There was a woman on the riverbank. The ugliest woman I'd ever seen. She looked like a corpse--dressed in tatters, washing her hands in the stream, tangled dark hair writhing over bone-thin arms, skin like jerky, twisted and tough and shrunken. Her face was horrible, with a long nose, blackened, jagged teeth, and sunken eyes--one black and one gray.
"Y mae mor salw a Gwrach y Rhibyn," I whispered.
She lifted her head, recognizing her name. Gwrach y Rhibyn. Those sunken eyes looked straight at me. Then she began to wail, so loud my hands flew to my ears.
"Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach," she shrieked. "Fy mhlentyn, fy mhlentyn bach."
My child. My little child.
Death is near. I have seen Gwrach y Rhibyn, and she warns me.
I staggered backward . . . into the bedroom, where I stood in the triskelion circle.
"Well, that wasn't just a little bit weird," I muttered.
TC chirped.
"Yeah, I know. These days, weird is my life. I should get that on a T-shirt."
I struggled to focus. It was surprisingly easy. I had just emerged from a dream state after stepping into a magically lit symbol ingrained in the floor of an old, abandoned house. I should be running for the door. Or huddled on the floor, rocking. But somehow it was like seeing red-eyed hounds and strange men who gave me boar's tusks. I could mentally lift the vision wholesale and stick it into the already overflowing "crazy shit I'll deal with later" box in my brain. At least I wasn't still trying to find rational explanations. That was progress. Or the sign of a complete mental breakdown.
I turned to TC. "Now can we go?"
He scampered out.
In the hall, I spotted him at the end, nudging that one closed door. "You have the worst sense of direction, don't you? That's locked--"
TC pushed it half open with his paw.
"No!" I said, lunging after him. "Not in--"
He dashed through. I didn't spend a second wondering how the heck a locked door got opened, because for once the rational explanation was the one that made sense. It was also the one that had me taking out my gun.
That door had been locked. Absolutely, undeniably locked. If it wasn't now, that meant I wasn't the only person here.
I suppose the intruder expected me to tear through after TC, having lured him in with some ripe-smelling tidbit. But while I was fond of my cat, it was a "break into an abandoned house for him" kind of affection, not "run into a death trap for him."
Gun raised, I kicked open the door and peered in. Steep steps rose into darkness. The attic.
"TC?" I called.
A bump sounded above, as if he'd jumped onto something. Then a loud thump, and I had to stop myself from running up after him.
"TC?" I called. "Are you okay?"
Another thump, lighter. Then an odd bump-bump-bump over the floorboards. I pointed my gun with one hand while lifting my flashlight-phone with the other. TC appeared, dragging something behind him. At the top of the stairs, he stopped and meowed.
"Come down here," I said.
He answered with a "No, you come here" yowl. When I didn't move, he nudged his trophy to the edge of the steps. I could make out a rough covering, like fur. He grabbed the fur and pulled the thing closer to the edge.
"Is that a rat?" I said.
It was too big for a mouse. Hell, it looked big enough to be a raccoon--a young one, at least. I stepped forward then stopped, as I remembered why I was staying at the base of the stairs.
"Come down," I said. "Now. I'm not chasing--"
He disappeared. I fought a groan. I should leave. I really should. But if someone was up there, TC might get hurt. I was about to call him again when the bundle at the top of the stairs moved. He was pushing it toward the edge. Determined to bring his prize with him.
"I don't want--"
Too late. He gave the thing a shove and down it came, bump-bumping over the steps as it rolled, while he trotted behind it. When his trophy was halfway down, I started to realize what it was, but I just stood there, light shining on the thing, watching it roll, telling myself I was wrong, had to be wrong, until it came to rest at my feet, and I was looking down at the head of Ciara Conway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I scooped up TC and got the hell out of that house, not stopping until I was on the front sidewalk. Then I called Gabriel. It went to voice mail.
"Goddamn you," I muttered, then said, "Gabriel? I need you to call me now. This isn't a joke. Call me."
I hung up and dialed 911. No more screwing around. I didn't care if Ciara's head vanished before the police got here. My conscience could no longer rest knowing that she was dead and I was carrying on as if nothing had happened. If Gabriel would have advised otherwise, well, then he should answer his damned phone.
My call went to the state police. I asked if I should report a problem to the local PD instead and they said yes. Did I want them to connect me? Just then my phone beeped with an incoming call from Gabriel. I asked the dispatcher for the number instead. Records would show that I'd placed this call. Better to speak to my lawyer now.
"I'm in town," Gabriel said before I could speak. "I need the address. If you don't know it--"
"Did you get my messages?" I said. "Any of them?"
"Messages?"
He waited patiently until I finished cursing him out and then said, "Is something wrong, Olivia?"
"My damned cat just found Ciara Conway's head. In the house where he was trapped."
"Do you have an address?" he said, less casually now.
I gave it to him. "It's over--"
"I know where it is. I'm less than a mile away."
"I'll be waiting out--"
"Stay on the line, Olivia. Tell me what happened."
I did. His car careered around the corner as I was getting to the part about calling 911. He'd climbed out and was closing the car door when TC zoomed past me.
"Watch out!" I said before he slammed the door on the cat.
TC jumped into the Jag and perched on the front seat.
"You might not want him in there," I said. "He has claws."
Gabriel closed the door. "At least we'll know where he is."
"Just don't bill me for the damage."
He took a flashlight from the trunk, then walked over. "As I was saying, yes, you were correct to call 911. It establishes a timeline, as does my call. I will handle contacting the local police, but I want to take a look inside first. Verify that the head is still there and keep it within sight. You can wait in the car with the cat if you like."
"It's not the head that sent me flying out of that house. It's remembering what happened the last time. I got out before I was knocked out."
"Good. Did you hear anyone inside?"
I said no, then explained about the attic door.
"That is odd," he said as I led him into the yard. "But the basement door did something similar, and I don't believe it 'just stuck.' Let's see what we have."
--
The head was still at the bottom of the attic steps. The head. That's how I thought of it now. Disconnected from any formerly living human being, because otherwise my gut started shouting, "It's her head. Ciara Conway's head. Severed from her body. Carted around. Tossed into a bed. Dragged by a cat. Pushed down the stairs. The poor girl's head." The horror and the indignity of that was too much. So it became "the head."
Gabriel seemed to have no such issues. He crouched and examined it from all angles.
"It appears to have been preserved," he said. "Most likely embalmed. That would explain the lack of rot and of scent, though TC still picked it up. A substandard job, then. Is it in the same condition as the last time you found it?"
I nodded.
He straightened, frowning down at the head as if it perplexed him. "You said you presume TC came in through the open basement window?"
"Yes. He'd been down there a while. Fortunately, he had water and found food."
"Meaning he could have been down there sinc
e he disappeared. Right before you found that head in your bed. Which he then found in the same house where he'd been trapped."
"And that makes no sense, which means the head must have been planted while I was rescuing him. I was trapped in the basement just long enough for that to happen."
"Possible, but that presumes the killer was either following you on your jog and took advantage--having the head conveniently nearby--or he was already in the house. I suspect TC didn't jump through that window. He was brought and left here. That could mean there is no one in this house tonight. TC was being kept here, as was the head."
"Which he smelled through two stories? Despite it being embalmed? And that doesn't explain stuck and unlocking doors."
"I know. It's not a puzzle we'll solve tonight. For now, we need to call the police. First, though, I want to take a look in the attic. Do you want to come or guard the evidence?"
"I'll go. You can guard."
"That wasn't one of the options."
"I know," I said as I brushed past him.
--
Gabriel didn't try to stop me, but he didn't hang back at the foot of the stairs, either. He came up until he could see what I was doing, while keeping one eye on the "evidence" below.
"Don't touch anything," he said. "Try not to leave too many footprints."
"I've been shedding hair lately. Is that a problem?"
"I will explain the footprints and any additional forensic evidence by saying you came up after the cat. I'm merely asking you to keep that evidence to a minimum."
"I was joking about the hair."
"I wasn't. Quickly now. We've established a timeline, and the longer it takes to phone . . ."
Unlike the basement, this space wasn't empty. It wasn't exactly jam-packed, either, just dotted with covered furniture and storage chests. From the dust, none of it had belonged to the previous owners. Not unless they'd moved out fifty years ago. As I walked, I remembered what Gabriel had said about footprints, and I stopped dead, cursing under my breath.
"What's wrong?" Gabriel's head crested the steps.
"You mentioned footprints. If someone's up here, that would be a sure sign of it." I backed up a few steps and waved my light around.
Gabriel gave me 1.3 seconds before saying, "Anything?"
I took another five before answering. "Not even my own, because someone has swept a path. I can see a few of TC's prints, but he seems to have stuck mostly to the cleared part. Meaning at the end of this path, presumably, is where the head was. Or where the killer is lying in wait." I raised my voice. "Did you hear that? I know where you are!"
"And now he knows where you are," Gabriel muttered.
"Like he wouldn't have the moment we started talking. Also, it could be a she."
"Olivia . . ."
"I'm moving. Following this handy path to my doom. Did I mention I had a vision down there? I think it was some kind of banshee. Which is--"
"I know what a banshee is, and I hope you're joking, and that you would not venture up here after hearing a death knell."
I said nothing.
"Olivia . . . ?"
"Hold on." A few more steps. "I think I see where . . ."
I trailed off as I shone the flashlight at the path's end. It was a table. Covered in a sheet. With something under that sheet.
The rest of Ciara Conway.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
As Gabriel phoned it in, I moved around the table, illuminating every surface with the flashlight beam. The swath swept around the table left enough room for the killer to maneuver without leaving footprints. I couldn't smell the body or the embalming fluid; the stink of bleach was too strong. He--or she--had washed everything down. Laid Ciara out here, covered her, cleaned up, and left.
When Gabriel finished his call, he came up for a look himself. He surveyed the area and then scanned the floor with the flashlight, until he was reassured I hadn't messed up anything. We left the sheet in place.
"We should wait downstairs," he said.
We went down to the second-floor hallway. As we waited, I told him about the banshee. I was showing him the owl triskelion when a voice called, "Hello!" from the back door. The police had arrived.
--
Gabriel handled things from there. I'd met the chief before. Eddie Burton. A quiet man in his forties, with a wife and two teenagers who'd come along to the diner with him for dinner once a week. Sending the chief wasn't unusual. He was pretty much the entire force. There was a local college boy taking police sciences who worked during the summer months, and two of the elders--Veronica and Roger--who volunteered. That was it.
Burton gave absolutely no sign that he considered me in any way connected to this crime. That surprised me. I'd just found a dead body mutilated postmortem . . . and my parents were supposedly serial killers who'd mutilated their victims postmortem. Even I wondered if there was some connection. Yet when Gabriel explained what had happened, Burton accepted his account.
I supposed it was pretty damned unlikely that I'd call the cops if I'd killed Ciara. Paw prints in the attic confirmed my story, as did those in the basement, along with the dead mice and my cat's condition.
While Burton seemed to know what he was doing, I expected they'd need to call in the state police for this. I was wrong. As far as Burton was concerned, this was just a dump site. The city would handle the murder investigation, picking up from the missing persons' case, and they'd want to process the scene. Escorting them in seemed the extent of Burton's duties. That and the paperwork.
"Gonna be a lot of paperwork," he said with a sigh. Then he flushed. "No disrespect to Ms. Conway. Horrible way for a girl to go. Horrible for anyone, of course, but a nice girl like that . . ." He shook his head. "I hope they catch whoever did this."
He said it with all due gravity, but with the distinct air of one who'd play no role in that "catching."
"Won't they at least consider the possibility she was killed here?" I asked.
"Doesn't seem like it. Looks like some kind of sicko serial--" He stopped, his pale face flushing again. "Sorry, Miss Jones."
"I meant, couldn't she have been killed within Cainsville, if not necessarily in this house?"
He looked as if I'd suggested aliens had murdered Ciara Conway. "We don't get that sort of thing here."
"I'm sure Cainsville has a very low murder rate--"
"It has no murder rate," he said. "Never been a homicide. Accidents, sure, but that's it."
I glanced at Gabriel, expecting a faint eye roll that said he'd dispute this--in private--later. But he nodded and said, "Chief Burton's right. Which is not to say that I share his opinion that this murder absolutely could not have taken place within the town limits, but it seems unlikely. However, given the hiding place for the body, the killer may have a connection to Cainsville, as Ms. Conway did."
"Hopefully an equally distant one," Burton said. A rap sounded at the door. "That'd be Doc Webster. If you two would like to get on home, you can just let her in on your way out."
"Thank you," I said. "And thank you for making this easy."
Another frown, as if he was trying to figure out why he wouldn't have made it easy, and I was reminded yet again why I loved this town.
"Next time you come by the diner, coffee and pie are on me," I said.
His frown deepened. "That wouldn't be right, Miss Jones, but thank you for offering."
Gabriel had gone ahead to let Dr. Webster in. I stopped partway to the door and turned back to Burton.
"I'd like to apologize to the owners for breaking in," I said. "Are they local?"
"She was. Died a few years back." He hastened to add, "Cancer. She was seventy. Had a husband, but I'm not sure if he's around anymore. Alive, I mean. The house was hers, and he moved back to the city after she died. He never really got used to Cainsville. Left as soon as he could." A note of wonder in his voice, as if he couldn't imagine such a thing.
"So it's owned by her children?"
"Ne
ver had any. They married late in life. Nephew owns it, I think. Maybe great-nephew. He's never lived here, and there's some reason it can't be sold. Contested will, maybe? It's complicated. Damned shame, too, place like this. Should have a family living in it. You leave a house like this empty and . . ." He waved toward the attic, as if to say harboring corpses was the fate that befell abandoned homes. "Damned shame."
It was.
--
TC hadn't scratched up Gabriel's car, which was a relief because I had not failed to note that he'd never actually replied when I said I wouldn't be on the hook for damages. I took him back to my apartment and he happily trotted inside. TC, that is--not Gabriel, although he did come in, without comment or request, rather like the cat, presuming he'd be welcome and making himself at home.
Gabriel watched TC settle into his cardboard-box bed. "He certainly seems happy to be home, which suggests he didn't leave willingly."
I got the lone can of tuna down from a cupboard. "Or he did, and he regrets it now."
I opened the can. TC sprang up and flew onto the counter, purring urgently as I dumped the tuna onto a plate.
"I don't know what happened," I said. "And I'm not sure I ever will. Too many unknowns, which seems to be the story of my life these days."
I pointed Gabriel in the direction of the files I'd brought home. While he fetched the pages he needed, I looked around the tiny kitchen.
"Can I make you a coffee? Tea? I've got a few Dr Peppers in the fridge. After tonight, they'd probably go down a lot better with a couple ounces of rum or whiskey, but I haven't gotten around to alcohol stocking. Sorry."
Gabriel waved off the apology. "Soda's fine. I don't usually drink."
"I suspected that," I said as I got out the pop. "No matter how bad a day we have, you've never said, 'God, I could use a drink right now.' I know I have. Silently. Many times."
"Then say so. I'm not a recovering alcoholic, Olivia. Nor do I have any issue with others imbibing. I do have a drink sometimes, socially, but otherwise . . . it's not for me."
Because of his mother. I was sure of that. Whatever mistakes she'd made, he was determined not to repeat them or share her weaknesses. Which is probably why I'd known never to say, "God, I could use a drink," in front of him.
"Rose has a liquor cabinet," he said, rising. "Put those back and we'll go over there, get you something."
I shook my head. "I was kidding. I don't need--"