“Investigating, Colson. You should try it. Yourself.”
He ignored the jab. “Was the fourth scroll sold after it was stolen, like the others?”
“Yep. For six figures.”
“Six figures?”
“Yep. It sold for the most of the group. All four scrolls sold for about four-hundred thousand total. The underground black market for stolen art is a world-wide, billion dollar industry. In case you didn’t know.”
“I’m in the wrong industry.”
“You’re on the right side of the law.” I sipped again. “The FBI has an entire unit of agents trained to recover high-value art, not to mention dozens of agencies in the private sector. Art investigators, they’re called. Thing is, stolen art moves quickly, which makes it tough to trace. The Cedonia Scrolls have been stolen and recovered three separate times over the last few decades, making them even more valuable in the black market.”
“That, and the fact that they’re said to be cursed. What idiots would want to be cursed? Let alone kill a cop for one?”
Colson obviously hadn’t spent the last seventy-two hours of his life researching the dark underworld of supernatural powers. The moment I began researching the infamous Cedonia Scrolls, two things surprised me. One was how little information there was on them, and two, was the massive cult that worshiped them.
The legend went something like this: In 1968, a group of hikers found four scrolls locked in a chest, hidden deep in a cave just outside Berry Springs. The scrolls were constructed of leather sheets sewn together and wound on two wooden rollers. Using punched designs in the leather, each scroll depicted a different location around Berry Springs. Although there’s no record of the scrolls being professionally appraised, they’re assumed to be from the seventeenth century. According to the Wiccan websites I’d perused, the location on each scroll signifies a monumental ceremony held by the famous witch, Cedonia, where she raised demons from the earth.
The hikers who found the scrolls died two weeks later, one from a rare virus, and the other, a tumble off a cliff. And so began the rumor that the scrolls were cursed and all those who touched them were doomed to face eternity in hell. I wish I could say I was surprised at the demand to own one of these scrolls, but the truth was, I knew far too well about the obsession to tempt fate. To own it, to control it. To be a part of something bigger than yourself, for better or worse.
As decades went on, the gossip of the Cedonia Scrolls slowly faded away, until a year ago when whispers said the scrolls had been stolen from an art lover named Charles Nicholson, who was in hospice, now dead. Over the following weeks, three of the four popped up at various private art auctions, where each was stolen sometime in the night. An anonymous witness to one of the heists dubbed the thief the “Black Bandit,” a nod to the black suit, hat, and mask it wore. The story quickly became sensationalized, gossip colored with stories of witchcraft, curses and supernatural power.
The fourth scroll was MIA until it turned up at a local art shop named Mystic Maven’s. According to the shop owner, Hazel De Ville, she’d purchased the scroll at a thrift store for two dollars, the infamous piece of art finding its way out of the black market and into the hands of someone who had no clue what they had. After bragging about her find to everyone in Donny’s Diner, Hazel locked the scroll in her art shop, where it was stolen that same night. During the robbery, the station received a call about a “suspicious person,” wearing head-to-toe black, lurking around the building. Lieutenant Jack Seagrave was the first one on the scene—where he was shot to death moments after the Black Bandit escaped with the fourth scroll.
“It’s all connected, Colson. A cursed Wiccan scroll was stolen. Then, Seagrave gets shot while responding to the heist. Then, on the day of his funeral, a voodoo shrine is assembled ten yards away.”
He slowly nodded, then asked, “Anything on the car?”
Earlier that day, I received the surrounding street camera feeds from the scene and hit my first lead. My first in three days.
Three fucking days.
“Nothing worth anything.” I said. “I ran the description through the system. No blue, four-door sedan associated with any recent crimes. I reached out to a few of my counterparts across the state, see if it rang any bells for them.”
“No luck?”
“No luck.”
Colson blew out a breath. “Could’ve been anyone, you know.”
“Or, it could be Seagrave’s killer. A piece-of-shit car with no license plate was caught on camera outside the art shop, moments after Seagrave was shot six times. Why wouldn’t you think it was the shooter?”
“But there were also two other vehicles that passed by within thirty minutes, right?”
“Sandra Nickels, on her way home from the nightshift at the processing plant, and Carlos Muniz, on his way home from a gig at a bar in Eureka.”
“You talked to them both already?”
I grunted.
“Verify Muniz’s story?”
“With the bar and his roommate.”
“Humph.” Colson chewed his lower lip.
“The unmarked blue sedan is our guy. Just have to find him.”
“I’m assuming you’ve been to Ron’s lot?”
I nodded. “His, and two other used car lots in town. Still need to hit up the surrounding towns. There was one blue sedan sold to an old lady name Ingrid, two years ago. She still owns it today.”
“You talk to her?”
“Went to her house before the funeral.”
“Of course you did. See any pentagrams on her front door?”
“No.”
Colson took a swig of his beer, then blew out a breath. “So we’re assuming the blue sedan belongs to the Black Bandit…”
“And that the Black Bandit killed Seagrave.”
A moment slid between us as we contemplated that assumption.
“What about the dumpster diving?” I asked. “Anything turn up?”
“No murder weapon.”
Searching the surrounding trashcans and dumpsters for the gun used to kill Seagrave had been a stretch, too. The Black Bandit wasn’t that stupid. Obviously.
“We’ll have the dolls and candles you bagged up from the Voodoo Tree scanned for prints. If the Bandit was the one who built the shrine, maybe we’ll get a hit. Maybe that’ll give us a legit lead. I’ll start the paperwork first thing tomorrow morning.”
I scoffed.
“Takes time. You know that.”
“We don’t have goddamn time, Colson. We’re already three damn days into this.”
He didn’t respond because he knew just as much as I did that after the first forty-eight hours of a homicide, every hour that passed made it less likely the culprit would be caught.
“Have any other of the Cedonia Scroll heists been associated with homicides?” He asked.
“No.”
“So, the Black Bandit stole the scroll, got busted by Seagrave on his way out, put a round of bullets in Seagrave’s chest, then disappeared in a blue four-door sedan?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a B&E ended in a homicide.”
“We’ve got no murder weapon, no prints, not a single piece of trace evidence. Only a random car and a blurred side-shot of the Black Bandit.”