Crime Spells

“Learn to use the damn computer,” Rollins said, though he didn’t sound mad. It was a partner schtick. Just as Adam and I’d had ours. “Okay, it says here that Jolie has several tattoos.”

“Go to Google Images. I want to see them.”

“You want to drive?”

“I like watching you earn your pay.” Pictures winked onto the screen. Obscure tribal signs, a huge tiger on her back, several dragons, a large cross. “The woman’s a walking billboard… There, on her left shoulder blade. What is that?”

“Supposedly, a magical tattoo,” Rollins said, and read. “Says here it’s written in Khmer and is supposed to protect her and her loved ones from bad luck, evil, stuff like that. It’s a… yantra tattoo.”

Bingo. “That’s it, that’s what she’s got.”

“Who?”

“Tell me about yantra tattoos.”

“Jesus, you’re demanding. Hold on, hold on…” A lot of hits on Google. Silence as we read.

Then Rollins said, “This is some funky shit.”

Here was how it worked.

A yantra tattoo had to both adhere to a certain Sanskrit pattern-the yantra-and be coupled with precise muons, chants dating back to the Vedic religion, the historical predecessor of Hinduism, which the monk who applied the tattoo was to recite.

A monk. That old man, Chuon. And those smudges on his forearms and neck: They’d been tattoos.

The actual verses tattooed in special ink were in Pali, the religious language of the earliest Buddhist school, Thervada, or “The Way of the Elders.”

If you believed these things actually worked, there were patterns that might make a warrior stronger, give someone good luck, allow someone to become invisible. Give you superstrength. If you believed in magic.

I thought Sarah Wylde might.

And me? Well.

I had met an angel a year ago. Maybe I was due a visit from the other side.

And I found out one more thing, courtesy of one of Wylde’s papers.

In Cambodia, sleep paralysis has a very specific name: khmaoch sângkât.

Translation: The ghost knocks you down.

Because the people who suffer from this also report seeing demons that hold them down. Another paper suggested that the symptoms were really PTSD; one woman suffered an episode whenever she remembered how soldiers razed her village and killed everyone.

I don’t think it was either-or. Could be both. Could be, maybe, that the old monk had been carrying the girl on the DVD. And maybe now, Sarah Wylde was picking up the slack.

Like she said: Right under my nose.

VI

Wylde wasn’t at GW.

“This is nuts.” Rollins was driving fast, no flasher, the light fading and the day slipping away. Flakes begi

“Maybe just one. Maybe two of them, or even more. And this isn’t about just the past. Remember what Lily said: The girl in her head had a red dress. There was the TV news saying snow in Washington.”

“So you’re saying-”

“We know Mackie was a pimp, and we know that Dickert’s got rental properties in Arlington, right? So maybe he’s renting to himself. Maybe what he’s got are a whole bunch of little girls just like Lily, only they’re Asian.”

“Because that’s where they’d have started, when they were in Vietnam. I can’t believe I’m even thinking this. Jason, you’re taking the word of a kid who killed a guy and said the devil made her do it. Man, are you hearing yourself? How are we going to explain this? And it still won’t help Lily. She killed a guy. It’s out of our hands.”

But this was the right thing to do, I knew it. As soon as the idea set in my mind, the charm Dietterich had given me had begun to warm, heating the skin of my chest as soon as I slipped the cord around my neck.

Why was I wearing it? Beats me. Same reason I didn’t tell Rollins what I thought about Wylde.

We were racing down Route 50 now, the strip malls blurring, and then the traffic starting to pick up. Cars started creeping. At the first flake, everyone in Washington panics and crashes into each other out of sympathy.

Screw this. I stretched, reached into the glove compartment, reeled out the flasher and slapped it onto the hood. “No choice, just don’t use the siren. Go, go!”

It was like the Red Sea parting, cars scuttling right then left like headless chickens. Rollins swore, jinked the car. I hung onto the safety strap on my side as Rollins took a hard right, accelerating through the turn. “You know, it’d be real nice if you get us there in one piece.”

Rollins was grim. “I’ll get us there. Just hope it’s the right there.”

Dickert’s rentals were in Arlington, but his house was in Springfield, an older section of identical 1950s ranch houses near I-495. It was dark by the time we made it. Snow silting down. A meager puddle of silver light from a street lamp illuminated the front drive, but I knew it was Dickert’s place as soon as I laid eyes on a Harley in the driveway.

There were no lights. The house felt empty. I didn’t see a car-I had no idea what Wylde drove-but I did notice that the house backed on dense woods. Lake Accotink Park. “They’re not in there. But I think.” I pointed at the woods.

“How do you know that?”

“Just do.” I popped the car door.

“Damn it, Jason, wait up!” Rollins pushed out of the car as I started around the back of the house. He grabbed my arm. “You have no idea where you’re going. Let me call for some backup. Man, we’re not even on our own turf. We’re going to end up getting our asses fried.”

“You’re right. So you should stay here.” I pulled free before he could protest and started for the woods. “Call for backup, Justin. Cover your ass. Better yet, go to those rental houses and see what you turn up.”

“I don’t have probable cause.”

“Find a busted window.”

He stood there a second, then hissed after me: “Jason, you don’t even have a fucking flashlight!”

“I know,” I said, and then I plunged into the woods.

I didn’t have a flashlight because I didn’t need one.

Reeling out the charm on its black cord, I let it hang outside my clothing. It was white-hot now, though it didn’t burn. The gems glittered in brilliant colors and shone beams that lanced the night. Showing me the way.

And my path was clear. Monstrous gleaming prints, partly human but clawed, tearing up and trammeling the earth. Think of the way white glows under UV and that’s how they looked.

Just as I also knew that anyone looking at me would’ve seen only a dark silhouette and no light at all. The ability to see-my second sight-was coming from within.

That there was only one set of prints worried me. I was pretty sure the prints belonged to Dickert-or whatever lived inside. But where was Wylde?

I couldn’t believe my intuition about this was wrong. Although I hadn’t seen her car on the street. Maybe she wasn’t here at all.

So I’m finally cracking up. Well, that’s just great.

But, no, I felt something striding alongside in my mind, a presence. Adam?

In my mind: Hurry, Jason.

The voice was sexless. I couldn’t place it.

I moved swiftly, silently. Almost too quietly; I should be making all kinds of noise. But there was none, as if I skimmed the earth. Snow getting thicker. Ahead, I sensed a space opening up, and in the next moment I smelled water. Getting close to the lake.

Ahead, I heard a low basso rumble, the sound of a man’s voice-and then the higher tones of a girl. And I knew: I’d found Dickert. Heart hammering, I ducked into inkier shadows at the edge of a clearing.