Expired

by Evie Rhodes

  He also knew from his brief experience with Randi’s death that you could still feel a person you loved when you entered their personal surroundings. He had felt it when he had gone to sit and mourn by himself in Randi’s room—as though Randi’s aura still somehow permeated the room.

  But that feeling was completely absent in Rashod’s studio. The studio was cold. In fact, it was downright frigid. Rashod’s spirit was nonexistent.

  He heard a sucking sound. Michael strained his ears. Oh, yeah, there it was. It started like the beginnings of a whisper. It was building to a full-scale wind tunnel.

  It gathered speed.

  Michael watched as it funneled into a whipping swirl of wind that contained itself in the center of the room.

  As suddenly as it had started, it stopped. Abruptly. The sucking sound was gone. The wind tunnel was gone. There was nothing save the deep darkness that inhabited the room.

  Michael tried to adjust his eyes to the blackness. He blinked. His whole body was trembling. It had turned into a mass of jelly. As he tried to climb to his feet, his legs unsure of what it meant to stand anymore, a slow, scrawling scribbling insinuated its warning on the wall, in crimson, glowing print: “Go.”

  “What?” Michael listened to the word torn from his throat, but it might have belonged to anybody else, so foreign did it sound to his ears.

  The scrawling grew more furious, bigger, as though it were yelling at him: “GO!”

  Michael was on his feet—unsteady, to be sure, but he could feel the floor, which felt solid and comforting.

  “What are you?”

  Another scribble on the wall: “I AM ME.”

  “Who’s Me?”

  Raw fear had taken control of his every word. He hated the tremor that was in his voice, but it couldn’t be helped.

  No scribbling this time.

  In the instant that Me had hesitated, Rashod had scrambled full force from the bereft depths in which he was residing, and forced a projected picture of himself before Michael’s face.

  He had always worn his pants pulled low, below his belly, with his Ralph Loren undershorts showing the label just above the rim. Now he used the disliked fad of his black youth to his advantage.

  Across his belly he scrawled the words, “Fight, Rebound. Fight. Tracie . . .”

  Rashod couldn’t speak; his windpipe was clogged, clogged with the damnable sunflower seeds.

  That was all he could transmit before Me sucked his image back, clamping it into his biceps.

  Me was stunned. He couldn’t. Hell, no. He wouldn’t believe Rashod had this type of capability. Aw, but he did. That kid was a pain in the ass. He had no gift, and Me didn’t want him. How the hell did he bypass him?

  However, there was little to nothing he could do right now about Rashod and his little bag of tricks. But he could do something about Michael Burlingame.

  Michael grabbed hold of a chair that was in front of him. For one solid fraction of a second, he had felt Rashod’s spirit. Rashod had broken through. He was trying to reach him, trying to tell him something.

  Something about fighting. He was trying to communicate something about Tracie. He fought through the layers of sheer horror gripping him, trying to retain what Rashod had said.

  Michael had been steeped in fear and disbelief, along with confusion. But he now knew that Rashod was in the room. He hadn’t been able to feel him before, but Rashod had broken through. He was trying to help. Michael understood this on a basic, gut level, but he couldn’t put it into the right perspective. The pieces were scattered. He backed up, trying to figure out how he could get out of the room.

  Me struck with a vengeance.

  Rashod had taken this to a different level. Me could not allow Michael Burlingame to think that what he had seen was Rashod. He had to alter the image.

  As Michael was fumbling in the dark, trying to make his way to the door by memory, a shape emerged before him. It looked almost like a watery illusion, except that it began to take form. That form reached out, touching him.

  Before him stood his brother Rashod Burlingame.

  Before Michael could utter a sound, the form changed shapes. The skin on Rashod turned to scales, like those on a fish. It began to peel slowly away. Writhing underneath was a black boa constrictor. It was not Rashod at all.

  Rashod appeared in front of the snake.

  It was Rashod.

  The six-and-a-half-foot snake stuck out its forked tongue. The heat sensors on its lips located the invisible prey that was Rashod Burlingame. It lashed out, sucking Rashod in, suffocating him, and then swallowing him whole as Michael watched in terrified astonishment.

  “Rashod!” he yelled, his vocal chords constricted from fear and shock. “Rashod!”

  NO! It couldn’t have been. That wasn’t Rashod. “God, please. That couldn’t have been Rashod. Oh, my God, a snake swallowed Rashod!”

  Michael ran blindly for the door, groping in the dark. But the boa constrictor was not yet done. His tongue lashed out, ripping the sketch Rashod had left him from inside Michael’s pocket.

  Michael felt the slimy, thick wetness of the snake’s tongue soak right through his shirt, saturating his skin. Disgust rose like bile out of his stomach. He heaved. The snake’s beady eyes watched Michael accusingly. Its tongue flicked. It swallowed the damnable sketch whole, just as it had swallowed the spirit of Rashod.

  Then it turned to dust before Michael’s eyes.

  With that, Michael fell to his knees. “Sweet Jesus,” he softly moaned. “Sweet Jesus. Save us, Jesus. Please, save us.”

  Immediately upon speaking the words, Michael realized with shell-shocked reasoning, like a man who had been to war, that he was religious. Yes, he did believe. He would seek out the grace of this man called Jesus, who would help them.

  Me had had a time with Michael Burlingame, but it was definitely time to move on. Besides, in the instant that Michael Burlingame had yelled out to Jesus, Me had fled. He could not stand before the presence of the Son of God.

  Michael had cried out from the depths of his belly with such sincerity that unknowingly he had evoked the presence of the Holy blood. Me had instantly disappeared from the realm.

  Light returned to the room. The door opened before Michael Burlingame as he bowed low on the floor, drenched in sweat and soaked in the saliva of the loathsome reptile.

  37

  Alexandra was fuming. She could have spit nails. Moments ago, the mayor of New York had just chewed her out in no uncertain terms, and she was out for blood.

  Pacing her office, she had screamed into the phone at one of the police consultants as Lonzo and Monica sat trapped in their chairs before her desk, wishing they were someplace else.

  “I said no press. I meant no press. Not a word. What? Am I not speaking English? Get rid of them. Now.” She slammed the phone down in the receiver.

  Her gaze landed on the two detectives sitting before her. A purple vein was pulsating in the side of her neck. Her breathing sounded like the whistle on a teakettle.

  Lonzo, who was used to these little displays of temper, pulled a nail file from his jacket pocket. He filed his nails, waiting for the storm to switch directions.

  Monica quietly stared out of the window. She was still chafing from Tracie Burlingame’s spiteful little verbal bullets and was not quite ready to cope with Alexandra’s as well. But cope she would, because Alexandra was in rare form.

  “I tell you to find me a single murderer, and instead this escalates into a serial killing, just like I suspected. I told you I didn’t want chalk outlines all over this city.” Alexandra reached for a pencil, a sure bad sign. She gnawed on the end of the eraser.

  Lonzo was tempted to throw her the pack of cigarettes in his jacket pocket, but he resisted the temptation. He continued filing his nails instead.

  “Let me cut to the chase here. Do we have any suspects that are still alive? Because obviously Rashod Burlingame no longer qualifies.”

  Lonzo looked
up. His nail file came to a halt. “No,” he stated without elaboration.

  Alexandra’s steely blue-eyed gaze took in Monica. Monica shook her head.

  “No?” Alexandra roared. “Did you say no?”

  Outside Alexandra’s office, Maya put on her Walkman. She turned it up full blast as Alexandra’s voice came rumbling through the closed door. She liked Lonzo and Monica. She didn’t want to be a willing witness to their verbal demise.

  Maya hadn’t acted a moment too soon, because just as she turned up the volume, Alexandra kicked over the chair in her office. It went skidding across the office, banging into the wall.

  Alexandra sighed. She had to get a grip on herself. This wasn’t going to bring in the killer. But she was under a tremendous amount of political pressure, and various community leaders had decided to put in personal calls to her, demanding to know what the hell was going on. The last call had been from the reverend of Harlem’s best-known historical Baptist church, with a large congregation that read like a who’s who list. Needless to say, he hadn’t called to invite her to Sunday’s sermon.

  This was exactly the kind of circus she had been trying to avoid. She also had to keep the media out of the case, and that was blowing up in her face, because somehow they had received vivid blown-up, colorful photographs of Randi Burlingame lying dead and broken on 135th Street.

  Whoever had shot the photographs had a keen eye and was gifted with a laserlike precision for the visual. The vivid clarity with which the photographer had captured the tragedy had made even Alexandra bow her head in horror. She could not imagine what the public would do if those photographs were published.

  She would have to call in some serious markers. She had already put the mayor of New York on it. He was calling in his markers as well. He had not been happy or diplomatic in stating his feelings about it. Gone was his Ivy League, Princeton-educated I’m-an-all-around-guy tone. In its place was fury, pure and simple.

  The mayor would have to go to great lengths to suppress the information and keep the press away from this case. He was certainly not thrilled at the prospect. Besides, if by any slim chance it leaked, then there would be political and personal hell to pay. He would have to use his utmost discretion.

  Alexandra took a deep, calming breath. She went over to pick up the chair, sliding it back to the desk. She sat down in the chair, ran her hands through her short blond curls, and joined Monica in staring out the window. She really needed to attend her meditation classes more often.

  Monica continued to stare out the window in a sullen silence. What did Alexandra think they were, magicians? If there was no killer, there was no killer. Period.

  It was all she could do not to let this blond witch know a thing or two. Who the hell did she think she was? Monica’s thoughts kept repeating in her silent fury.

  Finally, Alexandra spoke in a voice that belied her anger. “The Amsterdam News has received some stunning photographs of Randi Burlingame’s death. Close-ups of him broken and twisted on 135th Street. They are claiming they don’t know who sent the photographs. I’m in the process of trying to restrain them from publishing them, given the circumstances. I don’t want to help the killer grandstand.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Lonzo muttered under his breath.

  Alexandra ignored him.

  Monica was suddenly revived from her comatose state upon hearing about the pictures. “Are they being truthful about not knowing the source of the pictures?”

  “I don’t know. Generally speaking, they don’t like to reveal their sources. In this case, the killer could just be toying with us.”

  Monica wondered if Andre Burlingame could be responsible for the photos. But she didn’t have anything to go on. Besides, it really didn’t matter who’d sent them—unless, of course, it was the killer. What did matter at the moment was whether Alexandra could keep them from being published.

  “Can you hold them off?”

  “For now. But I don’t know for how long,” Alexandra said.

  The three of them sank into silence, wrapped in their own thoughts.

  Finally Alexandra said, “Oh. In keeping with consistency, the killer was kind enough to send us one of Rashod Burlingame’s Air Jordan sneakers. His boy, Genie, identified it. There was no note this time; I guess he’s told us what he wants to say. A picture—or in this case a sneaker, I guess—is worth more than a thousand words.”

  She blew a harsh breath. “But then what the hell? It seems he may have pictures, too, of his little artwork.”

  “No doubt our boy certainly doesn’t like to stray far from the rules. We already knew Rashod was dead, so what was the point to sending the sneaker? Unless he has a fetish for tidiness.”

  “That and blood,” Alexandra said. “Rashod’s body was drained of blood, too. Same MO all the way through.”

  “What if this isn’t a standard serial killing?” Monica said.

  Alexandra squinted her eyes at Monica. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what if the killer isn’t a standard-profile serial killer? What if his serializing is selected? What if he’s only after Tracie Burlingame’s sons? Her sons are the only ones being murdered in Harlem right now.”

  Monica had Alexandra’s rapt attention. Feeling herself, she spoke more rapidly.

  “He hasn’t struck anywhere else. What if it’s a personal vendetta but he’s making it look like a serial? Fun and games, you know what I mean? What if his killing is only centered on her sons? For that matter, she may know the killer.”

  Alexandra’s eyes brightened. A newfound respect for Monica appeared briefly on the horizon. She would have thought of that if she weren’t so damned stressed out. Where the killer would strike next had been all that was on her mind.

  True, she had been shocked when she learned it was another one of Tracie’s sons, but the pattern indicated that it could happen to any other boy at any time. Because of the style of the murders, she hadn’t been convinced, even with Rashod’s death, that it was just Tracie Burlingame’s sons. The killer could be trying to throw them off. But Monica might be onto something.

  “Okay,” Alexandra said. A pregnant pause, then . . . “Let’s fly with it. We could narrow our scope. Maybe even discover which son is the next target before he strikes. Then we could be there when he does.” Alexandra’s voice was laced with excitement. Her chase instincts had been revived momentarily, pushing aside her political agenda.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” Monica said. “Now you’re feeling me.”

  Alexandra nodded. “All right, I want you two to dig up everything you can find on Tracie Burlingame’s family. See who’s holding a grudge. Who’s jealous? See if we can pinpoint which of those boys would be the next target.” Alexandra smiled for the first time that day.

  The two detectives rose from their captive seats, relieved at the slim ray of light they had received, and ecstatic about getting out of Alexandra’s presence.

  They could not in their wildest imaginations or in all their police training have been aware of what a cunning, shrewd, powerful criminal entity they were up against.

  They could not even have imagined that the person they were seeking had created deception—that in fact, he was the embodiment of deception.

  How could they have known he who was history?

  He who was called Legion? Legion had the distinction of being the best known, yet he was the least recognizable of any enemy.

  The police had been trained to believe only what they could see. They used scientific weapons of engagement, and technological profiles of research.

  They were trained in hand-to-hand combat. They were highly skilled at fighting in the air. And they relied on historical data that had been gathered by the hands of men. If it had a shape or a form, then they were on it.

  But what if it didn’t?

  If the police had had any idea that by that same time the following day, Harlem would be swamped in a river of dead black boys, their blood dra
ined from their bodies, the coveted sneakers missing from their feet, and sunflower seeds stuffed down their throats, they would not have felt the false sense of elation they were experiencing by ferreting out another angle to look at.

  No, they would not have felt elated at all. Instead they might have abandoned their respective posts, seeking refuge in any place other than Harlem.

  And not one of them would have traded places with Tracie Burlingame.

  38

  Tracie Burlingame made her way to the House of Pentecost on 129th Street in Harlem. She stood staring up at the crumbling but somehow awe-inspiring structure of the small church tucked in a corner of an old brownstone. She could feel rather than see the spirit that generated from it.

  Just looking at it had given her a sense of serenity. It washed quietly over her as she stood with her hands stuck in her jeans pockets, debating whether she had the courage to actually step inside the church.

  It had been a long time since she found herself seeking for the roots of the Christianity of her past, but here she stood. She had opted not to go to one of the larger churches in Harlem, because she was too well known in the area to seek the anonymity of spirit that she needed there.

  But this church, so unassuming that it might not even have been noticed, drew her to it. Its wings of comfort reached out to her.

  Tears streamed down her face. She felt overwhelmed as she thought about the deaths of her two sons. Who would want to kill them? Why? She didn’t even know why she was at the church. She was far from what one would call a praying woman.

  But she needed solace in her spirit, in the place she had always kept well guarded. So she found herself striding up to the doors while wiping the tears from her eyes. She had tied a linen scarf over her silken mane of hair. She wore dark sunglasses to shade her eyes from the early morning sunlight. She had cried buckets of tears.

  Yet her pain was her own to wear, not for the world to see.

  She pulled open the heavy wooden doors to the church and stepped inside. A hushed silence greeted her as she gaped at the beauty of the church in its absolute simplicity. Everything was done in simple hand-carved wood. Her high-heeled pumps sank into what appeared to be lambs wool covering the floor.