The Shaman Sings (Charlie Moon Mysteries)

by James D. Doss

  The malignant presence told him exactly what to do about Anne Foster.

  Now that he owned his victim’s priceless property, he was reluctant to take unnecessary risks. He exhaled a puff of smoke. “What if I’m caught?”

  The Voice reminded him that he had experienced doubts before he killed Priscilla, but now the police were looking for the Mexican. It was true. Hadn’t the Voice told him which screwdriver would have Pacheco’s prints on the handle and how to manage the theft from the toolbox while the repairman was distracted?

  “Her property is mine now,” he said. “Don’t want to take any more chances, maybe end up in prison.” He dropped the cigarette butt onto the ice-encrusted pavement and ground it under his heel. Once this was all settled, he promised himself he would stop smoking again, for good this time.

  The Voice shifted to a soothing cadence, offered to provide proof of its ability to protect him.

  “Proof,” he muttered to himself, “that would be good.”

  * * *

  It had been a long day. The Jiffy Shop manager hoped to leave early and get a jump on the storm that would shortly turn the District into an ice-skating rink. There were few customers now and that was good luck. If the store emptied in the next twenty minutes, she could close the shop early. The young black woman, bored with her dull job, exercised her intelligent mind by studying each customer. She attempted to guess what their purchases were for, tried to imagine how each item might be used in their daily attempt to survive in the city. She watched her latest customer. The man obviously had time to kill. He wandered up and down the aisles, making a selection here, another there. He had less than a dozen items in the red plastic shopping basket when he shoved it onto her checkout counter. The assortment didn’t fit any familiar pattern. She slid each purchase over the laser beam that interrogated the bar code, calculated the price, and adjusted the inventory data. Cigarettes. A can of fancy cashews. A roll of nylon cord. A map of the District and Maryland. It was no surprise that he was a tourist; his jacket had a distinctly western cut. And, of course, there was the string tie.

  She paused when she came to the last item and offered a shy smile to her customer. “Well now. Mostly sell these during picnic season; didn’t know there was any still on the shelf.” His lips grew taut. The clerk kept her gaze away from his face as she dropped the last item into the plastic bag. Some folks, she had learned, were hard to figure. Won’t open their mouth to say a friendly word; wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire. And the strange things they buy! Why would anybody, she wondered, need an ice pick at this time of year?

  EIGHTEEN

  The tired young woman pulled her thin canvas raincoat over the woolen ski sweater and draped a heavy purse over her arm. When she locked the Jiffy Shop door and turned to face the deserted street, a frigid wind sucked her breath away. She buttoned her raincoat collar around her neck and headed south toward the Takoma Metro station. The cold slush penetrated her red imitation-leather shoes and filled the spaces between her toes, which immediately began to ache. No stranger to the harsh Washington autumns, she forged ahead stoically; the brown pillar marking the Red Line Metro station was only five blocks away. A half hour later, she would be home. She imagined a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup, the comfort of a warm bath. But her greatest desire was for sleep. Sleep without dreams.

  She would have heard his approach had it not been for the wind. The tempest howled and shrieked like a choir of demons, drowning out the normal sounds of the city. She felt the heavy cord as it dropped over her face, and thought a pull string had fallen from her raincoat hood. She attempted to brush it away with a gloved hand. When the cord tightened around her neck, she attempted to cry out but could not. It would not have mattered; the wind would have swallowed up her screams.

  As she struggled, a motorcycle policeman appeared at the next intersection, only yards away. The officer braked at the traffic signal and turned his head in her direction as he adjusted a helmet strap. He seemed to be blind, completely unaware that a citizen was being attacked within a stone’s throw. Her mind screamed out Why can’t you see me? I’m in the light, here under the lamppost! The traffic light switched to green. The cop calmly squeezed the accelerator on his handlebar, lifted his black boot from the pavement, and sped away in a swirl of snowflakes. The terrified woman swung her purse overhead in a vain attempt to strike her assailant; its contents were scattered at the curb.

  The cord tightened until it was impossible to breathe; she felt cartilage snap in her throat. The woman lost consciousness within seconds, and this was fortunate. She did not feel the thin cylinder of steel as it passed between her ribs and punctured the wall of her racing heart.

  Now the tired woman had sleep. Sleep without dreams.

  The madman stood exultant over the twisted body; a commonplace artist who had finally produced a masterpiece. Lost in ecstasy, he was unaware of the tears that left wet traces down his face. The policeman had looked directly at him while he strangled his victim, but the officer had seen nothing. Now he was certain: The Voice was not a symptom of madness. The Voice was a source of power—immense power.

  He no longer entertained the least fear of being apprehended. With an utterly calm demeanor, he squatted and pulled the nylon cord from around her thin neck. The woman’s head rolled to one side, doll-like; her eyes stared dumbly into the darkness. He carefully wrapped the nylon cord into a ball and pushed it into his coat pocket. He pulled the ice pick from her chest and wiped it on the corpse’s face to remove the blood. He did this several times, leaving patterns on the cheeks that reminded him of Indian war paint. This suddenly struck him as immensely funny. He chuckled silently at first, and then, as the hilarity of the situation overcame him, laughed out loud.

  It was a great relief—to know that the Voice was an objective reality. To know for certain that he was not insane.

  * * *

  Her job in Washington was finished, but it had been impossible to book a connection to Denver before morning. Anne made a reservation for dinner at a four-star Italian restaurant in Arlington. From the time she left the hotel garage, when she crossed the Potomac on the Teddy Roosevelt Bridge, even when she parked the rental car at the restaurant, she had felt it. Someone was watching her. Someone was following.

  She sat in the car and watched. And waited. An occasional car plowed through the slush on the street, but no one followed her into the parking lot. Anne closed her eyes and tried to rein in her runaway imagination. It was merely a case of nerves. Why would anyone be following her? Thomson certainly had no idea she was in Washington. She removed the key from the ignition and dropped it into her purse, then opened the door and gingerly stepped onto the asphalt. She was, she told herself, perfectly safe. Unless she slipped on this filthy oil-impregnated ice!

  Anne didn’t hear the man who approached from the shadows. It was all over within the space of a few heartbeats.

  * * *

  Parris was asleep; he was also dreaming. He was sitting in a small rowboat on a lake with a mirror surface like green glass. Not a ripple. Not a worry. The sun was warm on his face as he cast the line near giant lily pads. The rod bent into a U shape. The reel buzzed as the fish took the orange floating Rapala deep into the still waters. He tried to turn the crank, but the line continued to slip away. The trout had taken the lure, but the reel wasn’t working. The reel began to ring intermittently. Why, he thought idly, would a reel make such odd sounds? Fishing reels buzz or click, but reels don’t ring. Telephones ring.

  He rolled over onto his back. Damn the telephone! Tomorrow, he’d call Mountain Bell and demand an unlisted number. No, that wouldn’t be appropriate, not for the chief of police. There were other ways. He would unplug the infernal machine at bedtime. If they needed him at the station, they could damn well send a car and knock on his door! Parris squinted at the red digits on the clock radio and groaned. It was almost 2:00 A.M. He pushed the telephone receiver against his ear and grunted.

 
“That you, Chief? This is Knox. Sorry to call so late, but …

  Parris was instantly awake. Even the insolent Knox wouldn’t call his boss at this hour to have a casual chat. He pushed himself up on one elbow. “What is it?”

  “Some cop from back East is on the line. Thought he better talk to you, so I got him on a conference hookup.” Knox’s tone was unusually professional.

  He sat up and dropped his feet to the carpet. “Go ahead, Knox.”

  “Roger.” There was a clicking sound as Knox pressed the buttons.

  Parris’s hand trembled slightly as he gripped the telephone receiver. “Hello. Anybody on the line?”

  The connection was perfect; the voice could have been originating from next door. “Hello, Chief Parris? Officer Jerome Sloan, District of Columbia Police.”

  Parris felt his hands go cold as the blood drained from his fingertips. “You’re calling … from Washington?”

  “Right. Look, one of your citizens was delivered to the hospital over at Howard University Medical School. Bad news. Strangled and stabbed.” It was standard operating procedure to contact the police in the hometown so they could notify the victim’s family. Parris knew why Knox had referred the call to him. He knew, but he had to ask. “Who’s the victim?”

  “Well,” Sloan cleared his throat nervously, “she’s sure not talkin’, but her ID says she’s Anne Foster. Officer Knox says you … ah … know her.”

  The receiver almost slipped from his grasp; he fought to speak without a quaver. “Yeah.” Parris felt a cold emptiness growing inside his gut. “I know her.”

  * * *

  The man who was filled with darkness lifted his foot from the accelerator and pressed it lightly on the brake pedal. The car gradually slowed to a crawl. He pressed the brake pedal again and pushed a button on the door panel to roll down the right front window. He glanced up at his rearview mirror. No headlights were visible through the swirl of snow behind him; a truck approached from the opposite direction and passed.

  He was dead center on the Arlington Memorial Bridge. He unbuttoned his shoulder strap, picked up the ice pick by its metal tip, and tossed it out the window into the black waters of the Potomac. This small physical exertion gave him great pleasure. The cold air rushing into the warm automobile was invigorating. He had never felt so physically sure of himself. He removed the roll of nylon rope from his coat pocket and pitched it out the window.

  He hadn’t heard the Voice since he drove the ice pick into Anne Foster’s chest. That was no problem. He sensed that he was in complete control of his life; he presently had no need for his adviser. When he did have a need, he knew the Voice would be there.

  * * *

  The sympathetic policeman met Parris at National Airport and chauffeured him to the hospital at Howard University. They were halfway to their destination before either spoke.

  Sergeant Sloan kept his eyes glued to the slushy streets. “Officer Knox, he said you and this Foster woman…” His voice died, trailing off into the humming noise of the late-night traffic.

  “Yeah.” Parris clenched his fists. He wanted to break something. Anything.

  “Sorry, man. That’s rough.”

  “Have any ideas about the assailant?” Parris had his own notions, but it would be best to find out how the locals figured this.

  The officer was relieved to shift the subject to business. “No suspects; we have it down as a random attack. MO identical to another attack on the same night, up in Silver Spring. First victim was a black woman, late twenties, clerk in some two-bit store. Larynx crushed, left ventricle punctured. Died almost instantly.”

  “You’re sure it was the same…”

  “Sure as death and more taxes. Both victims strangled with a nylon cord. We got fiber samples from both assaults, probably from the perp’s overcoat. Good match. Both victims stabbed in the chest with an ice pick or something that’d pass for an ice pick. No attempt at robbery or rape. There was no more than a two-hour interval between the assaults.” After a few moments passed, the young officer offered another comment. “My cap’n is worried about this one. If the papers tie these attacks together, they’ll start yellin’ ‘Serial Killer in the Beltway.’ Son of Sam, devil cults, you know the kinda stuff. We’ll never hear the end of it.”

  It was an oblique plea for Parris to avoid any public statements that might set off a public panic. He didn’t bother to answer; the D.C. captain’s concerns about adverse publicity were trivial compared to the heavy weight on his chest.

  Parris tried to think, but he hadn’t slept three hours out of the last forty-eight. Two women. Strangled and stabbed. Like Priscilla Song. Only it wasn’t exactly the same. Priscilla’s assailant had strangled with his hands, not with a cord. Priscilla was stabbed in the eye. The clerk … and Anne … they had been stabbed in the chest. It seemed so similar and yet what would Sloan think if he suggested the possibility that a visiting professor of physics was responsible for these crimes? But why would the scientist kill a woman who worked in a convenience store? Only a lunatic would kill a stranger for no reason. Thomson might make a few dollars on drugs, but he wasn’t a lunatic. Sergeant Sloan must be right. It was random. A coincidence that Anne, in pursuit of a supposed drug dealer, had encountered a crazed killer. Metropolitan Washington had no shortage of killers. Anne was simply the latest casualty.

  Parris followed Sergeant Sloan into the deep recesses of the Howard University teaching hospital. Most of the staff, from medical students to nurses and physicians, were black. The physician who had filed the police report on Anne was a short, plump Puerto Rican who spoke with a barely discernible lisp. With clinical detachment, he described the cord marks on the neck and the tiny hole that had penetrated the chest a full twelve centimeters. The physician paused after he had finished his report on the clinical details. “We made the preliminary ID from her driver’s license. Maybe you could give us a positive…”

  Parris nodded dumbly. This encounter, the doctor’s lilting accent—it had the hollow quality of a dream. A very bad dream.

  The policemen left the physician to attend to an accident victim and eventually paused before a heavy green door. Officer Jerome Sloan stood to one side, his gaze fixed on the cracked linoleum floor. “If you don’t mind, man, I’d as soon wait out here.” He shuddered. “Never did like these places.”

  Parris didn’t answer. He pushed the green door open. When his eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting, he saw her prone figure draped in a light blue sheet at the far end of the windowless room. His boot heels clicked hollowly as he approached her immobile form. Parris forced his hand forward and grasped the sheet; he pulled it down just below her shoulders. She appeared much as he had expected; her eyes were closed as in a dreamless slumber. A long, arcing bruise circled the tender whiteness of her throat like a dark blue necklace. He touched her face, stroking her cheek with two fingers.

  Anne’s eyelids flickered, then opened. “Hello, copper,” she whispered.

  He squeezed her pale hand. “The doc said you were sedated, probably wouldn’t wake up until tomorrow morning. Thought I’d hang around and keep an eye on you.”

  “Shut up,” she said weakly, “and kiss me. On the mouth.”

  He did.

  The Puerto Rican physician padded softly into the room. He coughed to announce his presence and grinned. “I’m only her doctor, but I think our patient needs some rest.”

  Parris kissed Anne lightly on the forehead and followed the plump man to the door. “I understand this was a close thing.”

  “She’s lucky to be with the living,” the physician replied. “The penetration missed her heart by less than a centimeter.” He held his finger barely off the tip of his thumb to demonstrate.

  “We can be thankful the bastard had bad aim.”

  The surgeon smiled proudly, like a small boy who knew a wonderful secret. “Nothing wrong with his aim; he was dead center over the heart.” He removed something from his pocket and dropped it into
Parris’s hand. “She was wearing this around her neck. See that little metal tracing on that stone? It deflected the weapon just enough…”

  Parris tilted the rose quartz pendant to achieve just the right reflection from the fluorescent lights. There it was—a hairline tracing of steel where the tip of the ice pick had slid across the polished surface of the hard quartz. Anne’s survival was no accident. Her life was a gift from the old Indian with the radiator problem; the minor prophet who had vanished into the thin desert air on Route 64.

  NINETEEN

  Claude Potter-Evans was mentally exhausted; he leaned back in his rocking chair and rubbed his eyes. He had used the computer in the county library, programmed it to try dozens of potential key words. He had tested the “z f r c y r t” message on transposition and substitution systems, diagraphs, triagraphs, Vigenère squares, and Play-fair ciphers. Every attempt had been a failure. This whole undertaking was a waste of precious hours. He had told the policeman that it was absurd. You couldn’t break a serious code with only seven letters to work with. Particularly at his age, there were better ways to spend one’s time—walking in the forest, making rabbit stew, reading a good book. A nighttime visit to Madeline’s apartment. But no time to waste with fool’s errands. The old man pushed himself from the chair and pulled back the curtain on a small window to survey his “estate.” A light breeze whispered through the spruce; a blue jay fussed at a tufted-ear squirrel; marshmallow clouds were impaled on the summit of Salt Mountain. But he couldn’t get it out of his mind. If the girl had enciphered a message while she was under stress, it had to be something simple. Something very simple. She was under enormous pressure, perhaps knowing that death was near. How could she remain calm under such circumstances, calm enough to encode her last message to those who would ponder her fate?