The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (9 page)

Cate wasn’t kidding. The corpse was ripe. He’d been dead a couple of days. Carlson had a reputation as a food critic and gourmand who got himself a cooking show and sold a lot of cookbooks and spices. While he liked exotic stuff, his critics claimed he simplified things for the common man. He took folks living hand to mouth and made them think they were mastering
haut cuisine
.

All while using hot dogs, ground chuck and catsup, and the secret ingredient.

Food lay all around in the kitchen, on presentation platters, but it had curdled or dried, crumbled or gotten covered in flies. He even had packaged cupcakes arranged on a set of stacked trays looking festive. They were the only things that hadn’t gone bad yet, but that didn’t soften the most gruesome aspect of the scene—aside from the corpse, that is.

On the granite countertop of the island, in a roasting pan surrounded by potatoes and carrots and chopped onions, lay a leg.

A human leg.

Carlson’s leg.

He’d managed to hack it off at the knee, rub some salt on it, add pepper, before he collapsed and bled out on the floor. The butcher’s knife lay half-beneath him, covered in bloody prints. Angle of the cuts and the way the bone was sheered meant he’d taken the leg off with only a couple whacks.

I looked around. “What did Prout say? Carlson slipped?”

Cate shook her head. “He was gone before I got here. Manny said he covered his mouth with a handkerchief, then got that look on his face like he’d gotten an idea.”

Manny, who was taking pictures of the scene, grunted. “I said he looked like he’d just dumped a load in his tighty-whities.”

“Same thing when his brain has movement.” My eyes tightened. “Time of death?”

“Two days, three.”

I glanced at my PDA and the listing of case files. “Killer’s on a tight cycle, and it’s getting faster. Two days between Carlson and Anderson. Someone is going to die in the next twelve hours.”

“No, they won’t.”

I spun. Prout had returned, with handkerchief in place. “We just arrested the murderer.”

“What? Who?”

He lowered the handkerchief so I could see his sneer. “Martha Raines.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Only if you are, Molloy.” His beady eyes never wavered. “You followed the money. So did I. The Fellowship’s made millions on these deaths. You didn’t want to see it because you always were a lousy detective.”

“Arresting Raines solves nothing.”

“You trying to confess to being an accomplice? How much did she pay you?”

I glanced at Prout through magic. He almost looked as bad as the corpse, all mushroom gray and speckled with black. He had no
talent
—nor talent, for that matter—so one spell, just a tiny one, and his white suit would be sopping up blood as he thrashed on the floor.

Cate grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t.”

Prout gave her a hard stare. “I think you better escort your friend from my crime scene.”

“He’s going. He’s got a friend in jail who could use a visit.” She poked a finger into Prout’s chest, leaving a single bloody fingerprint on his tie. It looked like a bullet hole and I wished to God it was. “But this isn’t
your
crime scene. It isn’t even a crime until I say it is, Inspector. Right now, my running verdict is that he slipped. Death by misadventure, and unless you want to be doing all the paperwork and having all the hearings to change that, you’ll be letting me finish this one fast.”

Prout snorted. “Take your time.”

Cate shook her head. “I don’t have any. The killer’s next vic will show up in another six hours, so time is not a luxury I enjoy.”

I would have stayed, just to bask in the glory of that sour expression on Prout’s face, but Manny got a shot of it. He gave me a wink. I’d be seeing it again. I wished he had a shot of the sneer too. I wanted it for reference. Next time I saw it I was going to realign the nose and jaw.

Cate had been right. Martha was in jail, and it wasn’t for picketing some city office this time. She needed a friend. I owed her. I didn’t think the bulls down in lockup would want to do her any harm, but they’d have to cage her with the hard cases. Still, a visit could get her out of a holding cell at least for a little bit.

I got down to the jail pretty quick. I only made one stop, at a drive-through liquor store. I bought a bottle of twelve- year-old Irish whisky and took a long pull off it. Recorking it, I slid it under my seat. It burned down my throat and out into my veins. It made me feel more alive, and prepped me to use magic just in case.

I didn’t need it. Hector Sands was working the desk and he’d always believed I’d been framed for bribery. “You want to see Raines? Do you have to?”

“What am I not getting?”

Hector took me through into the holding area. Two big cells separated by a tiled corridor. Usually it was awash in profanity, urine, spittle, blood, and any other bodily fluid or solid that could be squirted, hurled, or expelled. People didn’t like being caged like animals; so they acted like animals in protest.

Not this time, though. Martha Raines sat on a cot, with all the other inmates sitting on the floor, and the people across the corridor hanging onto the bars. And hanging on to her every word. She just spoke in low tones, so quiet I could barely hear her.

Maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I was just remembering her calm voice and soft words. I heard her telling me that drinking myself to death wasn’t going to solve problems. She told me I had something to live for. It really didn’t matter what. I could change things from day to day. They were out there. I owed it to them and myself to straighten out.

“Been like that since we put her in the population. See why I don’t want to take her out?”

“Yeah. You’ll call me if there is trouble?”

Hector nodded. “I have to call Prout, too.” He glanced up at the security cameras. “I wouldn’t, but he wanted to know when you showed up, and he’ll go through the tapes.”

“Got it. Don’t want you jammed up.”

“I’ll wait to the end of my shift, about an hour, to call, you know, if that will help.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t care. He’d call Prout. Prout would call me. I wouldn’t answer. It didn’t matter.

“Thanks.” I left the jail armed with two things. The first was the list. The fact that Martha had given it to me without hesitation spoke against her guilt. If she were killing people, there’s no reason she would hand me a list of her victims.

Unless she wanted to be stopped.

Serial killers feel compelled to kill, which is why they cycle faster and faster, their need pushing aside anything else. I wanted to dismiss the possibility of Martha’s guilt outright, but I didn’t know if she had alibis. I only had her word about how nicely things had gone. What if Anderson and Hogan set up the trusts for another reason, to deny her funding and to oust her? What if they were scheming to move the mission and profit from the location, using that project as some cornerstone to gentrify a swath of the city? Would that be enough to make her snap?

I crossed to a little bistro and ordered coffee. Martha was
talented
. She sat in that den of lions and made them into lambs. I’d felt it. I knew her power. I’d benefited from it. But that was the good side of it. Was there a dark side? Could she talk someone into hanging himself or chopping off his own leg?

And if she could do that, could she convince a jury—no matter how overwhelming the evidence—to let her go? If she could, there was no way she could ever be brought to justice. While the Fellowship was a noble undertaking, did its preservation justify murder?

Those were bigger questions than I could answer, so I did what I could do with the meager resources at hand. Starting at the top, I called down the donor list. I left messages—mostly with servants since these sorts of folks like that personal touch—or talked to the donors directly. I told them there was a meeting of donors in the Diamond Room at the Ultra hotel at nine. I told everyone to be there. I didn’t so much care that it disrupted their evenings, as much as I hoped it would disrupt the killer’s pattern.

It took me two hours to go through the list. I spent a lot of time on hold, or listening to bullshit excuses, so I used it to study those case files. Cate was right, I really didn’t want to look at the Preakness photos. There was something there, though, in all of them, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

At the end of those two hours I was no closer to knowing who the next victim would be.

Then it came to me.

Prout.

He’d never called.

I drove to his home as fast as I could. Red lights and a fender-bender let me double-check the full case packages Cate had sent me. I finally saw it. As far as a signature for a serial killer goes, this one was pretty subtle. Maybe there was part of me that didn’t want to see it before, but there was no denying it now.

I rolled to a stop on the darkened street in front of the little house with the white picket fence. Figured. He probably owned a poodle. A sign in an upstairs window told firefighters there were two children in that room. I didn’t even know he was married.

I fished the whiskey from beneath the seat and drank deep. I brought the bottle. Prout wouldn’t have anything there, and if he did, he’d not offer.

That’s okay. I don’t like to impose.

I crossed the street and vaulted the fence. I could have boosted my leap with magic, but there was no reason to waste it.

And it didn’t surprise me that the hand I’d put on the fencepost came away wet with white paint. Had my head not been full of whiskey vapors I’d have smelled it. White footprints led up the steps and across the porch, hurried and urgent. The screen door had shut behind him, but the solid door remained ajar.

Beyond it, darkness and the flickering of candles. That wasn’t right for the house. It should have been brightly lit, all Formica and white vinyl, with plastic couch-condoms covering every stick of furniture. Lace doilies, and white leather-bound editions of the Bible scattered about.

I toed the door open.

I got the last thing right. Bibles had been scattered, page by page. They littered the darkened living room. Across from the doorway sat a woman in a modest dress, and a little girl in a matching outfit. Both had been duct taped into spindly chairs, with a strip over their mouths to keep them quiet.

On the wall, where I guess once hung the slashed portrait of Jesus crumpled in the corner, someone had painted a pentagram in sloppy red strokes. A little boy hung upside down at the heart of it, from a hook to which his feet were bound. He’d been muted with duct tape too, and stared in horror at the center of the floor.

His father sat there, naked, in a circle of black candles. Thirteen of them. He’d cut himself on the neck and wrists—nothing life-threatening—and blood had run over his chest and been smeared over his belly. He clutched a long carving knife in two hands. He waved it through the air, closing one eye, measuring his son for strokes that would take him to pieces.

I took another drink, and not because I needed the magic.

Prout looked up at me. “Yes, Father Satan, I have served thee well, and now have this sacrifice for you.”

I held a hand out. “Easy, Prout.”

He wasn’t listening. “You come to me in the shape of my enemy to mock me. I did harm to your pet. That opened my heart to you, didn’t it?”