“Ro, as pretty as you are, I wouldn’t put up with your mouth if I didn’t like you, okay? I think you’re smart and funny and nice to be around. So think about that the next time you get mad at me.”
She didn’t say anything. A minute later her phone sprang to life. Ben knew she probably had a million missed calls and a million texts. She didn’t make any phone calls, but she began to attack the texts.
He wouldn’t know from experience, but he supposed that once in a while it was nice to be in demand.
Chapter 12
Though Ben rarely spoke to Ro at school, she did show the following Saturday to help in his research. This time there was no banter back and forth and no hike in the mountains afterward. She was all business and that was fine with him. In the weeks that followed, she proved to be very helpful. That she was a crime junkie made it easier. Ben no longer felt so ghoulish. They became a good team.
The previous month, he had started searching for murders that occurred near the equinoxes. The first spate of material that he had pulled up mainly referred to a chain of gyms. Then he plugged in “vernal equinox” and “autumnal equinox” and pulled up thousands of hits. Some were names, some were scientific articles, but there were more than a few blogs about things that go bump in the night. He read and he learned. For instance, when the star Algol (known as the Ghoul) was in proper alignment, it was key to mischief and mayhem. He pulled up charts and graphs that reminded him of the Zodiac Killer. And he also got more than a few book titles—Blood on the Equinox, The Equinox Killer, Equinox at Daybreak. There were lots of conspiracy theories and murders—even some terrible mass murders—but nothing that fit the particular patterns Ben was focused on. The vernal equinox seemed to generate more iniquity than the autumnal equinox, although both were popular themes in crime fiction.
The solstices turned out to be different animals. Ben got the conspiracy theories, along with the titles of novels and movies, a few made-for-TV specials, and a couple of true-crime segments.
But Shanks was right.
The solstices appeared to attract a lot of ritualism and witchcraft. Some of the witchcraft was benign—Wiccans celebrating mother earth through dance, song, and orgiastic rituals. But then there were the Goths, and when they were involved, the tenor went from bacchanalia to satanism. Some of the rituals were completely silly. But lots of what he read was disturbing, with rites that included murdered cats. When the talk about animal sacrifices morphed into human sacrifices, it was just plain frightening.
He continued on, compelled by justice, he told himself, but it was also compulsion. He and Ro met every Saturday for two to four hours depending on how much homework she had. She was also studying for the SATs, and whenever she needed math help, he was more than happy to oblige, getting away from all the ugliness. But often they worked straight through until Ro looked at her watch and said she had to head to cheerleading practice, leaving him alone with his witches and warlocks and lovers of Lucifer.
A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, just as their session was reaching the three-hour mark, Ben got a beep on his computer.
Ro looked up from her laptop. “What was that?”
“Hold on.” He clicked a few keys and navigated until he found the site. “A new case.”
“What case? Something related to Ellen?” A pause. Ro got up and read over his shoulder. “Where is this from?”
“The Knoxville News Sentinel.”
“A murder in Knoxville?”
“Cosby.”
“Where is Cosby?”
“Tennessee. A girl . . . Jamey Moore . . . seventeen-year-old . . . disappeared two months ago . . . shit. She was abducted on September twenty-first.”
“Yikes. That’s right near the autumnal equinox.”
“Yes, it is.” Ben read aloud. “‘She was from Knoxville . . . possibly a runaway . . . a body was discovered two days ago near Cosby, Tennessee, in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.’”
“I feel faint, Vicks.”
Ben whipped around. Ro was sitting on the bed, sweating. “Jeez, you’re white.” He ran to the kitchen to get some water. When he came back, her head was between her knees. “Drink.”
“I can’t get up without my head tingling.”
He massaged her back while she waited for blood to rush back to her brain. This was all his fault. “Enough of this horrible stuff. I’ll turn off the computer and we’ll go for a ride.”
“You can’t turn off the computer now.” She was still talking with her head between her legs. “This is like superimportant. Go back to the computer and tell me about it.” Slowly, she lifted her head up from her knees. She was still pale. “Go!”
He read the article for a third time, then a fourth. Ro sat up and said, “You know what this means. He’s gone through all the seasons.”
“I know.” Nausea crept into Ben’s stomach. “Ellen’s was the first, three years ago, the summer solstice, then came Katie’s disappearance on the vernal equinox, Julia Rehnquist was a year ago, the winter solstice, and Jamey Moore . . . right near the autumnal equinox. Four murders in three years. He’s completed a cycle.”
“He’s going to repeat it,” Ro said. “And this time he’s going to be more precise.”
As soon as she said the words, Ben knew she was right. He threw his head back, sweating and shaking, in a full-fledged panic. Haley would be fifteen next year. Ripe for the picking. Breathe in, breathe out. “It’s four murders in four locations.” He was trying to calm them both down. But he didn’t believe his own words. “Maybe if he repeats it, he’ll pick a new place. Somewhere he hasn’t killed before.”
“But where?”
“I don’t know, Ro. I don’t . . . since we don’t know what’s going on, exactly, let’s concentrate on what we do have.” A pause. “We have abductions in Knoxville, Tennessee, Berkeley, California, and Albuquerque and River Remez, New Mexico. The first two abductions were here. Then he went west of here. Then he went east of here.”
“You think he picked the places randomly?”
“No, I don’t,” Ben said. “But I don’t know what these four places have in common.”
Ro said, “They’re all close to mountains.”
“Yeah.” Ben nodded. “Good. Right. First point in common. All of the bodies were buried either in or close to state parks. Except Katie. We don’t know where she is officially, I’m thinking she’s probably somewhere in the Sandias. If this monster picks a new place, it’s not going to be in the plains states.”
“Unless it’s the Ozarks,” Ro said.
“Fuck!” He pounded his fist on the desk. It made Ro jump. “What am I missing?”
“How far is Cosby from Knoxville?”
He typed the cities’ names into the computer. “As the crow flies, forty-one miles.”
“How far is it from Berkeley to Mount Diablo?”
Again, he tapped the keyboard. “This site isn’t giving me anything for Mount Diablo. Let me try Alamo.” He made some adjustments. “Sixteen miles from Alamo . . . nineteen miles from the town of Diablo. Let me see if Google Maps . . .”