“Suspects? We have been attacked and victimized by this group of zealots. They killed innocent people!” Mahalia’s voice rose for the first time in, well ever..
“Right, you’re all a bunch of innocents. Like I’m supposed to believe that a group of witches could be victims of anything. That line of bullshit might work with the press, but I’m not buying into it.”
“You know, just the other day I thought that you had a shred of humanity.” There was a moment in the car when he’d dropped me off at my apartment where I’d actually believed it.
“I’m more human than you’ll ever be.” Masarelli’s words stung. He’d unknowingly picked at an old emotional scab, one covering the wound from my mother.
“That’s it! I’m not listening to any more of this bullshit and neither is anyone else.” Oberon glanced in my direction, coming to my rescue before I said or did something to lash out. “You don’t have a warrant. It’s time for you to go.”
Masarelli got up, smoothed his suit jacket, and grabbed his trench coat off of the back of the kitchen chair. I stifled a laugh. He was certainly taking his temporary position seriously. I hadn’t seen him in full suit and tie once in the four years I’d known him. I didn’t think he owned a suit jacket, let alone a dress coat. I followed him to the front door just to be sure he didn’t try to plant some evidence on his way out. At that point, I wouldn’t put anything past him.
“I thought that you wanted to see the crime scene?” he asked, just as I was about to shut the door in his face.
I just stared at him.
“I’ll take you, but only you.”
“Wait here.” I closed the door.
Oberon was right behind me.
“I don’t want you going with him. I don’t trust him.”.
“Masarelli and I have been having this pissing contest for the last four years. He’s a first-class jerk, and a little power drunk with his new authority, but he’s harmless. I can handle him.” Leaning back against the door, I steeled my spine for an argument I didn’t want to have.
“You don’t look good, Maurin. You didn’t get much sleep,” the compassion and concern on his face sent an inexplicable jolt of pain through me. “You’re not yourself. You’re pale, and you look drawn out like you’ve got the flu.”
“Why, darling, you say the sweetest things.” I raised my arm to my forehead and pretended to swoon.
“I’m serious, Maurin. Don’t go by yourself. I’ll come with you. Tell him that according to the rules that Matthison and the Council agreed upon, you’re required to bring one member of the Council Guard with you.”
“I don’t want to press my luck.”
Oberon gave me a questioning look.
“I may have exaggerated a bit about how much he had to share. In truth, the language in the agreement is a little one-sided.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m supposed to share with them, but they don’t really have to share with me, since we always know before them. I’ve never had to worry about the specific language before since I always worked with Matthison.”
“So Masarelli was right. Things are going to change.”
“No. Matthison will be back.” I was unwilling to believe otherwise. “If he’s going to take me to the warehouse, then I’m going. I don’t care if he has ulterior motives. We need to know what’s going on. If the Inquisitors really are dead, then who killed them? And why?” I walked past Oberon and went upstairs to grab my coat, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the dresser. Oberon was right. Pale and drawn out, I didn’t look good. I had the amulet, but I still felt like there was a hole in my defenses and energy was leaking from my body. If I could have just gotten a decent night’s sleep and a hot meal, I would have felt better. Still, deep down I new I wouldn’t feel one-hundred percent until Lachadiel was gone. I just wished I knew how to make that happen. Slipping my coat on, I went back downstairs.
Oberon was back in the kitchen, pleading his case to Mahalia. It was understandable that he wanted to come with me, but I could handle myself. Besides, with the way Masarelli was behaving, things would go a lot smoother without any witches along for the ride. From the looks of it, Mahalia agreed with me. I slipped out the front door while Mahalia and Amalie kept Oberon distracted.
Masarelli was waiting in his car. In reality it wasn’t his car, it was Matthison’s. It was probably full of wrappers from his drive-thru addiction. Seeing Masarelli sitting behind the wheel of Matthison’s car got my blood boiling. He thought he’d have an easy time climbing the ladder with Matthison in the hospital. Someone needed to knock him down a few rungs, remind him of his place.
Good thing I was up for the job.
I opened the car door and brushed the burger wrappers onto the floor before getting in. After I buckled my seatbelt, Masarelli backed out of the driveway.
“Having fun playing pretend?” I pulled a burger wrapper I’d missed out from under my ass.
“Who’s pretending? The commissioner put me in charge of SPTF himself, and he made the right choice.”
“He made the only choice. No one else has been there as long as you have. As soon as he’s healthy enough, Matthison will be back behind his desk, and you’ll be back writing parking tickets.” It was the truth and we both knew it. Well, maybe not the parking ticket part.
“Don’t get your hopes up. I’m about to make my career with this case, and I have it on good authority they’re going to offer Matthison an early retirement with full benefits. His wife will make him take it. It looks like you’ll be dealing with me from now on.” Full of piss and vinegar with his new position, Masarelli exuded a confidence I’d never seen in him before.
Too bad he was a thick headed as ever.
“I’ll make a deal with you. You shut your offensive mouth for the rest of the drive, and I won’t file a complaint for racially-motivated harassment.”
“Witchcraft is still classified as a religion, not a race. And you’re not even a witch.” The detective had been doing some homework.
“Just shut up and drive.”
Masarelli was actually quiet the rest of the ride. I stared out the window, watching the houses and people as we passed them, but my thoughts kept going back to what he had said about Matthison. Would he retire after he got out of the hospital? I couldn’t blame his wife for making him do so. They had kids and bigger plans. SPTF wouldn’t be the same without him.
If Masarelli were at the helm, the entire purpose of the department would change. And not for the better. Matthison and I worked well together. I couldn’t work with Masarelli at all. He just wanted things back to the way they were before the Shift.
My stomach and my mood soured as the residential area turned into an industrial area and the warehouses came into view. It wasn’t hard to figure out which building it was. Masarelli might as well have put up a neon sign with big flashing arrows that said ‘something bad happened here.’ Black and whites lined the chain-link fence. A young beat cop pulled the gate open, and he closed it again as soon as our rear bumper was clear.
Masarelli parked off to the side of the lot. We both got out and walked over to the warehouse. He slid the large, metal door open, and we went in. Halogen lights were set up throughout the warehouse because the windows had been blacked out. I saw a few familiar faces from SPTF milling about. I waved and said hello as I followed Masarelli to the far end of the space.
We passed a makeshift office, a couple of tables with computers, GPS, COMM units and more technical gear. There were some more folding tables with maps and papers strewn across them as well. Farther to the left was an old-school chalkboard on wheels with what looked like a family tree drawn on it. There were two easels with flip charts on them in front of two rows of five folding chairs. I couldn’t see anything else, but judging by the number of people working back here, we were getting closer to the bodies.
“Did they move the bodies already?” I asked, trying to figure out what I was looking for exactly.
“There
weren’t any bodies.” Masarelli came up beside me.
“Then how do you know that ten people were murdered?” I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like his answer.
“There weren’t any actual bodies, but there were enough pieces left for us to figure it out. See for yourself.” He pointed to the right rear corner.
That was all the confirmation I needed that Lachadiel had been there. I headed in the direction of the body parts.
“Watch where you’re going. Just stay behind me.” Masarelli pulled me back.
I looked down to see that the cement floor about two feet in front of me was covered with blood. I fell in behind Masarelli and followed him along the back wall.
He snapped his fingers, and one of the officers turned the lights so that they lit up the corner. There were small, white numbered flags everywhere, marking different bone shards and pieces of flesh. The walls and floor were covered with blood. It looked like someone had thrown open cans of red paint all over the place.
“And you seriously thought witches did this?” I asked Masarelli in disbelief.
“You seriously think they didn’t?”
“It looks like a Pollock painting back here. If the coven was going to send out its best witches to kill the Inquisitors, do you honestly think that they would leave it looking like this?” I held back a shiver looking at the carnage.
“If they were trying to throw us off and make us think that someone else did it, then yes.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin, still confident he was on the right track.
“You’ve been watching the Sleuth channel again, haven’t you?” That got me a few chuckles from some of the other officers and dagger eyes from Masarelli.
“I know you know something. You say the witches wouldn’t have done this, but maybe they sent their dogs in to do the dirty work for them. Maybe they came in here and tore them all to bits.” He was obviously grasping at straws.
“Okay, a werewolf is strong enough to take down a Norm. I’ll give you that. But why would they?” I tried to follow his desperate logic.
He didn’t have an answer.
“You haven’t found anything to connect what happened here to the coven or to the wolves. And you won’t, because the Council has been cleaning up after the Others in Salem for centuries.” My hands land on my hips.
“Thanks for proving my point.” Masarelli sneered, like a cat that finally ate the canary.
“You damned well know what I meant! Did you know about the Others before the Shift? Of course not, because they didn’t leave shit like this for you to find. The only reason you know about them now is because they want you to. They would have made the Inquisitors disappear—not have splattered them all over the walls.”
“Wasn’t hard to win you over, was it? Just had to get a hot guy to make some magic in your pants, and you’d say anything they told you to,” Masarelli tried another tactic, the one where he made me look like a whore and I tripped up defending myself.
“You think he’s hot?” He wasn’t the only interrogator in the room. Rather than take the bait I turned his comment back on him.
There was an immediate eruption of exaggerated coughing and throat-clearing in an effort to cover up the laughter of some of the officers who were within earshot. Walking away from Masarelli, careful not to step in any of the tacky blood on the floor, I took my phone out of my coat pocket and started taking pictures. Ignoring Masarelli’s protests, I continued to take pictures at different angles, doing my best to stay out of the way of the crime scene photographer.
I got a pair of gloves from one of the detectives and started looking at the papers on one of the tables. There were maps of Salem and Winter Island, a file on me that I know Masarelli read more than once, and more photos of coven members. I moved to another table. There were some papers that looked like they were torn out of a really old book, in a language I couldn’t read. It looked like the Inquisitors were trying to translate them. I wanted to take them back to Mahalia, but I’d never make it out of here with them. I could feel Masarelli’s eyes on me. I took a few pictures of the papers, hoping that the zoom feature on my phone’s camera was good enough to glean some details.
They had enough evidence to prove the Inquisitors murdered those girls, but that wouldn’t help us now. Masarelli saw it as a motive here, and I had to admit it looked pretty bad for Mahalia and the rest of the coven. I couldn’t believe the Inquisitors might actually succeed in their plan to take down the Salem Coven, albeit ironically.
Masarelli was going to try to take this case all the way to the courthouse. He genuinely believed the coven was guilty and that this proved all of his prejudices were accurate.
There had to be something here that would prove the coven’s innocence, and I was hoping to find it. I had to find it.
Masarelli was through letting me play in his sandbox. I could see him talking to a couple of uniforms and pointing in my direction. I decided not to wait for my escort and walked out of the dark warehouse into the bright winter sun. The same officer who looked like he couldn’t be older than twelve was at the gate. He gave the chain-link gate a pull and opened it just enough for me to slip out. I walked about a block and called Oberon for a ride.
On the verge of turning into a popsicle by the time he arrived, I climbed into his truck and started turning all of the vents toward me. Oberon kicked the heat on high, so I put my hands in front of one of the vents to thaw them out. I needed to invest in some gloves.
“How are you with bolt cutters?”
“Why?” Oberon groaned, his hands flexing on the steering wheel
“We might need to come back here tonight.” After rubbing my hands together in front of the vent one last time, I settled back in my seat.
“What are we looking for?” Eyes on the road, Oberon pulled away from the curb.
“I don’t know yet. There were too many people in there for me to touch anything, so I couldn’t get a reading.” I gave the seatbelt a little tug, shifting it down so it didn’t cut into my neck.
“You might want to figure that out before we go committing a felony at a place that’s crawling with cops.” Oberon spared me a glance before concentrating on driving again.
“I’m hoping the pictures I managed to take will help. We’ll skip over the areas Masarelli’s team has been through. That should help narrow it down.” Leaning back against the head rest, I closed my eyes for a minute, and then thought better of it when the gory scene emerged in my mind.
“I’m not sure I follow. Why are we skipping the places that SPTF looked?”He flicked the blinker and made a left onto a side street. I’d never gone this way but trusted he knew how to get us back.
“Anything Masarelli’s tagged as evidence will be pointing toward the coven. If we look at everything else, we’re bound to find the real killer. Simple as that.” And it really was. At least where the evidence was concerned.
“We’d be less likely to get caught if we had a vampire with us. They can cloak themselves in shadows better than I can with any spell.” By his furrowed brow and slight grimace, I assumed it pained him to admit that.
“Perfect. Agrona’s due back tonight. We’ll ask her for a volunteer.”
Chapter 12
I sat on the floor in Mahalia’s study surrounded by the pictures of the warehouse. It took forever to get them off my phone and onto the computer, and even longer to print them out. I used Photoshop to zoom in and enhance the pictures of the book’s pages, but they still looked like cell phone quality. Shuffling the enlarged prints around, fitting them together like a puzzle, I lined them up to match the originals to the best of my ability. Out of everything the Inquisitors were working on, these pages seemed the most important. Hopefully someone here would be able to read them.
Oberon moved the couch back to open up more floor space, and I started laying out more pictures. I stood back up and looked down at the whole bloody scene on the floor.
“Now what?”
“Now you hav
e to eat something. You haven’t actually sat down to eat in days.” Oberon poked my ribs to emphasize his point.
I’d lost a couple pounds but nothing I couldn’t spare.
“Not true. Amalie brought me pancakes at my apartment, and I sat down to eat those.”
“Maurin, I’m serious. You can’t keep up this pace. You’re using up valuable energy just so you can keep going on a few hours’ sleep and a couple of snacks.”
“Thanks Dad. Look, we’re running out of time. We don’t know who or what did this, and we’ve got to figure it out before Masarelli starts convincing people that it was the coven. Food isn’t high on my list of priorities right now.” I didn’t even bother to look at him, my eyes fixed on the puzzle laid out on the floor.
“Well, it needs to be or you’ll be no good to anyone. I’m going to go fix you a sandwich, and you’re going to eat it,” he ordered, as he headed to the kitchen.
I didn’t move or argue, just stood there staring at the photos. I was missing something. I could feel it. But what?
“I don’t think you have them in the right order.”
I jumped, startled by the unexpected sound. I turned around to see who was behind me.
“Damn it, Kedehern, I hate it when you all do that.”
“Forgive me, centuries-old habit.” He smirked.
“Save it. You enjoy sneaking up on people. What makes you say they’re out of order?”
“I’ve become quite the expert on blood over the years.” His laughter rolled over me, giving me goose bumps. The untucked, white dress shirt, perfectly distressed jeans, and boots made his light-brown hair and eyes stand out. I could see how women would have been lured in by his fashion-model appearance. The danger was so well hidden beneath the surface.
“Right. That certainly makes sense, in a disturbing kind of way. Go ahead, Mr. Expert, put them in order.” I stepped to the side.
Kedehern bent down and slid some of the photos around. Before I knew it, he had everything in order. All of the pictures were in their correct place. It looked identical to how it was in the warehouse. He stood up, admiring his work.
Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology Page 162
