Page 21

The squad car's rear window framed Felix Blackwood's face like a portrait of youthful rebellion gone wrong. His bloody nose had dried to a rust-colored smear, and his black clothes made him look like a crow someone had stuffed into a cage. He'd clammed up the second Ross had stuffed him into the back of the cruiser, only breaking his silence to hurl some choice obscenities about pigs and fascists.

Charming kid. Real mystery why he failed out of NYU.

Meanwhile, the old man - Felix's father - sat on a bale of hay looking like someone had just shot his dog.

‘How’s your legs?’ Luca asked.

After that chase through the barn, her legs felt like they'd been through a meat grinder, but there'd be time for self-pity later. ‘Still working. How about yours?’

Luca inspected his arm. ‘Hurts. But all I did was hold Clive at gunpoint.’

‘Clive? You know his name?’

‘We had some time to kill while you were playing tag in the rafters. We got chatting.’

‘You learn anything?’

‘Yeah. He’s a Mets fan.’

‘Not about football,’ Ella snapped. ‘I mean about Felix.’

‘Oh. No. And the Mets aren’t baseball.’

Ella shot him a look. Luca zipped his mouth. ‘You ready?’ she asked.

Luca motioned towards the farmhouse door. ‘Age before beauty.’

Ella took the lead. She’d bet her badge that, if Felix was her killer, somewhere in this farmhouse lay evidence that confirmed as much.

Inside, the place looked like a tornado had picked a fight with a yard sale. Boxes everywhere. Papers scattered across every surface. The walls needed paint about three presidents ago.

‘Nice place,’ Luca said. ‘Surprised Family Services hasn't paid a visit.’

Ella grunted. The mess didn't faze her. She'd seen worse in the homes of upstanding citizens. Amazing how many skeletons could fit in the average suburban closet .

‘Martha Stewart's worst nightmare.’ Ella surveyed the chaos. Dishes crusted with ancient meals filled the sink. The fridge hummed like it was on its last legs. A stack of newspapers by the door dated back to summer. ‘Check down here. I'll take upstairs.’

'Aye, aye, captain.' Luca disappeared into what might have been a living room once before entropy got its hands on it.

Ella made her way upstairs to the sound of creaky floorboards and shoddy workmanship. The whole place had a vibe, like it was on its last legs. Maybe that's why the old man looked so weathered. Living in a house like this aged you prematurely. Then again, having a kid like Felix probably didn't help either.

Up here, the mess got personal. Clothes strewn across the hallway, more papers, what looked like college assignments. Three doors, all closed. She tried the first one. Inside, what Ella guessed was Felix’s dad’s bedroom. Second one opened into a bathroom that hadn't seen bleach in its lifetime.

Third door had to be Felix's room.

‘Found it.’

The space beyond screamed troubled youth so loud it probably kept the neighbors awake. Black walls, black bedding, draped flags with band logos Ella had never heard of with names like Putrid Flesh and Goat Semen. Empty beer bottles lined the windowsill. More clothes on the floor than in the closet. A desk drowning in papers.

And books. Lots of books.

‘You know,’ she called down to Luca, ‘I always imagined killers would be neater than they are.’

‘How so?’

‘Organization fetish. Control issues.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Luca shouted up. ‘You’re suggesting Felix isn’t our guy.’

Ella pushed aside a pile of clothes with her foot. ‘I’m not saying he isn’t. This just looks like every college dropout's room I've ever seen. You got anything down there?’

‘A traffic cone, if that helps.’

‘It does not. Not unless it’s got alchemy symbols on it.’

‘Negative. I’m coming up.’

Luca's footsteps announced his arrival. He whistled at the chaos. ‘Holy Hot Topic. Maybe Felix is a minimalist. Not every killer’s a hoarder. ’

Ella scanned the room, trying to see past the surface mess. Killers were a mixed bag when it came to housekeeping. For every fastidious monster like BTK, you had a dozen slobs content to wallow in their own filth. Hell, Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment had smelled so bad that his neighbors thought the building had a gas leak. Turned out the stench was coming from the decomposing head in his fridge.

The point was that you couldn't judge a psycho by his cover. Or his laundry pile.

She made a beeline for the desk, hoping for a diary or some equally incriminating piece of evidence. No such luck. Just empty energy drink cans and crumpled chip bags.

‘Hey, check this out.’

Luca threw a paperback at her. Ella caught it one-handed and squinted at the cover. ‘Seriously? 'Passion's Dark Embrace'?’

‘Found it wedged behind his mattress.’ Luca wiggled his eyebrows. ‘Along with tissues.’

‘Gross. We’re looking for anything relating to alchemy, elements. Or any links to the victims.’

He spread his hands. ‘A man's porn stash can be very revealing.’

Ella tossed the book back on the bed. ‘Some things are best left unsaid. Get back to it.’

'Yes, ma'am.' He snapped her a mock salute and went back to rifling through the desk drawers. 'Though I gotta say, this guy's taste in books is as bad as his taste in music.’

Ella wasn't listening. A glint of light had caught her eye from the mess on the desk. She reached past the stacks of junk mail and tugged out a small picture frame.

The photo showed Felix with his arm around a girl, both of them grinning at the camera. The girl had long dark hair, pale skin and a deep scar on her cheek. Her eyes were ringed with enough eyeliner to supply a pharaoh's tomb. Pretty, in a Suicide Girl sort of way.

But something about her face tugged at Ella's memory.

Luca materialized at her shoulder. ‘Who’s the goth Barbie?’

‘Not sure. Does she look familiar to you?’

He squinted at the photo. ‘No. I’d remember if I’d seen her. She’s hot.’

Ella shot him a look.

‘Some might say,’ Luca continued. ‘Where’s your perfect memory when you need it?’

‘It doesn’t work with faces. Or anything visual. I told you this. ’

‘Sorry. I must have forgot. The irony.’

Ella rolled her eyes. ‘Anything on alchemy yet?’

‘Nope. Best I can do is a bunch of trashy novels, and…’ Luca picked up a hardback. ‘ Beyond the Veil’ by Lydia Soulwright.’

‘Lydia Soulwright? No way is that someone’s real name,’ Ella said. She averted her gaze from the photograph and went back to searching the rest of the room.

‘A psychic, huh? Guess our guy likes pseudoscience. Or middle-aged women with big hair.’

‘You’re not kidding he likes pseudoscience. We’re dealing with someone who thinks you can turn lead into gold.’

Luca threw the book aside and said, ‘Maybe this woman ought to predict the lottery numbers instead of writing books. Let’s keep looking. There has to be something here.’

The bedroom didn’t give them much to work with. The drawers were clear of anything suspicious. There was no computer or laptop that Ella could find, and the closet was piled high with black clothes. That just left the bookshelf that Luca had already raided.

‘Well, if there’s anything here, it has to be on this bookshelf.’

‘Or somewhere else in the house.’

‘No. Felix is reserved, private. He wouldn’t let anyone else know about his little plan. Mission-oriented killers always have a lair, a nerve center.’

‘No shortage of places to search. Maybe he was working out of one of the barns or outhouses?’

‘Doubt it. He wouldn’t risk his dad finding it.’

‘True,’ Luca said as he went back to the books. He and Ella attacked the shelves with federal efficiency. Ella worked left to right, scanning titles and checking mental boxes. Introduction to Mineralogy . Basic stuff. Principles of Geomorphology . Standard college text. Earth Materials . Nothing special.

‘What exactly are we looking for?’ Luca asked.

‘Anything that mentions alchemy. Medieval science. Mysticism.’ She pulled out Physical Geology and flipped through it. Clean pages, heavy highlighting. Normal student stuff. ‘Ancient philosophy. Hermetic texts. That kind of thing.’

‘Am I supposed to know what they look like? Because I don’t.’

‘Me either. Basically, if you see symbols, or it’s written in another language, put it on the keep pile. ’

Next shelf. Historical Geology . Sedimentology . Structural Analysis of Metamorphic Terrains .

‘Well, all I’ve got down here is romance novels. Our boy Felix has a thing for shirtless cowboys.’

‘Me too.’ She moved to the next row. Environmental Geology . Plate Tectonics . Introduction to Geochemistry . Book after book, shelf after shelf, nothing but standard university texts. The kind of thing any former geology student would own.

Her legs protested as she crouched to check the bottom shelf. More textbooks. More highlighting. More dead ends. She found a few philosophy texts – basic stuff about Plato and Aristotle. Nothing about transforming elements or sacrificing professors.

‘This is useless.’ She pushed aside another stack. ‘No alchemy texts. No ancient grimoires.’

‘Well, I found Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone . And there’s a bookmark in it.’

‘Let’s just leave it. We’ll go talk to Felix at the precinct, see if we can coax something useful out of him.’

And that was when a slim volume caught her eye. It was wedged between a calculus primer and an ancient copy of 'Dune', so nondescript she'd almost missed it.

But something about it made her pause. Maybe it was the cracked leather binding, or the way it seemed to retreat into the shadows of its shelf-mates. Like it was trying to avoid notice.

She worked it free, taking care not to tear the brittle pages. The cover was unmarked save for a single line of text etched into the leather.

Hermetic Order of the Quinta Essentia .

Ella flipped to the first page. It was filled with dense, cramped handwriting. Not printed off a computer. Entirely handwritten. Ella skimmed the first paragraph:

Man's connection to the elements transcends mere physical existence. We are born of earth, sustained by water, moved by air, and ultimately consumed by fire. The cycle is eternal, unbreakable.

She turned another page. More philosophical ramblings about nature and death. Crude drawings of human figures merged with trees, with waves, with flames. Prayers or incantations in what looked like bastardized Latin lined the margins.

Death is not the end, but a transformation. The physical form returns to its elemental state. Only through sacrifice can the truth be revealed .

Static electricity danced across her forearms. The room felt too small, too dark, like the walls had inched closer while she wasn't looking.

‘Hawkins?’

Her partner rose to his feet and spotted the book in Ella’s hands. ‘What’s that?’

‘Remember how I said cults don't exist?’ The words scraped out of a throat gone desert-dry.

‘Yeah?’

She held up the notebook. ‘I think I was wrong.’