Kiss the Witch Read online

  “A hit squad?”

  “A very expensive hit squad. And if nearly everyone involved is dead, we have to look at who is still standing.”

  “J.P. Ferguson is still standing.”

  “Right. What do you say after we finish up here you get back to the office and dig deeper into Ferguson and Biocrynetix Laboratories? See what we’re missing.”

  “Got it. What will you two do in the meantime?”

  I looked at Carlos. He had his soup bowl pressed to his lips. With luck, we would all finish eating about the same time. “We’re going to take a ride out to the hospital. See Mrs. Snow. Someone has to tell her about her husband. It might as well be Carlos.”

  “What?” Said Carlos, as French onion soup dribbled down his chin.

  Spinelli and I laughed. It was worth it for letting him off the hook. “Relax. I’ll tell her. She’s not going to want to smell your onion breath anyway.”

  We left The Percolator at 1:00, and were barely a block away when Carlos brought up Dominic and Ursula again. I really wanted to concentrate on the case, maybe sort a few things out in my head. But Carlos has a way of driving the topic sometimes. And sometimes it is best just to roll with it.

  “So, did you notice?” He asked.

  “What?”

  “He didn’t mention Ursula even once.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t you think that’s kind of strange?”

  “How so?”

  “He’s getting married this weekend. You would think that is all he can think about.”

  “Maybe it’s all he can do to bury himself in his work to keep from thinking about it.”

  “Huh, you know what I think? I think he doesn’t want to go through with it.”

  “The marriage?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I think he’s scared.”

  “Well of course he’s scared. It’s a big step.”

  “No, I mean I think he’s scared of marrying a witch. Who knows what could happen if the two of them get into an argument. She might turn him into a newt or something.”

  “She won’t turn him into a newt.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because Lilith and I argue all the time. She has never turned me into a newt.”

  “That’s `cause you’re a witch, too.”

  “No, it’s because deep down she loves me, and people who love each other don’t go around turning their lovers into newts.”

  He grimaced lightly, and I could tell he wanted to add something. I waited until it seemed obvious he was not going to say it, and so against my better judgment, I asked him, “What’s on your mind now?”

  He looked over at me, his expression unchanged. “What is a newt, anyway? Is that like a frog?”

  “It’s a type of salamander. Haven’t you asked me that once before?”

  “Have I?”

  “I think so.”

  “Oh, then I forgot.” He turned his attention back to the road and seemed to give it some serious thought before coming back. “I see Dominic as more of a frog. Don’t you?”

  I shook my head and held my answer in reserve.

  Walking through the hospital, I got an unsettling feeling, an uneasy sort of vibration inside me that I could not explain. I felt it once before at the cemetery. We were burying Manny Sung, a retired cop who died of a heart attack while making love to his mistress, a woman one-third his age. Lilith told me that restless spirits try to invade the living, and that I might feel it at places like that where souls and bodies are newly separated. Sometimes, the newly dead cannot accept that their vessel is gone, so they try to take over another that is living. Their attempts are feeble, though, because the soul occupying the live body is much stronger and easily evicts the invader. The battle is brief and only those with a keen sense of their inner light, such as witches, can detect the attempted coup.

  I nudged Carlos with my elbow and said to him, “Someone died here recently.”

  He scoffed. “Yeah, well it is a hospital, Tony. They can’t save everyone.”

  “No, you don’t understand. This one I can feel. It wants me to know something, but I don’t know what.”

  “Maybe it’s the Jane Doe I investigated earlier. She wants to tell you who swiped her body from the morgue.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, not ruling it out for a minute. “I’ll let you know.”

  We stopped at the reception desk and identified ourselves proper. I asked if we could see Mrs. Howard Snow. From the look on the woman’s face, I could tell that was not going to happen.

  “I’m sorry, Detective,” she said. “Mrs. Snow departed last night.”

  “She checked out?”

  “She died.”

  “Died?”

  “In her husband’s arms at 11:06 PM. We cremated her remains this morning.”

  “I see.” I turned to Carlos. He seemed less surprised than optimistic.

  “Well,” he said. “Guess that lets you off the hook now, doesn’t it?”

  “How do you figure?”

  “Now you don’t have to tell the old girl that her husband is dead.”

  The woman behind the desk gasped. We both looked at her. I smiled politely and apologized. Carlos smiled, too, adding only, “Well he is.”

  Back at the office, Spinelli was eager to get us to my desk where he laid out a stack of documents five fingers high. Accompanying that were photographs of a dozen people from Biocrynetix Laboratories, including the six that died in bizarre accidents within the last three weeks.

  “What is all this?” I asked, though I knew without saying. Spinelli likes to present his findings in a way that seems choreographed for maximum effect. It is not that he is a control freak, per se, as much as he is compulsive obsessive over information assimilation and its lineal dispersion. In other words, he gets antsy if you jump ahead of his carefully laid out presentation.

  “Glad you asked,” he said. “This here,” he flattened his palm atop the stack of documents, “is what I downloaded off the internet. Most of it comes from Truthineessence.com, a grass roots radical organization opposing the research and development of anything that simulates, replicates, manipulates or destroys life. Lately, it has dedicated itself strictly to exposing the truth about QE647 and its disastrous potentials.”

  He tapped the pile with his hand. “These documents outline a decade of secret research conducted by Biocrynetix Laboratories and its affiliates. To date, they have spent billions on research and development, and now they are poised to make a fortune off their research.”

  “Some fortune,” I said. “If they spent billions already, good luck to them getting it back.”

  “No, you don’t understand. They expect to make trillions worldwide.”

  “Trillions? For a corn syrup substitute?”

  Spinelli shook his head and smiled coyly. “Tony, QE647 is not a corn syrup substitute. It is the elixir of life itself.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Look. Life, by definition, is organic based. There are four major categories of organic compounds found in all living things.”

  “I knew that,” said Carlos.

  I laughed. “Of course you did.”

  “No, I do. They are carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids.”

  “Huh?”

  “He’s right,” said Spinelli. “But life is not that simple. You have a smorgasbord of chemicals you need to mix in just the right proportions. You have water, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, as well as a host of others; sulphur, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium–the list goes on. You mix them all in just the right order and concentration and you have the very essence of life.”

  He gauged my reaction with a tentative smile. Clearly, he was in his element. I nodded affirmatively. “Okay, you got me. Go on.”

  He continued. “The thing is this. The exact balance of these chemicals has eluded chemists and alchemists for millennia. Until
now. QE647 is not a sugar or corn syrup substitute. It is a reciprocating compound that when energized becomes the essence of life, a quasi essence, if you will, capable of auto-regenerating biologically. With a suitable base of genetically engineered DNA, the organic structure can generate into any type of life form conceivable.”

  “Quasi essence?” I think I laughed at that. “It sounds like the stuff of science fiction.”

  “It was at one time, but no more. The talk is that Biocrynetix Laboratories successfully completed production of a stable version of quasi essence and now they want to take it and their company to the New York Stock Exchange.”

  “That explains their reluctance to let the media get a hold of this story.”

  “Sure, between the theft of the research and the deaths of six employees, who would want to buy stock in the company?”

  “Something tells me this case has just gotten considerably more complex.”

  “And mysterious,” said Spinelli.

  “How so?”

  “J.P. Ferguson, the CEO of Biocrynetix?”

  “Yes?”

  “He never called the FBI or the State Police. We are the only ones he called to look into this case.”

  I saw Carlos raise a brow at that and I knew he and I were thinking the same thing. I said to him, “You ready?”

  “Whenever you are.”

  Spinelli asked, “Where are you two going now?”

  “To pay another visit to Ferguson,” I said. “See if there isn’t anything he forgot to tell us.”

  Carlos said, “Oh, he forgot to tell us something all right. Maybe we can play good cop bad cop to get it out of him.”

  “Sure,” I said, slapping him on the back. “This time you play good cop?”

  “What?” He picked up and followed me out. “But I am always the good cop.”

  FIVE

  J.P. Ferguson met us in the lobby of the Biocrynetix Laboratories building, but not before keeping us waiting there a full twenty minutes. He stepped out of the elevator, accompanied by two men in dark suits and sunglasses, and saw the men to the door. Carlos elbowed me in the side as they walked by. He leaned in tight and whispered, “They have guns.”

  I whispered back, “What?”

  “Those men, they have side arms holstered under their jackets. You see the bulge?”

  “Now that you mention it. Yes. What do you think, F.B.I.?”

  He scoffed. “In $2000 Armani’s? I think not.”

  “How do you know they are wearing Armani’s?”

  “Oh, wait. You’re right. They’re not.”

  “Ah-huh. I knew it. They are F.B.I.”

  “No. They are wearing $4000 Caraceni’s”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I almost bought one. Wish I did. Bought a Holland & Sherry instead. It’s nice. Vicuna wool.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah it’s nice stuff.”

  “What did you pay for it?”

  He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”

  Ferguson finished showing the men out and then returned to greet us. “Detectives Rodriquez and Marcella, what a surprise to see you again so soon. Do you have news for me?”

  I shook his hand first. “Actually, we were hoping you might have something new to tell us.”

  His expression fell into a practiced blank. “Oh?”

  “Mister Ferguson, we know about QE647. It is not a corn syrup substitute. Now how `bout you tell us what we are really investigating?”

  “Please,” he said. “Can we go up to my office?”

  I looked to Carlos. He gestured with a sweep of his hand toward the elevators. “After you.”

  Back in his office, Ferguson seemed much more nervous about things than he was the first time we met. He invited us to sit, which we did, although he remained standing, his pacing nearly wearing a rut in the floor.

  “If you don’t mind me saying, Mister Ferguson, you seem mighty uneasy about something.”

  He looked at me, started to speak and then returned to pacing.

  “Are you all right? Who were those men downstairs, the ones you walked out?”

  He stopped at the window, pulled back the blinds and peered out nervously. He let the blinds go with a snap, turned to me and said, “They are watching, Detective. They are always watching.”

  “Who?”

  “Those men and the rest of them.”

  “Are they organized crime? Are you in trouble?”

  “Oh, if you only knew.”

  “Tell us. That’s why we’re here.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay, then tell us about QE647. As I said downstairs, we know what it is.”

  “Then what more can I tell you?”

  “You can tell us if it’s true. Have you succeeded in creating a viable quasi essence compound, the essence of life?”

  “Detective, I signed a confidentiality clause, a contract of secrecy. All I can tell you is that QE647 is a super sweetener. That’s it.”

  “You’re sticking to that, are you?”

  Carlos laughed. “Ha, good one, Tony. Sticking to that. Funny.”

  “Mister Ferguson. You signed a contract. Did that contract include murder?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Murder. Of your employees, Gerardi, Brookfield, Williams, Delaney and your own secretary, Julie McSweeney?”

  “Those were accidents, every one of them.”

  “Or made to look like accidents.”

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Come now, Mister Ferguson. You are either very stupid or very loyal. I don’t know which.”

  “I think stupid,” said Carlos. “Who would be so loyal as to put their head on the chopping block to take a murder rap?”

  “Good point.”

  “What do you mean? I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Maybe not, but so far the case is leading us down a road mired in murder, and all the road signs point to you. So, what do you say? Do you want to tell us what we’re up against?”

  “What you are up against? You are up against a robber who stole company materials and company secrets. Is it asking too much of you to do your job and get it back for me?”

  “Why didn’t you call the FBI or the State Police?”

  “I told you. This case does not warrant a federal investigation, and it is out of the jurisdiction of the State Police.”

  “That may be true, but still you didn’t call them.”

  “Detective, involving those branches of law enforcement would have resulted in bad press. Do you know how quickly a story like this can go viral on the internet? My investors would not like that one bit, believe me.”

  “Those suits downstairs, are they your investors?”

  He hesitated, but gave it to me. “They represent my investors.”

  “So they know.”

  “About the theft. Yes, they know. Of course, they know. They know everything.”

  “Except who stole your compound,” said Carlos.

  Ferguson turned his head away. I stood and brushed the creases from my lap. “Mister Ferguson. Something tells me you got yourself in a whole lot of trouble. If it is not of your doing, we want to help you. If you are hiding your culpability, however, we will figure it out. Either way, you need to come clean eventually.”

  “I think we are done here, Detective.”

  “All right then, thank you for your time. We’ll see ourselves out.”

  On the ride back to the office, I asked Carlos what he thought about Ferguson’s demeanor.

  “He’s scared,” he said, and I agreed. I told him I got the impression Ferguson wanted to tell us more, but could not. Carlos suggested it was because his office was bugged.

  “Makes sense,” I said. “Think they threatened him?”

  “The suits? Oh sure, no doubt. In fact, it won’t surprise me one bit if we wake up tomorrow to find that Ferguson had himself an accident.�
�� He let go of the wheel and made quotation signs in the air with his fingers.

  I nodded. “Yeah, me neither. You know I only wish we had a reason to bring him in for questioning, maybe keep him overnight. At least that way we would know he’s safe.”

  “So, let’s go back and arrest him.”

  “On what charges?”

  “We’ll say he took a swing at you.”

  “Lie?”

  “Yeah. Isn’t that a good cop bad cop thing?”

  “No. That’s a bad cop bad cop thing.”

  He soured his face but kept his eyes on the road ahead. It took another mile or so before he turned to me again. “We could invite him.”

  By then, my mind had drifted off into what-ifs. What if we had stopped the two men accompanying Ferguson to the door and asked to see their IDs? Better, if we asked them for their weapons permits. At least we would have their names and possibly the names of their employers. No telling what Spinelli might have dug up then.

  “Did you hear me?” said Carlos.

  “What?” I blinked and found myself recalculating our location based on the scenery change outside my window.

  “I said we could invite him.”

  “Invite who?”

  “Ferguson. Invite him to spend a night at the jail.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Uh, hello. To keep from getting killed?”

  “Oh. Yes, Carlos. You do that.”

  I’m not entirely certain, but I think that later he did.

  SIX

  I spent the rest of the afternoon with Carlos and Spinelli going over the accident reports for Williams, Delaney, Gerardi, Brookfield and McSweeney. We had no reports yet on our latest victim, Howard Snow, as the house he was in when it blew up was still too hot to bring in cadaver dogs. So technically, he was not yet dead.

  From the way the reports read, one would have no sense of foul play regarding the deaths of the five. I mean, you cannot read too much into a drowning, an electrocution, a couple of deadly falls and a train wreck. As the old adage goes, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then…. Well, you know.