"No, I'm all right, thanks. Legs are just a little shaky from squattin' down, that's all."
"Well, I was headin' home, anyway," Morris said. "The wife's still gabbin' with her friends over there, and she's not leavin' 'til she's all talked out. You know how the women are. I'll walk with you a little ways, if you don't mind the company."
"Yeah, sure, whatever."
The two made their way toward the street, and Morris silently counted to ten before saying, "Terrible thing, huh?" He was bluffing like mad while holding no decent cards at all, but thought it was worth a try. Might as well go all in.
"Yeah, Jesus. That kinda stuff doesn't happen around here. Never has, far as I know."
"What do they think it was, drugs?"
"I dunno. I ain't talked to the cops. My cousin Benny's the UPS guy who found him."
"Really? My God. He got quite a shock, I bet."
"Tell me about it. Benny says this guy, Hardridge--"
"'Hardwick,' I think it was."
"Yeah, you're right. Hardwick. Benny says, he's got a package for the guy, so he knocks on the front door; door swings wide open. Benny don't know whether to close it, leave it open, leave the package, or what, you know what I mean?"
"Sure. How's he supposed to know what the guy wants, right?"
"Right, exactly. So Benny takes, like, a couple of steps inside. He's about to yell, 'UPS man,' or something, but then the smell hits him."
"Christ, it must have been terrible," Morris said.
"Better believe it. Benny says it was like blood, and shit, and rotten meat, all rolled into one."
"Jesus Christ."
"Then he does somethin' I wouldn't of done, not in a million years. But, you know how he is--Benny always had more guts than brains. So he follows this god-awful smell, right into the guy's living room."
"That takes more nerve than I'd ever have, I'll tell ya that much."
"Yeah, well, I bet he wishes he'd just turned around and went back to his truck. He's gonna be dreaming about what he seen for years, I bet."
"Like that post-traumatic thing the guys in the war come home with."
"Yeah, somethin' like that, I guess." Benny's cousin shook his head in wonder. "He says the fuckin' guy--pardon my French--was turned inside out. I mean completely. Now how the hell could you do something like that? And who the hell'd want to, know what I mean?"
"Somebody who wanted to kill a guy and make it hurt," Morris said. "A lot."
"Fuckin' nutcase. Pardon my French."
"Yeah, a real psycho," Morris said quietly. "A real damn psycho."
Chapter 16
Libby and Morris stopped at a Perkins Pancake House, and ordered coffee.
"I'm glad you got something for your trouble," Libby said. "All I heard was a theory that the Manson Family was back in business, never mind that Charlie's in San Quentin, serving ninety-nine years to forever--as well he should be. Oh, and I got a nice recipe for strudel, for what that's worth."
The waitress brought their coffee, and Morris stirred sugar into his as he said, "Hey, don't underestimate the value of a good strudel. I knew a fella, one time, survived a knife fight because of a strudel his mom had made him."
Libby gave him a look that said she suspected her chain was being yanked, but then she said, "The sugar gave him the energy to fight better, or maybe run away?"
"Nope." Morris sipped his coffee. "He was carrying it home from his mom's house, when he ran into trouble. Took the strudel, and threw it at the guy with the knife. Knocked him right out. His mom wasn't much of a cook, you see."
Libby smiled and nodded, her suspicions confirmed. After trying her own coffee she said, more soberly, "I guess a strudel wasn't used on the late Mister Hardwick."
"No, not hardly. If he'd been found shot dead, something like that, I'd figure somebody from the poor kid's family came over for payback. But if a guy getting turned inside out doesn't reek of black magic, then I don't know what does."
"For sure. I'm assuming that what I was sensing last night emanated from whoever did that number on Hardwick. I wonder what he did, to piss off somebody like that."
Morris picked up one of the menus the waitress had left. "Well, he messed up the job. Got himself caught, even if the cops did drop the ball and get the case thrown out. And called a lot of attention to himself, in the process."
"Which means," Libby said pensively, "that someone not connected with the law might come along and decide to ask him some questions about why he did it, and for whom."
"Uh-huh. Someone like you and me, for instance. And I guess you could say we have been forestalled, big-time."
Libby picked up her own menu and looked at it without much interest. "So he was killed either as punishment for being careless, or to shut him up."
"Or both, which is my guess."
"Mine, also. Which turn of events leaves us, as my mom would elegantly put it, 'up shit creek.'"
"Shit creek?" Hannah Widmark said, as she slid into the booth next to Morris. "Doesn't sound like a nice place to be." She plucked the menu from Morris's hands, and began to page through it. "So, what looks good?"
"Pardee?" Fenton frowned in concentration, then shook his head. "Doesn't ring any bells with me." He hopped up to take a seat on the counter, next to a pile of Christine Abernathy's papers. "I take it the name has just cropped up for a second time."
"Yeah, I remember seeing it among Annie's stuff, day before yesterday," Colleen said. "It's mentioned in there at least once, maybe twice. Reason I remember, it's the name of a character in a Western that my brother Peter just loves: Rio Conchos."
Fenton shook his head. "Never heard of it, but then I'm not too big on Westerns."
"You're not missing much," Colleen told him. "I've sat through it at least three times. I stayed with Pete sometimes, when I was in high school, after I'd have a big fight with my parents. He was always watching that stupid movie--and what was I gonna say? It was his place."
"Yeah, I hear you," Fenton said. "Beggars can't be choosers--of the movies, or anything else."
"Anyway, there's a character in it named Pardee, some ex-Confederate colonel who's trying to re-start the Civil War by giving guns to the Apaches."
"Sounds complicated." Fenton's frown returned. "We're assuming it's a name. There's no such thing as a 'pardee,' is there?"
"Easy enough to check." Colleen produced her iPhone and did a quick Internet search.
"Um. Appears only as a proper name," she said, a few minutes later. "A big home builder in the Southwest, for one. Lots of smaller businesses around the country. Apparently, a man named Pardee was governor of Arkansas, like a hundred years ago."
"Probably not the one we want, then."
"Nope, not unless he's been resurrected, and I hope to heaven we're not going to have to deal with that stuff in this case."
Fenton gave her another sample of the look he had been sending her way a lot, lately. It combined curiosity with a certain amount of suspicion. "I don't suppose any of those Pardee guys--or gals, I guess--is mixed up in black magic."
"Well, I didn't check out all 1.3 million Google hits," Colleen said. She picked up the iPhone again. "Although, you never know..."
"I was kidding, Colleen."
"I know you were. But there's all kinds of stuff on the Internet these days, Dale. And we'd feel like real fools, later, if it turned out that what we wanted was right there in cyberspace, waiting for us."
She applied herself to touching icons on the small screen, one after another. Without looking up, she said, "Fortunately, we don't have to look at all 1.3 million. Let's see what we get by combining 'Pardee' with 'black magic' in our little search."
A minute later: "Nope. Okay, let's try 'sorcery.'"
Then: "Nothing. Hmm, how about 'witchcraft?'"
Then: "Shit. Oh well, it was worth a--"
Fenton was looking off into space, eyes narrowed. "Try 'wizard.'"
"Good one. Although if he didn't show up with the o
ther... well, hello, ladies!"
She looked up at Fenton. "One hit. Looks like a message board--part of a web page about witchcraft. Not bad, Dale."
As she started tapping the screen again, Fenton said, "A wizard's just a male witch, right?"
"Not exactly," Colleen said absently. "It's a different magical tradition, that draws its power--"
She stopped, then looked up at him. "Why are you asking me about stuff like that?"
Fenton shrugged. "You told me that you read a lot. Figured you might've read something about that subject. Looks like I was right, too. What was it you were saying about a different tradition?"
Colleen went back to the iPhone and shook her head. "Doesn't matter." A few seconds later, she said, "Okay, here we go. Looks like it's part of a long thread on the hazards of witchcraft, mostly about things and people to avoid. Somebody calling himself 'Gandalf 23' had this to say:
'I know just what you mean, Susie B. Buddy of mine, Vince Israel, got involved with a wizard name of Pardee who's bad, man, I mean real fuckin' bad. Dude's magic is the blackest of the black. But Vince wouldn't listen to me, thought he knew everything. Well, this Pardee got him involved in some shit, and now Vince is doing, like, twenty-five to life. They said he killed a little kid. I dunno whether he done it or not, but my point is, some people they're fuckin' poison, and you gotta treat 'em just like snakes in the jungle. I mean, like, cobras and stuff. You run into one, just turn and walk away. Otherwise, you're lettin' yourself in for a world of hurt.'
Colleen sighed, and put her phone down on the counter. "I translated the typos into English as I went along," she said to Fenton. "So this Vince Israel knows somebody named Pardee, and pretty well, by the sound of it."
"And if you believe the guy on the board, old Vince is in the slam. What's the date on that thread, anyway?"
Colleen checked. "Gandalf 23 posted it on November third, two years ago."
"So, if Gandalf's telling the truth, Vince is most likely still in the system. Unless he got himself shanked in the yard over a gambling debt, or something."
"Good thing his name's not John Smith or Bill Jones," Colleen said. "Shouldn't be too many Vincent Israels behind the walls, I would think."
Fenton nodded toward the iPhone. "Can you get into the Bureau of Prisons database with that thing?"
"One way to find out."
A little while later, she put the phone down again. "No, I can't get access through this operating system. Shit."
"Bet the Boston field office can," Fenton said.
Colleen thought about it. "Yeah, you're right. They probably can."
Fenton looked around the vast, silent warehouse. "Can you think of any good reasons why we need to hang around here?"
"Not even one," she said. "Come on, let's hit the road."
The fifteen desk-chairs were formed in a rough circle, and twenty or so others, not in use, were pushed to the side to make room. Allie Mercer conducted all of her smaller classes this way. When it came to teaching literature, she much preferred guided discussion over lecture, although for her introductory classes, which tended to be larger, the "me-talk-you-listen-and-take-notes-because-it'll-be-on-the-test" approach was sometimes unavoidable.
"So, Goodman Brown grows into old age cynical and bitter," Allie said to the group, "and Hawthorne ends the story with 'his dying hour was gloom.' What's his point here? That ignorance is bliss? Would Brown be better off not knowing that all his neighbors, friends, even his beloved wife, Faith, are practicing black witchcraft in secret?"
"I don't think so, Dr. Mercer." That was from Becky Daniel, who, in Allie's view, was one of the few current English majors who had the potential of one day becoming a true intellectual. "I think what Hawthorne's getting at, is that knowledge comes with a price, and you just have to be willing to pay it. I mean, Goodman Brown sees his..."
That was when Allie Mercer's right hand began tingling in a way that she recognized and understood. A quick glance at her watch told her that the class period had about ten minutes to go, but Allie knew she wouldn't be able to concentrate until she allowed her hand to do what had to be done.
All right, let Becky finish what she's saying, then get them out of here. They never complain when I break class early, anyway.
Becky was saying, "...that having no illusions is a hard thing to face, but we have to face it."
It was an interesting idea, and Allie regretted not being able to follow it up now. Todd Bailey, seated two places to Becky's left, said, "I'm not sure I--"
Allie held up a hand, interrupting him. "Todd, hold that thought, will you? And make a note to yourself about what you were going to say, so we can start at that point next time." To the whole group she said, "We're going to finish a little early today, guys. In fact, we just did."
As the surprised, but not displeased, students began to stand, Allie said, a little louder, "And don't forget to read Gordon Dickson's 'The Amulet' for Friday. That's next on the reading list, in case you forgot."
Allie was concerned that she'd be delayed further if some of them stuck around to talk to her about their term paper topics, but the students all shuffled out the door, and soon the classroom was empty.
With her left hand, Allie reached for the legal pad containing her discussion notes for 'Young Goodman Brown' and flipped to a blank page. Only then did she reach into her skirt pocket for a pen. Her right hand was tingling insistently now, in a way that was almost painful.
She took the pen in her right hand and touched its point to the lined yellow paper. Instantly, Allie was writing. She was not surprised to see the handwriting on the page was not her own.
It took only a few seconds. Then her hand stopped, and the tingling began to subside, soon fading to nothing. Allie stared at the words written on her pad.
The Circle must form, this night at 9:00 EST. It involves a matter of grave importance, and your participation is vital. May the Goddess bless you.
Allie Mercer could feel her heart beating faster. Sister Eleanor, despite an unfortunate tendency toward archaic language when communicating en masse with the Sisterhood, did not use terms like "grave importance" lightly. Allie wished she didn't have to wait almost six hours to find out exactly what kind of shit had hit the fan.
Allie stood slowly, and began to gather together the books, notes, handouts, and other stuff that made up what she thought of as her "professor kit." The specific components of the kit varied from course to course, but the same basic stuff was needed every time.
A guest speaker was scheduled on campus tonight--writer, cultural critic, and sometime porn actress Sharon Purcell, known also as "Shari Sexpert," was giving a talk entitled something like, "Two Drinks Away: Bisexuality and the 'Straight' Woman." Allie had thought it sounded like fun, and planned to go.
But now, nothing was going to prevent her from being home tonight at 9:00pm, lying on her bed and waiting to form the Great Circle.
A knot of anxiety was beginning to form in Allie's stomach. She picked up her professor kit, and headed for the door. Ten minutes of meditation, in her office with the door closed, would help. But she knew that she wouldn't be able to really relax until she found out what the emergency was--and maybe not even then.
"I thought you didn't want to be seen with us, Hannah," Libby Chastain said. "Something abut 'too close to the bull's-eye,' if I remember correctly."
"I think we'll be all right this time, Libby," Hannah said, with a tiny smile. "Especially since the threat to you has been eliminated--at least, the immediate threat."
"Do tell," Morris said. He turned sideways and looked at Hannah closely.
"I imagine this guy," Hannah said, "like those who preceded him, was just a hireling. But from what you've told me about the others, this one was a cut--no, several cuts--above."
A waitress came over and asked if they wanted anything to eat. Hannah, still holding the menu she'd taken from Morris, said, "I don't know about these two, but I certainly do." She proceeded to order
a meal that might make a lumberjack feel a tad overfull. Morris and Libby said they would stick with coffee, for now.
Once the waitress was safely out of earshot, Morris said, "This guy, the one who was several cuts above--I assume he was the one responsible for the bats."
"Oh, yes," Hannah said. "He called them from, I would imagine, miles around. Then he used another spell to change them into something more dangerous. I don't know if you got a close look at any of the little darlings--"
"A little closer than we'd like," Libby said. "In fact, a lot closer."
"Some of them fell to fighting among themselves, before this wizard could get everything organized and send them against the motel. A few fell to earth, after receiving mortal damage from one or more of the others. One came near me, and I had a chance to look it over." Hannah made a face. "Nasty things."
"And you were where, exactly?" Morris asked.
"In the hills, but about half a mile away from the bat man. I watched what he was doing through a pair of night glasses I had with me. Once I got a look at how powerful he was, I decided to stay put for a while. People like that--" Hannah stopped herself. "Creatures like that have very sharp senses, most of the time. It's difficult to get close without their knowing, and dangerous to try."
"You said 'most of the time,' Hannah." Libby had left the sarcasm behind now. "What's the exception?"
"When they're in the midst of working magic, of course. I realize that you're on the opposite side of things from these... monsters, Libby. But when you're concentrating on a spell, you're not exactly paying real close attention to your environment, are you?"
Libby nodded slowly. "That's true," she said. "I never really thought about it that way before, but you're right."
"So you stayed put, until when?" Morris asked her.
The waitress brought part of Hannah's immense meal, and a fresh pot of coffee for Morris and Libby. Hannah said, "I hope you'll both excuse me," and started in.
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