“Not really. If she was killed with that knife, you’re talking homicide.”
“I think it could be suicide.”
Savvy’s gaze hardened on Catherine. She had the distinct feeling she was lying.
“Will you do a DNA test on it?” Catherine asked.
“It sounds like you want me to open an investigation into your sister’s death. If that’s the case—”
“Can we first start with the DNA test?”
“I would have to know more about—”
“I can pay for it. Keep it private,” Catherine said, cutting in. “It’s just that I needed someone to . . . turn to, Detective. Do you understand?”
“You want a DNA test with no questions asked.”
“Yes.”
“Ms. Rutledge, there’s clearly a lot you’re not saying. I’m going on maternity leave soon. I’m not even sure I could do this,” Savannah said. “You might need someone else. And then there’s the question of the body. We would have to do an exhumation.”
As if she hadn’t heard her, Catherine asked, “Will you please do me this favor?”
Savvy expelled a breath. “I can send the knife to the DNA lab, but if it’s for private purposes, it may take some time before they get to it. There are a lot of requests, most of them more urgent, as they’re tied to known crimes.”
“That’s fine. I just . . . If there’s anything on the knife—blood, fingerprints, tissue—I want to know whose it is.”
“That sounds a lot like you believe this knife was used in a homicide.”
“If I truly believed that, I would ask you to investigate her death.”
Not likely, Savannah thought.
“It may well be that the only DNA evidence will be my sister’s, and if that’s the case, then I’ll accept that it was suicide, or even an accident, and that will be enough.”
“The ME tends to make the decision on whether a weapon was used in a homicide or a suicide, but, of course, we need a body.”
Catherine’s lips pressed into a line. “You’re going to force this investigation, aren’t you?”
Savannah stared at the knife for a long moment, then slowly picked the plastic bag up. “I’ll take this back to Detective Stone, and we’ll go from there.”
Catherine seemed to want to say something else, but she let it slide. “What did Cassandra say to you?” she asked instead.
“She said her name was Maggie and that she told you he was coming. That he came for Mary, and he was coming for you and maybe even me, too.”
“She said that?” Catherine whispered.
“Who is this he? Does he have anything to do with the DNA you’re looking for on the knife?”
“Cassandra sees things, but they’re not always accurate,” she said, in complete denial of her own body language, which was reflecting her intense fear.
“She knew I was carrying my baby for someone else.”
It was a role reversal. Now Savvy was the one intimating that she believed in the women of the Colony’s gifts, and Catherine was the skeptic. The two women stared each other down.
Finally, Catherine declared, “Cassandra has a flair for the dramatic. No one’s coming for us. And certainly not for you, Detective.”
“That’s good to hear.” Deciding it was time to stop talking in circles and get on with the Donatella investigation, Savannah got to her feet and said, “I’d better get going.”
“You’ll test the knife?”
“I . . . yes. I’ll bill you.” She walked around the table, out of the kitchen, and toward the rough-hewn front door, sensing Catherine behind her. Turning, she saw that Catherine’s eyes were following the bag in her hand, as if she was afraid to let it out of her sight. “I’ll talk to Detective Stone about it, too.”
“Thank you.”
“As I said, he may ask to exhume Mary’s body if he thinks a crime’s been committed.”
“There’s no reason for that,” Catherine stated quickly. “If Detective Stone wants to take things that far, have him get in contact with me.”
She opened the door and accompanied Savannah down the flagstone path to the gate, unlocked it, waited for Savvy to pass through, then relocked the gate before turning back to the lodge. Savannah climbed into her vehicle and looked back at Catherine’s stiffly held spine as the older woman reentered the lodge.
Who is he? she wondered again, her gaze sliding toward the knife inside the plastic bag, as she sensed in her bones that there was some real threat out there and tried like hell to shake the eerie feeling that had been with her since she first stepped through the gate of Siren Song.
CHAPTER 4
The bar was crowded with would-be cowboys and girls in skintight dresses, along with a few after-work businessmen, who had ripped off their ties and were knocking back shots, as if trying to prove they were twice as macho as any of the men wearing jeans, boots, hats, and oversize belt buckles. It was a rockin’ Thursday night at the Rib-I, a Portland steak and baked potato restaurant and bar, whose logo was spelled out in ropelike orange neon and encircled by a lasso.
Yes, the Rib-I was class all the way, and Charlie—no, that wasn’t his real name, but it was the only one he gave out—was pretty sure every fucker in sight would be worth more to the world if he were six feet under. With that thought in mind, Charlie wondered how many he could kill. How long it would take. How much forethought. He didn’t plan to ever get caught, and so mass murder or even serial murders were problematic, something to avoid. But recently he’d gotten the killing urge and gotten it bad. It was powerful, almost sexual. Well, actually, it was sexual. He had to beat off almost immediately after every last choking sound. He didn’t care how they expired. He just liked staring into their eyes, their damned souls, and watching them suck in those last tortured breaths, and then, man, the hard-on was so huge and uncomfortable that with a few quick strokes he was spewing like a volcano.
Now . . . there was danger in that. DNA danger. He’d learned to carry around ziplock bags, just in case he wasn’t somewhere safe.
It was a strange phenomenon, he thought as he sipped his beer. He’d never really understood his own power, but it was always there, always with him, an old friend. In his youth he’d worked his power on animals that he wanted to befriend. It ran through him with the heat of blood in his veins, and the zing of energy down his nerves. It was a power he couldn’t explain, though he’d tried to several times, the last time to his adoptive mother, who had looked pained and a little frightened while he struggled to name his power, and then had simply changed the subject. But by then he was sixteen and as horny as he could be.
To hell with befriending animals, he’d decided; he wanted sex. One night he moved up close to his mother and said softly that he wanted her, and he let his own invisible power slide over to her. When she stared at his lips and the look of horror slowly fled from her face, to be replaced by something else, he knew he had her. He moved forward and pushed her unresisting form onto the couch, and he screwed her every which way but loose, and she clasped him to her and howled with her head thrown back and her spine bent in a U, her legs locked around his back, meeting his thrusts with a body that jerked and stiffened and begged for more. The next day she threw herself off a freeway bridge, but he was gone by then, starting his vagabond new life, where he lured women with a wink and a smile, and by the time he was through with them, they’d given him everything they had and more. He stuck with a professor’s daughter through three terms of college and then moved on to the professor herself. He could have gotten a degree in business without hardly trying, but he got bored with the whole thing and quit before achieving that goal.
Which was why he was wondering if he should hook up with more of those academic types. Hmmm. He took another swallow from his long-necked bottle and saw a redhead checking him out. She was kinda swaying to the twangy country music—a come-on that he ignored for now. There was something desperate about her, and he didn’t need desperate.
&n
bsp; He knew his looks dragged them in. Of course he knew. But it was his power that really got them going, a power he struggled to keep under leash. Sometimes when he looked at the turn of a woman’s calf or the soft curve of her breast or the rounded lushness of her buttocks, he just couldn’t help himself, and he just let it out. They couldn’t say no to him. Sometimes they didn’t want to at first; sometimes he was just too impatient. But they couldn’t say no. He’d been trying very hard to put a lid on the whole damn thing, because he didn’t want to move anymore; he was still enraged over that last relo. He didn’t want to have to keep leaving just because some crazed husband or boyfriend thought it was time to take care of Good Time Charlie, so he’d had to put a lid on his power for a while. It was while he’d been in this state of weird abstinence that he learned what it felt like to kill.
Mother . . . fucker.
As he relived that last fatal encounter, his dick jumped up as if electrified, and he suddenly had the boner of all boners. He looked around for the redhead, but she’d disappeared, so he had to move up next to a chick wearing a short denim jacket and low-cut jeans, whose hair was bleached white with black roots, and he let a little of his power out so she wouldn’t object when he pressed himself into her butt and rubbed a little. She jerked away at first, then snapped around to look at him, a snarl on her lips, and he smiled and said, “C’mon, gimme some sugar,” and she said, “Fuck you,” a little breathlessly, and then she was all over him, twisting and squirming, and he had to put a stop to it right there or get thrown out on the street.
“Hey!”
The guy coming toward him wore a black cowboy hat, nose-picker boots, a bronze buckle with, of course, a buckin’ bronco on it, and a scowl dark enough to blacken the western United States.
This power Charlie possessed, unfortunately, did not seem to work on men.
“Garth,” she protested as he bore down on them.
He grabbed Charlie by the collar of his black shirt and got in his grill and yelled, “Get your fuckin’ hands off Tammie, or I’ll break every bone in ’em.”
Charlie considered pointing out that it wasn’t his hands that had been on Tammie, but decided it probably wasn’t the time.
“You touch him, I’ll kick your ass,” Tammie declared.
“Shut your mouth, slut.”
“Call me that again, you’ll be short one ball.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you!” she screamed.
She was still under the influence of his power, but her target had shifted, and as Charlie eased back, she practically attacked Garth. He tried to throw her off to get to Charlie, but she was insistent and shrieking and clawing like a cat in heat. For a moment it looked like it was going to happen right there on the plank wood floor, but the bouncer was suddenly on the scene, and then another husky brute showed up. Charlie stepped away from the melee and was out the door and into a shivery November night that threatened rain or snow or maybe both.
He waited around awhile, leaning against a black SUV, wondering how long it would take and if he had the time. He wanted sex and he wanted it now, but even more, he wanted to kill someone. This was a dangerous new twist to his power that had begun a few months back, ever since those days and weeks with Mother Mary.
His lips curled and he was just straightening when Garth finally staggered out with Tammie clinging to him like a burr, and they got into a red truck with monster tires and rocked and rolled for long enough to get the deed done. He watched from a distance—warring with himself—then let his mind travel down delicious paths as he thought of killing them. Maybe he should leave before dangerous things happened. Maybe . . .
But he couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to.
Slipping on a pair of supple leather gloves, smooth as butter, he crept up to the cab of the big truck and flung open the door. The knife slid across Garth’s throat in one smooth stroke while Garth was trying to get his pants buckled up. Fucking bucking bronco buckle. Tammie opened her mouth to scream, and he did the same to her. She let out a strangled gurgle and gazed at him in horror, and he smiled as he watched them both until the last of Garth’s breath whistled out and Tammie’s eyes went blank. He stayed as long as he dared, and then he was out of the cab and walking quickly around to the back of the restaurant, pulling out his plastic bag. One hard stroke was all he needed, and he pumped like a stallion into the receptacle, holding back a groan of ecstasy that nearly killed him. Then he cleaned up and put the ziplock inside a second one and tucked them inside his jacket pocket and strolled away. He would get rid of this specimen of DNA somewhere safe. Couldn’t leave any evidence behind.
Ever since he’d killed the beautiful but aging woman who’d told him she was his mother, his power had grown. She was the woman who’d given him this power, he’d realized when she’d lured him to the island where she lived. He’d damn near lost his life trying to get there, but she’d been impossible to resist. A real temptation—a siren. She had answered many of his questions, had even told him who his father was, but had held back even more, and it had burned him up. Worse yet, he’d been flummoxed to learn that she was resistant to his charms. Impossible! Especially when she’d been able to damn near use him up, so strong was her own power.
“Your gift comes from me, and you owe me,” she’d told him with that knowing smile, which, he’d found, gripped him from the inside out. “I need your help to be free of them, one and all.”
“Who?” he’d asked, locked in her spell. She hadn’t had sex with him, and it was pure torture. He wanted her, his cock throbbing painfully, and he knew she was the one doing it to him, making him sweat with desire. Sending out her pheromones. His own mother. Doing it on purpose.
He would have done anything for her. Anything!
She whispered their names in his ear. She wanted to be there when it was done. She wanted him with her. Always. He agreed readily. He was her slave. Just please, please, please fuck me. Fuck me. Fuck me.
But she wouldn’t. Ironically, she held all the power. She didn’t feel for him what he was feeling for her. She wouldn’t let him have her. Nor would she release him. She just kept him on the island until finally she was ready and he was half mad with sexual desire.
“Tomorrow,” she told him, her blue eyes glowing with anticipation. “We’ll go together.”
But tomorrow came and the winds were up and the rowboat he’d used to get to the island wouldn’t hold up. For a long, angry moment she looked upward, her blond hair flying, whipping around her head in wild strands. Her hands were fists, which she shook skyward as she railed against the dark heavens and the gods who held her prisoner.
And that was when she let go. Just a little. He felt it, that special tingle, and he was on her in an instant, wrestling her to the ground and the weeds of her garden. A flash, and he saw the knife that had been hidden in the folds of her dress. She raised it high, intent on taking his life, but he was stronger. Forcefully, he yanked the weapon from her fingers, then slipped the blade between her ribs in one fluid motion, watching her die, watching her eyes, feeling her power shrink down to a tiny dot and die out, feeling it enter him and make him even stronger.
He carried her back inside the cottage and laid her on her bed. Then he went into the bathroom and masturbated, filled with a wondrous sexual power far greater than he’d possessed before. Once he was finished, he returned to the bedroom, and with a rag he wiped the hilt of the knife clean. Then he pressed her right hand around it and held it until rigor mortis set in hours later. Before he left, he took a thin strip of cloth ripped from the bed and wrapped her hand to the hilt. Surveying his handiwork objectively, he decided that maybe she’d given him his mission in life. Find these women, screw the hell out of ’em, and then kill them, one by one. And maybe take some others, too.
After all, she was his mother. It was the least he could do.
Thinking about it now brought on another erection, and he struggled to tamp down his libido, bring the galloping horses under c
ontrol, turn his thoughts around, but it was no good. He was in his black Range Rover and driving away, thinking of who he could have sex with. He was too jazzed to call it a night just yet, but he knew another kill was too risky.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t find some woman ready to spread her legs and moan and thrash like an animal. He didn’t have to be quite so careful if he didn’t kill ’em. They always came back for more.
There was one in particular who couldn’t get enough of Good Time Charlie.
With that thought in mind, he turned the nose of his car west, out of Portland and toward the coast.
CHAPTER 5
By the time Savvy got to Kristina’s, it was going on nine o’clock and she could feel her own tail dragging. How long had she been up? Too long for her condition, that was for sure. She needed a bath and a rest, and it would be nice to have a drink, but since that was out, a cold Perrier sounded fantastic.
But first ... Kristina.
She knocked on the door and peeked through the sidelight windows that ran along each side of the mahogany door. She looked past the entry toward the kitchen and sunroom beyond, but there was no one in sight. She rang the bell again and heard approaching footsteps—Hale’s probably, as the sound was heavier than her sister’s—and sure enough, Hale St. Cloud came into view and threw open the door.
He’d dressed down from work into a collared gray sweatshirt with a zipper at the throat and a clearly beloved pair of jeans, if the worn-white areas near his knees were any indication. “Hey, Savvy. How are ya?” he asked, giving her a quick hug, the most affection she ever got from him, as he seemed to be one of those guys who was naturally distant, or maybe he was just not interested in knowing anyone from Kristina’s family all that well.
“Not bad,” she said as she followed him into the kitchen, where a bottle of red wine and a half-empty glass sat on the counter. There was a bag with Gino’s name on it, and her mouth watered at the thought of Italian food. Her earlier peanut butter and jelly sandwich wasn’t going to cut it till tomorrow’s breakfast.