Blood Moon: A Rowan Gant Investigation (36 page)

“Yeah.”

Madden shook her head again. “Then
I don’t think so. That’s about the only thing she
has
said so far.
Where are you, Judith
?”

“Hmmph,” he grunted as he furrowed his brow. Then he
asked, “So, you okay with us goin’ in?”

“Let me check with the crime scene guys just to be
sure,” she said. “The scene is pretty straightforward as far as the
physical evidence goes, so I doubt there will be a problem.”

The sergeant left us and engaged in a short
conversation with someone who appeared to be the technician running
the scene. He glanced up in our direction as she pointed at us and
then gave her a quick nod. A few seconds later she returned,
pausing briefly to point us out to someone else.

“Sign in with Officer Fisk,” she told us, gesturing
in the direction of the uniformed man she had most recently spoken
with. “He can give you shoe covers and gloves too.” Then she
leveled her gaze on Felicity and me. “Are you two really sure you
want to go in there?”

“I never want to,” I sighed through a heavy frown.
“But I do my job.”

“Yeah…” She nodded. “I hear you on that one.”

“Ya’know, this is pretty much over,” Ben said,
looking over at us. “You can prob’ly skip it… I don’t think
anyone’ll blame ya’, and you’ve already done what the brass asked
ya’ to do.”

“No,” I replied. “I’m going to need to go in.”

“TZ?” he questioned.

I didn’t miss the inherent meaning behind the
initials. “Yeah. Pretty much.”

He shot a glance at my wife. “Firehair?”

“Aye,” she said with a slight nod. “I need to be
there for Rowan.”

“You gonna need any salt?” he asked.

Sergeant Madden cocked an eyebrow and gave Ben an
odd look.

Felicity nudged me, so I glanced at her then shook
my head.

“No,” she replied. “Not here.”

“Yeah, okay…” Ben said with a nod. “Then let’s get
this over with.”

I could feel Sergeant Madden’s curious gaze burning
into our backs all the way to the door.

* * * * *

The upstairs interior of the house was just as I had
earlier described it. What I had seen of it in the vision, anyway.
The basement itself was no more and no less than I expected. It was
in large part barren. Little more than a low-ceilinged rectangular
room with pock marked cement walls and peeling paint—and of course,
the two slowly cooling bodies that occupied it.

I had seen worse, but that didn’t make the garish
scene any easier to look at. The first horror to befall us when we
reached the bottom of the stairs was the nude corpse of a young
woman, hanging upside down from the rafters. Her flesh was pallid
and so devoid of color as to appear ghostly, just as we had seen
before. Her arms were bound tightly behind her in such a way as to
bend her shoulders back into what had to be a painful curve. As
with the two victims resting in metal drawers downtown, a starkly
defined swan tattoo stood out on her right upper arm.

The odor of the musty basement mingled with the
smell of old smoke from the fire that had partially destroyed the
upper level. A sharp note of urine pierced through the aged funk,
most likely where one or both of the victim’s bladders had
evacuated upon death. As bad as it was, the intermingled malodor
was an almost welcome change to the sickening stench permeating the
atmosphere upstairs. It turned out that my stomach-churning
ethereal brush with improperly prepared liver was nothing as
compared to how it truly smelled in this plane of existence. I was
beginning to think I would have to swear off the dish for some time
to come.

Bright flashes from a camera strobe burst every now
and then as a crime scene tech documented the sadistic tableau. I
flinched upon the first then barely noticed when the second and
third erupted to cast harsh shadows across the walls. Albright had
already been taken out of the house by the time we entered, so it
was just the corpses, him, and us down here. However, in some odd
sense I felt all alone.

I stood motionless for a full minute, staring at the
woman hanging from the rafter above. The crown of her head was only
inches from the floor, her blue-black, stringy hair hanging down
and splayed out behind her across the filthy cement like the
strands of an old cotton mop tossed carelessly aside.

Still mute, I continued slowly around the suspended
corpse. As I reached her left side, a plastic tube came into view.
It was taped against her neck where it terminated in what appeared
to be a large gauge needle piercing a vein. The opposite end was
still dangling inside the mouth of a glass gallon jug, which was
almost half full of red fluid. It didn’t take deep thought to
figure out exactly what it was.

Glistening shards of a similar vessel were shattered
in an outwardly showering pattern nearby. The same red fluid was
pooled around it, as well as splattered several feet in an oblique
circle. A healthy measure of it was already drying to deep rust on
the dead woman’s face. Tented evidence markers littered the
area.

“You okay, Row?” Ben asked in a low voice.

I didn’t reply with words. I simply looked back over
my shoulder and gave him a shallow nod.

“We in your way?” he asked, looking past me and
addressing himself to the crime scene photographer.

I hadn’t been paying attention, but I now noticed
that the flashing from his strobe had stopped. I looked over at him
and saw that he was standing off to one side of the room, observing
me. He wore a flat expression, neither curiosity nor surprise
evident in his features.

“No,” he replied, shaking his head. “Just
waiting.”

“Sorry. I can move,” I offered.

“You’re fine,” he told me. “I’m done with her.”

I glanced around the basement but remained quiet. I
wasn’t quite sure what he was waiting for, but I didn’t figure it
was my place to ask.

I returned my gaze to the latest victim, wondering
who she was when she was alive. I found myself in an odd quandary.
My headache had subsided before we even arrived at the top of the
street. I was certainly grateful for the relief, but at the same
time I cursed the fact that I now seemed completely numbed to the
ethereal. If this woman’s spirit was trying to talk to me, I
couldn’t hear her. I was completely unaware.

I closed my eyes and took in an even breath. There
seemed as though there should be some humor in the fact that I was
mentally cursing the sudden lack of something I considered to be a
curse in and of itself. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find it.

I opened my eyes and turned away from the woman.
Several feet across the room, against the back wall of the
basement, the second body was resting. He was nondescript, though
somewhat effeminate in appearance. His skin was almost as pale as
that of his drained victim.

He was in a slouched sitting position, partially
propped up and appearing almost as if he had simply sat down on the
floor right where he had been standing and fallen back. The obvious
evidence to the contrary was the dark, wet stain on his chest and
the two large blood spray patterns on the wall just above his head.
Their relative positions told me they would be right at chest level
if the man had been standing.

I took notice of the fact that his arms lay relaxed
at his sides, hands empty. Sergeant Madden’s answer to Ben’s query
about a weapon rolled through my mind, and I now considered it in a
different light. I didn’t see anything nearby that would qualify.
Nor were there any of the evidence markers that were prevalent in
other parts of the room.

I kept my gaze leveled on the dead man for a moment,
looking into eyes that were staring out of darkly rimmed sockets. A
trickle of blood was running from the corner of his mouth, and I
had to wonder if it was his or the woman’s. Although his face was
slack, there seemed to be a surprised look in his sunken eyes. But
the perceived expression was all I had to work with. Even where he
was concerned I could feel nothing.

No malevolence.

No insanity.

Nothing.

As we stood there I heard the sound of footsteps
above us, creaking and thudding purposefully across the floor. A
few seconds later they grew louder as they started down the stairs.
Soon afterward, a uniformed officer stepped off at the bottom and
gave Ben a nod.

“You Detective Storm?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Ben answered.

The officer regarded him for a moment. “We just
finished talking to Captain Albright,” he said then raised an
eyebrow and nodded toward Felicity and me. “Lieutenant Penczak said
you’d probably want to clear your consultants out now.”

Ben gave him a shallow nod in return as something
secretive passed between them in the silent gesture. Turning to me
he asked, “You done, white man?”

In a slow turn, I surveyed the horror one last time.
There was nothing left to see, and for some reason, nothing left to
feel. I came back around to face him and gave my own curt nod.
“Yeah… I’ve seen enough.”

“Thanks,” Ben told the uniformed cop as we walked
toward the stairs.

“All good,” he replied.

We started up the rickety wooden staircase, and a
quick flash caught the corner of my eye. I assumed that the tech
was snapping pictures once again and that it was simply his strobe
that grabbed my attention, but out of pure reflex I still paused
and turned my head in that direction.

“Keep movin’, Row,” Ben urged, giving me a light
push in the middle of my back.

I continued up the steps, but before the upper wall
obscured my vision, I caught a second glint of light through the
railings. The cop was now squatting next to the body of the dead
man, and I was almost certain I saw what appeared to be a large
butcher knife clutched in a cold, once empty hand.

As we topped the stairs, I distinctly heard the
uniformed officer say, “Okay. You can take pictures over here
now.”

I stood in the front yard of the house, looking up
into the sky with a blank stare. Cops and crime scene technicians
were still moving in and out of the front door behind me, but I
paid them no heed. I was well out of their way, and my attentions
were focused elsewhere at the moment.

Felicity was snuggled against me, one arm slipped
beneath the folds of my coat to wrap around my back and the other
bent upward to hold my hand where I had my own arm draped around
her shoulders. I could feel her warm breath against my neck
whenever she would exhale. A sharp chill would fall in behind it
whenever she would turn her own face upward to stare with me.

“And the sun became black as
sackcloth of hair, and the
moon became as
blood
…” I whispered.

“Revelations?” Felicity whispered the question.

“Chapter six, verse twelve,” I
replied. “And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo,
there was a great earthquake… And the sun became black as sackcloth
of hair, and the
moon became as
blood
…”

“I suppose it’s ironic, isn’t it then?”

“That’s one word for it,” I replied. “Not the one I
had in mind though.”

“They’re just stories, Rowan,” she said. “You of all
people know that. You can even quote them better than most
Christians. The Bible is a book of allegorical prose. It’s filled
with misunderstood and misinterpreted metaphors and similes from a
different age.”

“I know,” I sighed. “But everything has an element
of truth to it somewhere… And sometimes…with everything I’ve seen…I
just… Well, I just have to wonder if some prophecies are universal…
If perhaps we’re driving ourselves headlong into the darkened abyss
of our own insanity. Why else would so many people do the horrible
things they do?”

“Don’t overanalyze,” she offered. “Just try to
forget about it. This is over. You’ve earned a rest.”

I gave my head a slow shake. “Something tells me it
isn’t.”

“Why?”

I let out a heavy sigh and pulled her closer as I
struggled to find the words to express what I was feeling. “This
wasn’t right… I mean, the way it all happened. This killer
escalated far too quickly. From a victim who disappeared several
months ago, to a sudden spree.”

“I’m sure the serial killer experts have an
explanation for that.”

“You’re right, they probably do. But something still
feels very wrong about it to me… And, that isn’t the only thing.
Ben made a valid point back at the rest area. I just handed him an
address for the killer, and here we are. We all know that isn’t how
it happens. Everything usually comes to me in cryptic messages I
have to decipher. That’s how communication across the veil works.
It’s like a language barrier.”

“Maybe you’re just learning the language then,” she
replied.

“Maybe…” I said. “But that’s not how it feels. It’s
almost as if someone was translating for me.”

“Who?”

I sighed again. “That’s the problem. I have no idea.
I feel like I should, but I just don’t…”

“You two okay?” Ben’s voice came at us from behind.
“You been standin’ here for damn near fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “We’re okay.”

“Good,” he harrumphed. “Listen, I thought ya’ might
like ta’ know… I just got word that Judith Albright’s been
found…”

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” I said in a soft voice,
commenting more than questioning.

“Yeah,” he replied. “Afraid so…”

“And her body wasn’t found here either,” I continued
my emotionless observation.

“No. Just a few miles further west of where they
found ‘er car, actually. Looks like she was raped and then
strangled. Might’ve been a carjackin’ or somethin’ of that sort
that went south. That’s not confirmed yet, but it definitely looks
like a separate crime. They’re already workin’ it on that basis.
Gotta get an ID from next of kin too, but that’s just a formality.
They’re ninety-nine percent sure it’s her.”