I knocked on the door a little harder than I usually do. It opened a few seconds later. “Y-yes?”
I held up my card. “Olivia Siegel? I’m Tom Jurgen. I called? It’s about your roommate, Marcy.”
Olivia let me in. Short, in her 20s, she wore jeans and a blue sweater. She looked me over nervously. “What’s going on? Like I said, I haven’t seen Marcy in three days—”
“Her parents hired me. She sent them some—disturbing emails right before she dropped out of sight.”
I looked over the living room. TV, books and magazines, empty soda cans, a cat box in the corner. “Three days? So the last time you saw her was Sunday?”
“Yeah. She left around two o’clock. She was meeting some friends. She didn’t say who.” Olivia fidgeted, uncomfortable. “Look, I already talked to a cop. This isn’t like Marcy, but I really don’t know—”
“Could I see her room?”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “I guess.”
She led me down a short hall to a closed door. “She doesn’t have a boyfriend or anything. Her parents hired a private detective?”
They’d called me late last night. David and Marian Pratt, in Oregon. The police weren’t taking the case seriously, they insisted. The cops didn’t care about the strange emails Marcy had sent them right before she disappeared. And they’d heard of me—my stupid tendency to keep my mind open about the strange and the supernatural when it reared up in the cases that found me.
The emails:
I’m going away for a while. There’s someone I have to meet. He’s calling me.
Mom, dad, I love you. I’ll think of you always.
Don’t worry, I want to do this. No one is making me do anything. Only Miskal can stop me now.
Disturbing, yeah. Two from Saturday night, the last one on Sunday morning, just hours before she’d left. She wasn’t answering her phone.
“We could come out,” David Pratt said, “but we don’t know what to do about finding her, except bother the police, and they don’t think it’s anything.”
“This just sounds weird,” Marian Pratt told me. “Who’s calling her? Who’s Miskal? I tried looking it up online, but all I could find was some stuff about demons and witches and black magic.”
That made my spider senses tingle. Okay, I don’t actually have spider senses. My girlfriend Rachel is psychic, but I’m just a P.I. who’s run into too many demons and witches and other supernatural stuff in my so-called career. This sounded straight up my alley, for better or worse.
“What’s Marcy like?” I asked them. It’s good to know something about the personality of the person you’re looking for.
A pause. Then: “Independent, I—” her father said, but his wife interrupted him. “Wild. Defiant.”
“Has she ever done anything like this before?”
“No,” said her father, but again Marian Pratt cut in: “In high school she stayed out all night many, many times.”
“A few times,” David Pratt said.
“We grounded her for a week. Then a month.” She sounded like a judge pronouncing sentence. “She just kept doing it.”
“I wish she’d stayed here,” David Pratt said. “But she was dead set on getting away—”
“She wanted her ‘freedom,’ she said.” She sounded like she disapproved of the concept.
“Please find her,” Marcy’s father said.
So here I was at Marcy’s apartment, interrogating her roommate, about to search her bedroom.
“Her parents were concerned that the police weren’t doing enough,” I told Olivia. “And I have some experience with cases like this. The bedroom?”
The blinds were drawn, and Olivia flipped on a light. The bed was neatly made. No underwear or clothes on the floor. A clock radio was blinking on the bedside table next to her pillows, along with a small lamp, a pile of markers in all colors, and one medical textbook. Marcy was a nurse, and so was her roommate.
Inside the top drawer I found some prescription bottles, mostly expired, mostly antibiotics and antidepressants. Some old receipts for mail-order purchases, a plastic bag full of weed, and, okay, a purple sex toy that Olivia didn’t see and I didn’t examine.
The closet was full of clothes, of course, along with a box of older textbooks and two suitcases, which suggested she hadn’t packed for a trip. The dresser drawer contents were equally ordinary—shirts, slacks, sweaters, socks, underwear, another toy shoved in back under a book of erotica and a half empty box of condoms. An envelope with $500 was taped to the bottom of one drawer. Emergency money that she hadn’t taken with her.
DVDs and a small TV sat on top of the dresser, along with another pile of books. Textbooks, bestsellers, one Stephen King, and an older book on top with no title on the spine.
I pulled it out. The book was bound in leather or a good imitation, and the title on the cover was in a language I didn’t recognize. Latin? Sumerian? Klingon?
On the back was a stamp:
Lair Books
Books, charms, candles, crystals, and more
The address was in Northbrook. We were in Evanston.
I showed the book to Olivia. “Have you seen this?”
She shook her head. “No. What is that? I don’t—we’re roommates, but we’re not really close friends. I mean, we work at the same hospital, and I try to be friendly and everything, but . . .”
I opened the book, flipping through the pages. Halfway through, on page 71, I found a piece of paper folded over. Like the cover, the words in the book weren’t in any language I recognized, and neither was the writing on the paper. It looked like a poem, in black pen, with some words crossed out and some parts just blank, as if the writer didn’t know what he or she wanted to say.
I held it next to the open page. It looked as if the writer had been copying a passage, but trying to make changes in the wording.
I gave the paper to Olivia. ”Is this her handwriting?”
She scrunched her eyes. “Maybe? Let me see something.” She ran away, and I renewed my search.
Olivia came back with a Post-It note. “This is a grocery list from the garbage.” I could see tomato sauce on one corner. I held it next to the page from the book.
“Looks the same,” Olivia said. “The way she makes the T?”
“Yeah.” I gave her the Post-It, put the page back in the book, and turned to see if I’d missed anything.
“What’s she like?” I asked. Her roommate might have a different take on Marcy than her parents. A more recent one, anyway.
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know. We aren’t really best friends, like I said. She didn’t have a lot of boyfriends that I ever saw. We work in different departments, so we don’t see each other at work much. But she seems kind of, I don’t know—bored.”
“With her job?”
Olivia shrugged. “With everything.”
Sometimes that’s a sign that people want to make a radical change. Like running away. I nodded. “Well, thanks for your help.”
“I hope she’s okay.” She led me to the door. “Will you call me? Or have her call me, or something?”
“Absolutely.” I only hoped I’d have good news.
Out in my car I called Rachel. My girlfriend. She’s psychic, and helps me with my cases, except lately she’s been busy, studying psychology on top of her regular job as a graphic designer.
“What?” She sounded frazzled.
“Do you think you could look up whatever you can find on a demon called Miskal? Or maybe it’s not a demon, I’m not sure.”
“Sure,” Rachel snapped. “I’m not doing anything except writing a paper on ethics in patient relations, designing an experiment with mice, redesigning a website, and, I don’t know, trying to remember if I’m hydrated enough. I’ve got practically nothing to do.”
“Great, thanks. Love you.” I hung up before she could call me a jerk, although I think she managed to send it telepathically.
Lair Books was in a small town square with trees and sculptures in the center, between a Mexican restaurant and a sunglasses shop. A high, broad awning cast a shadow across the entrance, and crystals and candles glowed in the big front window. The door’s sign said COME IN . . . IF YOU DARE, over a schedule of their hours.
I dared, opening the door and stepping inside.
The shop was dark, with thick rafters overhead and Oriental rugs over a hardwood floor. I waited for my eyes to adjust until I could make out tables and shelves holding candles, jewelry, incense sticks and holders, various oils, bronze lamps, bottles of holy water, Harry Potter wands, and other “magical” items. An assortment of knives and daggers hung in a glass case. Racks of robes and T-shirts stood next to a small dressing room door. A doorway in back opened into a room crammed with towering bookcases along each wall.
Two women were looking at candles on a shelf. “This one?” She held a dragon with a wick coming out of its tail. “You like it?”
“I don’t know. This one?” The other one pointed to a unicorn. “I like the color.”
At the counter a man with a gray beard in a black T-shirt sat on a stool, looking at his phone. “Help you with something?”
“This book.” I set it on the counter. “It came from here. Do you remember selling it?”
He opened the front cover, turned it over and saw the stamp on the back, and then opened it to the title page. “Let me get Warren.” He leaned forward and pressed a button underneath the counter. “I’m Leo, by the way. I own this place.” He looked embarrassed to admit it.
“Tom Jurgen.” I showed him a card.
“Private detective?” Leo’s eyes narrowed nervously.
“The girl who bought this book has disappeared.” I showed him one of the photos the Pratts had sent me. Marcy had short black hair and wide blue eyes, with a small nose and a sharp chin. She was 5’10”, although you couldn’t see that from the picture—tall enough to play basketball, although her parents said she hated sports and preferred dancing.
“There’s a piece of paper with something she wrote tucked inside.” I opened the book and showed it to him. “I’m just trying to find out if it has anything to do with where she went.”
He looked at the paper, confused, and shook his head. Then a young man emerged through the door in the rear. “Yeah, Leo?”
“Warren? Can you help this guy with a book?” Leo seemed relieved to hand me off.
“Sure.” Warren was Black, in his late 20s, in a denim vest and jeans. “What are you looking for?”
I held out the book. “A woman named Marcy Pratt bought this here. Do you happen to remember her?” I showed him her picture.
He nodded. “Yeah, I know her. Not her name, but she’s here a lot. Come on.” He pointed to the back room.
The two women came to the counter with the dragon candle and some incense. “We’ll take this.”
I followed Warren as Leo started ringing up the sale.
High bookcases lined the walls in back, looming down over thick armchairs. David set the book on a small table in the corner, next to a coffee urn. “Help yourself,” he said, then started walking down a row of bookcases, one finger up, until he found a gap.
“Right here.” He tapped the edge of the shelf. “She bought it a few days ago or so.”
“Good memory.”
“It’s not too busy back here. Most people want enchanted amulets and rings of power, not books.” He grinned. “Plus, she’s cute.”
“You’ve seen her here before? A lot?”
He thought. “A couple of times for a few months. I noticed her. Didn’t hit on her or anything, if that’s what you’re asking.” He frowned. “I have no idea where she is if she’s missing, all right?”
I nodded. “I’m worried it’s something else.”
“Like what?”
I glanced around at the books. “Demons.”
I expected him to laugh. Instead he sighed. “We got a lot of strange people in here. Some of them believe in demons. Sometimes I’m not sure they’re wrong, you know?”
I knew. “What kind of stuff was Marcy interested in?”
“Witchcraft. Wiccan for Beginners type stuff.” He pointed to a shelf near the doorway. “She was here the other day with Dr. Cody, he was pointing out some books for her.”
“Doctor? From the hospital where she worked?”
“No, no.” Warren shook his head. “He’s a professor. Lance Cody. Teaches religion and folklore and stuff at the college.”
“What college? Northwestern?”
“Hastings College. It’s outside town. Small, liberal arts, business, that kind of stuff. He comes in here sometimes to look over our books for this folklore class he teaches. That’s what he says, anyway.”
“Does he come in with Marcy a lot?”
“Just that one time a few days ago, like I said. That I know about, I mean. He was helping her find something, I didn’t hear exactly what she was looking for. But she bought that.” He pointed at the book.
“What’s the name? What language is that?”
“It’s, uh, Aramaic, I think. The Dead Sea Scrolls language? It means . . .” He looked at the cover. “’Beyond the Columns,’ I think.”
“You read Aramaic?” I asked skeptically.
He laughed. “I remember it from the catalog. I just had to look at the letters to be sure.”
I picked it up. “So he works at the college, you said?”
“Yeah. He lives in town, I think. Not far. He usually walks.”
“Thanks.” I took a step toward the doorway, then turned back. “When you said, ‘That’s what he says,’ about books for his folklore class—what did you mean?”
Warren hesitated. “Just—he special orders some weird stuff. I can’t always make out the titles, they’re in all different languages, but some of them are about ancient rituals, and the pictures have—well, witches being burned at the stake, and other stuff. Gross. Doesn’t seem like school material, you know?”
All too well. “Thanks again.”
No comments:
Post a Comment