“It’s his car,” she said, eyes snapping further up the road to Temeke’s house.
Reporters stood behind yellow tape, speaking into microphones and waiting impatiently for the moment when a body was brought out. One female dressed in a Hermes scarf and a green swing coat caught her eye. Jennifer Danes was standing close to a camera crew who were recording the incident on the Friday evening news.
Temeke said little as they walked toward the house, black eyes flicking back and forth as if he was looking for something. Traces, she thought, tracks, irrefutable evidence that he could somehow see in the dark, something he could clutch onto because right now there was nothing else.
She examined the license plate on the Honda, noting the absence of tags, and peered down into the passenger seat where a sheet of paper caught her eye. Handwritten directions to the house and a dollar number ‒ one hundred and fifty. Temeke matched the writing to the note left in the house. It was Paddy’s all right.
The south wall was pockmarked as if it had been rammed with a wrecking ball and yellow tape ran all the way to the back yard, a mere huddle of weeds that led to a cornfield. Peeling stucco flashed in fierce blues and reds and Malin eased her way between two units and an ambulance, nodded at an officer with an attendance log who checked his watch and summoned her in.
Officer Manning was in the cornfield shouting to his K-9. Malin could see the remote control flashing on Brock’s collar as he appeared to be herding a flock of quail toward the house.
She stood two feet from the back door, watching a Field Investigator dressed in protective clothing who was marking a bloody footprint on the threshold. It was pointing toward the back yard, where only the faint indentation of a second print suggested the perpetrator might have been in a hurry.
Malin held her breath from the familiar metallic stench and one of the worst bloodbaths she had ever seen. The doctor was talking to Temeke, saying how the thin trickle of blood from the victim’s neck once started out as a pumping geyser and now coated nearly three walls. There was blunt force trauma to the back of his head, victim was in full rigor. Said his name was Paddy Brody.
It was worse when you knew them, once suspected them and then found out they weren’t the sick perpetrators of the crime you were trying to investigate. Shame and sadness came in one quick surge and she forced herself to take a breath, tried to calm her racing pulse.
Temeke was leaning against the outside wall near a crate of evidence bags, mouth opening and closing like a fish. “Not bloody fast enough, was I?”
“You called them as soon as you could,” she reminded, shivering a little under her coat.
He seemed to flinch involuntarily as if he was about to lose the one last thread of evidence he had to solve the case. “You can never underestimate the meanderings of an art student, especially one with the morals of a tom cat. It’s a bleeding crack house. Has been for years. Who the hell was he meeting?”
Malin peered back into the kitchen which was already taped off, crime scene specialists mapping and marking and recording descriptions of the scene. A young man meticulously cleared Coke cans and fast food wrappers into evidence bags, and the doctor collected samples with forceps and placed them in metal evidence buttons. Malin wasn’t allowed any further.
Temeke pushed himself away from the wall when Matt Black hovered at the doorway in a white bunny suite. He was holding up a cell phone bagged in clear plastic and what appeared to be an old metal iron. “We think he was struck from behind with this. Looks like he had a text two days ago. Someone called D asking him to come over to grandma’s for a ride.”
Malin knew the word grandma’s was slang for a meeting place and as for ride it could have referred to sexual favors.
“Looks like he was collecting money.”
Temeke responded to Matt with the customary ribaldry and Malin sniffed back a bite of anger. The knot in her stomach wouldn’t go away, nor would the feeling that she was peering through the glass of a fisheye lens and everything she saw was curved and distorted.
“There’s a handprint on the inside door frame,” Matt said, leaning back a little and studying it for a moment. “Thumb’s facing forward. Killer probably tried to steady himself on the way out. Floor’s slippery. Pauline’s checking the blood arcs. But she thinks the killer came at him from behind the door. He was already here.”
“Prints?” Temeke asked.
“He must have worn gloves.”
“How tall was the deceased?”
“Seventy-two inches. About six feet. There’s some cash in a coffee can,” Matt whispered, “a grand at a peek.”
“Under all the coffee grinds or in full view?”
Matt gave a small smile. “He could have brought it with him. Maybe it was already there. Hookers... drug dealers, they all take cash.”
“Do you think this is the primary crime scene?”
“The doc said it was.”
Malin watched three heads bobbing back and forth behind the kitchen window, saw Pauline Bailey, the blood spatter analyst, and gave her a quick wave.
“Mr. Brody hadn’t been here before,” Malin said, hands pressed inside her pockets. She tried to form words through the constriction in her throat, and coughed a few times. “The address was in the car on the passenger seat. And there was a dollar amount. Probably cash he was owed.”
Matt nodded and gave her a small smile before ambling toward a Field Examiner who was squatting about ten feet away from the house in the back yard. He seemed to be leaning over a muddy path that led to the cornfield and shouting something about a set of footprints. Size nine, Vibram sole, same as a duty boot.
“Get those in plaster,” Matt shouted back.
“I hope they’re not yours,” Malin murmured, staring at Temeke’s yawning mouth. It was a common man’s boot and size.
More flashlights, more shouts from a patrol officer trying to deter Captain Fowler from lifting the tape to let Hackett past. Hackett stood there with a cashmere coat draped over his shoulders, chin lowered and peering over his glasses.
“Temeke!” he shouted. “What have we got?”
“Got, sir?” A spent match dropped into the dirt. Temeke lit a cigarette. “Terrible business. I wouldn’t go in there if I were you, not after that nice dinner you’ve just had.”
“Who is it?”
“Well, it’s not a bunch of old biddies playing poker, that’s for sure.”
“Get out of my way!”
“Before you go, sir, Detective Santiago and Lieutenant Alvarez were supposed to meet the victim at two o’clock this afternoon,” Temeke continued, pointing with his cigarette. “This explains why the poor old sod didn’t show up. Must have got the surprise of his life. I thought it was a nasty case of hara-kiri when they found him. It was his throat, sir. Sliced from here to here and the kitchen’s a nasty mess. I didn’t touch anything, I promise.”
Hackett gave a tolerant smile. “Doctor Vasillion or Doctor Henderson?”
“Dr. V. He’s bringing the deceased out now, sir. Twenty-two-year-old male. Patrick Brody, art student at Gibson.”
It was the black body bag carried by two examiners that claimed Hackett’s interest and quickly wiped the smile from his face. Dr. Vasillion followed behind, jutted a chin greeting to Hackett.
“Homicide,” the doctor confirmed, staring down at the body. He peeled off his gloves in two quick snaps and stuffed them in the top of his bag. “We’ll know more after the exam. Given the temperature, I’d put time of death at around twenty-two to twenty-four hours. Two slices to the carotid and jugular here and here.” He lifted his head and motioned to the left and right.
Malin was hardly able to pay attention to the steady stream of chatter, thoughts jumbled and where no scenario, no matter how intricate, seemed to fit into place. She recognized the tension under her hair, the sour surge in her gut, and stumbled a few feet from the house to inhale a gust of wind. Judging by the cuts, the killer hadn’t hesitated for a second.
> “Makes you want to down a large whisky, doesn’t it?” Temeke said over her right shoulder.
“I don’t drink,” she reminded him, watching the blistering end of a lighted cigarette.
“Pauline’s a bloody trooper. Imagine what it must be like having to analyze every tiny speck of blood, every smear, and wonder how it all happened. Said our unspecified subject would have been covered in blood ’cause there was plenty of it on the grass and leaves outside. Got a male intern with her this time. Smells like he threw up over here.”
Malin rolled her eyes and walked ten feet to her right. Couldn’t get the brutal visual out of her head, thick hair coated in blood and the staring eyes that had once been so blue. He wasn’t a bad kid, a little confused that’s all. But lying there on that hard wood floor eliminated the only suspect they had.
Temeke was right there beside her, puffing out smoke at her elbow. He raised his eyes to the sky as he had done five minutes earlier, and five minutes before that. “A guy like that doesn’t need to visit a hooker.”
Malin counted off a few more possibilities of her own. “A friend of a friend, a drug deal gone wrong―”
“Besides the girls, did Paddy mention any names when you saw him?”
“Demon. I don’t know if it’s a code name for a drug, or the person Paddy came to meet.”
“Why here?”
All Malin could think of was a rundown old house in close proximity to Temeke’s. She winced and turned her back on it all, walked toward the car with a determined stride. She could feel the warmth of Temeke’s breath against her cheek, and tensed when she heard the tone of his voice.
“Someone was watching me the other night,” he said, confirming her worst fears. “Young man, late teens, early twenties, between one twenty-five, one thirty. I followed him all the way through that cornfield. He was talking to a female.”
Lean at one hundred and twenty-five pounds, Malin thought. “What did the female look like?”
“I didn’t see her.” Temeke took a deep drag and then crushed the cigarette under his foot. “But I’d recognize the man if I saw him again.”
THIRTY-THREE
Gabriel opened his eyes and thought he was in The Lion’s Mouth. There was a peace about the place, rows of tall, weathered trunks and a muddy path pitted by human feet. Fir trees made a hollow, resonant whisper and sunlight streamed in between the branches.
He wanted to be back in the light where the spirits of family run free. He wanted to be one of them, away from this infernal darkness.
He rested now, warm and tired, heard a familiar roar in the distance. The Outlaw Biker Club met along the main drag into Corrales, road names emblazoned on their jackets and lounging with attitude on their tricked out motorcycles. In a strange way he envied them, the freedom and the thrill of all those ‘twisties’ on the hairpin turns. And he missed the homemade meals in the Fat Mule and the compassion of an aging waitress.
It was dark, but then he didn’t expect it to be anything different at that time of night. He knew Demon was there with him, a shape huddled against the wall and oddly translucent in the moonlight, oddly quiet.
His lips were moving, emitting no sound. But there was a mocking tinge to it and if Gabriel really listened, he could hear the soft strains of a song he once knew. Something about a garden, breath and dirt.
Gabriel never understood the words until now. Dirt was man, a filthy creature who was given authority over the animals and the earth. And when Dirt needed a mate he was given one from his own rib because Master loved Dirt more than Demon.
“Such an extravagant gesture. Such favoritism,” Demon muttered.
Gabriel had always felt sorry for Demon and he almost did now. But there was one thing that scared him and that was Demon’s power. His never-ending energy, the incredible fight that was still left in him, the passion to destroy a race that had taken away the Master’s favor.
“You must understand,” Demon said, “you are made in Master’s image. You are perfect.”
Gabriel liked the sound of that. Perfect. It had a nice ring to it and he almost thought he was.
“But you are also imperfect. Oh, yes, it was all Master’s plan. The original pair, lying down together and making more of their hideous race. A royal priesthood. You are testament to that, a museum piece that my kind study through a thin veil we can no longer walk through.”
“What do you mean?”
“Regret... is what I mean. There are moments when I grieve, moments when I remember the first sunset, the first moonset. And then I wonder what it must be like to live. I expect this is all ancient history to you.”
It was all a myth to Gabriel. Old-fashioned language that had no place in a modern world. A load of crock.
He stared at the shadow against the wall, wondered what the draw had been, what made him gravitate toward such a terrible choice. From an innocent man to a murderer, all in the span of two years. And then a thought struck him.
“If I am royal... then what are you?”
“Ah, now there’s a story.” Demon dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper and smiled.
Gabriel didn’t like that smile.
“I am one of many. A legion of prowlers tasked with turning the priesthood away from fellowship with Master. It seemed like a good idea at the time, stalking the herd, herding the stalked. So vulnerable, so frail... out there in the wild. Trouble is, it’s a gigantic waste of time and I’m getting rather tired of it. You would if you knew how it all ends. Oh, I forget, you already do.”
“I don’t know anything.”
“No, but you will. You’ll remember the stuff they taught you at school, all those righteous little stories. They have a funny way of creeping back into the mind when you least expect it. You won’t get lost then, will you?”
Gabriel was lost. Horribly so. All he wanted to do was get revenge, slash their tires, key their cars, crush their everything. Sometimes he was overcome with a rage so thick he’d fall into the deep black, legs kicking, arms flailing, not knowing what had put him there. Those righteous little stories were as calming as an antique clock, pendulum and cogs ticking their way through time. Soft and rhythmic. It put him to sleep.
“You told me those stories were make-believe,” Gabriel said. “Especially the one about the man who had a vision―”
“John.”
“...on that island. You said he was hallucinating from sunstroke.”
“The island was a little scant of trees.”
Gabriel hardly remembered those classes at school, but what he did remember were the pictures of Patmos, a desolate island in the Aegean Sea. Caves, rocky bays and not a hint of shade in sight. He began to wonder if Demon had been there, whether he was as ancient as he said he was.
“I’m old and tired,” Demon said over Gabriel’s thoughts. “Probably time we said goodbye. After all, an unwilling host is hardly worth dining with. Look at you. You don’t fool me. And you won’t fool them.”
“They don’t know me.”
“I know you. Remember how we met? You were quite different then. You believed me.”
Gabriel wanted to expel every nuance of that memory and dash the deep whispers from his mind. He replayed the scene in that quaint little wood in front of the school, recalled how Demon’s voice had called out to him, risen above the rest. How he preyed upon Gabriel in waking and dreaming moments.
It was no use. There was no quick escape this time. That voice was outfitted with every witty comeback, and slick remark, wooing Gabriel until he was his. “You said it was all a hoax.”
“A very elaborate one,” Demon murmured. “But there are stories, and there are stories. Around-the-campfire-stories, midnight-night-feast-stories, horror stories, love stories. You have to admit, my stories were the best.”
The smile Gabriel hated was back again, and the laugh when it came terrified him.
“And they were the best, my friend,” Demon whispered, “because they were all lies.”
Malin watched a cylinder of ash drop from Temeke’s cigarette before he took a drag, smoke exiting through his nose. The office was slowly fogging up to the density of a low hanging rain cloud and it was pointless hanging no smoking signs on the wall. He ignored every one of them.
There were two more in the boardroom, each torn down with an angry snarl. This wasn’t the seventies where crystal ash trays sat on every desk and a decorative pedestal outside the elevator. He’d flipped, that’s all. Willing the axe to drop on his career because he was no longer part of an elite team.
Temeke dropped the cigarette in his coffee cup, gave a disdainful sniff and walked beside her down the corridor with a file under one arm.
“Blimey, this is going to be a downer,” he said. “Why can’t we just send her a letter with the bad news? Duke City Police logo on the letterhead. You could frame something like that.”
“How would you feel? You can be such a jerk sometimes.”
“Of course, I’m sorry for her, Marl. I’m sorry for him too. How he died. She’s going to be in shock for a day or two.”
Malin always preferred the personal touch. You could tell a bunch by a person’s reaction, the way they look up or down, the shock, the tears. And sometimes there weren’t any tears. Like today.
“He can’t be...” Adel looked from Malin to Temeke, shook her head a few times. “He can’t be.”
“It was a terrible thing finding him there. Of course it was quick. That type of thing usually is.” Temeke tapped the file against the edge of the desk a few times before setting it on the surface. “When did you last see Paddy?”
“Last Saturday night.”
“Did he come to your house?” Temeke leaned forward and frowned a little. “Because the surveillance officer never recorded it.”
Malin knew he was trying to listen to the speech inflection, trying to match it to the female voice he’d heard in the cornfield. Bottom line, Paddy’s description did not match the man Temeke had seen that night.
Past Rites Page 18
