Eleven Days

by Donald Harstad

  “We might need a translator,” I said.

  Saperstein looked up. “Not too hard. I would have expected it to be encoded—at least a different alphabet.”

  Hal indicated the first entry. “How about this?”

  Saperstein looked at the page. “Okay, an ultimate sacrifice is a human sacrifice. The birthday of the ultimate fool is Christmas. Whoever Handmaiden is, is going to bring the victim. Probably use sexual favors to attract somebody and get them out to the scene of the sacrifice. Darkness is preparing himself to conduct the ritual, by meditation and secondary rituals. Benefactor has finally become a full-fledged member of the group, which means that he has participated in their final initiation ceremony. That would require, by the way, that all members be present.”

  He smiled at us. “Like I said, it’s easy.”

  “Maybe for you.”

  Art came in. “What you got?”

  I told him.

  “They change shifts at the hospital at eleven?”

  “I think so.”

  “We’d better get both those nurses,” said Art, “and get an interview done tonight. At shift change.”

  “Good idea,” said Hal.

  It was 21:40. “I’ll call them now,” I said. “They may have to make arrangements and let their family know they’ll be a little late.”

  I picked up the phone, then put it down. “Hey, I’ll bet that the one called Benefactor is McGuire. Even money.” I grinned. “Cause Helen told me so.”

  An aide answered at the hospital, and I asked to speak to Carrie. While I waited, Saperstein was reading another entry.

  “Definitely a human sacrifice,” he said to nobody in particular.

  Carrie came on the line.

  “Hi, Carrie, this is Carl up at the sheriffs office.”

  “Yes?” She sounded a little suspicious.

  “Carrie, we’d like to see you tonight. After your shift is over. And Lori, too.”

  “Well, I don’t know about Lori, but I have to be home right away tonight.”

  “An emergency?”

  “I just have some things to do.” She was using her official nurse voice, not about to brook any arguments.

  “Just a second, Carrie.” I put my hand over the phone. “Hey, Hal?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Our nurses are a little reluctant. Making excuses.”

  “We need them tonight?”

  “I think so. How about you, Art?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” said Hal, “let me talk to her.” He went to another phone. “What’s her name?”

  “Carrie. I already have a written statement from both of them.”

  “We’d better talk to ’em anyway. Hello, Carrie?”

  I listened in on my phone.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Special Agent Hal Greeley, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. We have to talk to you tonight.”

  “That’s out of the question, I’m afraid.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Carrie. It’s very important.”

  “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Greeley,” she said, and hung up.

  I looked at him. “Gee, I wish I could do that.”

  “We’ve been to special classes,” said Hester, grinning at her fellow agent. “Hal excelled.”

  “Shut up.” He was visibly embarrassed.

  Saperstein interrupted. “Hey, they have the first appearance of the victim on the 24th of November. She says that ‘the sacrifice was revealed to us at last.’ ”

  “Wonder who the poor bastard was?” I said to nobody in particular.

  While Hal was explaining some of the details to Art, I went over to Saperstein and read along in the diary. Weird stuff.

  “I can’t wait,” he said. “Let’s look at December 25th and see if they got him.”

  He flipped several pages ahead. The pertinent entry was on December 26.

  “Darkness has led us to the ultimate power,” he read. “The power flows through us all. We are supreme. We are complete. We are accomplished. Handmaiden has given us the vessel for our advancement. She is elevated. The sacrifice is in the arms of the Master and is safe. The Nathane bites deep into the heart of the sacrifice, releasing the life force and enhancing us all.”

  It got pretty quiet in the office.

  “No shit,” murmured Hester.

  “They did it,” said Hal. “They really did it, didn’t they, Bill? They sacrificed somebody.”

  “They did,” said Saperstein.

  “Jesus. I wonder who it was?” asked Art.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “There’s a little more here,” said Saperstein. “Listen to this. ‘A human essence has been given to you, O Prince, to prove to you our dedication. You thrive. We thrive. O Prince, treasure your sacrifice, and treasure the Handmaiden who gave to you.’ ”

  “Sounds pretty certain to me,” I said.

  “Me too,” said Hal, “but I’m not sure it will fly with a jury, unless we have a corpse.”

  “Let me check with Sally, but I don’t think we have any local missing persons. So it’s probably somebody from out of the area.”

  I asked Sally to check, over the intercom.

  “With the connections,” said Art, “into Iowa City, you might have her check them for missing persons from there.”

  “Sally, check with Iowa City. Better include Johnson County, too, and see what they have for missing persons from December—and November—of last year.”

  “God,” said Hester. “We’re going to have to check missing persons reports from all over hell. Shit, shit, shit.” She looked around the room. “We don’t even have a description, for God’s sake. We can’t really check without a description, unless it turns out to be local.”

  Oh, yeah. That could take months and still come to nothing. But it looked like it was going to have to be done. Because we now had a fifth murder.

  Entropy increases.

  21

  Saturday, April 27

  21:58 hours

  “I wonder,” I said, “if we have the other diary volume.”

  “Pardon?” said Hal.

  “The other volume. This one says ‘The Second Book.’ ”

  Saperstein flipped back to the frontispiece. “It does, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Hester.

  “Let’s check the inventory,” said Art. “From the search warrant at Herkaman’s.”

  “McGuire too,” I said. “There was a lot of stuff in his little basement grotto.”

  The inventory from the search warrant at Herkaman’s place was sixteen pages long. The one from McGuire was eight. Hester’s handwriting, small, precise.

  On the Herkaman sheet was the entry: “Exhibit AQ 1–7, seven assorted notebooks, four spiral, three loose-leaf, from bedroom closet.”

  On the McGuire sheet: “Exhibit AB, one notebook, from basement, small room.”

  One problem. The evidence had been taken by the lab team for processing. All the evidence was at the DCI lab in Des Moines. A mere two hundred miles.

  “I’ll get them to look first thing in the morning,” said Hester, “and if there’s anything there they’ll copy it and relay it up.”

  A relay would be from cop car to cop car. It would require a lot of gas, but it was a hell of a lot quicker than the post office.

  Saperstein spoke up, from the depths of the notebook. “These people have a goal here, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “What do you mean, a goal?”

  “They’re planning something, or, at least, they were. She refers to their ‘ultimate objective’ at least twice, once before the sacrifice, once after.”

  “I wonder what the ultimate objective would be for a Satanist?” I was just thinking out loud.

  “I don’t think I want to know,” said Art. “We have enough trouble here without that.”

  The intercom buzzed, and I picked it up. It was Sally.

  “We don’
t have any missing persons at all, Carl.”

  “Good.”

  “Johnson County had fifty-three from November 15th to now, forty-two of which have been located.”

  “Leaving eleven …”

  “You must have majored in math …”

  “Yeah … Look, are they sending you the info on them?”

  “They say they’ll mail it, unless we need it in a hurry.”

  “Just a minute … Hal, we have eleven missing persons unaccounted for in Johnson County from the 15th of November to date. They say they’ll mail the info, unless we need it right away.”

  “Have ’em teletype it now.”

  “Okay … Sally, tell ’em we need it now.”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “They’re gonna hate me.”

  “Tell ’em it’s for a homicide investigation, and that the request is from SA Greeley, DCI.”

  “Will do. I hope they’re not busy tonight.”

  “Now that we got some dates here,” said Hal, “I really want to talk to those nurses tonight.” He made a fist, put it up by his ear, and moved it in an arc toward the desk, snapping his fingers. “We’re on a roll.”

  “We can get ’em if you need ’em,” I said. “Material witnesses.”

  In Iowa, we can arrest and hold a material witness for forty-eight hours. Not done often. In fifteen years, I’d only done it once before. Really aggravated the witness, and he’d started a civil damage suit against the department and me. Didn’t get too far, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you took lightly.

  “Let’s see their statements first,” said Art.

  I opened my case folder and handed them to him. I leafed through my notepad, intending to write some of the night’s events down, with dates referred to in the notebook from Phyllis. I was flipping through the pages when I saw ‘November 24th,’ underlined. From the interview Hester and I had done with Helen Bockman. It was the date Rachel Larsen had had her baby.

  I just sat there for a second, stunned.

  Art turned toward me and did a double take. “You all right?”

  “Fine. But it was Rachel’s baby.”

  “What?”

  “The sacrifice—it was Rachel’s baby.”

  It had already clicked with Hester. “My God … you’re right.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Art.

  “Helen Bockman told us that Rachel had a baby. Looked it up on her calendar, and it was November 24th when she was born.”

  “Let’s have that part about the victim’s arrival again, Bill,” he said to Saperstein.

  He didn’t even have to look it up. “The sacrifice was revealed to us at last.”

  “On November 24th?”

  “Yeah, first mentioned on the 24th.”

  “And then, later, about how they got it?”

  “Just a minute.” He turned some pages. “Okay, ‘Handmaiden has given us a vessel.’ ” Saperstein shook his head. “It fits. It fits. Especially if Rachel was Handmaiden.”

  “And they killed her baby.”

  “Sure sounds that way,” he said. “Satanists have been reported to have done just this sort of thing in the past. We had a couple of instances where it was alleged, but never proved.”

  “Why not?” asked Hal.

  “No corpse. They say that they either scatter them or in some instances eat them.” He shook his head. “Don’t know if the cannibalism bit is true or not. But we’ve never come up with a body.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And if they’re born at home, without a doctor in attendance, there’s no record of the birth. No record needed of the death, either. Just like they never existed.”

  “How the hell could the mother put up with that sort of shit?” asked Art.

  Saperstein just shrugged. “You have to know them, I guess. The cult is everything. It probably ain’t easy or anything. But they do it. They do it.”

  I shook my head. “We should have guessed as soon as Helen said she was worried about the baby.”

  Hester leaned her back against the wall. “Maybe you did, sort of.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked toward the ceiling. “Just didn’t want to believe it.” She shook her head. “You didn’t have a lot of evidence, either. Not then.”

  Nobody said anything for a second.

  “Actually,” she said, “we don’t have a lot now.”

  “Not a lot,” I agreed. “But enough to convince me.”

  “Yeah, me too.” She arched her back, bringing herself upright again. “Let’s get those nurses. And see what else they found in the locker, among other things.”

  “Don’t let ’em hang up on ya,” said Hal with a small grin.

  Hal called Lamar and told him we had to talk to the nurses even if we had to arrest them. And tonight. Lamar reluctantly agreed.

  Art called the county attorney at the same time and told Fueller what we were going to do. It was okay with him, too, until Art gave him Carrie’s name. Her husband was the son of a very wealthy farmer, and Fueller was the dad’s attorney. He started to waffle. Art got pissed—well, just extra firm, I guess. Fueller told him to call Hamilton, the assistant CA. If Hamilton agreed, it was okay with Fueller. But he didn’t want any complications.

  Hamilton agreed.

  Art, Hester, and I hit the hospital about 22:45. We hung around in the lobby, getting stared at by the staff, for a few minutes. At one point I saw Lori looking around the partition of the nurse’s station at us. She saw me and ducked back.

  We didn’t want to interfere with shift change. We also decided to use persuasion, and to arrest only as a last resort.

  The four second-shift nurses were being replaced by three third-shift, and Sylvia Sukow, chief of nursing, happened to be pulling a night shift for an absent nurse. Sylvia, who Art and I had known for a long time, approached us.

  “Can I ask you people what is going on?”

  “Sure, Sylvia, we’re here to talk to Lori and Carrie.”

  “You’re disrupting my nurses. You’re making them very nervous.”

  “Well, we’re sorry about that. We just have to talk to them tonight, and didn’t want to interrupt anything until the shift had changed.”

  “I appreciate that, Art. But I’ll have to ask you to wait in the staff conference room. We have to have a little meeting of our own, to discuss a patient problem. They’ll be available in a few minutes.”

  Nurses. “Okay,” said Hester. “But tell them not to ‘forget.’ ” She showed her badge. “Division of Criminal Investigation. I’m very serious about this. If there’s any chance of them ‘forgetting,’ you could be in some serious trouble yourself.”

  Sylvia’s eyes got a little wider than usual. She was almost six feet tall, graying hair. She put her hands on her hips and stared down at Hester.

  “My nurses don’t forget, lady.”

  She turned on her heel and walked back to the nurse’s station.

  “We’re supposed to wait in here,” said Art, indicating a room off the lobby.

  They kept us waiting for about ten minutes. Then the door opened, and Carrie, Lori, and Sylvia came in. Sylvia took the offensive right away.

  “My nurses will talk to you, but I will be present. This is a hospital, and I will know everything that is going on. Do you have any criminal charges against them?”

  Now, we’d been getting off on the wrong foot ever since I had talked to Carrie on the phone. It was going downhill fast.

  “Just a sec,” I said. “Hester, look, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk to Sylvia for a moment. In private. I’ll have to reveal a little, but I think it’s warranted in this case.”

  She thought about it. She looked at the three nurses. Sylvia was becoming hostile. Carrie was actively hostile, and resentful. Lori looked a little concerned. We were going to get nowhere, at this rate.

  “Okay, but keep it brief.”

  “Right. Sylvia, could we talk in your office for a second?”

  She wavered. I b
elieve she thought I was trying to get her out of the way so that Hester and Art could talk to her two nurses without her.

  “For a second, Carl.”

  We walked down the hall and into her little office. Desk, desk chair, and one hard-backed office chair. I leaned my backside against her desk and crossed my arms. “Close the door, would you?”

  She did, but reluctantly.

  “Okay, Sylvia. This is about Phyllis Herkaman. You know that. And about some stuff that they found in her locker. You know that, too, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We have to have their cooperation, and we’re going about it in the wrong way. I know that. But we need them tonight, and maybe you, too. And if they refuse to cooperate, they are going to be arrested.”

  “For what?”

  “Not for anything. As material witnesses.”

  “I don’t understand, Carl. Phyllis was a damned victim. She didn’t do anything!”

  “Not so. Not quite the case, Sylvia.”

  I looked around for an ashtray. No luck. “Listen, Sylvia, what I’m going to tell you is not to be told to anybody, under any circumstance. Fair?”

  “Sure.”

  “The only people who know what I’m going to tell you are the three of us, and a New York PD detective.”

  “New York?”

  “Right. And now there’s going to be you. But I think you have to know.”

  “So?”

  “So, do you remember that girl that used to hang around with Phyllis? Rachel Larsen?”

  “I know of her, yes.”

  “You know that Phyllis was into Satanism?”

  “I don’t know that. There’ve been rumors, that’s all.”

  “Not rumors. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Did Phyllis ever mention to you that Rachel was pregnant?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she was, and she delivered in November. She was a Satanist, too. Fact, not rumor.”

  “All right. So?”

  “We have reason to believe that the baby was sacrificed on Christmas Eve.”

  Sylvia stared at me for a few seconds. “You’re crazy,” she whispered.

  “ ’Fraid not.”

  “You’re crazy,” she said again, and shook her head. “No.”