Loretta didn’t say anything.
“Why?” Aviira asked, glancing at her.
“I haven’t the slightest.”
“Of course you don’t.”
Loretta cleared her throat. “Detective, if you haven’t anything else to accuse me of, and you aren’t going to arrest me, I’d like to be on my way.”
“It’s up to you.”
Loretta tipped her chin to Aviira and then opened her umbrella before she stepped out from under the canopy. She lingered just for a moment, staring through the rain.
“I’m afraid Elaine…just like Hazel Howard…poked into things where she had no business looking. You’d do well to be careful of the same, detective, assuming you plan on having a long-lasting career.” She flicked her eyes up to Aviira’s. “Would be difficult to look after your sister when you don’t have the Society behind you, wouldn’t it?”
Aviira didn’t take the bait. “I imagine it would be.”
A tiny smile crooked the corners of Loretta’s lips, and then she went on her way. Aviira turned to watch her until she disappeared around the curve of the road and wished very desperately that Loretta would be in a fatal accident on her way home.
***
“She’s all but asking us to arrest her,” Aviira said. Jirel was sitting across the table from her in one of the conference rooms at Headquarters and had been silent while she relayed to him what Loretta said to her at the cemetery. He could tell she was unsettled by the way she was pacing up and down the length of the table. Abruptly, she stopped and looked back at him. “She talked about my sister. There are two people who know about my sister, you know who? You and Jensen. That all but proves that she’s got something going on in the dark arts, how else in the fuck would she know that?”
Jirel didn’t move.
“She knows we can’t bring her down on anything, because we don’t have any concrete evidence. Just a lot of weird coincidences, and she knows we can’t bring her down with coincidences.”
She put her hands on her hips and paced again. Her shirt was still damp. “Elaine must have started getting curious after we talked to her, because Loretta said she had been poking around in things before she died. That must be why she called you that night.”
Finally, she stopped pacing and took in a breath like she’d been running. She stared at Jirel and shook her head.
“Sorry. What did you find? Did you get into Devaney’s house?”
He nodded.
“Yeah? Anything?”
“Found the papers he was planning on handing over to us. One of the names sounds really familiar but I couldn’t figure out why.”
“What is it?”
“Braeden Cox.”
Aviira’s eyes narrowed slightly. “That does sound familiar.”
“Remember that calling card we found in the cellar?”
“Yeah…”
“There was one in his bedroom.”
She tilted her head to one side. “What’d you do, go looking through his underwear drawer?”
He laughed a little. “Really? I found the calling card again and you’re surprised by where I found it?”
“No, I just—never mind. Okay, so that proves we have the same person. Good. Then what did you do?”
Jirel took in a deep, casual breath. “Then I went over to Elaine’s apartment and let myself in to take a look.”
Her eyebrows hovered for a moment before they went up in surprise. And she laughed. “Look at you, mister plays-by-the-rules! Breaking and entering like an old pro.”
A small smile touched his face. “You must be rubbing off on me.”
Aviira almost said something off-color, but held her tongue. Instead she leaned across the table and high fived him.
“Okay, so what’d you dig up there?”
The lighthearted moment passed over and his face turned serious again. “I figured out why the name Braeden sounded so familiar.”
She almost didn’t want to ask. Jirel set his backpack on the table and pulled out a picture frame, which he set face up on the table and slid toward her. Aviira put her hands on the table and leaned over to see it.
It was a picture of Elaine, looking much happier than the last time they’d seen her. Her face was fuller, less gaunt, and her blonde hair was falling in thick waves around her face. She was standing next to a handsome young man, their arms around each other in what appeared to be a staged pose. He was dressed in a navy blue dress shirt with a pale yellow tie that subtly matched her yellow sundress. Her left hand was on his chest, showing off the sizeable diamond she’d been wearing the day they met her. An engagement photo.
Tucked in the corner of the frame was a scrap of paper cut neatly from a newspaper. Aviira pulled it free and unfolded it. It was Braeden Cox’s obituary.
Jirel watched the wheels turn in her head as she read the tasteful blurb about the young, successful man who’d died of a sudden unexplainable heart attack at the age of thirty-two and left behind his parents, a brother, and his fiancé, Elaine Turner.
She took enough time that she had to have read it twice. Finally she took in a deep breath and on the exhale said, “Motherfucker.”
“Loretta said his name the first time we went to see her. That’s why it sounded so familiar.”
Aviira raised her head to look at him. The wheels were still turning. “Why would Loretta stash him below the house and then turn right around and sell it to Elaine?”
“Probably because she never anticipated that she would find out. Even if Elaine somehow came across those bodies it’s likely she never would have gotten close to finding out identities.”
“But here we come poking around and suddenly there’s a real threat that she would hear what we found. Loretta had to get rid of her.”
Jirel nodded. His face was grim. “Makes it look like it could have been suicide because she had plenty of reason. If we hadn’t spoken to that guy down there it’s likely nobody would have known otherwise.”
“So let’s go get her,” Aviira said.
***
“You got any actual proof that she’s the one who did the cursework?” Xander asked.
Jirel looked at Aviira with an expression that said he was waiting for that question. He looked back at Xander and shook his head.
“So what are you attempting to arrest her for?”
“Three bodies under property that she owned,” Aviira said, ticking off one finger. “The woman who owned that property dead a couple of days later and the officer who responded to the call dead a few hours after that. Her estranged husband’s girlfriend dead a few days after that. She has connections to all of these deaths.”
Xander shrugged and sat back in his chair. “So? I can’t charge on coincidences. We need some proof.”
Aviira leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling and groaned. Jirel kept his reaction more contained.
“How do you know that it’s her? Coincidences aside?”
They were both quiet for a second until Aviira said, “She knows things she shouldn’t.”
Xander folded his hands together. “Like what?”
She stared back at him for a moment, glanced at Jirel. “I have a sister I haven’t been in contact with for years,” she said quietly. “And there’s only a couple people who know about her. Loretta mentioned her directly today when I confronted her. It was a threat. She shouldn’t have known about her.”
“Maybe she did some digging of her own.”
Aviira shook her head. “I go by a fake name, and my sister’s got some other family’s name that I don’t even know. She couldn’t have just opened up Facebook and found her.”
“Jesus,” Xander said with a small shake of his head. “That seems...extreme.”
She shrugged. “I took a lot of people down when I did that undercover thing, a lot of people I’m pretty sure would go out of their way to fuck me up if they had a chance. If I keep my distance from my sister they can’t use her to get to me.”
&
nbsp; Jirel looked at her and understood something about her that he hadn’t before, a kind of selflessness that she’d been hiding under the surface of that laissez-faire persona she projected to everyone else. He realized that was what she wanted—the less she intimated to others that she gave a shit, the less chance anyone had of using it against her. She was complicated, and he sensed that he was one of the few people who realized that about her.
“Do you have anything you could use?” Xander asked after a moment.
“We have this old cold case,” Jirel said. “Same MO but we can’t connect the two people and we can’t find anything on the original suspect.”
“So maybe it’s the same person.”
“It probably is,” Aviira said. She shrugged. “But again, can’t link the two.”
“We have someone digging dirt on the name to see if there’s any link somewhere.”
“Who’s on it?”
“Jensen Walker.”
Xander glanced at Aviira. She caught the look on his face and rolled her eyes.
“Yes, the guy from IT everyone says I’m fucking.”
Xander gave her a funny little smile and held his hands up. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was about to ask if he’s the guy with the eyes.”
She gave him a look that read, yeah right.
“Besides, there’s no problem getting in with someone who can do you favors,” he added.
Jirel scoffed.
Xander ignored him and quickly continued. “So were you?”
Her eyebrows went up slowly and Jirel tensed a little, not sure how she was going to react. She hadn’t exactly responded favorably to rumors concerning her private life in the past.
She finally said, “Used to, till he started thinking I was girlfriend material.”
Xander laughed. It was a sound that Jirel had heard before, a very specific laugh, usually followed by a set phrase he’d heard him use countless times in college. He wasn’t surprised when Xander said to Aviira, “I like you.”
He turned a flat glare at Xander and knew from that moment that he’d have to keep him away from her. A weird sensation of territorial jealousy flared up in him as Xander glanced back at him.
Xander kept going to keep the conversation moving. “Well, if there’s anything to find I’m sure he’ll dig it up. Maybe it will be enough for you to go off.”
“What about getting a watch on her in the meantime?” Aviira asked. If she noticed the tense exchange between the two men, she didn’t indicate it. “My fear is that if she knows she’s running short on time because we’re onto her, she’ll make a move on Dannels.”
Xander nodded. “I can get someone to sit on her for a bit while you two finish this up.”
Jirel crossed his arms over his chest. “If we can finish this,” he said quietly. Aviira glanced over at him and had a very grim look on her face.
***
“You know Xander pretty well, yeah?”
“Pretty well.”
Aviira nodded gently and was quiet for a second as they walked down the hall. Then she said, “In your professional opinion, how long till he starts openly hitting on me?”
Jirel smiled at her for a moment and then broke into a laugh. “That obvious, huh?”
She looked back at him and smiled. “Little bit. Does that little move of his actually work on women?”
“Hit or miss. He’s used it since college.”
“Isn’t he married?”
“Yeah, but neither of them are very good at it.”
She shook her head and opened the heavy door at the bottom of the stairs.
“Aviira.”
She glanced back and her heart immediately did a double beat as Jensen approached from the other side of the room. He had a folder in his hand.
“Found this for you. Hope it helps.”
She took it from him and nodded. “Thanks.”
He gave her a noncommittal look, exchanged glances with Jirel, and walked off again. Aviira forced herself to keep going up the stairs and pretend that the look Jensen had given her didn’t hurt just a little.
“Anything?” Jirel asked as they walked up the stairs.
She paused and flipped open the folder. Inside, a dated copy of a driver’s license greeted her. The picture was of a young Loretta. The card had expired in 2004. Aviira’s eyes narrowed as she considered why Jensen had thought that would be useful for her, and then she read the name on the card again.
Loretta Celeste Richtofen.
She gasped. “Oh, fuck.”
“What?”
“The gravestone,” she said as she looked at him. He had never seen someone’s eyes so wide. His eyebrows went up. “The gravestone at Park Vista I saw said Louise Richtofen. She’s a fucking relative!”
She held up the paper for him to read. He shook his head in disbelief.
“Celeste,” he whispered.
“She’s fucking Celeste Payne, Jay.”
He didn’t even realize what she had called him; neither had she. “Let’s go.”
***
They dropped by the apartment building so that they could pick up their guns and make a move on Loretta while appropriately armed. They stopped first at Jirel’s apartment while he picked up his .38 and then hurried upstairs to Aviira’s apartment. She fished her Glock out of the gun cabinet in the back bedroom while Jirel absently studied the Audubon prints in her front hallway.
On her way back, Aviira passed through the kitchen, where there was a stargazer lily on the counter near the sink. Next to that, as if it had been stamped into the countertop, was the calling card they’d spotted in the cellar a week earlier. The one Jirel had seen in Patrick Devaney’s house.
Her heart stopped.
She took a step back and started to call for Jirel, and that was when she saw the shadow standing in the reflection of the window right next to her. Her instincts screamed at her a second too late and before she had the chance to move, she was on the floor, the breath knocked from her lungs as a huge weight sat on her chest. The back of her head had slammed against the floor when it collided into her, making her vision go starry. She reached up to try to get a hold of the person on top of her, but there was seemingly nothing there to grab.
Two strong hands had gripped the front of her shirt, and the next thing she knew, she was being slammed into the floor again. She struggled, but the seemingly vacant attacker on top of her had pinned her solidly to the floor. She could barely even collect enough breath to scream for help, though it came with a burst when two sets of impossibly cold, sharp claws dug into the skin of her chest right below her throat.
It felt as if ice had been slipped under her skin and was being ground against her collarbones. The sensation, accompanied by horrific pain, set off every nerve ending in her body and she stiffened uncontrollably under the weight of whatever was on top of her, setting claws into her flesh like she was a fish on a hook.
From the hallway, Jirel looked up as he heard something hard hit the floor inside. He was on his feet and running into the room as Aviira screamed. As he rounded the corner of the kitchen, the man—or shadow—that was clawing Aviira to pieces on the floor looked up at him. Involuntarily he stumbled back and flattened against the wall. The shade dropped Aviira and straightened to a full height of at least six feet, but instead of engaging Jirel, it took a step back and disappeared through the wall.
Jirel was sure if his eyes had gotten any wider they would have fallen out of their sockets. When the thing was gone, he forced himself to look into the kitchen again, almost afraid of what he’d find there. He wasn’t even sure what he’d just witnessed.
Aviira was turned on her side like she had attempted to get up and didn’t make it. There was blood everywhere and she wasn’t moving much. He wasn’t even sure if she was breathing.
He knelt next to her. “Vira,” he said, his voice shaking.
She got the feeling, from some untouched
part of her brain, that she had gone into shock to keep her from feeling the pain and registering exactly what had just happened. Jirel took her shoulder and pushed her gently onto her back. A breath hissed between his teeth. The sound jarred the rest of her brain into wakefulness and she sucked in air desperately.
“Fuck!”
Jirel looked up, eyes traveling quickly around the kitchen for something to stem the blood that was beginning to pool on the floor under her. He leaned over her and grabbed a dish towel off the handle of the oven, then pressed it over the gashes that created two bloody, lopsided circles just below her collarbones. She groaned and grabbed his hand to lessen the pressure he hadn’t realized was too much.
He looked entirely like he had no idea what to do. His face was pale and his hands were still shaking.
“Ah…can you…can you sit up? Are you okay?” It seemed a stupid question as it came out of his mouth; of course she wasn’t okay.
She wasn’t sure. The adrenaline and shock were wearing off and she was freezing, even though the gashes on her chest felt burning hot and the pain was searing. Her head pounded. Gently, she shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut.
She had not lived a life free of injury or pain, nor was she a stranger to either. Injuries were common in her work and she had grown used to them, acquiring what she had always thought to be a relatively thick skin when it came to pain. This was the worst she had ever felt. The pain, ice cold and burning all at once, was radiating in sharp waves across her shoulders down both arms to the tips of her fingers. She felt like she could barely breathe.
“Get me a bowl,” she managed in a voice that was not more than a desperate rasp.
“What?”
“I’m going to puke, get me something.”
Jirel sat her up gently, but she had to grip his arm to stay upright. The room was spinning. “Hospital?”
“No, too many questions.” She coughed suddenly, but instead of the vomit she thought was coming up her throat, she spit a mouthful of blood onto the floor. Jirel made a weird sound and immediately pulled her up, holding her under her armpits.
Shadows of Old Ghosts Page 22
