To Kill a Sorcerer Page 14

  When traveling in the ether, the space through which you journey has the same geographical layout as the solid world, but you can cover great distances in a few moments by visualizing a place clearly in your mind.

  If you watch the sky while traveling fast at night, the trip can be disconcerting. The stars disappear against the black sky and reappear only when you stop. The first time I saw it happen, my mouth dried up at the implication—I thought it meant I could travel through space, perhaps even appear on the moon if I envisioned its desolate surface as my destination. The thought of that scared me to death. So to speak.

  Once you arrive at a location, you can move around and watch what is happening there in real time. In your stellar body you are invisible to the living since you occupy a different dimension.

  Most of the spirits on the astral plane are those of the deceased. Many are permanent residents—souls that, for one reason or another, have remained attached to the reality in which they lived.

  However, it was also common for the spirits of the recently deceased to remain in the ether for a few days before passing on to the next level.

  That’s why I was here. If I could find Sherri or Jessica, they could describe what had happened to them. Since the immobilizing drug left the victims conscious and aware, the girls probably remembered everything. Not that that would be any comfort to them.

  Picturing the Barlow home clearly in my mind, I thought, Go there. I experienced a brief sensation of extreme speed—the world around me blurred, as if my surroundings had become streaks of paint—then everything came back into focus.

  I arrived on the sidewalk outside the Barlow residence. Crossing the front yard, I walked through the door.

  The house stood empty. According to Hamilton, the Barlows had not been inside since the murder and planned to sell it.

  I floated up to the second floor. I moved along the hallway, looking in doors, until I saw the room that must have been Sherri’s.

  Textbooks and clothes littered the floor, and the closet door stood open, with shoes and hangers spilling out. A laptop on the desk, iPhone, posters of a boy band on one wall. The bed was unmade. I stared at a sock hanging from the seat of her computer chair, knowing Sherri had touched it last and wondering who would touch it next.

  “Sherri, are you here?” I finally turned away from the sock and walked through the wall, floating down to the lawn. A search of the region around the house turned up nothing.

  If our killer had failed to capture Sherri’s soul, she had not stayed near her home.

  Closing my eyes, I pictured the living room of the Patterson home and gave the mental command to travel there. Accelerating through the ether, I materialized in the middle of the blood pool on the carpet. Following a hallway toward the back, I peered into rooms along the way.

  “Jessica?” Through the second doorway, I saw garments strewn around like windblown paper and a tack board filled with dozens of pictures of Jessica and her friends. On the desk rested books, a cell phone, a digital camera, a laptop computer—all the essentials of a modern teenager. I detected no sense of her spirit.

  Circling the outside of the house, I called her name. No sign. In the middle of a carefully tended rose garden, I stood with hands on hips, looking around. There was a young oak tree on the other side of the sidewalk. A cat sat in its branches, statue-still on an outside limb.

  It watched me. I thought about floating up to join it, but that would certainly spook the poor thing, if you’ll pardon the expression.

  I followed my silver cord home. There was no place else to look for the murdered girls.

  Twenty-Four

  Thursday, December 23, 9:41 a.m.

  I had agreed to pick Hamilton up at Van Nuys station, so I showered, changed into a dark blue suit and tie, grabbed my keys.

  As soon as I hit Latigo Canyon, I powered the Maserati’s windows down. The sky shone clear, the air chill. A pale gray residue of morning mist clung to the shoreline.

  While I sped through traffic, I reviewed my astral search for the two murdered girls. Though there was no trace, they didn’t have to be near their homes. It was possible they were in the ether and had simply wandered.

  But I didn’t think so.

  When I walked into the detective’s squad room on the third floor, heads swiveled my way. As I passed desks, ghostly sounds followed me.

  “Hey, Montero,” Detective Munson said loudly. He waited until I stopped and turned to him. Everyone else was quiet. “If you’re looking for a magician, what about Harry Potter? Is he a suspect? I hear he’s pretty handy with a wand.”

  The others laughed. Hamilton had not been kidding when he said he intended to inform Chief Reyes that my team was considering supernatural angles, including the possibility the perp was a conjurer. Apparently, the information had leaked.

  Henry Munson was not a successful detective, mostly due to laziness. Reyes had him working the Easy Tables, which consisted of robberies, sex crimes like rape, and other cases that were similarly simple to solve.

  “No, this guy’s not a magician, Henry,” Gonzales said. “He’s a voodoo priest.”

  “Oh, yeah, a priest, I forgot. Well, Montero, maybe you should look for him in church.”

  I hate when people get the details wrong. Harry Potter was a wizard, not a magician, and voodoo priests did not sacrifice people as part of their religion.

  “So, Mr. Munson, I hear you’re tracking the man flashing his schlong on Universal CityWalk. Think you’ll need backup?”

  Munson’s face turned Ferrari red, and his eyes scrunched small and mean. He gave me a hand gesture. Italian. The butcher strikes again.

  “Oh, look,” I said, “there’s Hamilton.” I asked Gonzales, “Are you riding with us today?”

  “Not likely.”

  Which explained why I had brought the Maserati.

  Hamilton strode up with a newspaper under his arm, looking like a successful banker in his dark gray suit. “Ready to go?”

  “Yes.”

  Munson watched us. “Chasing the bogeyman today, Steve?”

  “Stuff it, Henry.”

  We walked to the elevator and climbed in. Hamilton hit L for the lobby.

  “Thanks for that, Sebastian,” he said as the doors closed. “I have little paper ghosts on my desk, and voodoo dolls on my chair, and somebody put a huge chicken feather with blood on it in my pencil cup.”

  “Me? It wasn’t my idea to tell the chief about Mr. Reed’s speculations.”

  “Don’t give me that. I had to report it to cover my ass, you know that.”

  The elevator floated to a stop, and we marched across the lobby. I got to the doors first and held one open for him. As he walked past me, I said, “Sorry about the bloody chicken feather.”

  Once in the car, Hamilton brandished the Times. I had read my copy before leaving the house. “Voodoo Killer Stalks Valley Teens” was the screaming headline.

  “You see this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit, Sebastian, I told you. Did you see the picture?”

  “Yes.” It showed a long shot of the house as the ME’s people brought the body out. Hamilton, Watanabe, and I stood out in the background. The article described the way the killer had hung her from the ceiling, like the first girl, and how he had mutilated her body.

  “I guess I should look on the bright side,” he said.

  “Which is?”

  “At least there wasn’t a news van waiting out here.”

  “Why did you inform Reyes of our conversation with Reed and Aliena last night?”

  “I told you I was going to do that.”

  “And I said it wouldn’t matter. Reyes told you to continue working with me and that she would take your concerns under advisement, or something like that.”

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “You really want me off the case?”

  He tossed the newspaper on the floor. “I don’t know. You know what you’re doing, but
if you start talking about magic and sorcerers, you’re wasting my time.”

  “I did not say we were talking about magic. I’m just following a train of evidence. Even you said you’ve never seen anything like this. The candles, the spices, drinking the blood, the whole method . . . I know our perp is a regular man. I just like to cover all the bases.”

  “There is no base to cover there. There is no such thing as magic.”

  I let it go.

  “We have a status meeting with Reyes tonight at seven,” he said.

  “Then let’s get cracking.”

  So far, this investigation hardly deserved the name. We had almost nothing. Today Hamilton and I planned to check out Smitty’s list of stores selling incense and black candles, but that angle did not hold a lot of promise.

  Hamilton’s cell buzzed just as we pulled out of the lot. “Yeah? Yeah okay, send me the info.”

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “We got a tip from someone who says she might have seen our perp entering the Patterson home.”

  Turning onto Magnolia, I headed toward the second crime scene. “You should have her work with a sketch artist or get a tech over there to do a digital composite.”

  “We do function when you’re not around.” He looked at the display on his BlackBerry. “Looks like her place is right across the street from the vic’s house.”

  Ten minutes later, I pulled to the curb in front of Karen Beasley’s home. According to LAPD’s swift background check, Mrs. Beasley was a retired widow living on Social Security augmented by her husband’s military benefits. She owned her three-bedroom single-family home with curved driveway and strip of lawn, and her six-year-old Toyota Camry was paid off.

  She appeared after our first knock, peeping through the lace curtains covering the square panes of glass in the door. “Let me see some identification.”

  Hamilton held his badge close, and I did the same with my ID card.

  We heard clicking and thumping as she disengaged approximately twenty locks before opening the door. After we entered, she locked up and led us to the living room. We passed a table in the foyer. A black nine-millimeter automatic lay atop it.

  Hamilton stopped and picked up the pistol.

  “Now, young man, I did not say you could touch my Beretta.” Mrs. Beasley sat on the couch and gestured me to an overstuffed chair.

  “Ma’am, this gun is loaded, cocked, and the safety is off.”

  “Well, what do I look like, the Sundance Kid? I have to be ready to go.”

  “That is extremely unsafe,” Hamilton said.

  “Now don’t tell me how to live in my home. I got no children and no grandchildren and no visitors. That gun is just as safe as my butcher’s knife. Now set it down, set yourself down, and have some coffee.”

  Hamilton replaced the gun after engaging the safety.

  “I saw that,” Mrs. Beasley said. “You’re gonna get me killed.”

  Hamilton sat. “This is a nice neighborhood,” he said.

  “You can say that after what happened to Jessie?” She poured us each a cup of coffee and, without asking if we wanted them, added cream and sugar.

  “That was one in a million, you know that,” Hamilton said, taking a sip.

  “Don’t tell me what I know, young man.” Her voice had plenty of snap in it. She appeared to be in her early seventies, healthy, and sharp. I wondered what had been the cause of Mr. Beasley’s death, and whether or not he had been sad to go. “I know Los Angeles, and I know Hollywood, and I know the Valley. Lots of murders and drugs, lots of violence around here, always has been. This neighborhood is better than some, and thank the Lord my Theo left me this place and enough to take care of myself, but I’ve never felt safe here, not even when he was alive.”

  “That’s why you keep a pistol handy?” I asked.

  “Damn straight.”

  “You have a permit, of course,” Hamilton said.

  “It’s in the drawer under the gun,” she said, crossing her legs and taking a delicate sip of coffee, “along with my spare clips and extra boxes of ammo. Theo gave me that Beretta for our forty-eighth anniversary. It’s the ninety-two SB. Fifteen in the clip and one in the hole. I’m a crack shot with it.”

  “I’m sure,” Hamilton said, not sounding thrilled. He set his coffee cup on the table and pulled out his notebook. “Now, Mrs. Beasley, you called and told the desk officer you saw something yesterday? Before Miss Patterson was murdered?”

  “That’s right. I was baking pies. Two blueberry and a crackleberry. I was cleaning out the mixing bowl at the sink after the crackleberry when I seen a man walking in front of my house.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  “I may be old, but my eyesight is sharp as ever. He was a tall black fella with short hair like yours. He had a mustache and a chin beard, one of them that’s so popular nowadays on TV.”

  “Are you sure he was black?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, it was afternoon. I could see him well enough.”

  Hamilton was probably thinking the same thing I was thinking: black serial killers were virtually unknown.

  “Do you remember anything else about his face?” Hamilton asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you remember what he was wearing?”

  “A dark suit. Them Santa Ana winds were fierce yesterday, and his jacket was flapping all over.”

  “You say he was my height?”

  “Yes, maybe a little thinner, though. And he had a big briefcase.”

  Hamilton continued scribbling. “Then what did he do?”

  “He crossed the street at the corner—I didn’t see him. I was still washing dishes, but when I looked up again, he was ringing the bell at the Patterson house.”

  “Did you see Jessica answer the door?”

  She flapped the heel of one of her slippers. “No. I was still rinsing the bowl, I guess. But I did look up right after she let him in, I think. That’s why I thought to call you. Even then, it seemed strange to me.”

  “What seemed strange?”

  Mrs. Beasley set her cup and saucer down. “It looked like Jessica was hanging on to him while he tried to close the door. I thought maybe she had fainted.”

  We were back in the car after taking Mrs. Beasley’s statement. She had given us each a piece of crackleberry pie on a paper plate, covered with plastic wrap. A sketch artist was on his way to her place.

  Greenleaf appeared quiet as we headed back toward Ventura Boulevard.

  “She must have seen them right after he dosed Jessica with the spray,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know the numbers on black serial killers.”

  “Yes.” White males seemed to have a monopoly on serial killing.

  “I don’t suppose she could have got that part wrong,” I mused.

  “Come on,” he said, “if she got that wrong, she got it all wrong. She sounded damn sure. She even noticed his hair was short like mine and that he had one of those mustache-goatee beards. We’ve got our first description of this guy,” he said. “We finally caught a break.”

  I glanced at him. “Tall, black, short hair, wearing a dark suit.”

  “I have an alibi for both murders.”

  “Just checking.”

  Our next stop was India West, the incense retailer at the top of Smitty’s list, a little shop on Western Avenue, sandwiched between a State Farm Insurance agent and a tattoo parlor.

  We pushed through the glass door and heard the familiar tinkling bell. India West was a small place specializing in essential oils, lotions, incense, bath-and-body items, and candles. Strong incense smoldered at different points around the store, but there was a more familiar burning scent under it all.

  Hamilton and I did a slow walk-through of the candle section.

  “No black,” he said.

  A man finally emerged from the back and stepped from behind the counter. Mid-twenties, skinny, and tattooed, with thick black hair and glassy haz
el eyes. His walk had been breezy when he first came out, but at the sight of Hamilton and me in our suits, his air became distinctly wary.

  “Can I help you?”

  Hamilton flashed his badge. “What’s your name?”

  “Benjamin Sanford.”

  “You work here, or you own the place?”

  “Both.”

  “We understand you sell . . .” He pulled Smitty’s list out of his jacket and glanced at it. “ . . . Tashua Jong incense here.”

  “Yes.” I could smell his breath. It was that rank combination of beer and marijuana. It’s one of our favorites. Hand rolled, you know. Many of my customers burn it exclusively.”

  That had to be good for business. I had spotted it on the shelves. It was the most expensive incense available.

  “Having this upscale location probably helps,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything to that. He just waited. When I glanced at his tattoos, he followed my look, folded his arms across his chest.

  “We’re going to need a list of customers who have purchased it.”

  “Yeah, right. My clientele is exclusive, and they expect privacy.”

  “What were you in for?” I asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Come on, Benny,” Hamilton said, “stop wasting our time. You want us to run you? I’m guessing if we do a little checking on this nice establishment of yours, well, maybe not everything’s perfectly kosher. Capisce?”

  “Two years for distributing,” Benny said.

  “Still in the business?” Hamilton asked.

  “No.”

  “This would be an ideal place to operate if you wanted a perfect storefront for the distribution of marijuana. I mean, we are somewhat lax about that in California, aren’t we?”

  “I swear I’m not selling dope. I don’t—”

  “Listen, you little shit,” Hamilton said, “we can smell the fucking ganja in the back, so shut it. We couldn’t care less about that. We don’t want to listen to any more whining about your exclusive clientele. All we want is a list of customers who have purchased that brand of incense.”