by J. R. Mabry
Richard heard voices coming close and made himself small, trying to hide completely behind the dumpster. A young, African-American couple came into view. She was slapping him, and he was batting away her arms with one hand, holding a gleaming silver pistol aloft with the other. Richard couldn’t figure out what the woman was angry about, but the man wasn’t able to get more than a couple words in. The woman was crying now and, with his free hand, he held her at arm’s length as she wind milled her own fists toward him ineffectually. There was another sharp crack, and the young woman dropped to the pavement like a stone. The man started shouting, “No, you motherfuckers!” and began shooting at anyone and everything. Richard squeezed himself out of the man’s line of sight, putting as much of the dumpster between them as he could. He backed up to the wall of the mini-mart, still crouching, and steadied himself with his hands on the ground. He felt something warm and sticky beneath him and he closed his eyes, fully expecting it to be blood. Slowly he brought his hand up to his face. His eyes widened as he saw not blood, but candle wax.
Barely daring to breathe, he turned and looked up at the wall behind him. Staring down at him was a massive sigil, spray-painted over most of the back wall of the mini-mart. A string of votive candles guttered at the place where the wall met the alley, sending hot wax onto the cement in white rivulets. Richard speed dialed Terry and waited for him to pick up. It rang and rang. Richard’s eyes grew wide as the call shunted into voicemail. He dialed a second time and got voicemail again. “Holy fucking shit,” he breathed. “Jesus, God, don’t let him be dead.” Then he closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and stood up to his full height. “Comin’ for you, buddy.”
20
Larch read the text message and grinned. The last of the Oakland sigils was in place. Purderabo was moving on to Emeryville. “That will keep them busy,” he said to himself. “Time to get busy myself.” He went into his bedroom and shut the door. He began to unbutton his shirt, and as he did, he wandered almost unconsciously toward the window. It was a muggy, Indian-summer afternoon. The heat was almost unbearable, which made it quite an anomalous day in San Francisco. He drew his shirt off and hung it on the back of a chair. The buzz of traffic blew through the window with the slight breeze. He watched the curtain ripple, a luminous sheet of gossamer. It looked like a beacon, breaking into the gloom of his bedroom—a herald of some rumored glory, a visitation. He pulled off his trousers and hung them on the back of the chair, too. Then he did the same with his briefs.
He sat on the bed and noticed how still everything was. He could just be still, too. He could just breath. And time would stop. He tried it, but the wind blew the curtain again, and it rippled again. Like Heraclitus’ river, it reminded him of the relentlessness of time. The stillness is an illusion, he thought. The world is being drawn toward its own tyrannous end. Do not be beguiled.
He pulled open the night table drawer and withdrew a squat jar. Unscrewing the lid, he held it beneath his nose and breathed deeply. The scent of precious essences and oils wafted up, giving him a chill. The scent of it propelled him back to his childhood, following his father around the sacristy. He remembered pulling the stopper out of a cruet of oil, how the sharp, spicy aroma had intoxicated him—until the back of his father’s hand caught him in the temple and send the cruet and himself flying. Both shattered against the sacrarium, the cut glass cruet into a thousand shards, the boy’s dignity and safety destroyed as well.
It was a bitter memory, and one he had almost forgotten. It had been one of many times his father had humiliated him, struck him, abandoned him. The boy knew he was an evil thing—born out of wedlock and an embarrassment to both his mother and to his father, the priest, who could never acknowledge him publicly. God might have pronounced that Jesus was his beloved son, but Larch would never hear those words.
He sighed and gathered his thoughts. He reminded himself that his father was not here, that this was not church, that this was not the oil blessed by his father’s bishop. It was the ointment of Hashanin, and while many of the spices infused in it were the same, it was consecrated for a very different purpose indeed.
He focused his attention in a single point, infusing the ointment with his magickal intention, then lowered two fingers into the jar. He drew forth a bit of the ointment and began to apply it to his feet, his legs, his thighs, and his genitals. He smeared the ointment on every part of him he could reach, and used a cotton ball fixed to a back scratcher to reach between his shoulder blades.
All the while he chanted the names of the great beings whose power and guidance he sought—the enemies of his Enemy, whom his father had served. He smiled at the thought that his Enemy’s enemies were his friends by default. Having anointed his neck, his cheeks, his temples, and the top of his head, he bent low again and began a second anointing. This time he did not cover everything; only certain parts. His incantations changed as well, from greeting to entreaty. He asked the great beings for wisdom, for cunning, for strength and endurance. As he did so, he anointed the soles of his feet, the palms of his hands, his eyelids, and his lips. This completed, he began the third and final anointing. This time his chant became one of praise. The great beings were indeed great. They were worthy of worship. They were worthy of his fealty and service. He traced an inverted pentagram on his chest as he sang.
His body felt strangely cool, despite the afternoon heat wave. He felt as if he were shimmering, as if he were being briefly touched by ice or perhaps by flame—it was hard to tell. When he moved, though, he felt a delicious iciness. His head swam with a potent intoxication, and he quickly sank to the bed. He arranged his pillow and laid back on it, drawing up his legs, and lying flat on the comforter. He watched the curtain ripple again into the room and felt the blessed breeze waft over his naked skin.
Then he ascended.
21
Mikael exited Highway 13 at the main Montclair exit but got no further than the Safeway. “Will you look at that?” Dylan drawled. It looked like a whole fleet of ambulances, zipping one way or the other. Several of them were clustered at a dead stop at a stoplight.
“Can you go around?” Kat asked.
“These streets aren’t exactly wide,” Mikael said. “But there’s a parking spot. Let’s just get out and walk.”
“Susan marked that corner right over there as the epicenter of all the drug-related crimes,” Kat pointed about a block ahead of them. “This is one of the ritziest areas in Oakland. It’s not the kind of place I think of as having a drug problem.” She got out of the car, shut the door behind herself, and made for the trunk to grab her kit bag.
“Waal, drug problems are no respecter of persons,” Dylan shut his own door and waddled to the rear of the car to retrieve his own bag. “Rich or poor, it don’t matter none.”
“Sometimes different drugs,” Mikael added.
“Sometimes, but you’d be surprised,” Dylan said. “Ah speak from experience, o’ course.”
They set out toward one of the ambulances, and Kat stopped. A young man was stretched out on the pavement, his eyes sightlessly looking heavenward. Above him, two paramedics worked feverishly. “Gone,” one of them said, feeling at the young man’s neck. Wordless, they sat still for a few moments. Then they covered the young man’s face and loaded the gurney into the ambulance. Kat could see that there were already other gurneys inside.
“This is terrible,” she said. She approached one of the paramedics, a thirty-something woman with her hair pulled back out of her eyes in a tight bun. “What did he die of?”
“Overdose,” she said. Kat realized that she probably should not have told her that, but she was grateful that she had. The young woman went on, “They all did. We’ve got three of them loaded up. And all of these,” she waved at the other ambulances, many from competing companies. “All drugs. I don’t understand it. We get a couple of calls a day for this kind of shit, but I’ve never seen it all at once like this. What’s going on?” Kat understood that the question was rhet
orical. The woman didn’t expect Kat to know. Except that she did.
“Can you direct us to where most of them are happening?” Mikael asked.
“They’re all over,” the paramedic said. “But there’s more of them by the sports bar. You know, McGills.”
“Right over there. That’s the spot Susan indicated,” Kat whispered.
“Ah know it,” Dylan said. “They got a good whisky selection. Uh…can you tell us what that poor guy OD’d on?”
“Vicodin. Most of them have been. Or Norco, or Oxy, or some other prescription opiates. It’s like they all just…emptied their bottles.”
“Thank you fer tryin’,” Dylan said, placing his hand on her arm. She looked up to see the big bear of a man for the first time. She smiled weakly. He squeezed her arm and set off toward the bar.
“Sounds like some kind of compulsion,” Kat said.
“Isn’t all drug abuse compulsion?” Mikael asked.
“That’s as good a word as Ah ken think of,” Dylan said. He stopped and pointed.
At first, Kat only saw two other ambulances, parked at odd angles in the middle of the street. Then she saw people lying on the sidewalks and a young woman staggering out into the middle of the street. At least there are no cars on the street, Kat thought, watching the young woman nearly topple over several times as she tried to cross. She was obviously stoned out of her mind, and Kat could guess on what.
“Do you see it?” Dylan asked.
“You mean her? I’ve got to help her,” Kat said.
“Ah mean the sigil. Look!” He pointed at the maroon canvas awning that circled the McGills exterior.
Kat looked up. “Oh my. Okay, yeah.” Spray painted in white on the awning was what was unmistakably a sigil.
Dylan squinted. “An’ there’s something above it, too.”
Kat shrieked as the woman fell and darted across the street toward her. By the time she reached her, the woman was spread-eagled near the waffle house. Kat knelt by her and helped her sit up. “Hey, take it easy. Just sit here. I don’t want you to hit your head.”
The woman’s eyes were barely open slits, and she grinned. “I’m fiiiiine,” she said.
“You’re not fine,” Kat said, “Although I’ll wager you’re not feeling any pain.” She prayed that there hadn’t been many pills in whatever bottle the woman had savaged. “Sit here, I’m going to go and get you help.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dylan giving Mikael a leg up toward the awning. She frowned, wondering what they were hoping to achieve but didn’t stop to ask. Instead, she ran straight toward one of the paramedics. Reaching him, she shook his shoulder but screamed when he fell over onto the street. His head made a sickening “thuck” sound when it hit the pavement. A needle stuck out of his arm at an alarming angle.
“What’s wrong?” Dylan called over his shoulder.
Kat blinked, looking around for someone else. There were plenty of ambulances, and plenty of bodies, but frightfully few moving people on the street. The surreality of it rushed over her, and she staggered. “Focus,” she said out loud to herself. She jumped up into the nearest ambulance and rummaged around in the cabinet until she found an EpiPen. Kat turned and in the corner of her eye she saw a glass vial that said “morphine.” She looked at the EpiPen in her hand then back at the vial.
She started looking for a needle and rummaged through another shelf until she found one. She filled the syringe with morphine, pulling as much into it as she could. She had no idea what the proper dose should be. She just knew that she needed it, more than she had ever needed anything. She had gotten shots before, but she had never given one and had never actually watched that closely. As she tried to position the needle where it might possibly enter her vein, she fumbled it, dropping the syringe onto the ambulance’s black rubber floor mat. “Shit,” she said out loud. She picked it up and tried again, her tongue stuck out of one side of her mouth as she concentrated. She felt it slide in and experienced a brief pinprick of pain that was quickly relieved.
22
Captain Herrer blew into the room. “Tell me what you’ve got on the witchcraft murder,” she said. Her ever-present coffee mug was in her hand, and her eyes looked baggier than usual.
Cain’s nostril’s twitched. “That’s not coffee from our pot.”
“No it isn’t, Mr. Nose. It’s a cafe au lait from Tucker’s across the street, poured into my cup. Sue me.”
He stood up and gave her a grim smile. “We sent an inquiry to that Craigslist ad. No response yet.”
“Can I see it?”
Cain nodded and pulled up the Word file he’d used to craft the message. “Posing as the same age and gender as the victim,” Herrer noted. “Good. Not race?”
“We figured that would be a little too close to the mark. Besides, Consuela didn’t mention being Latino in her initial email to him,” he said, pointing to a stack of printouts that the computer lab had produced.
“Were the tech-wizards able to retrieve any of the killer’s messages to her?”
“Yep. Looks like they met at a place called the Cloven Hoof in SF.”
“Christ, that place draws freaks like a magnet. Where’s Perry?”
“She’s with the wizards—” Cain started when Perry interrupted him.
“I’m right here, and you’ve got to see something, Cap. In the lab. You too, Cain.”
Cain and Herrer exchanged a look, then Cain shrugged and turned to follow his partner. Less than a minute later they were speed walking into the computer lab, barely able to keep up with Perry. Instead of the pastel walls of the squad room, the computer lab was painted the yellow and purple of UC Berkeley’s school colors. “Whatcha got?” Herrer asked.
“Check out this grid,” Anastasio said, pointing to a large screen television. Cain wasn’t fond of him. He was of that particular breed of computer nerd who eschewed showering and the brushing of teeth and wore clothes that looked like they were made for someone much larger. Maybe other folks could tolerate the man’s stench, but Cain’s nose was…sensitive. He had to admit that the smelly bastard was good with a hard drive, though.
“What are we looking at?” Herrer asked.
“This is the real-time 911 operator grid in Oakland.”
Herrer’s eyes narrowed as she looked at it. Across a bright green map of Oakland, little pinpoints of yellow light indicated the approximate location of every caller. Cain had seen these maps for most of the East Bay cities, but usually when used as evidence. He had even seen such maps of Oakland. But he he had never seen anything that looked like this. Oakland saw a lot more crime than Berkeley did, but this activity was of a completely different order. “That can’t be real,” Cain said.
“It’s real,” Perry confirmed. “Oakland is completely paralyzed. They’re calling on neighboring cities to send them cops.”
“I haven’t heard anything about this,” Herrer said.
“I think that’s because they’re calling way over your head, and they’re getting stonewalled.”
“Why would we refuse to send backup?”
“I’ve got a theory,” Anastasio said. He pulled up another screen, this one of the 911 calls in Emeryville. The clusters of calls were smaller than the ones in Oakland, but they were there, and they seemed to be growing. “It’s spreading. And Berkeley sure as shit doesn’t want it spreading here.”
“Or if it does, we’re going to need all hands on deck,” Herrer nodded.
“My guess is we’ll be setting up barriers soon,” Perry offered.
“That would be pretty extreme,” Herrer countered. “It’s not a virus, after all.”
“How do you know? What else could cause something like this?”
“A crime virus?” Herrer put her hands on her hips. “Are you shitting me?”
“I’m just saying we don’t know until we know, so we shouldn’t rule anything out.”
Herrer harrumphed. “Okay, keep thinking out of the fucking box, Perry. Just don
’t go down any rabbit holes.” Her cell phone buzzed. “Herrer,” she said, answering it. She screwed her eyes shut as she listened. “Hey what about—” She lowered her phone. “Asshole.”
“Who was that?” Perry asked.
“That was Julabi in the DA’s office, calling to bore out my prostate.” Cain was about to point out that she didn’t have a prostate when she continued. “They want an arrest in this case, and they want it yesterday.”
“They’ll just have to wait,” Perry said. “We’re working it as hard as we can.”
“Yeah, but now we’ve got the UC regents breathing down the back of our necks. They want to see some action.”
“Who the fuck are they?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, they are the not-so-secret cabal that actually runs this town,” Herrer said, running her fingers through her hair in exasperation.
“Can we go back to the squad room?” Cain asked. He leaned in to whisper, “You know, some place less…ripe?”
