Murder Among the Angels (35 page)

Authors: Stefanie Matteson

As Charlotte drew away, she gently squeezed Jerry’s shoulder to gain his attention, and then nodded at the man in the cardboard box, who stared up at the sky, a slight smile playing around his lips.

Jerry looked at her quizzically, and then turned to look at Peter.

“It’s Peter,” she whispered.

As they looked on, Peter raised his dark blue eyes to the angry clouds, and continued with his muttering. With his pale skin, reddish beard, and beatific expression, he looked like one of the mass-marketed portraits of Jesus that adorn the walls in the homes of the pious.

Charlotte could make out only one word from his torrent of gibberish. It was repeated over and over again: Lily, Lily, Lily.

“Jesus,” said Jerry. “How did he end up here?”

“He must have followed Sebastian,” she said.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” she replied. She had no idea what it was that had sent him over the edge, but she guessed that he had been hovering on the brink for some time. It might have been the stress of the accident, the death of Lily, the murders of the Lily look-alikes, or a combination of all three. It might have been cerebral cortex damage that had finally caught up with him.

Or it might have been demons.

For some reason, the sight of Peter reminded her of that family cemetery in the clearing in the woods behind the Retreat, with its graves of dead Archibalds marked only by boulders.

Then the answer came to her to the question that had been haunting her for months, the question of how the tortured families of the dead young women could ever expect to find peace of mind. They could find it in the same way that Peter had: through the belief that the flesh, be it swept away by a riptide, brutalized by a madman, or ravaged by the passing of the years, didn’t matter. That it was, so to speak, immaterial.

As they watched, a ray of sunshine broke through the roiling mass of dark clouds over Madison Square Park and illuminated Peter’s pale face, like the morning sun piercing a stained-glass window in a darkened transept.

“Is he praying?” Jerry asked.

“No,” Charlotte said. “He’s communing with the angels.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Drew Padrutt

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3717-4

This edition published in 2016 by
MysteriousPress.com
/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

180 Maiden Lane

New York, NY 10038

www.openroadmedia.com