Ash: Return of the Beast

by Gary Tenuta

  “Box of ammo.” He handed it over to Kane.

  Kane looked puzzled. “The hell? What kind of gun takes these?” He passed them over to Ravenwood.

  “Got me,” she said. “Never seen anything quite like them.”

  “Bag ‘em,” he said to Wheeler. Then he turned to the landlord. “Thanks for your help, Mr. Ramos. You can go.”

  Ramos left the apartment and Kane couldn’t resist having a look at the body even though he had a perfectly clear image in his mind of what he would see. He crouched beside the body bag and unzipped it. He stared at the sigil branded into the man’s chest and glanced up at Ravenwood.

  She nodded. “Lilit.”

  Kane zipped up the bag. “Yeah. Damn. Eight down and one to go. I guess. I mean, he was a janitor. Doesn’t fit the pattern.” His cell phone buzzed. He stood up and took the call. “Who? What? Why the hell are you calling me? What the––? Hang on.” He looked at Ravenwood.

  She had never seen panic in his eyes before. Or was it panic? She wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

  Kane’s voice was guarded. “Um…I need to take this outside.” He moved quickly into the hall, making sure the door was closed behind him.

  He returned ten minutes later, clearly distraught and trying to appear as anything but.

  Ravenwood approached him. “Are you okay? What was that all about?”

  “Nothing.” He spat the word out. “It was… personal. Wheeler, wrap things up here, will you?” He turned to Ravenwood. “Let’s get out of here.”

  ***

  In the car, Kane refused to talk about the phone call. Ravenwood could tell there was no point pushing it and neither of them spoke another word as they headed back to headquarters.

  The mysterious phone call was the first time Kane had heard his father’s voice in well over a year. Not that he’d missed it. But what his father had told him during those ten hellish minutes, out there in the hall, was the last thing he could ever have imagined. His mind was still reeling from the ramifications. His own father was the next victim.

  Lieutenant Kane was now wrestling with his own conscience in the most difficult decision he’d ever faced. He could keep Ravenwood in the dark, not tell her anything about any of this and let Cowl kill his father. How many times have I wished the old man dead, myself? Or he could give in to his higher moral sense, arrest Cowl and save his father’s life. It seemed so black and white until he suddenly realized it wasn’t black and white at all. It was really a horrible, ugly shade of gray. Cowl can’t be arrested. He’s in a goddamn coma, for Christ’s sake. Even if he came out of it and was arrested and thrown in jail, what’s to say he didn’t have the capability of killing the old man, regardless? Apparently, even as Cowl lay unconscious in a hospital bed, he’d somehow managed to perform his magick on Harlan Bodine. If he could do that under those circumstances what difference would a jail cell make? The only way to save the old man’s life would be to kill Cowl. But that would be murder. His sense of morality wouldn’t let him do that. No, wait, he thought. Not murder. Justifiable homicide. He’d be defending his father from a deranged killer. He shook his head. Yeah, right. A killer in a coma. Good luck trying to convince a jury of that one.

  It was an impossible situation. No matter how he cut it, it came down to one thing: Cowl’s life or his father’s. Not that his father’s life was worth a shit any more than Cowl’s as far as he was concerned. Still, the old man is my father and I... But goddamn it, no, he isn’t. Not really.

  Lieutenant Brian Kane was born Brian Beckham. His biological mother and father had been killed in an automobile accident in 1964 when Brian was just four years old. After being shuffled around from one Foster family to another, he was eventually adopted by Pastor Pete Kane and his wife, Patricia, and Brian took the Kane name as his own.

  He attended worship service and Sunday school every week; was made to listen to a reading from the Scriptures every night before bed; was made to say Grace before every meal; was told over and over that God knew his every thought and watched his every move; was told that his real mother and father must have done something horribly wrong for God to have taken them in such a terrible way. Then, when Brian was six, the unthinkable happened. He was sexually molested by his adoptive father, the good Pastor Pete Kane.

  “Brian,” the Pastor said, “this is our very special secret, you know, just between you and me. You can’t tell anyone, not even your mother or God will punish you like he punished your real mother and father.”

  Brian believed every word of it and the special secret was acted out, periodically, over the next four years until, finally, Brian had had enough.

  At the age of ten, he had somehow managed to figure out that none of this was normal. He was beginning to question everything. Maybe there was a God and maybe there wasn’t, but he was going to take his chances anyway. If he didn’t have faith in God at least he had faith in the woman he loved, the woman he’d called ‘Mother’ for most of his young life. Surely she would see that what he was being forced to endure was not right and she would put a stop to it. It took days to gather up the courage, but the day came and he told her everything.

  “Brian Kane! How dare you!” was her angry response. “What kind of filthy… Up to your room, young man. Now!”

  His faith in the one person he thought he could count on was shattered in that single moment. The world turned upside down and gave way beneath his feet. He was alone now and didn’t know what to believe anymore, save for one thing: there was no God. He knew that because he’d revealed the ‘special secret’ and yet he was still alive. No lightening bolts, no hellfire and brimstone, nothing had come to destroy him. The only thing destroyed was his faith in Love. But apparently a person could live without that because there he was, alive and breathing in spite of it all.

  Angry, despondent and alone, he decided to do what 10-year-olds do. He would run away. It didn’t matter to where because, really, nothing mattered.

  It was the middle of February, it was cold, the wind was blowing and a biting rain was pelting the city streets with a vengeance. Nevertheless, that night, just after midnight––with a dollar and some change in his pocket, and a paper bag containing a cupcake, a banana and his Dick Tracy penlight––he crept down the stairs, grabbed his hooded raincoat and set out to make his own life in the world and to Hell with them all.

  His journey ended two hours after leaving the house. A street cop found him huddled and shivering in the doorway of a Safeway store nearly two miles away. The cop called for a patrol car and Brian was promptly returned to his home.

  Looking back on it now, that ride in the police car had made more of an impression on him than he’d realized. Police cars were cool and cops were heroes and the two cops on either side of him during that ride were nice men. They even joked with him. He could tell they cared. He felt safe with them. The only thing he didn’t like was that they were taking him back to Hell where the Devil and the Devil’s wife would be waiting with fire in their eyes.

  He was surprised and confused, however, to find he was welcomed home with loving caresses and some unexpectedly gentle words of parental concern followed by a barrage of heart-felt words of thanks directed at the officers.

  Now, as he thought about it, all he could remember of the immediate aftermath of that reunion, after the police left, was an emotional blur and some fragments of images: the pastor going for the special leather belt that hung on a hook in the broom closet… His mother crying and telling him to go up to his room quickly and shut the door before his father got back with the belt… From his bedroom he could hear the muffled sounds of arguing, yelling, something metallic crashing to the floor; more yelling. Anything more than that, he couldn’t recall. The fighting must have stopped. He must, somehow, have escaped into sleep.

  The next memory, the next truly clear recollection, was of two days later when Pastor Pete called him down from his room, sat him down on the couch, looked at him for several long m
oments and then told him his mother had died. She’d accidentally fallen down the basement steps.

  “I tried my best to revive her,” he explained to Brian. “But there was nothing I could do. The good Lord has seen fit to take her up to Heaven.” Then, with a strange lack of emotion, he added, “The ambulance is on it’s way.”

  Brian’s young eyes welled up as the meaning behind the words began to take hold. His heart rose to his throat as he sank downward into some sort of nightmarish nothingness. But there was something else. Something was missing. He couldn’t remember now if he’d noticed it right then or later. Where were the man’s tears?

  In the days that followed, Brian believed he’d come to know the truth of what really happened. The arguing, the fighting––that night after the police had brought him home––must have been because his mother had finally confronted his father about the abuse. She had believed him after all. His father, afraid that she would betray him, took matters into his own hands. That had to be what happened. She’d navigated those stairs hundreds of times over the years, often with her arms so full of dirty clothes, on her way down to do the laundry, she couldn’t even see the stairs. She could have done it blindfolded. It was no accident. She was pushed. The son of a bitch had killed her.

  A sudden lurch of the car and a blast from the horn catapulted the Lieutenant back into the present.

  Ravenwood shrugged. “Sorry. Idiot pulled right out in front of me.”

  Kane ran his hands through his hair and sat up. He noticed they were only a few minutes away from the precinct headquarters. His memories of the past evaporated quickly but his present dilemma remained. It was unbearably heavy, unmoving, lying there in his lap like a sleeping mammoth refusing to budge. How could he lift it? How could he make it go away? What sort of corrupt God could concoct such an unconscionable twist of fate? Oh, that’s right. There is no God.

  CHAPTER 42

  The Next Day…

  Wheeler strode into Kane’s office. “Hot enough for you?”

  “Yeah. What the hell is it with this weather, anyway?”

  “I dunno but I’ve got something for you. Couple of things, actually.”

  “Lay it on me.”

  “Those mystery bullets from Bodine’s apartment. They’re for a Russian-made semi-automatic handgun. Pretty rare. They call it a silent gun. Those bullets are constructed in such a way that they absorb the sound of the shot when it’s fired. Least that’s what the ballistics guys told me. They also match the slug that was found lodged in the wall at Cowl’s place.”

  “So our victim number eight was the shooter that tried to kill Cowl? Interesting. Must have blamed Cowl for his son’s suicide and was out for revenge. And somehow Cowl got back at him. Damn strange twist of fate.”

  “Yeah, but there’s more. Turns out Bodine wasn’t just a janitor. He was the pastor at the Sea View Community Church but he left that position when his son died.”

  Kane’s eyebrows arched. “No shit? Well, that explains it.”

  “Yeah. Those twists of fate are getting more twisted every day.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Wheeler looked confused. “Meaning?”

  “Nothing. Good work. Let me know if anything else comes up.”

  Wheeler flopped the report on Kane’s desk and left the office.

  Kane was about to call Ravenwood when his desk phone buzzed. The intercom light and line-2 were blinking. He picked up the phone and punched the intercom button. “Yeah, Tom. What is it?”

  “Your daughter’s on line-two, Lieutenant.”

  Kane’s eyes lit up. He punched line-2. “Sarah! How’s daddy’s girl? You’re back from camp? Great! How was it? Can’t wait to see you. Maybe we could… When? Tomorrow? I don’t know, I… I mean, heck yeah. I’ll figure out a way. We’ll do lunch. How about Monkeyshine’s? Okay, sweetheart. Love you, too.”

  He hung up and then called Ravenwood. He was more excited to tell her about his date with Sarah tomorrow than about the latest info on Harlan Bodine. He remembered he’d recently asked Ravenwood if she’d like to meet Sarah. Maybe this would be a good time. Before he could talk himself out of it, the invitation just tumbled out of his mouth in an awkward sort of way. Hearing his own words caused his entire body to go rigid. But it was too late. The words were out and the invitation was accepted. He suddenly wondered if this could be construed as a date. Or misconstrued. Or whatever. Jesus, everything was getting so complicated. These twists of fate were turning his life into a surreal pretzel of bizarre proportions. Ravenwood was talking but he realized he’d been absorbed in his own inner dialog and had no idea what she’d been saying. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “I said, what time?”

  “What time what?”

  “Tomorrow. Lunch with Sarah.”

  “Oh, yeah. High noon. Work for you?”

  “I’ll meet you at your office. We can leave from there.”

  CHAPTER 43

  The Next Day…

  Kane glanced over at Ravenwood in the passenger seat as they drove down a very typical suburban street on their way to pick up Sarah. The noonday sun was just popping out from behind a thin layer of haze as he parked the car in front of the modest rambler-style home.

  The front yard boasted a huge chestnut tree with a tire swing dangling from one of the fat branches. He’d constructed it for Sarah years ago. Until the divorce five years ago, this is where Kane had lived the happy life of a husband and father. He turned to Ravenwood. “Well, here we are. Home used-to-be-sweet home.”

  Ravenwood lifted her sunglasses and looked out her window. The front door of the house flew open and Sarah came running out, attired in white sneakers, blue jeans and a gray University of Washington sweatshirt that was at least two sizes too big for her petite frame.

  Kane jumped out of the car and stood waiting to grab her as she ran toward him, her shoulder-length blonde hair bouncing all the way. She jumped up, wrapped her arms and legs around him, and nearly knocked him over. He tousled her hair, gave her a kiss on the top of the head and let her down.

  “Little hot for a sweatshirt, isn’t it?” he said.

  She looked down and shrugged. “But I just like it.”

  Ravenwood grinned. The girl was adorable and Kane seemed like a different man. It was definitely a side of him she’d not seen before. This was big time Teddy Bear.

  Sarah saw Ravenwood sitting in the car. “Who’s that, Daddy?”

  Ravenwood stepped out of the car and smiled.

  “Sarah,” Kane said, “This is Rowena.”

  Ravenwood extended a hand. “Ro. Call me Ro.”

  Kane groaned. “Yeah, um… Ro. Whatever. She’s an FBI agent. We’ve been working on a case together. I told her you’re the world’s best flute player so she wanted to meet you.”

  “Daddy…” sarah protested. She shook Ravenwood’s hand and rolled her eyes as if to say ‘don’t listen to him, he’s just being a Dad’. “You’re an FBI agent?”

  “I sure am.”

  Sarah’s blue eyes widened. “Wow, that’s really cool. I never met an FBI agent before.”

  “Well, I’ve never met a flute player before.”

  Sarah laughed.

  “Um…” Kane said, “do you guys wanna stand here talking all day or shall we get going? I’m hungry.”

  ***

  As usual, during the summer vacation months, there were at least a million kids inside the huge circus-themed extravaganza known as Monkeyshine’s Pizza Palooza. Maybe not quite a million, but it sounded like it. The din of noise was a clamorous confusion of kids squealing and laughing, video games beeping, booping and whirring, calliopes whistling every fifteen minutes, circus music blaring from a dozen speakers strategically placed among the rafters, and the cacophony of voices of moms and dads trying to be heard over the semi-controlled insanity. Kids loved it and parents tolerated it for as long as their nerves could hold out.

  Once inside the door, Sarah immediately h
eaded straight for the nearly full-sized merry-go-round, the central feature of the place, and stood waiting for it to stop so she could hop onto her favorite animal, the white unicorn.

  “Sarah!” Kane called after her. “We’ll be right here!” He pointed to the only empty table near the window.

  Sarah acknowledged with a wave.

  Kane and Ravenwood took a seat at the table.

  “She’s still beautiful,” Ravenwood said. “But you know that, right?”

  “Still?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Kane turned away for a moment, his eyes searching for Sarah amongst the crowd of kids. “Yeah.”

  “It’s not all that bad.” She leveled a look straight into his face. “Really. It isn’t.”

  Kane nodded. “I suppose you know about that, too. How it happened, I mean.”

  “Of course. Who doesn’t?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It was in the newspaper, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “You remember everything you read in the paper five years ago?”

  “No. But that story… it touched me, personally.”

  Kane tilted his head, begging an explanation.

  Ravenwood took a deep breath. “I… uh… sort of lied to you when you asked me if I had any kids.

  “Well, whaddya know. The resident witch is a mother. So what’s the big––”

  She raised a hand to interrupt him. “I’m not,” she said.

  “Okay, you’re not a witch. I’m sorry. I was just––”

  “I’m not a mother.”

  Kane looked confused.

  “I lost my baby at birth. A girl. Five years ago. A month before I read the article about you and Sarah.” She turned toward the window, her eyes glistening.

  “Oh, Jesus.” Kane’s face registered genuine sympathy. He was also genuinely uncomfortable with the intimate direction the conversation was taking. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”