Blood Angel

by Bernard Schaffer

“Nobody’s came or went since Bender sent us down here,” the first detective said.

  Carrie turned in her seat and looked down the road. “Have you seen anyone else?”

  “Like who?”

  Carrie put her car in park and got out. She stood in the road, shading her eyes from the sun overhead. She peered at Tucker Pennington’s house, then turned and searched the woods on the opposite side of the road behind her. “Rein?” she called out. “Are you here?”

  “Who the hell’s she yelling at?” the second detective asked.

  “I have no idea.” They came out of their car and stood on the street next to her.

  “You guys didn’t see anyone? A tall guy, probably looks homeless? Used to be a detective for the county?”

  “Does he live in the woods?”

  “No,” Carrie said. “At least I don’t think so. Maybe. Did you see anyone or not?”

  “We didn’t see shit.”

  “Rein!” Carrie shouted. “I need to talk to you! It’s important!”

  A branch snapped above their heads, and all of them turned their heads upward. High in the reaches of an old oak tree, branches shook and leaves fell to the ground as something worked its way down toward them.

  Jacob Rein, dressed in black, his face and neck and arms covered in dirt, emerged from the woods. There were pieces of leaves stuck in his beard and he was plucking prickly burrs from his shirt.

  “This had better be good,” Rein said. “I’ve been sitting up in that tree since these two idiots showed up and ruined my surveillance.”

  “Hey!” the first detective said. “We didn’t ask to get sent out here. We were perfectly fine back at the murder scene.”

  “What murder?” Rein asked.

  “I need you to get in my car,” Carrie said, trying to lead Rein away from them by the arm.

  He pulled away from her. “What murder?”

  * * *

  Rein watched the landscape rush past through the window as Carrie drove. “I let him get past me. He must know a back way. I looked at satellite photos of the house and didn’t see anything, so I thought. So stupid.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Carrie said. “That’s a huge property. For all we know they’ve got underground tunnels or something.”

  “I should have been there, with her.”

  Carrie didn’t say anything.

  “I was supposed to be. My son invited me out last night to celebrate and I knew she was going to be there, but instead, I was in those goddamn woods wasting my time. If I’d gone, this wouldn’t have happened.”

  I guess I didn’t get the invite, Carrie thought. It didn’t matter, she told herself. “Listen, Rein, before we get there, I have to warn you. It’s a bad scene. However, it looks like she was killed first thing. Her eyes are still closed, like she was sleeping when it happened. I don’t think she suffered. It’s not much, I know, but it’s something.”

  “You’re right,” Rein said. “It’s not much.”

  * * *

  Carrie raised the crime scene tape and waved for Rein to hurry up and come on. All of the cops and detectives there watched as he ducked under the tape. Rein kept his head low, feeling their stares crawling all over him like insects. “They probably think you’re bringing me here for questioning,” he said.

  “Forget them,” Carrie said.

  Harv Bender was standing by the front door, waiting for the team of crime scene unit investigators to come back downstairs. “We’re all done with photographs and measurements, Chief,” the lead tech said. “We didn’t find any weapons.”

  “I’ll let the coroner know you’re ready,” Bender said.

  Carrie hurried toward him. “Chief. I’m back. We still have time to go up and take a look before the coroner, right?”

  Bender turned. He scowled when he saw Rein. “I didn’t think you’d make it.”

  “Well, we did,” Carrie said.

  Bender put his hands on his hips. “I hear you knew this woman?”

  “She was a friend.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. No one deserves what happened to her. You going to help us catch this bastard?”

  “If I can.”

  “You know you’re not an employee of the county, right? I just need to make sure it’s absolutely crystal clear. You’re not law enforcement. You’re some kind of, what did you call it, Carrie? Consultant. For this case only. This one time only. Understood?”

  “I just want to help,” Rein said. “I don’t care what you call me.”

  “Well go ahead in there, then,” Bender said, stepping out of Rein’s way. “Look, everybody, it’s the world’s first consulting detective.”

  “Not exactly,” Rein said. He stopped at the entrance to the house and stared at the blood smeared across the frame.

  “Sign of the lamb, from Passover,” Carrie said, coming up beside him. “Right?”

  “So it appears.”

  They entered the house and he started up the stairs before her. “Rein,” she said, and grabbed him by the arm. “I’m serious. It’s bad up there, what he did to her.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “It’s just that you and her were friends and I’m just trying to prepare you.”

  “I’m prepared.” He went up the stairs and stopped when he reached the hallway on the second floor. Carrie knew he could see Linda’s body from there. The door was wide open. Her splayed-open, naked back was turned toward him. Rein didn’t move.

  “You don’t have to go in there, Jacob.” She put her hand on his back. Letting him feel human contact. “Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. We can go. No one would expect you to do this.”

  “She would.” He took her flashlight and went into the bedroom.

  Carrie let him go in by himself at first, not wanting to be in his way, and not wanting to invade his privacy as he looked at the remains of a woman he’d once loved. Had he loved her? Carrie wasn’t sure. Linda had loved him. That much was obvious. Carrie could see the beam of the flashlight inside the room, scanning the walls in increments, until finally it fell on the center of the room where Linda’s body sat. The flashlight flicked off. She heard his breathing catch. A sharp inhalation of air and the knotted struggle of him trying to steady himself.

  The light came back on. It kept moving. “Carrie, come in here,” he said.

  She went in. Whatever effect seeing Linda’s body had on Rein, he’d locked it in a basement far at the bottom of his mind. He aimed the flashlight at the symbols and phrases spray-painted on the walls. “What are these?”

  “That’s your basic satanic and witchcraft iconography. Upside down crucifixes and inverted pentagrams and whatnot. This is all Marilyn Manson one-o-one.”

  He shined the light at Linda Shelley’s body. “And what can you tell me about this?”

  “She’s obviously positioned in the way that he wants us to find her. “‘Behold, A Blood Angel.,’ ” She read the words painted on the wall above her. “He’s turned her into some kind of Satanic angel. Probably part of an elaborate ritual he concocted in the asylum. Sacrificing her to Lucifer, I guess. Or summoning him. Creepy little asshole.”

  “Interesting,” Rein said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Really?”

  “Inaccurate, but still, an impressive attempt.” He aimed the flashlight at the symbols. “You’re right about six-six-six and the references to The Beast. That’s all basic Satanism. Look at this symbol on the far left, though. That’s a unicursal hexagram. Do you see what’s at the center?”

  “The five-petaled clover thing?”

  “It’s specific to Aleister Crowley’s Mark of Thelema. Crowley was an occultist in the early 1900s, and Thelema was the philosophy he founded.”

  “Was he a Satanist?”

  “No.” Rein pointed at the next symbol, the circle with the elaborate lower-cased h and the dots. “That second one is the mark of Fraternitas Saturni. An old European order of magicians who worship the planet Saturn.”
<
br />   “They sound like they’d throw kickass parties.”

  “Technically, they’re Satanists, but they do sex ritual magic, not blood sacrifices.” Rein pointed at the last symbol, the large one with the goat’s head in the middle and the letters written above it. “T-O-L,” he said. “Temple of Lucifer.”

  “Finally, some real devil worshippers,” Carrie said.

  “Not exactly. They’re a satirical group dedicated to separation of church and state. Whenever someone wants to hang The Ten Commandments on government property, they show up and demand a statue of the devil be put there as well. When a public high school hands out Christian literature, they show up and start handing out pamphlets for Satanism.”

  “So why are these symbols here?” Carrie asked. “What do they mean to Pennington that he would use them?”

  “I’m not sure. Tucker was never a Satanist, as far as I could tell. He was more inventive than that.” Rein turned the light against Linda’s back, reinspecting her injuries and rereading the phrase written above her. “Blood Angel,” he whispered. “None of this makes sense.”

  “The ribs are supposed to be her wings,” Carrie explained. “See?”

  “Obviously I can see it. Except this is not a Blood Angel. It’s a Blood Eagle. An old method of torture the Vikings used. Honor was everything to the Vikings. When a warrior lost his honor, the Vikings would cut his back open, rip out his ribs one by one and splay them backward to resemble the wings of a bird. The prisoners who didn’t scream or break down during the ordeal were said to be allowed admittance into Valhalla. There is no such thing as a Blood Angel. It doesn’t exist.”

  “It does now.”

  “Well, it’s wrong.”

  “Wrong to who? To you and me? You’re fucking a-right it’s wrong,” Carrie said. “But the only person it has to make sense to is the killer, right? Isn’t that what you always told me? Maybe he saw these symbols in some book and read about your stupid Blood Bird and somewhere in his mixed-up brain it all got swirled around into something he liked.”

  Rein snapped the flashlight off. “The blood on the front of the door is from Passover.”

  “I told you that when we came in.”

  “That is supposed to make death pass by. Not invite it in.”

  She maneuvered him out of the room and shut the door behind them. She was tired of staring at the horror of Linda’s body. It was even worse that she’d begun feeling desensitized to it. She wanted to be outside on the front lawn and in the fresh air. “Well, if you are turning crucifixes upside down and worshiping the devil instead of God, maybe it means something different. Isn’t everything backward with those people? Black Mass. Black Sabbath. Black Led Zeppelin. I don’t know. Maybe this is Black Passover.”

  “Maybe,” Rein conceded. “All of it just feels very derivative. Too many unrelated things thrown together. Some kind of effort to confuse us. Tucker was extremely well-organized when I arrested him before. It all came out of his own twisted ideas. He didn’t borrow anything from anywhere else, let alone use it incorrectly.”

  “He also spent fifteen years in an asylum where they medicate the shit out of you. Maybe he read about all this stuff at some point and now he’s making it all his own.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Rein conceded. He wiped sweat from his brow and took a deep breath. “You are absolutely correct. The only person any of this ever has to make sense to is the killer. I must be slipping, trying to force my own point of view into this. That, or I’m just not cut out for this anymore.”

  She put her hand on his back. “You all right?”

  “No. No, I don’t think so. She was a good friend at a time when I didn’t have any other friends. I should have told her. But I never could.”

  “She knew,” Carrie said.

  “Let’s go talk to Tucker,” he said.

  12

  Carrie rolled down the driver’s side window to let some fresh air in and feel the warmth of the sun on her arm and neck. “You certainly knew a lot about Satanists, back there.”

  “The Night Stalker was the first serial killer I studied, back in the mid-eighties. He was a Satanist. I learned what I could.”

  “How old were you?”

  Rein looked up at the car’s ceiling, counting. “I went to California in eighty-four, and he was arrested a year later, so, sixteen?”

  “You lived in California? I never knew that. What made you go out there?”

  “I was studying the Night Stalker.”

  The two detectives were still parked on the street in front of Pennington’s house. Carrie pulled up alongside them and rolled down her window. “Did anyone come out of the house yet?”

  “Nope.”

  “We’re going down there to talk to them. Do you guys want to come with us? We could use a hand.”

  “Chief said to stay put and let him know if anyone leaves the house. Nobody left the house yet,” the first detective said.

  “I get that, but we’re going down there to talk to them instead.”

  “Chief said to stay put.”

  Carrie rolled up the window and turned the car around to head down the driveway. She drove toward the house and pulled around the fountain and parked in front of the house’s entrance. The entrance was a set of double front doors made of richly stained wood and ornate brass handles. The doors parted and Thad Pennington came out of the house and stood on the porch with his arms folded, watching as they got out of the car.

  “Detective Santero,” Thad said. “We’ve been expecting you.”

  Carrie closed the driver’s side door. “Really, why is that?”

  Thad pointed down the driveway. “There’s been two detectives in an unmarked car in front of our house all morning. I assumed someone would be coming to speak with us. Is anything the matter?”

  “No, not at all,” Carrie said. “The judge forgot to get some information from you yesterday and asked me to stop by.”

  “I see,” Thad said. “So you won’t mind if I contact my attorney?”

  “Sure, if you want. Or, if you wanted to save time, I could just ask you my questions, and if there’s any you aren’t comfortable with, you can call him on the phone.”

  Thad raised an eyebrow at that. “I suppose.”

  A man came through the doors behind Thad. It was the priest from the courthouse. He was dressed in a collared shirt and black pants. He came to Thad’s side and said good morning to them.

  “Have you met Father Ihan?” Thad asked.

  “You preach at Saint Margaret of Antioch, right?” Carrie went up the steps and extended her hand. “I’ve seen you there a few times.”

  He squinted at her and smiled. “You are a member of my church?”

  “I take my dad sometimes. He likes to go more now that he’s getting older.”

  “That’s very kind of you. Bless you, my child.”

  “So do you mind if we go in?” Carrie asked.

  “You may come in,” Thad said. His eyes fixed on Rein. “But not him. My son is in spiritual recovery and has no need to see this man ever again.”

  Rein stepped backward off the steps and stood in the driveway. “I’ll wait here.”

  As the others turned to go inside, Father Ihan came down the steps. “I’ll wait with you. If you don’t mind. I could use some fresh air.”

  Thad let Carrie inside and closed the door.

  The priest stretched his arms out and took a deep breath. He held his hand over his eyes and looked up at the thick white clouds above. “When I was a boy, I used to look at the sky on days like this, and I would sometimes see sunlight pouring through one of the clouds. I’d think that must be the doorway to heaven. That all God’s angels fly up through the sky and go through that doorway into paradise. I still sometimes think that, if I am honest.”

  Rein leaned back against Carrie’s car with his arms folded. He picked at the rough edge of his thumbnail.

  The priest leaned against the car beside him. “During
my first year as a priest, I took a confession from a police officer. He told me that he was afraid of having to use his weapon in the line of duty. ‘Father, how can I be a good Christian if I am expected to kill?’ You know what I told him?”

  Rein bit at his thumbnail, trying to make it smooth.

  “I told him that in Romans 13:4, the Apostle Paul talked about that very thing. He said to be afraid of those appointed by God, for that man does not bear his sword in vain. He is the avenger who carries out God’s wrath on wicked. After that, the police officer never worried about being called to take a life in the performance of his duties again.”

  Rein spat the piece of nail out and said nothing.

  “You think that is untrue?”

  “Show me any police officer convinced he was appointed by God, I’ll show you someone capable of atrocity.”

  “Mr. Pennington tells me you were once a police officer. A detective.”

  “A long time ago,” Rein said.

  “I see,” Ihan said. “In the priesthood, we also have those who walk away from their vows. Of course, what you are never really goes away, does it? There are things that you learn in this life that cannot be unlearned and you carry them forever. Many times, I’ve wanted to quit.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  Ihan nodded at the door. “Because sometimes someone comes along who needs you. Someone you see great potential in, who, if you don’t help, will fail. It’s almost like you have failed and you know it, and you are doomed and you know it, but to let them fail would be a sin worse than that. Do you know what I mean?”

  Rein didn’t answer.

  “I know you don’t believe it, but young Tucker Pennington has great potential.”

  “That’s why I’m here. His potential.”

  The priest chuckled at that. “You are a good man, Mr. Rein. You have a sharp mind and a good heart, even if you are uncomfortable with me saying it. I like you.”

  “Thanks,” Rein said. “If it counts for anything, this is the friendliest conversation I’ve had with a man of the cloth in the past thirty years.”

  “You have not talked with many servants of God?”

  “I’ve talked with plenty. But they were all child molesters.”