Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) (6 page)

The Blackhawk helicopter was waiting at idle when Jennings arrived at the airport. There were no problems with security. They rushed him right through. He boarded the military transport, strapping his hulking frame into a seat as a crew member handed him a headset.

“What’s this for?”

“Things are noisy,” the crewman hollered above the racket. “Besides, Boss Man wants to talk to you.” Jennings nodded and put the headset on. He knew who Boss Man was. The chopper’s engines whined distantly as the craft lifted into the air. The airport slid away beneath him giving way to the Portland skyline, a jagged coastline, and finally, open ocean.

“
Rick, can you hear me?”

Jennings
reached up and adjusted the mouthpiece. “Yeah, I hear you fine.”

“You’ll be here in about thirty minutes. You’ll be touching down at Pease International Tradeport. The scene is just ten minutes from there. There’ll be a car waiting.”

“What have you done with the bodies?”

“We haven’t moved them. They’re still at the scene exactly as they were found. Forensics has been poring over them trying to figure out what the hell happened.”

“So you say it’s the same MO as those people back in the nineties? The ones McArthur saw in his visions?”

“No doubt about it. That’s the reason I wanted you down here. You were the guy that introduced me to the kid. He told me how he’d seen the murders in some sort of . . . trance
like-state or something. I’ll tell you what, spooked the shit out of me.”

“I wish I’d never said a word
about it.”

“Why, Rick? Were you trying to protect him?”

“God damn it, Spencer, I wasn’t trying to protect anybody. The kid had suffered enough.”

“Yeah, I know. He was sort of famous, or should I say infamous, back before that. Don’t think I
didn’t keep track of what was going on. Very interesting cases. All of them unsolved, I might add. All the talk shows wanted him and the tabloids wrote about the things he’d seen—”

“Most of it was bullshit!”

“The facts weren’t bullshit, Rick. Those people did die. Christ, he even saw his own parents die. How tough can that be?”

“What’s this about, Spencer?”

“I’m not sure,” Spencer said. “I just can’t figure out McArthur’s connection to it all.”

“Simple, there is no connection.”

“I don’t think you believe that, Rick.”

“Listen, Spencer, he’s clairvoyant. He sees things. Or he used to. I can’t explain it any better than that.”

“Does McArthur still live in the area?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact he and his wife Annie are friends of mine.”

“What do you mean by friends? Like beer buddies and backyard barbecues?”

Jennings
knew he was being baited. Those had been Spencer’s agents at the scene of Doug’s and Annie’s ruined house this morning. He didn’t trust Spencer. Hell, he didn’t even like the man. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean.”

“Do you think he . . .
saw
these murders last night?”

“
Are you crazy, Spencer?”

“No. Actually I’m quite sane. Probably saner than I’ve been in a long time.”

“Listen, as far as I know McArthur’s visions were gone by the time he became an adult.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I told you, I’m his friend.”

“Have you talked to him this morning?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, Spencer, but—”

“What I’m getting at, Rick is, as far as I know nothing like this has happened in
more than ten years. And this morning McArthur’s house blows up and in its wake he leaves two square miles of carnage. A little bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“That’s all it is, Spencer. Coincidence! Period!”

“Where do you suppose McArthur is right now?”

“I
don’t know, but if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”

“You’re not playing nice, Rick.”

“Go to hell!”

Ignoring
Jennings’ remark Spencer said, “Do you think it’s possible that perhaps whatever causes him to see these terrible things came awake and he just went nuts?”

“And he blew his own house up and killed people, and then zipped on down to
New Hampshire and killed some more? No, I don’t think that’s possible. It isn’t logical—”

“These deaths aren’t logical, Rick.”

“Listen, those guys were trying to kill them, in case you didn’t know. He was simply trying to protect himself and his wife.”

“You know that for a fact, huh?”

“I was at the scene all morning and that’s what the preliminary evidence suggests. And it’s what I believe, yes. I told you, I know the guy. But you made sure I was taken off the case. So screw you if you want my help now.”

“That
guy sure does elicit a lot of passion in you, Rick,” Spencer said calmly.

“W
hy don’t you start leveling with me, Spencer?”

“
Okay, fair enough. How’d you like to get dealt back in?”

“You
lousy son-of-a-bitch.”

“It wasn’t me, Rick. It’s not personal. It’s just that the people upstairs thought you were a little too close to McArthur to be objective.”

“So why am I here?”

“
I convinced them that you were important.”

“
You thought I’d be able to lead you to McArthur, didn’t you? Well, you’re wasting your time. I don’t have a clue where he is.”

“I believe you, Rick.”

“So my involvement is over. Tell your pilot to turn around.”

“I really want you to see these bodies.”

“You can’t actually believe that McArthur was involved in the murder of a family two hours away from his home? I told you, it’s not logical.”

“
Nothing about this case is logical. I think if McArthur saw these murders and if he didn’t do them, then I believe he’s capable of leading us to whoever did. And furthermore, I think you’ll agree when you get here.”

“You bastards just want to grab him, don’t you? You’ve been waiting for an opportunity
like this. Take his mind apart, see what makes him tick.”

“Rick, we could have had him any time we wanted.”

“But now you’ve got the excuse you need. I told you, I don’t know where he is.”

“That’s okay, Rick, we do.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Silence.

“Spencer?”

“I can’t say any more
on the air. We’ll talk when you get here.”

Now
Jennings was more confused than ever. What if Doug
was
connected in some way to these deaths? Even though he knew Doug well, or thought he knew him, they never talked much about what happened back when he was a kid. Those regressive sessions back when he was in college had been the end of it as far as Jennings was concerned. He’d come away believing that McArthur had gone through some sort of psychic ability period, an ability to see the future, to see murder and mayhem in its most brutal form, and the most difficult one to believe: perhaps the ability to see the supernatural creature behind the murders. Jennings couldn’t explain any of it and he’d given up trying a long time ago. McArthur’s sight went far beyond the territory of ordinary police investigative work into the realm of the unexplained. What he did know was that Doug’s sight had diminished as he’d grown older until it was nearly non-existent. At least that’s what Jennings believed because Doug never talked about it any more. Growing up had been a tough time for the kid, losing his parents like he had and the media circus that Doug had endured. No, he wasn’t the least bit sure Doug would say a word even if he knew. And he wouldn’t blame him.

But
Jennings was still uneasy. This was all happening so fast he wasn’t sure of his instincts. The feds wanted McArthur; there was no doubt about that. Maybe they already had him. And their interest in him went far beyond this particular case. Jennings was suddenly sure of it.

“Tell you what, Spencer,”
Jennings said. “Let’s wait until I see the bodies so I can get a handle on this thing. I don’t know if these killings are the same thing as before.”

“
Oh, they’re the same all right, Rick, and I think you’ll agree when you see them.”

“What if it’s some sort of copy cat?”

“Wait till you see the evidence, and then tell me that.” The line suddenly went dead. Evidently Spencer was through talking.

Jesus Christ,”
Jennings thought, settling back in his seat. I wish Doug would call me.

The chopper landed right on schedule. Spencer’s men were cool and efficient. Jennings was shown to a waiting car. He got in, sat back and tried to relax. But there was no way in hell he could. All his muscles were tensed and his mind worried. Spencer seemed quite anxious to pin these deaths on McArthur. McArthur
was
a suspect; there was no doubt about it. But perhaps he was more than a suspect. What if the government had been watching him since—? The thought struck Jennings that perhaps they’d never taken their eyes off him. Yes, it was a definite possibility. Frankly Jennings was a little surprised they’d waited this long to make their move. He supposed that guys who could see the kinds of things McArthur could see were valuable. Sure they were. Doug’s was a rare gift and the government wanted to dissect him, to see what made him tick, and they were looking for an excuse to grab him. Jennings was suddenly and absolutely certain of it. McArthur would be a hell of a guinea pig for those CIA spooks to dissect.

But right now he couldn’t think about that. He needed to find a way to contact Doug and warn him of his suspicions. The man needed protection from his own government. He knew that Doug wasn’t capable of murder. Hell, the man wouldn’t harm a bee if one was stinging him. But they would accuse him to get what they wanted, wouldn’t they?

Jennings needed a clear head and some time to think. Unfortunately that wasn’t going to happen. Everything was moving too fast, and he felt like he was caught in the middle of a nightmare. He sat forward in his seat as they approached the circus, his muscles tense like over-stressed strings on a musical instrument.

The crime scene was an average suburban home on an average street in a very average small
New England town. The place had a front porch, a two car garage and a lawn with two towering oak trees growing up out of it like titanic guardians. One of the trees even had a rope swing attached to a rugged-looking horizontal branch. Right now, however, the house, as well as most of the street, was taped off, and inside the cordon there was a buzz of activity. There were at least ten parked emergency vehicles with people moving busily to and from them. Outside the barricade, Jennings noted as they passed, were several news vans and a crowd of anxious-looking spectators. As he got out of the car a crowd of reporters moved toward him in a wave.

“Can you give us any information?” A young man asked breathlessly, a cameraman at his side.

How they knew he was a cop, Jennings couldn’t say. Maybe he smelled like one. His shirt was stuck to his back and his underarms were wet. Yeah, that must be it. He smelled like a pig. He tried to smile as he pushed his solid frame through the crowd but could only manage a grimace. “As you can see, I just arrived,” he said. “Don’t know any more than you do. Maybe less.” He pushed past the crowd of reporters and spectators and into the cordoned off zone.

He stepped up onto the porch and peered through the open door. The first body he saw nearly undid him. The kid stood there like a statue, frozen in time
, looking like he’d been sculpted from marble. Nothing about him looked real. Not even his clothes. Everything seemed calcified. His hair stood straight up like slivers of glass. The face was stretched unnaturally, elongated somehow in an almost supernatural way, the mouth wide open in a silent scream. The eyes were open and dull-white, no pupils or corneas, more like the eyes of some renaissance sculpture than those of a human being. They seemed to be staring out at some unseen horror. A team of crime scene investigators hovered around the body, photographing, carefully taking samples.

Spencer stepped out onto the porch from inside the house walking carefully lest he step on some important piece of evidence. He was of medium height but solid, as though there were flexed muscles beneath his dark-colored suit jacket. His sandy hair was short-cropped and his complexion was deeply-tanned, like he’d just stepped out of the
Florida sun. “Rick,” Spencer said extending his hand, “glad you could make it.”

Jennings
ignored the outstretched hand. He could not take his eyes off the kid. Cold shivers ran through him as if he was witnessing something extraordinarily evil. “Where are the others?” he asked.

Self-consciously Spencer dropped his hand, turned and led
Jennings into the house. The mother and father sat in their chairs looking pretty much the way the kid looked, frozen in place, calcified, and like the kid on the porch the faces were stretched in an almost supernatural way, eyes dull-white and staring, mouths open in twin silent ovals that made it look like the victims had been screaming in their final moment of life. They’d seen whatever had done this to them. There was no doubt about that. The terror frozen on their faces didn’t lie.

The room was crawling with forensic people. Just to the left of the door lay a dog on its side. It looked just like the humans, freeze dried, calcified, its mouth open in an eternal howl. Even its fur seemed brittle, standing straight up like glass stalagmites.

“Jesus,” Jennings said, frowning down at the dog. “What the hell?”

“What the
hell seems to be the operative question of the day,” Spencer said.

Jennings
attention was immediately drawn to something on the wall above the television. Three symbols that looked like words in some exotic language had been drawn meticulously in what looked like heavy black ink.

He’d seen the symbols before but didn’t know what they meant, didn’t know if they meant anything, for that matter. He moved closer to the wall and stopped abruptly, staring. There was another image below the three word-symbols.
Jennings had no idea what it was but it looked something like the broken off point of an ancient arrowhead. It seemed to have been photo flashed there by some method he was unfamiliar with.

Jennings
studied it, cocking his head this way and that. “What does it mean?”

“Don’t know,” said Spencer.

“Looks like some sort of artifact,” Jennings said. “Old. Like maybe an arrowhead or the point of a spear.”

“That’s what it looks like to us, too,” Spencer said and shrugged.

“What about the symbols above it?” Jennings asked.

“They’re Aramaic. It’s an ancient language, sort of like Hebrew only older. From the time of Christ.”

“Jesus,” Jennings said, “how the hell do you know that?”

“Nothing too complex,” Spencer interrupted. “The bureau employs experts in ancient languages.”

“That’s a surprise,” Jennings said sarcastically. “How long have you known about this?”

“Years.”

Jennings shot Spencer a look of utter disdain. “What does it say?”

“Tleeqa, which means “Lost”, Shweeqa, which means “Forsaken”, and Minshiya which means “Forgotten”, respectively.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Jennings said.

“Wouldn’t think of it, Rick.”

Jennings thought for a minute before showing Spencer his bared teeth. “So, Doug was right. He knew when he was eight years old what those symbols meant.”

“Well, for some reason he was able to translate them. I’m not sure he knew what they meant. What do you think, Rick
?”

“Don’t have a clue, Spencer. But I can see that you boys have really done some homework on this one.”

“It’s our job, Rick. You didn’t really think we forgot about those other cases just because they weren’t solved, did you? Christ, they were the most exciting things to happen to the agency in years.”

“Exciting?”
Jennings said in amazement. “People died. Lives were destroyed.”

“Not my fault,” Spencer replied. “
I didn’t cause any of this. My job is to find answers.”

“Yeah, well did you have any success?”

“No thanks to you.”

“Wait a minute—”

“No, you wait a minute, Rick. You were the one closest to the boy that saw all this shit happen yet you wouldn’t let us near him.”

“He was just a kid.”

“Well, he’s not a kid anymore, and we will do whatever it takes to protect the national security.”

Jennings
face became hot with rage and he had to fight to keep his hands from going around Spencer’s neck. “Don’t you pull the national security card on me, Spencer. We have a history, remember? A sordid and shitty history. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what happened on Apocalypse Island.”

“
Oh, I know you haven’t forgotten, Rick. But you see, it doesn’t matter. Everything I do I do for the greater good.”

“
You keep telling yourself that, Spencer. Truth is you’re just a puppet for a group of greedy men who live in the shadows. You do their dirty work for them.”

“
Doesn’t matter what you think, Rick. Trust me, the world is a better place for the work I do.”

“Y
ou really believe that, don’t you?” Jennings stared at Spencer and concentrated on his breathing, trying to get himself under control. He still wanted to strangle the asshole, but decided that his confrontational style might not be the best way to find answers to the toughest questions. “So, Spencer, you’re so damned smart, fill me in, just what
is
this nut case trying to tell us?”

Spencer shrugged his shoulders. “Lost, Forsaken, Forgotten. Don’t have a clue, but there are theories. We have shrinks in the bureau, too, you know. Maybe he wasn’t loved the way he thought he should have been as a child. Maybe he was spurned by a lover. Who the
hell knows why these nut jobs do the things they do.”

“So you’re assuming the guy who did this is human?”
Jennings said.

Spencer smiled dryly. “Aren’t you?”

“I’ve never seen a human do this.”

“So you’re willing to buy into the possibility that he’s not?”

Jennings narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know what I’m willing to buy into, Spencer. This whole thing has been crazy from the get-go. I thought it was over a long time ago. Christ!” He sighed in frustration. “What about that symbol beneath the words?”

“Photos have been sent to
Washington.” Spencer shrugged. “We’re working on it. It seems to have somehow been transferred onto the wall as though it’s a
real
object and not just a drawing. If you look closely it appears to be in bas-relief and it looks like it’s made of either stone or pitted metal.” Jennings put his hand up as if to touch the symbol. “Don’t touch it!” Spencer said and Jennings’ hand froze midway. “We’ve got a team coming in to remove that piece of wall, take it back to the lab. No one’s ever seen anything like it and we don’t want it contaminated.”

On the stand beside the TV Jennings spied a family photo. Not able to wrap his brain around the image on the wall, he strode over and picked the photo up
to examine it. “This is them, right?” He said, pointing at the images. “The whole family.”

Spencer nodded.

“There are four people in the picture. I only saw three bodies,” Jennings said. “Where’s the little girl?” But even as he asked the question, Jennings thought he knew.

Spencer motioned for
Jennings to follow him. In the kitchen he spoke in low tones. “That’s the part I didn’t want to mention over the air. The little girl, her name is Ariel. She’s six years old and she’s missing.”

Jennings
sighed. “I was afraid of that.”