Chapter 18

Dashiell stepped into the dark room and the lights automatically flickered on. The room was clean, but it appeared unused. For all he knew, he was the first person to enter the archives since the Bureau had been closed.

He always thought of it as the Bureau, even though most people meant the FBI when they used that shorthand. But he figured it served them right. After all, even though the official designation for his former employer was the BOI, most feds couldn’t resist making a play on the nature of what was investigated, and referred to it as the Bureau of the Occult, or to be cute, BOO.

He made his way through the spacious room, looking around for the reference materials. Once he located them, he took his time trying to locate the volume he wanted. But at last, there is was: “Deities and Demigods.” He pulled the large volume from the shelf next to the more popular Monster Manual, and headed to a large table.

He flipped open to the index and started looking for cross-references to tigers. There were at least 30 different Gods and demigods listed. He decided to skip over the Gods and move right to the demigods and demigoddesses. This still left over twenty five deities. Several were Tiger-Gods, while others were only tangentially related to tigers.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated.

He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the display. It showed the number for Metro P.D. That meant it was either the captain calling to check up on him, or Regina with something to tell him. Either way, he decided to answer the phone.

“Aldridge here.”

“Hey Dash.” It was Regina’s voice. “How goes the investigation?”

“Slowly. And I’ve come up with some disturbing possibilities. How about on your end?”

She sighed heavily. “You know, you’d think it’d be easy to return information that I asked for, and not a bunch of extraneous crap. I sent out a bolo to all the local M.E.s asking for information on bodies with missing extremities, and I get all sorts of random bullshit. Like the idiot up in Baltimore who sent word of the body with the missing liver.”

Something in Dashiell’s brain sat up and took notice.

“Wait, what?”

“Huh? I said we got word of a guy with a missing liver. Why? Is that significant?”

“I’m not sure. Tell me about it.”

There was the sound of shuffling papers as Regina looked around on her desk for the file.

“Let’s see….Abe Goldman, 57, killed in his home last weekend, liver had been removed.”

Dashiell’s face creased in thought. “When last weekend?”

“Uh…Friday night.”

“What time on Friday?”

“Let’s see….best the M.E. can tell is sometime around 8 p.m.”

That seemed right. He was right on the edge of something. Like a name on the tip of your tongue.

“Regina, did the Fairfax M.E. send you the report on the car accident on the 273? The local Coroner told me about it.”

More shuffling papers. “Yeah, here it is. Captain Todd Stevens. What about it?”

“Captain? Was he in the armed forces?”

“No. Says here he flew for Delta Airlines.”

The thought that had been percolating in Dashiell’s subconscious for the last several hours sprang fully formed into his mind. It was almost too absurd to be believed. Could someone really be trying that? His eyes scanned the list of demigods on the table in front of him and he found the name he was looking for.

“Which way was he headed when the accident happened? In towards the airport, or away?”

“Uh…westbound. Away from the airport.”

Words flashed through Dashiell's mind. "Here I have a pilot's thumb, wracked as homeward he did come."

“Clever girls….” His voice was soft, as if he was speaking to himself.

“What was that Dash?”

“Regina, I’m almost positive our cases are connected. And that means we’re looking for women. Three of them.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ll explain when we meet, Regina.”

“Meet where?”

“The Folger Shakespeare Library.”

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Chapter 17

Dashiell approached a door with a frosted glass window, the words “Restricted Access” emblazoned in large letters. As if this wasn’t enough, the two armed guards on either side, members of the Library of Congress Police Force, ensured that no one entered without a proper pass.

Dashiell reached into his jacket and pulled out a slim black wallet. He flipped it open. Inside was a badge that identified him as a former government employee with clearance to enter this portion of the Library. The guard on the right looked over the ID, nodded and then turned to the door. He pressed a code into the keypad next to it, while the guard on the left pressed his thumb into a sensor on his side.

With an audible click, the door opened, and Dashiell stepped through. It closed behind him and he heard the locks engaging. He nodded to the two guards on this side of the door, before looking at what lay before him.

He was standing in a well-lit hallway, florescent bulbs in the ceiling reflecting off the hospital white tile floor. This portion of the Library looked different than the public sections. The hallway was wide. Three people could easily walk abreast down it, without brushing shoulders. Running down either side of the hallway were large oaken doors. Each door was made of a dark, solid oak, and each had a keypad over the handle.

The doors had no nameplates. Instead, the only indication of what lay inside were the official seals that marked the doors in gold paint. The first few doors carried the familiar symbols of the cabinet departments. A cursory examination would show that, starting with the first door on the right, and then alternating across the hall, the cabinet offices were in order of creation, from the oldest, State, to the newest, Homeland Security.

He walked a good way down the hall before he came to the door he was looking for. It was on the left. He briefly reflected on the fact that the secret archives of his former employer was on the sinister side of the hall, and knew that the former Director would have had something to say about it.

He looked at the seal. He hadn’t thought about it in nearly seven years. It would have been both familiar and disturbingly unrecognizable to the average citizen. It looked much like the Seal of the Department of Justice. But where the eagle on the DOJ seal was sitting atop a shield, this eagle was sitting atop a pentagram.

This was the seal of his former employer, the Bureau of Occult Investigations.

Dashiell punched in a seven digit code, then turned the handle.

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Chapter 16

Dashiell shook himself out of his reverie. Dark thoughts lay down that path and he wasn’t sure he could afford to entertain them. Then again, he was even more worried that he couldn’t afford not to. The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that he was right.

And while his subconscious had yet to cough up whatever it was that had started nagging at him in the coroner’s office, it did tell him that this seemed to fit. He just hoped it would spit out whatever it was chewing on soon. He had a feeling he didn’t have a lot of time.

He shook himself again. Okay – he was fairly certain whoever he was looking for was in the process of calling up a god. An incredibly risky and stupid maneuver. But then, smart people didn’t go for a life of crime. So now, the question was, which god? If Dashiell could figure that one out, he might get a jump on finding whoever they were.

Well, he could rule out Western religions. The God of Christianity and Judaism, not to mention Islam, didn’t come when summoned. He came when He felt like it, and contacted the individual or individuals in question. Of course, that was true for most full Gods. Some would deign to respond, when summoned. But most preferred to be the instigators of any contact. And then they’d provide a much easier way to get in touch than this. No, this much power was designed to get a god’s attention.

Maybe they were just going for a demigod. That was much safer, could be handled by three witches or warlocks without too much risk to the casters, and was much more likely to respond to a summons.

Of course, that list wasn’t exactly slim. But he had a big clue. It would be a demigod linked to tigers in some way.

He looked around the section of the Library he was in. Well, there would be some books here, but mainly pop cultural stuff. For the sort of details he needed, he’d be better off with the work the Bureau had done. Much more authoritative.

So he got up and headed even deeper into the building, headed for the parts not open to the public.

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Chapter 15

Dashiell entered the building and showed his Library of Congress ID. He then headed back into the depths of the labyrinthine library. The place smelled of an odd mixture of old paper and furniture oil. He headed to the room that contained the B section of the call numbers. That’s where the books on magic and superstition were located. If he struck out there, he always had his government ID that would get him into the more restricted section, where the Bureau’s old texts were kept.

He studied the symbolism of the tiger and didn’t like what he found. In India, the god Shiva was known to wear a tiger skin when in his aspect as the destroyer. It was this aspect of Shiva that Oppenheimer invoked when he saw the first atomic bomb – I am become death, shatterer of worlds.

Could whoever he was looking for be trying to conjure up a God? That would explain the effort to keep the knife pure. That was the sort of power that would require purity in the harvesting of ingredients.

But summoning forth a god, while possible, was extremely difficult and even more dangerous. In fact, it was not something that could or should be tried alone. So perhaps he was looking for more than one culprit.

Suddenly, something clicked in his mind. Of course. He had seen marks of three candles on the ground at the zoo. He had assumed that they were three separate focus points to control male, female and tiger cubs. Apparently, he’d been only half right. Those candles had been used by three separate people.

This had its own comforts and fears. It was comforting to the extent that it meant that he wasn’t dealing with a truly powerful warlock or witch. That had been bothering him ever since the zoo.

On the other hand, if he was correct, it made this new theory that much more possible. Witchcraft was a funny thing. Witches and warlocks, working together, were capable of much greater feats than either one working alone, even if they were working on similar spells. When you started messing around with mystical numbers, it got even more powerful. There was a reason that Charmed had three main actresses. Circles of 3, 7 or 13 witches could bring about truly powerful magic.

That was why the Bureau always made sure it had 273 witches or warlocks available in D.C. at all times. When combined, this circle, made up of all three mystical numbers, could do anything. But it took the organizing force of a government to bring together that much magical ability.

If it were Dashiell, he wouldn’t even risk calling forth a god with less than 7, and he’d prefer 13. And even then, he’d stick to the more benign end of the pantheon. Calling up anything more serious, he’d want at least 21 or 39, a combination of two of the three numbers.

To do anything less would be insanity and risk loosing a destructive force on the plant that nothing could stop. Ever since the Administration closed down the Bureau, the agents had scattered to the four winds.

Dashiell had the sudden sinking feeling in his gut that he couldn’t afford to get this wrong. He had to stop whoever was doing this before they could complete their work.

But how?

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Chapter 14

It was nothing Dashiell could put his finger on, and he knew from long experience not to try and pin it down. It was more like his subconscious was sending him a message that something was coming down the pike, and to keep his eye out. After chewing on it for awhile, his mind would spit out the answer. For now, he’d just have to let it marinate.

“Just reading your report here Doc. I see you found some fibers?”

He nodded. “Yeah, a couple of dark threads. The zookeeper was wearing lighter colors, so they were inconsistent. Probably came from the killer. But they seemed pretty generic. Still, you can never tell. There may be something in the weave or the dye. Those guys at the lab can do amazing things these days.”

“That’s true. I guess I’ll keep my fingers crossed.” He then crossed his fingers.

The Medical Examiner looked a little askance at him, but shrugged. “Is there anything else I can do for you today, Mr. Aldridge?”

Dashiell shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. If you end up identifying the object that was used to kill the zookeeper, give me a call?”

“Of course.”

Dashiell headed out of the autopsy room and signed out with the young man working the front desk, and he stepped out onto the streets of Southeast D.C. He reflected again upon the choice to place the Medical Examiner’s office here. It made for shorter trips for most of the bodies that the M.E. would have to deal with.

He headed up to the Metro and tried to decide on his next move.

He now knew that whatever the tiger had been intended for, it wasn’t any mere folk remedy. That would help narrow down his research. But at the same time, that was the problem. Almost all of the uses for tigers were traditional cures. In fact, nothing in his books at the office contained anything that would fit. In that case, his course seemed obvious.

He grabbed the Metro to Capital South and headed north, to the Library of Congress.

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