Crime Spells

“What the fuh?” He scrubs eye grit with the balls of his fists, an oddly childlike gesture. “What you want, bitch?”

“I’m not a bitch,” she whispers, the Lily piece of her mind finally realizing what is coming next, and, God forgive her, she wants it. She’s even happy because this is revenge, a sort of stand.

“But I’m not Lily.” And she brings the knife down. “I’m not.”

She doesn’t know if, through his screams, he hears. Certainly, in a little while, he’s past caring.

II

I was dead asleep when my pager brrred at one A.M. Technically, I was supposed to be at the station for third shift, but plenty of guys took calls from home. Not that I was home, mind you.

On these odd Fridays, I was sure my colleagues in homicide didn’t know what to make of me. I can guarantee you that the Black Hats at the synagogue-in Fairfax, off Route 236-thought my presence among them pretty weird. Me, too. Most days, I didn’t understand why I chose to study with the rabbi or occasionally come for a Sabbath meal and good conversation.

We’d met years ago on a murder I and Adam-my best friend, my partner-caught. Later, he’d tried to help Adam. Couldn’t, and Adam died. I don’t know if he thought he was helping me now.

Mostly, I was the student. I listened. I asked questions, very pointed ones, mostly about Kabbalist mysticism. The rabbi had interpreted a spell left at the scene of that case, so he knew his stuff. Not like Mado

But. That’s different from saying magic doesn’t exist.

And Judaism has its protective spells and amulets. Every letter of the Hebrew alphabet has magical co

So we talked. Sometimes, we drank bad coffee, but only if his secretary was in that day.

I crept downstairs, guided by nightlights. The lights were on timers, as was the oven, the compressor on the refrigerator. The refrigerator light bulb was unscrewed. How Orthodox Jews made do before the invention of the automatic coffeemaker, I’ll never know.

Halfway down the stairs, though, I caught the unmistakable aroma of fresh coffee. Hunh. Turned the corner. “Rabbi, what are you doing?”

Dietterich shrugged. He was a bearish man, with a thick tangle of brown beard that was showing more threads of silver these days. In his black robe and slippers, he looked like someone’s scruffy, huggable uncle.

“I had… a dream. Don’t ask me what. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, and I heard you moving around, so…” Another shrug. “You’ll need coffee.”

“You turned on the coffeemaker. Isn’t that forbidden?”

“Pikuach nefesh.” Dietterich was a native New Yorker. Every time he opened his mouth, I thought Shea Stadium. “ ‘Neither shall you stand by the blood of your neighbor.’ From Leviticus. To save a human life supersedes all other commands.”

“Well, they usually call me when it’s too late.”

He handed me a travel mug. He did think ahead. “But when you catch a killer, he can’t kill again, right? It evens out.”

The coffee was hot and smooth going down. Clearly he hadn’t taken lessons from his secretary. This was a bigger relief than you can imagine. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Think of this as an advance, a down payment. Save one life, it’s as if you saved the world. Making coffee so you don’t end up wrapped around a tree seems a no-brainer.”

“What about the Guy Upstairs?” For the record, I wasn’t sure where I stood on the God thing, but I can tell you this: I’ve seen what evil does, and I have no trouble bringing evil down. I’m not wrath of God about it. It’s what I do.

“Hashem can take a joke.” Dietterich hesitated, then said, “Jason, why do you come here? Don’t misunderstand me. We’re friends. But, in you, there is something missing. Here.” His bunched fist touched his chest. “You’re a detective, a seeker. You strive toward light where others see only darkness. But I still think you are a little bit like my hand here. You need to open, just a little.” His fist relaxed. “Like opening a door to a second sight. You can’t hold anything in your mind unless you open your heart.”

I don’t know how I felt. Not embarrassed. More like I’d been filleted and gutted.

He read my face. “I’m sorry. I’m intruding.”

“No. Don’t apologize. A lot of the time I’m stumbling around in the shadows.”

“Then do something about it.” He moved a little closer and pulled something out of a pocket of his robe. A glint of metal, a sparkle. “I don’t know why I haven’t given this to you before now. But now… feels right.”

The metal was like nothing I’d seen. In fact, my mind must’ve been playing tricks because the light was very poor. The metal wasn’t smooth but woven: gold filaments, I thought, and maybe silver? A hint of blue in the weave. I made out a five-by-five grid. A different gem sparkled in every square, both illuminating and magnifying a strange character-were they letters?-incised in the metal beneath. I counted five different symbols. Two were like runes, but the other three looked more like crude Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The center square was unique, with a character repeated nowhere else in the grid: a squashed teardrop canted right, tip down, broader bottom adorned with inwardly curved hooks or prongs. I thought: Georgia O’Keeffe. I rubbed my thumb over the gem there. A glitter of purple. Amethyst? “What is this?”

He opened his mouth, but my pager brrred again, and too late, I remembered I hadn’t called in yet. “Sorry, I have to take this. I didn’t want to use the phone in the house. But thank you.” I slipped the charm into my trouser pocket. “And don’t be sorry.”

“It’s fine, fine. We’ll talk later.” He made a shooing motion. “Go. Save the world.”

The crime scene guys had finished with pictures and were working the room. Kay Howard, the deputy M.E., was hunkered over the body. My partner, Rollins, was downstairs talking to the night clerk, a diminutive Indian with coke-bottle glasses and an accent that got thicker the more questions we asked.

I waited, resisting the urge to crowd Kay, something that comes easy when you’re as big as I am. People say I look like Patrick Ewing, except Ewing has the beard, and I’m two inches shorter and about eighty billion bucks poorer. I saw an opening when Kay bagged the hands. “Anything?”

“Well, she went right for the eyes.” Her gloved finger traced a bloody orbit. “Very clean, no ragged edges, no evidence that she hesitated at all. She got him a good shot on the right.” Kay gestured toward the evidence bag with a black-handled, blood-soaked pocketknife. The blade was serrated along two thirds of its length, then tapered to a sharp, slightly upturned point. A quarter inch was missing from the tip.

“We’ll probably find the tip somewhere in the brain, or maybe wedged in the sphenoid at the back of the orbit, but that’s not what killed him.” Kay indicated a deep, ragged, fleshy necklace extending from MacAndrews’s right to his left ear. Congealing purple blood sheeted the dead man’s chest and there were drippy arcs painted on the wall immediately above the headboard. A slowly coagulating river of purple-black sludge stained his forearms, though I could just make out what looked like a tattoo on his left bicep. (Or it could’ve been a cockroach. If his toenail fungus was any indication, personal hygiene wasn’t among MacAndrews’s finer qualities.)

“She got both the arteries and didn’t stop. Sawed right through the trachea.” She looked up, and I saw a glint of steel in her eyes, a little defiance. “If it wasn’t so politically incorrect, I’d say good riddance.”