“I’ve never felt anything like it before,” Barb said, shaking her head. “No, I have. From Almadu. But… that was stronger, filling me until the Lord came to my aid. Like this but… maybe not the same… scent.” She stepped forward again, holding her hands over the girl’s chest for a moment, her eyes closed and face twisted in a grimace. “I can’t do that for long,” she said, stepping back and rubbing her hands on her clothes again, unthinkingly. “But… I think I’d know it again.”
“We were wondering if you could perhaps go to where the bodies were found,” Halliwell said. “We know that wasn’t where the girls were killed. But if you can… feel anything that might help…”
“She was killed in a room,” Barbara said, her eyes unfocusing. “An unfinished basement, I think. There is a smell of mold. And… a gas flame?” She paused and shook her head. “I’m sorry, this is all very new to me. God has given me these gifts, but they are new and untried. I don’t know if I’m truly sensing something or if it is my imagination playing tricks on me.”
“You’ll learn,” Janea said, reaching across the body to touch her shoulder. “Let’s get out of this environment.”
“Wait,” Barb replied, looking around. The morgue had drawers for bodies on both sides of the room and she walked to the other, her hand out to the drawers until she stopped at one. “There is another who was killed by the same methods in here.”
“Yes, that is the other body we’re holding,” Hannelore said.
“But…” Barbara continued, walking down the row. “There is another…” She paused at one and gestured. “Here. Similar. Not… exactly the same. But… very similar.”
“Really?” Hannelore asked, confused. He went to the drawer to get a number and then brought the case up on a computer. “Hmmm… Case J-17389. Ohio. A male. No signs of sexual assault although there are ligations. And no symbols on the body. There was removal of organs, but that was assumed to be sexually predatory even without signs of sexual assault. And the throat was cut. But the MO wasn’t linked. It was brought here because we’re doing an analysis of the ligation marks and trying to get any minor DNA contamination that might have been on the body. You’re sure it’s the same?”
“The feel is the same, similar anyway,” Barb said, opening up the drawer and pulling it out. She paused when she saw the young man’s face. He could have been an image, slightly older, of her own son. “I am sorry for this, my son,” she muttered, holding her hands over the body. “Very similar,” she concluded after a moment, stepping back. “Not as strong, but very similar.”
Janea walked over to the drawer and held her hands over the body, shrugging after a moment.
“There’s a trace of necromantic residue,” she said. “That’s all I can tell. It is definitely a Special Circumstances killing, but more I can’t say.”
“The body was found a month before the first killing in Case R-143,” Hannelore said, musingly. “An early kill?”
“I think the killer hadn’t settled his devotional method,” Janea said. “Of course, the trace has faded over time. But I would guess that he didn’t find his true ceremony until recently. But I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the same killer, based on what Barb feels.”
“We’ll put it as possibly linked,” Halliwell said, nodding. “Based on MO and secondary, unspecified, evidence.”
“J-17389 was killed by a serrated edge,” Hannelore said, distantly. “Sawn down. The R-143 cases are all a long bladed, non-serrated edge, inserted on the left side of the neck and then cutting out with drawing strokes. Our killer has refined his killing technique, if they’re linked. Right-handed, by the way.”
Barbara suddenly felt it, being raped and the point of the knife entering the side of her neck to kill her. She reached up to touch it — the feeling was so intense she expected her hand to come away bloody — and shook her head.
“I need to get out of here,” she muttered, stumbling to the door.
Janea found her outside in the corridor to the lab, head bowed and hands clasped so hard her knuckles were white. She waited for the obvious prayer to finish and Barb to raise her head.
“I was calling for strength from the Lord,” Barbara said, lowering her hands. “I knew I shouldn’t have. This is something for which you have to find the strength within you. I don’t know if I have it. If this is what the minor touch of necromancy does to me…” She stopped and shuddered, shaking her head.
“Well, yes, in there,” Janea said. “You were opening yourself to the feelings. When you get into battle with the Enemy, your… sensitivity level goes down almost automatically. Or that’s what I’ve been told,” she added, shrugging. “I mean, I’ve never had to really face an enemy before.”
“Well, I need to get further away from the morgue,” Barb said, striding down the corridor. “I need to get out of this building. To take a shower. Slimy doesn’t begin to describe it.”
She exited the double doors to the morgue and then sat in a chair in the laboratory as the activity continued around her, willing herself to either ignore or suppress the continued miasma of evil. It was easier here but still seemed to be present and she wondered if she’d picked something up. She wanted to throw up, as if from sympathetic vomit.
“First time you ever saw a dead body?” one of the techs asked, grinning.
“That is not my problem,” Barbara snarled, then caught herself as anger welled up in her soul. “I’m sorry,” she added, trying to be calm. “But that is not my problem.”
“Are you all right?” Halliwell asked, coming through the door and closely followed by Hannelore. At the sight of the Special Agent in Charge and the director of the lab the grin slid off the tech’s face and he hurried away.
“I need to get out of this building,” Barb said as calmly as she could. “For a while at least. I’m sorry but… that was much more unpleasant than I could possibly have imagined. Or explain.”
“We were pretty much done here,” Halliwell replied. “Agent Donahue can take you to the sites that are near here.” He looked at Janea for a moment and shrugged. “You might want to change your shoes.”
“Whatever for?” Janea asked, batting her lashes. “They help keep me on my toes. Is Agent Donahue driving?” she asked, batting her lashes again.
“No,” Barbara replied. “I am. You can sit in the back. This time, wear your seatbelt.”
“There,” Donahue gasped, pointing to a narrow dirt road. “On the left.” He grabbed his seat with his left hand and the handle of the door with his right, anticipating the slew turn.
Instead, Barbara slowed and then turned in carefully. The road was heavily potholed and might once have been a logging road but now was used for illegal dumping and, she suspected, as a parking and partying area for local kids. The trees were mixed pine and oak with an understory of what she thought might be beech. Without the garbage dumped in corners it would be a pretty area. And without the reason they were visiting it.
Donahue directed her through a couple of turns and then she stopped when she saw the police tape. The area marked out, with tape around the trees, was about thirty yards across. It had, apparently, been turned over by animals.
“When we investigate something like this we tend to tear the place up looking for evidence,” Donahue admitted. Most of the pine and oak leaves from the area were gone, leaving empty loam.
“That also tends to make it harder for us,” Janea said, getting out of the car and looking around. “Where was the body?”
“Wait,” Barb said, following her out. She looked around the area, then ducked under the police tape, moving to a spot behind one of the larger oaks. “Here,” she said, pointing to the ground. “Right here.”