by Laurel Dewey
Turning to her computer, Jane logged onto the bookmarked motor vehicle website that she used frequently on the job. She typed in “AGA 171,” the plate she memorized off the ominous black sedan from the Anubus crime scene. The plate was registered to a private corporation called “ODIN” that had a fleet of automobiles. Jane first thought that ODIN was an acronym but after a quick Internet search, she realized the corporation was named after the ancient Norse God. One text stated that, “Worship of the god Odin was related to Norse and Germanic Paganism. His role as a Norse god was closely connected to war, bloody battles, victorious outcomes, death and rage while blending ancient magic and prophecy into the hunt.” Jane fixated on that last word: hunt. Her eyes then drifted to the words “magic” and “prophecy.” Reading further, she learned that Odin sacrificed his eye in order to gain the “Wisdom of the Ages.” While Odin also had links with poetry and inspiration, he was more commonly associated with “fury, madness and the lone wanderer.” Jane sat back and looked into the black sky above her. She was always blown away by some of the names people choose for their companies. When they dipped into names with less than admirable qualities, she questioned their intent. Nobody would seriously name their corporation, “Satan,” “Hell,” or “Chains of Torture” but they had no problem choosing a pagan god that carried the baggage of darkness and was known for “sowing strife and starting wars.”
Jane recalled the number on the Anubus: 121. Strangely, when Harlan counted how many tattoo cards Alex had on his wall, it was also one hundred and twenty-one. These types of repetitive number sequences fascinated Jane. It always felt like the invisible hand that hung close by and attempted to direct Jane’s progress by forcing her to see what she otherwise might not have noticed. Taking the bait, she opened a bookmarked site she’d used on another case that featured the occult symbology of numbers. It didn’t take Jane long to uncover the meaning of “121.” Next to the number was the Egyptian “Eye of Horus,” the same ancient symbol imprinted on the piece of lapis in Harlan’s mysterious bag. She felt her gut tighten. There was yet another sync. The text read: “121: The Age of Horus is a 2,000 year cycle beginning in 1904 in which the black magick master of evil, Aleister Crowley, stated the world would dive into ‘a time of force, fire and blood…of unparalleled freedoms and rampant chaos.’”
Jane sat back in the driver’s seat and took a hard drag on her cigarette. Between the nefarious ODIN and the fact that a bus incongruously named Anubus sported a number that was linked to chaos, she got the distinct feeling that whatever was on the other side of this insanity was veiled and treacherous. Jamming the cigarette between her lips, she looked up and saw Harlan cross in front of the light beam emanating from the flashlight inside the tiny house. Returning to the computer, she decided she needed to lighten the mood. She opted for a quick search on heart transplant patients who felt connected to their donors. To her shock, there were dozens of websites and articles that relayed stories of patients who openly conceded that they felt the “presence” of their donor “within them.” One fifty-five-year-old woman received a heart transplant and quickly began craving beer and snack foods she hated prior to her surgery. She also started having dreams of running with a ball on a high school football field and feeling the hard tackle from behind. But the woman’s next comment really got Jane’s attention. “I had other dreams where I’d be making out with a seventeen-year-old girl,” she wrote, “and I’m happily heterosexual.” It wasn’t until this woman was able to meet the family of her donor that things finally began to make sense. She found out she had the heart of an eighteen-year-old football player who died in a car crash after one of the biggest games of his short life. But none of it really sunk in until the family introduced her to their son’s former girlfriend. She instantly recognized the girl as the one from her dream.
There were hundreds of these testimonials and Jane read through a few with growing interest. Their similarities were stark, all of them confessing to feeling as though they “shared a body with another soul.” For some patients, this acknowledgment helped move them toward a greater spiritual spectrum; for others, it complicated their lives and made them feel as if their lives and memories had been hijacked by an intruder. For those patients, unexplainable fears and phobias plagued them. One man was convinced that his donor died in a boating accident because he became strangely terrified of open water and boats and had frequent nightmares where he was drowning. The fact remained that each of the donors was usually young, vibrant, relatively healthy and were either murdered or died suddenly in an accident. One case discussed a fifty-six-year-old man who was able to describe the exact manner in which his donor was murdered and could even draw the face of the murderer. Another startling case involved a five-year-old girl who received the heart of another child. Months after her transplant, she “recognized” the father of her donor in a shopping mall and ran up to him, calling him “Daddy.”
“Maybe they don’t know they’re dead,” one transplant patient wrote, “and they’re continuing to live through me.” A chill descended down Jane’s spine. “It’s like they’re trying to talk to me,” the same patient explained, “but I can’t translate their thoughts and desires into anything I understand.” A forty-nine-year-old woman who received a heart transplant went so far as to visit a psychic to discern what her donor was desperately attempting to convey. “The psychic held my hands,” the woman wrote, “and she gradually felt the donor come through me and speak to her.” Jane took another hit of her cigarette. “Jesus,” she murmured, taking another look up at the house. Returning to the text, she read, “The psychic told me she saw images flashing in front of her and it took a few minutes to get them to slow down so she could understand them. But once she did, she could clearly describe to me what the donor’s life was like and even how he died.”
Jane took another hard hit on her cigarette. She recalled how just touching Harlan’s leg the night before sent an electrical current through her and a blaze of blurred, staccato images in front of her eyes. This was crazy, she thought, as she sucked down another cool hit of nicotine. But as screwy as it seemed, the more Jane read about all these strange experiences, the more she realized Harlan might not be crazy after all. It was valid, even though many of the shared testimonials were given by people who refused to be photographed or did not want their last names to be printed. There was a still a social stigma attached to what these patients were silently experiencing. It trod in territory reserved for religion and higher spirituality but it still didn’t neatly fit into any compartment.
She continued to research the subject, landing on a website that discussed the more spiritual aspects of the heart. “The heart has a unique intelligence,” she read. “It holds memory and speaks to us in a language all its own.” From what she gathered, the heart communicated “at the speed of light.” When two people are deeply and faithfully connected to each other, an electromagnetic pulse—unseen by the eye or simple machines—bonds them together and affects the two of them forever, no matter how far apart they are. “Even death cannot separate them,” Jane read, “for they have merged into one vessel.” She swallowed hard. How incredible, she thought.
There were other articles that fascinated Jane. One of them had to do with Native Americans and other tribal groups throughout history eating the beating hearts of animals and humans after they’d been sacrificially slaughtered. “The ritual was meant to take in the imprinted energy of the deceased’s heart,” the article stated. “Great power is thought to result if you consume the heart of an animal or person who is considered profoundly wise and adept. Their soul joins inside you and operates in union.” Jane cringed. She knew someone on the police force when she was starting out who used to take two weeks off every fall to hunt elk on the Flat Tops in Colorado. Upon his return to work one day, she recalled him regaling other officers with the usual hunting stories that involved driving for hours into nowhere, setting up camp, and then spending hours of si
lence in trees or hidden by bushes. But on this occasion, he vividly described nailing a six point elk and upon reaching the animal, found it clinging to life. He slit open the elk’s chest, cut out the heart and ate it. “It was still warm and beating,” she remembered the guy telling the group. He claimed he felt “invincible” after that experience. Jane quietly noticed the change too. But she also noted a strange impatience and jumpiness in him that hadn’t been there before. Adrenal stress, she told herself at the time. When an animal doesn’t fall after it’s shot and runs for a while afterward, it’s said that the meat is tainted with fear. The animal’s last memory is of terror and running for its life and somehow, that changes the texture and flavor of the meat. Could it possibly also imprint that energy of fear and terror onto the person eating it, Jane wondered.
As gruesome as ritual sacrifice is, something about the primeval practice moved Jane to do a search. Her computer took a second to spit out the websites, as if the idea of the subject matter even disgusted her hard drive. The first few links dealt with the ancient Mayans and Aztecs but the sites further down on the page were eye opening to say the least. The BBC featured an article, reporting on how the ritualistic killing of children in Uganda “as sacrifices for wealth and good health” was on the increase. The practice, which was almost unheard of before 2007, suddenly had an upswing in 2008 with police investigating twenty-five ritual murders of children. In 2009, that number increased to twenty-nine. Who was instigating these horrific killings? According to the BBC, the country’s “new elite” were the source, eagerly paying “witch doctors” large sums of money for the promise of health and wealth. One witch doctor charged $390.00 for an animal sacrifice. But the price was “steep” for “the most powerful spell—a child.”
The ash began to lean heavily on Jane’s cigarette. She tipped it outside the window before crushing the cigarette into the cold dirt with her cowboy boot. Taking another quick check toward the house, she determined that everything still seemed calm. She felt inside her jacket pocket for the cigarette pack and touched the Patsy Cline cassette tape Harlan gave her. The cover was missing, leaving just the bare, well-played tape with a song label lightened by age. She could barely make out the title of the album, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” and kind of distinguish a few of the songs. Turning the cassette over, Jane noticed a yellow highlighter pen had been used across one tune. It was right before “Honky Tonk Merry-Go Round” so Jane inserted the tape and forwarded it until she hit the highlighted song. Patsy’s perfect pitch crept through the Mustang’s speakers.
“If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, what a wonderful world this would be. There’d be no trouble and no strife, just a big happy life, with a bluebird in every tree.”
She sat back and continued to listen to the tape.
“I could see right, no wrong. I could see good, no bad. I could see all the good things in life I’ve never had. If I could see the world through the eyes of a child, what a wonderful world this would be.”
The song continued and Jane listened but she wondered what in the hell any of it meant. Maybe she was giving the song too much credit, she reasoned. Sure, it was highlighted but so what? But she kept listening and waiting for something to stand out and mean something. When it was over, she returned to her computer. She searched on the local news station’s video feed for their interview of the helmeted motorcyclist who said he witnessed Harlan’s escape in Jane’s Mustang. Once she found it, she played it back repeatedly. After about the sixth re-run, she stopped focusing on the motorcyclist and began examining the background scenery.
“What the fuck—” Jane mumbled as she paused the video. Whatever gas station was used for this interview, it was not the same one where the crime took place. There were no roped off fuel pumps. In fact, from what Jane could tell, this gas station had only four islands, instead of seven. Eyeing the video even closer, the location of the Quik Mart building in the background didn’t jibe with the proximity of where it was located at the actual scene. Jane sat back in her seat and shook her head in shock. It was clear to her that the “interview” with this motorcyclist was completely staged. But why? She repeated the video several more times, listening intently to every word he said. The interviewer, who was never seen, prompted the motorcyclist, asking about Harlan’s demeanor. The descriptive terms of “madman,” “monster” and “the devil incarnate” certainly painted a precise picture of what “they” needed to put forth into the public mindset. But just exactly who “they” were still baffled Jane.
She selected her home page. Dora Weller’s shooting was at the top of both the national and Colorado news feed. Clicking on the link, she scanned the article. Weller was in critical condition but expected to live. To Jane, choosing Dora Weller as a hit made no sense whatsoever. Jane always considered her bland, white toast; a cheerful woman who wasn’t too savvy but made up for it with a willing smile and a seemingly altruistic outlook on life. The only controversy that Weller was involved in was her denial of a Biotech firm’s request to buy a thousand acres of rich grassland in Colorado. After a lot of controversies and headlines on the Denver news programs nearly every evening, Weller chose to uphold the loud and often subversive desires of the “Eco-friendly” activists who wished that the land be protected from “capitalistic development.”
But that political issue certainly was not worth killing somebody over, Jane mused. Then again, there was that undeniable advertisement on page seventeen of The Q magazine with that ominous line: “It’s Time For A Change, Dorothy.” The ad did seem to have an “in your face” quality to it—something many of the anarchist, left wing groups enjoyed. Jane recalled the violent actions of “Eco-terrorists” over the years. One group firebombed a Vail ski lodge in 1998, causing twelve million dollars in damages. Jane checked into that story and discovered that the convicted group was indicted in connection with “seventeen acts of domestic terrorism.” Jane read it again. Seventeen. This was getting stranger and stranger. Why would the Eco-Terrorists have anything to do with the shooting? Weller gave them what they wanted. And anyway, Jane figured, if she was going to play this scenario out, why would an Eco-Terrorist group be connected to the death of Mitchell Cloud, the unconventional microbiologist who spent over a decade of his professional life studying goats.
She returned to the home page and saw that there was a “Breaking News” update on the Weller event. Clicking on the link, she was greeted with a cell phone photo taken by somebody in the crowd during the mêlée after the shooting. There, standing in full view, was Harlan Kipple’s image.
“Holy shit!” Jane yelled. She read the article quickly. They were tying him to the shooting, claiming he had gone “on a crazed killing spree.” None of it made any sense to Jane. She desperately did more searches, looking for other photos from the scene that anyone might have uploaded to the Internet. From what she could find, she wasn’t in any of the shots. But Harlan was easy to spot, especially now that he had the weed whacker haircut and no facial hair. “Fuck,” Jane mumbled. Dying his hair at this point was futile. She was just about to start another search when she heard Harlan scream.
Ditching everything on her car seat, she raced inside the house. Harlan was on his knees, rocking back and forth and murmuring what sounded like a prayer. Jane leaned closer and heard every word.
“I will face the darkness, but I will not let it become me. Fear may be present but it will not possess me. I will face the darkness, as the knowing light within my heart and mind leads me home. And once again, I will be free.”
He said it repeatedly and spoke each word with rapid inflections as if he’d been speaking those words his entire life. Each time he repeated it, his tension lessened and his body relaxed. By the twentieth repetition, Jane had the verse committed to memory and Harlan was calmer as he slumped forward onto the wooden floor. But when she lightly touched his back, he jumped up and onto his feet as if he had springs on his heels. The
large flashlight rolled across the floor, casting an eerie shadow across the small room.
“What happened?” he yelled, struggling to breathe.
“You blacked out again. But you’re back and you’re okay.”
He clutched his chest. “I don’t think my heart can take this much longer, Jane.”
“Sure it can. They loaded a superior specimen in there, remember?”
Harlan fell strangely silent and contemplative.
“Harlan?” Jane asked gingerly.
He walked to the leather recliner and sat down, cloistered by the darkness. After several minutes, he bowed his head. “I can’t do this no more, Jane. It’s killin’ me.”
Jane heard Harlan grab for a water bottle, followed by a rattling sound. She walked over to the overturned flashlight and shone it toward Harlan. He had a fistful of pills in his hand from one of the prescription bottles and he was just about to slap them into his mouth.
Jane lunged toward him. “Are you fucking out of your mind?!” she screamed at him, wrestling the pills from his palm.
“Let me do it, Jane!”
“Not on my watch!
Even though he had her by over one hundred and fifty pounds, Jane’s blistering attack cowed him and he released the pills onto the floor.
She hovered over his corpulent frame. “Don’t you ever do that again! You hear me?” Every fiber of her body shook as she stared at him.
He looked at her and his eyes softened. It was as if he bored inside her head and drew her terrified thoughts to the surface. “Okay, Jane,” he softly said. But something in his voice sounded different.