Chapter 3

“He wasn’t a vampire. He was a lover. The wife had set a viper loose in their bed after discovering their tryst.”

“Seems obvious now, doesn’t it?”

“Superstition can certainly enliven the imagination of otherwise capable police detectives. Such was the case of the well-meaning men of the NYPD.”

“In this case, it took an occult mind to sniff out a crime that was most certainly not occult.”

“And in the case of the Satan worshippers of Zaragoza?”

“Pig blood. A lot of pig blood. How they got the blood in the woman’s body was certainly a feat, to say the least.”

“Yes. I’ve read the report thoroughly. How very fascinating. Then, of course, there is the case that brought you tremendous fame.

“Or notoriety, depending on your point of view.”

“It took quite a creative liberty to solve it. And courage. A woman’s courage, I might add. A string of rapes in Dublin by a veritable ‘Jack the Ripper’. His victims skinned alive. The Dublin police were stuck on the case for years, and each year another woman lost her skin, left in such conditions that the good people of Dublin could not comprehend that the murders could be committed by anyone except the devil himself. You and you alone solved the crimes. And in record time.”

Rachel nodded. “The Chief Constable showed an atypical obsession for his hobby,” she replied.

“No one believed you. No one wanted to believe you. He was a man of the people and a good catholic.  They even tried to run you out of town.  They’d much rather believe that the raped and murdered women had somehow inflamed the wrath of Satan than entertain even the slightest possibility that their saintly Chief Constable of Dublin could have committed such grotesque acts. You alone, despite all who went against you, were able to produce evidence far beyond reasonable doubt that the dear Chief Constable of Dublin was the perpetrator.”

“I did what I had to do.”

“If only you were around during Jack the Ripper’s time.”

“A case I certainly would have thoroughly enjoyed taking on.”

The rector’s face knitted with amusement. A slanted smile curled on her face.

“Is that why you do it, Doctor Blake? Do you enjoy it?”

“I’m good at it, and I enjoy getting paid.”

The rector nodded. She smirked. “So it seems. Yet there is one case that still eludes you to this day, isn’t there? Perhaps the most important case in your life.”

Rachel kept a straight face, but her hands tightened unconsciously into balls. A sudden uncomfortable heat flushed her face.

“Your sister, Emily Blake, enfeebled by polio her entire young life, was murdered at the age of twelve at a park in Boston. That is the real source of your drive is it not?”

“I beg your pardon, Frau Doktor, I’m not sure why that has any bearing on the case at hand,” Rachel replied curtly.

“Forgive me, Doctor Blake, you have my condolences for what must be a dreadful tragedy, but I am also a psychologist. As such, I am quite intrigued by the motivations that drive us all. While tragedy can be life debilitating ailment for many, for a few it is a totem of talent. I always wondered what the difference was.”

Rachel trembled. Anger began to overtake her, and confusion as to why this was a necessary conversation at all. Yet the rector persisted.

“You were with her at the park, were you not?”

Rachel did not answer. She merely glared and clenched her jaws.

“You left her for but a moment. A moment that would forever change your life.” The rector’s eyes glanced down at Rachel’s cane. “That was the cane she used to help her walk, was it not? Her polio cane?”

Her eyes returned to meet Rachel’s glare, composed, and filled with satisfaction at the response she received.

“It is,” Rachel said, swallowing the knot in her throat.

“Peculiar that you would want to keep it. That you cling to it so, after so many years. But perhaps it is precisely the same fixation that drives you to succeed. I find that intriguing.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes. She kept her voice as tepid as possible as she replied, “I’m glad I can be a point of intrigue, Frau Doktor.”

The rector returned a thin smile.

“Well. There we have it. You are talented. You are driven. That, more than anything else, is why I insisted on you for this case. The men from the Criminal Agency don’t have that spark that you do. They don’t have the insatiable desire to get the job done. They are civil servants in it for the paycheck. You are in it because of what you’ve gone through.”

“I will do whatever it takes to bring in the killer.”

“Thank you, Doctor Blake. I trust you will take this case on with the same level of… panache, let’s say, as you have always shown. The two gentlemen that were murdered were very dear friends.”

She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out an envelope.

“That is a check for one thousand US dollars to cover your board during your investigation. The rest of it will be provided to you upon successful completion of your assignment. As agreed in our correspondence.”

She slid the envelope across the table. Rachel palmed it and put it in her pocket.

“Thank you, Doctor Fischer.”

“You’re very welcome. Now, I do apologize again, but I have a schedule to keep, regrettably.”

The rector stood. Rachel stood with her.

“I have just one question,” Rachel said.

“What afflicts your daughter?”

The rector gave a thinned smile. “Nothing. She is perfectly healthy.”

“She did not give me that impression.”

A shade drew across the rector’s face. “Are you a medical professional, Doctor Blake?”

Rachel shook her head.

“Well, I am. I assure you; she is perfectly fine.”

“She was alarmingly still.”

“She had undergone a lobotomy of the prefrontal cortex.”

Of course. It made sense. The lifelessness. The marbled eyes. The marbled face. Trademarks of a lobotomy. Rachel wasn’t necessarily surprised by the revelation, only in the matter-of-factly way in which it was delivered. The practice was objectionable to her, not the least because of what it does to the mind but what it does to the soul. She has seen how a lobotomy breaks the soul.

Rachel did not betray her disgust with any emotive response. She kept a cool demeanor and replied, “I see.”

At least Rachel could cross Isolde off the list of possible suspects.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, Doctor Blake, I have other business to attend to. Good luck. Give Investigator Schmidt my due regards.”

“Good evening, Frau Doktor,” Rachel replied.

Passing Isolde on her departure, Rachel paused momentarily to look at the woman. A pit developed in her stomach. Isolde was beautiful. Angelic. A soft face. Soft, apple-red lips, once capable of carrying a beautiful smile, now forever bent in winsome indolence. Whatever ailed you before, I hope this is a less painful existence, Rachel thought, saying it in her mind like a prayer. 

The butler awaited Rachel in the entranceway. He opened the door for her.

“Auf Wiedersehen, Doctor Blake. And good luck,” the butler said. His voice followed her like a shout in a cave.

When he shut the door, Rachel took out a cigarette and lit it. Gravel crunched under her feet as she walked through the driveway. A chill snapped against her skin. When she reached the gate, she looked back at the estate. Its sallow eyes glared hungrily.

The walk to the morgue gave her time and space to think. And in that time and space, in the pockets of the fog of her insomnia, her mind went to her sister Emily. She tightened her grip on her cane. She swung it more vigorously as she walked. The cane was a point of pride for her as much as it was a point of intrigue not just to the rector, but to all that knew of her. It was a part of her identity, not just in her private thoughts, but in the public sphere as well. She was the witch detective who spoke softly and carried a big stick. But the stick meant more to her than what the newspapers exclaimed. It reminded her of what she was, and what she did. Not a day goes by that she does not think about Emily’s murder. They were feeding ducks at the park near their home in Medford, Massachusetts. Emily’s bout with polio had become particularly bad, so she had been put into an institute in Boston. It was a rare Sunday that Emily got to come home, and Rachel got to spend time with her. Rachel had gone off to purchase cotton candy — one blue and one pink — and when she returned, she found Emily face down, half sunk in the pond, the muddied skirt of her Sunday dress pulled over her head, and her blood clouding the water around her. The cane was still leaning on the bench where Rachel left her. The killer was never found.

The rector’s hunch was right. That murder singularly drove her. Her lust for vengeance was her lifeblood. But the rector didn’t know even half of it. No one could have known that on a bitter cold full moon night at the foot of Emily’s grave, Rachel prayed for vengeance and that it was not God who had answered her prayer, but an ancient demon named Sammael. She had made a pact with Sammael — to find and mark ten murderous souls for him. He would give her the name of her sister’s killer in return. No one could have known how unhesitant she was to take the deal.

Rachel found Schmidt standing outside the morgue. He had a blank look on his face as he smoked a cigarette, his eyes unblinking. The look of a man drowning inside. Despite that, he was handsome, and contained not an ounce of the swagger Rachel was accustomed to by his ilk. More and more, she found him to be a source of brightness in the never-ending gloom.

He greeted her in his typical aloof fashion when he saw her, then dropped his cigarette and stamped it out with a twist of his shoe before taking her into the morgue to see the coroner.

“Doctor Blake, this is Doctor Paul Bauer. Head coroner of the university morgue.

A short man with a round, gold wire-frame pair of glasses greeted them presenting a gloominess not unlike that of the people Rachel had met so far, but perhaps most apt for a man whose day-to-day job was to work with the dead.

Once they had all donned smocks, masks, and sterile gloves, Bauer guided Rachel and Schmidt to the morgue. He opened two square metal doors on a wall full of square metal doors and slid the body out on its metal tray.

“Doctor Otto Rauschenberg,” Bauer announced as if to present Doctor Rauschenberg for a keynote lecture at a conference rather than his corpse.

Rachel looked down at the deceased man. He had the tell-tale look of a corpse vacant its soul, confirming her suspicion that she would not garner anything by using her henbane powder. Fortunately, corpses can be still useful without the soul, perhaps even more useful, considering how her experience with Schulz went. Even without a soul, the person’s faded memory still lingers long in the brain. Even as decay sets in and the memory begins to fade, they may still provide information that a soul cannot. Thus, her vervain powder, which allows her to read memories, both of the living and of the dead, may prove useful now. She brought the coroner’s attention to her tool case by lifting it for him to see.

“Do you mind if I conduct a… special procedure on the body?” She asked.

His face gathered in uncertainty. He glanced at Schmidt who said to him,

“Her procedure is completely non-invasive.”  He glanced at Rachel for confirmation. “Right?”

Rachel nodded with an assuring smile.

Bauer straightened up. He bristled. “Well, Sabine certainly warned me about you. I was hoping it was nothing more than another one of her terrible pranks. It appears not, I’m afraid.”

“I can neither affirm your hope nor allay your fears, Doctor Bauer. The procedure will only take a few minutes,” Rachel responded.

“Fine,” Bauer responded curtly with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Perform whatever nonsense you must.”

Rachel acknowledged this by placing her tool kit on a surgical table. She clicked it open and pulled out a vial containing a lemon-yellow powder. She took out the small spoon and scooped out a small morsel.

Bauer crossed his arms and glowered. Schmidt watched her unemotively.

Rachel took a huge breath. Unlike the henbane she had used before, the vervain did not require her to cross into Limbo and subject her to the arcanic storm of that place, but it did induce a much more intense acute pain like a white-hot needle right into the brain as soon as the powder’s magic took effect. The pain was only very momentary but nonetheless unpleasant. It was her least favorite of her potions.

She placed the miniscule spoon into her nostril and snorted the vervain powder. The pain came. Searing her. She let out a grunt of pain. Schmidt moved to grab her, perhaps expecting her to collapse again as she had with the henbane. She motioned for him to stay put as the pain began to clear. Arcanic energy began to roil in her mind. The vervain only lasted a few minutes, so she got to work at once. She leaned over the corpse, pressed her hands against each of Rauschenberg’s temples, and allowed the arcanic energy of his memory to flow into her brain to start searching for the memory she was looking for — the last moments of his life. The process can be likened to fishing for an object from a bag without being able to peer into it, so it could take, and she may not even find the memory in question. However, a dying memory was typically quite easy to reach. It always resided somewhere on the surface, and being the freshest memory, she never had trouble finding it.