Glistening shards of a similar vessel were shattered in an outwardly showering pattern nearby. The same red fluid was pooled around it, as well as splattered several feet in an oblique circle. A healthy measure of it was already drying to deep rust on the dead woman’s face. Tented evidence markers littered the area.
“You okay, Row?” Ben asked in a low voice.
I didn’t reply with words. I simply looked back over my shoulder and gave him a shallow nod.
“We in your way?” he asked, looking past me and addressing himself to the crime scene photographer.
I hadn’t been paying attention, but I now noticed that the flashing from his strobe had stopped. I looked over at him and saw that he was standing off to one side of the room, observing me. He wore a flat expression, neither curiosity nor surprise evident in his features.
“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Just waiting.”
“Sorry. I can move,” I offered.
“You’re fine,” he told me. “I’m done with her.”
I glanced around the basement but remained quiet. I wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for, but I didn’t figure it was my place to ask.
I returned my gaze to the latest victim, wondering who she was when she was alive. I found myself in an odd quandary. My headache had subsided before we even arrived at the top of the street. I was certainly grateful for the relief, but at the same time I cursed the fact that I now seemed completely numbed to the ethereal. If this woman’s spirit was trying to talk to me, I couldn’t hear her. I was completely unaware.
I closed my eyes and took in an even breath. There seemed as though there should be some humor in the fact that I was mentally cursing the sudden lack of something I considered to be a curse in and of itself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it.
I opened my eyes and turned away from the woman. Several feet across the room, against the back wall of the basement, the second body was resting. He was nondescript, though somewhat effeminate in appearance. His skin was almost as pale as that of his drained victim.
He was in a slouched sitting position, partially propped up and appearing almost as if he had simply sat down on the floor right where he had been standing and fallen back. The obvious evidence to the contrary was the dark, wet stain on his chest and the two large blood spray patterns on the wall just above his head. Their relative positions told me they would be right at chest level if the man had been standing.
I took notice of the fact that his arms lay relaxed at his sides, hands empty. Sergeant Madden’s answer to Ben’s query about a weapon rolled through my mind, and I now considered it in a different light. I didn’t see anything nearby that would qualify. Nor were there any of the evidence markers that were prevalent in other parts of the room.
I kept my gaze leveled on the dead man for a moment, looking into eyes that were staring out of darkly rimmed sockets. A trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth, and I had to wonder if it was his or the woman’s. Although his face was slack, there seemed to be a surprised look in his sunken eyes. But the perceived expression was all I had to work with. Even where he was concerned I could feel nothing.
No malevolence.
No insanity.
Nothing.
As we stood there I heard the sound of footsteps above us, creaking and thudding purposefully across the floor. A few seconds later they grew louder as they started down the stairs. Soon afterward, a uniformed officer stepped off at the bottom and gave Ben a nod.
“You Detective Storm?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Ben answered.
The officer regarded him for a moment. “We just finished talking to Captain Albright,” he said then raised an eyebrow and nodded toward Felicity and me. “Lieutenant Penczak said you’d probably want to clear your consultants out now.”
Ben gave him a shallow nod in return as something secretive passed between them in the silent gesture. Turning to me he asked, “You done, white man?”
In a slow turn, I surveyed the horror one last time. There was nothing left to see, and for some reason, nothing left to feel. I came back around to face him and gave my own curt nod. “Yeah… I’ve seen enough.”
“Thanks,” Ben told the uniformed cop as we walked toward the stairs.
“All good,” he replied.
We started up the rickety wooden staircase, and a quick flash caught the corner of my eye. I assumed that the tech was snapping pictures once again and that it was simply his strobe that grabbed my attention, but out of pure reflex I still paused and turned my head in that direction.
“Keep movin’, Row,” Ben urged, giving me a light push in the middle of my back.
I continued up the steps, but before the upper wall obscured my vision, I caught a second glint of light through the railings. The cop was now squatting next to the body of the dead man, and I was almost certain I saw what appeared to be a large butcher knife clutched in a cold, once empty hand.
As we topped the stairs, I distinctly heard the uniformed officer say, “Okay. You can take pictures over here now.”
CHAPTER 33:
I stood in the front yard of the house, looking up into the sky with a blank stare. Cops and crime scene technicians were still moving in and out of the front door behind me, but I paid them no heed. I was well out of their way, and my attentions were focused elsewhere at the moment.
Felicity was snuggled against me, one arm slipped beneath the folds of my coat to wrap around my back and the other bent upward to hold my hand where I had my own arm draped around her shoulders. I could feel her warm breath against my neck whenever she would exhale. A sharp chill would fall in behind it whenever she would turn her own face upward to stare with me.
“And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood…” I whispered.
“Revelations?” Felicity whispered the question.
“Chapter six, verse twelve,” I replied. “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake… And the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood…”
“I suppose it’s ironic, isn’t it then?”
“That’s one word for it,” I replied. “Not the one I had in mind though.”
“They’re just stories, Rowan,” she said. “You of all people know that. You can even quote them better than most Christians. The Bible is a book of allegorical prose. It’s filled with misunderstood and misinterpreted metaphors and similes from a different age.”
“I know,” I sighed. “But everything has an element of truth to it somewhere… And sometimes…with everything I’ve seen…I just… Well, I just have to wonder if some prophecies are universal… If perhaps we’re driving ourselves headlong into the darkened abyss of our own insanity. Why else would so many people do the horrible things they do?”
“Don’t overanalyze,” she offered. “Just try to forget about it. This is over. You’ve earned a rest.”
I gave my head a slow shake. “Something tells me it isn’t.”
“Why?”
I let out a heavy sigh and pulled her closer as I struggled to find the words to express what I was feeling. “This wasn’t right… I mean, the way it all happened. This killer escalated far too quickly. From a victim who disappeared several months ago, to a sudden spree.”
“I’m sure the serial killer experts have an explanation for that.”
“You’re right, they probably do. But something still feels very wrong about it to me… And, that isn’t the only thing. Ben made a valid point back at the rest area. I just handed him an address for the killer, and here we are. We all know that isn’t how it happens. Everything usually comes to me in cryptic messages I have to decipher. That’s how communication across the veil works. It’s like a language barrier.”
“Maybe you’re just learning the language then,” she replied.
