Recall bound, p.13
Recall Bound, page 13
AZAZEL.
Beneath the word was a symbol. It resembled an A and a V intertwined with a line bisecting them and extending past them. Each endpoint was capped with a circle.
Ace Smith looked at Ray.
"Azazel," Ray said as he read the word.
"A pleasure to meet you, sir." The demon Azazel offered Ace Smith's hand to shake.
Ray ignored the hand. "It's your name?"
"Yes. And now that you've said it out loud, I can enter you. Don't worry; it won't hurt."
Ray looked down at Azazel's outstretched hand. "No."
"Oh, come on, Ray." Azazel smiled. "It'll be fun! You lost the guts to kill Chavez when that idiot djinni stopped you. Let me in and we'll kill him together."
"What are you?"
"I'm an angel."
"No."
"Okay, fine. Fallen angel if you want to get technical. What difference does it make?"
"Demon."
Azazel sighed. "Here's the deal. My man, Sean, is dying of cancer. It's stage four at this point. Terminal. He doesn't know it because I won't let him go see a doctor, do the chemo and all that." Azazel shivered in disgust. "End up a half-bald chimp with stringy hair? No thanks. Once I leave him, he's going to drop like a rock, but I need a place to land. You're my guy."
"Why me?"
"Why not you? We'll be a hell of a team. We'll kill Chavez and avenge Tasha, then we'll... I don't know, go pick up some hookers, do some coke, what's your pleasure?"
Ray shook his head.
"Do you even know what a demon is, Ray? A demon is what's raping your mother in hell right now. It's got red skin and big bat wings and a massive cock with bumps and spikes on it. Right now one of them is fucking your mother's ass, another her face. As for Tasha, well, she's-"
Ray bolted forward and stabbed the scissors into Azazel's neck.
"What the?" The demon staggered backward. It stabilized itself and then glared at Ray, furious, the scissor handle plunged deep into Sean Smith's body. Blood spurted out and down over its chest and belly. "You cannot resist me, you goddamn chimp."
Ray ran, but he was too old and too slow. The demon caught him at the door, placing his hand on Ray's shoulder.
Ace Smith's body collapsed to the floor.
Ray Westerhouse, now possessed by the demon Azazel, stopped and turned around. He found Sean Smith dead on the floor of his barbershop. Ray looked at his hands, opened and closed them, and smiled.
By the time Ty and Straw showed up for work, the shop was once again clean as a pin, the blood mopped from the floor. Sean Smith's body was dismembered into a dozen pieces, all of which were in plastic garbage bags in the dumpster out back.
"Hey, fellas," Azazel said.
Ty and Straw exchanged a glance. They looked at Ray's smiling face curiously. Ty said, "What's gotten into you?"
32
Sergeant MacDonald filled a Styrofoam cup with the bitter sludge that served as the precinct's coffee. He drank it quickly, scorching the roof of his mouth and burning his throat. The pain wasn't entirely unwelcome. The pillars of his constructed little fantasy world were crumbling. Jacob Duke, whom Dan couldn't help but consider a son, was on a rapid path toward putting himself back into an asylum or jail. Jacob's mother, for whom Dan had held decades of unrequited love, was now the subject of a multiple homicide investigation that Dan, himself, was leading. One of his detectives had been killed a few weeks back, another had been dismissed for taking money from criminals, and now a third was an insubordinate youngster Dan would have to treat like a child.
The sun had just risen on the hardened scab that was Detroit. The city was healing, Dan knew. He could feel it changing, could feel the desolation of his lifelong home retreating as new blood flowed in. But it was taking too long. Sergeant MacDonald figured he'd see the inside of a coffin before the scab finally flaked off and fell away.
He refilled his coffee and left the break room. The saying was that the early bird got the worm, but Dan felt less like a bird in these early mornings and more like a ghoul here to feast on the dead.
His office light was on, the door open.
Dan found Micky Embers sitting in the chair across from his desk. He had a manila folder on his knee, which was bouncing up and down.
"You're up early," MacDonald said, miffed to find the detective had beaten him to the precinct.
"Couldn't sleep, Sarge."
Dan set down his coffee and sat in his chair. He leaned back. "Let me guess, this thing with Elizabeth Duke?"
Embers nodded.
"You've been doing some digging?"
"Yeah."
"Me, too," Dan said. "And I'll go first if you don't mind?"
Embers nodded.
"They finally identified all the victims in the Northville Tunnels. Most of them were former asylum patients with nowhere to go, so they stayed at the tunnels long after the place had been closed. They were harmless. Used to run into them when I was on a beat, rousting high-schoolers out of the area. One of the victims was not a former patient. Gabriel Chase. You probably never heard of the guy. He was the right-hand man of Levon Ackroyd of Three Doors Financing before the real estate crash of ’07. Ring a bell?"
"No."
"The guy had a golden handshake clause in his contract, so when the shit hit the fan he was given a couple million to walk away. Crazy. Question is, what the hell was he doing down in the Northville Tunnels?"
"Yeah. Good question."
"Write it down," Sergeant MacDonald said. "We've got to pay Mr. Ackroyd a visit."
Embers wrote down the note.
"The other thing is this Harold Burger. Looks like he was more than just a guy with a snake fetish living on Heidelberg. Neighbors say he had visitors all the time. Never the same person twice. What do you make of that?"
"Drug dealer."
"Never the same person twice."
"That does sound odd, but, you know, maybe the neighbors aren't paying that much attention."
"Maybe. Or maybe he's running a different kind of business."
"Like what?"
"Take another note. We're going to go back there and find out. What do you got?"
Embers wrote down the note to go back and visit the Burger house. It was a note they didn't need, but knowing the kid was listening and actually doing what he asked made Dan feel better all the same.
"I did some research on that symbol." Embers placed the manila folder on Sergeant MacDonald's desk. "I know you're going to think it sounds nuts, but with what that Ace guy said the other day, and with what I found... well, I just don't know."
"What did Ace say?"
"You don't remember?"
Sergeant MacDonald remembered quite well. The note Ace Smith had given him had never left his pocket. He was afraid to read it again. "Why don't you refresh my memory?"
"What he said about using words to, I don't know, incapacitate someone? It seemed weird, but the dude was sincere."
"So?"
"So it seems like witchcraft or voodoo or something, you know? Combine that with what I found on that symbol..."
Sergeant MacDonald spun the manila folder to face him and opened it. The images they'd found and pieced together were on top. He flipped past them until he came to a printout that Embers had made. A Wikipedia article concerning the Archangel Jegudiel.
Saint Jegudiel the Archangel—also Jhudiel or Jehudiel (Hebrew: יהודיאל Yehudiel "laudation of God" or "God of the Jews")—is one of the seven Archangels in Eastern Orthodox tradition and in the eastern rites of the Catholic Church. She is often depicted in iconography holding a crown and a three-thonged whip in hand, which symbolizes reward from God for the righteous and punishment for the sinners. The classic Eastern Orthodox depiction usually shows her standing upright, holding a crown in her right hand, and a rod or staff in her left hand.
"What the hell is this?" Dan said.
"It's what that crown and whip mean. An angel. Jegudiel."
"So what are you saying, some religious nut is killing people in the name of an angel?"
Embers shrugged. "Maybe some religious nut believes he's an angel. With this Ace guy saying we should use an incantation to arrest a guy, maybe it points to some kind of cult?"
The fly once again hiding in Micky Embers’s collar had few facial features with which to express emotion. If it had, and if anyone had been looking at it, they would find it smiling.
33
"You coming or what?" Lori said. She had already taken Russ down to the idling truck and loaded him into the cab. She was supposed to wait for Jake down there, but he'd taken too long and she came back up to the hotel room.
"I can't lift it." Jake gestured toward his water pitcher. He gripped it by the handle, bent at the knees, and hefted it, but it wouldn't move. "I can shove it along the floor, but I doubt I can get it over the threshold."
Lori look down at the threshold beneath her feet. It was half an inch higher than the room's carpeted floor. She entered the room and went over to Jake. He looked helpless and sad standing above the pitcher. She pulled him close and hugged him, gripping him tightly.
He reciprocated the hug. They held each other for a moment, unmoving. She released him and bent over to pick up the pitcher. It came off the floor with ease. Couldn't have weighed more than five pounds.
Jake shook his head.
"Come on," Lori said. She carried Jake's pitcher down the hallway to the elevator. They rode it to the first floor and then walked to the parking lot where she loaded the pitcher into the truck. Oddly, as soon as she placed it on the back seat, next to Russ, the truck dipped on that same side. "What the?" She picked up the pitcher and the truck's suspension kicked back in. Experimentally, she got into the passenger seat and placed the pitcher on her lap. The truck didn't dip at all.
"This shit is crazy."
Jake never heard her. He was packing away his bag, careful around Russ's growls and warnings. He hopped into the cab to see her holding the pitcher on her lap. "What's up?"
"I'll just hold it."
"You don't want to put it in the back?"
"No. Let's go."
Jake eyed her curiously before pulling out of the parking lot.
The first hour of the drive to Calumet was quiet. They stopped for coffee and a fill-up at a gas station, got some breakfast—both for the humans and canine—and just enjoyed the peace of the open road.
Lori tapped Jake's hand. He looked over.
"I know this trip has something to do with your current wish," Lori said, "but you haven't said much else."
"I told you Lee Cotswald was once a copper baron in the U.P.?"
"I figured we were headed to copper country."
Jake nodded. "Come to find out there was a horrible accident that happened in Calumet around the turn of the 20th century. 1913 to be exact. Cotswald was ten years old at the time."
"What accident?"
Jake told Lori the details of the Italian Hall Massacre, adding that Chavez had told him to ask himself who really yelled “fire.” After the story, Lori sat silently, staring out the windshield. Eventually she turned to Jake and got his attention. "How come no one's ever heard of this?"
"It's been over a hundred years. I mean, think about all that's happened since then. The Great Depression, World War I, World War II, and that's all before 1950."
"And Lee Cotswald has been alive this entire time."
Jake nodded.
"They never found out who did it?"
"They suspect it was someone with the mining industry trying to break up the strike, but it's never been proven."
"You think Cotswald had something to do with it?"
Jake shrugged. "It seems like the type of thing you'd rather not remember, whether you simply survived the panic or you were the perpetrator."
"You think he was the one who yelled ‘fire.’" A statement, not a question.
"He was just a ten-year-old boy, but it's exactly the kind of stupid stunt a boy that age would pull, thinking he'd be putting a bunch of people out in the cold for a laugh. It wouldn't occur to him he might kill dozens of people. I don't think that sort of thing would occur to anyone."
The final leg of the trip passed in the same relative silence as the first. They drove along M-28 through the national and state forests of the U.P., cutting through the old growth hardwoods and evergreens and the constant scents of pine and fresh air, past the lonely two-tracks and roadside shacks. Jake felt this was what it must be like to live in Alaska, only without the surrounding mountains. The road eventually took them along the shoreline of Lake Superior, a body of water Jake had never laid eyes on before. Vast as an ocean. The water was said to be deep and frighteningly cold. It looked it.
They arrived in Calumet just after lunchtime.
The small city was a cut-and-dried slice of America. Churches and dive bars lined the streets, antique shops, a tiny theatre, and a number of small restaurants named after the people who currently owned them.
Jake followed his directions until he found the Italian Hall Historical Marker. He parked on the street and he and Lori got out of the vehicle, leaving the windows open for Russ. She placed the water pitcher on the seat, and once again the truck's suspension struggled under its weight. Jake noted it for the first time. He looked curiously at Lori, who waved him off.
At the Italian Hall site there was no building. The only part of the hall that remained was the archway entrance standing alone in a field of grass. There was a flagpole, but no flag flew. It seemed a deserted place.
Jake's senses tingled when three crows alighted on the archway’s curved top.
He and Lori passed beneath the archway to find a historical marker on the other side. The marker described the events of the massacre, adding in that the children were lining up to collect their toys when "fire" was yelled.
Lori sat down on the provided bench. Jake sat next to her.
"Seventy-three people died here," Lori said. "Right on this spot."
Jake nodded.
"And whoever did it got away with it."
"Maybe by man's law," Jake said. "They may never have served prison time, but I don't think you can get away with something like that in any real sense. The weight of it would always be on you, pulling down your life, forcing you to wallow in one event until the day you died. And even then, who knows if you'd have relief?"
Lori pulled a face. "You suddenly believe in the afterlife?"
Yes, Jake thought, but the word didn't escape his mouth. He wasn't surprised at his faith, though he understood why Lori would be. They'd talked theology in the past, and both agreed that organized religion was nothing more than institutionalized guilt, a way to line the pockets of greedy men. Now Jake was armed with Marta Flores's faith, taken from her when he granted her wish, and his belief in God and the afterlife was as deeply rooted in him as it had been in her.
"Come on," Jake said, glancing at the crows patiently waiting on the archway. "Let's go to the cemetery."
They started back toward the truck just as a woman was walking by with her dog. Jake could see Russ going crazy in the back seat, barking and trying to squeeze through the half open window to sniff out a potential enemy. Looked like a Blue Heeler. Lori ran ahead, presumably to apologize as the Heeler struggled against its leash to get to Russ.
Jake steered clear of the situation and hopped into the driver's seat. He noted then that Lori had started a conversation with the woman. They spoke for a few moments while Jake and Russ waited, and then Lori got into the truck, once again setting Jake's water pitcher on her lap.
"What was that about?" Jake said.
"I asked her about the marker. Wondered if there was a place in town where records were kept."
"And?"
"She said there was nothing official, but there's a diner on 5th Street with a bunch of memorabilia. The owners are the great-grandchildren of one of the survivors."
34
The tattoo parlor was empty. The sign out front read CLOSED and all the lights were out.
"He lives up there," Frankie said, pointing to the windows of the studio apartment above Hear No Evil tattoos. "You just gotta ring the doorbell."
"How would he hear it if he's deaf?" Buer said.
"Some lights go off."
To prove his point, Frankie pressed the doorbell. The windows upstairs reflected flashing red light from within.
"He's not here."
Buer and Frankie turned to find Ray Westerhouse leaning out the front door of his establishment. He was smiling and leering at Buer.
"Oh, for Christ's sake," Buer said, seeing Azazel inside the old barber.
For a moment the two stared at each other. Frankie looked between them, confused.
"Left my name here a couple hundred years ago," Ray said. "Thought it may come in handy."
"This and every other place you've been, marking your territory like a pissing dog."
"How are you, little fella?" Ray said to Frankie.
"Hi, Ray," Frankie replied.
"Why are you here?" Buer said.
Azazel ignored her, keeping his eyes on Frankie. He was trying to suss out whether or not Ray Westerhouse knew the little boy. He decided yes, he did know him, but not particularly well. The boy liked Ray, maybe even idolized him, which meant they hadn't spent enough time together for that kind of magic to lose its power. It was like that with humans. Familiarity always bred contempt.
"This is Angelica," Frankie said, gesturing toward Buer.
"Angelica?" Azazel said. "Well now, that's cute." He looked Buer up and down. "Where'd you get that fine outfit?"
"What, this old thing? It called my name in a Brazilian massage parlor. Wasting its time there, so I took it for a spin."
"I, for one, am glad you did."
"What are you talking about?" Frankie said.
"Demonic possession." Azazel winked at the boy.
Frankie rolled his eyes. "Sure."
"Why are you here?" Buer repeated to Azazel.
