The Book of 21 (10 page)

“What happened to you?” Murphy motioned toward the bloody tissue John was using to clean off his nose.

“I got popped in the nose by a bum.”

“What for?”

“Apparently, I had something he wanted. I found a note that was supposedly from the deceased professor. The prof had left it for a Detective Fullman. He spoke to Fullman twice, and he was worried that someone was stalking him.”

“Did you find any Detective Fullman?” Murphy asked with a frown.

“No, there is no Detective Fullman.”

“What did the log say?”

“The call is not logged, so either the professor was delusional, or somebody is screwing around with records here at the station.”

“Well, let’s hope Dunglison was just a nut.”

“I don’t think so. The kid we found with him, the apparent overdose, left a note mentioning the same Detective Fullman.”

“Jesus,” sighed Murphy.

“I have someone at the phone company pulling records right now. I’m going to do the paperwork for the court order.”

“What about the note, and the bum? Did you get him?”

“No, the bastard got away, and he took the note with him,” John said with a shrug.

“Make sure you write up everything. Give a copy to me after you file it, if you want. I’ll keep it here. If we really do have a dirty cop, then he can get into evidence and the computer files.”

“Way ahead of you,” said John as he turned to leave.

“Be careful, John. It’s not every day a cop gets pick-pocketed for a piece of paper. Keep me informed. I’ll give you a hand if you need it.”

“No worries,” said John as he left.

While he appreciated Murphy’s willingness to get involved, it always made him wonder how inept some of the other detectives were. Murphy constantly appeared to be impressed by the simple fact the John could perform independently. It seemed that the common expectation was not that you were doing your job, but trying to figure out how to do your job. The idea that Murphy could rely on John to do good work, and create minimal headaches, seemed to produce a relationship of mutual respect. As a result, John could rely on Murphy to watch his back and give him the benefit of the doubt.

Once back in his office, he started completing the paperwork for the phone company, when a fresh drop of blood fell out of his nose and splattered on the form. With a roll of his eyes, he tossed the soiled paper in the trash. He grabbed the last napkin on his desk and pressed it to his nose.

While he waited for his nose to stop bleeding, he thought about sticking Hallman’s papers in evidence. As Murphy mentioned, a dirty cop could easily penetrate the security of the evidence locker. Though Murphy’s offer to keep a copy was nice, saving these things in the Roundhouse might be as good as handing them over to whoever wanted them. Playing by the book might mean playing into someone’s hands.

John tucked the items back into his coat. There was no sense in bleeding all over them right now. He would read them tonight, after he stopped for a few sundries on the way home.

He dialed the office number of Amy Ritter and left a message saying that he would not make it back to Penn Commonwealth today. Once he had a few hours to leaf through Hallman’s papers tonight, he thought that he might have better questions for her tomorrow.

Chapter 9:
Tea Time

“I’ll have a medium chai,” Kim said to the girl behind the counter.

The girl nodded and repeated Kim’s order to the young man making the drinks. After pressing a few buttons and looking at the register as if she had never seen it before, the girl said, “That will be three-seventy?”

The girl’s voice lilted up at the end of her sentence in a way that caused Kim to wonder whether the girl was telling her the price or asking her.

Kim handed the girl a five and held out her hand for the change. The girl laid the dollar bill in Kim’s hand and then dropped the change on top. The quarter and nickel rolled off the bill in opposite directions. Kim gathered them off the bar.

The girl lilted her voice again to half-ask and half-say, “Uh, sorry?” The girl then proceeded to look back to the register, at which she frowned and poked as if she were again experimenting with a newly found device.

“No problem,” Kim assured the girl. She sighed heavily, gathered the change, and stuck it in the back pocket of her teal scrubs.

While the girl behind the register took the next order, Kim walked over to where the young man was making the drinks and leaned against the chest-high counter. A warm cup of chai always reminded her of the autumn in Madison, when her mother would make pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. She needed the soul-warming effect of the spiced tea while she figured out whether she should take John’s advice and tone down her report.

After pondering the issue for a few moments, she noticed a tall, dark-haired man approaching the drink counter with an exasperated look on his face. He shot Kim a look that fully communicated his frustration with the girl behind the register.

“Makes you wonder if Darwin was right, doesn’t it?” Kim whispered.

“Yeah, it does,” he said with a laugh. “Is she always like that?”

“Only when she remembers to breathe.”

He laughed again. “Well, I guess we can’t all be doctors.”

“Ah, you noticed my scrubs,” Kim said, feigning shock. “Well, I’m an ME.”

“Pretty gruesome job,” he cringed.

“Some days, yes.”

The young man making the drinks set a medium sized cup on the counter. “Medium chai!” he beckoned in a flamboyant tone.

Kim almost expected trumpets to sound at the end of each drink announcement. She looked at the kid, smiled, and picked up the tea.

The dark-haired man murmured, “He makes an order-up sound like the second coming of the messiah.”

She laughed and took a sip of chai.

“So why’d you become an ME?” the man asked.

“On days like today, I’m not sure. Sometimes, I wonder if I should just go back to Wisconsin and become a housewife.”

“Large latté!” the clerk heralded across the counter.

“Having a rough day?” the dark-haired man asked her as he reached across the counter for his cup.

“Yeah, it’s been a nasty one, unfortunately, but we
all
have things at work to deal with.”

“I know exactly what you mean.” He took a sip of his latté and extended his hand. “Forgive me, I’m Marco, Marco Vinzetti.”

“Kim Wohlford. Nice to meet you.” She could feel herself blush.

“Likewise, Kim.” He smiled for a second. “I’m in sales, in a company right down the street. Maybe we’ll see each other again soon.”

“I’d like that.” Kim realized that she was involuntarily playing with her hair. She put the hand onto her cup of tea and smiled.

He looked at his watch. “I better get back to work. I have a conference call in five minutes. See you later, hopefully, if you don’t run back to Wisconsin anytime soon.”

“Sure,” she said with a smile. As she watched him walk away, her smile grew wider.

When Marco finally left her sight, Kim plopped herself down at a small table outside the coffee shop and watched the people passing by on the bustling street. It seemed that plenty of folks made a fine living, dressed in nice clothes, and had no worries about whether anyone at work might try to kill them if they filed the wrong report. She tried to identify the single event that caused her life to go down such a wrong path.

After a few minutes, she decided that the larger questions about her life path could wait—she had issues that were more pressing. The end of the day was getting close, and she needed to figure out what to do about the report. She could leave the file as it was, or she could alter it until John figured out whether a cop was up to something. As she sat staring at the street, her mind danced between the pros and cons of each option, until she finally blurted out, “You’re an asshole, McDonough.”

Chapter 10:
Home, Sweet Home

John stepped into his small one-bedroom apartment. The place was not beautiful. A beige couch sat in the middle of his living room, facing his TV. He piled his computer equipment onto a small desk in the corner and then piled papers and impending bills on top of that. When he moved in, his budget forced a decision between a new TV, a decent desk, or a dining room table; he chose the TV, overcame the less-than-adequate desk, and never missed the table. He flung his coat onto the couch and carried his brown paper bag of sundries into the kitchen.

There, he filled a glass with ice and then pulled a bottle of good bourbon from his bag. As he poured, he looked at the clock.

“Four forty-five,” he sighed.

He refrained from drinking before five, even on holidays, but decided to give himself a pass on this particular pour, for the analgesic properties. After all, his nose still ached, and it was close enough to five o’clock to overlook the slip. After taking a sip of bourbon, he went into the living room and hit the power button on his computer.

While the PC labored away at its startup sequence, he attached the power adapter to his new smartphone and plugged it in to charge. The thing was sleek, pretty, and something that the department’s communications allowance would not fully cover. The clerk at the store had been able to port his address book over from his old mangled phone. All he had to do now, was figure out how the thing worked.

He tapped a button on the phone, and it chimed once to let him know there were messages waiting for him. He slid a couple of items on the miniature screen and the device automatically began to play his voicemail. The first two messages were from Kim. Their time stamp demonstrated she left them prior to his midday visit to the morgue, and on each message Kim simply said, “John, call me.” He deleted them, and the phone began to play the last message; it was from Amy Ritter.

“Hi, Detective,” her message began. “I won’t be in the office tomorrow. I was planning a trip out of town with some friends to hit the outlets in Lancaster. I could talk to you tomorrow night, or I will be at Eligio’s in Rittenhouse around five-thirty or six to take advantage of their happy hour prices if you would like to talk tonight. Hope to talk to you again, soon.” Amy then proceeded to leave both her home and cell numbers.

John knew Eligio’s. It was nice enough to attract the snobby young professionals who wanted a taste of some authentic Italian food, and practical enough to bring in those on a budget who wanted a good deal for their money. He guessed that Amy was in the latter group. Based on what the university paid teaching assistants, she probably needed to take advantage of the extra cheap happy hour prices whenever she could.

Meeting this soon might not be worthwhile, but then again, waiting until tomorrow night might slow things down. He could always tell her she was a suspect and that she needed to stay in town, but the justification for that would be weak. Once he had a chance to review the papers, he could make the call on whether she might be able to tell him anything, and if he thought she could, he would head out to Eligio’s.

He fiddled with the phone for a bit longer. The thing had just about every application or utility he would need. He just wished he could find the command to make the thing vibrate instead of ring.

The computer beeped at him once, capturing his attention and letting him know it had successfully booted up. Digging Dunglison’s disk out of his coat, he used a pair of tweezers to remove it from the bag and stick the disk into the drive slot.

 He decided to open the .rtf file, since it might be easier to read than the unformatted text. The title page came up on the screen: “Paranormal Pennsylvania: Folk Tales of Witchcraft and Hauntings in Southeastern Colonial Pennsylvania.” Instead of presenting Spartan double-spaced text, the document looked as if it was digital copy of a fancy book.

John scrolled down to the introduction and started to read:

While many scholars have taken time to study the folklore around Salem witchcraft (Jones, 1956; Mendelson, 1966; Pierre, 1967; Scholworth, 1971; Smith, 1972; Tauperson, 1976; White, 1982), only Johnerson (1985) has sought out the folklore and tales around witchcraft in southeastern Pennsylvania during the same period. In the folklore of Johnerson’s book, one can find tales relating to several groups in southeastern Pennsylvania. However, Tutbridge (1992) has claimed that Johnerson’s work is at best a good start to the field…

At this point, the words on the page turned into, “Blah, blah, blah.” John rubbed his eyes, and thought, “Who cares?” He scrolled down until he saw the first group that Dunglison mentioned in his death note.

The Brethren of Roxborough were one of Johnerson’s (1985) primary groups of interest. In his account, they were a group that quietly lived near the Wissahickon Creek and met at a waterfall along that body of water. Several folk tales of this group meeting late at night populated Johnerson’s work. Johnerson also made the strong assertion that the council of fourteen, which led the group, guarded a book. Johnerson referred to this book as
The Book of 21
, or
Le Coeur Codex
. None of Johnerson’s claims were corroborated by this researcher, since the original documents he cited as sources could not be found.

John rolled his eyes. “So he made the crap up to get published: big deal. Shut up about him and get on with it.”

He scanned the rest of the article. Apparently, an elderly woman had donated a bunch of old papers to Penn Commonwealth. One of the papers was a letter from William Penn to a man named Jan Hanstitch. In Penn’s letter, he stated that Hanstitch’s group was welcome to worship as they pleased in the Commonwealth. Penn also had made a request of the group, as “remuneration” for their freedom, that they help him on a certain matter. It seemed that William Penn wanted to keep Salem’s witchcraft frenzy out of Philadelphia. He asked for their help as “learned and educated gentlemen” in examining claims of witchcraft in the colony. Dunglison referred the reader to “Appendix K” for a full copy of the letter. Hanstitch’s group later became known as the Brethren of Roxborough.