Kirby said tentatively, “For the unsub to—to steal the arm right out of a freezer in the morgue and put it inside Reverend Pilate’s body . . . That has to mean something. Right?”
“I dunno, it feels to me like twisted humor. Or maybe he’s just messing with us.”
Cullen lifted an eyebrow at her. “Messing with us? Us, specifically?”
“Well, the way he left the body was certainly enough to shock and horrify anybody who saw it. The cell phone left in the victim’s mouth, a text that had to be for us, for law enforcement. The arm . . . Jill was the first to find that. I didn’t notice it at the scene.”
DeMarco said, “The warning text was also on the cell.”
“Yeah, and it had been read. But there was no sign of the emergency alert. It wasn’t an old phone but also wasn’t the latest model; the tech people here say it should have received the emergency alert.”
“Another sign he’s technically savvy,” Cullen offered.
Hollis nodded. “If we needed one. So far, the analysts at Quantico haven’t found anything worth flagging in the backgrounds of the victims—including Reverend Pilate, and thank you, Cullen, for thinking to call them last night to add him to their list of victims.”
“I was almost asleep when I remembered,” he confessed.
“I’m just glad you did. At least we know that the best analysts we have can’t find a commonality among the victims. They didn’t find anything we missed. That’s both reassuring and—frustrating.”
The words had barely left her mouth when the sheriff came in, carrying one of the big candlesticks they had found in Reverend Pilate’s parsonage.
“This is weird,” he announced.
Hollis only just stopped herself from asking him to take the thing away, or at least put it down somewhere not near her or anyone on her team, because its aura was still black shot through with red streaks, and all she knew for sure was that it wasn’t good. At all.
“What’s weird?” she asked him, relieved when he set the candlestick down on one of the desks flanking the doorway, which was at least not too close to any of them. “And where’s the other one?”
He answered her second question first. “The antiques expert is drooling over it in that little office beside mine. He’s been communicating with another expert, this one over in Europe. They’re both very excited.”
“Is that where the weird part comes in?”
Mal frowned. “Now that you mention it, the reason he isn’t still in my office is because Felix was getting more and more upset. I thought it was because he didn’t like the guy, but eventually I realized it was the candlesticks.”
Hollis exchanged glances with her partner, then returned her attention to the sheriff. “Animals sense things we can’t,” she said mildly. “So there’s something weird about the candlesticks?”
“You could say. Expert says they’re very, very old. Talking hundreds of years. They’re not as heavy as you’d expect because under the bronze surface, they have a copper core.”
“Copper,” Hollis said slowly. “One of the first metals ever used by humans. And it has very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Why copper wiring works so well.”
And why they have such a distinct aura?
Hollis blinked and looked at her partner, startled to find his voice in her head. Because he didn’t broadcast, surely—
“That’s pretty much what the expert said,” Mal told them.
Hollis returned her attention to him. “Sounds like they’re weird all the way around,” she said.
“Oh, I saved the best for last.” He was still standing beside the desk, and picked up the candlestick again, this time holding it so that the agents could all see the bottom. With his free hand, he carefully peeled back the felt that had been attached, possibly to avoid scratching fine wooden surfaces. Or to hide the symbol carved into the metal.
A pentagram.
“Shit,” Hollis said.
Mal said, “That was my reaction. Exactly.”
—
THE PROBLEM, AS it turned out, was that their expert insisted the candlesticks exactly matched a pair that had been stolen from a museum in France. And if these candlesticks were what he thought they were, they were not only stolen and priceless, they were also, Mal told the agents with a grimace, cursed.
Hollis waved off the curse, more interested in another of the possibilities. “When was the robbery?”
“Uh—he thinks it was around five years ago. That’s one of the things he’s checking with the other expert.”
“Another parameter for the analysts?” DeMarco suggested.
“That’s what I was thinking,” Hollis said. “Find out all they can about the robbery itself. How was it viewed by Interpol? Did they have a suspect? Do they believe it was stolen by or for a collector? And how did they end up in Clarity? Possibly someone who moved here since the robbery. Someone who traveled to Europe around the right time. Someone with the means to buy priceless things and a very good reason for doing so. Along those lines.”
“On it,” Cullen said, and went to the desk opposite the one with the candlestick to use the landline phone there.
Mal had put the candlestick back down and looked at Hollis in some disappointment. “Don’t you want to know about the curse?”
She was tempted to reply that she knew all about curses but said instead, “Sorry, Mal. Hardheaded and practical.”
DeMarco murmured, “I can testify to the first.”
Hollis ignored him. “I’m more interested in all the symbols worked into that decorative design.”
He blinked. “Damn. You really don’t miss a thing, do you? I thought it was all just frills and flourishes. Then the expert got out his magnifying glass and got even more excited. He and his . . . counterpart . . . over in Europe are compiling a list, with each of the symbols drawn and defined, and it may take a while. Ancient symbols, apparently. But he said some are definitely pagan, and others could match up with that pentagram.”
Hollis sighed. “I was afraid you were going to say something like that.” She looked at her partner, brows lifting. “Is he a killer because he believes in Satan or does he believe in Satan because he’s a killer?”
“Probably depends on how long he’s been practicing.”
“Yeah. And how long he’s been killing. We haven’t really turned up anything similar to our crimes, but maybe the analysts at Quantico will.”
Kirby, who had indeed looked both uneasy and curious about the curse, was clearly trying to keep her mind on more concrete details when she asked, “Is it more likely he’s using the—the beliefs to justify murder if we find out he’s done the same thing somewhere else?”
“Probably,” Hollis answered. “And because he’s perverting the beliefs.”
Mal said, “How on earth do you pervert—” Clearly as conscious as they were of the power of the word alone, he also chose not to use it aloud. “—beliefs like those? I mean, aren’t they perverted to begin with?”
Hollis shook her head. “Just a belief system, like any other religion. And traditionally—if I can use that word—not at all violent and not inherently evil.”
“Are you telling me Reverend Pilate butchered in his own church wasn’t evil?” Mal objected, sounding more than a little disturbed by the whole conversation.
“It was absolutely evil,” Hollis said promptly. “Everything this sicko has done is evil. But all religions have ceremonies, rituals, the . . . frills and flourishes. Sacrificing human beings doesn’t fit. Sacrificing anything living doesn’t fit. There are only a few blood rituals, and those involve a practitioner pricking a finger or cutting a palm—their own. It’s more symbolic than anything else.”
“But Reverend Pilate—”
“Mal, what we have here is a serial killer. Every serial killer has a reason or reasons
for killing. The more . . . perverted . . . the murders are, the more likely the killer has ritualized them in some way. And rationalized them. In all likelihood this monster knows on some level how sick he is, and justifies that sickness by blaming it on an external influence. A higher power.”
Slowly, Mal said, “He doesn’t kill because he believes in Satan, he believes in Satan because he kills. Because he needs to kill.”
“Exactly,” Hollis said.
—
HOLLIS HONESTLY DIDN’T know whether DeMarco was right in believing she was any kind of an empath, but as the day wore on and they continued to gather information, sometimes one dry fact at a time, she felt more and more unlike herself.
There were flickers of emotion, jolts of fear, irritation—and more than once she had to fight a sudden urge to burst into tears. And it was that last bit that convinced her he was at least partly right. She was picking up on the emotions of people around her. And since the gruesome murder of one of their pastors had horrified everyone and the emergency alert had told them how the killer sadistically warned his victims beforehand, there had been a steady stream of worried citizens of Clarity in and out of the sheriff’s department—some of them trying to turn their cell phones in as if that would save them a deadly text and gruesome death—and emotions were everywhere.
Mal came and went, often supplying another bit of information. Such as the fact that the apparently very excited antiquities expert none of them had even met yet now had a third specialist he was consulting using Skype or one of the other videoconferencing programs.
“Why another?” Hollis asked, fighting the urge to raise her voice.
“I take it this one’s in Italy. Specializes in ancient religious artifacts. He’s at his home, but all his reference books are there. I dunno, he thinks he might have information even the museum they were stolen from doesn’t have about the candlesticks. I’m mostly just watching and listening, and don’t have a clue about the parts in French and Italian. They all seem to be in their own world; I ask a question and it’s like I’m a fly buzzing around them.” He shrugged. “I’ll be back when he—and I—know anything.”
“Okay. We’re still waiting to see if the analysts at Quantico find anything useful.”
“Well, let me know.”
“Right.”
DeMarco rose from his chair and said pleasantly to Cullen, “You and Kirby stay here and do whatever you can, okay? Call my cell if we get word from Quantico. Hollis’s is already dead.”
“I didn’t tell you that,” she nearly snapped.
Cullen’s brows rose, but Kirby looked as if a question had suddenly been answered.
“You didn’t have to.” DeMarco went around the table and took her hand, drawing her to her feet. “Come on, we need to get out of here for a while.”
“And go where?” She still sounded snappy.
“Away from people,” he said distinctly.
Hollis started to speak, then closed her mouth, frowning.
“We’ll hold down the fort, don’t worry,” Cullen said to her.
She merely nodded and allowed her partner to lead her from the room. And it wasn’t until they were in the SUV and headed out of town that she spoke again.
“I have a lot of sympathy for Kirby.”
DeMarco nodded but kept his gaze on the road. “Every empath I’ve ever known has said it’s completely overwhelming at first. Once you can shield consistently, it will get better.”
“Promise?” She sounded even to herself like she was about to cry, and added an irritated, “Oh, shit, this is going to drive me nuts. And I thought spirits were hard.”
“I wonder if you’ll pick up their emotions,” he mused.
“Oh, shit.”
He glanced at her, trying not to laugh. “Sorry. I know it’s hell on you, but I have to say, watching you cope with new abilities is . . . sort of fascinating.”
“Dammit.” Hollis leaned her head back and closed her eyes, wearing an expression that immediately struck him as odd.
“Hollis?”
She had her eyes closed. “Oh, man, get me out of town. We just passed the hospital, didn’t we?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I think somebody’s appendix just burst. Damn. Damn.”
“Wow,” he murmured, and immediately increased the SUV’s speed, losing no time in moving away from the hospital and the town. “Better?” he asked after several miles.
“Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I so have to get a handle on this. I thought you said it was happening gradually?”
“It was triggered gradually,” he corrected. “I think. I guess once you knew, the brakes were off.”
“That’s a lousy analogy.” She held up a finger in a silent demand that he not speak until they passed a couple of houses on the outskirts of town, then said, “Sorry. There was a wife back there very pissed at her husband.”
“I’ll try not to take it personally,” DeMarco said.
“It’s all your fault, you realize that, right? I’m willing to bet if you hadn’t told me about it, it would be happening more gradually.”
“It’s possible. Sorry. The situation’s a new one for me too. I wasn’t sure whether to say anything.”
Hollis breathed in deeply, then out, clearly working on control. “Why don’t we stop at that overlook place near the Cross house. That’s about as remote as you can get and still be within cell range of town. I don’t want to get too far away from Kirby and Cullen.”
“Okay.” It was only about five minutes later when he pulled the SUV off the two-lane blacktop and into the overlook space that was just about large enough for three cars or a couple of larger vehicles to be safely off the road and pointed at the view.
Hollis was less interested in the view than in fresh air and the blessed lack of emotional turmoil all around her. She got out and walked toward the railing that protected the careless from a deadly leap down into the valley.
DeMarco joined her. “First time we’ve had a chance to stop up here during the day,” he said. “It is a beautiful view.”
Hollis blinked, then really looked. “Yeah, it really is. The valley is a lot bigger than it seems in town, too.” She scanned the valley, looking slowly from left to right. Then she frowned again.
Always alert to her expressions, he said, “What?”
“Was it Jill who said that Perla Cross’s body would probably have been visible from up here?”
“I think so. Something about the way the tree’s trimmed, and the bright red blouse Mrs. Cross was wearing.”
“She was right. I can just barely make out the ends of the branches they had to saw off to get the body down. Pale, fresh-cut wood against the trunk.”
DeMarco squinted for a moment, then said, “You have damned good eyesight.”
It was rather telling that neither of them even thought about the fact that the eyes she had were not those she had been born with.
“Spider sense. These last months at Quantico, Bishop was helping me learn to control it better. Especially with sight. At first it was like a raw nerve I couldn’t protect. Quentin’s best at it, really. His sight and hearing are drastically better. With me, it was mostly sight right from the beginning, so that’s what we worked on.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, then closed it and squinted again, concentrating.
“You aren’t still looking at the tree, are you?” It wasn’t really a question.
“No,” she said slowly. “Not the tree.”
He was silent a moment, then said, “Friday night, when we were leaving the attic. The goblin or gargoyle you saw on the roof.”
“Stop reading me.”
“Then talk to me.”
There was a brief pause, and then Hollis said, “The rain we finally got before dawn this morning nearly washed it away
. I can barely make it out. And I think . . . I’m seeing the energy rather than the actual marks he drew on the shingles. Chalk, probably. And he must have used blood. He would have needed the power of that. To keep us—to keep me distracted. Unsettled. Blocked, but convinced it was inside me, that there was something wrong with me . . .”
“Hollis?”
She finally blinked, then lifted both hands to briefly rub her eyes with her fingers. “Oh, man, I can’t believe I let him do that.”
“Hollis.”
She looked at her partner. “It wasn’t a goblin or a gargoyle, Reese. It was him. He was there, physically there, on the roof. Friday night. Casting a spell.”
SIXTEEN
DeMarco lifted a brow at her. “Casting a spell? You don’t mean an actual spell, do you?”
“Well, for want of a better word. He has power, Reese. The real deal. Or at least . . . he can call on it.”
“Call on it? As in summoning the devil?”
“He’s using power. Drawing it from somewhere else. Or someone else.”
“Is he psychic?”
“I don’t think so. If he were psychic, I would have known it. Because I was the one he needed to block.” She frowned again. “Why was I the one?”
“You’re the most powerful psychic on the team,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Arguably.”
“No. You are the most powerful psychic on the team.”
She looked up at him for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. We need to get down there and look around. Now, in daylight.”
“Let’s go.”
It took less than five minutes to get down to the Cross house; it had seemed closer to Hollis, but the road was so curvy it definitely required careful driving. The driveway was rather long and curvy as well, and as they parked and got out of the car, Hollis said, “I didn’t remember all the curves.”