Jon Merz - Vicarious

“Sister McDewey, I need to ask you a favor.”

“Don’t try to dissuade me, Lauren. I won’t have it.”

“I won’t try. But I would like to ask you to hold off on informing anyone for forty-eight hours.”

“There could be other victims in the meantime.”

“Yes. Perhaps.”

“Are you comfortable accepting responsibility for that? If I don’t tell the Bishop today and they are unable to act, those deaths would be on your conscience.”

“I know that.”

Sister McDewey sighed again. She seemed to be doing that a lot today, thought Lauren. “Very well. Two days. From now. If you don’t have something more concrete, then I will tell the Bishop. It’s lucky for you he’s still busy dealing with sexual abuse scandals or I’d be hard-pressed to accept your deadline.”

A small victory. Lauren inclined her head. “Thank you.”

“What will you do if you find this Soul Eater, anyway? You aren’t trained for dealing with the supernatural. Certainly not something as ominous sounding as a Soul Eater.”

Lauren stood. “I’m not sure what I’ll do. I’m hoping that it can be killed with bullets. As is the homicide detective.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Sister McDewey. “I’ll expect to see you back here in two days’ time.”

Lauren turned and headed toward the door.

“Lauren.”

She turned. “Yes?”

“Have you given any thought to how you’ll find this Soul Eater?”

Lauren could see the concern evident in the old nun’s eyes. The crows feet at the edges of her eyes had deepened and the creases by her mouth seemed firmer.

“I don’t think me finding the Soul Eater will be much of a problem, Sister.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s had no trouble finding me.”

Sister McDewey’s eyebrows lifted again. “What do you mean by that?”

“Last night at the library, someone was across the street. Waiting for me. If my friend hadn’t shown up, I’d hate to think what might have happened.”

“My God.”

Lauren nodded. “One way or another, I’m starting to think that I might just somehow figure into this whole bizarre mess.”

And God help me if that’s true, she thought.

Curran sat in the coffee shop on Newbury Street reading through the stack of files he’d pulled together on the various antiques dealers he’d spent the day interviewing. For some reason, his gut ached when he thought about them. Maybe his body was telling him there was a connection to the crime here, he thought. Maybe the Soul Eater is one of these people.

He flipped through them, never really settling on any in particular. Most of them read the same: advanced college degrees, some type of money in their background, a lot of bachelors — some gay some not, and not really a lot that made any of them stand out to the degree Curran hoped.

But one file was slimmer than any of the others.

Darius Assiniya.

It wasn’t just that he was a foreign-born national that had made finding things about him so difficult, there just didn’t seem to be very much information out there at all.

Curran found that unusual.

Especially when his gut ached even worse when Darius’ file surfaced at the top of the pile. Curran flipped it open and began reading the scant information the computers had spat out.

According to several sources abroad, including a dispatch from Interpol, Darius Assiniya had been born in the 1950s. Location: unknown. Parents: presumed deceased. Siblings: none listed. Education: On record of having graduated from Oxford in 1966 with a degree in Ancient Religions.

He’d moved around quite a lot. He’d lived a few years in the United Kingdom, in London and Manchester. He’d shown up in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Two addresses in Southeast Asia, including Thailand and the Philippines. He’d bounced over to Australia and then over to Kenya. From there he’d come north to Moscow before crossing the Atlantic and hanging out in Rio de Janeiro for a while. He’d finally worked his way north to the United States a few years back. There was a record of him entering the United States in Seattle, Washington.

Seems more like the kind of lifestyle a career criminal would have rather than a normal person, thought Curran. But Darius had said his clients and products dictated his location. That much made sense.

So what bothered him so much about the guy?

He took a drag on his coffee and leaned back. He’d kill for a butt right now, but this was one of those new age hippie shops that catered to the VegeNazis and Soy Gestapo. Curran wouldn’t have even come in here at all if Lauren hadn’t called him an hour ago asking to meet him here.

He stared out the window at the throngs of people shuffling past the murky windows. The skies had darkened again. Gray streaks bled into charcoal and blackness. He sighed.

I hate this freaking month.

A cool breeze swept over him and he instantly felt his adrenaline drip. But the front door had opened ushering in a taste of the cold from outside.

Lauren came hustling over. “Hi.” She was out of breath. Curran smiled. She still looked so beautiful even when she was rushed.

“You okay?”

“Just cold.” She dropped into the chair opposite from him. Curran closed the files and pushed them to one side. He motioned for a waitress who came over.

Lauren ordered a coffee and then leaned forward. “I had a meeting today with one of the administrators at the school.”

“Yeah?”

“She told me she’d have to inform the Bishop what was going on.”

Curran frowned. “What gives her the right? This is a police matter.”

“It might well become a Church matter, Steve.”

He sighed. “I don’t like this.” The last thing he needed was a bunch of priests warning the populace about demons in the streets. Cripes it’d be a circus. The media spotlight would be unbearable.

“Don’t worry.” Lauren looked pleased. “I got her to give us forty-eight hours.”

Curran looked at her. “Two days? What the hell are we supposed to accomplish in two days?”

She looked hurt. “I thought you’d be glad.”

“I am. I am.” He shook his head. “Just wasn’t expecting a deadline so damned soon.”

“Aren’t you getting pressure at work?”

Yeah, right. Like anyone was going to bitch about a bunch of scumbags who’d gotten wasted. “No. In fact, I could let the cases ferment for years in the unsolved file and no one would give a damn. The only reason I am is because I know the killer is more dangerous than any of his victims.”

She nodded. “Did you have any luck today?”

“You mean aside from exhausting myself?” He shrugged. “Depends on how you define luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“I spent the day interviewing a bunch of antiques dealers in the area. That’s not exactly a prescription for excitement.”

“What on earth did you do that for?”

“The souvenir from last night, remember?”

She sighed. “The button. I’d almost forgotten.”

“I’d want to forget, too.”

“Did Dr. Kwon do the carbon-dating test?”

Curran smiled and took another sip of his coffee. “Would you believe the bone is almost 30,000 years old?”

Her eyes opened wider and Curran thought they looked even more brilliant. “That’s incredible.”

“It was turned into a button much later. But the bone is that old. So, I figured that maybe someone with a real fetish for stuff like that would know about it.”

“Did you find anyone who fit the profile?”

He shrugged. “A few of them had a thing for buttons, but no one had ever seen anything like what I showed them. Except for one guy.”