Protector of Children - 16. Chapter 16: Whittaker

Leroy

I was the one who put two and two together to make four, and once more to make eight. As soon as I did, I translocated into Daddy’s office.

Nomos

Leroy popped in and sat in the seat beside my desk where I was being Captain Ben Marlberg of the Chicago Police Department.

My first reaction was, “Leroy, don’t you have school today?” Leroy had enrolled in a college program designed for working people: classes on Saturdays, on-line material available the rest of the week. Today was Saturday.

“I know . . . I know I’ve got to get a standard education and a legitimate degree,” Leroy said. “But I also know that there are things . . . ."

His voice changed. It dropped nearly an octave.

“I know that we have to look at this.”

I nodded. When I took Leroy for my own, I knew that the boy was more than he seemed. I knew that Leroy would find Authorities and Attributes: powers he had demonstrated when he first translocated and then learned to talk mind-to-mind with both the gods and a few, select mortals. Just what he would become was still in question, but I knew it would be something good. He had affirmed that through his actions many times over.

I hoped that he hadn’t been in a classroom when he had disappeared. And, I was rather glad he was attending college so I didn’t have to explain his absence to a public school administration: Dear Principal Jones, my son was absent because he is becoming the avatar of an ancient god (which one is still to be determined), and today translocated from Mrs. Prunella Smith’s classroom to my office.

Leroy heard this thought, and giggled. Yes, my eighteen-year-old son, former juvenile crime lord, giggled. I recognized it as a sign of the trust he had given me: he could not have giggled when among his former peers. In fact, he’d probably not giggled until he met me. He probably hadn’t cried, either. I was glad that now he could do both.

“What do we need to look at?” I asked. I cast my mind over the past few days of intelligence briefings, meetings, and reports. Nothing current came to mind.

Leroy handed me several printouts. I scanned them briefly and then looked up. “What’s the connection?” I asked.

“The connection is that they’re not connected,” he said. “They are all reports of old crimes, of evidence of old crimes, of old bodies, yet they’ve never been officially connected.

“And, they’re all crimes against children.”

Leroy’s voice was level, and calm. Still, I could sense the tension when he said that. “You think?” I asked.

“I think there’s a connection,” he said. “And, I think there are probably more.”

I looked more closely at the sheaf of papers, trying to tease out what had alerted Leroy.

Takai

The bones had been discovered two years ago during excavation for a new shopping center. The argument between the foreman and the backhoe operator hadn’t been documented, but was easy to imagine.

“What the hell you slowin’ down for?” the supervisor yelled over the grumble of the diesel.

“That ain’t right,” the operator said. “Them’s bones. An’ we’re supposed to stop . . . in case it’s an old Indian graveyard or somethin’.”

Dammit, the foreman thought. We’re already three days behind schedule. “What you mean, bones?”

“See for yourself,” the operator said. He grabbed a shovel and jumped from his seat.

Even the foreman couldn’t deny what the shovel unearthed. The rib cage was too much like what he remembered from his eighth grade science textbook. “Damn! Okay, I’ll call the cops. You,” he said to the backhoe operator. “You stay.” He spoke to the crowd of workmen which had gathered. “Everybody else, you’re off for the rest of the day.”

The forensic anthropologist who supervised the collection of the bones had a degree from an unaccredited university—and a friend who was a political ward boss. He asked the backhoe operator a few questions, and then drove away in his city vehicle while others put the bones into plastic sacks and loaded them onto the coroner’s wagon. The others were part-time employees, people without political connections, whose hours had been cut once again so that Cook County wouldn’t have to provide health-care benefits under Obamacare. The workers were indifferent, therefore careless, and missed important clues.

“Male, age about 14, racial profile likely oriental,” the medical examiner’s voice spoke into the microphone and echoed against the white tile and stainless steel of the autopsy chamber. “Cause of death cannot be determined given the paucity of remains. Skeleton is generally intact save for the hyoid, which is not uncommon, and the right hand. It is assumed that the recovery team missed the right hand.”

“Will you take a DNA sample?” the ME’s assistant asked.

“Not for some kid who doesn’t match a missing person report,” the ME replied. “Too expensive.”

Hansel

Sven and his brother fought fatigue as they piloted their fishing boat toward the dock. They’d been on the lake and awake for nearly thirty-six hours. Their catch, iced down in the hold, would fetch enough to pay for the diesel they’d burned, and a few dollars more.

Ivan pointed to a black dot in the water. “Garbage bag,” he said.

“Bring it in,” Sven said, and turned the wheel. Ivan nodded. The brothers had a healthy respect for the environment without being classified as tree-huggers. They would dispose of the trash bag on the dock without adding to the pollution already fouling the lake. Ivan pulled a boathook from the outer wall of the pilothouse, and snagged the bag. He swung it onto the deck of the Leena, where it burst open to reveal the body of a child.

Sven and Ivan had gutted fish since they were children. That might have inured them to corruption and the stench of death; however, what came from the black bag was more than either could stand. They both retched over the rail until their stomachs were empty, and more. Then, Sven picked up the microphone that would connect them with the Coast Guard.

The body was taken from the Coast Guard docks to a coroner in South Chicago where a different ME performed a perfunctory autopsy. His report did note the evidence of trauma to the boy’s anus and the missing right hand.

Deacon

“Hey Deek!” Matthew called. “You coming to the revival meeting?”

Deacon nodded. “Sure. You be there?”

Matthew nodded. He had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday, which was also the seventh anniversary of the day on which he’d found Jesus: “Fourteen years old and seven years saved,” he told people when they asked how old he was.

Matthew’s body was not found until twelve years later, when a crew replacing a collapsed storm sewer dug through an accumulation of silt in a gulley. The backhoe operator had been slow to react, and no one thought anything of the missing right hand.

Yukio

The pinched faces of the children were always the same. Carbon dioxide from thousands of coal-fired power plants and giga-gallons of burned petroleum products had raised the average temperature of the globe by 2.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Not much, but enough. Fresh water from the melting glaciers of Greenland and ice pack of the Arctic Ocean had interrupted the thermohaline circuit. The Labrador Current no longer warmed England and Europe. Crops failed.

At first, the world was able to absorb this setback: food aid from Brazil and the United States, purchased with the last gold reserves of Europe, held off starvation for another year, at least for some people. In the USA, a lone science writer, working in the library of the university, tried to connect the events to those of the Little Ice Age; DHS censored his scripts.

Hunger stalked the big cities of the USA, too. Yukio accepted eagerly the man’s offer of food, even though he knew where it would lead. Yukio’s body was dumped in an alley and was mauled by dogs before being discovered. The missing hand was considered unremarkable.

Whittaker

As a child Malcolm had shivered to tales by Poe and his ilk, tales of ghosts, murder, and body snatchers. Now, as Parish Priest of St. Anne’s, he had responsibility for a two hundred year old cemetery and he no longer believed in body snatchers or in ghosts.

Nevertheless, he shivered briefly when he saw a boy standing by a grave. The evening sky had darkened, like a purple-gray. The white shirt and socks of the boy’s parochial school uniform seemed to glow in the twilight.

“Who are you?” Father Malcolm asked. “And why are you here?”

“My name is Whittaker,” the boy said. “There used to be more to it, but I’ve forgotten the rest.”

The boy gestured to the grave, “I’m here looking for my friend. The stone says that he’s here, but I can’t find him!” The boy put his hands on his face and began crying.

Father Malcolm looked at the stone. Reginald _____, October 17, 1990—July 15, 2004 Beloved son of . . .

Father Malcolm looked from the stone to the boy who stood by the grave, but the boy was no longer there. Kids! Some sort of prank, Malcolm thought, and went back to the rectory where hot tea and supper waited.

Two weeks later Father Malcolm locked the front door of Saint Anne’s and the gate of the cemetery. In the old days, the church stayed open through the night. Now the risk of burglary and the near certainty of homeless people looking for a warm, dry place to sleep meant that the church was open only during daylight. And then, an armed guard stood at the entrance.

Father Malcolm trudged toward the rectory and saw the boy. He still wore only shorts and a white shirt, despite the chill. The last time he appeared he seemed to glow in the twilight. Tonight, he still glowed; but the sky was dark. The boy brought his own light. Father Malcolm stopped and stared. He pulled the boy’s name from his memory, and then walked toward him.

“Whittaker? My name is Father Malcolm. I am a priest. Please tell me how I can help you? Would you like some supper?”

The boy smiled. “You know I cannot eat, but you don’t want to think that. Thank you.

“Can you help? I’m looking for Reggie. I’ve found his grave, but I cannot find him. Please? Can you help?”

Father Malcolm realized that he could see through the boy. He experienced a sudden shifting of his reality, an epiphany. He’s a ghost, and he is real. I am not mad; therefore he is real.

“Will you come inside? I can look up your friend in the parish records, perhaps they will tell us something. Perhaps they will tell you where to start looking.

“When did you die? Might you be in the records, too? Perhaps I can find your last name for you.”

The boy’s lips did not move, but his voice echoed in Malcolm’s mind. “I am not here. I died when I swam into the lake until I could swim no more, and drowned. I meant for that to happen. My body became food for the fish. I know that my soul is damned.”

Father Malcolm shivered when he read of Reggie’s death—the boy had been murdered. The parish records were sketchy. Father Malcolm found more on the internet and in newspaper archives. Not only had Reggie been murdered, he had been sexually assaulted. The newspaper articles had not provided a name, likely because the victim had been a child; however, seminary training in exegesis had made Father Malcolm something of a detective. He studied newspaper records; he checked other newspapers, including tabloids. He called the retirement home of his predecessor as Parish Priest, and spoke to him. Then, he called the police department and asked to speak to a homicide detective.

There was a click as the call was transferred. There was a voice: young, male, and black. “Homicide.”

Father Malcolm explained. “I am the Parish Priest at St. Anne’s. There’s a grave in the cemetery, the grave of a young boy. I have reason to believe that there is something suspicious about his death, and that the remains may have been tampered with sometime in the past.”

Father Malcolm paused, listened, and then said, “No, this is a Catholic church. You know what that means.” It means that if I heard this in the confessional, I do not have to tell you. Of course, I didn’t hear it in the confessional, but I’d rather not tell you I heard it from a ghost.

The priest hesitated, unsure of what he had heard. “Yes, or course. But, can you really get an order of exhumation that quickly?”

Father Malcolm hung up the telephone. Tomorrow. They’ll be here with a court order and motorized equipment. I’d better tell the Diocese, they’ll want to have someone here to observe.

After calling the Diocese, Father Malcolm dithered, cursed himself for a fool, bundled against the damp wind, and went to Reggie’s grave. Whittaker was not there.

The storm that last evening’s chill and damp had foretold blew in the next day. Snow flurries dropped from leaden skies and were tossed about by fickle winds. Father Malcolm offered coffee to the priest who had been sent by the Diocese.

“What’s this all about?” Father Jerome asked. He spoke abruptly, with little warmth and less courtesy.

Reluctant to lie, but more reluctant to speak of ghosts, Father Malcolm explained what he’d learned: that there was something unusual about the death of a parishioner, and that a grave might have been desecrated.

“If you’re so worried about desecrating a grave, why did you call the cops?” Father Jerome asked. “They’ll bring in a bulldozer and tear up half the cemetery.”

Before Father Malcolm could answer, the housekeeper came to report that there were policemen and workmen at the gate, and would someone please let them in.

Father Jerome was wrong: the police brought not a bulldozer but men with shovels, tarpaulins, and wheelbarrows. The man who seemed to be in charge, a youngish man in civilian clothes with a badge clipped to his belt, introduced himself and a black teenager.

“I’m Captain Marlberg; this is my son, Leroy. He’s studying police procedures as part of his schooling. If you have no objection, he will accompany us.”

Father Malcolm looked to Father Jerome, but he wasn’t paying attention. Father Malcolm nodded. “You may not want to be present when the coffin is actually opened,” he said to Leroy.

The boy nodded. “Thank you, Father, but I have to start learning somewhere.”

The workmen dug until they cleared earth from around the steel outer coffin. Then they erected a tripod over the grave. When they had attached straps to the handles, they began cranking. In minutes, the rusted steel crypt was sitting on the ground beside the grave. One of the workmen took up a crowbar and a hammer. He looked at Captain Marlberg, who nodded. The workman struck a blow with his hammer; then, another. When the lid fell off, he flinched, and turned his face away. And then announced, “No smell, Captain. I’m betting that it’s empty.”

He was right: the inner coffin held nothing but a satin pillow.

“There’s no impression that a body might have made,” Leroy announced. “If he was ever in the coffin it wasn’t for long. My guess is that he never was buried here, and that the coffin was always empty.”

“You think the coffin was closed even for the funeral?” Captain Marlberg asked.

Leroy nodded. “Yes, sir. His death was brutal. It’s likely that the coffin was sealed before it left the funeral home.”

He turned to Father Malcolm. “Would your records show which funeral home?”

“Of course, but so would city records,” the priest said.

Leroy giggled, coughed, and turned it into a chuckle. “Father, you have no idea how messed up the city’s records are.”

Ben

Leroy and I spent the afternoon at the computer, trying to tease out more information. After supper, we cuddled on the couch. Neither of us was paying any attention to what was playing on the television. “We have enough to subpoena the funeral home’s records, and perhaps start interviewing people who worked there,” I said.

“It’s been several years,” Leroy said. “A couple more days won’t make any difference as long as the priests keep their promises to say nothing about this. And I’m in the mood for a game of connect-the-dots.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Not that!” Leroy said. “The case files! They’re all boys, ages between twelve and fifteen. Probably all violent deaths.”

“We fed those parameters into the search engine, and got hundreds of results,” I said as I looked at Leroy. “You saw something else, though. How are they related?”

Leroy grinned. It wasn’t a happy grin; it was a predatory grin.

“With the exception of Reggie, and we can’t know about him, they were all missing their right hand. That’s the most obvious connection. I’ve run that through the computer but didn’t get any more hits. Doesn’t mean there aren’t any; the records are so messed up. That’s what comes from the city’s hiring policies: political spoils mean hiring slugs from the Wright and Roman camps—leeches and takers who do as little as possible—and awarding I.T. contracts to the highest bidder who has a friend on the city council.”

“Why the missing hand?” I asked. I knew the answer, but wanted to see if Leroy had come up with it himself. He had.

“If it were both hands, I would think an attempt to conceal identity, especially in the older ones when DNA sampling was still crude. But only one hand? It’s a serial killer pattern. He’s taking souvenirs.”

“He?” I pounced on Leroy’s assumption.

“Yeah,” he said. “Until we know differently, it’s a he. That, however, is a hunch. It makes sense, though.”

I nodded. “Okay, first dot: male serial killer, missing hand. What’s next?”

“Boys, nubile, who likely suffered violent deaths. One—Reggie—and one without a name from South Chicago are known to have been sexually assaulted. The others? Autopsy reports are incomplete or remains too old to determine. Assumption: pedophile.”

I nodded. “Dot three?”

“This one’s pretty fuzzy,” Leroy said. “Location and timing. The number we have aren’t enough to give us a geographic or temporal pattern. There’s bound to be one, though. If we could find other cases in the data. I want to do that, first. That’s why I want to put off going public by questioning people at the funeral home.”

Kevin

I was surprised when Nemesis called and asked if I could come back to Chicago, but Nemesis told me that Captain Marlberg was one of us and needed my help. I translocated to a street corner near the municipal building where Captain Marlberg’s office was and started walking. I’d not taken more than twenty steps before I realized that a black boy was walking beside me.

“Hi, Kevin,” he said.

That frightened me. Not because he was black; two members of my old garage band were black, and so was one of the guys in the new band at Refuge. What frightened me was that mortals weren’t supposed to be able to see us, and I didn’t see the glow around him that marked him as a god. I must have shown my fear.

“Hey! I didn’t mean to frighten you, but I knew you were coming to see my daddy and when I felt you translocate I figured I’d show you the way.”

By this time, I’d stopped walking. People moved past us. The stream of traffic parted before it reached us, and reformed after it passed, as if we were a rock in the flow of a river. The boy pulled me against the wall of a building to get us out of the way.

“Your daddy?” I blurted.

“Yes. My Daddy is Nomos or Captain Marlberg. Even invisible you’d have a hard time getting to his office, so you probably want me to escort you.”

“Your daddy?” I wasn’t being very intelligent.

“Yes. I’m Leroy, and he adopted me after Nemesis . . . later. We have a crime to solve and you’re supposed to be the guy to help.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll follow you.”

The guards all saw Leroy confirming my observation that he wasn’t a god. He showed them some sort of card, which a couple of them ran through scanners before allowing him to pass. They ignored me, of course; I just followed Leroy into the office of a man who had the proper glow. Nomos.

Leroy explained the problem. The city’s records had been computerized by so many different people over so many years it was nearly impossible to make the kind of search he needed. Different file formats, some of which were no longer supported by the extant software; different systems of keywords and document identification, none of which had any user manuals or other documentation. I sat at the terminal behind Nomos’ desk, and concentrated.

After a while, I turned and rubbed my eyes. “Okay, I think I’ve gotten to the root of the problem. I’ve got a program running that will convert everything into searchable dot-pdf files. When that finishes, some time tonight, another program will kick in and start indexing every word in every document. Every word except the trivial: prepositions and conjunctions for example. That will take longer and the results will have to be stored somewhere off the city’s servers. There’s not nearly enough room on them. I’ve borrowed space on some servers in a salt mine in Kansas. By tomorrow morning, you’ll be able to search that database and link results to the appropriate document. I’ll show you how to structure your searches. Any chance of Chicago-style pizza for supper? I haven’t had any decent pizza in weeks!”

Leroy

I was starting to like this kid! I had watched him work. Daddy had given up after two hours and left the office, locking the door behind himself. No one would enter in his absence. Most of the time, Kevin seemed just to stare at the screen. He’d type a few lines, and stare some more. I figured he was thinking. I hoped he was thinking and not falling asleep. Something told me that whoever had been killing these kids was still around, and I wanted to stop him before he killed, again.

“Pizza? Absolutely. May I ask some other guys to join us? I’m thinking Nemesis and James.”

“Who’s James?”

“Um, kind of my boyfriend?” I said. “He’s mortal, but—”

“So are you, right?” Kevin said. “There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, some of my best friends . . . I mean . . . I’d better shut up while I’m ahead. If I’m still ahead.”

I laughed, and then smothered the laugh. It wouldn’t do for someone to walk by Daddy’s office door and hear laughter.

“Yes, I’m still mortal, although Dike says I’m getting powers. And James is mortal, but I think he’s going to be important, somehow. And just how did you think we were going to get out of a locked office, anyhow? I can translocate, too.”

“Oh.”

I let Daddy know what had been done and what we had planned, and texted James and Nemesis who were in my best-friends group. A month ago, I didn’t have any friends, just a bunch of hoodlums who were afraid of me. Now, I have friends, and two best-friends who are also my boyfriends. I wonder if Kevin . . . ?

We had a great time, together, at the pizza place. Kevin especially. He rolled his eyes in exaggerated pleasure at the first bite, and then settled down to serious eating. Nemesis invited Kevin to spend the night with him. I looked at James, who said that his daddy, Hermes had said he might spend the night with me. If I wanted. James knew that Daddy and I were lovers, and was sometimes reluctant to intrude. I’m pretty sure the kiss I gave him made it clear it wasn’t an intrusion.

The next morning, Daddy woke us early so that I could go to work with him. Kevin popped in in time to ride with us. “You’ll have to allow people to see you,” Daddy told him. “Too confusing, otherwise. James? I called your daddy. We’ll drop you off at school.”

Daddy took us to his conference room and Kevin booted up the computer, there. “Programs have both completed; let’s see what we have.”

He brought up a screen with search boxes and Boolean connectors. “You never told me what you were looking for.”

“Try boy, missing hand.” I said.

“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me the background, and let me determine the best search terms? You’re the subject matter expert, and I’m the computer geek,” he said to defuse the anger that I had almost felt.

So I told him. “Eight boys, pre-teen to mid-to-late-teen, dead under suspicious circumstances over a period of twenty years. Seven sets of remains found without the right hand. One set of remains is missing entirely; that one and one other are known to have been sexually molested before being killed. I have names of four; location at which remains were found for all but the one whose remains are missing. I want to know if there are any more, who are the four whose names I don’t know, and what besides their age and the missing hand connects them. I think that’s all.”

Kevin let out his breath; I don’t think he was aware he’d been holding it. “Sunny-beaches,” he whispered.

“Give me the names, locations, everything you have,” he said. “This is going to take more than a simple search. Oh, I’ll do that, too. It may give us a place to start. But I’m going to need a crawler.”

“A what?”

“A crawler. A program to do a search, and then modify the search terms as it finds information. I’m not going to write a sophisticated one. I’ll watch it work and tweak it as necessary. What are the names? I’ll start, there.”

The simple search gave us the names of twelve more boys whose deaths were suspicious and whose bodies had been found without a right hand. There was also a list of several hundred boys who had gone missing during the same twenty-year period. Kevin’s crawler got its first hit when it linked one of the missing boys to a set of remains. I wrote the information down and took it to Daddy.

The crawler got another hit, five years before the earliest in my files. Kevin expanded the search, and found three more sets of remains. The crawler found the names—probable names—of three of my four unknowns, and I passed that to Daddy, too. Then, the one I was waiting for but feared the most: the crawler gave us information on a body, found in Lincoln Park, a body that was almost certainly Reggie, the boy whose body was missing from St. Anne’s.

At three in the afternoon, Kevin shut down the crawler and logged off the computer. “The end,” he said. “At least, based on the records available to us, the probability of another hit is vanishingly small. I lost track somewhere around noon. How many?”

I pulled two pages off the printer and scanned them. “Thirty sets of remains, one of which is probably Reggie, the one that started this investigation. All thirty are missing a right hand. All thirty are boys between the ages of twelve and seventeen. Average age, thirteen. He likes them young. Twenty positively identified; four tentatively identified; six unknown. I hope the newspapers don’t get hold of this,” I said.

“They will,” Daddy said. He’d arrived in time to hear my summary. “We need to bring in some more resources, we need to do some exhumations, and we need to start a temporal and spatial mapping. May I see the list?”

I handed him the printout Kevin had made. “Damn it! This was going on right under my nose!”

“Do we have to go through channels?” I asked. “What about Dike or Nemesis?”

“Yes, we do,” he said. “Go through channels, I mean. That priest? Father Jeremy or something? He told his archbishop who told someone who told a reporter for one of the tabloids. There’s a copy of the paper on my desk.”

The tabloid managed to put the worst possible spin on the story: the killer wasn’t just a pedophile, he was a necrophile and had stolen the body to continue his “vile assault.” Daddy’s name was prominent in the article, as was the demand that something be done.

“I have a press conference scheduled for five o’clock. That gives us about an hour to decide what I’m going to say. What do you think that should be?”

I felt really good that Daddy had asked that, and really scared that I wouldn’t live up to his expectations. I dove in, anyway.

“Make sure they know that you discovered this problem and that the exhumation at St. Anne’s was not the first step in the investigation. Then, chastise the tabloid for breaking the story, since the killer now knows that the police are looking into the missing body and will be reopening the investigation into his death. We’ve found Reggie’s body. At least, Kevin found one which we’re pretty sure is his. It was buried in the city’s Potter’s Field after being found in Lincoln Park.”

“And when they ask if there are more missing bodies? When they ask if there are more unsolved sex-crimes? Because they will, you know,” Kevin said.

“Tell them that it was a responsible priest who had to keep the sanctity of the confessional while performing his civic duty who gave you the clue about the missing body. Chicago still has a large Catholic population, at least, a large population who was raised Catholic. You don’t want to get them angry at either you or the priest,” I said.

“Then tell them that of course, there are unsolved sex crimes, and that the police department must balance day-to-day crime prevention with solving current crimes and that resources to devote to cold cases are small, but aggressive. Make the cold-case unit sound like overworked heroes—and they will become just that.”

“And this list?” Daddy asked.

“You can’t release it all at once. The first one I gave you?” I asked. “The missing person that Kevin linked to a set of remains?”

“Already turned that over to Cold Case,” Daddy said. “They’re going to get an exhumation order. They should be able to get DNA and see if it matches the family. They’ll also check the usual—dental records, for example—but nowadays, everyone expects DNA testing. We’ll do the same thing for Reggie.”

“So, you have one that’s already in the open,” I said. “Add that to your press briefing. In fact, start out with that. Make it sound as if the press conference were called for that reason rather than to respond to the tabloid.”

I felt Daddy’s pride in what we’d done and what we’d said. “Whatever you do, keep it secret that we think we’ve found Reggie,” I said. “I’m not sure why, but I think we should.”

Kevin and I watched the press conference on closed-circuit TV in Daddy’s office. He was dynamite! He started out by announcing that a fifteen-year-old missing person case was about to be closed by the cold-case unit, and praised that unit for their tireless efforts. He mentioned the exhumation at St. Anne’s and praised the priest, there. He glossed over the missing body, suggesting a mix-up at the funeral home might be to blame without, however, saying anything that the funeral home might consider actionable. He concluded by saying that the cold-case unit was working on things that were much more serious than the speculations of tabloid journalists.

He took questions from several serious journalists, and simply ignored the fellow from the tabloid. Like I said, dynamite!

Kevin had been playing with Daddy’s computer during the press conference. When Daddy came back to his office, Kevin offered to show us what he’d found.

“It’s a time-lapse of the crimes we know of. They’ll appear on a map of the city as a red flash. I don’t see a pattern, yet. But there’s still a lot of work to be done.” He pressed the enter key. A calendar in the bottom corner of the screen started moving forward from twenty-five years ago. Pinpoints of light flared and faded, seemingly at random.

Daddy saw the first pattern. “They’re all in the spring: January through April.”

“What do you suppose he does the other eight months of the year?” I asked.

“Whatever it is, it’s not in Chicago,” Daddy said.

“Kevin? Can you put your crawler on state police, other states, FBI, DHS data bases?” I asked.

“We can access Illinois and surrounding states as well as FBI from here,” Daddy said. “But not DHS. They’re very uncooperative with anyone. Demand information but never release anything.”

“Not to worry,” Kevin said. “We passed a coffee house on the way here. They all have WiFi, and I brought my laptop.”

“You’re going to get into DHS database from a coffee house?”

“If it’s connected to the internet, even through proxies, I can get into it,” Kevin said. “If they’re getting information from Captain Marlberg, then they’re connected to the internet.”

It took several days for Kevin to compile information from state databases. He fine-tuned his crawler until it was so efficient he turned it loose on every state in the continental USA. Between doing states and the FBI, he put another crawler to work. This one looked for geographic coincidences that might link the crimes. There weren’t a lot of hits, until he expanded the search radius and discovered that most of the bodies were found within a mile of a church.

“What kind of church?” I asked.

Kevin poked keys, and waited. A table appeared, and numeric accumulators started counting up. “Fundamentalist and evangelical, by about two standard deviations,” Kevin announced.

“Can you cross reference the names of the churches with articles and advertisements in their local newspapers?” I asked.

Kevin typed some more, and waited. “Lots of hits,” he said, watching another counter.”

“Let’s see some,” I said. We scrolled through a dozen, then another dozen. Revivals, they all had revivals with a visiting preacher. And, it was the same preacher every time. Bingo!

“Where is he, now?” I asked.

“That’s too easy,” Kevin said. “He’s scheduled to start at the Heavenly Assembly in South Chicago on Monday.”

“Today’s Friday. When will he arrive in Chicago? Where will he stay? And where is Daddy?”

Twenty five years, averaging two revivals a month, and one boy per revival. One hundred and fifty boys. Once Kevin knew where to look, he found more links. A lot of the boys, although not all of them, had been members of the congregation of the church that had held the revival. The obituaries of those boys read like photocopies of one another with phrases like, “found Jesus at an early age,” “twice-saved,” “active in his church youth group,” and the one that created the opportunity, “earnestly desired to be a minister of the gospel.”

It was easy to put together the common scenario. An earnest, brainwashed boy asks the traveling evangelist, “How do I get to be a preacher like you?” The evangelist arranges a private meeting, perhaps telling the boy to say nothing to anyone else, lest others intrude. The boy meets with the evangelist and learns what Hell is like before dying.

Speaking of dying. The police would take care of the evangelist. The computer evidence was circumstantial, but knowing what it showed, it wouldn’t take the cold-case unit any time at all to find physical evidence. We had one more thing to do.

Whittaker

I’m not sure where I was; I was never sure where I was except when I was at Reggie’s grave. And I’d never heard anyone calling me since I died. But there was a voice, one I had heard only once before, and it demanded my presence. I followed it, and found myself standing in the apse of St. Anne’s. Seven people stood in a semicircle facing me. In the middle was the priest I’d talked to in the graveyard. Beside him was a guy who looked like an old London policeman. Holding the cop’s hand was a black kid in blue jeans. There was another guy who looked like a teacher. Beside him was a kid wearing—not much of anything. There was a young man wearing jeans, black T-shirt and black leather jacket, and a kid in school clothes.

I shouldn’t be here! I can’t be here! This is holy ground! It was hard enough to visit Reggie’s grave, and should have been impossible for me to enter the church.

The priest—Father Malcolm, I remembered—spoke. “Whittaker, in the name of God I welcome you to this place. We are here to tell you that Reggie’s body has been found, and placed in the grave that was marked for it. We are also here to summon Reggie, for I have been told that he is as lost as are you. You see before you . . . .”

The priest choked, looked at the others, seemed to find strength, and continued. He gestured toward the school teacher. “You see before you Garreth, Protector of Children; his son, Nemesis, god of Retribution; and Kevin, one of the Norns.”

He looked at the London cop, and said, “These are Nomos, the spirit of Law and his son, Leroy. You also see—” he looked at the guy in black— “you also see Death.” The guy in black winked at me.

“Hi, Whittaker,” he said, and I knew where I’d heard his voice before. I had heard it on the lake the night I had drowned myself and it was the voice that called me to this place, tonight. “Please don’t be afraid. We’re here to help you.”

Death spoke his name and Reggie stood before me. He looked just like the last time I saw him: school uniform shorts and shirt, and a book bag slung over his shoulder.

“Whit!” he said, and stumbled into my arms.

“Um, Reggie? We’re not alone,” I said.

Reggie looked around. “We’re in St. Anne’s, but who are these people?”

I looked at Father Malcolm, who nodded.

“Um, Reggie? It’s been almost ten years,” I said. “You died. So did I.”

I pointed to the guy in black. “He is Death. That’s Father Malcolm; he’s the priest here, now. The others? They’re friends.” I hugged him tighter and wouldn’t let him push me away, although as soon as I said Father Malcolm I felt his fear.

“It’s okay, Reggie,” I whispered to him. “Father knows we love each other. So do they all.”

Father Malcolm spoke. “Whittaker? I must ask you a question even though I know the answer. Do you love Reggie?”

I didn’t have to think at all. “Yes, Father, I love him.”

“Reggie? Do you love Whittaker?”

Reggie looked at me and whispered. “Is it really okay?” I nodded.

“Yes, Father, I do love him.”

“In the name of God, by the gift of St. Peter, my blessing and the blessing of the church upon you both,” Father Malcolm said. “And what has been so joined, let no one part.”

It took a minute to understand what had happened. Father Malcolm had joined us not in traditional marriage, but in the same sort of bonds, and proclaimed them to be holy and blessed by the church. That meant that Reggie and I were linked!

“No!” I said. “You can’t do that! I’m going to hell; Reggie can’t go there! He belongs in heaven!”

I was angry, until Death spoke.

“Neither Heaven nor Hell are what you were taught.” He looked at the priest. “Sorry, Father, but you know it’s true.”

The priest nodded. “When I accepted that Whittaker was a spirit, I had to question a great deal of what I knew to be true. When I understood how strong was the love that tied him to Reggie’s grave, I had to question even more. I accept who you are and the special knowledge that is a part of that.”

The guy in black stepped from the semicircle, and hugged Reggie and me. “You are both going to a good place, a place where you will be happy and where you can catch up on the love you missed, and where you will live in peace until you are called upon.”