Read Online Angel Killer by Andrew Mayne - Free Book Online

publicity stunt, killing another.
    I search the rooftops again for any sign of someone watching. I know he’s long gone, but part of me still has that feeling that I’m being watched. This dark show has only started.

10
    O UR JET LEAVES Michigan a little past 4 a.m. When I check my phone there’s a message from my ex-boyfriend. He’s in from New York and wants to know if I want to grab a late dinner.
    I send him an e-mail explaining why I couldn’t return his call and tell him maybe next time. Secretly, I’m thankful I didn’t have to turn him down over the phone. Our breakup was long and awkward. A campaign fund-raiser for a New York senator, he seemed like my workaholic match until I caught him reading the CNN closed captioning in the middle of sex. I may not be the most imaginative girl in the bedroom, but I have to draw a line somewhere.
    By the time we land, there’s already a meeting scheduled for later that day to fill in the rest of the bureau on what happened. I make it home long enough to get a shower and take a three-hour nap. While I change into something more suitable for the office, I watch the news for the media reaction from yesterday.
    What should be a quiet Sunday morning is filled with high-def video of the flames from the body over the iron gates of the cemetery. The fire looks like a stretched-out tornado as it twists into the sky and ends in a dark plume of smoke.
    Photos are already popping up online. Some people saying they can see ghastly images and spectral eyes looking down on them. A commentator flicking through different images calls attention to the most striking ones. I have to admit that some of the freeze frames are ominous-looking. No matter what I know about statistics and psychology—you’re bound to get some photos that can be anthropomorphized into faces—it doesn’t change my emotional reaction when I see a dark skeletal image leering at the camera.
    I send a quick e-mail to Ailes while I put on my makeup, something I never learned properly until a college roommate showed me how. All I knew up until then was show makeup, designed for bright lights and big theaters. I used to either look like a drag queen or wore none at all. Now I go for a simple not-made-up-unless-you-look-closely style. It takes just as long as anything else.
    We’re so image-obsessed, if the Warlock really wanted to mess with us, it would be simple for him to Photoshop an image or digitally manipulate some video and then post it somewhere online. It would be the twenty-first-century way to leave a calling card.
    Watching the news replay the video and play up the mystery is frustrating. I keep hearing the phrase “a case that has the FBI baffled” over and over again.
    For Christ sake, we’ve only been on the case for less than twenty-four hours. Give us some time . . .
    But there may not be time, I realize. The Warlock may be playing a game with us, but it’s not one we’re meant to win.
    A young paramedic, one I think I remember from the scene, is talking to a reporter. His face is wide open with surprise. Not shock. It’s awe.
    “I can’t explain it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. One moment the girl is just there and then BOOM! She’s erupted into flames reaching the sky.” He looks up, expecting to still see the fire.
    “Do the authorities have any idea what caused this?” asks the reporter.
    The paramedic shakes his head. “No. Nothing. They don’t have a clue. Look to your Bible, that’s all I’m saying.”
    I turn the television off, disgusted. I don’t think it’s time to give up on rationality and reason just yet. I hope he’s just one excitable young man, but I can’t help think that his reaction is similar to that of many other people watching this around the world.
    Somewhere the Warlock is also watching this. Laughing to himself.
    I finish getting dressed and head back to Quantico for a conference with Danielle’s forensic unit, the assistant director, the head