Knights of Babylon, Page 2

CHAPTER ONE

  MUMMY IN CHURCH

  The major headline on the New York Times that morning boldly read, “JAMAICAN SERIAL RITUAL KILLER CAUGHT.” The Chicago tribune read, “NEW YORKERS BREATH SIGH OF RELIEF.” Another headline read, “VOODOO HEAD HUNTER APPREHENDED.” All the news outlets went viral with the story about the capture of the serial killer that had almost grounded New York City.

  Agent Rice paid the newspaper vendor along Seventh street as he took a copy of the tribune, he was lucky his face didn’t appear on the paper as the agent who had cracked the case, he would have been mobbed. Someone, somewhere had licked his name out to the media, and now he was on the run, made a fugitive by his new found fame. A horde of journalist had gathered outside the federal building at Albany awaiting him. He had been forewarned and as a result he was heading out of town, for whoever had leaked his name could have leaked his address also, therefore he expected nothing but an ambush at home.

  Staring at agent Matt Rice, in his blue white stripped shirt, grey suit jacket and black pants with black leather shoes to match, one would think what a charming middle aged man he was. At forty three years …. About six two with an imposing figure many who worked with him thought him to be snobbish, overly straight forward with a zero social life because of his reserve nature. He had a head of flame coloured hair, a pointed nose, flat chin with tight eyelids that made his eyes look almost invisibly seen.

  The man seated next to him on the subway train was a hefty African American, gold Rolex on his muscular arm. He was reading the day’s paper just as many in that coach, and the headline reminded Rice that he was a celebrity running away from his stardom, what a shame.

  “Imagine what madness drove this schizophrenic to kill these innocent girls!” the man exclaimed remorsefully. “Thank god they got him. Hey! Haven’t you read the news?” he asked when he discovered Rice wasn’t forthcoming with any replies in their conversation.

  Rice stared him in the face and felt like letting him on a little secret that he had solved the case, show the man his badge and asking him to check and correspond with the name of the lead agent on the paper.

  Rice continued to stare into his paper, the steward announced over the address system that the train was approaching the next station; he could hear the shrill cries of the brakes as it slowed. At the next station the man alighted,

  Rice just realised how much importance New Yorkers attributed to the case, it had gained the popularity and media blitz of a presidential election, a pontiff’s death or the death of a major celebrity. He never had a celebrity persona, evading the media was the second best thing he knew how to do. Eight years ago when he recently got his first case after been commissioned out of the academy after leaving the army, he and his team were investigating in Dallas. One night a Russian gunman dubbed “Ivan the terrible" after an infamous Russian Czar, walked into a hotel and gunned down three agents, members of his team. Rice shot Ivan as he escaped; investigations revealed that a member of the team had talked to reporters from whence Ivan got wind of their activities.

  After the incident in Dallas, he never spoke to any journalist again. Eight years back he was secretly dating a fellow agent, Chloe. She died at the hands of Ivan; her death brought an end to his love life. The lady that sat opposite him on the train reminded him much of her, pretty, brilliant, brunette hair flowing past her shoulders.

  After the train ride, he took a cab to Bainbridge Ave, Brooklyn to the St. Ann's church. He wasn’t a man of faith so he wasn’t going to find solace in any religious activity, he was the kind of man who believed anything that could be seen, felt and explained by science and did not believe in anything supernatural. He remembered as a child being led to church by his mother, after mass he would wait to see Uncle Jose, who was a reverend father. After many years he stopped attending church and went to experience the world for himself, but he never ended his contact with the priest. Father Jose was never a blood relative, but after Rice lost his father at a tender age, Jose became his guardian, a father figure who was good at it.

  Today he decided to pay the sexagenarian priest a visit; he knew he was always welcome there.

  Rice could already anticipate the manner of the conversation to come, which seemed to be a debate between two worlds, two systems. A debate that had begun before either of them was born, while father Jose spoke from a spiritual point if view, he saw Rice as inexperienced speaking from a materialistic and scientific point.

  He could remember the last time he and the old priest had sat down to discuss over coffee. Father Jose appeared troubled and was about divulging something Rice thought to be a secret, when he was interrupted. Rice had left without saying goodbye physically, though he later called to explain the emergency.

  The March sun was beaming over the city, spring was at hand. He had wanted to call earlier to mention his arrival, but it was on a Sunday and the priest would be busy he thought.

  It was two months after solving the Jamaican Head Hunter case, the bedside phone rung, he always hated the scenario of it waking him up before the bedside alarm that usually wakes him up at six. He rose up dazed and tired as if he had not being sleeping; he knew it was an emergency as not even the president would dare call him before six. The time was six minutes past five.

  "Who's speaking?" He asked.

  The other person spoke for a while and the call went dead, another murder in this city of a over nine million, where almost two murders occur every day wasn't a new thing. But this one was strange and had fallen beyond the jurisdiction of the NYPD to the FBI, and if he wasn't wrong he was sure he heard Henry say something like a Mummy in a church. For god sake they should call the Metropolitan museum of art not him, they might have lost a Mummy.

  He fell back to his pillow, now he would either beg Hypnos for sleep or drug himself; he knew his body needed more sleep. He hadn't shut his eyes when the call came again, this time he just got direction and headed straight to work.

  Despite the cold morning air, a crowd gathered beyond the yellow tape line that cordoned the crime scene at the stair of Holy Cross Church along Soundview Ave as forensics scanned for evidences, while cops kept the crowd at bay. FBI special agent Rice alighted from his black Tahoe. He gave a keen stare at the crowd of onlookers, he knew from experience that most killers would act normally like everyone when they come to relish their heinous act, most of the mourners were worshipers.

  Rice came through the crowd and ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, when a hefty NYPD cop with a stolid look intercepted him. He flashed his badge at the cop without saying a word and continues, agents were already at work taking statements and evidences from the crime scene.

  He walked up the marbled stair of the gothic styled church that resembled those in Italy. On the huge Oak wood door was an image of the blessed virgin. This was the first murder he would investigate in a church in his carrier, he had seen murders perpetuated virtually every place on earth by all characters of people but never inside a church, such things didn't happen on hallowed grounds he had thought until today, but he had a premonition that this was to be the greatest case of his carrier.

  The inner part of the church hall was under quarantine by the FBI hazard team. Forensic team dressed in quarantine suits, with oxygen cylinder strapped to their backs were going in and out.

  “Good morning sir.” Some one said from behind him. Turning back an average height agent with dark hair, blue narrow eyes of Asian descent. Agent john Li.

  “Agent.” Rice had never called anyone by their names ever since he learnt the devil’s first name was Lucifer in kindergarten, he preferred to call people by either rank or occupation.

  “Call came at 6.am, found a Mummy at the altar; everyone who has been in the church has been quarantined. Forensics fears it might be a hazardous transmissible disease like a virulent form of Ebola.” Agent LI was a loquacious individual who spoke beyond what was needed most times.

  “I need a quarantine suit. This is my case I
need to see what we are dealing with here.”

  Rice went to the quarantine truck where he changed into a safety suit. Inside the church he stared at the renaissance paintings of the saints, and the huge bronze crucifix hanging over the altar. Three morticians were assiduously attending to the body with their instruments. One was Dr. Harrison and the other two would be Maggie and Craig, his interns.

  “Good morning Rice.” Dr Harrison said as he stood up.

  “Morning doc.” Rice said. The horror of the corpse stunned him that he paid little attention to the other two attendants. At his foot laid what appeared to be the Mummy of an Egyptian pharaoh missing its sarcophagus. But it was not wrapped in any shroud as was accustomed of Mummies but was in a neat liturgical vestment of a priest, a chaplet in its wreathed right hand and a broken vial containing holy water shattered at the threshold of the altar.

  “Wonderful!” Rice exclaimed.

  “I said that too.” Harrison confessed.

  “Call the Metropolitan museum and find out if any of their mummies is missing.” Rice said to an attendant beside him. “This might be a hoax but not a murder.”

  “No need to do that, it appears like a Mummy but its not. Its skin is dried but look there is flesh beyond the coniferous layer. But who is this!”

  "All the witnesses who were here before we came could swear it is their priest."

  “The Vic died from a single stab wound to the neck; there is only an entry wound no exit wounds as you can see.”

  “Then what will metamorphose a man into a mummy in one day?”

  “At first we thought it the Vic had come in contact with a virulent and weaponized biological agent but after running preliminary test we excluded that. Am stunned!” Dr Harrison said nodding his head.

  “We found this a few meters from the Vic.” Craig said and in a sealed plastic bag was a little black image, like a carven doll only without a head.

  Rice received the bag and intently looked at the strange object.

  “I have never seen anything like this before.” He said.

  “It’s a totem, sir.”

  “Totem!” Rice said, he knew he had definitely heard that word before but could not tell where.

  “It’s a mystical object, voodoo, witchcraft.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “She is a student of mysticism and metaphysics, and she attends a local temple in town.” Craig said.

  “Interesting.” Rice said. He had learned not to ever believe in anything his senses could not feel, neither religion or in the supernatural.

  “In fact I have my own theory concerning the murder.” Maggie said. And without any further ado she began. “The broken vial contains holy water, the Vic was a priest therefore he was learned in exorcism, he must have thought he had seen a demon. Look his chaplet is still in his grip he was obviously praying when he died, and there is the totem to confirm my theory.”

  “Don’t be too hasty, you might be right. But how did you know that that is the priest, have u carried out a DNA test? And secondly I believe demons are spirit you don’t see them, so when did spirits start murdering people in the physical? I have seen worse than this keep whatever mystical theory you have to yourself.” Rice had always been known to be blunt and to many insensitive and egocentric.

  Rice left the side of the Vic and headed towards an open door, he switched on his flash light as he walked into a rummaged sanctum. This must definitely be where the struggle had started; at his feet were scattered books, shredded garments like the scene of two tussling bulls. On the floor next to the wall were a chunk of bills, which looked like offering collected from the previous day’s mass that ruled out a robbery gone wrong. On the wall hung the picture of a priest in his 70's, looking frail, such an individual was in no condition to struggle with anyone he must have done the fleeing, meaning who ever had come in here must have rummaged this place in search of something and when he had found nothing, vented out all his frustration on the priest.

  Rice went through all the papers on the ground, they were all church documents, he wished he could tell what was been sought after here, but he knew it was impossible to tell the deep mysteries of the human mind, it was unfathomable.

  Outside a flock of reporters from the local TV channels had gathered like a flock of vultures hovering a carcass. Agent Mallory was giving a press statement; he obviously loved the limelight by his charming grins and eloquent speeches. Moments later the forensic team came out of the church wheeling a tightly sealed bag to an awaiting ambulance. The reporters rushed to take photographs in a mad frenzy.

  It was midday when agent Rice got to the ..................building, parking his car in the area allotted to him due to his high status in the bureau. Strode into the elevator and punched in 7th floor, during the flight up his pondered over the mysterious death and from where he would take his lead, he considered Maggie's theory, though insane he imagined a carefully orchestrated murder carried out to look like the work of a demon, he chuckled. The elevator door opened, the air was fresh with the scent of pine, the cubicles were angled to the white wall amidst grey file cabinets and a bank of clean windows that overlooked the streets below.

  As a senior Agent he had his own office, he hung his jacket on the rack behind his seat, went through the messages at his fax machine, there was one from Dickson his partner of three years who was vacating with his family in the Caribbean. Rice released the grip of his necktie as he took his seat, the sight of the murdered victim came fresh to his mind and once again he was lost in a mind boggling thought on how to begin the case. At 4.30pm that day the preliminary autopsy result was faxed to his desk, he watched as the machine belched up the paper with much anticipation. His eyes strayed first to the inference where the DNA confirmed that it was the priest who lay as dry as a four thousand year old mummy. It struck him at first like a huge joke, if not that he could vouch for the competence of Dr. Harrison the chief medical examiner, due to his long history of almost three decades of crime solving forensic work he would have screamed incompetent. Rice had not survived his bewilderment when his hand reached unconsciously for the receiver and dialed the mortician’s number.

  “The phone rang for a moment, then it was picked and the doctor’s baritone voice answered.

  “I just got the preliminary result.”

  “I knew you would call as soon as you saw it, so I waited. DNA showed it is the priest.”

  Rice knew a DNA result was infallible unless if tempered which was a federal crime. “Its damn strange.”

  “Who carried out the testing?” Rice asked.

  “I did.”

  “But eye witnesses claimed the dead priest carried out evening mass just yesterday, then how did he turn into a three thousand year old mummy over night.”

  “If I say am not confounded by the mystery of this case am a liar, I think this time we would have to look beyond our means to solve this case.” Rice knew the doctor was insinuating, unlike him who was as good as an atheist, Dr. Harrison was a protestant, and a staunch believer in the supernatural.

  For a moment both men were silent on the line, at length Dr. Harrison spoke. "The secret to this riddle is to find what mummified our priest."

  “Please do.” Rice said and hung up.

  Driving downtown to the mortician’s office was less stressful and always permitted him sometime to think about the case at hand. Dr. Harrison was chewing a sandwich when Rice walked in, he swallowed hard. The air was cold and had the odor of chlorine and flesh, at a corner Maggie and Craig stood in their light green overalls like surgeons, nose sealed behind masks, their gloved hands holding glistening surgical implements, probing the gutted torso of a dead man that lay supine on the locker bed. What an awkward place this was, would be the first thought a stranger would have upon entering here but men like Dr. Harrison had come to call here home over the years, so fond was he of corpses that he left his sandwich a few inches from an open torso.

  “Good morning Doc.�
� Rice said, taking off his jacket he helped himself into an overall. Dr. Harrison went to a locker bed at the right end of the morgue took off a white cover cloth, and their laid the victim, dried and old as Ramses.

  Rice and Harrison stood at both side of the mummy perhaps wandering by what contrivance or mystery they had found themselves here.

  “I want to show you something.” The chief mortician said. he switched on the UV light source over their heads. The corpse turned from black to dark blue like an alien specimen, he took a hand magnifying glass and passed it over to Rice, and beckoned him to look closely.

  Rice stooped over the corpse, in the blue light the magnifying glass revealed intricate shapes and mystic runes that appeared to have come from an ancient and extinct civilization. Dr. Harrison heard Rice mutter some words.

  “Amazing right?”

  Rice looked up a strange bewildering look was in his eyes. “Strange! How did this come about?”

  “I don’t know but everything about this case baffles everyone. The markings are ancient Chaldea, Mesopotamia, or Babylonian. The winged bull is a Babylonian god “

  “But there were no mummies in Babylon.”

  Dr. Harrison nodded in agreement. “Neither did the ancient Egyptians tattoo their mummies, and these markings could not be inscribed by the killer on the Vic, or was that what the killer was after but was completely fooled by the old priest?”

  “What do you think of the markings?”

  “It could be a message, a coded message. Well I can’t read ancient Chaldea.” Dr. Harrison said and shrugged his shoulders. “But whatever message it is will surely help us to figure out the motive behind this murder.”

  “Am afraid you are wrong doc.” Rice said. “The markings were not what the killer was in search off, this are the insignia of the killer.”

  “His mark!”

  “Yes, but you are right it could definitely got to do with the occult, remember the case of the Jamaican hunter.” Harrison nodded, there was no way he could forget that case in a hurry, it was barely four months ago here in New York, a deranged schizophrenic who believed he could derive power from the murder of a dozen virgins, had murdered eleven young girls so coldly by beheading them. Rice solved the murder case, and it was during that time he had come to know agent Rice as a brilliant agent.

  “The Jamaican left headless bodies behind, but this is different.”

  “The killer could be a worshipper, he would know that there will be hundreds of fingerprints everywhere after mass, and so no need to be discrete, he needs no alibi to clear his name, too bad we can’t find a murder weapon.”

  “I thought so at first, but why would a priest instead of fleeing from his would be assailant use holy water to defend himself?”

  Harrison thought for a moment. “He might have thought he was facing a demon.” He conjectured looking speculatively at Rice. “It could be the killer was masked like a demon.” Dr. Harrison walked over to his cabinet where he kept his secret solutions and came back with two glasses of brandy, one he handed over to Rice who instantly downed his glass.

  Rice shook his head with his eyes tightly shoot as the hot sensation hurtled down his throat. “No. according to records this man has being a priest for over twenty years, he is a master when it comes to exorcism he won’t be easily deceived by some theatrics.”

  “Someone somewhere knows something we need to know about this murder, and am going to get to them.” Rice said in a serious tone with a vindictive intent. “What of the totem found at the scene?”

  “I found a strange marking on it too, but this one was hand made not as smooth as that found on the priest mummy.” He passed onto Rice a piece of paper with the photo of the totem on it and the carving enlarged. "I found something startling, in the past hundred years such totems have been found in their thousands all over the world, and they were found beside someone dead."

  "Was autopsies carried out on the dead? We could be dealing with a worldwide serial killer here."

  "No, most deaths were confirmed natural, accidental in fact to many a hoax."

  "Well this isn't a hoax. This is not the first time such totems are found, but this is the first murder of this nature, so what was the inscription?”

  “The totem appeared to be half burnt. But we found “RL” inscribed, the letters fit the middle words in the priest name.”

  “Then the killer knew our Vic, this rules out all nonsense talk about spirits.”

  “Anytime from now the lab analysis on the composition of the wood from which the totem was carved would be out, from that we could narrow it to a certain part of the world.”

  “About those markings on our Vic I think there is somewhere I need to check.” Rice said as he put on his jacket again.