The Bible verse seemed most promising. Though there was not a book of Samael, there were a pair of books of Samuel. The first book of Samuel, chapter 5, had no verse 356, but one young patrolman, formerly a seminarian, calculated on a long night shift that, starting with Samuel 5:2, the first 356 words read thus:
When the Philistines stole the ark of God, they hid it in the temple of their god Dagon, and set it by the idol of Dagon. Early next morning, the men of the house of Ashdod rose to find that Dagon had fallen upon his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord. And they righted Dagon and set him in his place again. Next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stumps were left on the idol. Therefore unto this day, neither the priests of Dagon nor his worshipers tread on the threshold of the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. The hand of the Lord was heavy on Ashdod, and he annihilated them and plagued them with genital boils. When the men of Ashdod saw these terrible things, they said, “Let us take the ark of the God of Israel away from us: for his hand is hard upon us and upon our god Dagon.”
The men of Ashdod called together the Philistine lords and said to them, “Where shall we hide the ark of the God of Israel?” And the lords answered, “Carry the ark of the God of Israel to Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel to that place.
But when it arrived, the hand of the Lord struck the city of Gath with a terrible annihilation: and he struck the men of the city, both poor and rich, with boils in their private parts.
The people of Gath sent the ark of God to Ekron. But when the ark of God arrived in Ekron, the Ekronites cried out, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to slay us!”
So all the Philistine lords met again and said, “Send the ark of the God of Israel away, back to its own place so that it will not kill us or our people: for there was a terrible annihilation all through the city; God’s hand was very heavy on them.
The fact that the false god Dagon’s hands and head were missing was taken as an ominous sign. So, too, was the mention of tumors in the groin, which some interpreted as a reference to sexual perversion. A columnist of the Burlington Gazette irresponsibly speculated that the killer considered himself to be the ark of God, righteous and powerful but captive to the Philistines – corrupt society at large. As long as he felt trapped in this hostile world, the reporter said, the man would kill again and again, and be the Death that brought panic to the city. God’s hand was heavy upon him.
The young patrolman who had discovered these things had collaborated with the columnist and was suspended for it. He took the suspension as a sign, quit his field training, and went back to seminary. Leland’s remembrances were interrupted by a beep, and by a listing of violent crimes in the three-state area of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Bleary-eyed, Leland scrolled through the accounts. Some involved decapitation, others amputation, and still others necrophilia, gun use…
She began to read the individual entries but glanced up at the list tally – the screen showed only five of four hundred eighty-two entries. She requested a crossindex of amputation and decapitation, and sat back as the computer began its contented grunting. The piggish sound reminded Leland of another speculation about Samael 5:2:356. One officer, speaking facetiously, said that since the corpse had been hung up among the pork carcasses, 5:2:356 must be a reference to the act, scene, and verse in Hamlet: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” A fitting enough verse, except that the butcher had been no prince, and the killer no singing angel.
Dead ends everywhere.
The cross-check came in, narrowing the field to two hundred thirty-one cases. Though the name “Samael“ had not been found on either the priest or the newspaperman, Leland’s recollections had piqued her curiosity. On a whim, she typed in a check for the name Samael. She leaned back and took a sip of coffee. Officer Greenberg had said Samael was the name for the Jewish Angel of Death.
“Mother of God.”
The screen blinked, producing a list of eighty-eight murders in the tri-state area, each of which included decapitations, manual amputation, and, somehow, the name Samael.
Angel of Death.
FIVE
At last, Keith McFarland is slated to die. The death will come in a month, so I have plenty of time for orchestration. I want his end to be bloody, slow, and somewhat perverse. Already, I have many ideas, most shaped by the fact that the detective assigned to his case, a Detective Leland, is scheduled to die the same day. I might as well let them kill each other. Before that sweet moment, though, I have a very difficult case before me. A newlywed couple. Many cultures believe that angels of death seek to steal virgins on their wedding day. Actually, we do. A rose is best snipped before it opens. Also, deaths become tricky around any rite of passage. A death date scheduled for a virgin adolescent will be inappropriate for a sexually active adult. Once a rite of passage is completed, the person is new, and a whole new death date must be arranged.
There are various traditions meant to prevent virgin abductions. One is the white wedding runner, which can supposedly stop an angel of death from reaching up through the floor to snatch a bride on her way to the altar. Oddly, virgin grooms are not similarly guarded. Another is the Jewish tradition of breaking the wine glass, a symbol of the broken hymen. It is thought that this symbolic consummation will fool angels into giving up. If such preventions are unsuccessful, grooms must ready an arsenal of tricks and wards for battling angels throughout the wedding night. They will appear in various hostile guises – drunk drivers, fires, jealous boyfriends, muggers, poisonous snakes, and so forth – until consummation is achieved. Some noble grooms lay down their lives to protect their brides, all the while unaware that it is their own virgin soul the angel has come to collect. Today, though, I must collect them both. The couple is driving through Chicago, en route from Waukesha, Wisconsin, to Kissimmee, Florida. It is the morning after their all-night wedding party, and they plan to drive to Louisville for their first day and on to Kissimmee afterward.
They will not reach Indiana.
It will be a car accident. That much is simple on the Dan Ryan Freeway. Husband and wife both, at intervals, break into tears at how beautiful their wedding has been. That fact will make the moment’s inattention even easier to arrange. The difficulty is organizing a suitable end for such promising young lovers. He drives. The roads are dry and cold this January. The shoulders hold filthy snow. The sky is white like paper.
His brown hair is combed back long, like a prophet’s, and his beard is coarse and reddish. His blond mustache disappears against lightly freckled skin. From a distance, he looks Amish, or Lincolnesque. He does not disapprove of either impression. He talks. He talks and talks, in a fluid, self-impressed bliss of hopes. The breath pulsing in and out of him fans the eager flames in his eyes. He pauses now for a comment from his bride, but when she does not immediately volunteer, he turns up the CD player and points at intervals toward it, as though a guitar solo could be seen as well as heard.
Sighing at the sublimities of feedback, he clutches the wheel in large, strong hands. Since puberty, those hands had moved with the rhythm of mantis claws. It makes sense. He has spent much of his adolescence in trees.
A bit of egg and Canadian bacon is perched on a groin fold of his thin canvas pants. Ratty deck shoes leap from gas to brake to gas again in the graceless dance of young nerve on the Dan Ryan. Despite an athletic build and a freckled tan from life guarding, he is no true athlete. His disabling fear of competition extends even to card games and attempts to drive through Chicago. His bride sits beside him, glowing in their first morning together. Her oval face and bright hazel eyes are intense. She listens, mostly because she loves him, but also because she has nothing to say about the bizarre flurry of fancies he spins out. This particular eruption will be spent as quickly as all the rest. She waits, patient and powerful. A force of nature, the bride is both fragile and indomitable.