Dark Rites

  “It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to those of us who were working. I was there for hours while the police grilled me. And now...now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double shot of single malt scotch and swallowed it in a gulp.

  He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.

  It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.

  After all, he’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.

  The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was around the block from Le Club Vampyre.

  The whole situation was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family from the mid-nineteenth century, dating back to her distant great-great-uncle. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.

  As manager, Declan was the only one who made the pub his lifework. Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. Yet they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.

  The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage at Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about the place for the past six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club like that in an old church!

  The club had, of course, been the main topic of conversation yesterday, when the news had come out that unknown grave sites had been found—and Professor John Shaw had been called in.

  Of course, people were still talking about the old catacombs today. Not that finding graves while digging in foundations was unusual in New York. It was just creepy-cool enough to really talk about.

  Creepy-cool was fine when you were talking about the earthly remains of the long dead.

  Not the newly deceased.

  At the moment, though, Kieran was one of the few people who knew that the body of Jeannette Gilbert had been discovered. That was because she knew Dr. John Shaw, professor of archaeology and anthropology at NYU, famed in academic circles for his work on sites from Jamestown, Virginia, to Beijing, China. He and a group of his colleagues had met at Finnegan’s one night a month as long as she could remember.

  When she’d seen him enter today looking so distressed, she’d ushered him into one of the small booths against the wall that divided the pub’s general area from the offices. She’d gotten him his scotch, and she’d sat with him so she could try to calm him.

  “Oh, my God! I can just imagine when it hits the news!” he said, looking at her with stricken eyes. And yet, she recognized a bit of awe in them.

  Of course, he hadn’t known Jeannette Gilbert personally. Kieran hadn’t, either. She’d seen her once, on a red carpet, heading to the premiere of a new movie in a theater near Times Square.

  Sadly, Jeannette hadn’t been an especially talented actress. But she’d been too beautiful for most people to care.

  “I’m so sorry you’re the one who found her,” Kieran said. That should’ve been the right thing to say; usually, people didn’t want to find a body. Still, John Shaw worked with the dead all the time—the long dead, at least—and he was going to be famous in the pop culture world now, as well as the academic world.

  But it was obvious that he was badly shaken.

  He was accustomed to studying bones and mummies—not a woman who’d been recently murdered.

  “I was—I am—very excited about the project. I don’t understand how the church could have lost all those graves. Can you imagine? Okay, so, you know how they built Saint Paul’s to accommodate folks farther north of Trinity back in the day? Well, they built Saint Augustine’s for those a little north of Saint Paul’s. And, according to my research so far, the church was fine until about 1860, when way too many people went off to fight in the Civil War. It wasn’t deconsecrated—just more or less abandoned because the congregations were so much smaller. Then, according to records, Father O’Hara passed away, and it took the church forever to send out a new priest. Apparently, there was structural damage by then, which closed off that section of the catacombs. You see, until about seventy-five years ago, there was an entrance to the catacombs from the street, and I suppose everyone—church officials, city organizers, engineers, what have you—believed all the graves had been removed. Of course, most of the dead were buried then in wooden coffins, and in the ground outside, so most of those became dirt and bone. But there’d been underground catacombs, too. Coffins set upon shelves. Some of the dead were just shrouded, but some were in old wooden coffins, and they were decaying and falling apart, and I had workers taking them down so carefully—and then, there she was!”

  He sipped his scotch again and looked at Kieran intently. “You’re not to say a word, not yet. The police...they asked me not to speak about this until...until someone was notified. I don’t think either of her parents is living, but she must have family...” His voice trailed off. “My God. It was ghastly!” he said a moment later. “Gruesome!”

  Once again he picked up his glass and swallowed the scotch in a gulp.

  Kieran wasn’t sure why she turned to look at the front door when she did; it was always opening and closing. Maybe she wanted to look anywhere except at John Shaw. She was a working psychologist, and yet she wasn’t sure what to say to the man.

  She glanced up just in time to see Craig Frasier come in, blink, adjust to the light and walk toward the two of them.

  She wasn’t surprised Craig was there; they were seeing each other and had been since the affair over the “flawless” Capeletti diamond. It had all started as they danced around each other following a diamond heist. They were both assigned to the case, but Kieran’s involvement had been more than a little complicated. They’d progressed to each having a dresser drawer at the other’s apartment, and were now talking about moving in together.

  While she had truly fallen in love with Craig, she was a little hesitant—and a little worried that the man she believed to be her soul mate also happened to be a special agent with the FBI. Her family was striving to be legitimate now, but that hadn’t always been the case. Growing up, her brothers had had a few brushes with the law.

  And trusting her beloved brothers to behave wasn’t easy. They were never malicious; however, their ways of helping friends out of bad situations weren’t always the best.

  Then again, she’d met Craig because of the Capeletti diamond and Danny’s determination to do the right thing...

  And because of some criminal clientele.

  “Excuse me,” she murmured to John, assuming that Craig had come to see her.

  The door was still open; he stood in a pool of light, and her heart leaped as she saw him. Craig was, in her mind, entirely impressive, tall and broad-shouldered, with extraordinary eyes that seemed to take in everything.

  But he had not, apparently, come to see her.

  He greeted Kieran with a nod, held her shoulders for a minute—and then offered her a grim smile as he gently set her aside so he could move past her.

  Something was up. Craig spent his free time here with her and her family. Her friends, coworkers and the usual clientele all knew that Craig and Kieran were a couple.

  Today, however, there wasn’t even a qu
ick kiss. Craig was being very official.

  He was heading straight to the booth where John Shaw was seated.

  Kieran stood there for a minute, perplexed.

  Jeannette Gilbert had been killed, but as a local woman her death should’ve remained a matter for the New York City Police Department, not the FBI. And John Shaw had left the body less than an hour ago.

  Why would Craig be here so quickly? And more to the point, why was the FBI involved?

  She didn’t get a chance to slide back into the booth and find out what was going on; she felt a tap on her shoulder and turned.

  Her brother Kevin was next to her. He was a striking man—in anyone’s opinion, she thought. He was tall and fit, with fine features, dark red hair and deep blue eyes. They were twins, and it showed.

  “I have to talk to you,” he said urgently.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Not here. In the office,” he told her. To her surprise, he glanced uneasily at Craig, whom he liked and with whom he was pretty good friends.

  Kevin whirled her and headed her down the entry aisle toward the bar, and then to the left and down the hallway to the business office. He peered in, as if afraid their older brother might be there, since it was, basically, Declan’s office.

  He closed the door behind them.

  “She’s dead, Kieran! She’s dead!” Kevin said, looking at her and shaking his head with dismay and anxiety.

  She stared at him for a moment. He couldn’t be talking about Jeannette Gilbert—no one knew that she’d been found at the church yet, not according to John Shaw.

  Her heart quaked with fear. She was afraid he was talking about an old friend, or a longtime customer of the pub.

  Someone he cared about deeply.

  “Kevin, who?” she asked.

  “Jeannette.”

  She frowned. “Jeannette Gilbert?”

  He nodded.

  “Okay,” she said slowly. “I know that, because John Shaw just told me. But he only found her body a few hours ago. The police asked him not to say anything.”

  Kevin took a deep breath. “Well, John Shaw might not have said anything, but one of the workers down there—a grunt, a student, I don’t know—came out and told people on the street, and the story was picked up, and there are already media crews there.”

  She studied her brother. “Kevin, it’s terrible. A beautiful young woman has—I’m assuming—been murdered. But, Kevin, I’m afraid that terrible things do happen. But...we didn’t know Jeannette Gilbert. Not personally.”

  “Yes,” he said. “We did.”

  “We did?”

  “I did,” he corrected. “Kieran, I was the so-called ‘mystery man’ she was dating! I might have been the last one to see her alive.”

  * * *

  The NYPD had been called in first; that was proper protocol, since New York City was where the body had been found.

  She’d last been seen by her doorman entering her apartment; she was a longtime Manhattan resident. She had, in fact, grown up in Harlem, a little girl who’d lost both parents and gone on to live in a household filled with children and an aunt who hadn’t wanted another mouth to feed.

  By the age of seventeen, however, she’d had an affair with a rock star.

  While the rock star denied any kind of intimate relationship with her at the time, he’d gone on to put her in one of his music videos soon after.

  An agent had picked her up and it had been a classic tale—little girl lost had become a megastar. By twenty-five, she was gracing runways all over the world and, because of her modeling, doing cameo spots on television shows and even appearing in small roles in several movies. She was considered a true supernova.

  Jeannette’s physical appearance had been called perfect by every critic out there.

  She could walk a runway.

  She had beautiful skin, luscious hair, long legs and a body that didn’t quit.

  Craig Frasier had learned all this about Jeannette in the last few hours. Before that, she’d only been a face he might have recognized on a magazine cover.

  But he’d made it his business to read up on her quickly.

  Because her death had suddenly become the focus of his life.

  He’d been in his office, reading statements from witnesses about the murder of a known pimp, when he’d been summoned, along with his partner, Mike Dalton, to Assistant Director Richard Egan’s office.

  Craig and Mike had been partners for years. Craig had been assigned a young, new agent when Mike was laid up on medical leave—a shot to the buttocks—about a year ago. He’d learned then how much he appreciated his partner; they knew each other’s minds. They naturally fell into a division of labor when it came to pounding the pavement and getting the inevitable paperwork done.

  And there was no one Craig trusted more to have his back, especially in a shoot-out.

  Egan, a good man himself, was hard-core Bureau. His personal life had suffered for it, but he never brought his personal life into the office. He was the best kind of authority figure, as well—dignified, fair, compassionate. And efficient. He never wasted time. There were two chairs in front of his desk, but he hadn’t waited for Craig and Mike to sit down. He’d started talking right away.

  “I had a back-burner situation going on here,” he’d told them. “We’d been given information, but the local police down in Fredericksburg, Virginia, were handling the case. A girl—a perfect-looking girl, an artist’s model—disappeared about six months ago. A few weeks later, her body was found in a historic cemetery outside Fredericksburg, in a mausoleum. She’d been stabbed in the heart, then cleaned up, dressed up and laid out in a family mausoleum. She was discovered when the family’s matriarch died, since she’d been put in the matriarch’s space. As I said, it seemed to be a local matter, and the Fredericksburg PD and Virginia State Police had the murder. We were informed because of the unusual aspects.”

  Egan had paused, running his hands through his hair. Then he’d resumed speaking. “We’re all aware of the high-profile disappearance of Jeannette Gilbert.”

  Mike had nodded. “Yeah, we were briefed with the cops about her disappearance when she went missing. We weren’t really in on it, as you know. But we were on the lookout.”

  “Ms. Gilbert’s been found. An archaeological dig at old Saint Augustine’s.”

  “You mean—” Mike began.

  But Egan had cut him off. Yeah, he meant the new nightclub. Egan wasn’t a fan. He’d gone on and ranted for a full minute about the destruction of old historic places. In his opinion, that suggested New York City had no real respect for the past.

  Craig knew Mike hadn’t been asking his question because of the club; he’d been trying to ascertain if she’d been found dead.

  Mike had glanced over at Craig, who shrugged.

  They’d both just let Egan rant, figuring it was obvious. The poor girl was dead.

  Egan had ended by saying, “Yes, she’s dead. And it is bizarre—as bizarre as that Fredericksburg case, maybe even more so. Because in this case, the perp had to know she’d be found quickly. He placed her in a historical site where anthropologists and archaeologists were expected to arrive imminently. Later, you can go over the info on the Virginia case, do some comparisons. We’re part of the task force on this, but we’re taking the lead, and you two are up for our division. Because, gentlemen, I believe we have a serial killer on our hands.”

  They’d asked about the security tapes at the club.

  Techs were going over those now, Egan had said.

  “That’s a bitch!” Egan had exclaimed. “Try looking for something out of the ordinary when every damned customer in the place looks like an escapee from a B Goth flick or worse! Not to mention that the club closed down when the crypt was discovered. There?
??s no club security overnight other than the cameras, but cops have been patrolling the place since the historic folks stepped in.”

  From the office, he and Mike had gone straight to the church. The ME on duty was Anthony Andrews, a fine and detail-oriented doctor, but he hadn’t really started his examination of the body yet.

  Photographers were still taking pictures, trying to maintain the scene just as it had been after Professor Shaw had opened the first coffin and seen Jeannette Gilbert.

  A half-dozen members of a forensic team were moving around, but Dr. Andrews delicately stopped the photo session to show Craig and Mike what he’d discovered. Gilbert had been killed in another location, stabbed through the heart, and then bathed and dressed and prepared before being placed in the old coffin.

  Seeing her was heartbreaking. Craig hadn’t known the woman or really anything about her until today, but she’d been young and beautiful, and her life had been brutally taken. She lay in the old coffin, dressed in shimmering white, a wilted rose in her hands. With her eyes closed, it looked as if she slept.

  Except, of course, she’d never wake again.

  “Defensive wounds?” he’d asked Andrews.

  “Not a one. She was taken by surprise. Whoever killed her stood close by—had to be someone who seemed trustworthy. Maybe someone she knew,” the ME had speculated. “Or she could’ve had some kind of opiate in her system. Anyway, she didn’t expect what was coming.”

  “Time of death?” Mike had asked. “She’s been missing about two weeks.”

  “I’m thinking one to two weeks,” Andrews replied. “And I don’t believe she’s been embalmed—but she was somehow preserved. Maybe in a freezer while he worked on her or made arrangements or...” He sighed. “I need to get her on the table.”

  Two patrol officers, the first on the scene, had closed off the area. Luckily, the club had been closed, pending the investigation of the newly discovered crypt. Detective Larry McBride, with the major crimes division, had been the first to arrive. Craig and Mike had worked with him before. He was particularly mild mannered, but he had a brilliant mind and nothing deterred his focus.