“And included in his notes was a letter from Leslie Winchester stating that she did not receive the antique gold spoon as stated on the item list; however she said she did like the silver brooch he had sent. From that I put two and two together.”
He nodded. “From that and the pictures of the items no doubt accompanied his personal papers.”
I smiled as we strode briskly down the hall to the front doors. “Very cynical, Mike, but true. Yes, collectors take pictures of all the items in their collections and I had all his photos. One picture showed a small, worn bowl, like those used to drink from, say about two thousand years ago in Judea. Looking at the picture, and reading the letters, I knew straight away what he’d sold. He probably stroked out when he realized what he’d done, poor beggar.” The threadbare hallway carpet blurred by in a nauseating pattern of blue and red. How is it that hotels know how to pick the worst wall-to-wall possible? They must have blind interior decorators working for them.
“How was the camera able to catch the image of the real Grail?” Mike asked, stroking his moustache.
“The Grail fools the mind but cannot deceive film or electronics.”
Glass double doors opened and the semi-warm evening air filled our lungs. “You could be wrong, you know.” Mike sounded almost smug. How unpriestly, I thought. “How do you know so much about the Grail, that it appears as different things to different people?”
I stopped and turned to my friend, who nearly collided with me. “Mike, buddy, when are you going to get it into your head that I once had access to almost limitless data and funds? Think about it, dude, my whole Family knew the secret of the Grail. They’ve been looking for it for centuries.”
He blinked. “Got it. Powerful family, big connections, secret history.”
We resumed walking toward the black Grand Prix parked a short distance away. “Good, you’re getting it. Now, let’s just hope Leslie still has the Grail; then we can figure out if it can destroy the Silver.”
“What if the Silver is more powerful?”
“It isn’t. Trust me, the Grail is the big banana, next to the Ark.”
As we approached the Grand Prix, I held the fob up and pushed the trunk release button. The trunk lid obligingly popped open. When we got to the car, what we saw stopped us short.
“Holy-!” Mile blurted.
“That’s a little disturbing,” I agreed tonelessly.
Inside the trunk was the body of a woman. More of a girl, really, face sliced to ribbons along with her clothes. She had been small, petite, and probably pretty, with a fine bone structure and porcelain skin. Her small breasts as well as her sex had been cruelly slashed and I could tell that the killer had taken his damn sweet time at the job. Long strips of skin and muscle lay around her body like obscene, fleshy streamers. The sheer sadism of the act appalled even my jaded senses.
“This would explain why the demon chose that man,” I muttered as, behind me, Mike became violently sick. The smell of puke mixed revoltingly with the corpse and blood stench billowing from the trunk. “The damn fool was a serial killer.”
“How can you tell?” Mike burbled as he barfed again. His black loafers and the hem of his pants were spotted with his upchuck.
I pointed to the precise, almost surgical, cuts paralleling her face and breasts. “He took his time; he’s done this before. Also, he appeared to have been in his forties, perhaps early fifties, and I’m guessing that would be a late start in the serial killing business. Most serial killers start when they’re younger. Or, at least, that’s what I’ve read.”
Poor girl, she looked like any young thing fresh out of puberty and ready to face the world with a fresh supply of hormones along with a healthy dose of overconfident rebellion. From the blood that covered her head to foot, she’d been quite alive when that sick fuck had taken a savagely sharp knife to her, obliterating her sense of immortality and infallibility.
“We must tell the police, Jude,” Mike moaned, staring at his shoes. “Her people have to be informed, so she can have a decent burial.”
He was right, the cops had to be told, but the last thing I needed was to be taken into a police station and made to answer quite a few embarrassing questions, not the least of which was ‘What happened to your house?’ If Las Cruces PD was in the loop with decent facial recognition programs, then my Family would know where I was in an instant. We had pioneered the software, after all. That was the reason I avoided all airports. So … no cops.
“We find a burger joint and dump the car there, then make an anonymous call to the police.” I slammed the trunk lid down, hiding the horror within.
Mike was aghast. “We can’t do that!” He used his sleeve to wipe the puke from his lips.
I couldn’t look at him. “It has to be this way. We can’t get involved and maybe, just maybe, when they find this sicko’s ID, they’ll be able to solve other murders he’s committed.”
Swallowing a lump of dread, I turned to see what I had half-expected, a look of disappointment in my friend’s eyes that made me almost wish I had those old, hard calluses on my soul again. “We go to the cops, my Family finds me. Us. After what you’ve read, do you really want to meet Julian?”
Righteous anger, fear and determination warred behind his baby blues for a few moments before his shoulders slumped and he nodded in resignation. It must have been a bitter pill for him to swallow, but at that moment necessity beat out the desire to assist the police and I couldn’t be happier. However it did sting a bit to know how much that admission cost him, how badly it dented his principles.
Despite the blow to civic sensibilities, we meandered around the city until we found a battered blue Ford pick-up with a red and black For Sale sign in the front window. The rusted ’80s vehicle rested on somewhat inflated tires in front of a respectable ranch style with a front yard containing three tons of crushed red and white rock.
When the owner cautiously answered the front door, he visibly relaxed at the sight of a priest on his front step. He was further reassured by Mike’s willingness to pay his outrageous price for the beat-up old truck, although he lowered it a tad in deference to Mike’s collar.
If franchise hotels are like weeds, then fast food joints are like cockroaches; when you see one, you know there are a thousand more just around the corner. Between a Wowzaburger (home of the greasiest cheeseburger in the Southwest) and a dilapidated white crack house lay a broken, dirt-covered drive that suited our needs perfectly. After parking the Grand Prix (carefully wiped of all prints) on the broken concrete, Mike picked me up and we were gone in far less than sixty seconds.
Mike stared out into the darkness, barely illuminated by the truck’s anemic headlights. “Where to?” he inquired in a voice devoid of life.
“Time to see Leslie Winchester,” I replied, more tired than I had been in a long time. When I worked alone, absent friends, the events of the past day wouldn’t have fazed me one bit, but now, with Mike as my own little Jiminy Cricket, my energy levels had dropped somewhere south of zero. Who knew that a conscience could take so much out of you? I stared out of the corner of my eye at Mike as he drove, his jaw set in ferocious determination, and I realized I wouldn’t trade places with my old self-that egocentric bastard-for all the safety and security in the world.
“Is there a Catholic church in Mesilla?” asked Mike.
I nodded. “A rather famous one, San Albino.”
Big hands gripped the steering wheel until the knuckles shone white. “Right. Show me where.”
How could I refuse?
Less than ten minutes later we reached the heart of Mesilla, a large plaza that held more tourist trap shops than you could shake a stick at, most selling ‘authentic’ Native American artwork and knickknacks. Hundreds of luminaria (small paper lanterns made of brown bags and weighted with sand in which a candle was set) were placed along the walkways illuminating the square, as well as the large wood and stucco gazebo in the plaza’s center. Festooned in and around the gazebo were electric Christmas lights, contrasting boldly with the luminaria.