A Life of Death: Episodes 9 - 12 Read Free Page A

heading to where Jessie sat waiting in the car. Flipping out my cell, I called home base and got Taylor, our only dispatcher. She said she’d look into Rayson further, but it was really just a shot in the dark.
     
    * * *
     
    “Find anything worthwhile in big brother’s office?” asked Jessie when I ducked into the driver’s seat.
    “Only if you call having to start at the beginning worthwhile.”
    “So Irene’s off the hook?”
    “It appears that way.”
    “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!” he shouted, breaking from his distraught expression. “Now don’t get me wrong, I ain’t tryin’ to get people off. But I’ve been sayin’ those ankh tattoos really aren’t connected for years.”
    I nodded, sullen with the lack of prospects after years of investigating and so many murders. Maybe he was right. Something tickled the back of my brain, telling me the tattoos were still important, but thus far they’d gotten me nowhere.
    “So where to next?” he added, a bit more cheery than before.
    I shrugged. “Home, James.” I turned to shift the car into gear and spotted an assortment of flyers and advertisements in the center-console shelf. “What’s up with the flyers? You trying to clutter up the car and get me charged for cleaning?” I grabbed the handful and scanned them.
    “Nothin’ much. Just got a girl I’ve been dating for a while. I thought I’d take her out. She’s into that kinda thing.”
    “What… food?” I asked, holding up a flyer with a pizza coupon advertising two-for-one. “Most people are, Jessie.” I grinned, but the look disappeared when I saw what was on the back.
    “Nah, not the pizza. The stuff on the ba—”
    “Yeah, I see it,” I mumbled, lost in thought.
    “She’s into that Egyptian-mythology stuff,” he added, but the words seemed distant and muted. “GW’s got something going on…”
    On the color flyer was an advertisement for George Washington University’s Archaeology department. However, what caught my eye was the brown bowl pictured below the title. In jagged hieroglyphics was a line of symbols and connecting lines in black ink. A stick figure seemed to be moving around as though it were an ancient flipbook. In one hand it held a large key in the shape of an ankh, and in the other was a staff with an angled, oblong head and a forked base. I couldn’t decipher the text, but the key and creature’s head brought back a particular vision of the first victim, Junior Lee. Vague images of the woman’s mask had been silhouetted at times by torchlight. In my drugged state I hadn’t been able to make out more than partial figures, but piecing them together the image began to take shape. The depiction on the bowl was of a man with a wolf’s head. I hadn’t been able to make out the creature in the visions before, but this couldn’t be coincidence.
    “Alex, what is it?” Jessie asked, pulling me from my thoughts.
    “Give me a minute,” I said, holding up an index finger. The tug in the back of my mind wouldn’t let up. My research and the Internet had been pretty reliable, but maybe there was more to it. I tried our local college years ago, but unfortunately they shut down the archeology program due to budget cuts. “You know, you may be right about the tattoos, but I’ve got a hunch that there’s more to it. I think the ankh’s the key.” I flipped over the flyer and slapped the image. “See, it’s a key, literally, and that’s exactly what I saw.”
    “What, Anubis?”
    “Yeah.”
    “It’s a dog-headed god. He was over life and death or somethin’ back when Egyptians ran things.”
    “I ran across him in my past research, but it just hit me what that creature was.”
    “You know, you could have mentioned that before: like years ago, before more than a dozen people were murdered.”
    I lowered my head. “I didn’t realize it before. You don’t understand how hard it is to interpret these memories, especially when the victims are