Lacey's area was at the back of the room. Sitting at a desk near hers, scowling at a computer printout, was her partner. Johnny Cedric lost an eye a few years back, during a raid on an illegal coven that had gone very wrong. Could've taken a disability pension and moved to Florida, but he chose to stay on the job. I kind of admired that, even if he was always bragging about how the sinister-looking eye patch got him laid a lot.
"Hey, look what the bat dragged in," Cedric said.
"How's it going, Cyclops?" Cops aren't known for their sensitivity.
"Not bad," he said. "Still trackin' it down and tryin' it out. You over here about our dead guy?"
I nodded. "The M.O. sounds like a couple of corpses we've had turn up in our neck of the woods."
"Oh, yeah, Lace was telling me about those. How recent?"
"Both in the last week, and we're pretty sure they're related to a torture-murder we had the week before."
"Christ. I hope the bastard hasn't relocated here permanently. Not that I'd blame him, of course. Anyplace is better than Scranton, even if you're a serial killer." He squinted at me with his good eye. "You guys got anything?"
"Not a lot," I told him. "One name that's come up is a wizard named Sligo. Supposed to be a big deal black magic practitioner. Ever hear of him?"
Cedric thought a moment before shaking his head. "Uh-uh, doesn't jingle. He's not in the database?"
"Not under that name, anyway. He's supposed to be from Ireland, so I sent a query to Interpol. Haven't heard back yet."
"You wanna finish up the incident reports, Johnny?" Lacey said. "I'll entertain our visitor." Then she turned to me. "Come on, pull up a chair. I'll show you what I've got."
I was sure the double entendre was unintentional. Well, pretty sure.
I grabbed an empty chair and dragged it over next to Lacey's desk, as she pulled a file folder from one of the drawers, placed it on the blotter, and flipped it open. When she did, I noticed that the ring finger of her left hand was missing the wedding band she'd worn as long as I've known her.
Trained detectives notice stuff like that. And sometimes, we're even smart enough to keep our mouths shut about it.
The file contained the usual paperwork you find in any police report, and a set of crime scene photos. The pictures showed a young-looking guy lyng on a concrete floor, surrounded by a pool of blood. Something long and thin was wrapped around his neck, looked like a ligature of some kind. In the background, I could see metal bookshelves full of thick bound volumes.
"Where'd you find him?" I asked.
"Basement of the Osterhout Free Library," Lacey said.
I looked at her. "The killer comes in, offs somebody in a library, and still gets away clean? I would've thought they'd get him for violating the noise policy, if nothing else."
"The basement doesn't see a lot of use these days, apparently," she said. "What's down there is mostly bound collections of old magazines. With all the stuff that's available online these days, why bother? Although I've always had a warm spot for the place in my heart, or maybe lower."
"Why's that?"
"I gave my first blowjob down there – to my high school boyfriend, when I was fifteen."
I decided that was someplace I didn't want to go. "So who's the vic?"
She checked the paperwork. "Ronald Casimir, twenty-five. Graduate student at Wilkes University."
"That might explain what he was doing in the library basement," I said. "Research of some kind, maybe." Or he could have been in the market for a good blowjob. I looked closer at a couple of the photos. "Is that a garrote?"
"Bingo – you got it in one. Haven't seen one of those used around here before."
"You sure this isn't some Mafia thing? They use wire sometimes, don't they?"
"Not any more," Lacey said. "I talked to a guy I know, works the State Police Organized Crime Task Force. He said the wise guys mostly stopped using garrotes back in the Fifties, once reliable silencers were available. Tradition usually gives way before technology, except maybe in Scranton. And besides, there's this."
She flipped through the photos and pulled one out of the pile. It was a close-up of a man's naked abdomen.
Three esoteric symbols had been carved in the corpse's flesh.
"That look like Guido's work to you?" Lacey asked.
After a long moment, I replied, "No, but it looks a lot like the kind of stuff I've been seeing on corpses in Scranton, recently."
I pulled out my notepad and began to copy down the symbols that were in the photograph.
"What's it say?" Lacey asked. "Do you know?"
"No, I don't," I told her. "But tomorrow night I've got a shot at talking to a guy who might just be able to tell me."
"And you'll let me know anything you find out, of course," she said. " And send copies of the two case files of yours."
"Sure, no problem. In the meantime, there's something you can do for me."
Lacey gave me a wicked grin. "What, right here in the squad room? In front of all the guys?"
"That's not what I meant," I said, and hoped that I wasn't blushing. "See if your lab guys can find out what material that garrote was made of."
"Okay, I can do that," she said. "You think it matters?"
"It might," I told her. "It might matter a hell of a lot."
I thanked Lacey for the heads-up, and got out of there before she noticed the bulge that had developed in the front of my pants. God only knows what she'd have said about that.
According to my buddy Ned, who taught something called Communications at the U, the guest lecture by esteemed Georgetown scholar Benjamin Prescott, PhD, was scheduled for 8 o'clock at the HoulihanMcLean Center. A reception would follow.
It took some work, convincing McGuire to let Karl and me attend this thing on company time. But I told him that Prescott was our best chance for getting a translation of the runes, sigils, or whatever they were that were being left on the corpses. Hell, he might even know what ritual they were part of.
As for what we were going to do with that information – well, I'd worry about that when we got it. Or, rather, if we got it.
The program they gave us at the door said Prescott's talk was called "The Devil Made Me Do It: Demonic Possession as a Defense in European Witch Trials, 1530-1605."
Ned once explained to me that academic papers usually have a colon in the title, because so many of them are written by assholes.
Before things started, I spotted a couple of witches I knew in the audience. They looked just like anybody else – which is the trouble with a lot of supes, if you ask me.
I wondered if the witches viewed this lecture kind of like "old home week."
The university's president, a tall, skinny Jesuit named Monroe, made some introductory remarks. He surprised me by being both witty and brief.
Then Prescott came to the podium.
I saw right away where the wheezing in the guy's voice came from – and it wasn't asthma or smoking. Benjamin Prescott must have weighed over four hundred pounds. Put that much pressure on your lungs and ribcage, and breathing problems are almost guaranteed.
That's not to say that Prescott was a slob. His brown hair was carefully cut and brushed straight back. The gray suit he was wearing didn't exactly make him look slim, but it fit his bulk well, and the material looked expensive. I can't afford pricey clothing, but I still torture myself with an issue of GQ every once in a while.