J King - Angel of Death

As for the body, a wide red path wound like the yellow brick road back behind the counter to the meat locker. There, the butcher at last was hooked and hung among his stock. By the time Blautsmeyer’s wife discovered the scene, the blood beneath her husband had thickened to a syrupy brown.

The killer had dipped his left index finger – the prints were positively confirmed from three other locations – in the blood and written on the parchment-pale chest of the corpse, “Samael 5:2:356.”

Leland blinked away the scene. The only Wisconsin crimes that matched the priest’s murder were the two she had already been involved with.

Strange that I’ve worked both cases. I was only an assistant investigator five years ago. It’s like the killer has me targeted.

She shook away that idea. The long hours and gruesome scenes, the memories of poor Kerry and his homemade noose, the death of her partner – all of it was tumbling around in her head. Chronic loneliness had deepened to bona fide isolation. Perhaps she would go to Lakeland Animal Shelter to see if they had any calico kittens, but it would only be cruel to leave a kitten alone for so many hours a day. Besides, in the midst of all this welling inhumanity, she needed human contact. How late is Fred’s Burgers open? She checked her watch. Not tonight. Tonight, she’d hit the NCIC and get to bed.

Sighing, Leland switched to the National Crime Information Center computer network and began typing in information. While she did so, she thought back to that most puzzling clue: Samael 5:2:356. Debate about the other clues had quickly been replaced by speculation about that one bit of writing in blood. What was it? A Bible verse? A date? A license plate? A verse of poetry?

The Bible verse seemed most promising. Though there was not a book of Samael, there were a pair of books of Samuel. The first book of Samuel, chapter 5, had no verse 356, but one young patrolman, formerly a seminarian, calculated on a long night shift that, starting with Samuel 5:2, the first 356 words read thus:

When the Philistines stole the ark of God, they hid it in the temple of their god Dagon, and set it by the idol of Dagon. Early next morning, the men of the house of Ashdod rose to find that Dagon had fallen upon his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord. And they righted Dagon and set him in his place again. Next morning, Dagon had fallen on his face on the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both hands were cut off upon the threshold; only the stumps were left on the idol. Therefore unto this day, neither the priests of Dagon nor his worshipers tread on the threshold of the temple of Dagon in Ashdod. The hand of the Lord was heavy on Ashdod, and he annihilated them and plagued them with genital boils. When the men of Ashdod saw these terrible things, they said, “Let us take the ark of the God of Israel away from us: for his hand is hard upon us and upon our god Dagon.”

The men of Ashdod called together the Philistine lords and said to them, “Where shall we hide the ark of the God of Israel?” And the lords answered, “Carry the ark of the God of Israel to Gath. And they carried the ark of the God of Israel to that place.

But when it arrived, the hand of the Lord struck the city of Gath with a terrible annihilation: and he struck the men of the city, both poor and rich, with boils in their private parts.

The people of Gath sent the ark of God to Ekron. But when the ark of God arrived in Ekron, the Ekronites cried out, “They have brought the ark of the God of Israel to slay us!”

So all the Philistine lords met again and said, “Send the ark of the God of Israel away, back to its own place so that it will not kill us or our people: for there was a terrible annihilation all through the city; God’s hand was very heavy on them.

The fact that the false god Dagon’s hands and head were missing was taken as an ominous sign. So, too, was the mention of tumors in the groin, which some interpreted as a reference to sexual perversion. A columnist of the Burlington Gazette irresponsibly speculated that the killer considered himself to be the ark of God, righteous and powerful but captive to the Philistines – corrupt society at large. As long as he felt trapped in this hostile world, the reporter said, the man would kill again and again, and be the Death that brought panic to the city. God’s hand was heavy upon him.

The young patrolman who had discovered these things had collaborated with the columnist and was suspended for it. He took the suspension as a sign, quit his field training, and went back to seminary. Leland’s remembrances were interrupted by a beep, and by a listing of violent crimes in the three-state area of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Bleary-eyed, Leland scrolled through the accounts. Some involved decapitation, others amputation, and still others necrophilia, gun use…

She began to read the individual entries but glanced up at the list tally – the screen showed only five of four hundred eighty-two entries. She requested a crossindex of amputation and decapitation, and sat back as the computer began its contented grunting. The piggish sound reminded Leland of another speculation about Samael 5:2:356. One officer, speaking facetiously, said that since the corpse had been hung up among the pork carcasses, 5:2:356 must be a reference to the act, scene, and verse in Hamlet: “Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!” A fitting enough verse, except that the butcher had been no prince, and the killer no singing angel.

Dead ends everywhere.

The cross-check came in, narrowing the field to two hundred thirty-one cases. Though the name “Samael“ had not been found on either the priest or the newspaperman, Leland’s recollections had piqued her curiosity. On a whim, she typed in a check for the name Samael. She leaned back and took a sip of coffee. Officer Greenberg had said Samael was the name for the Jewish Angel of Death.

“Mother of God.”

The screen blinked, producing a list of eighty-eight murders in the tri-state area, each of which included decapitations, manual amputation, and, somehow, the name Samael.

Angel of Death.

At last, Keith McFarland is slated to die. The death will come in a month, so I have plenty of time for orchestration. I want his end to be bloody, slow, and somewhat perverse. Already, I have many ideas, most shaped by the fact that the detective assigned to his case, a Detective Leland, is scheduled to die the same day. I might as well let them kill each other. Before that sweet moment, though, I have a very difficult case before me. A newlywed couple. Many cultures believe that angels of death seek to steal virgins on their wedding day. Actually, we do. A rose is best snipped before it opens. Also, deaths become tricky around any rite of passage. A death date scheduled for a virgin adolescent will be inappropriate for a sexually active adult. Once a rite of passage is completed, the person is new, and a whole new death date must be arranged.

There are various traditions meant to prevent virgin abductions. One is the white wedding runner, which can supposedly stop an angel of death from reaching up through the floor to snatch a bride on her way to the altar. Oddly, virgin grooms are not similarly guarded. Another is the Jewish tradition of breaking the wine glass, a symbol of the broken hymen. It is thought that this symbolic consummation will fool angels into giving up. If such preventions are unsuccessful, grooms must ready an arsenal of tricks and wards for battling angels throughout the wedding night. They will appear in various hostile guises – drunk drivers, fires, jealous boyfriends, muggers, poisonous snakes, and so forth – until consummation is achieved. Some noble grooms lay down their lives to protect their brides, all the while unaware that it is their own virgin soul the angel has come to collect. Today, though, I must collect them both. The couple is driving through Chicago, en route from Waukesha, Wisconsin, to Kissimmee, Florida. It is the morning after their all-night wedding party, and they plan to drive to Louisville for their first day and on to Kissimmee afterward.