While it wasn’t as crass as it had been as a cheap bordello, it wasn’t a well-loved house either. Most of the structure and decor looked like it hadn’t been bothered with in a good twenty years. The stairs had also been carpeted in the offensive blue, and the railings a dirty white that begged for fresh paint. Gabriel jogged quickly up the stairs, knowing that what he was looking for was waiting for him.
The succession of little rooms seemed to have been consolidated into two larger bedrooms and a bathroom. But oddly enough, or maybe appropriately so, Anne’s little room at the end of the hallway had been left untouched, serving as a minute guest room with a daybed.
“John, isn’t my room just lovely?” Anne asked him, quite serious,a smile on her face as she spun around and fell backward onto her bed. She gave a contented sigh, surveying her tiny domain.
He thought the room was a stuffy little hole in the wall, the plaster crumbling, the sheets yellow with age, the dressing table chipped and wobbly, the shutters missing slats. It had the odor of damp and a thick layer of dust on the baseboards and there was absolutely nothing lovely about it.
Madame was charging him too much for it, but he didn’t really care if he was being fleeced. Money was only money, and Anne had his absinthe. It didn’t matter where he drank it and the room was enough to please Anne.
“Not as lovely as you,” he said. “Pour my drink then let me sketch you.” He wanted to capture that smile, that satisfaction on her face.
Maybe if he captured it, he could figure out how to create it for himself.
Raphael was sitting on the daybed, cross-legged, a stack of papers in his hand, more on the mattress next to him. “Hello, Gabriel,” he said without looking up. “I figured I would see you sooner or later.”
Gabriel stepped into the room, the floor creaking beneath his boots. “Raphael. I assume you know why I’m here.”
Setting his papers aside, Raphael sighed and looked up, his expression calm. Gabriel had been expecting anger, disdain, sarcasm, maybe a sick satisfaction. But he saw none of that on the demon’s face. “I think you are planning to tell me to stay away from Sara Michaels.”
“To start with.” Gabriel had other thoughts as well, but first he wanted to hear what Raphael had to say. “Are you going to agree quietly or do I have to convince you?”
There was nothing but a shrug. Raphael’s passivity was unnerving. Gabriel had arrived expecting, anticipating, a battle. He had a sheath knife in his back pocket, prepared to kill Raphael if he had to, knowing full well only an immortal could kill another immortal.
But the man he had come to think of as his nemesis, the one who had taken Anne’s life, making him doubt his own innocence, his soul, his very self, and who by killing her mother had hurt Sara in ways that could never be repaired, just sat there hunched over in khaki cargo shorts and a red golf shirt.
“I’ll stay away from Sara because I don’t want her to get hurt,” Raphael said. “I never wanted to hurt her, and I’m sorry that she has been affected by all of this . . . by me. I came here to watch her, to protect her. I admit I was surprised that she was with you . . . I didn’t anticipate that, but I figured it was a good thing. With both of us watching out for her, she should be safe, right? She is safe, isn’t she? Where is she?”
Confused, Gabriel just stared at Raphael. What the hell was he talking about? Safe from who? It didn’t sound like the words of a man who had sent her pictures of her mother’s crime scene, but Gabriel was wary of drawing any conclusions. “She’s safe. Why do you care?”
Raphael propped his chin up with his hand. “I care about Sara. She’s a wonderful person. Kind, giving, and she loved her mother even though Jessie had her fair share of problems. I should have stayed away from both of them.”
“If you care about Sara so damn much, why did you kill her mother? That nearly destroyed her.” And Raphael had clearly lost his mind. He was eerily calm, melancholy, unfocused.
But Gabriel’s words made Raphael’s head snap up. “I didn’t kill Jessie. Gabriel, I swear by all that is holy, I didn’t kill Jessie. I loved her. We had a good relationship. Together, we were helping each other be better, if that makes sense.”
Gabriel did understand that. It was the very way he had thought of his relationship with Sara. But he couldn’t wrap his mind around Raphael being innocent. All evidence pointed to his guilt. “Then who did? You were the last one with her. Your DNA was found on her. There was no forced entry.”
Raphael waved his hand in dismissal. “And like my attorney said in court, we were in a relationship. There was reason for my DNA to be on her. But I don’t want to run through all the forensic evidence. I can’t stand the thought of it any longer. I can’t stand what was done to her. I came here to kill myself, you know. To end it. Where it began.” Raphael stacked up the pile of papers neatly and held them out. “My last will and testament, if you please.”
Still unsure of what exactly was going on, Gabriel took the papers, feeling like the last piece to the puzzle was still missing. “Why did you kill Anne? She did nothing to you, and if it was to punish me in some way, why did you testify for the defense in my trial?”
But Raphael just shook his head. “I didn’t kill Anne either. I was upset when she chose you over me because I was fond of her, but I was willing to recognize that you had more money than me, and a prettier face. I also realized that Anne didn’t appreciate my love of the French ménage à trois. I couldn’t resist one last visit to her though that night, but you arrived early and Madame sent me packing.”
Not bothering to hide his disbelief, Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest, crumpling the papers in the process. “So you’re telling me that you had nothing to do with any of these women’s deaths? That you’re just an innocent little lamb prancing around the fucking meadow?”
“I never said I was innocent, any more than you are innocent. We are fallen angels, you know. We’ve sinned, over and over, you and I. But yes, I am telling you that I did not kill those women. But clearly, I am responsible ultimately for their deaths, because in the last one hundred and fifty years, every woman I have had an intimate relationship with has been murdered.” He gave a short laugh. “It rather ruins the ardor.”
“You’re a crazy mother fucker, Raphael. You’re killing these women and you know it.” Gabriel didn’t understand who it could be if it wasn’t Raphael and it wasn’t him. No one else had ties to both Anne Donovan and Jessie Michaels, and it clearly had to be an immortal.
It couldn’t just be a sick and weird coincidence. “Why did you send those pictures to Sara?”
“What pictures?”
“And the absinthe?”
“Absinthe? What are you talking about?” Raphael frowned. “I thought you stopped drinking that swill. Don’t tell me you’ve fallen off the wagon. I thought you were better than that these days.”
Gabriel stared at his fellow demon. Either Raphael had completely lost his grip on reality, or he was telling the truth. Unfolding the stack of papers Raphael had handed him, Gabriel glanced at the will, a quote toward the bottom of the page leaping out at him.
I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin’s; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.—Michelangelo
“What’s with this sudden obsession with Michelangelo?” he asked as he stuffed Raphael’s will in his back pocket, angry that he couldn’t make sense of what was going on.
Raphael gave a slight smile. “Michelangelo saw angels. ‘I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free.’ Don’t you think it’s odd that these women, the women I cared about, the women I loved, the women I wanted to help, Gabriel, were carved? Carved until set free . . . sent to heaven.”
A cold sweat broke out over Gabriel’s flesh. That was the most appalling visual, the most horrific metaphor, he’d ever heard, and he almost choked on his disgust. Raphael had done it, had killed those women, and he was sitting there in his suburban doctor clothes with a stupid smile on his face.
Gabriel reached for his knife without hesitation. “Raphael, stand up so I can send you back to our Maker.”
Chapter Eighteen
Jocelyn pulled the door to her apartment open immediately. “You’re back early.”
“Rafe’s not home.”
“Good. Well, not good, but I’m glad you’re back, because I really want to talk to you about your samples, but I didn’t want to hold you up when you got here earlier. You seemed really eager to see Rafe.”
She had been. Not so much anymore. “So what did you find with the samples?”
“Well, your samples were tainted or mislabeled.”
“What do you mean?” Sara was still unnerved from the encounter with Rafe’s girlfriend, and the quasi-fight she’d had with Gabriel the night before when she’d left New Orleans. She wasn’t sure she could wrap her mind around deciphering how she could have screwed up the samples.
They sat down on Jocelyn’s sofa and Sara pulled her legs under her skirt. She was tired. Numb. Jocelyn, who was a six-foot-tall brunette with funky retro glasses and more energy in one minute than Sara had in an entire day, had a glass of red wine in her hand. “Do you want a drink? You look worn out, Sara.”
“No, I’m fine, thanks. I just had a weird thing happen. I’ll tell you about it after I hear the lab results. You’ve got me curious. I don’t see how I could have mislabeled those samples.” But then again, she had sent the samples overnight to Jocelyn when she had been distracted and irritated with Gabriel. She supposed anything was possible.
“Well, here’s the thing. I found the markers matching your blood sample to the sample you said came from your ancestor. So that made sense. There wasn’t a lot to work with, given the age and size of the sample, but I did a DNA comp to the first hair sample you gave me and there was no match. So whoever that hair belonged to, it wasn’t his blood on that knife. Which again, makes sense since you said it was a woman’s blood on the knife, the victim. But then I compared the two hair samples to each other, since you said the two men are related. Only they’re not related.”
“They’re not related?” But then why the hell had Gabriel said he was a descendent of John Thiroux if he wasn’t? Or did Gabriel just think he was, but he wasn’t?
“No.” Jocelyn gave her a shrug. “They’re better than related. They’re the same guy.”
“
What?
” That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. “That’s impossible.”
“Nope. There’s no doubt about it. Those two hairs came from the same dude, Sara.”
Sara wished she’d said yes to the wine. She sat back against the couch cushions, mind racing. How could she have wound up with two samples from Gabriel? That was just impossible because she was sure there had only been one hair on her pillow, and the other hair had come from Gabriel’s sample of John Thiroux. Unless the hair Gabriel had given her as John Thiroux’s was really Gabriel’s all along and he had known that. But why the hell would he lie about something like that?
“That’s just so weird . . . I don’t see how they could have gotten mixed up like that. Maybe he’s just a close match to his relative.” Even as she said the words, she knew that wasn’t possible. Jocelyn knew what she was doing and she would be able to tell the difference between mere markers and a match.
“DNA doesn’t lie, honey. For whatever reason, you wound up with two samples of the same guy. And I’m hoping after I’m done telling you the rest of my findings, you’re going to illuminate me as to who all these samples belong to, and what exactly it all means. I thought you were in New Orleans on sabbatical.”
That was a polite way to explain what she had been doing. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise.” God knew she needed to talk to someone. “But first tell me what else you found.” Not that it was going to matter if she had screwed all the samples up. Which infuriated her. She didn’t like to mess up, couldn’t explain how she could have done that.
“That patent print you sent me? I entered it in AFIS and got a list of four possible matches. Patricia ran through them last night for me, which means you owe her big time for doing that on a Saturday night, but anyway, she made a conclusive match. Twelve points.”
Sara narrowed her eyes at Jocelyn. “Wait a minute. I only sent you one fingerprint scan. How the hell could that match prints in AFIS?”
“Because it’s the same person.” Jocelyn looked at her blankly. “What do you mean? Why did you send it if you weren’t looking for a match?”
What she meant was that the print she’d sent Jocelyn had been the bloody fingerprint on the sketch of Anne Donovan, left there in 1849. Almost a hundred and sixty years earlier. She’d sent it merely to ask Jocelyn if she thought there was any possibility of extracting DNA from the bloody fingerprint on the original sketch, but she’d never actually gotten around to asking that of Jocelyn, so her friend had obviously assumed she wanted to search for a match. Which hadn’t occurred to her as even a possibility because of its age. “It’s an old print. There’s no way there should have been a match.”
“How old?”
“It was from 1849.” A chill went up Sara’s spine. Something was very wrong, only she had no idea what it was.
“What? That’s impossible. Patricia doesn’t mess up like that. She’s an expert fingerprint tech and she’s been doing this for fifteen years. She found twelve fucking points of comp, Sara.”
“That’s why it doesn’t make any sense!” Sara rubbed her temples. Nothing made sense. “Who did the match come up as? Just some random petty criminal?”
“No. It’s a woman who was arrested in Louisiana in 2003 for running a prostitution ring. Her name is Marguerite Charles. Does that ring any bells?”
It did. Sara sat straight up. That’s what the woman outside Rafe’s had said her name was. Marguerite. But she hadn’t told her a last name, so why did the whole name Marguerite Charles sound familiar?