Past Rites

by Claire Stibbe

  Malin saw the smile was replaced by a concerned expression, more fitting for someone with something to hide. Paddy Brody knew the guy. He just wasn’t saying.

  “He owes me money. So, yeah. I’d recognize him.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifteen hundred. Didn’t have it so he disappeared into thin air. Not a good place to be.”

  Malin homed in on a thought, a recent message from Wingman. This one’s a little green-eyed, tipped right over the edge. Dangerous place to be. There could have been a connection, slim chance, but it was worth a try.

  “Does the name Gabriel Mann mean anything to you?” she asked, trying to read his face.

  “No.” His toned implied why would it? “I wanted to talk about Alice, if that’s OK with you.”

  Malin nodded. It was the reason he’d called her. She couldn’t help wondering how far away he lived. Whether it was one of those new houses she saw in the distance with terracotta pitched roofs and matching block walls. Or whether he lived rough under a tarpaulin in the trees behind the runway. It would be easy to find out. “How did you meet... you and Alice?”

  “It was a Saturday afternoon and some of us were tanning by the pool.” Those same watery eyes seemed to roam over some inner landscape, losing himself in the memory. “She heard me say I was reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray. Wanted to talk about it. I was flattered.”

  “Was she beautiful?”

  “I thought so. I liked her mouth, the way it curled around every word, the way she spoke, the things she talked about.”

  “What things did she talk about?”

  “Astrology. Demonology mostly.”

  Malin caught a whiff of cologne. “Did she believe in it?”

  “Oh, yeah. She thought she could talk to her dead father better that way. I think it comforted her.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “I was raised Catholic. We weren’t allowed to do séances or anything like that.”

  Malin waited for Paddy to go on, but when nothing came she asked him again if he was scared.

  He went very quiet then, eyes holding her in a viselike grip, and the smell of cologne was suddenly very noticeable.

  “We started seeing each other. So I couldn’t tell her what I really thought. I took her to a bookstore in Old Town, found a book that taught us how to trap a demon. She collected ash from the fireplace downstairs, spread it around her bed at night. Said she’d catch one soon enough. When she woke the next morning, there were demon tracks. You could tell because they have bird talons for feet.” Paddy saw Malin’s raised eyebrow and grinned. “Adel did it when Alice was asleep. Scared the crap out of the others.”

  “Was Alice afraid?”

  “No. She said the more informed we were, the weaker the threat.”

  “And you?”

  “I went along with it. Thought she’d like me better if I did.”

  “And that was important to you?”

  “She had a way of drawing you in.”

  Malin started suddenly and then ran a hand through her hair to hide it. “How?”

  “Some kind of magic, I suppose.”

  “What about Lily?”

  If Paddy hadn’t been staring off into the distance with narrowed eyes, Malin would have thought he hadn’t heard her.

  “She was in and out. Too many shadows in her life, I guess.”

  “Explain.”

  “She was private. Didn’t let anyone in. The girls... they were a little harsh sometimes. Not that Lily didn’t deserve it. She did. Needed to get a grip, you know?” He gave an uneven sigh, voice trembling as he spoke. “She was beautiful once. Had long hair like Alice. Reminded me of a painting by John Collier. Lilith... do you know it?”

  Malin pressed her lips together and shook her head. Paintings weren’t her thing and if he was about to give her a pompous lesson on art she’d throw up.

  “It’s a painting of a nude wrapped in a snake. White skin and a body so perfect you can’t stop looking at it. The way she stands, the backward tilt of her head. And all that red hair... down to her waist.” Paddy motioned with one hand. “The queen of the night.”

  Malin nodded mutely; no one was queen of the night. A pulse throbbed hard in her neck as she listened to the deep, whispering voice, unable to understand how it could hover somewhere between both extremes at the same time. “Did you sleep with her?”

  “Not saying I didn’t try. Wasn’t her type. She preferred the dark ones,” he said, pointing to his skin.

  Malin gave him a look that would have been interpreted as surprise. Paddy had a well-honed physique, strong jawline, intelligent eyes. Certainly someone you’d look at twice in the street. “Would you say Alice and Lily were close?”

  “They argued sometimes. Alice was upset when Lily cut all her hair off. Said she was rebelling against her mom.”

  Malin followed his gaze, fixed briefly on a row of trees. Sunlight slipped between the trunks, making long shadows on the runway, some jumping in a sudden gust of wind.

  “Were you surprised when Alice died?”

  “You keep looking at my eyes, my nose. Think I’m high on something?”

  “You do a little weed now and again.” Malin could smell that cologne even stronger now.

  “I dabble in this and that.” Paddy looked away for a moment and then back again. “I know you think I’m nuts.”

  Malin didn’t think he was nuts and she told him so. Just a little disturbed by the books he must have read at school, most of which were probably still fresh in his mind. She wondered when he would lose all that literary pretentiousness. If at all.

  He smiled. Said he liked her honesty. “Anyone tell you you’re beautiful?”

  “It’s not important to me.”

  “Of course it is. All women want to be told they’re beautiful.” He brushed a strand of hair from her forehead and she took a step back. His hand dropped then, but not his smile. “Do you believe in the occult?”

  “Do you?”

  “Let me put it this way. Do you believe in demons?”

  Malin shielded her eyes from the pale desert and a deep blue sky. “I believe there’s a battle going on above us, a battle for souls. So, yes, I believe in demons.”

  “Do you think they can make us do anything they want?”

  “Depends which side you’re on.”

  “Let’s not pretend you know your enemy as well as he knows you. All that sidestepping... all that armor. It won’t help you. He knows exactly what goes on in that head of yours. He knows what you want, what you’re afraid of... all your little mistakes.”

  Malin’s heart pounded loud in her ears and her blood seemed to ice over at his words. Her own voice was like a child’s in her mind. Go away, go away, go away.

  “I can tell you the thing that haunts you the most, the thing you dread. Aloneness. I can tell you what you want more than anything. Family.” He ignored her raised hand, the shake of her head. “You have to hear me out. Aloneness is all I’ve known these past few years. My father said I wouldn’t amount to much. Real men go to university and do a masters in politics, he said. They become marines, serve the country, die for it. I chose art history. Haven’t spoken to him in years. Then along came Alice. She offered me a gift, a rare gift. So I took it.”

  “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “She made me whole again.”

  Malin began to sweat in her jacket, gloved hands clenching in her pockets and she had to struggle to breathe normally. They likely bonded over absent fathers. “Did you love her?”

  “Would you think less of me if I said no?”

  Malin shook her head. He must have been so young then. So utterly convinced this was the right thing to do. “But you liked her.”

  “She had a way with people, had them eating out of her hand. Should have been a stand-up comedienne... should have been class president.”

  “Did she love you?”

  “In her way. Not head-over-heels. Th
at wasn’t her style. Kept it all on the inside.”

  “So, what stopped you from loving her?”

  “Alice got bored of the parties. Wanted to expand the alumni, take it more serious. But that wasn’t my thing. I started sleeping with Adel. It was the drugs, the guilt.”

  “Guilt?”

  “Alice said I was like a locust in a cornfield, only worse because I could never be satisfied. She said I’d corrupted them.”

  Malin knew Paddy just wanted the fun and excitement, but he had grazed his way through that meadow until there was nothing left.

  He shook his head as if berating himself and then recoiled slightly as if someone had thrown a spider at him. “Do you know how demons are made? Sunlight and smoke. And sickness.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Alice.”

  “It was The Lilin Esoterica, wasn’t it? I’ve seen the book.” She saw the unblinking gaze and the way he suddenly looked down at his hands.

  “There were pictures in it,” he said. “When I close my eyes at night, I see ice, miles of it. And when the wind blows, there are shards in the air cutting like knives. Demon is always a gray silhouette on the horizon, cloak swaying from side to side as he comes closer. There’s a mallet in his hand and it’s bloody. He never gets close enough to reach me, not if I run... He can break you into a thousand pieces and you’ll never find them again.”

  Malin felt a sharp wind against her cheeks and shivered. “Who is he? This Demon.”

  Paddy stared hard at her. “Cruelty, hatred, shame. He’s all of it. The night Alice died she tried to get rid of him.”

  Malin felt her eyebrows shoot up, felt the color drain from her face. Her feet were stuck there on the runway as if she had been cemented to it. She wanted to reach out and touch him, see if he was warm. But something told her he was as cold as she was.

  “She was in the attic burning candles and sage... reciting incantations. Baca found her and confiscated the lot. Three days later Alice was dead.”

  “Did you know she was going to kill herself?”

  Paddy’s face went white and he seemed almost on the point of fainting. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands. “No.”

  “Did you know she had a knife?”

  Paddy shook his head and then stiffened. “I would have taken it from her if I had known.”

  For one panicky moment, Malin wondered if Paddy Brody was telling the truth. Or would he stab her in the back and drag her body through the trees to a shallow grave he had already carved out of the sandy loam before she arrived? She took two steps toward the parking lot and then looked back.

  “Know anything about Rosa Belmonte?”

  “Saw it on the news. But that’s not the answer you wanted, was it? I was taking a late class, Native American Art II. Didn’t get out until eight.”

  Malin all but rolled her eyes. He clearly kept up with current affairs. “And Kenzie Voorhees?”

  He blinked a few times, struggled to swallow, and she could see the tears in his eyes. “We were all friends at school.”

  Malin tried to fit all the pieces together in her mind but failed. “Where were you on the night of February 10.”

  “Hosting a reception at an art gallery with Adel. And no, I don’t love her either.”

  It was both brutal and honest, and triggered something inside that made Malin angry. And then he said what her intuition warned her he would say.

  “I’m not going to pretend I’m loyal. Not wired that way.”

  “Well, then, I can see you’ve obviously got all your instincts under control.” She handed him her card, told him to keep in touch. “Let me know if you remember anything else. Oh, just one more thing. Did you send Asha Samadi some flowers recently?”

  “No.”

  “Write her a note?”

  “No. Why are you asking?”

  “I’m not going to give away a confidence. Not wired that way.”

  Paddy gave a cheeky grin, eyes flicking down the length of her body and up to her face again. “We have our chains of command, detective. We’re all answerable to someone. Alice tried to cut the umbilical cord, tried to burn the book before it became a curse. The others... I don’t know why they died.”

  “Is Lily dead?”

  Paddy blinked a few times as if the cold air was hurting his eyes. “She is to me.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Temeke cleared his throat and turned off the tape recording. “I’d like to smack that smug bastard in the mouth. It’s the work of a sick mind.”

  “Sick mind or not, sir, I think Paddy’s mad at Lily.” Malin tapped the cover of Alice Delgado’s investigative file. “Lily told Baca and Baca confiscated the book. She did what she had to do.”

  “Right,” Temeke said, swaying slightly. He was already dead on his feet and was in no mind to disagree with her. “Why didn’t Baca hand the book over to the police after Alice died?”

  “Probably didn’t think it was important... didn’t want a scandal to taint the school. Loss of funds and all that.”

  “Yet she handed it over when Lily went missing.”

  “By then it was serious. By then it was evidence.”

  Temeke heaved out a loud sigh. “Didn’t Paddy say he was with Adel Martinez on the night Kenzie Voorhees died?”

  “His story checks out. The Roadrunner Art Gallery on Central had a reception from seven o’clock to eleven. Paddy and Adel volunteered as sales consultants. At least five people confirmed seeing them, including the owner. Paddy was in a class when Rosa Belmonte died. The lecturer’s a female. She remembered him.”

  “So... Mr. Brody is Albuquerque’s answer to The Bachelor. Only, some jealous cow got busy and hired someone to narrow the playing field.”

  Temeke could almost see smears of blood in the flatbed of the builder’s truck on Fourth Street. The samples from Cornell Drive had been confirmed to be those of Asha Samadi, elevating the missing report to a possible homicide. It was the worst night of the year.

  The composite sketch lay face-up on his desk ‒ Tom Lahaye’s interpretation of the man he saw. Temeke pinned it to the board beside the Charlie Miller sketch and marveled at the similarity. Lahaye had even asked for a first name. Gabe.

  “Did you call Admissions at Gibson about the name Gabriel?”

  “No listing, sir,” Malin said. “Not in his sister’s class.”

  Yet Lahaye thought he saw someone he knew.

  Temeke rubbed his eyes and stared at the clock. It said eleven forty-eight at night and every so often it would start wigging out, minute hand shuddering as if the battery was nearly flat. He stifled a yawn, wishing someone would come in and tell him to go home.

  “I called Dr. Vasillion about two different hair samples they found,” Malin said, rubbing one eye. “The ones tangled in the hook of the poker belong to Asha Samadi. He also mentioned hair fibers on the carpet which are commonly made from poly-silk mesh. Likely a lace wig. Oh, and the time of death for Rosa Belmonte was Saturday night between six and seven in the evening.”

  Temeke let out a long sigh and wondered what Paddy meant when he said Lily was dead to him. Had he killed her for tattling on her sister? Surely, there were better ways to get even?

  “When you watched the tapes on Alan Delgado, what did you see?” he asked.

  “Saw the interview he had at Laguna Seca when he lost to Claude Chaboud. Struck me as a quiet man, rather humble, actually.”

  Despite Delgado’s irrefutable charm and ability to persuade the public to dance to his tune, Temeke wasn’t buying it. How a driver could finish second and display such enthusiasm over his competitor was, in his opinion, suspicious. Nobody in their right mind behaved like that. Least of all him.

  Hit him where it hurts the most were the unspoken words in Temeke’s last evaluation. He was grateful to Hackett because it renewed his focus, made him work harder to prove them wrong. But it didn’t stop him from punching the wall out in the bathrooms.

  What would c
oming second have done to Alan Delgado? With all that pent up frustration, how would he have behaved when he got home that night?

  Temeke rubbed his temples and every so often he thought he heard a squeaky rendering of a well-known song coming from somewhere down the corridor. “What the hell is that?”

  Malin exhaled a loud breath that seemed to have been held for a good minute. “Someone fastened a singing toilet seat to Hackett’s private bathroom.”

  “Poor old sod.” Temeke lit a cigarette. “Four plush rolls of his favorite toilet paper went missing last week. Now he’s using standard issue tissue. I bet that wiped the smile off his face.”

  “Hackett wants a face and a name on a Wanted List by the end of the week, and bulletins sent out to all US agencies. We’re gonna have to use those sketches, sir.”

  “Nothing like tipping our hand.” Temeke rubbed his forehead, feeling dark clouds pressing in a second time. “We could give Hackett a sketch of a man in a gray hoodie. Can you draw?”

  Malin grinned. “As long as its confined to law enforcement agencies and not the public.”

  “Keep on at those stolen car reports. You never know what might turn up.”

  “I bet this perp’s got a pack of fake IDs,” she said. “Might have plenty of money if he’s been chipping away at Lily Delgado’s savings. He’s safe. He’s hiding.”

  “Where’s he hiding?”

  “New houses, old houses, warehouses. No one keeps track of those. And as far away from his hunting grounds as he can get.”

  “What is it with these villains? They’re getting too sodding good these days.” Temeke let his eyes wander over the office which smelled of stale cigarettes and coffee, and then huffed out another cloud of smoke to add to the flavor. “Might not be a he? Could be a they. Maybe it’s a hierarchical group like Chicago’s Temple of Set.”

  “Doesn’t feel like it,” Malin muttered. “Feels more like an individual, self-styled, or a pseudo-Satanist. Someone who rebelled against a controlling parent and then became seduced by a satanic cult. Someone who used the knowledge they gained from a rule book to justify a fantasy.”

  Temeke recalled what a criminal profiler at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit once said. That elements of the occult were present in the psyche of many serial killers. Illegal drugs such as crank, speed, meth, crystal and psilocybin, an hallucinogenic drug similar to LSD, were often part of their modus operandi. This individual could be a youth sub-culture Satanist, belonging to a group that had a leader, a goal and a set of rules. But what if the individual had latterly become disillusioned and broken off by themselves?