by D J Mcintosh
“Before I tell you, someone else is in danger from the man I suspect killed Tricia. I need to call my friend right now to warn him. His number’s on my phone.” I expected an argument but Shea handed my phone over straightaway. I called Strauss. His line switched to voice mail so I left a message. I couldn’t reach Bennet either but left a message for her too. I prayed I hadn’t been too late.
I filled Shea in on what had happened since Bennet first walked through my door, including Yersan’s harassment of Tricia, and gave him the shop address in Flatbush. I told him about my place being broken into and my laptop stolen soon after my visit to the shop. Shea listened closely, interrupting only to clarify a point, then jotted down a few lines in his notebook. When he finished, he sat back and sighed. “What time did you get here?”
“Couple of minutes before seven.”
“Anyone see you drive up?”
“Not that I know of, but hold on.” The long wait in the cruiser had given me time to think. I’d anticipated his question and realized I did have proof. I dug into my pocket and pulled out a receipt. “Here. I bought some food and coffee at McDonald’s in New York just after six P.M.”
He reached for the receipt, read it, and handed it back. “Okay. That’s good. Did you see any signs of forced entry when you first knocked on her door?”
I shook my head. “No. And that’s when I got Jack next door. He had a key.”
“Okay. How do I contact you?”
I handed over my card, and then he returned my things. “That’s it?” I said.
“Yes, for now. You can go. I’ll be in touch.”
Loki yelped and leapt into my arms when I opened my car door. I snapped on her leash and let her take a leak before we left. As I backed out of Tricia’s driveway, I waved toward Shea. He didn’t seem to notice.
Seventeen
February 18, 2005
It was after midnight by the time I made it back to my place to find Bennet sleeping on the sofa, one arm thrown around a plump pillow. The eiderdown had slipped away from her shoulders and the tiny T she wore had ridden up, exposing her naked breast. Even in my troubled state of mind, I found that enticing.
She woke with a start, gaped at me, then hastily yanked her top down.
“You’re back so late. I was worried about you,” she murmured, still half asleep.
“I called you a bunch of times. Don’t you listen to your messages?”
“The battery died. Have to get a new one tomorrow. Why? What happened?”
“It’s been one hell of a night. Tricia Ross was killed.”
“What?” She sat up straight.
“I went to see her this evening out on Long Island. She was beaten to death in her own kitchen.” The scene ran through my mind once more. I sat on the edge of the sofa and related how the rest of the evening had played out.
“You’re not saying they suspect you?”
“Sure felt like it while I was stuck in the back of that cruiser, but no, I don’t think so.” I slumped back on the sofa beside her. “I can’t believe Tricia Ross is dead. I didn’t know her but my brother did and he really respected her. Samuel said she was fearless, and braved some pretty narrow scrapes on-site in Iraq. Not this time.”
Bennet placed a slender arm around my shoulders. “God, that’s terrible. Who could have done it, do you think?”
“Did our visit to Yersan get him so fired up that he went out to threaten her?”
“Well, he was disagreeable, but I doubt he’d be capable of something that violent.”
“I gave his name to the police. Just in case. What happened with Strauss? Did he give you any money?”
“I didn’t end up going after all. I called him before I set out. He said he didn’t want me to come up but agreed to send me the advance through an email transfer. So I’m rich now.” She laughed sarcastically, her fingers brushing my cheek. “What an awful experience for you.”
“You said it. But much worse for Tricia. This whole thing is so fucked up.”
I calmed down a little after talking more with Bennet. She went back to sleep and I stumbled into my bedroom, undressed, rolled into bed, and drifted off. At some point my body jerked violently. Another bout of sleep paralysis. This time I had an overwhelming sense of déjà vu. It felt as if my hands and legs were bound tightly. I was in great pain but unable to move. A throwback to the times Alessio held me under his spell or a flashback to the terror at Kutha? Somehow this seemed different. As if it were an actual memory. Once again I put up a monumental struggle to shake myself out of it. Despite a couple of shots of scotch to calm my nerves I lay awake for at least an hour before falling into a restless sleep.
The aroma of fresh coffee and bacon crackling in the pan woke me. Hearing me stir, Loki padded into the bedroom. She still walked on her three good legs, gingerly lifting the injured one with the pink cast off the floor. She licked my shoulder and I eased myself out of bed.
Bennet gave me a smile when I walked into the kitchen. She stood in her bare feet, wearing the same T-shirt over mint-green nylon panties fringed with lace. Quite the tasty treat. “Always did love a barefoot cook in the kitchen,” I said.
“Bacon and tomato sandwiches—my specialty. Help yourself to a coffee and take a seat while I wait on you hand and foot. After what you went through last night, you deserve it.”
I sat down and sipped at the coffee, taking surreptitious glances at Bennet’s comely figure. The coffee wasn’t my blend. Something stronger with a hint of chocolate. Bennet set the plates down, pulled a chair closer to me, and sat. “I took Loki out.”
“In your underwear?” I laughed.
Bennet blushed. “Of course not. It’s raining. My jeans got soaked.”
“You could probably get away with it. All kinds of fashion statements in Madison Square.” I took a bite of the sandwich. Perfectly done, juicy Canadian back bacon, thickly sliced tomato— where had she bought such sweet tomatoes this time of year?—and lightly toasted brown bread. “You’re hired,” I said, “but I can’t afford as much as Strauss.”
She smiled between enormous bites, finishing before me. We wiped our hands on paper napkins and sat with our coffees. After breakfast and its idyllic mood of domesticity, the world seemed to have come to rights again. The sense of doom from my sleep-paralysis episode had all but disappeared. Bennet’s next words spoiled that brief interlude in an instant.
Eighteen
Bennet glanced at me as if afraid of my reaction to what she was about to say.
“What?”
“I don’t know whether I should tell you.”
“Now you have to.”
“It’s probably nothing. I mean, how could he possibly know?”
“Now you really have to tell me.”
“It’s Strauss. When I spoke to him last night he said a very strange thing. I don’t want to ruin your day or anything. The article about you I’m working on? He said it would end up being your obituary.”
I choked a little on my coffee. “Seriously? That’s crazy. He likes to play with people, mind-fuck them. It’s what he does for a living.” Still, Strauss’s remark bothered me. Especially coming so soon after Tricia’s murder.
Bennet reached across the kitchen table and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “I know. I shouldn’t have said anything but it freaked me out and I didn’t want to hide it from you. Not after what happened yesterday. We’ve got to be really careful.” She stood up and refilled my coffee. “So, tell me. What’s the mystery about your background Strauss is so intrigued with?”
“It’s not for the record—I don’t want it in the article. Okay?”
“Agreed.”
“And no talking to Evelyn behind my back.”
“Fine,” she said, a little exasperated.
“My half brother, Samuel—he was much older than me—brought me to New York from Turkey when I was three. Our father, who was Greek, fled after World War II and went to Turkey where he married my mother. They both died in
a mining accident caused by an earthquake. That’s what I was told, but less and less of the story adds up. I don’t believe it anymore.”
Bennet played with a curl of her red hair. “And at Gina’s, Strauss hinted he has some information about that.”
“Yes, but I don’t see how he could. Really, I think he’s just bluffing.” I took a last swig of my coffee and got up. “I’m going to hit the books for a while.”
“I’ll set up my laptop in here then,” Bennet said. “Watching you will be too distracting.” She punctuated that with a flirty laugh. “Can I have your notes on those trips you took to Iraq?”
“Yeah, uh, hold on. Let me find them.” After scanning them quickly, I gave her my rough copies, enough material to keep her busy for a couple of hours. That done, it was time to source my own reading materials. I’d donated Samuel’s library to his university, except for some of the more important volumes, and kept all his journals. I looked through a couple of them now.
But I found it hard to concentrate at first. Loki noisily batted her makeshift toys around with her nose on the hardwood floor and Strauss’s obituary line still disturbed me. The illusionist had a certain compelling draw, as a master hypnotist would, but I told myself it was simply an art he’d learned. No one could foretell the future. Nevertheless, his prediction, coupled with the previous night’s sleep paralysis, pushed me to make an appointment to see my doctor later that afternoon.
As I leafed through Samuel’s journals I finally left my fears behind to focus on another mystery—an ancient one. The Sumerian artifacts Strauss had shown us, and his claim that they’d been found near Kandovan rather than southern Iraq, intrigued me. For scholars, the Sumerians posed a giant enigma. Evidence of their presence showed up in southern Iraq between 3500 and 3100 B.C., a period associated with the onset of large-scale agriculture and the development of the first cities. But no one could prove their origins. Their language had no known affiliates, modern or ancient. Strauss’s artifacts had been dated to around that time but from a place hundreds of miles to the northeast. Had the ancient Sumerians in southern Iraq simply grown out of the indigenous Ubaid culture that preceded them or were they especially gifted migrants from a different region?
The various theories—they came by boat from the Ganges river basin or they were a displaced Semitic people—were nothing more than guesswork.
Although Samuel respected the efforts to trace ethnic origins through pottery, written language, and physical remains, he believed the answers lay in their mythology. “They have told us where they came from in their stories,” Samuel wrote, “and we only need to listen.” Based on a myth, he’d concluded that the Sumerians were originally mountain people, pushed out of their domain by some calamity, environmental perhaps. In the early third millennium B.C. they moved down to the southern fertile marshes near the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates, where their advanced culture allowed them to dominate the people already living there.
The myth described a legendary conflict between Enmerkar, the king of Uruk, an early Sumerian city state in southern Iraq, and the lord of Aratta, a mountain kingdom in northern Iran. The two regions had a similar language and culture along with a trading relationship—grain from Uruk traded for precious metals and wood from Aratta. Another myth gave a concise description of the mountain kingdom.
Aratta’s battlements are of green lapis lazuli, its walls and its towering brickwork are bright red, their brick clay is made of tinstone dug out in the mountains where the cypress grows.
Inanna, the principal goddess of Uruk, was originally a mountain deity from Aratta. As I read, it became clear to me that the people of the two regions had so many similarities they were essentially part of the same Sumerian culture. But more important, insofar as my quest was concerned, Strauss’s artifacts came from the same area in northwestern Iran that the myth called Aratta. The last line in Samuel’s journal surprised me.
He’d pointed out that the word for the mountain plain where Aratta was located was Edin.
According to the Sumerians, who carefully recorded their history, Edin was a real place. Could this have anything to do with Helmstetter’s reference to Eden in his last letter to Veronica Sills? I wished once more that my brother was alive so I could discuss the idea with him. I had only his writings left to try to decipher. In the margin beside this entry he’d written Reginald Arthur Walker. I didn’t recognize the name and wondered why Samuel had put it there.
I glanced at my watch and reluctantly shut the journal, realizing that if I didn’t leave now, I’d be late for my doctor’s appointment.
Bennet was still immersed in my notes, and when I stuck my head in to let her know I was going out, she mumbled what sounded like “’Kay.”
“Can Loki stay with you?”
She nodded without looking up. Leaving her alone in my apartment seemed incautious, but I reasoned that if she wanted to look through anything, or worse, steal, she’d had ample opportunity the evening before. I shut the door quietly on my way out.
As I stepped onto the sidewalk a figure detached itself from the shadows at the side of my building. Yersan. He headed directly for me.
“You told the police I killed that professor,” he snapped.
“What makes you think that?”
“You’re the one who asked me about her.”
“You’d been harassing her. She probably complained about it to the police herself.”
He shook his head slowly. “No. It was you. After your visit to my shop I pondered, why are you involving yourself in my affairs at all? You’re a dealer like me and I’ve been checking. Your record’s not so clean. You want those artifacts to sell yourself! For a fat commission. It’s what I think.”
“I did tell the police you broke into my apartment and stole my laptop. I’ll find a way to make you pay for that.”
“I know nothing of this.” Yersan shrugged.
“I’m late for an appointment. Don’t come back here.” I pushed a finger into his chest to emphasize my words. But he wasn’t finished and knocked my hand away.
“Leave this whole thing behind you, Madison, or I will make sure you don’t get another chance to smear me.”
I waved him off and carried on. After a minute I checked to make sure he wasn’t still following. Then I whipped out my phone and called Bennet, warning her to slide the inside bolt on the apartment door. Yersan’s threats made him only more suspicious. And it was clear I’d made an enemy, probably a lethal one.
I tried to put the confrontation with Yersan out of my mind as I sat on the 1 train up Broadway. I’d been seeing the same doctor since my days at Columbia; his office was on West 112th, not far from the enormous Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The route traversed an old Indian pathway once called the Hollow Trail. As the train clattered its way north, I thought about the cathedral’s life-sized statue of St. Michael, the winged archangel I’d always regarded as a profoundly pagan work, surrounded as it was by sculptures of wild, mystical beings and symbols. Fascinating and quite at odds with traditional Christianity.
“Well, John, haven’t seen you for ages,” my doctor said when he ushered me into his office. “I’ve received the reports from your specialists, though—glad to see you’re still breathing.” He punctuated this with a barking laugh. He always found a way to lighten the mood. A pint-sized man in his fifties, Dr. Cass had a booming voice quite at odds with his height. He looked at me over his glasses. “What can I do for you today?”
“The injuries have all healed, the blood disorder seems unsolvable, but the sleep paralysis is getting really bad. Last night was the worst I’ve ever experienced.” I indicated the fat file on his desk. “I even went to a sleep disorders clinic. Nothing’s worked and it’s driving me crazy. I’m hoping you can think of something.” Cass had always seemed practical and possessed of good common sense. I shouldn’t have bothered with specialists and come to see him sooner.
He pursed his lips. “Atonia. It’s common enoug
h, you know. I’ve had it myself on night shifts at the hospital when I’m dead tired. You experience that momentary terror—it seems as if you’re paralyzed—but after all, that’s what sleep is. The body is immobile while we sleep. With the atonia syndrome, your brain just wakes up before your body does.”
“Why does that happen?”
“Well, for one, it’s much healthier to be immobilized during REM sleep so you won’t act out your dreams. Otherwise homicide would definitely be on the rise.” His laugh boomed again in the small office. “How often do you have these episodes?”
“More and more. Lately, at least on a weekly basis. And last night it was almost as if I was hallucinating along with it too.”
Cass frowned. “How so?”
“It felt like my hands and feet were tied up. That I was bound.”
“You were having a nightmare. And transiting out of it. That’s not a classical hallucination.”
He flipped through my file until he found a sheet of notes. “You’ve had one hell of a time, John, starting with your car accident and Samuel’s death. Your body took a lot of punishment in the Middle East because you got yourself into situations you weren’t trained for. Or, I suspect, able to deal with psychologically. Emotional stress can be deadly if it’s prolonged and severe enough.” He sat down behind his desk and steepled his fingers. “I think you’re suffering from PTSD. No doubt you’ve heard of it. There’s no record in your file that you’ve seen a counselor, so I assume you haven’t?”
“No.”
“Well, let’s check your vital signs and then we’ll see about that.”
After going through the usual procedures, he put the blood pressure monitor back and gestured for me to sit in the chair again. He sat at his desk and scribbled something out on a prescription pad, tore off the leaf, and handed it to me. “You’re not taking any drugs right now?”
