No Media. Even then it struck me as weird. Newspapers, TV, youname it, they run scanners on the cop frequencies, they chase calls. Someonehad clamped a tight lid on this already. Anyway, I heaved my bulk out of thecar, locked it, and hiked back to the rowhouse with two shiny Mercedes outfront.
A couple of faces looked out of windows as I went, a couple ofcurtains swung closed, but no crowd stood out on the sidewalk buzzingsuspicions and rumors back and forth. Nobody had strung crime scene tape infront of the place or posted a cop to guard the landing at the stoop. Very strange.I wondered what other secrets andgray-areas hid behind those curtains, that people didn’t want to be seen andmaybe photographed. You get to thinking that way after a few years as a cop.
The uniformed cop waited insidethe door, opened it when I climbed the steps. I showed him my badge andback-dated ID, and he compared it against a clipboard list. Like maybe this wasa society ball and I needed an engraved invitation? But Cash appeared behindhis shoulder and waved him off.
I lifted an eyebrow at her. “What’s up?”
“More a question of what’s down. Or who.”
I scanned the length of the block, looking at the little menand women and cameras who weren’t there. Plenty of times I’d wished they’d goaway, but. . . . “Where are the vultures?”
Cash looked like she’d bitten a lemon pickled in alum forgreater pucker-factor. “Governor has already been on the Colonel’s ass aboutthis. Three times. And the mayor has been leaning on the city guys. We will keep things quiet. Or we will findother employment.”
Anyway, she showed me into the front hall, pointed to theritual box of booties and gloves, and I performed my part. Her gesture carriedthence into the parlor next to it, full of polished woodwork and lush curtainsand expensive antiques. This place seemed to be one of the upscale crowd. Iknew three of the five faces there — Mac from the state force, Pendleton fromthe city, Father Joseph. All of us fat guys, hefty concentrated load, and Istarted to wonder about the floor stringers in an old place like this.
Father Joseph didn’t really fit a crime scene. A Jesuit, I’dmet him a few times here and there, didn’t know his real rank or title orwhatever the Church used for him, but what he did was, he and his brethrenhelped the Church decide what magic threatened your immortal soul and whatcould pass for moral. Which meant he had to be a wizard himself, to judge. Andbecause of that he knew the whys and hows and wherefores of some pretty nastystuff, to know it should be banned. I don’t know where he found his centeredcalm with all that, but he always kept it. I envied him.
Cash introduced me to the other two — a new state wizard,Jacobs, I’d never met, and Rabbi Meyers, a Jew who advised other rabbis on thesame basis as Father Joseph, a Talmudic scholar with a specialty in Kabala andgolems and such. The rabbi, too, gave off an aura of calm strength that I mighthope to reach with a hundred years ofmeditation and enlightenment.
Cash seemed to be pulling in as broad a range of wizards asshe could find. I didn’t like the look of that.
As confirmation, she turned to me and added, “I even calledBycheck. Didn’t answer his phone.”
Then she turned back to the assembled multitude. “Gentlemen,some ground rules. The files on this case will be sealed until we get a suspectin custody. Which I doubt will ever happen. That’s all files, the ME reports and the evidence from crime sceneforensics and whatever you give me. I would like each of you to assess thecrime scene silently, not discuss it with each other or anyone else, and giveme a personal written report of what you saw and felt. No copies. None.”
She paused andlooked each of us in the eyes. “Does anyone have a problem with this?”
We all nodded that we, each and severally as the lawyers mightput it, agreed. Then Cash gathered us up and led us to the second floor. Wherewe filed into a large bedroom, Cash kept us back near the door, and we found ascene I’ll be a long time forgetting. If I ever do.
Two men. Two corpses. Naked. One hung from a rough woodencross, bastard blasphemous crucifix. At first I thought he’d actually beennailed to the thing but then I saw he was holding the spikes with each hand andstanding on a block of wood. Like I said, a corpse, or we wouldn’t have beenthere. He was frozen in place by magic. And kneeling in front of him, the otherman performed oral sex. Also a corpse, also rigid and held by the same magic.
I concentrated on my breathing. I’m not particularlyreligious, but the scene gut-punched me.
It took me a while to start checking off details — theelectric wires leading to each spike on the cross, the wire to a plate underthe kneeling corpse completing a circuit with his lips to the still-rigid penisin front of him. Must have been quite a kick, quite a kink. When I could tearmy eyes away from that, I noticed a glass-topped table with the classicunidentified white powder drawn out into several lines, a couple of straws, arazor blade. Cocaine party.
Then my cop-brain listed other things, avoiding the centralscene — clothes, neatly folded, on separate chairs. Bed, rumpled, obviouslyused. Assorted sex toys, including some sado-masochistic bondage stuff, ariding crop and sets of handcuffs and ball gag.
I took that in, added it up, and forced my attention back tothe man playing Christ on the Cross. Face distorted, grimacing either from theelectric jolt or orgasm or both at the time of death, but I knew him anyway.
The public called him “Reverend Fred,” a rising star in thetelevangelist world. Fundamentalist sort, hellfire and brimstone everlasting onthe abominations of the modern city and our decadent times. It looked
