I was going to have to find out.
Donny Falk hung on the wall and I couldn’t take him down. Maybe the cops could find some evidence in all that gore. I couldn’t risk disturbing that process. But there was something I could do.
I closed my eyes and drew in all of the scents of this place. Identifying Donny’s, filing it away. Separating out Bambi’s. Discarding all of the neutral smells — food, clothing, all of that. Then picking through the commingled animal smells.
Donny didn’t have any pets.
The only animal smells had been left by people.
There were two smells that were stronger than the others. Fresh and pungent. Male smells. Not Big and Tall. Other male scents.
I catalogued them the way my grandmother taught me. If I smelled them again, even months from now, I’d know them.
Not one scent, but two.
Two killers?
Those smells were both in the killing room.
Two killers.
There was nothing else to learn here, so I wiped off the wall where I’d leaned my head, smudged any footprints I’d left on the floor, pulled the door shut as I left, and wiped the doorknob.
I walked down the fire stairs with every outward appearance of calm.
Appearances are so incredibly deceptive.
The offices of Dunwoody-Kraus-Vitalli were in Center City, but by the time I got down there it was after five. I stood at the receptionist’s desk and tried to look affable, upscale and charming. In the parking garage I’d changed out of my oversized Vikings jacket and put on a three-button Polo shirt. Like most working P.I.’s, I have all sorts of clothes in my trunk. I combed my hair and tucked a pair of Wayfarers into the vee of the shirt.
The receptionist was a snooty brunette with too much eye-makeup and too little warmth.
“Mr. Meyers has left for the day,” she said.
“Ah, damn,” I said mildly and started to turn away, then paused, snapping my fingers. “Hey, did Mike say he was going to the club tonight?”
The receptionist lifted one eyebrow about a quarter of an inch. My attitude and apparent familiarity with Meyers, along with the reference to a club, was at war with the fact that she didn’t know me from a can of paint.
“I…think he said something,” she said evasively.
It was enough.
“Cool,” I said. “I’ll catch him there.”
“He may call in. I’ll tell him you stopped by, Mister…?”
I grinned. “Wolf,” I said.
“Very well, Mr. Wolf.”
I gave her a smile and a wink and headed for the elevators.
Wolf.
Sometimes I crack myself up.
Two calls came in while I was on my way south to Club Dante.
The first was Jonatha Corbiel-Newton, the anthropologist at University of Pennsylvania.
“Hey, doc,” I said. “Thanks for getting back to me so fast.”
“No problem. You caught me in my office grading papers.”
“You get the images?”
“I did. Where did you take them?”
“They’re attached to a case. Something I’m working on right now.”
“Are these from a crime scene?”
I was careful to make sure that Donny wasn’t in the shots I’d forwarded. “What makes you ask?”
“Well…it rather looks like the medium used to paint the symbol is blood.”
“Pretty sure it’s paint,” I lied.
“It’s very dark and viscous-looking.”
“Red poster paint. That tempura stuff.”
“Uh huh.” She clearly didn’t believe me, but then again I hadn’t contacted her because she was an idiot.
Even so, I sidestepped the topic. “Is that an astrological symbol?”
She took a moment before answering. “Not precisely. It has cosmological connections, but it isn’t a chart for any of the common astrologies. It’s not the zodiac or the Chinese astrological grouping. It doesn’t represent planets, animals or aspects of the natural world.”
“Okay, but—.”
“However I do recognize it.”
“Ah.”
“It’s a symbol used by a group who call themselves the Order of Melchom.”
“The who of who?”
“Order of Melchom. There are several versions of the group, some new and some very old. The new groups vary between covens of modern neo-pagans and RPG-ers.”
“Who?’
“Role playing gamers. Like Dungeons and Dragons. Those groups have adopted thousands of names and symbols from various arcane sources and used them as backstory for their games. It’s all over the Net.”
“I’m pretty sure this wasn’t posted by geeks playing games,” I said. “You said the others were neo-pagans? Do you mean witches?”
“Well, wiccan, of one kind or another. Not the white-energy wiccans, though. This symbol is tied to dark energy.”
“You mean evil?”
“Evil is relative. Most modern pagans view the universal forces as white and black, light and dark, or positive and negative.”
It wasn’t quite the way I saw things, but I kept that to myself.
“You said there was another reference,” I said. “Something older? What’s that?”
“In Biblical terms, Melchom is often cited as a variation of a god worshipped by the Ammonites, Phoenicians and Canaanites. The more common name is Moloch, which is itself another name for ‘king’, The worship of Moloch was brutal.”
“In what way?”
“In sacrificial ways,” said Jonatha. “Devotees practiced a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice in which parents gave up their children.”
I had to clear my throat before I asked, “What kind of sacrifice?”
“The biblical and historical records vary. Most likely the children were burned alive. There’s a reference to that in the Book of Leviticus, but other texts include plenty of references to various kinds of mutilation that include a ‘sacrifice of the flesh’.”
“Which is what?” I asked, though I thought I already knew.
“The sacrificed children were very carefully skinned so that they would be ‘unclothed to the soul’ and still alive when given up to Moloch.”
The day outside was bright and there were puffy white clouds in the gorgeous blue sky. All of that didn’t belong in a world, in any world, in which this conversation was a part. I told myself that, but the bright clouds and the flawless sky mocked me for my naiveté. Lovely skies have looked down upon every despicable thing we humans have done. What’s truly naïve is to think that horrors are always hidden away in shadows.
“This Moloch sounds like a charmer,” I said.
“He is. He’s nasty and he’s fierce. The ancients considered him one of the greatest warriors of the fallen angels.” I heard her rustling book pages. “John Milton wrote this about him in Paradise Lost…
“…MOLOCH, horrid King besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though, for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire
To his grim Idol.”
“Nice.”
“There’s more,” she said. “Milton listed him among the chief of Satan’s angels, and he gives a speech at the Parliament of Hell to argue for war against God.”
“He’s an angel?”
“Depending on which source you read,” she said, “he’s either a fallen angel, a god, or a demon. In his aspect as Melchom, he’s the accountant for hell. He holds the purse strings to all of the Devil’s gold, and he inspires men to strive for wealth, often by any means necessary. He’s a monster in all of his aspects, really.”
And that fast something went skittering across my brain. A demon worshipped by men striving for money.
“Sam—?” asked Jonatha Corbiel-Newton. “You still there?”
“Yeah.”
“Is any of this useful to you?”