Eye of the Witch (25 page)

His expression deepened. I could tell he was trying. God love him for that, but he just couldn’t plug the lamp into the socket. He looked at me sheepishly, his big brown eyes hooded below anguished brows. “I’m Sorry, Tony,” and I believed he was. “That’s all I got.”

I grabbed his wrist and snatched the obsidian from his hand. “Forget it. You tried.” I pointed up at the window. Rivera left the room sometime during our conversation. Not that it mattered anymore. We only hung around in hopes of catching Piakowski there. If Rivera had been talking to Piakowski on the phone, then it seemed safe to say that our stakeout was pointless. “We’re wasting our time here, Carlos,” I told him. “What do you say we get rolling?”

Twelve

We left Rivera’s place and already heading back to the justice center when my phone rang again.

“
Spinelli,” I said. “Tell me you have something.”

He answered, “I might. How does this fit into your facts-for-fun book?”

“
Wait a minute. Let me put you on speaker.” I held the phone up to the map light and pressed the speaker button so that Carlos could listen, too. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

We heard nothing.

“
Spinelli? You there? Spin—”

The phone rang again. I pushed the SEND button and heard Spinelli say, “Detective, don’t hang up.”

“
I didn’t hang up on you. You hung up on me.”

I looked at Carlos, who tried hard not to laugh at something that obviously wasn’t funny. “Just say you did,” he told Spinelli. “Remember what we talked about.”

“
What?” I asked. “What did you two talk about?”

Spinelli came back. “Sorry `bout that, Detective. I must have hit the wrong button or something. My bad.”

“
Your what?”

“
His bad,” said Carlos. “It means—”

“
I know what it means! Spinelli, what the hell have you got?”

I thought I heard him cover the phone and laugh. It took him a few seconds to come back with a voice that sounded suspiciously tweaked. “Right. I have an interesting tidbit for you. It seems that Karen made notes regarding the exact ages of the victims at the time of their deaths.”

“
How do you mean?”

“
She kept a notepad of random thoughts, notes she scanned into her computer. For instance, she noted that Bridget Dean died exactly four months and a day from her last birthday. Ana Davalos, three months and a day.”

“
Coincidence,” I said.

“
Is it? Well, how about this? Carol Kessler died today at the train station exactly one month and a day from her last birthday.”

“
Probably another coincidence. Four, three and one month plus a day. The chain is broken. Now, if you were to tell me that Karen Webber’s death fell two months and a day past her birthday, then….”

Spinelli remained quiet. I looked at Carlos, a little uneasy. A bead of ice ran through my veins, driving goose bumps from the top of my head to the tips my toes. I held the phone closer. “Spinelli?”

He came back, somber. “There’s a definite pattern here, Detective. And the scary thing is that Karen saw it, too, but she didn’t seek anyone’s help.”

“
Who would have listened? Before her death, there were only two others, by themselves, not all that coincidental. Take Thomas Jefferson and John Adams for instance: two former presidents, both died on July 4
^th
1826, exactly fifty years to the day after both signed The Declaration of Independence.”

“
Yes, but at least there weren’t two more dead presidents only a week after those two croaked.”

“
Still, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, not unless the numbers add up funny for anyone else.”

“
You mean, like Leona?”

“
What about Leona?”

“
Leona’s birthday was yesterday.”

I dropped the phone on my lap, inadvertently hanging up on Spinelli. I tried dialing him back in the dim light, but gave up when I realized my fingers were trembling too badly to hit just one number at a time. Carlos noticed me fumbling with the phone and reached across the seat to stop me.

“
Tony, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Dom will call back.”

“
Did you hear what he said?”

“
Yes, he said Leona’s birthday was yesterday.”

“
Do you know what that means?”

“
I know what you’re thinking. Bridget died four months and a day after her birthday, Davalos, three and one: Webber, two and one, and Kessler one and one. Based on that pattern, Leona has none plus one, and then she’s dead.”

“
Right! And that plus one is today!”

Carlos shook his head no. “But Leona didn’t attend the workshops with those other women. There’s no reason to believe she’s on that list.”

“
Can you say that for sure?”

“
No. I can’t even say for sure that there is a list. And if there is, who’s to say the list isn’t hers?”

“
It’s not hers!”

“
Do you know that for sure?”

Of course, I didn’t, but I wanted to believe I did. I knew that if bilocation was a factor in the deaths of those women, then hardly anyone other than Leona or Benjamin could have committed the crimes. The problem was that I still hadn’t convinced myself that bilocation was a factor. I turned to Carlos, his eyes gleamed sharp and focused on the road. He didn’t know Leona as I knew her: soft, shy and timid. He knew her only as another student of the vilified Lieberman workshop. Her ability to bilocate made her a suspect in the murders we investigated then. That ability, at least in his mind, cast shadows of suspicion on her still.

“
Carlos, let me ask you. Given this new information, who do you think killed those women?”

“
I don’t know,” he said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. “But if not a case of multiple suicides—”

“
Which seems highly improbable.”

“
Yes, which seems highly improbable, then I think Benja-Leo did it.”

“
You do?”

“
Yes. You?”

I took a breath and shook my head, uncommitted. “You know me,” I said. “I usually go with my gut feelings.”

“
But you’re not feeling it, are you?”

“
Not with Benjamin. I don’t know why. I know we’ve both seen enough of the paranormal and supernatural to make a connection when we see it. But I keep finding myself coming back to Rivera and Piakowski on this one.”

Carlos gestured with a nod, but kept his eyes on the road ahead. “Ah-huh. Why do you suppose that is, Tony?”

“
Motive,” I said, almost without thinking. “Rivera had it. Benjamin didn’t.”

“
Not that you know.”

“
How do you mean?”

“
Tony, come on. Benny’s got a connection with the women going back almost ten years. There’s no telling what took place then that might have set him or Leo off. Maybe he hasn’t had the ability to do anything about it until now.”

I found myself surprisingly persuaded by his argument, and once again doubting my own instincts. “You know, Carlos, you may have something. Ordinarily, I would have to agree that if Rivera killed the women for reasons we discussed earlier, then the staggered timing of their deaths in relation to their birthdays would seem merely coincidental, at best. However, if you add the paranormal element into the mix, then perhaps you do introduce an entirely plausible scenario that I shouldn’t so easily overlook.”

“
That’s what I’m saying. But now are you ready for my other theory?”

“
What’s that?”

“
Well, think about that timing thing again. You notice how the decrements not only diminish by one month at a time, but always by a month and a day?”

“
Yes.”

“
You remember from the Surgeon Stalker case that all the critical murders occurred on predetermined intervals.”

“
Based on the lunar cycle, I know. But what do you base the unusual timing on now?”

He looked at me, almost too worried to answer. “You’re not going to like this?”

“
That’s all right. Let’s hear it.”

I saw him grip the steering wheel and wring his hands around it tightly. “Earlier at Lilith’s, what did she say to you about her ceremony tonight?”

“
That it was some sort of self-dedication thing, a rite of passage, I think she called it.”

“
No. I mean, about the witch’s ladder. She told you she needed it for her ceremony, but do you remember what she said about it?”

I thought for only a moment, and then it hit me. “She said she made it exactly a year and a day ago.”

“
Ah-huh, a year and a day, and the witch’s ladder she needs for that ceremony belonged to Leona?”

“
That’s right.”

“
Okay, I’m not saying this is what I think, or anything. But do you suppose that maybe Lilith’s ceremony tonight is really about Leona?”

There have been times in prior investigations when I believed I had delineated my case accurately, only to discover later that I had seriously misjudged the scope and intricacies of its details. With Carlos’ words, I staggered in the horror of realizing that I had, possibly, not only underestimated the perimeters of the case, but also the bedrock on which the case stood.

“
Damn it, Carlos!” I said, tightening my fists in frustration. “Why did you have to go and complicate matters so? I barely had my mind wrapped around things as it is, and now you go and drag Lilith into it.”

“
Drag Lilith?” he said, his voice pitched high. “Tony, if this is about Lilith, it’s not because I dragged her into it. If anything, she dragged us into it.”

He looked at me, and I could see his concern for my disposition outlined on his face. I took a deep breath and relaxed my clenched fists, only then realizing how hard I had pierced the skin of my palms. “I know that, Carlos,” I said, apologetically. “I don’t mean to sound angry with you. I’m angry with myself for not putting the pieces together.”

I rubbed my hand on my knee and over the obsidian stone, wondering why that damned eye of the witch wasn’t working, why it hadn’t let me see things more clearly. That’s when it occurred to me. Maybe it was. Maybe Lilith’s eye of the witch was working exactly the way she intended it to work: to confuse me and throw me off track. I looked out the window and noticed us heading toward town.

“
Where are we going?” I asked.

“
Back to the box. Why?”

I shook my head. “No. Take us back to Lilith’s. We’re not done with her yet.”

“
You got it.” He hit the brakes and swung the car around. Inside of fifteen minutes we were back in front of Lilith’s house, only this time parked at the curb. When asked why he didn’t pull up to the house, Carlos explained, “The car has a slight oil leak. I don’t want to make a mess on her driveway.”

I gave him a look as if I believed him. “How considerate.” I opened the door and got out, adding, “I’m sure that old gnome will appreciate it, too.” I shut the door, and as the dome light blinked out, I heard him declare, “Oh, yeah? He don’t scare me!”

The walk up to Lilith’s door dogged me like a Trojan mile. I couldn’t accept the thought of her culpability in the murders of Karen and the others, but Carlos’ theory could not go unchallenged. If he was right, and a small part of me deep inside suspected he could be, then Leona had maybe just a few hours left to live. I planted my heels at the door, rolled up my sleeve and gave it knock. It took Lilith a bit longer to answer this time. I thought perhaps I had interrupted her in meditation. She was dressed still in the robe she wore earlier, only now she seemed more relaxed, almost detached in spirit from the Lilith I spoke with barely an hour before. She stared at me blankly, as wax from her candle dripped freely down the back of her hand.

“
Lilith,” I said, “it’s me, Detective Marcella.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I swear I saw the light of presence fill them like a phantom breeze. A wave of dread struck me nearly off my feet. I staggered back, grabbing onto the doorjamb, praying I hadn’t arrived too late to save Leona.

“
I know it’s you,” she snapped, in that usual sarcastic way. “You think I didn’t see your gumshoe partner pull up in front of my house?”

“
We weren’t trying to sneak up on you or anything. Detective Rodriquez felt —”

“
Afraid?”

“
No. He felt that you wouldn’t appreciate it if he dripped oil on your driveway.”

“
Sure, well, you can tell him not to worry. He doesn’t bite.”

“
Who?”

She pointed at the gnome out on the front lawn. “Jerome.”

“
Oh,” I said, and that was enough of that. “Look, Lilith, do you mind if I have another word with you?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed audibly. “Detective, I’ve already told you that tonight is not good for—”

“
I’ll make it quick. I promise. Please. It’s very important.”

Judging from her expression, I expected she would slam the door in my face without further discussion. Instead, she inhaled deeply, and I saw her lips clearly counting to three as she slowly exhaled, though she did not speak the words. When she finished counting, her expression softened considerably. She opened the door fully and stepped aside. “Fine. Come in.”