The Mesmerist: The Mesmerist Thriller Series, #1

By Joseph D'Agnese

He kills with his mind. Only an unbeliever can stop him.

Tod Fisher is a simple cop with a complicated past. His brother Johnny had a strange gift that he was forced to hide—until the moment he ended his life.

Haunted by that memory, Tod sees Johnnys everywhere. In the age of disco, New York City has become home to an underground culture of gifted individuals who can kill with a glance or heal with a touch. People called thinks. They're just like you and me. Some are good. Some aren't.

A vicious madman is sucking the life out of his victims--crushing their hearts, withering their bodies, and leaving their corpses old before their time.

All with the power of his mind.

Can Tod and his new buddy—a federal agent with a taste for the supernatural—run the killer to ground before they face the unthinkable?

The Mesmerist is the first in a spellbinding series of thrillers featuring psychic phenomena, page-turning suspense, and heart-pounding action.

If you're a fan of occult or fantasy detectives, paranormal answers to life's burning questions, and diabolical twists and turns, you owe it to yourself to check out The Mesmerist.

Don't even think about it. Get it today.

* * *

Praise

"Excellent urban fantasy. D'Agnese manages to create a fantasy world of 'thinks'—people with special abilities, most of whom are hidden to the rest of the world."—Robert Swartwood, USA Today Bestselling Author of The Serial Killer's Wife

"Flat-out fun...a book that artfully blends ambition and enjoyment, one well-written that remains entertaining throughout. The Mesmerist casts an intriguing spell."—Loren Eaton, I Saw Lightning Fall

"The Mesmerist is the quintessential page-turner."—Thomas Briggs, Killer Book Covers

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nutgraf Productions, LLC
• Release date: Dec 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781941410219

Joseph D'Agnese

Joseph D’Agnese is a journalist and author who has written for children and adults alike. He’s been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, Discover, and other national publications. In a career spanning more than twenty years, his work has been honored with awards in three vastly different areas—science journalism, children’s literature, and mystery fiction. His science articles have twice appeared in the anthology Best American Science Writing. His children’s book, Blockhead: The Life of Fibonacci, was an honoree for the Mathical Book Prize—the first-ever prize for math-themed children’s books. One of his crime stories won the 2015 Derringer Award for short mystery fiction. Another of his stories was selected by mega-bestselling author James Patterson for inclusion in the prestigious annual anthology, Best American Mystery Stories 2015. D’Agnese’s crime fiction has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Plots with Guns, Beat to a Pulp, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mystery Weekly, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. D’Agnese lives in North Carolina with his wife, the New York Times bestselling author Denise Kiernan (The Girls of Atomic City).

Book preview

1

Thursday, June 21

I popped a stick of Clove gum in my mouth and stared at the door.

No answer.

At the bottom of the pebbled-glass window were a line of letters in black paint: Federal Bureau of Investigation. UC-13.

The Federal Building in downtown Manhattan was only ten years old, but the paint on the door already looked chipped, as if the feds knew it was only a matter of time before this team got axed. The second line told me that there were at least thirteen other teams in the country that were saddled with everything from cattle mutilations to little green men.

The door was unlocked, so I helped myself.

It was a long, windowless cinderblock room, heavy on the fluorescent lighting, and designed to look like a classroom. Two blackboards at the front and back, a platform or stage with steps under each of them. Sad-looking US and bureau flags on either end. The bulk of the room was occupied by rows of metal shelving.

I called out the agent’s name.

Nothing.

I headed to the other side of the room, picking my way past shrunken heads, maracas fashioned from possum skulls and chicken feet, handmade dolls impaled with needles, and giant jars of colorless fleshy objects swimming in formaldehyde. There were books and religious statues and skeletal creatures suspended on thread from the shelves above them. By the time I’d emerged from the aisle, I’d been saluted by Buddha, Ganesha, and a porcelain phrenology bust.

I don’t know what any of it had to do with law enforcement.

A man sat cross-legged on the rear platform, eyes closed. Weird-looking dude, I thought. He could have been any ethnicity under the sun. Indian. Black. Hispanic. I had no clue. His skin was brown. His head was bald, the top of it shaped like the business end of a torpedo. He wore a shaggy Fu Manchu.

The body under the collarless ribbed shirt was lean and powerfully muscled. Old jeans clung to him tight. No gut. A semiautomatic in a rig around the left shoulder. Sandals on his feet, which was also weird. I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw another detective’s toenails. His were thick, yellowed, and curled at the tip.

After a while, the eyes opened.

Detective Fisher, he said.

The voice was clear, rich, booming: Fish-ahh.

Doctor Soul, I presume?

He leaped from the platform and came over to crush my hand. Call me Ishmael. Let’s set up over here.

A couple of desks stuck out at right angles to the stage. They held ugly green rotary phones, paperwork, empty takeout bags that smelled as if something had died in them, and a beige metallic box with a glass window.

That threw me.

New York was mired in a fiscal crisis. The nation and I were only a handful of years out of a war and enjoying our well-earned slide into amnesia. The Oval Office was occupied by a well-meaning peanut farmer. And this guy had on his desk the first personal computer I’d ever seen.

He rooted in his desk for a business card, which he handed to me with a flourish; I felt obligated to go digging for mine.

He opened the first of my files and spread the crime scene photos on one of the clean desks.

When did they start?

That’s the embarrassing part. We missed them. The first was three weeks ago. A Monday night. Transit cops found her in a utility room at the Fourteenth Street station. On the track level.

Door was unlocked?

Officially, no. But you know how it is. They had a padlock on it with a chain through a hole in the door where the lock used to be. City’s a dump. Anyway, official COD was a heart attack.

Which is why no one thought to flag it.

"Exactly. But I did. There were a few other weird things that no one else noticed, apparently. Wrinkles. Loss of muscle tone. Hair loss. Basically what you’d see in a case of premature aging."

How old was the victim?

I pressed my lips into a thin, disturbed line. The first one? Twenty-one. He said nothing, so I continued: They all figured that the girl felt chest pains, wanted to get to a bathroom, tried the first door she came to. She’s disoriented. Boom, she drops. Found her there next to some cleaning supplies. How many twenty-year-olds you know die of a heart attack?

"It happens. The vie, she is tragique." A hah! escaped his lips. He was cracking himself up.

Okay, I said, "but how many women that age look like this when they die?"

I held up the photo. Andrea Brandon had been a thin waif of a woman clad in a sundress. A purse and an artist’s portfolio had been among her personal effects. She stared out of the photo, wide-eyed, in disbelief.

She looked like a woman three times her age.

Soul regarded the dead girl’s face calmly. Okay, he said, "but it’s all still in the realm of the possible. A hard life. Alcoholism. Drug abuse. Undetected heart disease. Cardiomyopathy. All these things could, conceivably, lead to the death you describe. But what did you see that your colleagues didn’t?"

A tarot card left at the scene. Yeah—that’s the photo. The Page of Swords. The number 1 was marked on the card in blue ink. Smudged prints, nothing usable. Not hers, not anyone’s. At the time, they assumed the card was either hers or it was trash on the scene.

The Page, huh?

Soul looked at the photos.

I’m convinced he’s on an eight-day schedule, I told him. Always hits at night. The second was George Baraut. Forty-six, a commuter. Same MO. They found him in a toilet stall at Port Authority on the ground floor. Heart attack. Possessions, wallet untouched. Same physical signs. Hair loss, wrinkles, et cetera. Two in eight days’ time, with a tarot card at the scene. Still in the realm of the possible, Doctor? I’m not buying it.

The photo: a dead man seated, fully dressed, on a toilet seat. Head and shoulders lolling back against the bus station’s wall of filthy white tile.

Which card?

The Chariot.

If the cat had a sense of humor, he would have left a card showing a throne, Soul said. Plenty of thrones in the tarot deck. Pen mark on this one, too?

Yep. The number 2, scratched into the coating. And then last night—eight days later, like clockwork, the two in the park. They found them come morning near the Alice statue on the East Side. A witness, a homeless woman, is down at Bellevue. We haven’t gotten much out of her.

He’s coming out of the shadows, Soul said. The first two were hidden. A toilet stall. A utility room deep underground. This is his first foray out of doors, and he takes two. This them?

He held up some photos. Grisly ones. The girl’s hands were still locked around the boy’s throat.

I nodded.

Young couple, presumably out walking their dog after coming home late, I told him. Anna Cifuente. Stephen Worwaski. Hispanic and white. Both late twenties. Lived together on the East Side. I gather they worked on Wall Street. They had dinner with some friends till well after 11:00 p.m. They were anxious to leave because they had to walk their dog. The animal had been cooped up all day, they said. We haven’t found the dog.

Soul leaned in. His breath was hot. One card or two?

One tarot card. The Six of Wands. Marked with a number 3.

Soul nodded. "Mmm-yeah. Interesting, isn’t it? Either he was planning only one victim, and fate handed him two. Or the digit on the cards is meant to denote the episode, not the number of victims. Either way, the cards don’t seem to correspond to the victims."

So you agree it’s murder?

Of course. Why else would you be here?

Heart attacks aren’t murder—

Semantics. We’ll get to that. How’d he pull off the latest one?

"Well, that’s the thing. They both have the skin and muscle tone of much older people. The girl died of a heart attack."

And the boy?

I smiled. "Well, that’s really why I’m here, Doctor. Why my genius captain insisted I talk to someone who had the, excuse me, right expertise. Worwaski was clearly murdered. Strangled. Judging from the skin and blood under his nails, the girl choked him to death. He didn’t go easy. Practically tore her face off, scratching her, trying to get her to stop. Not one of those wounds bled, Doctor. Not one. She was dead before she laid a hand on him. Which is impossible."

That depends on your point of view, now don’t it?

She drops dead of a heart attack, then killed her boyfriend? It’s illogical.

Oh ye of little faith, cracked Dr. Soul. If the rational isn’t working for you, isn’t it time to look at the irrational?

Which is what?

The federal agent’s eyes narrowed for a second. He smiled, mustache twitching grandly. Well, Detective. Looks like you’re presiding over a case of murder. By zombification.

I waited for Soul to crack a smile, to let on that he was just kidding.

But he didn’t. He was for real.

I’d spent years busting my hump, working with some of the best cops in the city. Some were crooked. Some a touch melodramatic. Some certified nutjobs. But I’d never heard anyone treat as credible the nonsense Soul was spouting. It just wasn’t done. Not if you wanted to go anywhere in the NYPD.

I started collecting my photos and stuffing them back in the file.

Well, Doctor, thanks for taking the time, but I’m afraid I’ve got more important things on my plate—

He laid a finger on the sleeve of my blazer. What’s wrong, Detective?

I shrugged him off. Don’t touch me, okay? I’m under a lot of pressure right now. I don’t need this.

This, what?

I stopped. I looked into his huge brown eyes. This bullshit of yours? It has no place in good police work.

Ohhh, he moaned, his voice trailing off. "No place in official police work."

"In my experience, Doctor, I said, hoping he got the sarcasm in the word, ascribing supernatural causes to events like these only gets people hurt. The people who believe that stuff, the people who practice it, turn out in the end to be—I struggled to find the right words—sadly delusional."

"That’s what the system wants you to believe, isn’t it? ‘They’re all crazy.’ For what it’s worth, Detective, I don’t embrace the supernatural either. I behold it as an outsider, not a participant. It fascinates me. And I think we’re fools if we don’t consider it. If we ignore it, we’re powerless before it. Man like you has to be open to the possibilities."

A man like me? You don’t know shit about me, pal. I know all I need to know about you. They’ve got you down here in this basement office, underground, because they’re trying to bury you. Clearly, whatever quackery you’re peddling, it has no place in the work. You’re not a detective.

"Oh no? I work for the FBI, and you think I don’t know about you? You think I don’t know you did two tours in the shit? Think I don’t know that you are one of only three officers under the age of thirty to be promoted to detective in the last year? A man like that has some skill, some talent, to be promoted as his city’s going bankrupt fast."

He stood now, six-feet-plus of him looking like a tree trunk planted in the middle of the room. He eyed me with disdain.

I admit I don’t see evidence of it, just yet, he said. "But that’ll come in time, I suppose. No, what I see is what’s right in front of me. I see a man once married, but no longer. You look surprised. That pinkie ring of yours is clearly a woman’s wedding band. Divorce? I doubt it. Too much of the funereal about you. Not hangdog, but genuine misery. You are haunted, Fisher. I saw the serenity prayer on a card when you opened your wallet just now. Working the steps, are we? That’s good. That’s a man who’s pulling himself up out of the muck. I respect that. Yet the clothes on your back are almost too big for you. Could say you’re a shell of the man you once were. But judging from the notches on your belt, you are only now getting that weight back. Why? I have only a guess. You’re Burlington Wearhouse from head to toe, except for that tie and shirt. A tad too lavender and pink, too artfully stylish, for a man like you. A gift perhaps. A new woman in your life? How am I doing? Am I detective enough to be working with a man of your talents?"

The photos hung from my fingers, limp.

Al-Anon, I said, correcting him.

The truth was, the last five years had been hell. I jumped sometimes when I heard helicopters buzzing the Manhattan skyline. Ghosts hovered on the edges of my vision. Johnny. My mother. Maggie. All gone, kept alive because I saw us together when I slammed my eyes shut.

Who was this guy? I thought.

If you’re a cop—a real cop—then help me, I told him. They told me you were smart. Give me something I can use. Don’t send me off chasing after werewolves. I’m not a moron, for Chrissakes.

The big man pressed his lips together, and nodded his naked head gently. He walked to the bookshelves. Those photos? Something caught my eye. You see anything weird about the victims’ hands?

What about them?

He had disappeared down an aisle of his gruesome library. Look at them, Fisher, his voice called out. What do you see?

I looked. Anna Cifuente’s hands were locked around her lover’s neck. Dark nail polish. Some scratches across the backs of them, from where he’d tried to claw her off him. His right hand was hidden by his body when he’d fallen. But the left was…pointing. The index finger seemed to be gesturing out of the picture frame. The remaining fingers of that hand were curled into his palm.

I glanced at the photos of Brandon, the art school student, and Baraut, the lower management schlub who’d died in a toilet stall you wouldn’t wish on a bum. Baraut’s left hand hung limply at his side. But the right lay cradled in his lap. His middle finger, ring finger and pinkie were drawn into the right palm, the thumb carefully curled over them. The index finger pointed out.

Baraut’s the same, I murmured. But the girl—

The girl’s different, I know, Soul said. He’d reappeared from the stacks with a giant hardcover book covered in blue buckram, its crumbling spine repaired with duct tape. He flipped through pages. What’s it look like to you?

The girl lay splayed on a floor of a long-neglected transit authority supply room. Her left hand was limp. Two fingers of her right hand pointed outward. Of the remaining three fingers of that hand, the ring finger and pinkie were curled under the thumb.

It’s like a peace sign.

Maybe. It depends how you look at it. If you’re Dick Nixon or Winston Churchill, you see a V-for-Victory sign. If you’re John Lennon, it looks like a peace sign. Peace, love, groovy, baby. If you’re religious…

He laid the book on the desk. It was opened to an image of a tortured saint in a medieval mosaic. One hand of the holy man held a serrated sword, the tool of his own martyrdom. The other reached upward. Two fingers up, the rest curled in the palm.

It’s a benediction, Soul said. "You go into any Orthodox church, and you’ll see Christ bestowing that same blessing from domes, icons, stuff like that. Hagia Sofia in Constantinople, the monastery in Sinai, some church around the block. It doesn’t matter. It’s everywhere. It varies slightly depending on the artist and the rite. Two fingers symbolize the duality of Christ; both God and man. If you want to go nuts, it’s also the duality of man: good and evil. Some rites stress three fingers; the thumb plays a more prominent role in the blessing. The symbolism of three is obvious: the trinity. He paused and pointed at Brandon’s hand. This other gesture? The single outstretched finger? Different meaning."

He flipped a few pages in the art book and showed me. "It’s here in Leonardo’s Last Supper. St. Thomas points up to heaven. Leonardo did another famous painting—St. John the Baptist here—with the same, almost defiant gesture. Raphael did the same thing in his famous painting, The School of Athens. He actually painted Leonardo into that scene making the same gesture."

What’s it mean? Look up? God, heaven, that kind of stuff?

He snapped the book shut with a thud. See, those old cats, these painters, they were imparting messages to anyone who looked at these paintings. Most of the churchgoers in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance were illiterate. So the pictures on the walls had to tell a story. The message was either, ‘Peace be with you,’ ‘I bless you,’ or it was, ‘Heaven is that way, baby.’ You were always reminded to transcend this miserable life for your heavenly reward. There is something distinctly spiritual about this whole thing.

So we’re looking for a religious fanatic?

He shrugged. That’s the problem with these symbols. They’ve been around so long and appropriated by so many people that they’ve become interchangeable. And the addition of the tarot cards is troubling. The two-fingered blessing here? Something similar is used by Satanists in their depiction of Baphomet. And Baphomet sometimes shows up in those decks of cards.

Bapho—

Baphomet. It’s a Satanic goat-man. I think I have a statue around here—

I stopped him before he headed back to his creepy stacks. I don’t need to see the goat-man. I need to know how to catch this guy. What does this tell us that we can actually use?

Well, we’re almost certainly dealing with someone who’s familiar with the iconography we’re talking about. He’s taking different religious traditions and subverting them for his purposes. He’s moving objects around so they conform to his worldview, whatever that is.

He touched them.

"He posed them. Have all the bodies been released to the next of kin?"

Two have, yeah, I said. Brandon’s buried. Baraut’s about to be if he hasn’t already been. I could get an exhumation order.

Don’t bother. It’s not routine to check for prints, especially in cases of heart attacks. But morticians are remarkably thorough. We go out of this life cleaner than we came into it. But the latest couple—

They’re still downtown at the morgue. I gotta make a call.

Ishmael Soul dropped the book on his desk and produced a set of car keys.

Radio ’em from the car. We need to get to Bellevue. I want to talk to that witness.

2

When his eyes opened that morning, he had two quick thoughts in a row: Where am I? Why the pain?

He did not move an inch in his bed. His eyes roved around the room. Took in the flakes of paint dangling from the ceiling above him. The radiator, its edges tinged with rust. The window set high in the wall, above where any human could reach it. There was a closet, and a shabby dresser holding a cup of now-dusty water. His work clothes hung neatly on a chair.

The doorway, and the small shop beyond it.

There was a bathroom between the bedroom and shop.

And a door, leading to the staircase. To the roof. To the basement. To the incinerator.

Oh, he thought. I’m here.

Thank you, God, for giving me this day.

This day.

This day—and not the night.

The nights were always bad. Always. He closed his eyes fearfully, and waited. The nausea that afflicted him last evening had passed.

It was safe now, to go about his day.

The air was sweltering.

He moved carefully, like a man unfolding a tall ladder, taking care to locate each of his limbs and assess their condition. He was hopelessly entangled in sheets of a nondescript color. He kicked them down around his ankles, and levered his legs to the floor.

For a little while, he sat on the edge, holding his head.

A shudder ran through him, and he could feel his stomach rebel.

Oh, no!

He propelled himself to his feet, and staggered toward the tiny bathroom. It was a hole; dark, squalid, familiar.

He didn’t think about aiming for the toilet. Not once. He was always prepared. A cheap, plastic bucket with a wire handle squatted next to the toilet.

He used it instead.

Waves of nausea rocked him, again and again.

What came out of him was green, viscous, putrid, and at last, done.

The bucket was almost full.

Lord help me. Lord forgive your servant. Teach him to do your bidding.

He ran the water in the sink, and threw his hands under the cold spray. He flipped the spray up to his face. Frigid needles bit into his skin, waking him.

He eyed the old man in the mirror. Smiled at him.

You frightened me for a second there, you know?

This was good. Very good. He had purged himself of it. And he would survive one more day.

A little coffee. Something to settle the stomach. And he would go about his daily shifts. Later, when he got home, he’d go about his business. Unlock the shop. Get some light in this old place. Tend to a few jobs. But before all this, he had to deal with the bucket, and the excrescence of evil that filled it.

3

The shrinks had tried to speak to our only witness with little success. Terry Brew had lived a life on the outs since her mid-twenties, when her parents died. Diagnosed schizophrenic, she’d been in and out of various institutions over the years. Not dangerous, just difficult to manage when she didn’t stick to her regimen. Her last known address had been a garage apartment in Queens, courtesy of her nephew’s family.

That was like her, the nephew’s wife had told me early that morning over the phone. Came and went, in and out, like we were running a hotel. I gathered there was no love lost here, and who could blame the younger woman? Every family had its embarrassments, troublesome relatives who took too much energy and didn’t fit well into the dynamic. The Brews had two kids, a dog, and two full-time jobs. Caring for Aunt Terry, fifty-three, a former sales clerk, was just not going to go well. She’d become abusive during a party last Christmas, shouted at her family and their guests. When her nephew tried to calm her, she whacked him once across the jaw with a twelve-inch serving spoon, and retreated to her apartment. The next day, she was gone. They hadn’t seen her in six months, nor cared to.

The object of all this craziness sat now in a hospital room bed, dressed in a paper gown, fresh socks on her feet. Her hair had once been red, but that was shot through with gray. Bluish-black circles ran under her eyes. Her face was pasty but smooth like a child’s, though the veins coursing under her cheeks seemed purpler than they had any reason to be.

The nurses told me Brew was managing well. I unfortunately knew this hospital and several others in New York’s psychiatric firmament all too well. Managing well was Bellevue-speak for being pumped with so many chemicals that you’d get more conversation from a door hinge.

Her leather restraints were just long enough to allow her to sit up, move around, take a cup of soup and sip it. Which she was doing now.

We probably would have never made Brew’s connection to the park deaths if it hadn’t been for a couple of foot patrol officers, who, on the morning we’d found Worwaski and Cifuente, were trying a novel approach to dealing with Central Park’s homeless: walking around and asking the ragged and hopeless if they were okay. Living on the streets during June in New York is no picnic, and charitable organizations were fanning out as well, distributing cups of water to those in need. The uniforms, otherwise good guys with a thankless beat, had found Brew under one of the park overpasses, bedded down on some newspapers, using a stuffed plastic trash bag as a pillow.

They noticed that the side of her head was encrusted with dried blood. When they asked her about it, she told them to beware the killing man.

At the hospital, doctors had concluded that she had indeed suffered a concussion. Had the killer brained her with something? It seemed weird to contemplate, for a good reason: Up until now we hadn’t seen evidence of him using a single weapon.

Terry, my name is Dr. Soul. Do you mind if we talk?

Soul pulled a chair close to the bed, where the woman sat drinking her soup and staring blankly at the wall in front of her.

Terry, do you know why you’re here?

Demons.

Demons are trying to get you?

Demons are trying to get you! she said, pointing at Soul.

She dropped the bowl and drenched herself with soup. Clenched her teeth and trembled. Her face got redder and redder.

What do they look like? he said.

Bad, she said. Her voice dropped. Evil.

I don’t know if this is a good idea, I told Soul.

Soul murmured apologetically as he sopped the fluorescent-yellow chicken soup off her blankets with hospital napkins. We can talk about whatever you like. Would you like that?

No response.

Hey, Terry, honey, Soul said. Did you see that I have no hair?

Something about the question short-circuited her thought process. For the first time, she turned her head to look at him as if he were really there.

Ooooh, she cooed. You’re a baldie. Baldie, like a bowling ball.

Hah, he said. "That’s a good one. Hey, you know how those bowling balls are shiny? Can you find the shiny spot on my head? You see that? You looking at that, Terry? You hear my