Plans for the holiday were on hold, at least any plans that included Dana. She had a feeling Shawn’s parents were encouraging him to come visit with the girls, even if it meant leaving his obsessed, scarcely-there-anyway cop wife behind.
She’d been reading Lata’s book which was about the Kali Yuga, but also about Native Americans — particularly the Hopi — and the Mayans, and the Mahabharata, an epic Sanskrit poem. Shawn didn’t say much about Dana’s reading, but Hamill did: he minced no words that Dana had become fixated on mumbo-jumbo which had nothing to do with the case. But with no other breaks in the investigation, along with the absence of conclusive toxicological reports, Dana justified it. She was working the case as best as she could.
Her eye watered. She had yet to schedule the surgery. Her face was healing, but she was going to have a visible scar beneath her drippy eye. Hamill joked that it made her look tougher, like a biker, or a superhero.
She dropped the cereal bowl in the sink and ran some water into it. She stood for a moment, listening. The girls were not yet back from school and daycare. Shawn was at work on one of his carpentry contracts. The wind blew and the house sighed and creaked. The clock in the living room ticked off the seconds.
She picked over the case for the umpteenth time: no indictments in the Taylor/Arbruster deaths. No suspects. Bladen McCasland was a minor who’d been buying pot, wrong place, wrong time. George Lambert had gone to court for peddling marijuana illegally and was facing a fine and a short ride in jail. Perry Brady’s lawyer had gotten him released, Maggie Lange was free; both were back at classes.
The Feds were still there in the background, but the truth was that Yarrow and the U.S. Attorney hadn’t gotten any further with the case than she had. After coming in and stirring up the media with ideas about serial killers, they’d provided no real assistance. Even the media stories were drying up. The last headline had appeared Wednesday morning: Authorities Say Serial Killer Case Still Ongoing. The next day, the local papers covered upcoming football games, where to watch the Thanksgiving parade, and more conflict in the Middle East.
Countless hours had been spent analyzing every molecule of the victims’ bodies. Yet there was no consensus of aconitum poisoning. Nor arsenic, selenium, nor any plants like oleander or deadly nightshade. No phenobarbital. The pathologists were tight-lipped now.
She’d also been looking more closely at the study conducted by Wayland Kimball. The results had been posted on the school’s website; she’d looked at them carefully, and found one glaring omission in Kimball’s statements to the cops.
Dana had been tracking the movements of the author of Unraveling the Ancient Wisdom for the past three days. Rakesh Lata had a home in New Mexico, where he scarcely resided; a sprawling desert property replete with a huge “sound room,” purportedly able to heal people using vibrations. He was all over the map recently, with speaking engagements across the country. He was appearing in New York City today. Considering how close he was — at least sharing a timeline — she’d thought it the best chance to get a hold of him, so she’d sent the famous author an email requesting that they have a brief Skype conversation.
* * *
Dana shut herself in her office and booted up her computer. Rakesh Lata had agreed to her request to share a Skype call.
“Of course, I knew who you were,” Rakesh said on-screen. He was in his hotel room, dressed in a simple white T-shirt and jeans. His hair was almost entirely gray. His eyes a beguiling dark brown. Skyscrapers were framed by the large window behind him. “I’ve seen you on TV and in the paper. I’m glad you contacted me.”
Dana smiled. “Thank you. Good.” She found herself momentarily at a loss. She’d always found Skype a bit awkward. In real life, you could look around. Skype seemed to demand a more intense exchange.
“It’s been a while since I’ve been down there, in the city. More than ten years.” She imagined the blur of people on the streets below The Waldorf. “I want to thank you. I know you’re a busy man, so I’ll come to the point.”
Rakesh Lata smiled softly, his eyes kind but calculating.
“You’re friends with Professor Sanders?”
“Oh, yes. We went to Brown together.”
“I saw that. And you agreed to proctor her study.”
“The young man’s study, really. Wayland Kimball. Yes, I agreed to do it.”
“Why? You didn’t find it offensive?”
Rakesh seemed taken aback. “Offensive? Not at all.”
“The whole ‘psychic phenomena’ being a ruse. A ploy to test people for performance anxiety.”
“Oh I wouldn’t call it a ploy. I found it very interesting, as I knew I would.”
“You agreed to the study at Plattsburgh just for a friend, and nothing more?”
“That’s right.”
Dana nodded. Her one reprieve from the constant conversation was her notebook. She scribbled, other motivations . . . Then she looked back into Rakesh Lata’s dark, empathetic eyes. “How did you find the students?”
“Oh, they were lovely. Very nice, very nice.”
Dana tried to keep her eyes on the man on-screen as something worked itself through her mind. “Doctor,” she said, “I’ve read Unraveling the Ancient Wisdom.”
“Oh, so it was you?”
Dana smiled at his self-deprecation. “You’re very knowledgeable. Very gifted at synthesizing information.”
“You’re very kind.” He paused, and added, “It’s much the same as what you do, I would think: synthesizing information. The pieces are there — I just put them together.”
She nodded, felt heat in her face, and looked down at her notes. “In your book you discuss how we each have an electromagnetic signature.”
“Most definitely.”
“And about how we each sort of give off this aura . . .” Dana realized her eye was leaking and dabbed at it. Rakesh watched her passively, making no remark. Dana hurried on. “I want to know what you observed in the students. Anything that stands out. Any . . . odd behavior.”
She watched the screen closely. Rakesh was undoubtedly practiced in kindness, non-judgment, but the man had no poker face. She saw it immediately, something in his eyes.
“I’ll do you one better, Detective Gates, than what you’re driving at — which is, do I really believe in psychic phenomena? I don’t think there’s any distinction between the ‘normal’ and the ‘psychic.’ Any more than I think there’s a distinction between the ‘natural’ and the ‘supernatural.’ We may make these distinctions, formally and informally, but it doesn’t mean that they are real.”
She leaned forward, her desk chair squeaking. “Did you find that any of the students showed abilities?”
Rakesh looked into the camera. “We’re each on a path. Each of us, always, going in one of two directions.”
She waited for an explanation.
“Either we’re hindering our consciousness,” he said, “working to rein it in, tamp it down, or we’re expanding it, embracing it. Those are the only two choices.”
“Sorry to be so blunt, but is that a yes? Did you find a student was moving . . . forward with it?”
It was his turn to seem at a loss for words.
She opened her mouth, perhaps to make an excuse and end the call, to just let it all go, wake up tomorrow and go see one of the department shrinks after all, when Rakesh lowered his face to right in front of the camera, so that his image filled her screen. He looked so closely at Dana that it took her breath away for a moment, like he was in the room with her.
“You told me you’ve been reading, researching. And you’re quite gifted yourself, Detective. You’ve seen that cultures which are geographically and chronologically disparate, with no way to communicate with each other, using different languages and symbols, are all interpreting the universe in a similar way. That there are great cycles of time, and that as each comes to an end, there are changes. Chaos, decadence — the pains that accompany a growth spurt. Or, the
tremors of death. That is the ancient wisdom.”
Dana said nothing.
“All of these cultures, from hunter-gatherers to sophisticated Egyptians, from the Mayans to the Christians have their version of this, which all boils down to what the Hopi called the ‘End of the Fourth Sun.’ Why do people persist with the same myths, over and over again, across cultures, and time? Why, if they are myths? What might link them?”
“Doctor,” Dana said in a quiet voice, “I sought you out because I want to know if . . . any of this . . . has to do with the death of two college girls.”
“And if I had to do with their death.” It was a sudden, terse statement. He leaned back from the screen.
“Okay,” Dana said. “As long as we’re being honest.”
Rakesh interlaced his fingers.
“The Hopi also believe that a great flood purged the land at one time,” he said. “Like Noah’s Ark. They believe in the Great Spirit, and that the Great Spirit became incarnate as a man. Like Christianity’s Jesus. Or Egypt’s Horus, Greece’s Attis. Some New Testament scholars even believe that Jesus saying ‘I will be with you until the end of the Age’ means, until another celestial epoch, another astrological time cycle. There are so many myths across time and cultures which possess similarities. Odin had a son, half man, half god. What fascinates me, as it has since I was a boy, is that in between these cycles, the consciousness people shy away from seems to advance. It percolates through humanity, it calls some forward, and their gifts are revealed.”
Something clicked in Dana’s mind. “You were deriving some philosophical, religious, historical study out of this experiment.” It wasn’t just a favor to a friend, Dana thought, it wasn’t just about performance anxiety.
Rakesh spread his arms. “Where are our Nostradamuses today? Or our John the Baptists? Our seers and prophets? Are they just scared to come out of hiding?”
“Tell me about the other results,” Dana pressed. “You know, the ESP,” she twiddled her fingers next to her skull, a crude illustration of psychic. Her patience had run out. This was another dead end. What the hell had she been thinking?
Rakesh maintained eye contact via the video connection, his voice even and buttery-pleasant as ever, coming clearly from her speakers. “Those are confidential.”
“Confidential? I’m sorry, I don’t think so. Someone surprised you. Taylor? Was it Sonia Taylor?”
Rakesh didn’t blink. “Detective, I wonder — why are you the one to contact me? Why not the FBI? These are some heavy implications coming from you, a state police detective from the BCI.”
The comment briefly knocked Dana off her game. Rakesh was pushing back.
Dana selected a response. “I’m desperate,” she said.
It was the brutal truth. But the desperation was surely on both sides. Rakesh had admitted that he was looking for something, that he had ulterior motives for helping with the study.
He waited, his expression still pleasant, his posture relaxed, but his eyes unsatisfied. She had him, and he knew it. He had to know it. If she wanted to run this up the flagpole, Rakesh could come under fire for exploiting those girls. Professor Sanders and Wayland Kimball could even find their jobs on the line.
“Doctor, do you have any enemies?”
His eyes glimmered. “Good instinct, but you need to . . . unravel this a different way.”
“Please clarify that.”
“If you can accept, at least, that, at various times in history, people have arisen who show exceptional qualities. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Then you know that these exceptional people are often imperiled. Sometimes they are driven to addiction, to extremes. Sometimes it is that they threaten the establishment. But, I think, Detective, if there is a root to any of it — it is the quest for immortality.”
“I don’t follow.”
“The threat, Dana, is when people appear who challenge the status quo, the conventional notions of life, death, and afterlife. Sometimes it is an assassin, waiting in the wings. Sometimes it is someone closer than you think, who watches, who judges, who is scared.”
“Who are you talking about?” Dana riffled through a mental database of suspects. Who saw these girls frequently? Who would envy them, covet them, be afraid of them?
“She told me about you.”
“What?” The non sequitur threw her off. “Who told you about me?”
“I’d like to keep that confidential, but I’m sure you can figure it out.”
Dana was quiet. She thought of Lori Stender, at the top of the stairs, looking down. The feelings Dana had experienced, however fleetingly, when the young woman had looked at her.
“Women are gifted.”
“That’s very nice . . .”
“Before written languages shifted us to use a different hemisphere in our brains, a male-dominated hemisphere, women ruled. Their intuition, their empathy. You asked me if any of the college women stood out. Yes. They all did. They were all gifted. And maybe one in particular.” He paused. “She saw your sadness. And your gifts.”
“Alright,” said Dana, feeling the heat creep up her neck.
“Equality is not what we think, squeezing women into the corruption of the world of men.”
Now Dana scowled. “Excuse me, if that’s a jab at my gender as a law enf—”
“Detective, not at all. What I’m saying is that the feminine power is very great.” He smiled a bright, winning smile. “The androcentric society of the last cycle of time is collapsing. The patriarchy. What comes now is . . .”
The connection wavered for the first time, Rakesh Lata’s face momentarily freezing, the audio breaking up.
No, she thought. She leaned against the desk, towards the screen. “Doctor, you’re corresponding with one of the students. I need to know who.”
Then his image jumped and was alive again, the sound returning. “I hope you are careful up there, Detective Gates,” he said. He either hadn’t heard her question or ignored it. “A change is upon us. This is known as the Mahabharata War. Men betray their gods, become demons who walk among us . . .”
Dana quickly pulled out her cell phone and flipped to the image. She turned it towards Rakesh. Dana watched Rakesh Lata’s reaction closely. Something seemed to pass through the doctor, then it was over.
He fixed Dana with one last look. “In Hindu mythology, the bull is the bearer of truth and righteousness. Be careful, Detective.”
Her phone buzzed in her hand, startling her. She looked at the incoming number: Hamill.
“Doctor Lata, I want to thank you,” she said. “I will . . .” She paused. The screen had frozen again. A second later, as she watched, Skype made a sound like a rock dropped in water, and then declared, call dropped.
She answered Hamill’s call. “Not going to believe this,” he said, sounding out of breath.
“Oh, great.”
“Wayland Kimball called the local PD just a few minutes ago.”
“And?”
“Says Maggie Lange wasn’t in class today.”
A brief sinking sensation in her stomach. Dana stared at the blank screen. “She didn’t head home for Thanksgiving? Only two more days of classes next week — maybe she left early? Check her schedule.”
“Negative. Called the parents and they said she’s not home. And they’re only an hour away from the school.”
She put her head in her hand. “Where was the surveillance on her?”
“Local PD pulled them off this morning because of the holiday. Both girls were checking in regularly up till then. Then Lange claimed she was going home for Thanksgiving, which rattled some nerves. But apparently Plattsburgh PD was too short-staffed to see her off. She was last logged going into her dorm room yesterday afternoon. They figured she was packing up, leaving. They pulled that detail.”
Shit. “What about Lori Stender?”
“She’s accounted for. We’ve got two cops on her; she’s supposedly staying in town for the break.
Oreck is already terrified of this case. Now he just made a big mistake with Lange. He’ll blame us, though, I’m sure.”
“What about us? Why weren’t we watching, too?”
“We were. But it was total miscommunication. Plattsburgh thought we were still on it for the weekend. And they didn’t tell us they were pulling the manpower away.”
Dana felt sick. She could feel her eye start to run. She didn’t bother to blot it.
“I’m on my way,” she said. She looked at the time on the computer. It was one thirty. “It might take me a bit, though . . . Shawn and the girls haven’t come back yet, and I . . .”
“It’s alright. I just wanted you to know. You’re still on leave, anyway . . .”
“Hamill,” she said, “I’ll be there.”
“Hey,” he said, catching her before she hung up, “we okay?”
She didn’t know how to respond. She repeated, “I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY / Minimizing Damages
The trooper barracks in Desiree was mobbed with more FBI agents than Dana had ever seen in one spot. It was as if they’d materialized there, beamed in from some other world.
She’d barely entered the place when Captain Bouchard was on top of her, leading her into his office. Hamill was already in the room, looking like a high schooler sent to the principal for misbehavior.
Before Bouchard could say anything, Dana spoke. “Rakesh Lata.”
Bouchard leaned back against his desk, “What?”
“Doctor Rakesh Lata,” Dana repeated. “He was brought in to proctor the study at the school. The one on performance anxiety. Obtained his graduate degree from in parapsychology in Europe. Also studied hypnotherapy, anthropology, archaeology, biofeedback at Brown University. . .”
“For fuck’s sake, Gates . . .” He held up his hand to stop her. The room smelled like some kind of spoiled meat. Her stomach twisted. She didn’t like where this was heading.
“You’re just coming to me with this now?”
Dana and Hamill exchanged glances. The captain was right; it was indefensible. The detectives had been focused on Perry Brady and Wayland Kimball, but without an exact time of death for Holly Arbruster, and with alibis for the estimated time of death, they couldn’t nail either of them. And Professor Sanders had been out of the country. The trail had ended there for a while.
DARK KILLS a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Page 13
