Robert Browne - Kill Her Again

“When you told me about the tattoo,” he said to Anna, “I was pretty sure I’d seen it somewhere before.” He dropped into his desk chair as the screen came to life, then opened up an Internet browser, typed in a URL. “So I did a quick Google on my cruiser laptop and found this.”

A moment later, a Web page blossomed on-screen and at its center was a familiar-looking graphic:

Anna’s heart skipped.

“This is it,” she said. “Except his tattoo was missing a couple of spokes.”

“So what is it?” Pope asked.

“The Roma chakra,” Worthington said.

“The what?”

“The symbol of the Romani people. They adopted it in the early seventies, but it’s been around for decades. Based on an earlier Hindu version.”

“Pardon my ignorance, but who are the Romani people?”

“Gypsies,” Anna told him. “Only I’m pretty sure they consider that a derogatory term.”

“That they do,” Worthington said. “I found that out the hard way a few years ago when I busted a drifter for shoplifting. I made the mistake of calling her a gypsy and she almost bit off my nose. She was part of a Roma caravan camped just outside of town.” He nodded to the screen. “And she had one of those tattooed on her forearm.”

Anna’s heart skipped another beat.

“So then our guy’s a gypsy?” Pope said.

“Based on Anna’s description, it sure as hell sounds like it. We don’t have any caravans on the radar right now, but I’ve got a call out to the Barstow and Vegas PDs to see if they’ve encountered any.”

“So what exactly does this thing signify?” Pope asked.

“It’s a wagon wheel. Gypsies are nomads. Used to travel from town to town in wagons.” He paused. “But it also represents the Roma soul.”

Anna’s heart seemed to stop altogether now. “The soul?”

He nodded to the screen. “That’s what it says.”

“How oddly appropriate,” Pope muttered.

Worthington looked at him. “Meaning what?”

“Just a theory I’ve been working on. Agent McBride here can tell you all about it.”

But Anna was barely listening to them. Her mind had locked onto that one word, that single syllable that was like an icy wind rattling inside her chest.

Soul.

The girl who stole my soul.

Was that why there were spokes missing from Red Cap’s tattoo? Did it represent a missing or broken soul?

Worthington seemed to be waiting for Anna to say something, but she wasn’t quite ready to revisit Pope’s claims of past lives and concussions and reawakened memories. What little sense any of this made to her at the moment did not fill her with warmth.

“I’m not sure it matters what this stands for,” she said. “And right now I’m not feeling too optimistic about finding this guy.”

“Maybe you should be,” Pope said.

Anna turned. “Why?”

“Because we both know he’s killed before. And that simple fact could help us quite a bit.”

“Killed before?” Worthington frowned at him. “Do you two know something about this clown that I don’t?”

Pope ignored the question, his gaze on Anna. “We can stop him. Before he comes after you again. And I think he will.”

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“I’d put money on it. All we have to do is take a look at the previous killing. Dive in, get some details, then go from there.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” she asked.

“I think you know,” Pope said, then raised a hand, giving her a Svengali-like finger wave.

And there was no doubt in Anna’s mind what he meant by this.

He wanted to hypnotize her.

“ Would one of you mind telling me what the hell you’re talking about?”

Pope turned to Jake, offering him a weak smile. “Maybe you don’t want to know.”

“Spill it, Danny. What kind of nonsense are you spewing now?”

The choice of words didn’t surprise Pope. While he himself had always tried to keep an open mind, Jake was a rationalist and skeptic who believed only in what could be seen or experienced or explained. And if he had no explanation, he’d look for one based on evidence, not what he called voodoo speculation.

When they were kids, Jake had been the first to question the existence of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, just as he had later proclaimed-during a pot-fueled soliloquy-that the story of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection was a longstanding and commonly told myth. A myth that had traveled from religion to religion, culture to culture, for centuries before Jesus was supposed to have been born.

“The only evidence that he ever existed is the Bible,” Jake had said. “And that’s neither historical nor accurate, and was never really meant to be.”

“What about faith?” Pope had made the mistake of asking.

“Faith is nothing more than wishful thinking, based on conditioning, fear, and the desire for a reward. Ask any kid if he believes in the Easter Bunny, he’ll tell you with the greatest conviction that he does. It’s the same for those who believe in religious deities. Or ghosts and goblins, for that matter.”

“I hope you realize,” Pope said, “that you just insulted about ninety percent of the world’s population.”

Jake, who had just taken another hit of weed, exhaled a plume of smoke. “So sue me. The truth isn’t always pretty.”

Except for the switch from a pipe to a deputy’s badge, Jake hadn’t changed much since those days. To tell him now about McBride’s visions and the theory that she’d been murdered in a previous life-by the same perpetrator no less-made about as much sense as telling him that Dorothy’s adventures in Oz were based on true events. Especially after Pope had already sprung the Evan’s-a-psychic story on the poor guy.

But the popcorn was already out of the box and Pope felt he had no choice but to offer Jake a full confession. So he laid it out, sparing him nothing, as Special Agent Anna McBride remained uncharacteristically mute.

When Pope was finished, Jake leaned back in his chair and laughed. It was a smug, I-know-better-than-you laugh that set Pope’s teeth on edge.

“What’s so funny?”

“You remember when we were about fourteen and you were convinced that the old abandoned Smokehouse was haunted?”

“Of course I do.”

“You got a bunch of us together to spend the night there. Me, Tommy Walsh, Billy Kruger, Joey Shepherd. And while all you wimps were shitting your britches over some rustling noises, I took a closer look and found a family of cats living inside one of the walls.”

“This is different,” Pope said.

“Is it? The problem with you, Danny, is that you’re always a little too quick to believe the unbelievable.”

“That’s not true.”

“I know you’ve convinced yourself that you’re a straight thinker, open to any possibility. But that’s never really been the case, has it?”

Pope wondered if Jake was right. Had the fence he’d been straddling all these years been leaning slightly to one side? Even if that was true, did it really matter at this point?

“Are you telling me you have a rational explanation for any of what I’ve just told you?”

“No,” Jake said. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”

“Well, until you find it-”

“What? We toss reason to the wind and waste time on some ridiculous fantasy?”

“You know what happened with Evan,” Pope said. “You don’t want to believe it, but everything he told me turned out to be true.”

“Pure coincidence, Cuz, and the sooner you see that the better off you’ll-”

“Shut up, both of you.”

They turned, staring at McBride as she rose from her chair. Her face was pale again. She looked frightened, yet filled with a new sense of resolve.