Ash: Return of the Beast

by Gary Tenuta

  Kane knew she was right. He was fishing out of frustration but he had no bait on the end of his line. “Why are we even talking about it? It’s not gonna happen. We’ll have to come up with something else.”

  Ravenwood sank back into the seat. “Obviously. But what?”

  “I thought this kind of case was your specialty.”

  “Yeah, well, right now I feel more like Crowley on his death bed.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Just before he died, his final words were ‘I am perplexed’.”

  The comment brought an amused chuckle from Kane, followed by at least two miles of silence. If she thinks she’s perplexed, she ought to be in my shoes. That thought triggered a mental picture of his daughter with her feet on top of his feet as he danced her around the living room to one of his favorite old songs, ‘Dancing On Daddy’s Shoes’.

  Ravenwood caught the grin on his face. “A penny,” she said.

  “What? Oh. Just thinking about my daughter.”

  “Sarah, right?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  Ravenwood gave him a look that said ‘Are you kidding? Did you forget who you’re talking to?’

  He shook his head. “And I suppose you know about––”

  “The accident?”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Do you get to see her often?”

  “What, you mean you don’t know?”

  “Sorry. I don’t mean to pry. Just thought you might like to talk about it.”

  Any other time he’d probably tell Ravenwood to mind her own business. But lately, with his days being shrouded by black magick and characters that seemed to enjoy dwelling in the dark, Sarah was the one bright spot in his life. He wasn’t at all comfortable with any part of this bizarre case but oddly enough––as he just at that moment realized––he was actually beginning to feel comfortable with Ravenwood. That made no sense to him, whatsoever. He shook his head. I am perplexed. “I see her as often as possible,” he said. “Which hasn’t been all that much lately.”

  “The job?”

  “That, and she’s off at camp right now.”

  “Camp?”

  “Music camp. Flute. She’s really good. Don’t know where she gets it. Her mother, I guess. I can’t carry a tune in a bucket.”

  Ravenwood smiled. “Me neither.” Wow. The Teddy bear has returned.

  Kane glanced over at her. He couldn’t deny she was physically attractive as all hell. The devil on one shoulder was shouting in his ear, ‘This is not good’. The angel on his other shoulder was whispering, ‘Yeah, but it ain’t bad’. “What about you?” he asked. “Got any kids?”

  “Me? No. Haven’t found the right guy.”

  “Hmm––you like kids?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t like kids? I always thought I’d be a great mom. I mean, you know. If that ever happened.”

  “You wanna meet Sarah sometime?” He couldn’t believe those words had tumbled out of his mouth. Shit. What the hell did I just say?

  The question threw Ravenwood back against the seat as if someone had ignited a rocket thruster and they instantly jumped from a comfortable 35 miles per hour to a Star-Trek warp speed and the Teddy bear was piloting the ship.

  She quickly regained her bearing and pretended to brush a speck of lint off her pant leg. “Sure,” she said, casually turning to gaze out her side window. “Why not?” She was now more perplexed than ever.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Next Morning…

  Wheeler popped in to Kane’s office and flopped a copy of the Seattle Eye on the desk. “Seen this?”

  “What is it?”

  “Check the headline.”

  Kane scanned the heavy black print:

  SEATTLE’S CLERGY DROPPING LIKE FLIES

  The Seattle Eye––popularly known simply as The Eye––was the city’s alternative weekly news tabloid. It started out ten years ago as a relatively insignificant paper that focused on entertainment and offbeat news. Gradually, it grew into a going concern and acquired a reputation for occasionally scooping Seattle’s major establishment newspaper, the Seattle Sound Times. The article causing the vein on the side of Kane’s neck to swell like a balloon was written by Mike “Bloodhound” Morran, a defector from the Seattle Sound Times and now the star reporter for The Eye.

  The deaths of the preachers, up to this point, had been given little attention by any of the local news media. That was due in large part to Kane’s insistence that the Department keep a tight lid on the details of the case. But it was that hermetically sealed lid that aroused the curiosity of Bloodhound Morran.

  Kane exploded before he even got through the first paragraph. He slammed the top of his desk with a closed fist. Two pencils and a half empty box of paperclips bounced onto the floor. His coffee sloshed over the lip of the cup, soaking The Eye and its unwelcomed headline. He glared at Wheeler. “Shit! How the hell did this happen?”

  Wheeler froze. “Um… I…”

  “Somebody around here leaked and I want to know who it was.”

  “It wasn’t me, Lieutenant. Swear to God. Besides, if you read the rest of the article, you’ll see he doesn’t really know much of anything. It’s just a lot of questions and speculation.”

  Kane was still steaming. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But there is one thing. He’s noticed the nine-day pattern.”

  Kane gripped his own forehead and began giving his temples a slow massage. It was only 10 a.m. and he was already getting the headache that was usually reserved for an afternoon slot on a really bad day. “All right. Get out. Let me read the rest of the damned thing.”

  Kane discovered Wheeler was right. Morran didn’t really know much about the details of the case. But the star reporter’s bloodhound instincts were on high alert. His article mentioned the 9-day intervals at least three times and it focused on the fact that the official cause of death in each case was heart attack. He called it ‘A set of coincidences so unlikely that it seems to defy the laws of chance’.

  Kane finished reading the article and called Ravenwood to break the news. “Wait’ll you hear this,” he said when she picked up the call.

  “Morran?”

  Kane winced. How foolish could he have been to think he was finally going to be one step ahead of her. “So you read The Eye.”

  “Of course. I have a subscription.”

  Kane rolled his eyes. “Of course you do. Well, you know what’s going to happen now, don’t you? The mainstream press is going to jump all over this. It’s gonna turn into a goddamn circus.”

  “It’s already started.”

  “What?”

  “Remember Gail Green?”

  “Who?”

  “You recall the case of that twelve-year-old girl who went missing last year and was finally found dead, six weeks later, in the trunk of a an abandoned car down by the waterfront?”

  “Yeah…”

  Ravenwood paused, waiting for Kane’s memory to kick up a few details of the case.

  “Oh, Christ,” he groaned. “Gail Green was that old woman who claimed to be a psychic channeler or something. And apparently––”

  “She accurately pin-pointed the location where the body was finally found.”

  “Yeah, I remember. Psychic, my ass. It was a goddamn lucky guess on her part. So, what about her?”

  “Ever hear of the Rick and Dick show on Talk-Radio, KTOK, in the morning?”

  “Yeah, vaguely. Why?”

  “They were talking about Morran’s article this morning and Gail Green called in to offer her two cents on the subject.”

  “Oh, God. What’d she say?”

  “She says her spirit guide informed her that the preachers had been murdered by an inter-dimensional disciple of Satan and that it’s a sign of the coming Apocalypse. The end is near. The whole nine yards. No number pun intended.”

  Kane’s head dropped. This wasn’t going to be just a normal media circus. This w
as going to have the special added attraction of a freak show. Wonderful. “How should we handle this? Reporters are going to be all over us now, you know. Especially with tomorrow being the ninth day.” He was about to continue when he was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Hang on a minute.” He put Ravenwood on hold.

  Tom Bower peeked his head in. “Sorry, Lieutenant. Some guy named Morran here to see you. Says he’s a reporter.”

  “What? Shit.” The surprise caused his headache to ratchet up another notch. “Tell him I’m not in. No. Wait. Tell him… Oh, Christ. Just stall him off for a minute.” He got back to Ravenwood and told her what just happened. “How do you think I should handle this? I could just tell him to blow off.”

  “Wow, Morran’s really got his teeth into this one, doesn’t he? Okay, look. I think you should see him. The more we try to cover up, the more suspicious he’s going to get. Before you know it, the whole story’s going to explode into a firestorm of conspiracy theories. In fact it’s already started. While you had me on hold I logged onto Morran’s blog. The comments are streaming in. Between Morran’s article and Gail Green’s appearance on the Rick and Dick show, the doomsayers and conspiracy theorists are having a field day.”

  “Christ on a crutch. I knew it. I knew it would happen. I suppose we were lucky to have held it off as long as we did. So what now?”

  “I’m thinking we should roll with it. It might work to our advantage to have a few more facts of the case floating around out there. Who knows? Maybe someone out there knows something, heard something that we’ve missed. So I say give the Bloodhound a few nuggets to chew on. We’ll see what happens. Can’t hurt.”

  “A few nuggets? Like what? There aren’t but a handful of nuggets in our feedbag as it is.”

  “Yeah, I know. The biggest nugget is the doppelganger. We sure as hell don’t want to let that one out of the bag. Okay, look. Don’t tell him we have any suspects yet but do tell him about the coins, the Batman medallions. Tell him we don’t know their significance yet but we think, with the public’s help, maybe that piece of information will trigger someone’s memory about something they might have heard or something they might have seen. You know. Anything that could help our investigation. What do you think?”

  Kane sighed. She could be right. Again. The way things were shaping up there was nothing to lose and maybe something to gain. “All right. I’ll see the flea-bitten son-of-a-bitch and shove a nugget into his mouth. Hope he chokes on it. Call you later.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The Next Day…

  Kane hustled into the precinct building and whipped off his dripping hat. One of the officers squeezed by him on his way out.

  “Morning, Lieutenant” the officer said. His tone was a little too cheerful.

  Kane grumbled. “Goddamn rain. It’s supposed to be summer.”

  “It’s Seattle,” the officer said, letting the door swing shut behind him.

  Kane slapped his hat against his leg to shake off the rain as he made his way to the office where he found Ravenwood waiting by the door. She looked fresh and bright-eyed, holding two steaming cups of Starbucks. He was soaked, bleary-eyed and looked like a pile of crumpled laundry.

  “Well,” she said, “look what the cat dragged in. Bad night?”

  Kane grunted and unlocked the door. She followed him in and set his coffee on the desk.

  “Thanks,” he said, hanging his coat on the back of the door. Yeah, bad night. Couldn’t sleep knowing this was the day.”

  “Figured. How’d it go with Morran?”

  “All right, I guess. I showed him one of the coins and told him how they were being used. The numbers on them. The whole thing. He thought it was pretty weird. I told him it gets weirder.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Yeah. Wish I hadn’t said that but it just fell out of my mouth. He wanted to know what I meant. Kept pressing me for more information.”

  “What’d you tell him?”

  “I opened the door and told him to get the hell out of my office.”

  Ravenwood grinned. “Well, at least he left with something to chew on. Should keep him busy for a while.” She pulled the morning edition of the Seattle Sound Times from her briefcase and handed it to him. “Seen this yet?”

  “What now?”

  “No big headline. Just a few paragraphs buried on page three. Seems the wives and some relatives of the dead preachers have all been in communication with each other for about two weeks now.”

  “What?”

  “They’ve set up a private chat room on the internet where they talk about what’s been happening. Like Morran, they don’t think this string of deaths is just a series of coincidences. They’ve organized an interdenominational prayer group. You know. Hoping for some divine revelation to give them some sort of an answer to what’s happened.”

  Kane snorted. “Good luck with that. God quit answering prayers a long time ago.”

  She narrowed her eyes and studied his face. The comment was similar to others he’d made over the past few weeks. “And you know this, how?”

  Kane didn’t answer.

  Ravenwood leaned back in the chair and folded her arms. “Why do I get the feeling there’s something you’ve been keeping from me?” She knew she may have crossed the line and she mentally braced herself for an explosion. Instead, he surprised her by carefully rolling up the newspaper with all the expertise of a seasoned delivery boy and maintained his silence. The look on his face seemed distant. Maybe he was considering revealing his deepest secret. Her eyebrows raised in anticipation.

  He lobbed the paper over to her and gave a look of fatherly approval when she caught it. Or maybe it was fatherly pride. In any case, she knew the look. She’d seen it in her own father’s eyes when she was a little girl and he was teaching her how to catch a baseball.

  Kane took a sip of coffee. “It’s personal.”

  Ravenwood nodded. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to pry.” She was disappointed that she didn’t get more of an answer but relieved that she hadn’t set off his fuse. That, in itself, was a genuine miracle. Proof positive that there is indeed a God. “Anyway,” she said, unrolling the paper and thumbing back to page-3. “There’s more. You’ll love this.”

  “I doubt it. What is it?”

  “Not all of the members of these families are satisfied with just prayer groups alone. The brother of the second victim is a hard core right wing political activist and he’s talked a few of the others of that persuasion into conducting their own investigation.”

  “Great. Here it comes. Just what we need. A roving band of Christian vigilantes.”

  She nodded. “That’s one way to put it.”

  Over the next few hours they continued to discuss various aspects of the case. There were moments, however, when the conversation would lapse into complete silence, a silence that each of them privately recognized was not nearly as uncomfortable as it would have been even just a week ago. During one of those moments Kane cast a glance at Ravenwood.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  As the hours passed, they occasionally checked the clock in anticipation of the call they knew was coming. Somewhere in the city, preacher number seven was about to take an unexpected detour through Hell on his way to Heaven and only one person knew where and when it would happen.

  At 5:15 p.m., the phone rang.

  CHAPTER 31

  A Few Hours Later…

  In a low-rent trailer park on the outskirts of the city, 72-year-old Pastor Pete Kane––arthritic and partially confined to a wheelchair––sat in his trailer staring at the TV. As he mindlessly scratched the itch on his arm beneath the floppy sleeve of his drab gray bathrobe, the reporter on the screen stared back at him from her location just outside the church where the latest victim had been found. He fumbled with the remote and turned up the volume.

  “…number seven in a string of recent deaths. And again, as in each of the previous cases, there were no eyewi
tnesses and there are no suspects in this case as far as we know. Police are remaining tight-lipped when it comes to any details concerning their investigation of these bizarre incidents. However, we did receive confirmation about those Batman coins previously rumored to have been found stuffed into the mouths of the victims. Now, with a little detective work of our own, we were able to find such a coin at a local retail shop that specializes in vintage comics and related memorabilia. These coins came in sets of nine, each individually numbered ‘one’ through ‘nine’ and… can we get a good close-up of this?...and I don’t know if you can see, but this one happens to be stamped with the number ‘four’. We have gathered some information––unconfirmed at this point––concerning these coins. It seems the perpetrator of these crimes is using these coins in sequence. The coin found in the mouth of the first victim was stamped with the number ‘one’. The second victim, number ‘two’ and so on. So it seems that the mystery killer––”

  The old pastor clicked off the TV. His wrinkled hands were shaking. Something was stirring in the dark recesses of his mind. That coin… I know that coin… Oh, dear God...

  He wheeled himself around and rolled down the short narrow hallway, past a cheap velvet painting depicting Christ surrounded by a group of adoring children. He continued on past a photo of his son, Brian, graduating from the police academy. He maneuvered into his tiny bedroom and came to a stop in front of a tall dresser. He paused a moment, drew a deep breath, and scooted his pale, hulking body to the edge of the wheelchair. With a final, painful effort, he dropped to his knees in front of the dresser and opened the bottom drawer.

  Inside the drawer was a lifetime of forgotten items: a discarded hair brush; a broken watch; miscellaneous papers; wrinkled receipts; several pencils with erasers that had turned hard and brittle; a crucifix on a broken chain; a tattered book of hymns from an earlier life; and then finally… the box.