“I haven’t been laid in, like, a month.”
“Too much.”
“It’s tough out there, you know?”
I ignored the question and stared at the wallpaper photo on my phone a moment longer, because if I engaged with Max, I’d wind up with an essay of the latest trials and tribulations of his love life, and he was not known for keeping the glory—gory?—details at a minimum. There was only so much my old-man soul could handle before 9:00 a.m.
Max flipped the newspaper over and tapped the front page. “Check out the news. ‘Ouija Killer at Large.’”
I locked the phone, pocketed it, then looked down at the headline. “The what?”
“This isn’t one of those subway rags, is it?”
I picked up the paper and brought it close. “The Cityisn’t exactly known for its quality journalism, but they sure aren’t writing stories about Bigfoot being abducted by aliens in order to breed some super ape-soldier to take over Earth.”
Max took a drink from his Starbucks concoction and said after a beat, “It’s a weird coincidence, don’t you think? After yesterday?”
I frowned, because yeah, it was, and tugged my magnifying glass from my back pocket. “What’re you drinking?” I asked absently, studying the newsprint.
Max shook the contents and said, “Strawberry Funnel Cake Frap.”
“That’s dessert, not coffee.”
“It’s pretty good. It’s got powdered funnel cake pieces in it. Wanna try?”
“No, thanks.”
The Ouija Killer article had a definite flair for sensationalism, but otherwise coherently summed up the life and death of Madam Sandra, a self-proclaimed psychic and medium working out of a storefront on the West Side. She’d been fifty-six, in business for four years, and offered the typical menu of love and career readings via tarot, palm, and crystal ball, but could also commune with and relay messages to and from the spirit world—for an extra fee, I’m sure. She was found dead on Tuesday morning by her cleaner.
“It was awful,”the article quoted Marie Yang.“I unlocked the front door and there she was, dead on her reading table—a dinner knife in her neck! This is a nice neighborhood. Madam Sandra’s a staple of the community.”
Clearly, the Madam wasn’t beloved byallof Hell’s Kitchen.
The article went on with some melodramatic descriptions of the shop postmurder, such as the eeriness of the neon sign in the window proclaiming Psychic Readings, which had glowed day and night, now suddenly dark. And the smell of incense still lingering in the summer air around the storefront, as if Madam Sandra had only stepped out for a moment and would be right back. It concluded with a quote from the NYPD—No comment—and hypothesized as to the motive behind the slaying.
Ms. Yang, intimately familiar with the layout and possessions in both Madam Sandra’s shop and personal residence directly upstairs, tellsThe Citythat nothing was out of order. If robbery wasn’t incentive for the brutal murder of a gifted advisor, then what terror is stalking our streets? Could this be a sort of spiritual hate crime?
“I guess ‘Ouija Killer’ sounded sufficiently spooky,” Max said when I lowered the paper. “Since there’s nothing in there specifically about talking boards. It’s probably because she was a supposed medium.” He set his cup aside, and condensation began collecting around its base. “But it caught my eye because of the spiritoscope and how you said it was a precursor to Ouija boards.”
“I did say that,” I agreed in a subdued voice.
“Think this is what Ferguson was on about yesterday?” Max tapped the paper a second time.
I thought of the crime-scene photographs I’d been privy to—the spiritoscope atop a probably wooden table and a dead woman’s handful of knucklebones. The tangible clues were, in my opinion, symbolic representations of the countless hoaxes pertaining to Spiritualism. Calvin had remarked afterward that the victim was a con artist. Radcliff had mentioned clients. And here, in literal black-and-white, was a reported murder of one of the dime-a-dozen psychics in the city who, let’s be real here, was as psychic as I was heterosexual.Plus, Ferguson had mentioned Radcliff was on a scene Tuesday morning, and that’s when this Madam Sandra was found to have bitten the big one by her cleaner.
“Seb?”
“I’m fairly convinced that this incident and Ferguson’s blustering are related.”
Max shook his head, folded the newspaper, and said, “We should get one of those OSHA scoreboards for the shop. You know, for recording accidents? Except we record how many days we can go before a mystery is dropped in your lap.”
“I’ve been doing very good,” I answered.
“I know. A new record. It’s been… 545 days.”
“Exactly. I haven’t—wait, for real?”
“Yeah, but now it’s zero,” Max explained.
