Jon Merz - Vicarious

Pushing the chair back to the table, she gathered her things and left the room. As soon as she opened the door, the air seemed lighter. She could breathe again.

She walked back through the rooms, but paused when she saw the same nun still bent deep in study.

“Excuse me, sister?”

The nun, older than Lauren, looked up. “Yes?”

Lauren smiled, almost embarrassed. “Just a few minutes ago…did someone else come through here?”

“Someone else?” The nun looked closer at Lauren. “No, I’m afraid not. It’s just us in here today, dear.”

“Okay.”

“Are you all right?”

“I…I'm not quite sure.” Lauren smiled. “I felt a little odd a minute ago.”

“Odd?”

“It was probably nothing. Sorry to disturb you.”

The nun smiled. “Now, don't you apologize. There are plenty of books in this library that can make you feel a little…suffocated. Some of the cardinals used to say the very knowledge of the world rests in these books. All the good, you know.”

And all the evil, thought Lauren. She tried to smile. “I heard that.”

“Have you entered the service yet?”

“Not yet, no. I’m preparing to, though.”

“How soon?”

“Probably next year.”

The old nun smiled. “It will be a glorious time for you. Don't worry about this old place. Just keep your studies up and make sure you've made your peace with God before you enter the Church.”

Lauren nodded. “Thank you. I'll do that.” She glanced around, suddenly wanting to call Steve. “I should go.”

The nun merely inclined her head and Lauren backed away, quickly turning the corner back toward the front of the library.

I need some fresh air, she thought.

Outside in the entranceway, she paused, leaning against one of the marble columns. It felt cool to the touch and she welcomed the temperature change. She realized her skin was hot and she felt her head.

Her hand came away wet with sweat.

What happened back there?

Briefly, she wondered if it was her period but she dismissed this. Ever since her brother had raped her, she'd stopped menstruating. The doctors all concluded that the psychological trauma of the event had jarred her system so much that she'd simply become barren.

Strangest thing, though, she thought. This does feel a lot like PMS.

Curran stirred some sugar into his coffee. “Say that again.”

Lauren’s eyes sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight that streamed through the windows of the coffee shop cum bookstore on Newbury Street, a spit away from the secret library. Around their small table, shelves packed with used and new paperbacks leaned in on them.

“A Soul Eater.”

Curran sighed and tried to ignore Lauren’s beauty and remind himself she was going to become a nun. He didn’t succeed. “Listen, I know you did a lot of work here.”

He could see the frown already creeping across her face. “But?”

Curran took a sip of his coffee. “I don’t know if I’m all the ready to accept a supernatural reason as being the cause of all these deaths. I mean, in all likelihood, it’s probably some nut case who’s just figured out a nifty trick of killing people off.”

“Steve, you asked for my help. I'm telling you what I found.”

“Yeah, but this…” He paused. “Do you really buy it?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“We’re living in the 21st century for one thing. A Soul Eater sounds more like it belongs in some sword and sorcery epic movie or something.” Curran could see his fellow detectives laughing their asses off when he tried to tell them there was a servant of the Devil at work in Boston.

Lauren looked down at her coffee. “I don’t have a problem accepting ideas based solely on faith.” She looked up. “Do you?”

Curran chewed his lip. “Yeah, I do.”

“Your lack of belief doesn’t mean this guy will go away, though. Does it?”

Not with my luck, thought Curran. “What did this book say it could do?”

“Eat a person's soul.”

“And there are recorded instances of this in Church history?”

“Yes. And the method of death fits with what you’ve described as happening with all these cases. The Soul Eater is somehow able to steal the life essence away from the people he touches.”

“But why?”

Lauren shrugged. “I don't know. What I read in the book didn’t make mention of the reasons for its existence.” She rummaged in her purse and brought out the red notebook. “But someone had penciled someone’s name into the margin. Even though it had been erased, I was able to make it out: ‘Graham Westerly, 1907.’”

“What do you think it means?”

“Maybe he was some sort of expert on Soul Eaters.”

“Great. I guess we’re a little late to interview him, huh?”

“He might have passed his information on to someone else in the Church. The old nun I told you about seemed to have a lot of information.”

“Can you find her again?” Curran didn’t think it would yield much, but he didn’t want to entirely discourage Lauren, either. He liked having her around.

“That shouldn’t be a problem.” She sipped her coffee. “Did you make any headway on the case today?”

“As a matter of fact, I hit on a connection. Finally.”

“What is it?”

“Evil.”

Lauren eyed him. “What?”

“They were all evil.”

“Who?”

“The victims of this…Soul Eater guy. Each one of them had rap sheets a mile long. All bad seeds, the bunch of ‘em. Each one was a certifiable-”

“Grade A Scum bag?”

Curran smiled. “Exactly.”

Lauren smiled. “How come you didn't figure this out before?”

“Honestly? Probably because we're so used to having murder victims that are good people, not bad. Certainly not in a serial murder case. Like I said, most of those cases came at me pretty quick all those years back. Plus, there’s the fact that I was so close to the case, so absorbed by it, that I probably couldn’t see the most obvious thing in front of me. Sometimes we look too hard for the solution when it’s staring us in the face.”

“Are you sure they were all evil?”

“Well, the cases I had at the Bureau all were. And your brother was a pretty rotten egg-” He winced. “Sorry.”

Lauren waved him off. “Forget about it. You're right.” Even so, Curran saw her eyes mist over slightly. They cleared quickly and Lauren looked at him again. “So, now what?”

“I need to see if there are other outstanding unsolved murder cases anywhere else in the country. Since I wasn't with the Bureau for close to five years, there's a good chance our boy has been busy elsewhere.”

“Will that be easy to track down?”

Curran nodded. “It might be. All I'll have to do is put out a request for information. We'll see what comes back. For all we know this guy could have been criss-crossing the country offing people and we weren’t even aware of it.”

“I think there's a pretty strong chance that's what been happening.”

She seemed strangely confident. “Oh? What makes you say that?”

She frowned. “I'm not really sure. I just have a feeling.”

Curran cocked an eyebrow. “A feeling?”

“Don’t make fun of me on this, Steve. I swear I’ll walk out that door if you do.”

Curran held up his right hand. “Promise.”

“Besides, there’s nothing weird about a feeling. Haven’t you ever had them before? Like a sense of premonition?”

“As much as I hate to admit it, I have.” He took a sip of his coffee and paused to wipe his mouth. “I’d graduated from Quantico and got shipped out to Montana. Lot of times, they do that with new agents. Get them acclimated at a less-busy field office. After a year or two there, they get bumped up to a busy office like LA or New York.”