Читать книгу The Anointing - Aubrey Smith - Страница 6

Slore dialed extension 487. When the clerk answered the phone “Intelligence,” he asked for Sergeant Valdez. Mike may be my only friend. For sure he’s my best friend, Slore thought as he reminisced, waiting for Mike to answer the phone. Mike and Tim Crawford are the two men I can count on when the going gets tough. Either one of them is worthy of walking through the valley of the shadow of death with, he thought.

“Hey Slore, what can I do you for?” Mike chuckled into the phone. “I’m a busy man, but I guess never too busy for an old gringo like you.”

“I need a favor. Have someone pull all the information you guys have on Santeria and brujas working in the barrio. Also, I need whatever you’ve got on those grave robberies in the county. You know, the ones out near Bulverde. Can you check with the sheriff and see what they’re doing on those cases? One more thing, I need whatever you’ve got on any voodoo and devil worship activities.”

“My word, partner. Is that all? You’re talking about a full day’s work for two clerks.”

“I realize that, but you know what I’m into over here,” Slore pleaded.

“Okay. Sure, I’ll try and have it together by this afternoon. By the way, how are you coming on those homicides? I hear there was another one today. Alamodome Murders. That must be one sick cockroach to sodomize and butcher those kids the way he has.”

“So far we don’t have much. Maybe your reports will shed some light on something. Thanks Mike, I owe you one.”

“You don’t owe me anything. Hey, I don’t know if you heard the call on the radio, but there were some more graves dug into last night at Wetmore. We’re going to be working with the sheriff’s office on these. I just got the call and I’m on my way out there now. Do you want to go?”

“I’ll meet you in the parking lot in about five minutes.”

Slore mentally noted the time for his daily log when he stepped out of the air-conditioned building. It was going to be another hot day. It was already in the nineties and it was only ten forty‑nine. Valdez was waiting in an unmarked car and had the motor running with the air conditioner going.

Mike Valdez was a good officer. They had both graduated from the Police Academy the same year. Their careers somewhat paralleled each other’s. Mike was a big, tough man. Slore laughed as he recalled the day one of the instructors had demonstrated the proper way to use a stun gun. Mike had watched the demonstration intently. When the instructor had completed the explanation, Mike told him he didn’t believe the gun would put anyone down. After very little coaxing, Mike volunteered to test the stun weapon. At first, the instructor let Mike put the two hot points to the heel of Mike’s hand. That caused some reaction, but only enough to curl his fingers some. The instructor explained that the stun weapon needed to be close to the bones to have much effect on the nervous system. He then thanked Mike for his help and told him to sit down. But poor Mike couldn’t leave well enough alone and did not realize the instructor was setting him up.

He kept on about the gun not being able to knock anyone down until the instructor told Mike, “You can do whatever you want with the gun, but don’t ever put the gun up to your chest or rib cage and fire the electrodes.” By this time, Mike was all primed to show off a little and he prodded himself with the stun gun in the center of his chest. In half a second, he was flopping around and dazed on the classroom floor. Slore remembered that Mike fell like a cow at slaughter. Mike had never lived it down. Now in every new academy class, they talk about the sergeant who knocked himself out with a stun gun.

Slore and Mike went way back together. They had started the first grade together when they were six years old. Slore thought it funny how school ties could bond two people together for a lifetime. Lieutenant Tim Crawford also graduated with Mike and Slore from the same high school and then the police academy. These three men had a long history of good times. Tim and Slore sometimes worked out together. He was Tim’s best man and threw the bachelor party before Tim’s wedding. They still teased Tim about the party cake. When it arrived, everyone was in their best drunken party mood. In came a cake, about four feet high, carried by four huge men just like the movies. When they set the cake in the center of the room, Tim, thinking there would be a beautiful stripper would pop out of the cake, began to shout, “Take it off, baby.”

What a shock he had when out jumped a male stripper. The dancer started to put moves on Tim and everybody was rolling with laughter until Tim floored the poor guy.

Crawford was valedictorian of their high school graduating class and academy. Now he was Lieutenant, over the Narcotic Division. He had done well for himself.

“You’re quick this morning,” Slore said as he slid into the front seat beside Valdez.

“We gotta roll. The sheriff’s office is just getting to the location. I want to get there before they mess it up. Ever been in a grave before?” Mike continued, “I’m a little superstitious myself. You know how Mexicans are. It’s in our blood.”

“I’m not too crazy about this myself,” Slore answered. “Do you know if they opened the coffin or just dug into the grave?”

“I was told this was one of the three coffins that has actually been opened. There were two at Bulverde last month. All the rest were just dug into, but the coffins were not actually opened. In the two at Bulverde, they got into the coffin by cutting a hole big enough to reach in. They took a finger and hand bones. I assume this one will be the same.

“I was also told that Texas Ranger Hitchcock would be out there this morning. I guess people take messing with graves seriously.”

Time galloped as the brown Ford sped along Wetmore Road. When they saw several patrol vehicles parked along the roadway ahead, Slore pointed to their right and said, “There they are.”

The cemetery was an old semi unkempt, fenced in, piece of land about two miles outside the San Antonio city limits. Once, this had been the small community of Wetmore. It had been a place for trains to refill with water on eastbound schedules. Today, there was one general store about a quarter of a mile farther down the road.

When Valdez and Slore approached the group of men, they noticed they were the only two dressed in suits. Most of the men were deputies in uniforms and straw hats. Hitchcock had not arrived yet.

They recognized Captain Flores of the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department and walked straight toward him.

“What you got, Captain?” Mike asked.

“Hello, boys. I don’t know yet. We’re about to open the coffin lid. Slore, you want to get in on the head’s end and I’ll pull on the other?”

At first, Slore thought Flores was kidding. Then he grew anxious with the realization that the captain was completely serious.

“What’s the matter with your deputies, Flores?”

“They’re all afraid, I guess. Come on, let’s get it over with,” Flores mouthed, stepping into the grave.

“Put on those rubber gloves and let’s do it.”

Slore felt queasy as he slipped on the surgical gloves. He knew the gloves came from the jail. He recalled that jailers carry them for searches at the jail. Moving a little slow himself, he walked to the head of the grave and looked down. The grave robbers had dug the entire coffin area open. He could see that the lid was bent on one corner. From where he stood, he could not tell if the lid had been opened or not.

When he stepped into the grave, he felt a strange rush of mixed emotions and tried to place his feet on the edge of the coffin so he could keep his footing and not slip into the casket, when the lid came up. Several deputies and Valdez stepped back as Slore and Flores bent to lift the lid.

“Are you ready, Slore?” Flores asked loudly as if to warn the spirits of his presence. “This may not be too pretty.”

Slore didn’t say anything. Reaching down, he took a deep breath. With a yank the lid squeaked and groaned its way up. What they saw would remain a part of each man’s memory for life.

The inside of the casket looked like something from a Halloween spook house. The lining was torn and falling loose. Parts of it were decayed and gone. Lying dressed in a, now dirty and ragged, red print dress were the bones of what was once a woman. The bones were pretty much as they should have been, except that the head was gone. Also, Slore observed the fingers on her right hand were gone. There was no smell. When he reached to pick up a wad of red, he realized it was part of the woman’s gray hair with a clump of skin and dried blood hanging where it was once attached to her head. Quickly, he pulled his hand back and stepped out of the hole with the help of Mike Valdez.

“Ugh, um,” Mike breathed low.

Hitchcock had arrived and was standing beside the two city officers. “Not a pretty sight,” he spoke in a reserved way. “We’ve been running this through the analyst’s computer at Ranger Headquarters and we may have hit on a link.”

“What link?” Flores asked from the grave.

“Seems that all of the graves that have been dug into contained people who died in July,” Hitchcock replied.

Hitchcock was a big man, tall and rugged. He walked a little stooped as he moved away from the grave and along the cemetery road.

“Just a minute. We may know another thing,” Slore called, as Hitchcock continued to walk away from the open grave. “Yes, this grave fits the cult patterns I read about in the library this morning.”

Hitchcock turned and started back toward the waiting officers. As Slore continued to speak, Hitchcock approached while writing in his notebook. Slore pointed out, “This is the seventh grave on the seventh row. There must be some combination of three sevens in any Santeria grave robbing. Seven is their special number. In this case, the person died in July, the seventh month. She was laid to rest in this grave, which is the seventh grave on the seventh row. Three sevens!”

Slore continued to address his spellbound audience. “There have been several other robberies across South Texas during this month, July, the seventh month. In every instance, there is some combination to add up to at least three sevens. In some cases, the town had seven letters in its name like Sabinal. I talked to Sheriff Smith in Uvalde County this afternoon and they’ve had a grave dug into. From what he told me, I think the MO will match this one exactly. Three sevens. I’m also sure that all of these grave robberies happened on Thursday, during the dark of the moon. This really amounts to Wednesday night after midnight. The dark of a moon on Thursday is special in this religion.

“They take the middle finger from the body or the head, if they can get it.” Slore pushed on, telling the mesmerized officers standing in a semicircle around the open grave, “The thieves use the bones in their worship and for spells or charms. The head is supposed to have the most power and could easily bring ten to twenty thousand dollars if they sell it.”

The rest of the morning passed quickly as the officers went about the job of reconstructing the crime scene. The grave robbers left behind some shovels and a flashlight, which were dusted for prints. Casts were taken of some tire tracks and pictures were taken of two jogging shoe prints found in some loose dirt around the grave. When everything was completed, the okay was given to the backhoe operator to cover the grave. The cemetery was checked for any other evidence and to be sure no other graves had been violated.

Hitchcock had not stayed long and was the first to leave.

“That’s the way Rangers are. All show and no go,” Valdez remarked about Hitchcock. “Why didn’t you tell me what you knew as we drove out?”

“I wanted to be sure before I opened my mouth and put my foot in it. I just needed to see for myself. Let’s go. Captain Flores, we’re out of here. Glad I don’t have to be the one to tell the family about someone stealing their mother’s head.” Slore meant it. “That’s what captains are for.”

They waved goodbye to the deputies, then climbed into the brown Ford and drove away.

“I told the clerks to have your reports ready by the time we got back. Hopefully they will,” Valdez said as they drove back into the city.

Slore barely heard Valdez. He was mentally gasping for breath. He felt a tingle start in the end of his fingers and proceed up into his hands. A sense of panic stirred just under his skin. There it came. The blackness followed by a twinge of red and then a rush of foul air. This time he managed to stay upright by holding onto the door handle and Mike Valdez never knew something was short circuiting in his friend.

Mike turned off the freeway and headed toward the station, unaware that Slore had drifted away to a place where demons dwell.

“Let’s get a bowl of caldo at Mi Tierra,” Mike said for the second time.

“What?”

“Let’s get lunch at Mi Tierra’s,” Mike repeated.

“Okay.”

Valdez pulled the unmarked police car into the back parking lot behind the café. “Lunchtime.”

A silent nasty anger was building within Slore as he ate lunch. Valdez assumed the grave robberies had taken away his friend’s usual good mood. They ate with little conversation.

Deep behind that brown door in the inner recesses of Slore’s mind, plans to destroy Henserling were being drawn and redefined. The war room was a busy center of activity as he went through the motions, the facade of eating lunch. He had a new compelling purpose for his life. He thought, I’ll take a sword and cut Henserling’s yellow-eyed, snakehead off so I can breathe again.

The hate and rage that had been held in check pushed and pulled to be released. Training and protocol helped him to control these emotions for a while, but the feelings that were held dormant this past twenty‑four hours began to bubble and boil. The evil of a witch’s cauldron was being stirred, and the fire that heated this evil brew was being stoked by Slore’s memories. The pot boiled hot as goop splattered on the floor and ran between the cracks of his sanity.