“Forget it,” I told him sincerely. “You didn’t have any choice. I know I sounded like a lunatic when I called you…”
“Yeah, but you’re my friend,” he protested. “And after everything that’s happened… Well, I shouldn’t have doubted you.”
“Really, Ben. It’s okay. I would have done the same thing if I were in your position. Let’s just figure out who it is, so we can stop him.”
“How did you know anyway?”
“Like you said. I just ain’t natural.” I smiled.
He nodded and returned the smile, and I knew that the matter was settled.
I turned back to the neatly arranged sacrifice. The earlier thought was clawing its way forward from the back of my head, tearing painfully at my brain. I knew for certain that the answer was right in front of me. I just didn’t know why I couldn’t see it.
Her arms were at her sides, palms upward-an act of supplication. Her hair was fanned out like a diaphanous halo floating around her head. The flaying was precise and clean.
Deckert and Ben were still talking behind me, discussing the question of whether or not this event actually did clear R.J. of the crimes. I pressed myself to tune them out and listen only to the rhythmic patterns of my measured breathing. I wasn’t about to try channeling this young woman, especially without Felicity here to anchor me on this plane. I simply wanted to read the room with something other than my eyes. I wanted to know what the killer was up to. What he was trying to accomplish.
I stretched my senses outward, closed my eyes, and concentrated on the sound of my own heart. I raked my senses through the ethereal atmosphere only I could see. I let every molecule of residual energy run through my otherworldly fingers like ghostly grains of sand. To be inspected. Scrutinized. Discarded.
Nothing.
I could feel nothing but darkness and death. It was just like the other crime scenes. It was as if no ritual or ceremony had ever been performed in this room.
“ This is just the dress rehearsal,” a child’s tiny voice echoes in my brain.
“This is just a dress rehearsal,” I whispered aloud as my eyes opened wide.
“What was that, Mister Gant?” Doctor Sanders looked up from her work.
“A dress rehearsal.” I made the comment louder now as the thought scratched its way up through my brain to reside clearly and positively in the front. “Look at the way she’s arranged.” Ben and Deckert had broken off their conversation to listen to me. “Her hair. Her hands, palms upward in supplication or offering. The detail of the flaying. The opium in the incense.” By now I had moved around the bed motioning to each of the points I had mentioned. “The whole ritual has gotten more complicated each time. The first three were for practice, and this one was the final dress rehearsal.”
“Dress rehearsal for what?” Ben appealed.
“For the invocation,” I answered quickly. “For the actual ceremony.”
“No offense, but so what?” Deckert interjected.
“So it’s something that has bothered me ever since the second murder, but I could never really put my finger on it.” I continued, “I’ve never felt any residual energy from the crime scenes. I know that means nothing to you, but to me it’s important. I’ve just been assuming that I was missing something, and now I’m sure that I was.”
“I still don’t follow.”
“The refinement in the ceremony with each murder. This has all been one big rehearsal for the final ceremony. This was the dress rehearsal. The next time it’s going to be for real.”
“That still doesn’t tell us anything,” Deckert returned. “It just means that the asshole is going to kill again. That is, unless you’re trying to tell us you actually believe he’s going to summon up a demon or something.”
“That’s entirely beside the point,” I returned. “I’d rather he never get a chance to even try. All of this DOES mean something though. It tells us WHEN, and in a certain respect, WHO he’s going to kill next. That’s what I’ve been missing.”
“How’s that?”
“Based on some of the things I dug up when I researched ritual sacrifices.” I continued, “If I’m on the same page he is, and I’m pretty sure I am, he’ll plan to perform the ritual on a full moon.”
“Anyone got a calendar?” Ben called out. “When is the next full moon?”
“This Friday,” I told them before anyone else could respond.
“Okay, so that’s the when.” Ben looked at me expectantly. “What about the who?”
I bit back a rush of bile in my throat at the thought, then quietly uttered the answer, “He’ll believe he needs a virgin.”
“A virgin?” Deckert posed, “How the hell is he going to know if the victim is a virgin?”
“A kid,” Ben answered him flatly, still holding my gaze.
“A kid?!” Deckert exclaimed. “Holy fucking shit, you can’t be serious!”
“Tell me I misunderstood, Rowan,” Ben appealed, eyes still fixed on mine. “Please.”
I couldn’t.
I just looked away.
There was a note waiting for me when Ben dropped me back at home later that morning. Felicity had already left for a photo shoot she had scheduled, and she was letting me know that she would be home later in the afternoon. I showered and changed clothes while the coffeepot performed its prescribed duty. After grabbing a cup and filling a thermal carafe with the resulting brew, I settled in at my desk upstairs.
I hoped that doing some work would take my mind off the events of the past days and allow me at least some small period of rest. Much to my chagrin, I found the reason behind why the previous week had been so grueling. I was entirely caught up. No unanswered support calls. No clients needing upgrades or modifications. I had nothing to do.
I was just preparing to call it quits when I noticed the yellow pickup slip in my box. It had been lying there since Saturday afternoon, completely forgotten. The odds were that the package was a software backup from a client needing a minor modification or a database recovery; either of which would only amount to an hour or so worth of work. In any event, it was better than nothing, so I snatched up the canary ticket and made the short drive to the post office and back.
As expected, the small package contained a tape cartridge full of data. The included trouble sheet indicated that the database was corrupt and needed to be recovered, which was one of the contract services I provided to my clients. I quickly scanned over the trouble sheet to see if there was any more information and noted that this particular client was located in Seattle, Washington. I was just preparing to slip the cartridge into my computer’s tape drive when the hair rose on the back of my neck.
“ It always rains here,” Ariel’s voice rings through my head. “It’s mostly just a misty rain.”
Rain.
Constant misty rain.
Seattle, Washington.
The second of my nightmares suddenly made sense as the electrochemical reaction within my brain generated the connection. It almost always rained in Seattle. I remembered that from a magazine photo layout Felicity had done about the Seattle Bumbershoot Festival. A festival to celebrate the rain. Work was once again forgotten as I seized the phone and stabbed out Ben’s cellular number on the keypad.
His voice came after the second ring, “Hello?”
“Ben, it’s Rowan.”
“Hey,” he replied, “I was just gonna call you. You’ll be happy to know that the D.A. decided to hold off on filin’ charges against R.J. pendin’ further investigation.”
“That’s great,” I answered quickly, “but that’s not why I called.”
“What’s up?”
“I know I’m going to sound crazy again,” I started. “But I’m calling about another vision I had.”
“When? Just now?” he asked.
“No, a couple of nights ago,” I continued. “I’ve been having them almost every night since I got involved in
