Dark Prophecy (17 page)

“Yes, Father,” Dark said, then left the church.

chapter 36

Santa Monica, California

 

 

Dark wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking the streets of Santa Monica. He’d wandered out of the city limits and was somewhere near Venice Beach now. Skateboarders and beach cruisers milled around him. At times he had the creeping sensation that someone was watching him, but Dark chalked it up to paranoia. First he sees a woman he thinks is his dead wife. Then he thinks unknown agents are observing his every move. Hell, maybe he was being followed. Graysmith could have put a tail on him from the very beginning.

The wind grew stronger, fiercer. The palm fronds at the tops of the trees swayed violently. Dark finished the last of his smoke, then flicked the butt away into the sand. Sibby would have yelled at him for that. She would have also ribbed him about leaving his car in an illegal zone. Then again, why should he worry? If Graysmith could sneak him into any crime scene in the world, Dark was sure she could fix a parking ticket and have his Mustang pulled out of the impound lot.

Maybe if he kept looking, he’d run into that Sibby lookalike. If he didn’t, Dark knew he would sit up all night, wondering. Wondering how someone could look and move just like Sibby, only
not be
Sibby. Maybe this was more of God’s work, too.

An obese homeless man who smelled uncomfortably like antiseptic and vomit hit Dark up for money near the ocean walk. Dark reached into his pocket and realized that in his haste, he’d left his wallet in the car. He pulled out a ten and five singles; Dark gave the man the larger bill and kept the singles for himself. The bum mumbled thanks, half-stunned at his good fortune, shuffling away.

Down to five bucks. Dark thought he should probably start walking back, see if his car was still around. If not, it would be a long hike back to West Hollywood.

And that’s when he saw it—the tarot card shop. PSYCHIC DELIC, the large painted sign over the doors read.

Dark looked up at the sign and couldn’t help but smile. Clearly, he was going about this all wrong. If he wanted to catch the Tarot Card Killer, he needed a tarot card reading, right?

He remembered this place. Sibby once tried to drag him inside, just for fun. Dark passed.

But now Dark looked up at the sign and wondered—what if he had gone in with Sibby that time five years ago? Would he have been able to see any of the horrors coming? Could he have changed both of their fates for . . . what, five bucks?

No. This was ridiculous. Dark knew he should head back to his car, get himself home. Bad enough he missed his daughter’s nightly phone call. He needed to go home, prepare for tomorrow’s lecture, try to get his life back in order. Dark was good at knowing what he
should
do.

Of course, he didn’t always do it.

The proprietor of the shop sat at a circular reading table. She was younger than he expected. No moles, no tattoos, no wrinkled skin, no stiff black hairs poking from her chin. In her mid-forties, majestic, and deep in her demeanor. Her skin was a smooth brown, her eyes calm, youthful and friendly. She contact-juggled four glass balls in her hand, spinning them round and round and round . . .

Dark was about to turn on his heel and bolt when she spoke up.

“Steve Dark,” she said.

“How do you know my name, lady?”

The woman smiled.

“Read about you in the papers. You catch him yet? TCK. The Tarot Card Killer.”

“You
do
read the papers.”

“It’s my job to know a little something about everyone. I’m Hilda.” She showed him a chair near a small table. “Have a seat.”

As Dark lowered himself into the chair, Hilda began to shuffle the tarot cards, her fingers like snakes working the deck. Dark, meanwhile, scanned the surprisingly spacious shop. There were lamp stands, lit candles. A glass counter where you could buy occult ornaments, incense, jewelry, herbal treatments. Statuettes of Buddha and Jesus. A painted scene from
Alice in Wonderland
. The moment you stepped through Madame Hilda’s dimly lit threshold, you were no longer in sunny, funky Venice Beach. You were in a timeless pocket of magic, where anything could happen. At least, that was the point of the decor, he supposed.

“This is all bullshit, right?” Dark asked.

Hilda was unfazed by the question. “No more bullshit than what’s out that front door.”

Dark had to admit—she was good. He supposed you had to be, to make a buck in a shop like this in the middle of crazy Venice Beach, relying on tourists who were busy deciding between SPIRITUAL ADVICE and a temporary henna tattoo they could show their coworkers back in Indianapolis.

Hilda pushed the cards across the table. “Cut the deck any way you’d like.”

Dark paused, then lifted a pile of cards, put it to the side, and repeated the process a few times.

“Have you ever had a reading before?” Hilda asked.

“No,” Dark said. “I came close once. This joint, actually, but . . . didn’t happen.”

“Maybe you weren’t ready.”

Dark didn’t reply. He thought about Sibby. Her beautiful eyes, squinting in the sun.
Come on. It’ll be fun.

“Here’s how it works,” Hilda said. “I’ll deal ten cards face up. I’m not a fortune-teller. I’m a
reader
. The cards aren’t meant to make predictions or offer false promises. They’re only meant to guide you. Add clarity. You can draw from it what you will. So ...”

Hilda took a small stack of cards and pressed them to her chest.

“What do you need to know?”

Dark sighed, then decided to cut through the bullshit. He didn’t have to get himself wrapped up in the mysticism. This was no different from a cop talking to an informant.

“I need to know how it all works. If I can get a better understanding of your world, maybe I can catch him.”

chapter 37

Now Hilda smiled again, but it was a weak, uneasy smile. “I don’t know if I can help you, but I suggest we start with a personal reading. See where it takes us.”

The last thing Dark wanted was a
personal
reading. His whole career was an unholy mix of the personal and the professional, and it had taken everything important away from him. But before Dark had a chance to reply, Hilda began dealing the cards in the shape of a cross. First:

Followed by:

And:

Dark stared down at the table. He couldn’t breathe. Someone had siphoned all of the air out of the room. Even the flickering lights seemed to writhe around on their candle tops, gasping for oxygen.

Hilda noticed his discomfort and stopped the deal. “Something wrong?”

Three of the murder scenes, in the
exact order
. Either this was a setup, or this woman read the papers
really carefully
and was fucking with him. The odds of these specific cards being dealt, in
this
order, was . . .

“These cards match up to the murders so far,” he muttered, then looked up at Hilda. “What’d you do? Rig the deck?”

Hilda leaned back in her chair. No smile now. Either she was a skilled actor, or she truly didn’t realize the importance of the three cards on the table.

“I’m not a magician, Mr. Dark. You cut the deck. All I did was shuffle the cards. Now it’s up to fate to tell the story.”

Hilda finished forming a Celtic cross with three more cards:

—before placing four more on the table:

Dark quickly committed them to memory. Ten, five. Wands, pentacles. That was easy. So was the final sequence: Wheel, Devil, Tower, Death. He put together a quick word association to cement it in his mind.
If you spin the wheel against the devil, you’ll end up in the tower where you’ll meet your death.
Also easy enough.

But now Hilda was the one with the stunned expression on her face.

“Something wrong?” Dark asked, mocking her a little.

“Look at this Celtic cross. Six Major Arcana and one from each Minor. In all my years of doing this, I’ve never seen that before ...”

Dark stared at Hilda. “What does that mean?”

Hilda paused before she answered. “You were meant to be here.”

chapter 38

The reading lasted until sunlight broke over Venice the next morning. As promised, Hilda gave him a personal reading, taking care to explain the meaning behind each card to Dark before moving on.

But the session took all night because each card seemed to trigger an explosive memory. With each card, Dark became convinced this was no sleight-of-hand card trick. These ten cards were tied into his life in a very real and fundamental way. It felt more like a counseling session than it did an occult reading. At first Dark tried to dismiss the cards, joke their implications away.
The card means all that, huh?
But Hilda held firm, taking her time, asking simple questions that opened the floodgates in Dark’s mind.
At what key moment in your life were you the Fool? When you finally got into Special Circs, how was it? Celebratory? Are you prepared to discuss your worst memory?

The cards also, chillingly, provided insight into the first four murders.

The Hanged Man, Hilda explained, represented the story of Odin, the god who scarified himself to gain knowledge—which he then shared with humanity. His suffering was for a greater good. So Martin Green—a member of a high-level think tank—had gained some kind of knowledge. His death, presumably, was for the greater good as well.

The Fool was embarking on a new journey, his worldly possessions slung over his shoulder, the sun of enlightenment shining down upon him, white rose of spontaneity in his hand. But the dog at the Fool’s side is the voice of reason, urging him to be careful. If not, he may walk off the edge of a cliff . . . or his own rooftop, in the case of newly minted Special Circs agent Jeb Paulson. What was the voice of reason trying to tell Paulson? Had the killer attempted to warn him away from the investigation? Did Paulson ignore the warning, and end up paying the ultimate price?

The Three of Cups and the murders of the MBA students in West Philly came into sharper focus, too. The card about celebration, exuberance, friendship, camaraderie—forming a bond for a common goal. However, Hilda explained, the cards can be reversed, and the celebration can turn to self-absorption and isolation.

And finally the Ten of Swords represented the futility of the mind, a failure of the intellect to save you. A man like Senator Garner thrived by his intellect, brokering deals and changing the course of the nation. But in the end his intellect had failed him, because his base urges had stabbed him in the back. The pleasures of the flesh versus the logic of the mind.

Just as the sequence of cards fit Dark’s life, they fit each of the murder victims perfectly. The victims and killing methods were not chosen at random. They were perfectly suited for each other. There was a pattern, a story being told.

But what linked them all together? And how would it end?

For that matter, what linked Dark’s life to this string of murders? Was it merely fate that caused his life to intersect with these killings?

Or something deeper?

A while later Dark found himself at Sibby’s gravesite. Even though it was just a few miles away, he’d hadn’t been here in a long, long time. Sibby always had the uncanny ability to pull Dark out of his own head and help him see things more clearly. His wife soothed his soul like no one else. And ever since Sibby died, looking at her grave was a painful reminder of how utterly lost Dark felt without her.