Odd, but Skye had never contemplated Anthony’s unusual upbringing largely because he didn’t hide anything. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about how many kids were abandoned by their mothers at a monastery to be raised as warriors for God. The entire idea sounded suspect to her analytical cop mind.
Yet her mother had left when she was fourteen, walked out with a man who made lots of promises, then killed her. Abandonment wasn’t foreign to Skye, either.
And she loved Anthony. She accepted what he said as truth, even though it was unusual.
Then Moira O’Donnell showed up, and Skye saw a side of Anthony she’d only glimpsed briefly during the few months she’d known him. Anger and hostility. Had he and Moira been involved? She tried to brush it off as cop instincts, not feminine insecurities, but it wasn’t working.
Rod was unusually quiet as he performed the autopsy, but he was generally more reticent when working on young people. Focused, deliberate, with none of the banter Skye was used to. It made the autopsy that much more uncomfortable. If it was a drunk or a sixty-year-old heart attack victim or even a gang shooting, Rod would joke to relieve the tension. But Abby was seventeen; she’d had her whole future ahead. Everything …
Skye had come to the autopsy after telling Abby’s parents of her death. They had been sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee, both of them believing that Abby was still sleeping in her bed. It was the hardest damn thing she’d ever done. She knew Hiram Weatherby, and she also knew that Hiram would be on her ass day and night until she solved the crime.
He was, after all, the mayor, and the council member who’d led the charge to appoint her sheriff.
She said to Rod, “You’re killing me here. It’s been thirty minutes.” All he’d spoken were clipped orders to his young assistant.
“I have nothing,” he snapped. “Nothing.”
“Nothing … what the hell does that mean?”
“Heart-perfect. Lungs-strong. No sign of cancer, heart attack, internal bleeding, physical signs of OD-I sent the labs over as a rush, and Monica just walked over tissue samples from every major organ, as well as skin and hair samples. I have a second set being worked up to send to the state lab for additional testing, beyond our capabilities. But sudden, violent overdoses would normally show something somewhere. Needle pricks in her arm? No. Bloody nose? Nope. No signs of sores or burns in her mouth. Hell, she probably has never even smoked a cigarette; her lungs are in great condition. Her stomach contents are next to nothing, some liquid-probably tea-no solids. Sent that over too.”
“There was an odd smell at the scene when we arrived-maybe she was poisoned through the air, breathed it in.”
“No sign of violence to her nasal cavities or throat or lungs. It’s like her heart just … stopped for no damn reason.”
Skye wanted something scientific to hold on to, but Rod wasn’t giving her anything.
He continued. “I saw the destruction on the cliffs, Skye. There had to have been more than one person on scene before or during her death. We didn’t find her clothing or her car, and she couldn’t have walked there without shoes-her feet are dirty, but no cuts or bruising. Someone had to have brought her out; someone had to have taken her clothing. Why? She should be alive. She’s perfect in every way.”
“This morning her father said she’d recently lost a lot of weight, that she’d been exercising.”
“How recent? Sudden weight loss, or over time?”
“He said she started losing at the beginning of the school year. Lost twenty pounds or so, according to her mother.”
“Twenty pounds in five months? Not common, but certainly possible.” He inspected her body. “Yeah, I see the loose skin here … here. But if she was popping pills, I’ll know when I get the bloodwork back. I’m running everything I can think of.”
“Sexual abuse?”
“No sign of recent or habitual abuse. No signs of forced entry or violence or bruising in the vaginal area.”
He handed her a Polaroid photograph. “Here’s a copy of her tattoo.”
Skye stared at the photo. The colorful tattoo was eerily beautiful, a circle with crisscrossing curvy lines that narrowed in the center. It was the same image upside down. “What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s a bit unusual. I thought you might need it, show it to the parents. Maybe one of her friends knows something about it.”
She stuffed it into her notebook. “Lots of girls these days get tattoos.”
“I’ve seen. Usually when they’re dead. And one more thing.”
Rod turned Abby on her side and touched the small of her back. “I didn’t notice this at the site, but she has a faint birthmark here.”
The pale strawberry stain looked like a sun, with a filled, near-perfect circle in the middle of faint lines reminiscent of varicose veins, except they were red. Almost as if smeared, the birthmark spread around her to her side, ending in a crescent.
“A lot of people have birthmarks. What’s unusual about it?”
“It seems too perfect for a natural mark. I’m wondering if it’s scarring left over from a previous tattoo. But she’s underage, she’d need parental permission to both get and remove a tattoo.”
Skye shook her head. “In California, but it’s pretty easy to go to Nevada and get a tat, and there are plenty of people here who’ll do it for the right price. Did it contribute to her death?”
“Doubtful, but since I don’t know what killed her, I’m not going to discount anything. I took a skin graft and should have some answers.”
“Are you thinking maybe an infection from a bad needle?”
“Again, doubtful-her white blood cell count is normal. She’s a little on the anemic side, but not dangerously low. But hell, Skye, I’m willing to look at every cell in her body if it’ll tell me what happened to her.”
Her phone vibrated. Normally she wouldn’t answer it during an autopsy, but it was the hospital calling. “Sheriff McPherson.”
“Sheriff, this is Doctor Bertrand at Santa Louisa General. I need to report a missing person.”
“Doctor, I’m in the middle of-”
“You’re the contact. It’s my coma patient, in the hospice wing. Raphael Cooper.”
Skye straightened. Rafe Cooper was missing? “What happened? When?”
“I don’t exactly know-he apparently walked out just after midnight.”
“Walked out?”
“I’ve already ordered a copy of the security tapes for you, but I saw it myself. He walked out of the hospital. Extremely odd.”
Odd? That wasn’t the word Skye would use.
Especially since he’d apparently gone missing two hours before Abby Weatherby died. He’d also been the prime suspect in the slaughter of twelve priests, until Anthony Zaccardi convinced her that a demon was responsible.
Maybe Raphael Cooper wasn’t as innocent as Anthony made him out to be.
“I’m on my way.”
TWELVE
Moira listened to Lily’s account of what happened on the cliffs. According to her, Fiona’s coven had killed Abby, though she didn’t know exactly how. Something had come out of the ground around Abby’s body, but she couldn’t say what.
At least a dozen people had been involved, many from Santa Louisa. Lily hadn’t seen the faces of everyone in the circle, but she recognized some.
Moira realized the absolute worst had happened. Not only had the Seven been freed, but no one had control over them. Neither Fiona nor anyone else. They were on the loose, and anything could happen.
“My pastor was there,” Lily said. “Pastor Garrett. Why?”
“Why did you go to the cliffs in the first place?” Moira demanded to know. “What were you thinking?” She breathed deeply, and her chest ached from the earlier attack.
“I-” Lily glanced at Jared.
“Don’t look at him,” Moira snapped. She was too tired and sore to coddle the teenager. She swallowed three aspirin and chased them with
lukewarm water. “You went to the cliffs when I told you to stay the hell away from Abby. I told you she was up to something. You were supposed to tell me when the coven was meeting!”
Lily blinked back tears and Jared jumped to her defense. “Don’t yell at her! She just saw her best friend die-her cousin she’s known her entire life-and saw things no one’s seen before.”
Moira held back an outpouring of truths these kids needed to hear before it was too late; she wasn’t in the right frame of mind. Instead, she bit her tongue.
Lily said quietly, “I thought I could help Abby. I thought that’s what she wanted, but didn’t know how to ask. But when I got there-she-she-” Lily stuttered, not knowing how to describe it.
“Abby wanted to be there,” Moira said evenly.
“Yes.”
“You said they called you the arca. Is that right?”
She nodded, accepting with a smile the water Jared offered her. “I don’t know what it meant, but they painted these symbols on me-”
“Symbols? Show me.”
“I showered. I felt so disgusting, dirty-I can’t.”
Moira wanted to throttle her, but asked calmly, “Can you draw them for me?”
“Maybe.” She bit her lip, obviously not knowing what was written on her.
“I remember one or two of them,” Jared said.
Moira tossed him a notepad and pencil.
“Did you voluntarily cross into the circle?” she asked Lily.
“I don’t understand.”
“Did they drag you kicking and screaming to their altar, or did you walk into the circle of your own free will?”
“I-walked in, but I was worried-”
“What does that matter?” Jared interrupted.
Moira didn’t want to go into the nuances of human sacrifices and dark magic. She recited the CliffsNotes version. “Human beings have free will. We make our own decisions. Many rituals-especially the ancient rites-require a conscious choice.”
“I just wanted to help Abby. I didn’t know-”
“I told you!” Moira pressed her thumb in the center of her forehead. She’d warned her, she’d warned Jared-and she didn’t pull any punches. Maybe they hadn’t truly believed her because she was too blunt.
Moira needed a good twelve hours of sleep but doubted she’d get ten minutes before dark. She pulled the makeshift compress from her lower back, squeezed out the water from the melted ice, and added fresh ice. Her entire body ached; she needed an icy bath to numb the pain and stop the swelling. She put the compress on the back of her head now that her back was so cold she could barely feel the bruising.
“Something went wrong with the ritual and you ran away,” Moira prompted, wanting to get to the end of Lily’s story and figure out what to do with her while she called around to friends and “frenemies” to find out what arca meant. It was a container of some sort, but what could Lily have that was valuable to Fiona? “You’re certain you saw demons? What did they look like?”
“Dark. Smoke, but thicker, and they had shapes-faces, tails, not like us. They changed, looked more like animals-monsters-than people. But they looked human, too.” She choked back a sob and Jared sat next to her on the edge of the bed. He took her hand.
“It’s okay,” he murmured.
“I didn’t want to look, I closed my eyes, but then the stranger told me to run or I would die.”
Moira’s head snapped up. “Stranger? What stranger? Someone from the coven?”
“No-he came right after Abby died. Just walked up and started saying these things-I didn’t understand him. It was a foreign language, really weird, and then he looked at me, told me to run or I would die. I ran. Then there were the most inhuman screams I’ve ever heard and I glanced back and the sky was like on fire, with lightning, thunder, screams, all there around the circle, and then they were gone like the fluttering of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of birds. I thought he was behind me, and I was scared of him, but he’d saved my life. I thought he might be an angel, but he wasn’t. He was running, but then he wasn’t behind me and I was alone.”
“Describe the stranger,” Moira said, then added, “please.”
“He was wearing green hospital scrubs-you know, like what surgeons wear, or orderlies. He looked sick-pale. Dark hair. Black or dark brown. His eyes-I don’t know, they were … honest. Very-I can’t explain it, but when he told me to run, I ran. I trusted him. He stopped them, stopped them from killing me. But he was too late for Abby.” She was crying now, and Jared pulled her to his chest, rocking her.
Moira pulled out her iPhone and brought up the Santa Louisa newspaper. Her conversation with Father Philip had been running through her head, and then what Fiona had said in the jail-she knew something that they didn’t know, and Moira thought she’d figured out exactly what it was.
She retrieved articles about Santa Louisa de los Padres Mission. Skimmed them. Anthony Zaccardi, historical architect rebuilding … the fire … the murders …
Jared said, “What are you doing?”
“I have an idea about who that man was, I’m trying to find a picture.”
Moira touched article after article on the small screen until she found what she was looking for.
Raphael Cooper, psychologist and seminarian from St. John’s in Menlo Park, was assigned by the Vatican to Santa Louisa de los Padres Mission four months prior to the murders. A spokesman for the Vatican, Samuel Cardinal Benvenuti, declined to comment, releasing a written statement that briefly said, “The prayers of the Holy See are with the victims of this unconscionable attack, and with Mr. Cooper for a full recovery.” A spokesman from St. John’s Seminary said only that Cooper was abandoned by his parents as a young child and raised in an orphanage. He became a naturalized American citizen when he arrived in California twelve years ago.
An orphan? Friends with Anthony? He was one of them, Moira was certain-like Peter and Anthony and Rico and others, left on the doorstep of St. Michael’s.
A photo-tagged as from St. John’s Seminary five years earlier-showed Raphael Cooper in his late twenties. His dark hair was short and conservative; his eyes at first glance looked black, but Moira realized they were dark blue. He was handsome, broad-shouldered, with a strong, square jaw. On his neck was an inch-long scar. Pure Irish oozed from every pore. How had an Irish baby ended up at St. Michael’s? Moira knew not all of the infants left were Italian, but most of them were.
She skimmed the article. Cooper was thirty-two. Peter would have been thirty-two had he lived. Cooper hadn’t been at St. Michael’s during the time Moira lived there, but Peter must have known him.
“Is this the man?” She showed Lily the picture.
Lily nodded. “Yes-but his hair is longer and he’s lost weight. He has that scar, right there, on his neck.”
“And he just told you to run and he stayed behind?”
“I thought he followed me, but then there was an earthquake, and the screams-nothing I’ve heard before.”
“Fuck!”
Lily jumped at Moira’s language and Moira bit back the stream of profanity she wanted to spew. She’d bet her life that the screams were the demons’ call. When two or more demons were together, fighting being controlled by the witches who summoned them, they screamed a cackle unheard by most people.
“Did it sound like laughter?”
“No-well, maybe. Sick laughter. Like they were crazy.”
“They’re demons.”
Lily was shaking and Jared held her close, glaring at Moira. “I thought you could help. All you’re doing is hurting her.”
“No,” Lily said quietly. “She is helping.”
Lily stared at Moira with wide eyes. “They called me the arca, Abby the key. She never wanted to die. She wanted to live forever. She wanted-”
“Live forever?” Moira asked. “Damn, damn, damn!”
“What-” Jared began.
Moira cut him off. “Stay here. Do not call anyone. Do not leave this room. I
have a stash of food and water. When I leave, seal the door with salt.” She tossed a bag of special salts at Jared; he caught it. “I don’t care who it is, do not let anyone in no matter what they say.”
She stuffed equipment in her backpack. Salt. Her backup knife-the sheriff hadn’t returned hers because it was a weapon-her cross, and holy water, and she pulled on her leather jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“Not to sleep,” she mumbled. “I have to find Rafe Cooper.”
“Not alone,” Jared said.
“Of course alone,” she snapped. “Lily has to be protected, and you’d damn well better do a better job of it this time. Lily, you said your minister was there. One of them.”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
“Garrett Pennington. From Good Shepherd Church.”
“Catholic?” Moira wouldn’t be surprised. The best-and the worst-in this battle were in the Church.
She shook her head. “Just, you know, regular Christian.”
“When did Pennington open his church?”
“He took over for Pastor Matthew at the end of the summer. His mother got very sick and he wanted to be with her. I miss him-I really liked him, though my mom didn’t. She adores Pastor Garrett, and I liked him too, until … “
“He’s no man of God.” Moira didn’t know if there were any left, but she didn’t say that. “What about your parents?”
“It’s just my mom. She thinks Pas-um, Mr. Pennington walks on water. Sunday services went from less than fifty of us to over three hundred. He’s a great speaker.”
If Ms. Ellis had been sucked in by the witch, then Moira couldn’t let Lily go home. She could very well be turned over to them, and Ms. Ellis wouldn’t even realize what she was doing to her daughter.
“Jared, I don’t know why they wanted Lily, but she’s important to them, which means she’s in danger. You can’t let her out of your sight. I have my phone. Call me, text me, do anything-but if she’s in trouble? Get me the message.”
She reached behind the dresser and pulled out the little.22-caliber Beretta she’d hidden earlier. Some things protected you against demons, but when facing human evil, nothing worked as well as a bullet through the head.
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