by Glen Craney
“Satisfied?” Marly whispered. “Now let’s get the hell out of here before someone asks us what we’re doing.”
Cas kept strolling, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Across the street, he saw a dark-skinned kibbutzim boy who was painting a railing. Hands stuffed into his pockets, he ambled over. “Dude, the dining hall is closed? I was seriously jonesin’ for a burger.”
The boy didn’t even look up from his paint job. “That’s not the dining hall.”
“Looks just like Beckman Bistro at Stanford, only, y’know, smaller.”
Keeping his eyes fixed to his spot on the board, the boy pointed his brush at the commissary down the street. “Store hours are seven to ten.”
“Word.” Cas smacked his lips. “Good burgers there, too?”
Irritated by the interruptions, the boy threw his brush into the bucket and snapped, “Are you here on some special-education program? Like for mentally challenged students?”
“Homeslice, no need to get all up in my grill, yo. I was just admiring your architecture.”
“It’s the old laboratory, okay?”
Cas blinked. “Old? You mean nobody uses it anymore?”
The Israeli boy glanced around as if making certain no one was listening. “Some rich American built it. He used it for a few weeks and then took off. That’s all I know. They keep it locked up now. No one is allowed inside.”
Cas shot Marly a satisfied glance. “Nice work. You an artist?”
“Yeah,” the boy grumbled. “I’m a regular Michelangelo. I plant turnips. In two years, I’ll go into the Army. Then I’ll probably spend the rest of my life hawking cell phones in Tel Aviv. Anything else you want to know about me for your Elderhostel term paper, gramps?”
Cas raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry to bother you, bro.”
Sensing an unfriendly vibe around the entire place, he led Marly back down the street until they reached a spot where they saw no one and hoped nobody was watching them. He grabbed her arm and whisked her onto a sidewalk between two beige-brick barracks buildings. Shadowed from the sun and passersby, he whispered, “We have to find a way into that lab.”
Marly thought a moment. “I have an idea … but it’s a real long shot.”
“I’m a big fan of long shots. Especially when the alternative is no shot.”
She hesitated to tell him what she was thinking, but his brow-raised glare finally drove her to it. “My roommate in grad school, Rada, told me a story once about her family during World War Two.”
“This isn’t exactly the time for Masterpiece Theatre.”
“Her grandparents were Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They survived by living for months in the sewers. The Nazis never did find them.”
Cas was growing impatient. “And the Polish sewer system has what, exactly, to do with … ?”
She frowned at him to drive home her point. “Rada told me that, after that experience, Jews always built escape routes under their houses. In case the Holocaust ever came again.”
“You’re saying that every kibbutz in Israel has a sewer system that can also serve as a bomb shelter and an escape tunnel?”
“I guess. I don’t know. Maybe.”
Cas peered around the corner and studied the laboratory’s perimeter. “Let’s see, where would the entrance to a sewer be built?” His eyes followed the slope down a deep ravine, where a wastewater-treatment plant sat. He grinned. “Marly McKinney, you magnificent stone junkie! I knew you’d eventually start contributing to the cause.”
“Hey, I’ve been covering for your screw-ups ever since Dallas!”
“How’s your tolerance for squeamish?”
Marly narrowed her glare. “What do you mean?”
“This could get a little, uh, fragrant.”
INSIDE THE SEWER TUNNEL, CAS pushed up on an iron disc and climbed through the exposed hole. He turned, grinning, and motioned his grumbling partner to follow him.
Covered in filth, Marly climbed up the iron ladder and looked around, amazed that they had guessed the direction correctly. “This looks like the laboratory’s maintenance room.”
Cas watched her walk into the dim light. “Yikes! Went a little heavy on the makeup there, Fright Girl.”
She rushed to the sink and washed the sewage scum from her arms and face. After cleaning herself, she still smelled a foul odor. This one, though, was different: bitter, lingering, and deathly. “What is that stench?” she asked. “This whole damn country must be rotting.”
Waving her to come with him, Cas opened a door and walked around the laboratory, careful to step around shattered glass vials and canisters that had been strewn across the floor. “Look at all this busted-up stuff. I’d say a squirrel must have gotten in here, gone ballistic, then died.”
They stalked the smell toward another door, this one in a far corner.
Cas tried the handle, but it was locked. “Must be the office.”
“Definitely worth checking out,” Marly said. “Cohanim might have left some records.”
Cas scanned the shelves until he found was he was looking for—a container of calcium carbide. He took the metal cylinder down and tucked it under his arm. “See if there are any sandwich bags in the kitchen.”
Marly returned with a Ziploc baggie.
Cas filled it with the carbide powder and then zipped it up halfway. Striking the pose of a surgeon standing over an operating table, he ordered his nurse, “Your ballpoint pen. Stat.”
Marly bit off a curse at his annoying medical act as she searched several lab drawers. At last, she came up with a Bic and tossed it to him. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
“Guess we’re about to find out.” Cas removed the ink injector in the Bic and filled the clear plastic cartridge—the one kids use to shoot spitballs—with water. He pawed through more of the drawers until he found some glue to plug the ends of the plastic cartridge. He stuck the water-filled cartridge into the cylinder of calcium carbide and zipped it, leaving an inch-long opening. He balanced the makeshift bomb atop the doorknob and warned her, “Stand back.”
Marly ducked behind a counter.
Cas flicked a lighter and dropped it into the opening of the zip bag. He dived behind the counter with Marly, taking the opportunity to cuddle her. Before she could wiggle from his groping, the room shook with an explosion. When the debris finally settled, they slowly raised their heads over the counter.
The door had swung open, its locking mechanism destroyed.
Cas grinned at her. “And to think I only got a ‘C’ in chemistry.”
They leapt up and walked warily into the office, waving away the smoke from the explosion. Marly was nearly doubled over by the same stench, now even stronger.
“Damn” Cas mumbled.
Marly finally found enough air to take a breath. “What’s wrong?”
Cas stood over the decomposed body of an elderly woman whose hands were bound behind her. The ragged nose on the corpse looked as if rats had eaten it. The woman was curled into a clenched repose of agony, as if her last minutes had been spent in excruciating pain.
“What is that on her forehead?” Marly asked.
Cas lifted the rotting head to the light and saw what appeared to be carved letters and numbers: Leviticus 20: 2-27
Marly came closer to see what he’d discovered. She turned and dry-heaved.
Cas flipped on the halogen lights to examine the grisly scene. “I’d say she’s been here for months. You got any reception on your smartphone out here?”
Marly held a sleeve to her mouth while checking the bars on her phone’s monitor. Afraid to take a breath to talk, she nodded.
Cas wrote down the Bible citation in his notebook. He tore out the page and handed it to her. “Search this.”
Marly found an online concordance on her cell phone’s browser. When the search result came up, she turned pale again as she showed Cas:
Whosoever giveth any of his seed unto Molech, he shall surely be
put to death.… A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.
She heard a sizzling sound. Looking down at the floor, she saw what appeared to be cursive script materializing as if by magic. “What the hell?”
Cas touched the floor and retracted his finger, shaking his hand as if something had bitten him. “Damn! That’s acid.”
She looked up at the halogen lights in the ceiling. “The chemical must have interacted with the ultraviolet rays when we turned those bulbs on.”
Cas glanced hesitantly at her, not wanting to confirm what he was thinking. He leaned over the woman’s body and examined her chewed-up face. “Her hands are bound. She must have used her nose to scribble a message with the acid.”
Marly was trying not to retch.
Cas risked lowering his eyes to the floor. “What does it say?”
Marly could just make out the first word of the harried script. “Looks like … ‘Immaculate’ something.”
Dropping to all fours, Cas studied the letters on the floor from several different angles, careful not to get too close. He pulled out another page from the notebook and carefully placed it over the spot on the floor where the acid-ink message had been written. After several seconds, he pulled the page up, examining the slender lines that had been eaten away:
Immaculate Deceptio.
Baffled, he shook his head. "Is that Latin?”
“I don’t know,” Marly said. “Does she have any ID on her?”
Cas went through all the dead woman’s pockets, but found no wallet. He carefully lifted her flaky hands to check for fingerprints. The tips were decomposed.
Marly studied the poor woman. “Strange.”
“What?”
“Is that eye shadow around her lids?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Slathered on pretty heavy for an eighty-year-old woman.” Marly checked a ring that was on the woman’s rotting finger. Grimacing at the disgusting task, she finally managed to pull the ring off with a sliver of rotted flesh. Coughing away the stench, she studied the facing on the ring. “A skull and cauldron.” She shivered—now that was really morbid. “Whoever this was, she dressed and made herself up like a teenager.” She looked down at the corpse’s feet. “Platform heels. And look, they don’t even fit her. Must be at least three sizes too large.”
“Hey, everybody’s searching for the Fountain of Youth.”
“Maybe, but …” She sighed. “Probably nothing.”
Cas heard voices outside. “They must have heard the explosion. That’d be our cue to evacuate the premises.”
Marly looked around for a door. “How?”
Cas held his fingers to his snout and said in a nasal honk, “The same way we came in.”
AS THEY RACED BACK TOWARD Jerusalem, Cas dialed up an old contact at the State Department. “Mickie! Your patron saint Cas here … Hold on now … I swear I left you a note.”
Marly didn’t even bother to roll her eyes. Age-old story. She didn’t need the details.
“Mea culpa, my beautiful attaché,” Cas crooned. “Listen, darling, despite my past reprehensible behavior, I need a favor. About nine months ago, a certain Seth Cohanim flew from Dallas to Israel. Can you filter out all of the American passengers who flew to Israel from there at around that time, give or take a week? I need to know if anyone did not fly back on a return ticket.… Yeah, I can wait.”
“Let me guess,” Marly said. “You bedded her, too.”
Cas was about to defend his honor when he heard the report over the phone. “Really. Only one?” He nodded for Marly to write down what he was being told. “Bridget Whelan from Lubbock, Texas. Can you spell that? … Great, and do you happen to have her age?” His face fell. “Thanks anyway, but I don’t think that’s my girl.” He hung up, disappointed.
“What?” Marly asked.
“She fits the profile, except for one slight variance.”
“Yeah?”
“Bridget Whelan was twenty-six.”
Marly sat in stunned silence.
“Cohanim covered his tracks like a pro. I don’t think—”
“She was wearing platform heels,” Marly said.
Cas took his eyes off the road a moment and looked over at her, utterly perplexed why she kept bringing up the shoes. “Yeah, you mentioned that before. You doing a fashion survey now?”
Marly tried to blink her brain into high gear. “Why in the world would an old woman risk breaking a hip by walking around in six-inch platforms?”
Cas shrugged. “Maybe she was just crazy. Maybe she liked being tall. Maybe she bought them a yard sale. Maybe the world just doesn’t make any sense.”
Marly opened her purse and pulled out the plastic bag with the victim’s ring. She stared at the jewelry, trying to understand the woman who had worn it. She noticed an inscription inside the band. She looked at the ring through the transparent bag and held it to the light:
Texas Tech, Class of 2009.
Her eyes narrowed with alarm. “How far are we from Jerusalem?”
“A good hour, at least, ” Cas said.
“Get me to Hebrew University, Tonto. And fast.”
MARLY AND CAS LEAPT TO their feet when a female lab technician at the university’s Hadassah Medical Center strode through the lobby doors. Clutching the requested test results, the technician smiled at Marly. “Good news, Dr. McKinney. We were able to scrape enough DNA from the dead skin on the ring to get a good sampling.”
Marly quickly scanned the document. Reaching the end, she closed her eyes, her suspicion confirmed. She thanked the technician, who lingered, as if hoping to be told why the test had been such high priority. But Marly remained silent, until the technician finally got the message and departed through the swinging doors again.
“Well?” Cas said. “You gonna to let me in on what this is all about?”
“That dead woman suffered from Progeria,” Marly said. “It’s a rare syndrome that causes someone’s genes to fast-forward the aging process. Children who have the condition age rapidly, to the point that they look like they would in their final years.”
“What does any of this have to do with Cohanim?”
“Progeria usually isn’t inherited. Something has to trigger the genes to go haywire.”
“You mean …”
Marly had a sickened look. “I think our Doctor Texanstein manipulated that poor girl’s DNA and kept her prisoner to force her to watch herself grow old. Happened in a matter of a few days, maybe a week.”
“I thought you said the DNA in living humans couldn’t be changed?”
She shook her head, still in shock. “That’s always been the prevailing scientific consensus. But some biotech companies have been messing around with DNA polymerase to provoke mutagenesis. Cohanim may have stumbled on the process to accomplish it.” She pulled out her purse, found her aspirin bottle, and popped a couple into her mouth. “This is why I went into rocks. I don’t have the stomach for the living sciences.”
Cas paced in a circle. “So, that woman could have been Bridget Whelan.”
“It’s looking that way.”
“But why would Cohanim go to all the trouble of torturing a grad-student employee by aging her to death?”
She shrugged. Who could read the mind of a sociopath? She looked at Cas and had to bite her tongue to keep from saying, Takes one to know one.
Cas flipped open his phone and called the registrar at Texas Tech to confirm that a Bridget Whelan had indeed been a student there. Informed that her home was Lubbock, he found her listed with an older woman named Livia and an infant, age two. He punched in the phone number listed for the address. Moments later, a woman came on the line with a cigarette-husky voice.
“I’m looking for Bridget Whelan,” Cas said. “Does she live there?”
The woman didn’t answer immediately. “Who is this?”
“My nam
e is Fielding. I’m with the police. Is Bridget your daughter?”
“Yes, but we ain’t seen her for nearly a year. She left her daughter with me. Last I heard from her, she was going overseas for her job.”
“Ma’am, did Bridget wear a ring with a skull and cauldron?”
The woman let out a stifled cry. “That was her coven talisman.”
Cas shot an alarmed glance at Marly. “Coven? You mean like a witch?”
“She was into all that pagan nonsense,” the woman said. “I told her it was the Devil’s work, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”
Before the mother could get another word in, Cas hung up, not wanting to be the one to give her the bad news. He’d let the Israeli police do that when they found the body. Stunned, he looked at Marly. “Why would a Christian rancher from Texas hire a witch?”
“Maybe Cohanim didn’t know about her pagan beliefs. Maybe he thought it was just a fad. It’s not like the woman would put something like that on her resume. The real question is, why would a modern witch leave her last desperate message in Latin?”
Cas broke a devilish grin. “Qui quaerit, invenit.”
“Very funny.” Marly stared at him. “Seek, and ye shall find.” She touched her temple. “Not just another pretty face, huh? Don’t tell me you’re going all New Testament on me now.”
Cas hurried for the exit, dragging her with him. “All of a sudden, I’m feeling an urge to go to church and confess my sins.”
She stopped and dug in her heels, clueless as to what scheme he was hatching now. “You’d have to get an extended visa for the time it would take to confess your—”
He was already out the door.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Old City, Jerusalem
MARLY STRUGGLED TO KEEP UP as Cas hurried down a narrow medieval street toward the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. When they turned a corner and reached the entrance to the sprawling rotunda built over the site of Christ’s crucifixion, Cas ducked into a side alley and pulled a small pistol from a holster under his vest jacket.
