“Okay,” I surrendered. “But I won’t guarantee that I’ll use it.”

“Trust me, Kemosabe. I hope like hell ya’ don’t ever have to make that decision. If I can help it, ya’ won’t.”

In the resulting quiet my friend pulled a pair of stubby Chateaus out of his pocket and offered one to me. He proceeded to slip his cigar out of its cellophane wrapper, and with a quick snip he trimmed the end. Borrowing his guillotine, I followed suit.

After lighting the tight roll of tobacco and giving the glowing tip a cursory inspection, he tucked it in the corner of his mouth and puffed.

“So fill me in,” he said between clenched teeth. “What’s the scoop with Rev. 21:8?”

“Book of Revelation, chapter twenty-one, verse eight,” I told him as I finished igniting my own smoke. “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers,” I stressed the word sorcerers, “and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”

“Second death?”

“The proverbial afterlife, Ben. I think maybe since he couldn’t kill me tonight, he just wanted to make sure I know that I’m going to burn in hell.”

*****

Austin was supposed to be leaving to return to Ireland the next morning and had reluctantly departed our home somewhere around one a.m.; but only after we had spent a solid hour convincing him there was nothing he could do. We still weren’t sure whether or not he was going to cancel his flight.

Neither Felicity nor I had come down from our adrenalin highs, so after a fitful try at sleep we elected to sit up with Ben.

It was 4:30 in the morning, and the deep fold of darkness had yet to lighten when he and Felicity came out the back door in search of me. My friend had been maintaining his caffeine buzz with one cup of java after another, and I was supposed to be brewing a fresh pot of the fuel. Unfortunately, somewhere in that process, time had suddenly segmented itself and fallen away from my reality. A void now occupied the space in my mind between then and now. I was barely conscious of standing coatless in the cold air, shivering as it chilled me through.

“Rowan, honey, what are you doing out here? What’s wrong?” My wife’s concerned voice was the first to meet my ears.

“Dammit, white man,” Ben’s words followed close behind. “You scared the hell outta us.”

Their voices prodded me from my catatonia, and I broke my locked gaze from the inscription gracing my garage door. As their thick words formed coherence in my sluggish brain, I slowly turned to them.

“What’re ya’ doin’ out here by yourself?” my friend pressed.

“I… I don’t know,” I stammered.

Felicity let out a sudden gasp then gently grabbed my hand and pulled my arm farther into the light.

“Awwww, Jeez! What the hell is this?” my friend exclaimed as the reason for her surprise came into full view.

I looked down at my arm.

Scattered randomly across the surface of my flesh were a half dozen small welts, each one surrounding a puckering lesion. Thin trickles of blood still wept from the puncture wounds to streak my skin. The deep pricking sensation that had been masked by my earlier blankness returned with a sharp, biting rhythm. In my mind there could only be one meaning for this torture.

“I think he might have moved to the next name on the list” was all I said.

It was late afternoon before the Major Case Squad managed to determine for an absolute certainty that Amanda Marie Stark was missing.

CHAPTER 23

Nothing.

There had not been a public or traceable move from the killer for almost seven days. A mere dwindling handful of sixty-minute revolutions around the clock face were all that stood in the way of officially making it an entire week since the suspected kidnapping of Amanda Stark.

Each day had slid quietly and uneventfully into the next. Each one completely devoid of anything to set it apart from another except for the random appearance and disappearance of various lacerations on my arm. I didn’t even want to imagine what was happening to the young woman who was on the receiving end of the tortures the wounds were mimicking. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep from it.

The Major Case Squad frantically chased down every lead-even the insignificant ones-and as feared they had all fallen colder than the winter’s chill. The miniscule amount of evidence that had been collected endowed us with no more information than we already possessed. There were no witnesses to be found. No new clues brought forth into the light of the day.

The daunting concrete wall of a dead end alleyway was staring us squarely in the face, and it showed no remorse.

If there was anything positive to be said, it was that the nothing we faced included that there had been no more killings. Unfortunately, that one positive was tainted with an overshadowing negative. We all knew beyond any doubt that another murder was looming close, and Amanda Stark would be the victim. Even worse, there was every indication that there was nothing we could do to stop it from happening unless something suddenly led us to the killer’s doorstep; and that was something that seemed less probable with every moment that passed. The unspeakable horror that no one wished to voice was simply the fact that it would most likely be the exact catalyst it was going to take to resurrect this case.

A sixth violent murder was the other shoe we all abhorred but knew would strike the floor no matter what we did. Until then, the investigation was all but dead.

So, expectantly, we waited.

As we approached the final hours of the week, within each of us the mainspring of tension was twisted tightly in upon itself. With the coil of stress hovering a mere quarter-turn from the point where that clockwork spring would violently release, the internal mechanisms of our psyche’s kicked into high gear. In defense of our own individual sanities, we all became mindless automatons. Each moment was spent awaiting the heavy soled thud that would return us to a horrific reality and with any luck just might provide us with a tangible lead.

With the investigation at a standstill, a frighteningly eerie apathy had epoxied itself to the city of Saint Louis. While the search for this serial killer officially remained a priority, bureaucrats were in control of the purse strings and decisions made behind closed doors routed tax dollars to projects viewed as more important by those in power. Overtime for the members of the MCS became a thing of the past, and officers were shifted and shuffled to meet the demands of other cases. Suddenly, the round-the-clock protections originally provided for those believed to be on the killer’s list became little more than semi-frequent drive-by’s courtesy of the local police departments.

Adding insult to injury, Detective Deckert was forced to reluctantly absent himself to fill in for a vacationing colleague with the county homicide division. Shortly thereafter the FBI recalled Special Agent Mandalay, assigning her to tend other duties deemed more critical in light of the stalled manhunt. While there was still federal involvement, it was relegated to the background. Ben continued to head up what was left of the effort, even with the greatly reduced staff.

And then there was me.

While I was still listed as a consultant for the MCS, there was very little for me to consult about. With each cut or contusion that inexplicably appeared on my arm, I became a barometer by which we knew, or at least suspected, that Amanda Stark was still among the living. Beyond that, I was relegated to playing the role of potential victim-watched over day and night by Ben and off duty officers who owed him for one reason or another.

The “Ghoul Squad” was no more.

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