To Kill a Sorcerer (17 page)

As we explored each other intimately, my spirit grew alight with the fire of her presence.

She finally pulled away, staring at my mouth, her lips parted, mole glistening in the blinking lights. She dragged the tip of her finger along my lower lip. Her gaze rose slowly to my eyes. “That was wonderful.”

“It is only the beginning.”

“I know.” She pressed her finger against my lips. “I can feel it, too. Please be patient with me.”

“Of course, my darling.”

My head swam from the obvious passion of her embrace as she led me onto the deck. She turned and gave me a soft, lingering kiss on the cheek.

“See you tonight.”

She lifted slowly into the air, staring down at me. Then she blurred and disappeared into the backdrop of stars while I stood looking up, my mind aflame with a divine, delirious ache.

Thursday, December 23, 6:49 a.m.

The sky gleamed cobalt. I sat on the low patio wall and smoked as the stars faded from view. Aliena was probably tucked into her lair by now.

She hid her cell phone high in a tree or on top of a building every morning, and picked it up every night after waking, so no one could use the GPS signal to find her sleeping place. She told me that for the last ten years, she had been stripping down to nothing and hiding her clothes many miles from her bed, so concerned was she over the sophisticated tracking devices available these days.

The thought of her running nude through the forest, a beautiful, steel-white nymph, impervious to the elements, the most dangerous creature in the woods, roused me deeply, bringing to mind images of Diana, the virgin huntress—goddess of the moon.

Musing on our parting kiss, I fought down the soaring feeling in my breast with panicky quickness. Failing to curb my feelings for Aliena would be a terrible mistake. Her emotions toward me were too capricious.

But kissing her had been more intense than I had believed possible. My pulse rose as I remembered the way her long body had turned liquid against mine.

I went inside, closed the doors, and checked my watch. Three hours before I picked Hamilton up at the station. I had time for a trip to the ether.

Reed hypothesized that if our killer had made a mistake during a magical ritual, he might have lost a soul. And though he had also said the chance of meeting one of the victims in the ether was improbable, it was worth it to take a look. Several permanent entities resided in this area, and they may have seen or heard something relating to the girls. It was a slim lead, thinner than a Hollywood starlet, but I wanted to leave no avenue unexplored.

Reclining on the floor, I crossed my hands over my chest and began breathing rhythmically. In moments I had slipped into a deep trance. I visualized my spirit body. With a slight tug on my chest, my
ti bon ange
rose from my physical form.

The inner spirit is composed of two parts, the
gros bon ange
, or big guardian angel, and
ti bon ange
, or little guardian angel. It is the latter that travels in the ether—and warily. The
ti bon ange
can be captured, even killed, by forces on the astral plane. Any injuries sustained by the spirit are mirrored in the physical body, so it is crucial to avoid harm.

Once free of my shell, I gazed down at my recumbent form and confirmed my silver cord stretched back to it. Thus reassured, I turned and floated up and through the ceiling and continued rising until I was fifteen or twenty meters above my house.

I hovered there, looking at the sky and the ocean. Gray clouds scudded fast across a slate sky. The moon was still up with Sirius and the blazing Orion Nebula.

It is difficult to generalize the experience of traveling on the astral plane to someone who has never been there. Your body feels the same, but it does not move the same way—at least, not until you begin abiding by certain rules,
in your mind
. For instance, I always feel buoyant when I begin, so I start by “flying.” I use no muscles of which I am aware when I travel this way, only thought. However, it is also possible to “land” and walk on the ground, even sit on chairs and lean against things, but you have to believe the ground and the chair are there in a way that is unlike the physical world.

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.

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.