“I think there's a pretty strong chance that's what been happening.”
She seemed strangely confident. “Oh? What makes you say that?”
She frowned. “I'm not really sure. I just have a feeling.”
Curran cocked an eyebrow. “A feeling?”
“Don’t make fun of me on this, Steve. I swear I’ll walk out that door if you do.”
Curran held up his right hand. “Promise.”
“Besides, there’s nothing weird about a feeling. Haven’t you ever had them before? Like a sense of premonition?”
“As much as I hate to admit it, I have.” He took a sip of his coffee and paused to wipe his mouth. “I’d graduated from Quantico and got shipped out to Montana. Lot of times, they do that with new agents. Get them acclimated at a less-busy field office. After a year or two there, they get bumped up to a busy office like LA or New York.”
“What happened in Montana?”
“One time, me and this other guy were working late. We’d had a rash of bank robberies across the state. Nothing too serious, but enough to get concerned about.” Curran took another sip. “So, the phone rings. Turns out some guy has a tip for us. It'd been happening a lot. A bank would get robbed, we'd ask for the public's help. Tips would come in and we'd go out following up on them. Got so we pretty much thought they were all dead-ends. Nothing ever panned out.
“But this one time, this one evening for some reason it felt different. I can’t describe it.”
“What did you do?”
“We drove out. This was in January. State was frozen. All sorts of howling wind. Chest-high snowdrifts. The kind of snow that comes at you sideways and manages to get itself down your collar, in your boots, everywhere. And it was cold. You know the kind of cold where your breath comes out in huff of steam and then freezes? This was worse.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold,” said Lauren.
“Yeah, it’s not the greatest sensation. Anyway, I made sure I took a vest along, one for me and one for my partner. Outside the house where these guys were supposed to be holing up, I put the armor on, the feeling was getting a lot stronger then. I told my partner to put his on, too.”
“Did he?”
Curran saw the scene again in his mind. The snow. The howl of wind. The purr of the car engine. Even the heat streaming out of the vents. “Uh uh. Said we'd be back at the office in no time and he didn't want to waste time slapping a bulky vest on. Said he thought it would turn out to be another bad tip. I tried to insist but he was adamant.
“So we made our approach. I took the back and he said he'd flush the front. I worked my way around back, trudging through the snow, getting all wet and uncomfortable. Really sucked being out in that weather.” He took a sip of the coffee trying to push out the memory of the cold. “I could hear my partner out front knocking on the door, identifying himself.”
“Did they come out?”
“They shot him through the front door with a single shotgun blast.”
Lauren didn’t say anything. She just sat there with wide eyes.
“Took him right off his feet and tossed him back down the steps. He bled out pretty fast, having the front of his chest cavity ripped open like that.”
“Did you get the guys?”
Curran looked away. “Two of them. Yeah.”
“Did they stand trial?”
“They never got that far.”
Curran watched Lauren stop breathing. After a minute of staring at her, she exhaled slowly. She said nothing.
“So,” continued Curran. “To answer your question, yes, I have felt a sense of premonition before and that was it. I somehow knew there was going to be trouble that day. Luckily, I listened to it. That could have just as easily been me taking that shotgun blast in the chest.”
Lauren finished her coffee. “Steve…I…I felt something earlier today when I was researching the Soul Eater.”
“Felt something? Like what?”
“A presence in the library with me while I was reading.”
“You mean like a ghost?”
“Possibly. But I don't think so. It felt different than a ghost.”
Curran eyed her. “You've felt ghosts before?”
“Yes.”
I’m not going to touch that one, thought Curran. “Okay. Tell me about it.”
“The library seemed to close in on me. But at the same time there was a breeze. It made my hair stand on end. It flipped the pages of the book I was reading until the chapter about Soul Eaters came up. Later on, it got incredibly cold in the room but I started sweating. I suddenly felt like someone was there with me.”
“Could it have been another person in the library with you?”
“I thought of that, too, but it wasn't. The only other person there was an old nun. And she was far too busy studying to have been it. But Steve…something else was in there with me.”
“You think it was this Soul Eater guy?”
Lauren shook her head. “I doubt it. I don’t think his power extends to invisibility. But something, some kind of presence, was in that room.”
“And you think it’s related?”
“I think so. I heard something that sounded like a voice.”
Curran stopped drinking his coffee. “Did you say a voice?”
“Yes.”
“What did it say?”
Lauren looked away. “Don’t think me foolish. But it sounded like it said ‘soon.’”
Curran’s heart jumped. Could it be that she heard the same thing Curran heard in his dreams? He frowned. Ridiculous. They were just dreams. Weren’t they?
“Steve?”
He snapped back to reality. “Yeah?”
“You look concerned. Everything all right?”
A buzzing on his left hip made him jump. The cell phone. He exhaled and grabbed it. “Yeah?”
What he heard didn’t make him feel any better. He hung up and got to his feet.
Lauren stood. “Steve, what is it?”
“We’ll have to continue this some other time.”
“Why?”
“They just found another body. Looks like the Soul Eater — whatever we end up calling him — has struck again.”
Chapter Eight
They’d found the body on the top part of Prince Street in Jamaica Plain. Woods bordered the street on both sides a short throw from Jamaica Pond. The leafless trees leaned in on the police cruisers, their bent and broken branches threatening to scratch the tops of heads and cars alike.
By the time Curran arrived, Kwon and his meat wagon were already there. Kwon didn’t look happy.
“Another one,” he said by way of introduction.
Curran lit a cigarette, inhaled and held it for a few seconds before letting the smoke stream out of his mouth. “Who’s the lucky stiff?”
