had a trip to make tomorrow.

  * * * *

  At the Motel 6 just off the turnpike, Craig thought his wild goose chase might have paid off. The diminutive maid looked about twelve in her pink uniform. Fortunately, she was as chatty as a twelve-year-old on a sugar rush.

  “You should have seen this creepy guy, was here two weeks. Looked like Lurch from that old show, The Addam’s Family.”

  She didn’t look old enough to remember The Addam’s Family, Craig thought.

  “He had a big mole hanging off his nose. He definitely was a fanatic of some sort. He covered all the pictures and mirrors with black cloth. He nailed a freaking four-foot cross on the wall.” She was winding up to continue her tirade.

  Craig stopped her by holding up his hand and asking, “Do you remember his name or any specifics about his car?”

  “Hah, I just clean. There might have been some religious pamphlets lying around, but I don’t really remember. You need to ask Sal at the desk. He was really pissed at the guy for putting holes in the wall.”

  The desk clerk remembered the damage to the room. A little research showed the person had checked out late on the afternoon Elizabeth Meyers died. The clerk also remembered the man with the mole asking about carnivals. The man had paid cash for the room and signed in as Evan Parris. The registration card showing the make, model, and license number of the car was unreadable.

  It seemed like a dead end, but at least he had a name. It didn’t take a profiler to figure out the murders were done by a religious fanatic, and there had been a Reverend Parris in Salem. Craig hoped the name wasn’t an alias. He’d do some research when he got back to his computer.

  After checking eighteen motels in two days, Craig decided to keep going and look at occult groups in the area. It was a long shot, but he wanted to see if they had any stalkers. If he was going on a wild goose chase, he was going to make it a thorough one.

  Cleveland’s local witch group wasn’t hard to find. A woman with too much mascara who worked at an occult bookstore tipped him off about a meeting they were having that evening.

  The Cleveland coven wasn’t what Craig had expected. The leader was a big guy with biker tats all along his arms and on his chest bared by the muscle shirt he wore. His tattoos were not as graphic as some Craig had seen. The other people were a stereotypical cross-section of Middle American housewives and blue-collar types. The only member who looked like he might have an occult connection was a kid wearing black, with heavy mascara and dozens of piercings.

  “Agent Darren, I’m sorry, but no one here knew this woman. She wasn’t part of our group,” Mike Stone said, handing Craig back Elizabeth Meyer’s photograph after it passed around the room.

  “Does anyone in your group have any connection to carnivals or circuses?” Craig noticed a significant look between Mike Stone and the kid with the piercings.

  “Do you think people from the carnival killed this woman?” Mike Stone asked.

  Everyone in the group seemed to defer to this guy. Craig couldn’t figure out why all these normal looking, middle-class people followed a man who looked like a thug.

  “Not necessarily. We are pursuing a great number of possibilities. We have a person of interest who seemed to be following carnivals and circuses.” Craig suddenly realized how stupid he would look if these people talked to the press about an FBI agent warning them about someone hunting descendants of the Salem witches. “He may be contacting occult groups.”

  Mike Stone nodded. He looked around the room. “I don’t know anyone here who has connections to the circus. We’re pretty boring as covens go.”

  “Well, if you have any unusual people showing interest in your group, could you let me know? I can be reached at the local FBI office.” Craig wished he had a business card like a regular field agent.

  “We want to thank you for your concern, but we’ve had no hint of any suspicious characters around our group. We will keep an eye out and let you know if anyone shows up,” Mike Stone said. “Sandra will show you out.”

  A woman wearing a sweater set and orthopedic shoes guided him out of the room. Wings of gray hair framed her oval face. She blathered on about how people really had the wrong idea about witches. “Covens are more of a social club for people with psychic gifts. We aren’t evil.” She straightened some pamphlets on a table by the door. The title line read, Do You Have a Gift? “I can’t imagine a real witch having anything to do with carnivals. Like I said, we like to socialize among our own kind. The only carnivals I go to are the ones at the church festivals. My nephew Jason did go to the carnival at the county fair last week. The poor boy lost his 4H steer. It was sucked up by the tornado, and they never found hide-nor-hair of it. Jason’s hear
t was broken.” She took a breath to continue.

  “Thank you for your time. I’ll be in touch if I need any more information.” Craig cut her off before she could go on. He left her at the door.

  The Goth-looking kid with all the piercings was leaning against his car. At Craig’s inquiring look, he said, “I got a feeling you need to talk to someone at the carnival who was at the fair last week.”

  “Who specifically?”

  “I just think that someone there might need your help.” The kid wouldn’t meet Craig’s eyes.

  “If you have any information, you should let me know.”

  The kid looked at him briefly, then his eyes shifted to the bottom of Craig’s tie. “I just got a feeling. I get feelings sometimes.”

  In his car on the way back to the office, Craig considered his visit to the coven. The woman had him thinking about carnivals. The kid had been weird but insistent. Something was up. Craig would sort out their motivations later. A computer search would clarify the random information. It would tell him if anything happened at the carnival. He yawned widely. Perhaps being a field agent wasn’t as glamorous as they wanted him to believe.

  * * * *

  A news article about the isolated tornado hitting the county fair gave Craig the clue he needed. The carnival was only a few miles from the motel where Parris stayed. Babbling Sandra and the Goth kid from the Cleveland coven were useful after all. The police report about the missing cattle yielded the Dimitri Brothers Carnival, managed by a Milo Dimitri. A quick computer search gave him a phone number.

  “Hello, Mister Dimitri?” There was silence on the other end of the phone. It lasted about twenty seconds before Craig continued. “I am Agent Darren of the Cleveland FBI office.” The silence continued. Craig checked the face of the phone to see if he was disconnected. “Mister Dimitri, are you there, Sir?”