Revels Ending

by Vic Kerry

  “No, if I had, I wouldn’t have come by. Why?”

  She took a deep breath. Talking about the break-in made her very uncomfortable. Some of her classmates had asked. Retelling the tale scared her almost as much as when it happened.

  “Someone trashed my apartment last night. They left a note in blood or something that looked like blood. Ashe—Dr. Shrove—took a picture of it on his phone. He wanted you to look at it.”

  “Blood? What did it look like?”

  “Dr. Shrove said it looked like reverse Latin, but he wasn’t sure.”

  “Maybe I should go and see him. I think you might want to come as well,” Smalls said.

  “I need to finish copying his voice mails, but I can just ride my scooter over there,” she said.

  “Nonsense. Finish his messages, and you can ride with me. It’s too cold to ride a scooter across town, plus I don’t know where he lives,” Smalls said.

  Cybil hit the play button on the voice mail. “I don’t want to leave my scooter on campus again.”

  “I drive a truck. We can put it in the back.”

  “Okay. Just a few more.”

  She took up her pen as the next message played. The first part passed without her paying much attention. The person hadn’t left a name. She was about to delete it for being some nut who had read about Ashe in the newspaper.

  “Quit trying to figure out what happened to your fiancée. You’re going to stir up more trouble than you could ever imagine, not only for yourself, but everyone else you’re around as well,” the caller said. Cybil paused and gave it more attention. “You can already see how it’s affected the life of Ms. Fairchild, and she has very little to do with anything.”

  As the rest of the message played, her stomach sank. She looked at the priest. His jovial face turned granite hard. Lines of concern drew down from his mouth. As the message ended with the advice to leave the university, Smalls reached across the desk and silenced the voice mails.

  “Grab your stuff. We need to go,” he said.

  Cybil didn’t hesitate. She wanted to be far away from that office at that very moment.

  Ashe sat up and stretched his arms out. Everything looked fuzzy. He blinked hard and got the sleep out of his eyes. The doorbell rang again.

  “Hold on,” he yelled at the door, which was just feet from the couch.

  He walked to the door and opened it. Smalls and Cybil stood on the stoop. The wind blew in his face. The air raised goose bumps on his bare arms. He’d fallen asleep in his undershirt and khakis, which were unfastened. Cybil grinned and pointed that out using her eyes. He moved from the doorway to allow them in and to zip up. Smalls closed the door behind him.

  “What brings you two here?” Ashe asked.

  “A couple of things,” Smalls said. “I’ve got a feeling we probably need to be sitting when we discuss them.”

  “Sounds like I’m going to need a beer for this.” Ashe walked toward the kitchen. “You two want one?”

  Smalls shook his head no, but Cybil agreed. Ashe went into the kitchen, grabbed two bottles from the refrigerator and came back. He handed a bottle to Cybil as he sat by her on the couch. Smalls perched on the end of the recliner. Ashe twisted the top off the bottle and took a slug of it.

  “All right, I’m ready,” Ashe said.

  “I heard about your students. I’m very sorry,” Smalls said. “It seems that things just get worse and worse for you. Cybil also told me about the break-in at her apartment. She said that you took a picture of a message left in what looked like blood.”

  “It’s on my phone,” he said. “I can get it.”

  Ashe reached over the back of the couch. His phone lay on the table there. He probed around blindly until he found it. A few flicks of his thumb brought up the picture. He handed it to Smalls.

  The priest squinted and then put the phone close to his face. “It’s too small. I can’t make it out. Can you upload the picture onto a computer so it can be larger?”

  “Sure.” Ashe stood up and took his phone back from Smalls.

  He left his guests sitting in the living room and went into his bedroom. His computer lit up when he moved the mouse. He plugged his phone into a cord that stuck out from a USB jack. A window popped up with all the pictures on the phone. Ashe clicked on the one of the writing. It opened up in a separate box. He printed it off and brought it back to the priest.

  Smalls took the paper and stared at it. He didn’t say anything, but his lips moved pronouncing each syllable silently. After he was done, he shook his head.

  “We’re dealing with a sick individual here,” he said.

  “What did it say?” Cybil asked.

  “It warns Ashe to back off trying to find out what happened to Marianne,” Smalls said.

  “Just like the voice mail,” Cybil said.

  Ashe looked from Smalls to Cybil. “What voice mail?”

  “That was another thing that we needed to discuss,” Smalls said.

  “I was checking your voice mail like you asked me to. Father Smalls came in while I was doing so, that’s how he knows about this. So, the last message I listened to was from a man that said you should quit trying to figure out what happened to Marianne. Then he said that other bad things would happen.”

  She stopped talking. Ashe could tell that she was upset. He took her hand. This didn’t seem to help, because she remained silent. It didn’t make him feel any better either.

  “The message said that others around you would get hurt if you didn’t, and then it mentioned the break-in at the apartment,” Smalls said.

  “What did the guy sound like?” Ashe asked. “Did he sound familiar?”

  “He almost sounded like one of those reader programs on a computer,” Cybil said. “The voice was very artificial, almost mechanical.”

  “They probably used one of those programs,” Smalls said. “It would help to keep his identity a secret.”

  “Or her identity,” Ashe said. “If it was a program, it could have been either gender.”

  “True,” Smalls said. “This is beginning to become a mystery best suited for Sherlock Holmes. I have one more piece to add to this puzzle.”

  “What’s that?” Ashe asked.

  “It’s about our friend from the bar, Francisco San Roman. I did a search of that name because it sounded so familiar to me. Then I found it.”

  “Where? Who is he?” Ashe asked.

  “Francisco de San Roman was the first Protestant burned as a heretic in Spain,” Smalls said. “Years ago I wrote a paper on witchcraft in the time of the Inquisition. Heretics were often accused of having extrasensory powers. His name came up then. That’s why I remembered him.”

  “What does that mean?” Cybil asked. “Lots of people could have that name.”

  “True, but being inquisitive by nature I decided to run another search for missing persons. I looked for people that resembled the supposed Francisco San Roman,” Smalls continued. “This is who I found.”

  The priest reached into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to Ashe who unfolded it. The man from the bar stared back at him. The picture looked like one somebody would see in an advertisement for an insurance company, but it was definitely the man from the Bayside Bar.

  “Who is he?” he asked.

  “Harold Conner, a State Farm agent from Natchez, Mississippi. He went missing about three weeks ago after spending a weekend in Biloxi at the casinos,” Smalls said.

  “What does this all mean?” Cybil said.

  “In light of all the new information, the note, the voice mail, I think that Mr. San Roman or Conner is some kind of sociopath who is after Ashe,” Smalls said.

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t know that. I study psychic phenomena, but I’m not psychic myself. He probably has seen things abo
ut you in the news related to Erik’s research with emotion. People will become obsessed with the strangest of celebrities.”

  Ashe stared into the eyes of the insurance agent. Nothing seemed different, until he looked closely at the eyes. Conner’s stared back in a deep green, but the man in the bar had amber eyes like those of woman at the parade. He was about to question Smalls about that, but remembered that a person could get contacts in any color, even amber. He folded the paper up and handed it back to the priest.

  “What do we do now?” Cybil asked. “He’s apparently after us.”

  “We can go to the police,” Ashe said, “but I don’t think it will help anything. All we have is a suspicion.”

  “You’re right,” Smalls said. “We need more evidence before we can move on this.”

  The doorbell rang. Ashe handed his beer to Cybil so that he could answer the door. He hated when people kept their drinks in their hands when they greeted people.

  “Who’s there?” He felt cautious just in case San Roman/Conner knew where he lived.

  “It’s Detective Semmes.”

  Ashe opened the door. The detective stood on the stoop with another police officer. Both held their badges out for clear viewing.

  “What’s going on?” Ashe asked.

  “Ashley Shrove, you’re under arrest for defilement of a dead body.” Semmes pulled handcuffs out of his pocket. He turned Ashe around and put his hands in them. “You have the right to remain silent, and I suggest that you do so.”

  As Semmes quoted him the Miranda rights, Ashe felt like he was in some kind of bad movie. He saw Smalls and Cybil get up and rush to the door.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “He hasn’t done anything.”

  “Please don’t interfere,” the other officer said.

  Ashe shook his head at Cybil, and Smalls pulled her back into the house. When Semmes finished the rights, he said that he was sorry.

  “Stay here,” Ashe said to Cybil. “Stay with her please, Father Smalls.”

  Both nodded as Semmes led him down his front steps and to the police car. All around, Ashe could feel his neighbors staring out their windows at him. He’d never felt quite as embarrassed and angry as he did then.

  Semmes watched Ashe through the two-way mirror. He didn’t think the professor had stolen the body. Marianne’s corpse hadn’t really been stolen at all. She’d gotten up and walked out. The deaths of the students and a doctor—along with one of the corpses going missing—meant something had to be done. He, unfortunately, was the only logical suspect, especially after mentioning that the machine the perp used looked like the device he had invented to measure those brain waves or whatever they were.

  Ashe sat at a wooden table in a straight-backed wooden chair. He looked down at the tabletop. Semmes knew that he was aware of the mirror. He didn’t know if the professor knew he was watching him. Almost as soon as they’d gotten to the station, Ashe had demanded that his lawyer be present. That would usually annoy him, but this wasn’t any old perp.

  The door behind Semmes opened. Cooper stepped inside.

  “The perp’s lawyer’s here,” she said.

  “The perp has a name, rookie. It’s Ashe.”

  “A perp’s a perp, and I’m not a rookie.”

  “Not in this case. You’ve got a lot to learn about homicide. Not everyone we pick up is guilty.” He stared at Cooper. Tomorrow he was going to the chief and getting this woman reassigned. He’d tried when they assigned her to him, but this definitely spoke to her inability to work the kind of cases homicide had to deal with. “Let Ashe’s lawyer in. I’ll be there in a minute. Just watch. We won’t need good cop, bad cop on this one.”

  Semmes walked out. He went to the coffee pot and poured out three cups of joe, and hoped that everyone liked them black. It would be a juggling act just getting those cups to the room. Holding two Styrofoam cups in one hand, and his own in the other, Semmes made his way toward the interrogation room. Cooper passed him carrying a brown envelope.

  “Rookie, stick that under my arm. I need it,” he said.

  She followed his instructions without complaint. Semmes walked to the interrogation room door and opened it with the hand holding the single cup of coffee. As he walked in, Ashe’s lawyer got to his feet ready to protest.

  “Hold your horses,” Semmes said. He held out the hand with the two cups of coffee. “Take one, and give Ashe the other.”

  “Dr. Shrove, if you will,” Johnston said.

  “Scott, it’s okay,” Ashe said. “He can call me by my first name.”

  Johnston took the cups of coffee. “Whatever you say.”

  “Please note that we are being recorded,” Semmes said. “I don’t figure you’ve ever been in a situation like this so I want to let you know from the start.”

  “Ashe may not have been in this kind of situation, but I have,” Johnston said. “I promise that he will not say anything that will incriminate him.”

  “Mr. Johnston,” Semmes said. “I’m trying to be as nice and pleasant as I can. I would appreciate a little bit less of an adversarial tone.”

  “Acting buddy-buddy isn’t going to butter us up, Detective,” he said.

  The urge to punch the lawyer was strong. Ashe was innocent of what they’d booked him on, and Semmes knew it. All the effort he was trying to take to let them know that’s what he thought wasn’t working. It was time to go a bit rogue.

  “Rookie, turn off the recorders.” He looked at the mirror.

  “What?” Cooper said over a speaker.

  “You heard me. I said turn it off. I’ll take responsibility for whatever happens.”

  “They’re off,” she said.

  Semmes looked at Johnston. “Get out.”

  “What? This is violation of my client’s constitutional right to representation.”

  “I’m not going to question him. I have something to say that I don’t need you or anyone else to hear. It’s going to benefit him, but I know how you lawyers are. You’ll screw me over the first chance you get. So, I don’t have any recording devices going, which includes you; so either get out or get punched out.”

  Johnston’s face turned red. His throat started to swell up like a bullfrog about to croak. Ashe reached out and touched his lawyer on the arm.

  “I trust him,” he said. “Give us one minute.”

  “Forty-five seconds,” Semmes said.

  “Thirty,” Johnston added, getting up from the table. He walked across the room and through the door. “Starting now.”

  The door closed. Semmes opened the manila envelope and pulled a small stack of black and white photographs from it. He slid them over to Ashe.

  “Those are stills from a security camera in Providence Hospital’s morgue,” Semmes said.

  “That’s my student, Jason Samuels,” Ashe said.

  He flipped to the next photo, which showed two men entering the morgue, and then to the third, which was the murder of Dr. O’Hara. The last was of the room after the murderers left.

  “Did you recognize anyone else?” Semmes said.

  “The guy with the killer was Eddy Bertram, another one of my students, but he’s supposed to be dead,” Ashe said.

  “Exactly.” The door opened, and Johnston came back in. “I think that someone is trying to get you.”

  “What do you mean?” Johnston said.

  Semmes ignored him and looked back at the mirror. “Turn the recorders back on.”

  Johnston took the pictures from Ashe. He flipped through them. “Are these the evidence against him?”

  “Not necessarily,” Semmes said.

  “He’s not in these pictures. You don’t have him on camera when Marianne went missing. I saw that film myself at University Hospital. You’ve got nothing,” Johnston said. “We’re going to take you to the cleaners on t
his one, Semmes.”

  “I think I’m being framed or set up or something,” Ashe said.

  “By whom?” Semmes asked.

  “Don’t answer that,” Johnston said.

  “I don’t know anyone who would do something like this. I don’t know anyone who could pull something like this off,” Ashe said.

  “I told you to stay quiet.”

  “Do you know anyone who might?” Semmes asked.

  “As your lawyer, I’m telling you to keep your mouth shut,” Johnston said.

  “No. I don’t know anyone who could raise the dead.”

  “All right, that’s it,” Johnston said. “This interview is over. I want to speak to a judge right now and get this thrown out. This is a gross miscarriage of justice.”

  “Do you think that there is a connection between this and the break-in at Ms. Fairchild’s apartment?” Semmes asked.

  “Ashe told me about that. He was with her the whole night, and she will verify this,” Johnston said. “You’re pulling at straws, Semmes.”

  Ashe gave Semmes a look that told him he was getting it. He willed his supposed suspect to hear his thoughts about how he was only trying to protect him.

  “Where were you last night between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.?” Semmes asked.

  “I’ll answer,” Ashe told Johnston. The lawyer shook his head in defeat. “I was with Cybil Fairchild and Father Peter Smalls until about 11 or so. Then I took Ms. Fairchild home where we discovered the break-in. You showed up at about midnight. Then I took her to my place. We were there the rest of the night.”

  “Where were you at about 10 a.m. this morning?” Semmes asked.

  Johnston threw his hands up in frustration. “Answer! Answer! I don’t care. It’s your money we’re wasting.”

  “I was in Dean Allred’s office being put on forced sabbatical because of all the stuff going on in my life,” Ashe said.

  Semmes looked at the mirror. “We got nothing, rook.” He turned to Johnston. “He’s got a rock-solid alibi. He can go.”

  “I should hope so. Expect a lawsuit, Semmes,” Johnston said.

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Ashe said. “I won’t be pressing charges.”