Disconnection (12 page)

“I’ll think about it. I’m not an outdoorsy type. Plus, alligators scare the hell out of me. Never purposely surround yourself with something that can eat five times its body weight, that’s what my grandmother used to say.”

“Hey, Soccerace!” A young man screamed in the middle of the restaurant. He sat with another guy of his shape and size, two college boys in their jeans and letterman college jackets in a booth on the other side of the restaurant. They waved at Dean.

“Excuse me,” Dean muttered to Sela. He stood up and walked over. “Hey, how’s it going?” he offered. The three guys began speaking in muted tones. When Dean arrived back at the table a few minutes later, his face was slightly flushed. “Those guys are on the soccer team.”

“The
soccer team?”

“The Tulane soccer team.”

Sela stirred her water with a straw. “Oh. You’re on the team, too, I suppose?”

“Yep.”

“And they called you Soccerace. What for? Are you the prima donna, or is it just an ironic nickname?”

Dean smirked. “I’ve won my share of games.”

Sela leaned back. “I’ll have to see one of your games sometime.”

“Sure. When the season starts.”

Ordinary acts of everyday living. Dean’s life. A class schedule and a position on his school’s soccer team. What would he say if he knew Sela’s secret, the extraordinarily strange circumstance that had guided her week? The dead girl on a phone with no batteries. If he knew, would he believe her?

She pushed her plate away and sipped her water, her eyes downcast. Dean reached over and took her hand. “Sela, you feeling down about something? Wanna talk?”

“What makes you think I’m upset?”

“You’ve hardly touched your food. I mean, I can understand why you wouldn’t, your shrimp and fries are practically drowning in ketchup.”

“I like ketchup. So me not having a healthy appetite qualifies you to worry over my state of mind?”

“No, I mean, it’s not just that. You’re kinda quiet. You didn’t strike me as one of those quiet types the other night.” He winked.

A chuckle escaped Sela’s throat. She took her hand away and gazed up at Dean. “I told you I was tired. You insisted.”

“I would have taken no for an answer.”

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

His smile broadened as he ran a knuckle along his cheek. “Maybe not.”

Sela watched him watch her. He seemed to care, even though this was only their second time to hang out together.

Could I tell him?

Sela cleared her throat and began, “Dean, do you believe in the supernatural? I mean, all that crap you hear on TV and in books about ghosts and stuff—do you think any of it’s real?”

Dean popped an onion ring in his mouth before answering, “Sure.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Do you know anything about the Talmud or the Torah?” Sela shook her head. Dean continued, “Well, Jews don’t necessarily believe in an afterlife, because for us, life is everlasting. We descend to a new place, that’s all. It’s called
Sheol
. It’s supposed to be in the middle of the Earth. And there are different levels. We believe that entering the higher world of living is a reflection on the soul’s experience while still in the body.”

“Okay, but what about an afterlife here? Do Jews believe that people can be trapped here on Earth?”

“Hmm.” Dean sat frozen for a moment in thought. “Well, the Talmud says that there are several goodbyes after death. The first goodbye is between the soul and the body. The second lasts for seven days and it is between the soul and all its earthly pleasures. The third goodbye lasts thirty days.”

“What are the thirty days for?”

“To say goodbye to everyone that the soul once loved.”

Sela swallowed hard. “What if the soul was wrongfully killed?”

“You mean murdered?” Sela nodded. Dean answered, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I guess I’m not up on my Judaism like I should be. Do you want me to ask my rabbi? I can if you want me too.”

“No, it’s okay. What do you personally believe, though? I mean, in your heart of hearts?”

“In my heart of hearts, I’ve never thought about it,” Dean admitted. He took another onion ring and shoved it in his mouth. “So what’s your stance?” he asked between chews.

“On afterlife?”

“Religion.”

Sela shrugged. “Recovering Catholic, I guess. My parents used to take me to church when I was a kid, but then, well, I felt disconnected after my parents died. I think it was hard for me to worship a God that would let a seven-year-old child watch her parents burn to death. Believing in ghosts is almost easier.”

“Dostoevsky once said that the suffering of children was man’s best proof for the absence of God.”

She nodded. “I guess that’s why I’ve always liked New Orleans. It’s sorta stuck its middle finger up at the Bible Belt. Although, I have to admit I’m pretty much like anyone else—whenever I’m in trouble or I want something great to happen, ‘God’ is the first name I shout out.”

Dean stood up abruptly. “I’ll be right back. Coffee’s kicked in.”

Sitting alone, Sela drank the rest of her water.

The last time Sela had attended church, it was a memorial service for her parents. It had been June, and the driest June on record. A pale sun burned in a cloudless sky overseeing the church’s roof. From her front row seat Sela watched the intense heat claim the last of the spring flowers—the irises, the deep pink azaleas, the rhododendron blossoms drooping over the apple green grass.

“We come to church to seek peace,” the priest said. He was Irish and his name was Father O’Something. “For the Lord is our Savior, we will not walk in darkness.”

Darkness was what Sela felt right now. Darkness and darkness and more darkness. It seemed forever ago that Dean had left the table.

A light flickered on from outside the window. Sela could see its silhouette on the dark table. She looked up.

There was no light, save for the streetlights across the road. For Sela, it was only further proof that she was losing her mind.

A moment later and Dean was there. He smiled at her with beautiful green eyes and took her hand across the dark. “You’re very pale,” he commented.

“I thought I saw something.”

“I thought I saw something, too. A big roach. In the bathroom. One of those half-made ones, you know, where you can see its inside because it has a clear shell. Turns out it was just an unwrapped condom.”

Sela cringed. “I don’t know what’s worse to find in a public toilet—a half-made cockroach or a condom.”

They held hands as they stepped outside into the warm night. “Thanks for dinner,” Sela said.

Dean put his arm around her neck and she snuggled closer to him. He said, “Well, it was the least I could do after that amazing tropical wine cooler you made. God, however did you do it?”

“Not funny.” She playfully hit him on the chest.

Dean reached down and kissed her hard on the mouth. Sela was suddenly lost in the memory of what had occurred only a week ago, when he had stayed in her apartment and they had spent all night in one hot position after another. She closed her eyes and let the memory consume her.

The night grew warmer until the heat increased so much that it seemed the very air was sizzling like oil inside a frying pan. A bright orange light canvassed Sela’s face, and soon she was aware that the heat was no longer a product of the ever-present humidity, but something greater.

She opened her eyes and screamed when she saw where the heat was coming from.

“Dean!”

Dean released Sela and turned to see the source of her horror. Nearby, flames were eating away at Sela’s car. Beside the engulfed Beetle, the Fishhook sign burned, created with a dozen smoldering coals, as the smoke lifted up to the sky and hovered in the otherwise clear night.

L
ewis watched Chloe Applegate enter his office. No, on second look, it was not Chloe Applegate, but it was close enough. In some way, white girls looked the same. Chloe and this girl were damn similar, though. The same blue eyes, same brown hair, same body frame. But Chloe was prettier than this girl, or at least the photos of her were. All Lewis had were photos. The girl standing before him now looked like she had not slept in days.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“I’m Sela Warren. My car was on fire, and …”

“Someone burned a Fishhook symbol next to it, I remember,” Lewis finished for her.
Another pain-in-the-ass copycat
, he thought. They’d had this problem since the Fishhook murders had begun. Some kids thought it was funny to imitate a lunatic serial killer, not by going so far as to imitate the murders themselves, but going around town drawing that damn symbol on anything that stayed still. The whole downtown area was now filled with the mutated Christian symbol, enough to cause hysteria in the city, enough so that the police station had close to a hundred calls a day with people asking questions or giving false leads.

And yet, nothing amounted to shit. The sociopath was still out there somewhere, and greatly disconnected from his deeds, thanks to the imitations of others.

“Please, sit down,” Lewis said.

Sela and the boy with her “a dark, tall kid with equally tired eyes” sat on the two chairs opposite Lewis. Opening the folder on his desk, Lewis began, “Your statement says you were in the café, having dinner. You walked to the car. You saw your car burning, and the Fishhook sign was burning beside it. Is that correct?” He looked up. The girl was nodding. He turned his attention to the boy. “You’re Dean Wolf, I assume?”

The boy answered, “Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Your statement is the same. Do you have anything else to add?”

“No. That’s what happened.”

Lewis leaned back in his chair, his coffee mug clutched tightly in his hand. “We’re taking these Fishhook signs very seriously. Any information the two of you can give us could help.”

Dean Wolf shifted in his chair. “We don’t know anything. If you ask me, it’s a random act of violence. Sela doesn’t have any enemies.” He looked at her. “Do you, Sela?”

The dark-haired girl shook her head.

Lewis thought about what Dean had said. Random acts of violence were rarely random at all. There was always something, something to draw the perpetrator’s eye, whether it was the color of an object, its location, the way it smelled or sounded, how it sat in place.

Sometimes the perpetrator focused in on the person, usually a woman. It could be the clothes she wore, or the way she walked, or the style in which she wore her hair. It could be her race or age; many times it involved sex appeal.

Lewis studied Sela Warren’s face. In the looks department, she was no one special. No spectacular beauty, no spark. Nothing that would draw attention, at least not for Lewis. Of course, the detective had always loved his black women. He knew many brothers worshipped the ground white women walked on, but not him. He liked the darkest cherries on the tree. The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.

Lewis put his coffee cup down on the table and folded his hands behind his head. “You don’t think you know anything,” he began, “but think hard. Was there any incident you remember over the past few weeks, anyone you might have upset? Strange phone calls, domestic disturbances, that kind of thing?”

Dean Wolf answered, “No. I’m at school from dusk till dawn. And to be honest, I don’t really know that many people. I play soccer for Tulane but I’ve never known a soccer player angry enough to burn up a car, unless it’s at the World Cup.”

Lewis looked at Sela. “And you?”

Sela glanced up from her lap. “I said no, okay?”

Lewis’s lips curled into a sympathetic smile. “I’m just trying to help, Ms. Warren. You see, since these Fishhook signs have been appearing, we’ve had a lot of copycats. Kids think they can get away with whatever they want and blame it on this crazy bastard. My job is to separate the real from the pseudo real. You understand?”

Sela cleared her throat and asked, “And that thing burning by my car? Did that look like the real thing to you?”

He shrugged. “Hard to say. We’re having forensics take a look at it now. They’ll match fingerprints or materials from the other crime scenes if there anything matches up.” Lewis leaned forward. “This Fishhook sign—this isn’t the first time this symbol’s been around. You know how I know that?” The young people shook their heads. Lewis leaned back in his chair again. “My fourteen-year-old daughter had a report due at school. The history of religious cults in New Orleans. We went to the library and looked through old newspapers.” Lewis opened his desk drawer and pulled out a printed copy of an old newspaper. He tossed it on the desk.

Dean and Sela leaned over the desk and began reading what Lewis had already memorized.

“What is this?” Sela asked.

“This, Ms. Warren, is a paper dated all the way back to the 19th century. In those days, the Fishhook sign—they called it the Fish & Cross sign back then—was drawn on people’s houses right before they were murdered.” Lewis paused so that the two white kids could take in his words. Dean and Sela glanced at one another and then back at him.

He continued, “It baffled the city for almost a year before the detectives found the origin of the sign in some shed out in the middle of bum fuck Idaho. The Knights of Galilee is what they called themselves. Crazy sons-of-bitches. Thought they were cleaning the world of sinners. Some of the victims, they burned. They drowned, some even hung. All with that damn Fishhook sign on their back. Everything settled down once the members were arrested, but now …” His sentence hung in mid-air.

He picked up his lukewarm coffee from the desk and took a sip as Nick rose and flared. Denying the urge to scream aloud, Lewis gritted his teeth and continued, “This is why if something isn’t right—if you think someone’s following you, or you’re getting weird phone calls, etcetera cetera—you need to contact me. Immediately.” He looked at Sela. “Do you have someone you can stay with for a while? Family or friends?”

Sela shook her head. “My parents are dead. And if you knew my friends, you would know that it’s safer to live in Iraq than with them. They’re not exactly beacons of society.” She paused. “How many people have been murdered under this sign since it started appearing again?”