by Jessica King
“Is there anyone else here?” Vince asked, moving to block the path between the man and the door. The screen door outside screeched as it finally came to a halt. Ivy walked back to the main living area. The walls were all white, at least she thought so. They were nearly entirely covered in movie posters, flags, and an assortment of parking tickets and bits of old wrapping paper, all taped together in a makeshift wallpaper.
“No,” the man said, looking toward the door that now hid the dog. “Tyler, shut up!” There was a momentary pause before the barking picked up again.
“Anyone else live here?” Vince asked, and Ivy followed his gaze around the living space to the kitchen, where a few dishes lay in the sink, and the trashcan was overflowing with paper plates and takeout boxes.
“No.”
“Name?” Vince finally asked as Ivy walked into the only other enclosed room of the home, the bedroom. It smelled of laundry detergent and dirty socks.
“Jeremiah Ethan?” The man’s name came out as a question.
“You’re going to have to come back to the station to answer a few questions about the murders of several women in the area.”
“What!” Jeremiah said. “I—”
Ivy searched through the room. A series of nearly shredded paperbacks and books of poetry and Shakespeare’s plays were stacked next to the twin bed, which faced a desk and a series of monitors. She shook the mouse, and each screen asked for a password, the computers humming to life.
“Should have brought Ivan,” Ivy muttered, trying to avoid the stack of empty cereal boxes, each one proclaiming a more sugary experience than the last.
She made quick work of searching through his drawers, finding a series of the exact same pair of jeans in every possible wash and a crumpled pile of T-shirts. The bedside table drawer housed a table knife and a pocketknife among a rolling collection of buttons and Tylenol that must have escaped the bottle, but nothing serious.
By the time Ivy made her way back into the living room area, Jeremiah was stuttering his promises that he’d had nothing to do with any murders of anyone, ever. He’d turned red in the face, and the dog in the laundry room seemed to sense his agitation, moving from scratching to howling at the door, demanding release. Vince was securing the cuffs around Jeremiah’s wrists, explaining that it would be safer for everyone if he was restrained during their drive.
“I promise I didn’t,” Jeremiah said again.
“Then you should have nothing to worry about,” Ivy said, looking into the light eyes and wondered if they were the last ones her mother had seen. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-seven,” he said, and Vince handed her the ID he’d already confiscated. Jeremiah Ethan. Thirty-seven. That would put him around twenty-two when his mother was murdered. Not too young, necessarily, but young.
“Let’s go,” Ivy said, motioning toward the door. She padded down the brick steps and opened the back of the police car. She briefly fantasized about crushing the man’s head into the side of the car instead of making sure his head didn’t hit the car’s frame on his way in, which is what she actually did. She sat in the passenger seat and didn’t speak the entire drive back to the station, while Jeremiah insisted several times that he had nothing to do with any murders, whatsoever, at any time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 4:27 p.m.
“How do you want to do this?” Vince asked as the two of them looked through the double-sided glass at Jeremiah. He sat at an empty metal table, looking directly at the camera in the corner of the room.
Ivy wiped her hands along the thighs of her pants before blowing directly on her palms. “I want to go first,” Ivy said, moving toward the door. She walked into the room—a square, gray box of nothingness beyond the metal table and chairs—and sized Jeremiah up. He was tight, his shoulders raised, and his feet balanced up on his tiptoes.
“I’m going to tell you what I know about you,” Ivy said, and Jeremiah looked at her with a steady gaze, as if he, too, were trying to tell if she was about to lie to him. “This morning, you updated a post about a woman believed to be a reincarnation of the centuries-old, so-called witch, Amelia Partridge. Shortly after, you bought a plane ticket that would land you suspiciously close to a woman assumed to be a reincarnation of Martha Eaton.” She tapped her fingers from pinky to thumb on the metal table. “Would you care to explain that?”
Jeremiah tilted his head, the lights above shining against his prominent forehead, giving him a greenish pallor. He lifted a hand, palm up. “My family lives in Mississippi. If I were planning to kill Jennings Ford, I would have booked a flight to Florida. It’s hardly a connection, detective.” His fingers curled back into a fist and rested lightly on the table.
“But you know her name and that she lives in Florida?” Ivy said, feigning confusion.
“Let’s not kid ourselves,” Jeremiah said, who had now seemed to have put on an entirely different persona than the stuttering gamer they’d found in Mission Hill. “If you somehow came to the incorrect conclusion that I have been the one murdering a collection of witches in the L.A. area, then you have presumably found my connection with the website that keeps track of the witching lines. That doesn’t mean I killed those women.”
“That doesn’t mean you didn’t, either,” Ivy said. “Don’t talk in circles, Jeremiah. I promise I’m much better.” The soles of her shoes made small tapping sounds against the ground, echoing around the room with no soft edges to absorb the sound. She imagined the sound waves bouncing all around the room as if she’d thrown a tennis ball.
Jeremiah raised a single eyebrow. “I’m a suspicious person,” he said. “I’ll admit to that. It’s a trait I picked up after returning home from fighting for this nation’s military. I saw too much to believe that there aren’t evil, supernatural forces at play in this world.” He looked at the camera again. Was he trying to make a connection with Vince, who had also served in the military? It was no secret; the tattoo was across his knuckles. “Is it so bad that I appreciate the people who do what they can to eliminate those evil forces? Even if it’s witches and not the people our country has identified as enemies?”
“And you think that the person killing the witches is doing some sort of…favor? For the greater good?” Ivy asked.
Jeremiah pointed at her in a way that said she had it exactly right. “I did it in my own way, in the military. Whoever they are, they’re doing it their way. Fine. But I guarantee you, I haven’t done anything that would be considered illegal by this country’s standards.”
Ivy turned the conversation in a different way. “How long were you in the military?”
Jeremiah flipped his wrist upward so Ivy could see the army tattoo on the inside of his forearm. “Joined the army right out of high school at eighteen, left at thirty. Broke my leg badly enough that it still gives me trouble.” He ran a hand over his knee. “Two two-year tours right off the bat.”
“Were you deployed in 2002?” Ivy asked.
Jeremiah seemed taken off-guard by the question. “I was overseas from 2002 to early 2004.” He could be lying; she knew that. But a bit of hope slipped out with her breath.
“How did you know that Erin had been killed right when the police did?” Ivy asked. “The public didn’t know until late this morning, and her family didn’t authorize the release of her picture until this afternoon.”
Jeremiah shrugged. “I get anonymous text messages.” He shook his head as if that were obvious. “Must be using burner phones or something. Got hired a while back to set up the website. A lot of money. Thought it was a joke.” He put his elbows on the table and crossed his fingers, making a shelf for his chin. “Some millionaire who’d used too many drugs or something, right?” Half a smile at that. “But I believe it now that I’ve seen the evidence. They’re coming back, and if you wanted to put your taxpayer money to good use, you clowns would be tracking those women down, too.” He leaned back and locked his hands behind his neck in a rela
xed posture, proud of himself.
Ivy didn’t respond to the jab. “So, you get paid to run the website and get anonymous texts telling you what, exactly?”
“Just a name. Always just a name. I update the site.”
“Do you track down the targets?” she asked. She watched his face for any hint of a lie, but he kept eye contact and stayed entirely turned toward her.
“Nah, not my job. Don’t know how they do it,” he said. “But they’re accurate, that’s for sure.”
Facial recognition. That technology would be the only way to track down lookalike women with any amount of accuracy without spending unimaginable hours searching through online profiles and unidentifiable crowds. Ivy bit the inside of her lip.
Without another word, she walked back to where Vince was still watching Jeremiah. He was stiff jawed with his arms crossed, his fingers rubbing absently over his own military tattoo.
“They have someone on the inside,” Ivy said quietly. “Who else could use facial recognition like that?”
“Could’ve engineered an app or something,” Vince said. “Didn’t you say he had a bunch of tech equipment?” He looked back through the glass to Jeremiah, who was now picking at a scab on his wrist.
“He does, but that’s pretty complicated stuff, don’t you think?” Ivy said. “Even if he is some sort of brilliant gamer person, I don’t think it’d be so simple for him to whip something up like that.” She ran her hands through her hair.
“Okay, well, if he didn’t do it, then maybe the person doing the killing has a contact. A high up contact.”
“Like FBI high up,” Ivy said. When Vince didn’t say anything, she shuffled her feet to fill the silence. “Crazy?”
“No,” Vince said immediately. He scratched the back of his neck. “Let’s table that for now.”
Ivy pressed her lips together. “Okay, so, someone who wants to get rid of people they think are witches who also has a connection to reliable facial matching recognition and then Jeremiah. And one of them is doing the killing?”
“Or they’ve hired someone else,” Vince said. “Someone who would buy into all that ‘true believer’ type of thing.”
“You want to go in there?” Ivy asked.
“I’ll good-cop him,” Vince said, nudging her. “I usually get to be the angry one.”
“You’re not good at being the angry one,” Ivy said, though she knew her amusement didn’t reach her voice or eyes.
Vince grabbed a water bottle from the shelf behind them and slipped out the door. Ivy watched him pull up a chair. Vince offered Jeremiah the water with a smile, and he took it.
“So, you didn’t do it, huh?” Vince asked, leaning back in the chair. The picture of ease and confidence, he rolled his shoulder blades and tilted his head just a bit.
Jeremiah shook his head. “I want them dead, but I don’t do the dirty work. Not my thing.” He mirrored Vince’s casual poster, settling deeper into his chair, allowing his back and neck to relax. His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the table.
Vince nodded. “Gun-shy, then?”
Jeremiah’s eyes went cold, and his fingers ceased their tapping. “I can still defend myself.” His hand drifted to his knee again. “If I have to.” It’d taken Vince just a few seconds to find that soft spot. Jeremiah sat up straighter.
Vince raised his hands in surrender. “Look, I don’t doubt it.” He shifted his hands behind his neck. “It’s just that we didn’t find any guns in your place. I have a lot of military family members living in the civilian world. They all have guns.”
It seemed as if time had curled up like a cat in the corner as the two looked at each other for a long moment. Jeremiah had immediately distrusted Ivy, but Vince, he was trying to puzzle out. His gaze shifting between Vince’s eyes and the tattoo on his knuckles, Jeremiah slowly set his palms onto the cold metal of the table, and then lifted them, leaving sweaty prints behind.
“I don’t like killing,” he said, and his voice was earnest. “I want those women dead. I want their dark power gone from this world—”
“But what exactly are they doing that’s so awful?” Vince asked. “Why don’t you find stage magicians repulsive or card tricks to be threatening, for instance?”
“No one should have power over life and death like that,” Jeremiah said, suddenly leaning in, pushing himself closer to the edge of his seat. His eyes lit with the sense that someone was truly listening to him. “Don’t you see it? If they can choose to live again, they have some mastery over death itself. Who’s to say they’re not using their powers of life and death all the time? Erin Preston gave a man the ability to walk again when his injuries were supposed to be the cause of his death.” Another slow pass of his hand over his knee. “Aline Rousseau’s co-star on her most recent show? Dead.”
“That was an overdose,” Vince said.
“Sure,” Jeremiah said, almost sad. “Those who don’t believe will tell infinite lies to give themselves an explanation they find reasonable. Try to see the truth here, detective.”
Vince crossed his hands on the table.
“I know you’re here to play the good cop,” Jeremiah said. “I’m not an idiot. But if you hear anything, hear that. Look at the things that are occurring around these women. Healing miracles, deaths.”
“Most people would just call that the circle of life,” Vince said. “Some people luck out, and everyone dies eventually.”
Jeremiah shook his head, returning to his relaxed state. “Death is not accidental. It’s wielded. And these women have harnessed that power. They’re dangerous,” he said, running a hand down his short beard. “To all of us, remember that.” The man crossed his arms, dismissing the detective. He stared down at the tiles of the floor, defeated.
Ivy pressed her palms together, wanting to run into the room herself. If these witches had power over death, even just a little bit, how had none of them had managed to save themselves from it? She paced.
“One more thing,” Vince said, his voice taking on an edge. “You are returning from Mississippi on Saturday, right? Pretty expensive flying day.”
The man nodded from his chair.
“And is there a reason you picked that date?”
Jeremiah shook his head, looking up as if there were a mental calendar in the back of his brain.
“Is it because you need to be able to make a certain update about Miss Aline Rousseau during the Academy Awards next Sunday? And if you were traveling, you might not have access to information and your servers during that time?”
Jeremiah shook his head again, and Vince stood.
“I feel that it is my responsibility to tell you that if my suspicion is right, you will be considered an accessory to murder. But if you tell me everything you know now, then that murder might be stopped, thus making you not an accessory to murder, which would certainly be the preferable option,” Vince said, lifting a shoulder. “Just a suggestion.”
“The manager said I should expect an update next Sunday.” Jeremiah stared at the table, and Ivy could barely hear his words through the speaker.
“Did he say anything about the awards?”
“No.”
“Did he say anything about Aline Rousseau?”
“No.”
Vince smiled a dangerous smile and huffed out a humorless laugh. He leaned his hands against the table, moving into Jeremiah’s personal space.
“You seem so concerned with getting rid of evil,” Vince said. “Do you think that your recording of these deaths is moral?”
Jeremiah blinked slowly. “I’m tired of this investigation, detective. As far as I see it, I frequently update a news outlet that has an anonymous source. I don’t wait for the facts to be confirmed,” he said, motioning a hand to Vince, “by the police. So maybe that makes me a bad journalist. But my sources have never been wrong. So no, I don’t think my reporting is immoral. I think I’m playing my part in getting rid of these dark forces.”
Vince took a moment to st
are at him, and to Jeremiah’s credit, he didn’t look away. He just stared back, his own eyes searching the detective’s. Vince walked out, a stormy air around him as he closed the door behind him and turned to Ivy. “We have to let him go.”
“We try his phone first,” Ivy said, flipping Jeremiah’s phone and its cracked screen over and over in her hands. “Text the numbers back, see if Ivan can track them.”
“If they’re all different numbers, then they’re probably one-use, and then they destroy the phone.”
Ivy pressed her lips together and texted back the number that had texted only one thing: “Erin Preston eliminated.”
“Who are you,” she texted, saying the words out loud. It only took a few moments for the return message to pop up: “Sorry, the number you have reached has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you believe this is a mistake, please contact your provider.”
Ivy called the number, and immediately reached a message explaining that the phone had been disconnected. She tried the next text message: Atlas Hale eliminated, and the next: Amber Woodward eliminated.
Everything had been disconnected. Ivy gritted her teeth. “Let him go.”
CHAPTER NINE
Wednesday, February 15, 2017, 6:29 p.m.
In a not-so-stunning turn of events, I was detained this afternoon from the tax-money stealing sham, the LAPD. Was this something I expected? Yes. Unfortunately, one cannot expect our country to be true to the ideals of an unoppressed press.
As a trusted news source for many around the country who fear the power-mongering witches of this modern era, being detained by the LAPD could be considered not only a scare tactic but a direct influence of the ring of witches here in Los Angeles.
The two detectives on the case have recently been exposed to the bodies of three different witches: the sixth reincarnation of Mary Caste, Atlas Hale, the sixth reincarnation of Sarah Pepper, Amber Woodward, and the eighth reincarnation of Amelia Partridge, Erin Preston. Not to mention their likely involvement with the seventh reincarnation of Sarah Pepper, Hollywood starlet Aline Rousseau (a double occurrence of the suspected growing power of Sarah Pepper).