Sinners and Saints

by Jennifer Roberson

  Abruptly the browser dimmed, flickered, pixelated briefly, then went out altogether, leaving in its place a black screen with print across the middle.

  “Well,” Remi said, “there’s your answer.”

  I’d asked, I’d sought, Remi’d knocked, and in bold, gold, bright letters the screen said: ‘Unblessed.’

  And below it: ‘Anevlógitos.’

  “Is that us?” I asked. “Angelitos?”

  “Anevlógitos. Greek for ‘unblessed.’”

  I contemplated the screen, frowning at it. “Now it wants to teach me ancient Greek?”

  “Angelic Rosetta Stone, maybe,” Remi offered.

  I typed again. ‘Why is Shemyazaz here?’

  ‘Unblessed.’

  I typed back: “But why is he HERE?”

  ‘Unblessed.’

  “I got that part,” I muttered, then added a lengthier question with a little bit of melodramatic Bible-speak crossed with Middle Earth mixed in. “What the hell are we supposed to do about an unblessed fallen Grigori angelito now loosed upon the world?”

  “Might could take out the ‘the hell’ part,” Remi suggested. “Probably wouldn’t go over well with celestial beings.”

  So I deleted, started again. ‘What the fuck are we—’ But that’s as far as I got, because the entire screen went black. Possibly I had offended The Man Behind the Curtain. I tapped the escape, enter, and backspace keys, even considered just turning the whole thing off by depressing the power button, then turning it back on. Wondered if we’d have to defrag an angelic device.

  “Recalculating,” I muttered.

  And the screen actually did come back, but no more deep web browser, or whatever the hell it was. Just three minimized browser screens along the bottom.

  “Bring one up,” Remi said. “Bring one up, type in Mary Jane Kelly.”

  “Mary Jane Kelly?” I clicked on a browser.

  “The Ripper letter,” he said. “Those names on the backs of the other photos we received, the names of the Ripper victims. They were prostitutes Jack the Ripper killed. The last Ripper victim, as far as anyone knows, was Mary Jane Kelly. We haven’t received a photo of a woman of the same name the way we did with the others. And maybe . . . well, I reckon that kidney might be from the Catherine named on the back of that last photo. Catherine Eddowes was the woman killed before Kelly.”

  “You know all this how?”

  “There’re these subversive items called books.”

  “So, you’re a . . . what is it? Some kind of Ripperologist?”

  “In my own small way, you could say so. There’s no slack in my rope.”

  It diverted me a moment. “But—never mind.” I typed the name into the search field. “And you think maybe we can stop this surrogate masquerading as Jack the Ripper before he kills Mary Jane Kelly—if he hasn’t done it already, that is.”

  Maybe we were spinning our wheels, just like the surrogate wanted, but we couldn’t afford to ignore the possibility murder was in the works. “Do you know how many ‘Mary Jane Kellys there might be in this country? Or even in this state? This could be a real challenge.”

  “I do not,” Remi said, “but let’s start local.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I typed, and Wiki came up at the top of the screen along with a string of names tied to Jack the Ripper. Mary Jane Kelly, also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, Fair Emma, Ginger, Dark Mary, and Black Mary.

  “Check the shelves,” I said. “See if there’s a phone book. Old school, but you never know.”

  Remi found and pulled out a phone book, flopped it on the table, paged through the thin leaves. It wasn’t very thick to start with—Flagstaff, I’d gathered, was not exactly a sprawling metropolis—and contained next to no White Pages. Besides, I wasn’t sure it would do any good at all now that almost everyone had given up their landlines. But it was a place to start.

  I went back to the browsers, wondering if I could convince the dark web to come up again and say something more than ‘Unblessed.’ “Try Mary Jeanette Kelly, too.” I waited as Remi flipped a page. “Anything?”

  He shook his head. “There may still be women who only use initials for their first names so no one knows the listing is for a woman. Means she probably lives alone, right? Doesn’t want to advertise that.”

  I nodded absently, most of my attention on the computer. “Yeah, my mom said something about that once—that Grandma told her never to list her full name in the phone book. And her mother told her no woman needed to be listed at all, if she had a husband. He’d be listed, and that’s all you needed. Lo, how times have changed.”

  Remi’s tone was thoughtful. “There’s a university here. Wonder if they’ve got their own phone book, or if it’s all just virtual these days. It’s been years since I was in school, and things are different in England anyhow.”

  That’s right, the Texas cowboy had been a Rhodes Scholar. Doctor McCue, Ph.D., graduate of Oxford University. I only had a measly master’s. “You think she could be a student?” I stopped noodling on the computer, spun the chair to face him again. “You thinking the victims are age-specific?”

  His expression was solemn as he briefly hooked his mouth sideways. “I didn’t look that closely at those photos the surrogate slipped us to note what age those women looked like.”

  “Me, neither.” I’d barely looked at the photos at all, in fact, once I’d realized how messily dead the victims were. We’d seen several already, and the gore quotient kept increasing. “But there will be newspaper articles about the murders, and bound to be obits in the paper and online. Ages probably wouldn’t be hard to find out.” I shook my head. “But we don’t know that these victims, outside of the names, are anything like the ones Jack the Ripper killed.”

  “Prostitutes, maybe,” Remi said. “Seems to be a tradition among serial killers. I doubt the Ripper was the first, and we know he’s not the last. But obits won’t go into that.”

  “Neither will the reports the police release to the news media,” I said. “At least, not at first. So, you’re seriously thinking the surrogate is purposely murdering prostitutes with the same names, around the same ages, as the women Jack the Ripper killed? Part of his cover, so to speak? Verisimilitude?”

  Remi shrugged. “Possible.”

  I mulled that over a minute. “I’m not saying you’re wrong—how the hell do I know?—but you gotta admit it strains the bounds of credulity, that all these victims match up so closely. Besides, Flagstaff’s not that big, as far as I could tell on my way in from I-40.”

  Remi nodded agreement.

  “It’s . . . wait a minute . . .” I typed, and the computer—a normal browser with normal search engines—gave me the number. “Population around seventy-five thousand,” I told him. “Would it even have enough prostitutes to match up with the Ripper numbers and names?”

  “Nothin’ says they all came from here, or that they’re prostitutes,” Remi pointed out. “We start here, yeah, because we are here, but might could be he’s killing all over the country and just sending the pix to us. Hell, he could be having other demons do the killings for him, having ’em purposely track down women with the right names, the right ages, regardless of where they’re from.”

  “If that’s true, why send the pictures to us?” I asked. “We’re not the only celestial cannon fodder in the mix. Grandaddy even said so. There’re a whole bunch of us little half-angels—or whatever you want to call us; angelitos?—running around doing the bidding of the heavenly host.”

  Remi shrugged. “Maybe all of us conscripts across the country are being played this way. Could be one set of photos with copies sent to all of us.”

  With a twist of my hips I set the office chair in motion, swiveling it back and forth as I thought. “That would be one mega mindfuck,” I said finally. “All us newbies across the entire country d
istracted by the murders of women who have the same names as the Ripper victims.”

  “And all of us tearin’ around trying to hunt up info on ’em,” Remi agreed. “Mighty big distraction, ain’t it?”

  “But why would anyone feel we need distracting? I mean, how do we count for anything?”

  Remi nodded. “We are, as my daddy would say, a pair of green pups still wet behind the ears.”

  “Then why?”

  He shrugged. “You’re the one who mentioned chaos in relation to demons. It’s a state of utter confusion, seemingly random, but maybe highly calculated with surrogates at the wheel. In Biblical terms, chaos is also the formless matter that preceded creation.”

  “Creation . . .” I let it trail off, hooking thoughts together like chain mail. “You know, creation could as easily apply to what Lucifer is after. He wants to create his own particular version of earth, and so the same type of chaos precedes his goal, too. I mean, God succeeded at creating the world in His own image on the heels of that chaos, we know—if one is a believer, that is—so the baddest of His kids might just have decided ‘If it works, don’t fix it.’ But the concept of chaos as a form of reality, as a true sentient presence on earth, has certainly given birth to all kinds of cultural legends and lore. I mean, with all this ancient Greek language being thrown around . . . according to Greek mythology three specific primordial gods were born of chaos: Gaea, Tartarus, and Eros. Gaea personified the earth, and Eros, love and sex. Tartarus wasn’t so benign.”

  Remi nodded. “A god of the underworld, AKA hell. Or a form of it, anyhow.”

  “Yup,” I confirmed, “and Tartarus is also referred to as a place. It ranks below Hades. That’s where the monsters and criminals are—Hades is a warehouse for the dead. Well, and also a name for the god himself. Romans called him Pluto, the Egyptians, Osiris. Hell, I don’t know—Lucifer’s got hundreds of aliases.”

  “Hades, Pluto, Osiris . . . what’s in a name? God knows—” Remi broke it off, smiled crookedly, “literally, God knows how many names the devil actually has. Every religion has its Lucifers, Satans. A Tartarus, both location and god. Names are different, maybe, but the end goal is the same.”

  “Ultimate chaos, ultimate destruction. If the stories are true.”

  Remi ran a thumb across his bottom lip. “But chaos, even if it’s the devil’s version, doesn’t mean there’s no truth smack in the middle of it.”

  I raked a hand through loose hair, let it fall behind my shoulders. “But if this demon’s just screwing with us . . .”

  Remi turned the photo face up so the image was clear: a woman, limbs asprawl, wearing very little clothing that wasn’t torn, that wasn’t soaked with blood from the disembowelment. “I think we’d better look for ourselves,” he said. “I think we’d best not risk missing a potential victim. I mean, the cops’ll be doin’ their thing, but they won’t be looking at Greek mythology or Lucifer’s surrogates.”

  I spun the chair back to the computer. “I’ll start Googling deeper, pull up public records, LinkedIn, social media, try a couple of those pay-for-play search sites—I figure that won’t count as ‘frivolous expenditures’ on the heavenly credit card. Why don’t you call Grandaddy, see if he’ll answer this time. Keep calling him till he does, see if he’ll tell us shit and save time. If he doesn’t, maybe you could start a search on your phone. If people are dying, we need actual facts. Not alternative ones.”

  Remi’s tone was dry. “Said alpha to the beta?”

  That stopped me dead. “What?”

  He smiled. “Just joshin’ you. I’ll step out, call Grandaddy. Check back in a few.”

  I watched him go, considering what he’d said. Alpha. Beta. It’s how Grandaddy had described us when he announced we’d been born, bred, and trained, all unknowing, then conscripted to join the heavenly host as foot soldiers deployed against, well, yeah, melodrama and all: the hordes of hell. I, as firstborn—by split seconds, apparently—was therefore alpha to Remi’s beta. Which counted when heavenly matter was coalescing, because it’s what fueled the supernatural primogenitura Grandaddy’d taught me about. More than just property being passed down, it had ignited in me when I’d nearly gotten my kid brother killed, when I had taken Matty’s pain as my own and understood what true stewardship meant. But with Remi, it wasn’t brother to brother, older to younger. We weren’t brothers, not in flesh, not in bone, blood, nor spirit. We were strangers. We just happened to be linked in a bizarre sort of way because we’d both been born in a momentary spasm of heavenly essence.

  Or maybe a celestial fart.

  * * *

  —

  As Remi got on the phone, I stood up and stretched before hitting up the keyboard again. Less than thirty I was—twenty-eight, in fact, only a few days before. But laying down a bike on asphalt at fifty miles-per-hour, leather or no, results in a body feeling more akin to eighty, and a hard-used eighty at that, like Indiana Jones and his quote about mileage over years. I crossed arms, settled palms over the point of each shoulder, twisted side-to-side to gently loosen my spine. Next up was hands hooked behind my neck, elbows stuck out, as I rocked down toward my hips and back up.

  “Yowza,” I muttered on a restrained groan, teeth gritted, wondering if there were any analgesics stuck away in the modest bathroom. I wasn’t going to be walking anywhere quickly for a while.

  Of course the bike was worse off than I was. And then that thought, of course, reminded me all over again that my ride was lying half-drowned in the middle of a creek cutting through steep, rocky banks. There was no way of pushing the motorcycle up the sides even with two of us doing the labor; and anyway, there was no path. Both Remi and I, beatin’ feet after the legendary La Llorona of Mexican folklore, a mother who drowned her own children, had worked our way down outcroppings of granite and pockets of loose earth, hanging on to grass tufts.

  Remi had no more luck reaching Grandaddy than I had, and tucked phone into pocket. “Who was the Irish god of the underworld?”

  I rolled sore shoulders. “In Irish mythology? Aodh.”

  Remi took up his hat from the tabletop, settled it onto his head. “Just who do we know could have some answers about an Irish god who might just slop over into Lucifer’s backyard now and then? Maybe pitch a horseshoe or two against one another come the weekend?”

  My smile grew into a grin of appreciation. “A certain red-haired, tattooed Goddess of Battles, parked in a motorhome just up the road.”

  Remi smiled back. “Then let us vamoose ourselves right on up that road.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Daybreak as we stepped out of the Zoo’s interior. Fitful, dour daybreak, and barely registered before heavy skies opened up. Rain blew through the pines and rattled loudly on the roadhouse’s tin roof two stories up.

  “Ahh, man.” I paused before stepping out from under the roof overhang. In the east, the rising sun spawned brief light behind a scalloped scrim of clouds, then dimmed as the clouds closed ranks.

  “I thought you were from the Pacific Northwest,” Remi said from behind me. “Don’t you have to get rained on every day, or shrivel up and die?” He slid by me through the giant split-crotch tree, thumped down four wooden steps into wet dirt and gravel and headed hastily for his silver pickup truck.

  I followed, long-striding to catch up and squinting through the rain. The shoulders of Remi’s denim western shirt were already soaked dark. I’d left my jacket behind, and within minutes my black t-shirt was going to glue itself to my skin. “Do you even have rain in Texas?”

  Remi thumbed his remote and popped the locks from distance. “We have no mountains, but rain we do have. Hurricanes, even, in the Gulf. Just be glad you’re not aboard your motorbike.” He hunched against the weather, then flashed me a quick, sidelong glance as I matched his pace, head ducked. “Guess you’ll be wantin’ to go haul it up out of the crick soon as you can.”


  “I was actually thinking we’d do it today.” I fumbled the wet door handle, pulled it open on a second try and climbed in out of the rain. “But bike’s going to have to wait while we try to deal with what the devil’s thrown at us, and to find a Mary Kelly. The Mary Kelly.”

  Remi opened his door, grabbed the wheel and stepped up hastily. His expression was solemn as he buckled up, stuck the key into the ignition.

  I settled into the passenger bucket, yanked the door closed to shut away the wet. Rain pounded the truck’s roof so hard I had to raise my voice. “Are you thinking Lily might know more than Grandaddy about this demon?”

  Remi twisted the key. “I’m bettin’ he knows a helluva lot more than most, but since he’s not answering his phone we are hitchhiking on the information highway. So maybe Lily can at least get a message to him. I mean, he’s got to care about women being murdered.”

  I stretched the seatbelt across my torso, shoved the tongue home in the latch. “He seemed to be surprised by the picture, like he knew nothing about the murders.”

  Remi drove out of the parking lot, hooked a left onto Route 66. Still not much traffic, but it was early yet. “Angels aren’t omnipotent. He may be high-ranking in the heavenly hierarchy, but none of them is all-knowing or all-powerful, according to the Good Book. So yeah, reading that letter may well have sent him off somewhere to do some checking.”

  I finger-combed hair back from my face. As hard as the rain was falling, it hadn’t taken much for Remi and I to get pretty damn wet just between building and truck. “But he needs us. He’s said it. And without the right clues, the right knowledge, we can’t be very effective.”