“Hello,” the boy whispered.
When Rachel looked down, he was gone.
*****
Over an hour later, the police finally let her go home. She had discovered to her consternation that the young man who had died, practically in her arms, was a kidnapper. He had drugged a young woman at Northwestern and hauled her out to the suburbs. Once there, he had started a bizarre ritual, the purpose of which the police were still trying to ascertain.
“Strangest thing I ever saw,” said the detective who had taken her statement. He jerked his head towards a warehouse a few hundred yards away. “He had this poor girl laid down in a circle, with weird markings all over the floor. Candles and whatnot all around her. And some old book lying there when we cleaned the mess up. God knows what he thought he was doing.”
