The Vanished, Part Two

Back home I looked into Silk’s Jewelry and the macrobiotics store, Soul & Body & Soul. The macrobiotics place had two other stories, one downtown and the other in a different suburb. All owned by a company called MacRo Inc. 

Two months ago they’d issued a press release recalling a proprietary product called Bluejacket Root. Instead of improving memory, it could apparently cause hallucinations. At least in some small percentage of people who took it. Customers were urged to throw it away and return their bottles for a full refund. 

            Silk’s was owned by a partnership, Zach and Jonathan Silk. Brothers, and serial entrepreneurs. In the last 20 years they’d launched a game shop, a bar, two restaurants, a café, a shipping office, and then a jewelry store. All of them had failed, but somehow they’d kept going on. Maybe their family had money to waste.

            I couldn’t find anything tying either business to any unexplained disappearances, but I wasn’t done looking. How hard had the local police pushed into the case? Ginny was disappointed in their efforts, but that was pretty typical for families of the vanished. It was why she hired me, after all. I’d keep digging until I’d run down all the leads I could find.

            Rachel came in from a meeting downtown. “How’s the case?” She pulled off her sweater and kicked off her shoes.

            “Nowhere yet. A few leads. And I’ve got other cases.” I sipped some coffee. 

            “What about Neral?”

            “He’s fine. Says hi. What do you want for dinner?” It was my night to cook, nightmares or no nightmares.

            Rachel planted her hands on her hips. “You know what I mean.”

            I sighed. “He gave me some prescriptions. I picked them up on the way home. And I’m seeing him next week. He thinks I may have issues.”

            She snorted. “He’s got that right.”

            “Hey, I’ve got no more issues than any P.I. who regularly tangles with ghosts and demons and cyborgs and possessed dogs and . . . huh.” I shrugged. “Okay, he may have a point.”

            She leaned close to me. “These prescriptions, are they going to affect your, uh, performance?”

            I kissed her. “Only one way to find out.”

 

I was running again. Hurtling down the dark path, desperate to escape whatever was chasing me. It wasn’t just one thing—I heard barking, howling, roars, screeches, all right behind me, just inches from my neck. 

            The path under my feet was jagged glass and hard rocks. Every step was agony shooting through my legs. The air was foul, like sewage mixed with vomit. Branches snapped against my arms, bugs flew into my eyes, dirt flew in my face, choking me.

            Lightning exploded in the sky, and for a second I could see everything. I was surrounded by demons, by vampire bats, by spiders leaping from tangled webs in the trees. Grinning skulls loomed in my face, lizards crawled up my legs. I wanted to scream, but my throat was twisted, and I could barely breathe. They were coming, they were coming for me, and I couldn’t—

            “Tom!” Rachel’s voice jarred me. So did the slap across my face. “Tom, goddamn it! You’re safe! Wake up!”

            I opened my eyes, gasping for breath. Rachel was kneeling over me, her face red. She shook my shoulders. “Snap out of it!”

            “I’m okay!” I lifted my head. I was in the living room, flat on my back, next to the TV. The table was on its side, all the books and magazines and the TV remote scattered over the rug. “Sorry.”

            “So much for Neral’s pills.” She slumped against the sofa, breathing hard herself.

            “He said they’d take a while. Maybe up to a week.” I sat up. A bottle of water from the table sat next to my foot. I grabbed a drink.

            Rachel sighed. “Look, I just don’t know how much more of this I can take.” She pulled the bottle from my hand and took a swig herself. “I mean—I’m sorry, I know this is hell for you, every night—”

            “I know, I know.” I rubbed my temples. “Maybe you should just chain me up in here. You’ve got chains. I never asked why.”

            “They’re from that time you were a vampire.”

            “You had them before. I always wondered.”

            She patted my shoulder. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

            “Right.” I stood up. “Let’s go to bed.”

            “No funny business.” She dropped the empty bottle on the floor next to the magazines. “You’re cleaning that up tomorrow.”

            “No funny business. Clean up. Got it.” I nodded. “At least the pills didn’t stop me from—”

”That’s what I mean by no funny business.” She punched my chest. “Take a shower. You sure work up a sweat.”

It wasn’t all from the night terrors. But she said no funny business. I headed for the bathroom.

 

I called my client the next morning. “That macrobiotics store your mother was in? So it turns out that they’ve had trouble with the federal government about a supplement they were selling for memory issues that turned out to cause seizures and psychotic breaks. It wasn’t the ginkgo, but I’m wondering if there was anything else in her bag.” 

            “I don’t think so. I’ll check again.” She sighed. “Is there anything else?”

            “Not yet. I’m still looking into the jewelry store where your mother was last seen.”

            “Yeah, there was a necklace from that place. I showed it to the police, but they didn’t think it had anything to do with the disappearance.”

“I’ll keep checking. But I’ve got to be honest, I’m not very optimistic. It’s been two months.”

            “Yeah.” Another sigh, longer this time. “I’m sorry. It’s just—I can’t stop thinking that she’s somewhere. Out there. I don’t know. It’s more than just a feeling.”

            Something in her voice made me curious. “What do you mean?”

            “Well . . . I didn’t want to tell you, because you’ll think it’s silly, but I hired you in particular because you have this reputation for, uh, strange stuff?”

            I do. “Go ahead.”

            “I’ve been, uh, having dreams about her. She’s chained up, in her underwear, in some dark room. I’m trying to get to her, but I can’t move. She can’t see me. I wake up and I can’t get back to sleep.” She sounded tired. “Crazy, right?”

            “No. Not at all. I’ve been dealing with some—disturbing dreams myself. From another case.” I didn’t want to go into details. “Whatever else Freud said, dreams are sometimes telling us things we need to know.”

            “Okay.” She seemed relieved that I believed her. “So is this it? You’re done?”

            “Not quite yet.” I still wanted to know more about the jewelry store. “Check your mother’s purse for anything else from the Soul & Body & Mind store.”

            “Okay. You think maybe she took something that gave her amnesia or something?” She sounded skeptical.

            “It’s one possibility.” A faint one, that probably wouldn’t check out once she’d looked in her mother’s purse. But you have to look everywhere. 

            “I’ll call you back.”

            Rachel came into the office carrying coffee in her Supergirl mug. “Feeling any better?”

            “A little.” I looked her over. Shorts and a tank top. “A little better.”

            She smirked. “Going to work out later. No point getting dressed, right?”

            “I totally approve.” My phone buzzed with an email. My client. She’d sent me a picture—a bottle with the store’s logo.

            BLUEJACKET ROOT. From what I could read of the label, it promised to help with memory issues, mental acuity, concentration, and focus—with an asterisk warning me that these claims had not been confirmed by the FDA.

            “Mom’s worried about dementia,” Ginny wrote. “Always taking stuff like this.”

            I called the mall store. “Hi, I’m wondering if you have any Bluejacket root for sale there?”

            “Just a moment . . .” Not Mimi, but another chipper young woman. I waited.

            “No, that’s been recalled,” she told me a minute later. “If you have any, don’t take it.”

            “What’s the problem?”

            “Recalled by the manufacturer. It doesn’t say, I’m just supposed to tell you not to take it. If you have any. Do you have any?”

            “No, it’s for a friend. When was it recalled?”

“About a month ago, I guess. We sent it all back.”

A month. “Thanks.”

            A few minutes online showed me the problem: Bluejacket root, from a South American plant, caused hallucinations. Not all the time, not to everybody, but often enough for the government to demand a recall three months ago. It was especially risky for older people. 

            I looked at the email image again. The bottle looked half empty. 

            I called Ginny May. “I don’t know,” she said when I asked about the Bluejacket. “She took a lot of things, like I said. I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. Do you think—what do you think?”

            I didn’t have a theory yet. “Well, she probably didn’t buy it at the store that day and take half the bottle. It might have kicked in unexpectedly when she was at the mall. Doid you ever see her have any hallucinations?”

            “No.” Her voice was firm. “She worried, like I said, but I never saw any sign of her losing her marbles. Forgetting things, or acting strange. She was fine.”

            I nodded. “Okay. Maybe it’s nothing. I’ll get back to you.”

            I sat back and looked at my computer screen. It seemed a long shot to blame Veronica May’s disappearance on a pill. And it didn’t explain the stuff burned in the dumpster. 

            So I sat forward and started digging again. 

            Fifteen minutes later I found something. “Whoa.”

            “What?” Rachel turned in her chair. “You cracked the case? Or is it just weird online porn?”

            “That jewelry store? The brothers who own it, there’s been mysterious disappearance at almost every location they’ve set up business in.”

            She cocked her head. “Lots of people disappear.”

            “Yeah, but—” I stopped. Okay, Rachel was right. It didn’t necessarily mean anything, any more than the Bluejacket did. Still, I saved the results of my research for a closer look later.

            “Are you getting anywhere?” She stood up and walked over to my desk. “It doesn’t sound like you’ve got a lot to go on.”

            “Not much.” I shook my head. Missing persons cases like this aren’t easy to solve, most of the time. I’ve gotten lucky, but some people just slip through the cracks. 

            But—"She’s having dreams of her mother being held prisoner. And she can’t help her. Like me. I mean, I’m helpless in my dreams. Sometimes I’m running and I can’t get away, and sometimes I can’t move. It’s, it’s . . .” I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

            Rachel sighed and then kissed my cheek. “I get it. You can’t let things go. You never could.”

            “Tenacious Tom, that’s what they call me.” I grinned.

            “Stubborn asshole, that’s what they call you.” She punched my arm. “So keep working on it. What do I care? As long as I get a good night’s sleep.”

            I rubbed my arm. “I’ll do my best.”

The Vanished, Part Three

By lunchtime I had a little more data on the jewelry store brothers. Zachary Silk had gone to Harvard Business School, earning an MBA and a job at McKinsey for a few years before teaming up with his brother Jonathan, an ex-Marine who’d done tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, on an entrepreneurial run. 

Their first business together, the game shop, sold board games, Dungeons & Dragons modules and dice, computer games and accessories, and hosted D&D nights and other gaming activities. 

            It failed after 18 months. Their other businesses hadn’t done much better—the longest any had survived, a Hooters-style bar, was four and a half years. How did they keep going? Maybe their family was ridiculously wealthy. Maybe they were copying Donald Trump’s business model of lying and cheating their way up the ladder to success.

            All the businesses were located in Skokie or surrounding suburbs. I looked closer at the disappearances I’d noticed yesterday. Rachel was right—most of them looked routine. Kids running away, crooks jumping bail, husbands leaving wives and vice versa, people fleeing debts, and so forth. 

            But a handful didn’t fit the pattern. A man from Evanston in his 30s who never came home from work; an older woman in Wilmette who stopped answering her phone until a relative discovered she’d been gone from her apartment for weeks; a retired teacher who went for a walk and never returned home. No bodies found. A missing credit card turned up in a convenience store, a wallet was dumped in a trash can. Friends and relatives posted signs for some of the missing; others were forgotten almost immediately.

            I called the Skokie police department and got connected to a detective. She actually tried to be helpful, which doesn’t always happen to me. The Chicago PD generally hates my calls because I usually want to talk about vampires and monsters. This detective listened.

            “Yeah, I remember that woman in Wilmette a few years ago,” detective Grayson told me. “Credit card in the 7-11? It had a few random purchases on it, but nothing we could trace. Probably stolen, or someone found it in the street, and left it when the cashier got suspicious. I talked to someone over there, and they didn’t get anywhere with it. These things just happen, you know? It’s tough for the families, but there isn’t always anything we can do after a while.”

            “Yeah.” I was grateful for her attention. “Is there anything new on the Veronica May disappearance?”

            I heard fingers clicking keys. “There was a necklace in her purse the daughter couldn’t identify. There was a receipt from the jewelry store in the mall, but the clerk we talked to doesn’t remember her. We communicated it to your client.”

            Jewelry store again. “Okay, thanks.”

            “And some pills from a store in the mall. They’re supposed to be recalled. The store denies selling them to her, and the detective didn’t find any in the store.”

            “Right.” Did the pills mean anything? Or the jewelry store? Or was I just driving down dead ends? “Thanks.”

            I searched around and found a phone number for Silk Enterprises. I called, asked the receptionist for either Zachary or Jonathan Silk, and a moment later I heard, “Zachary Silk, what can I do for you?”

            “Mr. Silk? My name is Tom Jurgen. I’m a private detective working for Ginny May. Her mother disappeared in the shopping mall where you recently had a jewelry store—”

            “Right, the cops called us about that. What was her name? I don’t know anything. I talked to all my people there, they don’t remember her.”

            “Are you familiar with the necklace she bought?”

            “Yeah, the, uh, cops told me. It’s one of our signature pieces. Silver chain, star-shaped pendant with an opal in the center. Specially designed for us.”

            He remembered the necklace but not the woman who bought it? “How much did it cost?”

            “Uh, eight hundred dollars. Sometimes we negotiate a little, but that’s the standard price.”

            Expensive. “Did you have many in the store?”

            “Just the one. It’s a special piece. We’d pay to get it back. Not eight hundred, but something reasonable.”

            “And no one remembers selling it? For eight hundred dollars? A specialty piece?” I didn’t hide my skepticism very well.

            “Well, we remember selling it. Jon, I mean,. My brother Jonathan. He just doesn’t remember the woman very well.”

            “The detective I spoke with said the police talked to a clerk there.”

            “Jon was there when she rang it up.”

            I said nothing for a moment. This guy had fast answers, which made me suspicious.

            Finally he said, “Is that all?”

            “What happened with the store? You had to close.”

            “Malls are dying everywhere. We couldn’t break even. Jewelry’s expensive. Times are tough.” It sounded like a well-rehearsed list of excuses.

            “You and your brother have started a lot of businesses, haven’t you?”

            “Yeah. I mean, we’re ambitious. One of these days we’ll score big. In the meantime, it’s fun. Building up a business from the ground up. It’s the challenge.”

            “How have you managed to keep it up? Your businesses haven’t lasted more than a few years. Family money?”

            “We have . . . resources. Look, what’s this all about? You’re looking for that old lady, or are you just poking around for some kind of payout from us?” His voice rose. “We’re legitimate businessmen, me and Jon. We’re honest.”

            “You’ve been sued. Twice.” I’d found that while looking the brothers up.

            “Who hasn’t? You run a business, you get sued. We settled both times. Everyone was happy. Look, Mr.—Jurgen, right? I don’t have any more time to talk to you. We’re working on something new here. So unless you have something about Veronica May to ask me directly—”

            “No, that’s fine. Thank you for your time.” I hung up before he did.

            Unless you have something about Veronica May—but I hadn’t mentioned her name. And Silk had said he didn’t remember her name. It could have come to him as we talked, of course, but our chat seemed to make him defensive. Like he was hiding something.

            Or just pissed off by my questions. I do that to people. 

            I called Ginny May. “I just talked to one of the owners of the jewelry store. He says the necklace your mother bought cost eight hundred dollars. Does that sound like something she’d do?”

            “Eight hundred—? That’s crazy.” She laughed, then stopped. “Do you think maybe those pills made her, I don’t know, lose her judgment?”

            “Maybe. I’m more suspicious of them, though—the brothers who owned the place. It might be nothing related to your mother, but I’m going to dig into them a bit more.”

            “Okay.” She sounded doubtful. “I really think those pills might be the thing, though.”

            She had a point—maybe the bluejacket root had sent her on a shopping spree that ended badly. “I’ll look at both.” 

            “Thanks.”

            I looked at the email image of the bluejacket bottle again, zooming in, though that didn’t work the way it does on TV. Still, I could see that Veronica May had taken more than one or two pills. Which suggested she probably didn’t buy it the day she disappeared, unless she’d downed a handful right away. Which seemed unlikely.

            But carrying it around in her purse meant she was probably taking it regularly. I looked it up online again. The instructions said to take “two tablets up to three times daily, with food.” So maybe she was popping them throughout the day? And the hallucinations or whatever had kicked in while she was at the mall?

            Even so, it didn’t tell me what had happened to her. And I was still suspicious of the Silk brothers. 

The Vanished, Part Four

I was locked in a box, chained, paralyzed. My mouth was dry as ashes, and the pit of my stomach felt like a ball of barbed wire. I couldn’t breathe, as if a huge stone was crushing my chest. I could only gasp in ragged, shallow breaths, fighting for air.

Someone was watching me from a corner. I could hear them breathing hoarsely.

            I pulled against the chains. I kicked. Something moved beside me and then kicked me back. 

            Suddenly my hand was free. I punched upward, heard a shout of anger, and punched again. Then something clamped down on my arm, and I rolled over, panting, as a fist pounded my shoulder. Something felt familiar about it.

            “Wake up! Goddamn it, Tom, wake up and stop hitting me!”

            Rachel. Oh hell. My eyes opened, and I could see Rachel on her knees, shaking me with one hand, her other fist raised to punch me again 

            “Whoa, whoa! Sorry.” I rolled away, almost falling off the bed until Rachel caught me. “Sorry.”

            “I ought to let you fall on the floor.” She rubbed her arm. “You hit me!”

            “S-sorry.” I sat up. “Is it bad?”

            “Oh, please. I’m a lot stronger than you.” She dropped her arm and glared at me. “I love you, Tom, but I can’t go on like this until those pills kick in.”

            “I know. I know. Sorry.” I rubbed my eyes. “I’ll sleep in the other room. You can chain me up.” Chains . . .

            “Maybe I’ll sleep in the other room and lock you in here.” She stood up. “I need a drink of water. You?”

            “Yeah, thanks.” I went to the bathroom toi splash water on my face. My body was covered in sweat. Back in bed Rachel handed me a bottle.

            “What was it this time?” 

            I swallowed. “Different. I wasn’t running. I was chained up. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe. Then something started hitting me—”

            “That was me. You were kicking me first.” She groaned. “It wasn’t that hard, thank God, or you’d be in a lot more pain now.”

            “Small favors.” I looked past her at the moon. Then I stood up again. “I’m not getting back to sleep soon. I’ll watch some TV. Or check my email.” 

            “Sounds good.” She laid down and pulled the covers over her. “Don’t wake me.” 

            “Yeah.” I grabbed a T-shirt. 

            Nothing vital waited in my email. I checked the news, watched a few YouTube videos, and yawned until I felt ready to go back to bed. The moon was down as I slid next to Rachel and kissed her.

            She kissed me back, then rolled over. “No funny business tonight.”

            I chuckled. “Tomorrow’s another day.”

 

Ginny May called me the next morning. “I just got a call from the guy at the jewelry store. Zachary Silk? It was kind of weird.”

            “What did he want?”

            “He wanted to buy that necklace back. He said he’d pay what mom paid, eight hundred dollars. He was pretty anxious about it.”

            I picked up my coffee. “Did he say why?”

            “Just that it’s a signature piece, and very important. It was all kind of creepy, actually. I don’t even know how he got my number.”

            Oops. My fault. “I, uh, gave him your name when I talked to him. Sorry. I had to say something.”

            “That doesn’t matter. And he didn’t mention you or anything. He just wanted the necklace.”

            “What did you tell him?”

            “I’d think about it. He was really insistent on me calling him back. I mean, I think I could get more money from him for it, that’s how he sounded.” She laughed. “What should I do?”

            I didn’t know. “Let’s think about it. I’ll call you back.”

“Okay.” She sounded puzzled. Just like me.

I went back to what I’d gathered about the Silk brothers. They’d been sued several times, but never arrested for anything criminal. Jonathan’s Marine discharge was honorable. Zach had been a middling student at Harvard Business School, but he did get his MBA. He rowed crew, joined the anime society and the chess club, and been part of a Dungeons & Dragons group. 

His résumé on the Silk Enterprises website also listed membership in something called the Quetzal Club as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, before going to Harvard. A little digging told me it was named for Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec feathered serpent, and the club had been dissolved by the university after a fire in the building where its meetings were held. A little more digging told me that the Quetzal Club played with magic.

I found a partial list of members, cross-referenced it with public records from the alumni list, and spent half an hour making phone calls and sending emails. A few emails bounced back immediately, and a few phone numbers went nowhere. 

Finally I reached Donald Franchot, a marketing executive in Boston. He seemed embarrassed at talking to me, but he did answer my questions.

“Yeah, we tried casting spells. Some of them seemed to work. We did a few séances, levitation, even a love spell that got a guy named Kirk laid, and he never had any luck with girls. But that might have been a fluke.” He laughed. 

“What about Zachary Silk?”

“He was all about making money. He was trying to turn stuff into gold. Alchemy, you know? Nothing worked, and he got mad about it. We finally had to kick him out when he wouldn’t stop talking about it. That was right before the fire.”

“What happened there?”

“We were doing a séance. One of the candles exploded. Zach was in charge of the candles. We always thought . . . Anyway, after the fire, the administration shut us down and we had to pay for the damage. We managed not to get anything on our permanent records, though so that was good.”

I thanked him, and we hung up.

Rachel came into the office. It was 10 a.m., late for her. But it was my fault she hadn’t slept well, so I didn’t say anything.

She kissed my cheek. “Don’t think you’re not in trouble.”

“Never.” I squeezed her hand.

“Anything new on the case?” She sauntered to her deck on the other side of the office. I watched until she sat down.

“Zach Silk tried to make money with magic in college,” I told her. “And he may have set a fire.”

“Cool.” She turned on her computer. “Did you call Neral?”

“Left a message.” I’d done that first thing. Now I turned back to my computer, drank some coffee, and started poking into Zachary Silk again.

Twenty minutes later I found something that sent a chill through my body. I doubled checked my dates, then sat back in my chair and crossed my arms. “Oh hell.”

Rachel turned. “What?”

“I cross checked the disappearances around the brothers’ stores. Took out all the ones that had realistic explanations, like spouses running away and all that. The ones that are left all happened around a full moon.”

“Okay.” She was skeptical. “Was that—”

“That’s when Veronica May disappeared right after going into that jewelry store. And tonight’s a full moon too.”

“Is it?” She cocked her head. “I guess it was pretty big last night.”

“I checked.” I waved a hand at my screen. “And suddenly Zach wants the necklace back. The one he sold to Veronica May.”

“Huh.” She stood up. “So what are you thinking?”

“I don’t know.” I folded my arms. “Some kind of—ceremony around the full moon? With the necklace?”

“What about the disappearances? Oh, wait.” Rachel’s eyes went wide. “Oh, hell, no.”

“Yeah.” I picked up my phone. “But there’s maybe one bright spot here.”

“What the hell would that be?”

I started punching numbers. “Veronica May might still be alive.”

The Vanished, Part Five

Ginny May met Zachary Silk in an Evanston coffee shop at 6:30 that evening. Rachel and I watched from my car as twilight lit the street.

            Ginny had her phone on. Their voices were muffled, but we could make out most of the conversation. Silk was eager to reclaim the necklace—he said it was a “signature piece” again, several times, made by a “genius jeweler from the . . . school of . . . really special.” He gave Ginny a check. “Nine hundred dollars?” she said. “Wow. Thanks.”

            “I hope . .  your mother . . . for your loss.” Silk stood up, shook Ginny’s hand, and headed for the door.

            He’d parked his red Kia next to a fire hydrant, and tossed away the parking ticket on the windshield before starting the motor. Rachel and I followed.

            “What if he doesn’t go to Veronica right away?” Rachel peered at the car ahead of us. “Am I just going to sit here with you all night?”

            “You wanted to come.” I’ve never been able to talk Rachel into staying home.

            “Yeah, but if he just goes back to his office, I’m calling an Uber.”

            My phone buzzed. Ginny May. Rachel answered it. “How’d it go?”

            “Fine. I deposited the check with the phone app right away. I figured I ought to do that before he cancels it. Where are you now?”

            “Looks like he’s heading for the highway,” I said. “I’ll keep you posted. I have to concentrate now.”

            Tailing a car is always tricky, and I lose them about half the time. Being spotted isn’t usually a problem, but getting caught at a red light or behind a slow car or a left-hand turn signal can finish off a pursuit in half a second. Silk was in a hurry, too—I had to stay closer than I liked, while not rear-ending him or any other vehicle that got close to either of us. 

            Rachel kept quiet, except to occasionally warn me of a stop sign or a car about to change lanes. I managed to stay with the Kia until we reached the highway, where following got easier. I relaxed a little, but kept my eyes glued on the car ahead. I shaded my eyes against the setting sun as I drove.

            “He’s heading to Skokie,” Rachel said after a few minutes. “The mall.”

            “Yeah.” I nodded. 

            The sun was down by the time we reached the parking lot of the Three Roads Mall, and the moon was slowly climbing in the sky. Silk drove around to the back. We watched him lock his car, carrying a briefcase, and walk up to a rear entrance, where he unlocked a door and went inside.

            I looked around at the back side of the mall. “He’s got to be going to his store.” I hit the gas pedal and started around to the front.

            “But it’s closed.” Rachel hung onto the door handle as I made a turn. “Hey, watch it!”

            “He can probably still get inside.” I eased off on the gas. 

            The mall was open until 9 p.m., but the parking lot was mostly empty. I found a parking space close to an entrance, and we jumped out of the car.

            The moon was above the horizon, big as a lump of cheese.

            Inside the middle area was practically empty, just a few shoppers strolling past storefronts, some carrying sacks, others window shopping. I looked up and down to get my bearings. “That way.”

            We found the shop. Across the way, Mimi stood in front of Soul & Body & Soul, slurping a soda through a straw. “Hi.”

She didn’t remember me. “Yeah? We’re open. I’m just on a break—”          

            “Did you see anyone go into that jewelry store over there?” I pointed. “In the last few minutes?”

            She looked at the locked doors and metal bars behind the dark glass. “No. I just went down to get a soda. My break’s not over for five minutes.”

            “Okay. Thanks.” We left her to finish her soda and her break and walked over to the store.

            I peered inside through the bars, shading my eyes. No movement. Wait—was that a light in back? I shaded my eyes.

            “Can I help you with something?”

            I turned. It was Bevers, the security guard, in her blazer and tan slacks. “Hi. Tom Jurgen? I was here yesterday? This is my partner Rachel. I think there’s someone in the store.”

            She looked me over with suspicious eyes, then checked Rachel out. “And why are you here now? Again?”

            I swallowed. “I followed Zachary Silk here. He’s—I think he knows what happened to Veronica May, the missing woman. He went in through a locked back door. There’s a light in back”

            Bevers pursed her lips skeptically, then leaned toward the glass door, peering through the metal bars. “Huh.” She took out a phone and pressed a number. “Hey, Boris? Can you check the logs for any access to Silk’s lately? I mean, in the last few minutes. Yeah, thanks.” 

She lowered her phone. “We can track who opens a door. Should take—hang on.” She held the phone up again. “Yeah? Okay, send a couple people over here. I’m at the front of the store.” She nodded to us. “Yeah, Zachary Silk used his code just a few minutes ago. And before that, the other one—Jonathan? About an hour ago.”

            “Didn’t that alert you guys?” Rachel asked.

            She shrugged. “Why should it? It’s still their store.”

            I looked through the glass again. “I think—this is going to sound crazy, but I think Veronica May might be back there.”

            Bevers blinked. “Say what?”

            “I think they’re planning to kill her.”

            “Full moon,” Rachel said. “Human sacrifice. Black magic.”

            I recognized the look in her eyes. “Yeah, we sound crazy. Can we just check right now? Please? If I’m wrong you can laugh at us all you want.”

            “Him.” Rachel pointed at me. “Just him. I’m just his partner. I just do whatever he says.”

            I rolled my eyes. “Oh, really?”

            “Enough.” Bevers slipped out of her blazer, dropping it to the floor. A thick belt around her waist carried enough equipment for a squad of cops—handcuffs, flashlight, Taser, baton, and more. She reached behind her back for a roll of keys as big as a car tire. “Let’s check this out.”

            She unlocked the door, then used another key to roll the metal bars back. She pulled a flashlight from her belt and kept a hand on one hip, close to the handle of her Taser. “Stay behind me.”

            “No problem.” We followed her through the door at a safe distance.

The flashlight darted light right and left, up and down across empty shelves, few boxes on the floor, a roll of cash register tape, and a few candy bar wrappers and soda cans. 

But a light was definitely flickering through a doorway at the back of the store.

            “Hello?” Bevers’ voice boomed like a warning shot. “Who’s there?”

            No response. We walked forward. The door in back was almost closed, the filtering through a few open inches. 

I heard music. No, not music. Chanting.

            “Come on,” I whispered.

            “Don’t rush me.” But Bevers walked fast. At the door she leaned forward, listening, then nodded. “Stay back.”

            “Uh-huh.” I nodded.

            Bevers shoved the door open with one hand, stabbing the room with light. I looked over her shoulder, Rachel right next to me with a long gray tube of pepper spray in her hand.

            Candles flickered in a circle on the floor. Two men in gray sweatsuits stood on opposite sides of a pentagram sprayed in unsteady lines across the tile floor. 

I’d seen pictures of Zachary and Jonathan on the Silk Enterprises website. Zachary was short and stocky, with black hair and thick eyebrows. His brother Jonathan was taller, standing ramrod straight like a Marine at attention. 

            In the center of the pentagram lay a middle-aged woman in dirty underwear, hands and feet tied behind her with duct tape, her eyes glazed but terrified, her body slumped and motionless.

            A silver necklace dangled from her neck, glinting in the candlelight.

            Zachary Silk held a knife in his hand and a sheet of paper in the other, reading from it: “. . . offer this sacrifice, honored Umal, please accept this sacrifice, powerful deity Umal, take this sacrifice, mighty being, and reward your servants with the prize we seek, the gold you promise, mighty one, Umal, lord of dark and bringer of riches . . .”

            At one point of the pentagram a shadow rose from a crack in the tile, like smoke climbing upward, swirling slowly. I could see a spark of red at the top, and a thick form began taking shape in the flickering candlelight—

“What the hell?” Bevers shouted. “Drop that knife right now!” She reached for her Taser.

            The shadow dissolved suddenly, leaving just a puff of dark smoke. The brothers looked at each other, then at us. Zachary cursed. Then he plunged toward Veronica May, his knife raised high.

            Bevers fired her Taser. Zachary stumbled, dropping the knife and clutching at the darts in his arm. He fell to his knees, twitching. One foot knocked a candle over.

            Then Jonathan lunged for us, waving his knife wildly.

            Bevers dropped her Taser and reached for something else in her belt, but Rachel already had her pepper spray ready. She blasted Jonathan in the face, and he staggered to one side, kicking over another candle and losing the knife as he reached for his eyes, frantically rubbing his face as he dropped to the floor.

            I ran past Bevers and knelt next to the woman. “Mrs. May? I’m Tom Jurgen, I work for your daughter Ginny.” I started pulling at the tape binding her arms.

            Her eyes flickered. “G-Ginny?” Her speech was slurred, and she drooled a little on the floor. 

            Bevers was snapping cuffs around Zachary’s wrists. Rachel stood over Jonathan, ready to blast him again if he moved.

            Two more security guards crashed through the door. “What’s going on? Joanie, you okay?”

            “I’m fine! Just take care of that asshole over there!” Bevers pointed toward Jonathan. “Not her, the guy on the floor! And call an ambulance for the woman!”

            “What about that guy?” A guard pointed a bony finger at me.

“He’s harmless.” Bevers stood up. “You okay, Jurgen?”

“That’s me.” I glanced at Rachel. “Harmless.”

 

Ginny May met us at the hospital. Her mother was getting fluids through an IV drip and antibiotics for a nasal infection. But she was conscious, and started crying when her daughter entered the room.

            Ginny’s face was flushed. “I came as fast as I could—Mom! Are you all right? What happened?” They hugged.

            “This girl saved me.” She smiled at Rachel. “And the security woman.”

            “You saved her?” I looked at Rachel. 

            She gave me a wink. “You helped, I guess.”

            I’d talked to the cops briefly at the mall. They let me go with Veronica May to the hospital, but they’d promised there’d be more later. I wanted to ask some questions before they got here, so I cleared my throat. “Uh, Ms. May? Could I talk to you for a moment?”

            “What? Oh. Yes. What was his name again, Rachel?”

            “Tom.” She smirked at me. “Go ahead.”

            I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter who got the credit—as long as I got the check. “What happened? The day you bought that necklace?”

            “I don’t—I took one of those bluejacket pills, and it’s kind of fuzzy.” She snorted. “They’re supposed to improve your memory.”

            “They’ve been recalled,” I told her.

            “I told you about taking those pills, mom,” Ginny said.

            “I know, I know.” She shook her head. “I remember seeing that necklace, and then . . . I guess I remember being in the back of the store. They were arguing, the two brothers. Something about my purse. I didn’t have my purse.” She paused to sip some water through a straw. “And they had to do it at the right time. I don’t know what ‘It’ was, but it had to be the right time, and they couldn’t do it because they didn’t have my purse. Then—they had it, they put the necklace on me, and they tied me up, and then Rachel came in and—” She rubbed her eyes. “I’m pretty tired.”

The necklace lay on a tissue next to her water—star-shaped, with an opal in the center. It looked pretty.

“Can she rest?” Ginny looked at me.

            “Of course.” I nodded to Rachel. “We’ll be in touch.”

            In the hall a tall woman accompanied by a uniformed Skokie cop jabbed a finger at me. “Hey! You Tom Jurgen?”

            I stopped. “That’s me.”

            “Detective Grayson.” She pointed down the hall. “Let’s talk.”

            The visitors’ lounge was mostly empty. We sat in a corner. The uniformed cop stood like a sentry, a hand on one hip.

            “Those guys aren’t talking,” Grayson said. “So why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”

            I took a deep breath. “The Silk brothers have been financing their entrepreneurial ventures through human sacrifice.”

            The uniformed cop looked at me, then went back to keeping guard.

            “Every couple of years when they need money, or something, they kidnap a victim and sacrifice them on a full moon to a demon. Umal, I guess his name was. He’d supply them with gold so they could start up a new business. This time they took Veronica May. She was already disoriented from the bluejacket root when she picked out the necklace. It’s a talisman, some kind of magical catalyst, but she didn’t know that, and neither did the clerk who sold it to her. She put it in her purse and forgot about it, but it must have been important—the brothers needed it for the sacrifice. But they threw it in the dumpster and set a fire before they realized they didn’t have it.”

            I scratched my ear, wishing for a drink of water. “They held onto her, maybe trying to find a substitute talisman. But the purse didn’t burn up in the fire, and Ginny May had it. So I had her call them to sell it back. They were pretty eager—they gave her more money than her mother paid for it in the first place. So now that they had it, they could do the ritual. Rachel and I stopped it. Along with Bevers, the security guard.”

            “Mostly me.” Rachel smiled. “Tom helped.”

            I thought about punching her—lightly—for all the times she’s punched me. Not always gently. But even a light tap would get me into trouble. So I just nodded. “Yeah. I helped.”

            Grayson sighed. “Well, we’ve got them with a knife and a woman tied up on the floor in the middle of a star—”

            “Pentagram,” the uniformed cop grunted. 

            “Yeah, that.” She glared. “So I guess the rest of it is all background that won’t make it into court anyway. But what the hell is it about this necklace? That’s what they kept asking about. When they said anything at all.”

            I shook my head. “A talisman, like I said. A catalyst for whatever they wanted to do. Maybe they used something different every time, like dice at their game shop, or something at their bar. In rituals like these, sometimes the victim has to pick the talisman, and that’s how they choose who to sacrifice.”

            Grayson looked at me with narrowed eyes. “It’s a little scary how much you know about stuff like that.”

            “Welcome to my world,” Rachel said.

            She stood up. “I’ve got your number. I’ll call you if we need more.”

            “I live to serve.” We stood up with her. “Have a good night.”

            “Yeah.” She scowled. “Come on, Lombardo.”

            He grinned at me, then followed her down the hall.

            I turned to Rachel. “Home.”

            “Yeah.” She frowned. “My turn for dinner, right? We’re getting carryout.”

            “Sounds like a menu.” I took her hand. “Which way’s the parking garage?”

 

“How have you been sleeping?” Dr. Neral asked a few days later.

            I nodded. “Better.” I’d slept through the first two nights after rescuing Veronica May. Last night I’d dreamed of being lashed to a tower in a thunderstorm, thrashing in a hail of freezing water. Then Rachel woke me up. I was in the shower.

            “Good.” He made a note. “How are your cases?”

            “There was one involving a human sacrifice.” I waited. “I managed to prevent it.”

            His sigh of relief was audible. “That’s good.” Then he leaned back. “Let’s talk about your stress level in general.”

            I tensed. “That could take a while.”

            Dr. Neral glanced at the clock behind me. “We have an hour.”

            I nodded. “All right.”

 

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