AN ORIGINAL NOVEL BASED ON THE HIT SERIES!
new york
DISTRIBUTED BY SIMON ft SCHUSTER
It was late September. New York City was in the grip of a lingering Indian summer. The cool promise of autumn had barely touched the streets. The temperature was scorching hot during the day and uncomfortably warm at night, but the old man walking down the dark, deserted street had more pressing things on his mind than the unseasonable weather.
Something was following him. Something that wanted to kill him.
the old man paused as he heard the sound of clanking chains being dragged on asphalt. There was almost an element of harsh music to the noise, like a rhythmically lurching techno-industrial dance mix. He thought he’d shaken whatever was following him by suddenly dodging into a dark cross-street, but that sound meant that it was still on his trail.
He realized he shouldn’t be standing alone in the night, listening to strange sounds emanating from nearby alleys. It wasn’t a prudent thing to do. The streetlight on the corner, forty yards away, cast what little light there was on the pavement. He suddenly felt as if the dim illumination thrown by the flickering lamp could protect him from the unknown thing following him in the darkness.
He took a faltering step, then another, but suddenly the noise of clanking chains was almost upon him. It had moved faster than anything human. He only had time to turn his head, time to see the thing looming above him like an avalanche of death with one long arm raised above its head.
The figure was huge in the night, bigger by far than the old man. It was dressed in tattered rags and, yes, dragging several lengths of chain behind it on the sidewalk. A portion of its face gleamed like ivory in the darkness, and the old man saw that the thing wasn’t a man-it had only half a face. The rest was bare skull with flesh stripped away from bone and one empty eye-socket a deeper darkness than the night that surrounded them both.
The old man recognized him now. He knew who he was and who had sent him. Worse, he knew what the creature was going to do to him.
The old man took a deep breath so he could scream his lungs out, but choked instead on the stench emanating from the thing. The creature stank of the grave, of rot and mildew and wet ground. The old man put his hand out helplessly, and the thing’s upraised arm swept down with terrific speed and the old man caught a glint of light off a machete blade and then felt a terrible blow to the side of his neck.
His head slipped sideways and hung downward, connected to his body by only a shred of flesh and skin. For a long, horrible moment, the old man still could see. He blinked rapidly at the gleam of white finger bones in the hand that wielded the machete, and, as his blood gushed out of his body in a pulsing column, his eyes closed and his legs failed and he slipped bonelessly to the sidewalk.
The last thing he knew was the high, cruel laughter of the creature that had killed him, as he slid into welcome oblivion.
CHAPTER
I3rooklyn was not Sara Pezzini’s regular turf.
She was a detective working out of Manhattan. She was young to be a detective, and, many thought, too beautiful. Being a young, beautiful woman made for constant battles in the cop world, but to Sara her age and looks were at most a minor distraction. Usually she had more important things to wony about.
Currently her worries centered about what the press had already dubbed the Machete Murderer. Twenty-four hours earlier a headless and handless body had turned up in a Manhattan Dumpster. It was still unidentified. Twelve hours later two more corpses had washed up on the Manhattan side of the East River, also headless and handless. Although they’d been discovered after the first, the coroner had established that actually they’d been killed and dumped in the river twelve hours earlier than the Dumpster John Doe. The East River was just a lot bigger than a Dumpster, and it took longer for them to be found.
Precinct Captain Joe Siry gave the case to Sara and her partner, Jake McCarthy. There was a reason for that.
Though both were young, they were tough, smart, and dedicated if not entirely orthodox in their approach to police work. They got results. They’d already developed a reputation for solving the tough cases, the oddball killings, and to Siiy these beheadings and behandings already looked more than a little kinky.
Jake concentrated on the Dumpster corpse and Sara the floaters. After twenty-fours of fruitless labor, they’d decided to call it a night, head for their respective apartments and grab some sleep. But, once home, Sara couldn’t sleep. Something was pricking at her consciousness, some little bit of information she should have looked at further, some avenue of investigation she should have explored.
Besides, it was also a bad night for the voices. They nagged at her, not letting her sleep. She got up with a sigh, turned on her computer, and checked into a database she’d previously overlooked.
And found the connection that led her to Brooklyn.
Normally this meant, at the least, polite queries of the appropriate Brooklyn precinct, but Sara had no time for polite queries that often led to not so polite runarounds. She also didn’t like second-hand information. Secondhand information was often inaccurate information. She didn’t care to deal with other peoples’ mistakes. If mistakes had to be made she preferred to make them on her own. Nor did she want Jake involved, at least not yet. She didn’t want him to pay for her mistakes. Besides, the boy needed his rest.
She found herself wandering around Cypress Hills, a quiet Brooklyn community with narrow, tree-lined streets and rows of mostly semi-attached two story houses. She liked it. It was mostly clean, mostly neat. There was a sense of age about the neighborhood, though a tide of recent immigrants from Haiti and India sprinkled among the older residents of eastern European origin also gave it a certain color and vivacity.
Sara found Fulton Street, which seemed to be the heart of the community, the main street, and business district. It was fairly early on a warm September evening, and the street was still crowded. The pedestrians were a mixture of black Haitian, brown Asian, and white eastern European, though the European population seemed to consist mostly of older people with only a few youngsters here and there. The stores that lined the streets were mostly mom and pop types, and though it was nearly ten o’clock at night, most of them were still open. Although Sara passed three curiy joints and a couple of Caribbean-style coffee shops, there was nary a golden arch in sight. For some reason, maybe because it gave the community a stamp of individuality and independence, Sara liked that.
She found what she was looking for at the entrance to an arcade already crowded with young people. Three young black men, in their late teens or early twenties, were heading into the dark cave to slay virtual dragons, steal virtual cars, and blow away virtual citizens by the score. The one wearing a black Batman T-shirt had a cross tattooed on his left cheek, reaching from his eye-socket to his jaw line. Another had a cross tattooed on the back of each hand.
She followed them surreptitiously. The arcade was incredibly noisy with computer-generated beep-bop-boops, the sounds of racing engines, and continual muffled blasts of artificial gunfire. The third member of the group, she saw, had the tattoo on his neck, under his jaw and running down to his shoulder.
As she’d discovered on the ’net, the cross tattoos were the recognition sign of the gang called The Saturday Night Specials. They would have other, probably more elaborate, cross tats on their bodies hidden by their clothes, but they all had to have at least one visible at all times as a recognition sign both to those members of the public who were aware of the gang and, of course, other gang members.
They stopped before “Blast Billy the Kid,” a quickdraw shooting game, and Sara went up to them before they had a chance to feed their quarters into it.
“I’m looking for a friend of yours,” she said.
The oldest of the three Specials, the one in the Batman T'shirt with the cross on his cheek, looked her slowly up and down.
“You found me, momma. Can I do?”
“Probably not,” Sara said.
She took out a photo and held it up so all three could see it. It was a Polaroid taken by the coroner, showing a thin torso that had three crosses tattooed on it, one large one between the flat male breasts, flanked by smaller ones under each nipple.
“Achille—” one of the Specials blurted, and the one with the cross on his cheek threw up his hand against his chest, silencing him.
“What makes you think we’d recognize some skinny guy’s tats?”
Sara smiled. “They’re gang symbols. Specifically, for The Saturday Night Specials. Each gang member has a unique, identifying tattoo. You should know that, considering you all have the recognition cross on your face or hands or neck.”
“It’s not a gang,” the spokesman said. “It’s a social club.”
Sara shrugged. “Whatever.”
“What you'want him for?” he asked Sara.
“I don’t want him,” she replied. “I’ve got him. His body, anyway. He’s dead.”
She pulled out another photo, this one a full body shot, showing—or not—the missing heads and hands. The bangers glanced at each other. The one who’d blurted the name looked a little queasy.
He’s the one, Sara thought, I can break.
“You a cop?” their spokesman asked.
“Do I have to show you my badge?”
The three again exchanged quick glances.
“No. I guess not.” He pursed his lips and seemed to come to a decision. “Look here, momma—”
’’That would be ‘Detective Momma’ to you.”
He smiled, without humor. “Sure. Whatever you say. Listen, uh, Detective, this ain’t no place to talk. Meet us in the churchyard. Say, about an hour?”
“Churchyard?” Sara asked.
“Yeah—St Casimir’s. Right down the street. You’re a cop. You should be able to find it.”
The voices roiled in Sara’s brain like an angry medusa. “Insolent brat-”
“-teach him a lesson-”
“-teach him to mock us.”
Later, Sara said silently. Aloud, she said. “I’ll manage. In an hour, then.”
She left the arcade, suppressing a smile.
A little way down the street, on a cross-street running roughly north and south, Sara saw an old, dark, stony mass of a building poised on the crest of a sloping hillside south of Fulton. The church looked as if it had been built sometime around the turn of the century, give or take a couple of decades, and hadn’t seen prosperous times recently. It was constructed of dark stone that hadn’t been sandblasted in a couple of generations. The sloping churchyard was almost entirely taken up by a cemetery whose monuments ranged in age from the last century to last month. As Sara climbed the worn concrete stairs leading up the hillside, she could see that the churchyard was neatly maintained, but many of the older tombstones were in need of straightening or more serious repair. Like a schoolteacher with a dusty eraser, the toxic city air had rubbed out many names and dates with its acidic breath, leaving behind sad, blank slates that had once commemorated generations of New Yorkers.
It was dark and quiet. A nice place for a secret meeting. Or, of course, an ambush. She settled down in the darkness behind a concealing tombstone. She didn’t have long to wait.
The three gangbangers showed up fifteen minutes later. Cheek Cross, as Sara thought of him, evidently had high ambitions, and had seen this as an opportunity to begin his long and probably bloody climb to the top.
“I just got off the phone with the man,” he was telling his associates, “and he said this was our chance.”
“Our chance?” asked Neck Cross, who had blurted out the name “Achille” when Sara had first showed them the photo.
“Our chance to go big, dog. He said I got to handle this
cop. I got to get her off the case. Then, I move up, and I bring my bros with me.”
“We got to kill her?” Neck asked, clearly uncomfortable. “We got to do the job,” Cheek said. “You just back me. That’s all.”
He took a snub-nosed pistol out of his pocket and caressed it lovingly.
The voices took exception to his apparent plan. “Impudent fool-” they told Sara.
“-let us punish him-”
“-punish him severely.”
Sara almost laughed.
I don’t need your help with these morons, she said to herself. She drew her .45 from its snug hiding place in the small of her back, and stepped out into the open from behind the tombstone.
“School’s out, boys,” she said, the barrel of the .45 centered on the middle of Cheek’s chest, not more than seven feet away. “Welcome to the real world.”
Their eyes got round, their jaws dropped. Cheek made an abortive move to raise his pistol, but Sara only shook her head. “Freeze or die.”
He froze.
“I need only one of you bozos to give me the info I need, and you’re not my favorite banger right now.”
She approached him, smiling.
“Hey,” Cheek said, trying to laugh. “You’re here early.” “Early bird gets the scumbag,” Sara said, and slapped him on the side of the head with the barrel of her automatic. He went down like a bag of cream of wheat. She turned to Neck Cross. “You.”
“Me?” He swallowed hard. His eyes were soft and scared. Sara could almost smell the fear coming off him in waves. He’s the one, she thought again. She tossed him a pair of handcuffs.
“Cuff yourself to that bush.” It was more a sapling than a bush, with a main trunk that was almost too big for the cuffs. He fumbled in his haste to comply with her orders, but finally succeeded in chaining himself to the tree.
He’ll be an easy nut ta crack, Sara thought.
She waved her pistol at the last Special.
“Come with me."
“Where?” he asked suspiciously.
“Where we can have a little chat. Privately.”
“I don’t—”
She jammed her gun barrel into his solar plexus, hard enough to hurt but not to stun. He made no more protests as they went off into the depths of the graveyard.
“Far enough,” Sara said. “Now, call for help. Not too loudly.”
“Help,” he said tentatively.
She pushed the barrel of her gun up one of his nostrils.
“Like you mean it,” she suggested.
He called out in a low voice, but with some desperation, like he meant it.
“Now groan a little. Moan, too.”
He did. Sara reached out and grabbed the flesh between the thumb and index finger of his left hand. She squeezed and twisted and he went down to his knees with an authentic yelp of pain, cut short as she released him. He kneeled in the dark, looking up at her with fear in her eyes.
“You’re crazy, man,” he said.
Sara nodded. “And don’t you forget it. Now get out of here.”
He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. -
“You got it right,” she said. “Scat.”
She didn’t have to repeat herself. He took off between the tombstones as if the wolves of hell were on his track. Smiling, she/went back to the banger she’d left cuffed in the other part of the churchyard.
He was practically shaking with fear as she walked up to him, stopping a moment to check on Cheek Cross, who was still dreaming on the ground.
“What’d you do to Henri?” he asked, eyes wide.
Sara shook her head.
“You don’t want to know. But I’ll tell you—he wasn’t smart. He wouldn’t answer my questions.” She fell silent, looking at him. He started as she touched his forehead with the barrel of her automatic, and ran it down his nose, around his mouth to the tip of his chin. He was trying not to shake, but failing. “On the other hand, you strike me as a smart guy. You let me know what I want, I let you go. Simple as that. If you don’t tell me what I want to know...” Sara let her voice trail off, and shrugged.
“What you want to know?” Neck asked. “I’ll tell you what I can.”
“Of course you will,” Sara said. “You’re the smart one.” She showed him the photo again. “You know who this is.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, yes. That is Achille de Petion. I’ve know him a long time-”
”He was a member of The Saturday Night Specials?” “Yes, of course,” Neck said, eagerly.
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know-”
Sara shook her head. “Not what I wanted to hear.”
She lifted her automatic.
“I swear, I don’t know. I know he was in trouble. He and the doc.”
“Doc?”
“Doctor Caradeuc. Dr. Cladius Caradeuc. He has a clinic farther down on Fulton. They was involved in something, together. I don’t know what. They-something went wrong. We heard whispers, is all. Something went wrong.”
“Caradeuc.” She took out another photo, showed it to him.
He squinted at it in the uncertain light.
“I don’t know if that’s him. Could be. He’s got no head, man. Like Achille.”
“Observant,” Sara said. “Ever think of going into police work?”
He cringed as she took him by the wrist, but she only unlocked the cuffs from his arm and the tree.
“Get out of here,” she said, “and take your friend.”
Neck scuttled back, and after a couple of tries managed to heave Cheek up from the ground, and, hugging him to his chest, started to drag him out of the churchyard.
“One last thing,” Sara said.
He stopped and looked at her.
“Take my advice. Find another social club to join. You're not cut out for this one.”
He looked at her as if seriously considering what she said, finally nodded, and disappeared into the night.
CHAPTER
least, Sara thought, she had someplace to start. At least the vies now had names.
She should either call Jake and let him know what she’d discovered, or better yet, go home, get some sleep, and call Jake first thing in the morning.
Instead, she did neither. She stood at the edge of the quiet churchyard and looked at the church.
It had been many years since Sara had seen the inside of a church.
She’d been raised Catholic in a conservative Italian Queens parish. Her mother had been devout. Her father, a cop, less so. He’d gone to Mass sometimes to please Sara’s mother, but he’d died in the line of duty when Sara was very young, and she didn’t have many memories of him. She cherished those few she had, but none of them were of him and church.
Something inside her made her pause in front of the church, some inner need unconnected with the case. Something deeper than the voices in her head told her to go in, just for a moment. There was something or someone who could help her. The urge was irresistible. She went up the rotten concrete stairs and the voices, started again to whisper in her head.
“What are you doing-”
“—do you want with this place—”
“-nothing for you here—”
“-nothing to help you-”
“-only we can hclp.-you.”
“I’ve had enough of your help lately,” Sara replied aloud. She strode up the pathway to the double-doored entrance. One of the doors had a worn sign whose weathered words welcomed her to St. Casimir’s. She flung open one of the double-doors and entered the vestibule.
The voices shrieked as her hand touched the door, and .rose to a cacophonous maelstrom as she crossed the small vestibule and opened the door leading to the nave. Her knees weakened as the shouts and shrieks buffeted her brain, but the part of her that was the fighter, the part of her that refused to give in to the voices’ suggestions and sly offers, knew that if the voices didn’t want her to enter the church, she should.
With the great force of will that had driven her to the rank of detective before she’d reached the age of thirty, Sara bulled her way into the nave, and suddenly the voices were gone. Finally, there was blessed peace in her troubled, tired mind.
She’d almost forgotten what internal peace felt like. It was such a relief that she had to grab the back of the pew in the last row to keep from collapsing. The tranquility, the utter isolation that she felt, alone at last in her own brain, almost bought tears to her eyes. She wouldn’t, however, allow herself that last bit of release. She held onto the back of the pew and surveyed the church’s interior.
It looked like what it was: a small, unpretentious church that served a small, poor parish. It was dark inside, lit only by infrequent, dim electric candelabras, and by banks of votive candles alongside the old-fashioned confessional box and- before the low, white railing that separated the altar from the rest of the nave.
To the right of the altar, opposite the confessional, was a baptismal font-currently dry-and behind the font something Sara had never seen in a Catholic church before. It was an exhibition of crosses. Crosses, hundreds of crosses, some metal, some wood, some plain and severe, some intricate and fanciful, were crowded together in a jumbled mass against the wall behind the font. It was a chaotic, but somehow beautiful display that suggested a mountain, or at least a hill, of crucifixes.
A handful of people were sitting or kneeling in the pews, praying silently. They were mostly women, mostly elderly. None were as young as Sara or as well dressed. A group of them sat together, saying the rosary in a European language that Sara didn’t recognize. Others were scattered about the nave, some at the banks of votive candles lighting tapers, dropping change into the money boxes and lighting their own offeratories with the long white wicks supplied for that purpose. An old man leaning on a cane, hobbled by his many years, came out of the penitent side of the confessional box and made his way slowly to a nearby pew where he knelt rustily, and started to say his penance.
It had been years, Sara realized, since she’d made confession. Not since she’d joined the force, certainly not since she’d taken on the burden of the Witchblade.
If the voices that were the spirits of the Witchblade didn’t like her being in the church, how would they react to confession, penance, and a cleansed soul fit for holy communion? V
She hadn’t thought of that before. Maybe the voices had purposely blotted that notion out of her mind, until something, some slight lapse of attention on their part, some deepening of Sara’s need to get a respite from them, culminated in this visit.
Without thinking about it any further, Sara scurried to the confession box along the side wall, entered the penitent side and pulled the curtain shut behind her. She kneeled on the uncushioned wooden rail.
., Sara realized that this parish must be at least as conservative as the one she’d grown up in. When she’d been a little girl, twenty years before, many Catholic parishes had initiated a somewhat more informal method of communion. Penitent and priest met privately, but in the open, face to face. However, some parishes with deep roots to their old countries and their old traditions, still maintained the ancient form of the rite, the anonymous confessional.
The Catholics of Cypress Hills must be more conservative than most, Sara thought. Inside the confessional, you couldn’t tell if it was the twenty-first century or the twelfth.
It was dark inside the box, but cozy rather than claustrophobic. Sara felt like a little girl tucked safely in her bed. The penitent’s side was separate from the priest’s side by a blank wall with a small, wire-screened window.
All she could see in the priest’s side was a vague shadow waiting silently. / -
“Bless me, Father,” she murmured. The words of the ancient ritual came back to her easily across the intervening years. “For I have sinned. It has been ... too long... since my Jast confession.”
She halted for a moment, then a voice said quietly from the darkness, “Go on, my daughter.”
She took strength from the voice’s quiet strength. It sounded young, deep and resonant, but soft. Almost, Sara thought, like the trained voice of an actor or singer. It was the voice of a man you could believe in. You could trust. “I accuse myself of the following sins ...”
She stopped again. The voices hadn’t come back, but memories of them did, like echoes recounting her past transgressions, of the men she had killed, the deeds she had' done while under the influence of the Witchblade.
The Witchblade... the source of her all her problems and, paradoxically, a great portion of her strength. She still didn’t know exactly what it was, though it had been in her possession for some time now. It was a mystic artifact that had a horrible life—or maybe lives—of its own. It spoke to her constantly in the form of murmuring voices, tempting her, trying to seduce her to abandon herself to its use. She had used it, God knows, used it repeatedly, often to good effect. She had saved lives with it, but she had also killed with it, too often and too easily. And it was hungry for blood. It feasted on the blood of the evil, the blood of the guilty, but it took innocent blood just as eagerly. And it always wanted more.
But this was the twenty-first century. How could she confess sins such as these, and have anyone believe her?
Worse, she whispered to herself, what if the priest did believe her? The transgressions she’d committed under the influence of the Witchblade ran too deep and too cold in her soul. Could she ever do sufficient penance to be forgiven of them?
She stood, suddenly and swept the curtain aside and bolted from the confessional. The voices thrilled somewhere deep in her brain, as if exultant at her weakness as she fled from the box, her shoes clacking on the bare flagstone floor. She glanced back at the confessional as she ran, and saw the priest look curiously out from behind the curtain that shielded his side of the box. He was young and handsome, with a broad brow and the pale complexion and dark compassionate eyes of a saint. He was clearly puzzled as he watched Sara. She felt a stab of longing as the handsome priest watched her, but was unable to overcome her sudden shame and fear, unable to respond to the offer of understanding and forgiveness on the priest’s face.
As she stepped outside the church the voices came back, briefly and exultantly, in a quick babble of derision. But they cut themselves off quickly, as if afraid of pushing Sara too hard too soon, and steeling her resolve while she was still close to St. Casimir’s.
The thought swept through Sara that all she had to do was open the door, go back in, and unburden herself to the priest. After all, he was in the business of healing hurts of the soul and dispensing forgiveness. She stopped, half turned to the door, and then her cell phone rang.
“Yeah,” she said, half-thankful for the interruption, half-angiy.
“Yeah, yourself.”
It was Jake McCarthy, her partner. He was a blond, handsome young surfer dude who had somehow found his way from the left coast to New York City, and traded in his surfboard for a badge and a gun. As a cop he was as tenacious as a bulldog and as honest as Abe Lincoln. He not only watched Sara’s back when they were in action, he guarded her from official inquiry as well. He didn’t know about the Witchblade, exactly, but he knew something spooky was happening with Sara. He was fiercely protective of her, whether from scum in the street or higher-ups in the department.
“I wake you?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve been checking out some things.”
Jake grunted. “Too bad Siry didn’t call you, then. I was sensibly getting some shuteye when he phoned me.”
“What you got, Jake?" she asked.
“Another body,” he replied laconically. “Brooklyn, this time. Cypress Hills.”
Sara paused. “That’s not our turf,” was all she said.
“Yeah, but you’ll want to see this body. It looks familiar.”
“Familiar?” Sara said. “You mean, familiar like you know him?”
“Yes and no. The deceased is one Philip Pierre-Pierre, according to the I.D. in his wallet. When I say ‘familiar’ I mean he resembles certain other corpus dilecti we’ve come across recently.”
Sara felt a cold finger poking her heart. The voices twittered loudly, excitedly, in her brain. She could feel her nerves twinge, like the hot flashes that raced across her muscles when the Witchblade took over.
“You mean-”
”Yep,” Jake interrupted. “Dude’s missing his head.”
, CHAPTER
1 wo uniforms stopped Sara at the crime scene tape. It was a big city; she’d never run into either before.
■, “Nothing here for you to see. Better move on, miss,” the taller one said.
They were both taller than Sara, though she was five-ten, and wore their facade of authority as easily as they wore their blue uniforms. Sara suppressed a tinge of anger. She knew she was beautiful. Her looks were an advantage in many social situations. In the cop world they meant that she had to prove herself over and over again. It was tiresome. At times it was infuriating.
“They are arrogant,” one of the voices whispered.
“They are weak and puny,” a second took up.
“Teach them a lesson,” pleaded a third.
“Show them our might,” ordered a fourth.
It’d be easier, Sara said to herself, if I just showed them this.
She took out her wallet and flipped it open, showing them her detective badge.
“Well, Detective Pezzini,” one of them said after a moment, “come right in.” •
He lifted the length of sagging tape so Sara wouldn’t have to duck under it.
“Yeah,” the second said with more than a trace of false solicitousness in his voice, “but be careful. It’s pretty gruesome over there.”
Sara, already past the checkpoint, turned and looked at the two cops. “I’ve seen worse than headless bodies, boys—a lot worse.”
She smiled. From the look on their faces, they seemed to believe her.
Sara was the last to arrive on the scene. The Emergency Medical Technicians were waiting to take the body away in their ambulance, the Crime Scene Unit was crawling all over the street, taking photos, measuring, scouring the vicinity for clues under the glare of their too-bright flashlights. Later, they would come back in the daytime, just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.
Jake McCarthy was standing with a heavy-set black guy in plain clothes, watching as representatives from the coroner’s department put a loose-limbed corpse in a body bag, and zipped it out of sight.
Sara didn’t recognize the other cop with Jake, but she recognized the man leading the coroner’s team. It was Coroner’s Assistant Kilby, well-known to Sara from past cases. His presence on the scene was both good and bad news. Good, in that he really, really liked her and would answer totally and truthfully any question she asked. Bad, in that he really, really liked her and was basically a pain in the ass who didn’t hesitate to make inappropriate suggestions and offers in the mistaken belief that he was being romantic. "
“Sara,” Jake said, as she approached. “Meet Lt. Carl Dickey. He was first detective on the scene. Carl, Detective Sara Pezzini, my partner.”
Dickey was a middle-aged black man with a round, sad face. Sara thought he was either a poor dresser or had recently lost a' lot of weight. Though Dickey was more beefy than lean, his unfashionable brown suit hung on him like it belonged to his fatter brother. If Sara’s weight-loss theory was correct, he still had a few more pounds to go.
“Pleasure,” Dickey said. “Sorry for the circumstances.” Sara shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
Dickey shook his head. “I’m not. Never will be.”
Kilby came over to join them like an eager puppy, leaving the body bag to carried away by the waiting EMT’s. ~
“And you know Kilby, of course,” Jake said sardonically.
“Hi, Sara," Kilby said eagerly. “Fancy meeting you in a place like this.”
“Yeah,” Sara said, glancing over the crime scene, her disinterest in him evident. “Fancy, all right.”
“What you got for us, Kilby?” Jake asked.
“Strange case, all right Probably not the place of death.” He gestured at the ground. “There’d be blood all over if he’d been decapitated here. Only blood was on his clothes and body. Those were soaked, but maybe not as much as you’d expect in a beheading.”
“So,” Sara said, “he was killed elsewhere, then dumped here after his heart stopped pumping.”
“Exactly,” Kilby said brightly, beaming at Sara as if she were his prize student. “But', dumped not too long after he was killed. Minutes, at most. Hell, the body was still warm when we got to it. Kind of surprised that there wasn’t a trail, or anything. No blood, no footprints, nothing being dragged here. It’s almost like he dropped here out of the sky or something.”
Sara and Jake exchanged glances, but said nothing. “Who found the body?” Sara asked.
“The classic anonymous informant,” Dickey said. “Uniforms were on the scene in three minutes. As it happened, I was close by and arrived two minutes after the uniforms.” “Could the anonymous informant be the one who killed, moved, and dumped the body?” Sara asked.
Dickey shrugged. “Why not?”
“Interesting. Why the call reporting the body, then?” “Killer wants the body found," Jake theorized. “He wants the world to know about this killing.”
“He does?” Sara said. “That’s a change. Why hide the identities of the first three vies and not this one?”
Jake shrugged. “He’s getting careless.”
“Or cocky. What was the vic’s name again?”
“Philip Pierre-Pierre. How can you forget a name like that?” Jake checked his pocket notebook. “Apparently he owned a restaurant on Fulton Street.”
“Cypress Hills? I just came from there,” Sara said.
“You did?” Jake asked.
“Yeah. Met an informant. He’s the one who gave me the names of the other vies.”
“Other vies?” Dickey interrupted, finally able to get a word in. “What other vies?”
“A couple of possible victims of this so-called Machete
Murderer turned up earlier in Manhattan," Sara said. “Three to be exact. Two, at least, seem to have ties with Cypress Hills.”
“That’s news to me,” Dickey said.
“Don’t you ever watch TV?” Jake asked.
“Only sports,” Dickey said morosely. “The news is too depressing.”
“Can’t argue with that*'.”
“But I shouldn’t have to get information like this through the TV,” Dickey said doggedly.
“I just identified the first couple of victims,” Sara said smoothly. She wasn’t above spreading a little fudge to smooth things over. “I was just on my way to the precinct to let you guys know when I got the call from Jake about this new killing.”
. “Uh-huh,” Dickey said, but Sara could tell from his eyes that he didn’t believe her. She shrugged, to tell him she didn’t particularly care.
Sara turned to Kilby. “This Pierre-Pierre was killed with a machete?”
“Well...” though clearly happy with Sara’s attention, Kilby was too good a coroner to jump to conclusions. “Officially, all indications are yes. No broken bones. No stab marks from a smaller blade. No bullet wounds. Could conceivably been strangled, poisoned, bludgeoned, and then beheaded to confuse things. The autopsy will tell for sure. But, just for now, for something to go on, I’d say death was probably caused by decapitation by a heavy blade.” “Single blow?” Sara asked. The voices within were getting excited at Kilby’s news. She had to concentrate to block them out.
Kilby nodded. “Yeah, but it wasn’t clean. The blow cut
through most of the neck, leaving the head attached to the body by a flap of skin and flesh. Then, it looks like the perp just ripped it away.” He stopped. From the expression on his face Sara knew that he had more to say, but was uncertain if he should reveal anything farther. “What else?1? she asked. -
“Well, I... I shouldn’t say. Not really certain.” Kilby brightened, and smiled at Sara. “But, for you, sweetcheeks ... There were marks around the stump of the vic’s neck. Teeth marks.”
Jake frowned. “You mean, like the killer was biting the vic’s neck?”
Kilby shook his head. “No. More like he was sucking. Sucking at the stump.”
Sara and Jake looked at each other. Dickey made a noise somewhere between sadness and disgust.
“My God,” the detective said. “My God.”
“Maybe that’s what happened to the missing blood,” Sara said. “Maybe he was killed right here after all.”
“And someone slurped down a couple of gallons of blood?” Kilby asked.
Sara shrugged.“It’s a possibility.”
Kilby looked thoughtful.
“It’s disgusting,” he said. He smiled at Sara. “I like it.”
“Here we are,” Jake said. “Fulton Street, Cypress Hills.”
“I was just here,” Sara said, as they parked Jake’s car in an open spot next to a fire hydrant.
“Canvassing the neighborhood for info on the other murders?” Jake asked.
“Something like that.”
Jake looked at her suspiciously.
“Look,” he said, “I know you’ve got your methods, and I know that sometimes they even work. But let’s not forget we’re partners. You’re not holding out on me, are you?” Sara forced a smile. She couldn’t tell him about her trip to St. Casimir’s. Even if the voices would have let her, and she didn’t think they would. “Holding out on you? My partner? Nahhh.
“When I left the station house I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d do some checking on the ’net, and on a site devoted to New York City gang symbols. Found a reference to a gang called The Saturday Night Specials that used cross tattoos as a recognition sign and initiation symbol. Remember those crosses on the one floater’s body?”
“Yeah,” Jake said.
“Well, I was able to find someone who could identify the corpse from the tattoos. He was one Achille de Petion. Haven’t been able to run a check on him yet, but I expect he’ll be in the computer. My informant told me that an associate of his, Dr. Claudius Caradere, is also missing.” “And how’d you get this informant to be so talkative?” Jake asked.
Sara smiled. “You know what a winning personality I have. Oh, look.” She changed the subject, gesturing at the restaurant before them. “This must be the place.”
The sign over the door said Pierre-Pierre’s. Engraved in the glass window was the same name in an elegant flowing script with Fine French Cuisine below it. There was also a closed sign in the window, and, indeed, the restaurant was dark and empty though most of the other businesses on the street were still open.
Jake put his nose up to the glass and looked in.
“Seems like no one’s about,” he said. “Weird.”
“Maybe Mr. Pierre-Pierre was having some financial difficulties,” Sara said.
Jake shrugged. “Maybe the people next door might know something.”
“Maybe they might.” „? .
The shop to the right of the restaurant was a bookstore called The Serpent ANp the Rainbow. The store to the left was somewhat more mysterious. It seemed to be a souvenir or gift shop of some kind, called Mambo Marie’s Notions, Potions, and Lotions. Like many of the Fulton Street stores, both were still open though it was getting late.
Jake and Sara looked through the shop’s front window. It was dimly lit inside by a mixture of low-wattage fluorescent, some pastel neon signs, and electric faux candles. Despite the less than brilliant lighting, both cops could see the tall, voluptuous black woman behind the counter with tight, low-riding jeans that exposed her pierced navel and svelte waist, and a form-fitting, low-cut T-shirt that was two sizes too small.
“I have a notion,” Jake said. “Let’s check this place out.” Sara looked at him. “Bookstore. Bimbo store. Not hard to figure which one you want to investigate.”
Jake shrugged. “We’ll get to the bookstore. This one looks like it has more possibilities.”
Sara gave a wordless grunt as she followed her partner into the dimly lit shop that was also ripe with dozens of heavy, clashing scents, and cluttered to the point of claustrophobia. The aisles were narrow, the tables and shelves were piled with all sorts of strange and tacky merchandise, from fake plastic glow-in-the-dark skulls to sprays of chicken feathers dyed bright flourescent colors, to bank upon bank of glass-enclosed candles to arrays of perfume and incense, to bundles of what looked like suspiciously real chicken feet.
Jake went up to the counter where the girl was watching them closely. He flashed his badge. “You’d be Mambo Marie?” ...
“I’d be Juliette,” the girl said. “This place is a franchise.”
Her skin was a gqlcjen honey-brown, her eyes were dark and almond-shaped. She wore her hair in a retro Afro. Close-up, Sara, could see that she didn’t wear a bra under her T-shirt, and, despite the size of her breasts, didn’t need one. Jake seemed to realize that, too.
“Detective McCarthy,” Jake said, smiling. Juliette smiled back.
After a moment Sara said, “I’m Detective Pezzini.”
Juliette continued to smile at Jake, who eventually remembered to put his badge away.
“Can I help you, Detective?” Juliette asked. Somehow she managed to make her innocent question sound like an indecent offer.
“I hope so,” Jake said. Sara realized that if they were going to get any information relevant to the case they were working, she’d have to take the lead.
“Do you know why Pierre-Pierre’s is closed?” she asked.
“The restaurant next door?” Juliette spoke to Sara but continued to look at Jake. She leaned forward, putting her hands on the glass countertop in front of her, creating a deep valley between her large, round breasts. Jake looked at them as if he were gazing at the clue that would wrap up the case. “I hear the owner is having problems. I hear he’s sick.”
“He’s more than sick,” Sara said. “He’s dead.”
Juliette looked at her for the first time. “That’s too bad. He was a nice man.”
“What can you tell us about him?”
Juliette leaned back languorously. She seemed as supple as a big, black cat, a fact obviously not lost on Jake. “He was a nice man. That’s all I know.”
“What kind of store is this?” Jake asked, finally managing to get a word in.
Juliette looked at him. It was as if, Sara thought, she herself wasn’t even in the room.
“This is a voodoo store, honey. We sell candles to call the spirits, charms to soothe the savage breast.” Juliette crossed her arms under her own, lifting and emphasizing. “Even Sir John the Conqueror root.” She gestured down at the glass case in front of her. Among the rows of cheap silver-plated ear and toe rings were some small, shriveled brown things that looked like dolls parodying the shape of men. “Make you strong for love," she said, half-closing eyes that were glued on Jake. “But you don’t look like you need Sir John, do you?”
“Not usually,” Jake said.
Sara looked disgustedly at her partner. The bell on the front door chimed as someone else entered the store. The newcomer was a tall woman with a lean, boyish figure, pale skin, and fine, narrow, fox-like features. Her blonde hair, so light as to be almost white, was cut short and slicked back like a silent film star’s. She moved with a sinuous litheness that spoke of a highly-conditioned athlete or martial artist. Her eyes had almost a physical impact when they met Sara’s. Sara couldn’t tell their color in the dim light, but there was strength in her gaze and a promise, if they’d been man’s eyes, of an extraordinary erotic appetite. Sara caught herself catching her breath as she swept past.
The newcomer looked at Juliette, and nodded almost imperceptibly. She went into a back room off the main body of the store. Jake didn’t notice.
“I think we’re done here,” Sara said after a moment. “I’m going to check out the bookstore.”
“Okay.” Jake said, smiling at Juliette.
“You coming?”
“I’ll catch up.”
Men, Sara thought. She strode out of the shoppe and had almost reached the bookstore when Jake hurried up to her side. She glanced at him.
“That was useful,” she said.
_ “I got her phone number,” Jake said. “Just in case.”
' “In case?”
“In case we need to investigate her, uh, more closely.”
Sara just looked at him and reached for the door handle. A bell jangled musically as Sara pushed the glass door open, Jake at her heels. They stepped inside and looked around what seemed to be the classic small-time independent bookstore. The lighting was pleasant. The bookshelves were from floor to ceiling and stuffed with books both new and used. A comfortable old rug cushioned the floor and comfortable old chairs were scattered about. Some of the chairs were occupied by customers thumbing through books and magazines, other customers were browsing the shelves.
“Hey, take a look at this,” Jake said. Sara joined him where he stood before a bookcase and gestured at the shelf that was on eye-level.
“Spirits of the Night," Sara read. “Strange Altars, The
Serpent and the Rainbow, Divine Horsemen, Written in Blood, Voodoo Fire in- Haiti, Mythologie Vodou, Go Tell My Horse, Magic Island.”
“What’s with all this voodoo stuff?” Jake said. “Pretty freaky, huh?”
“Can I help you?” a voice asked in French-accented English.
They turned to see a young black man standing behind them. He was Sara’s height, and slim, with short hair curled tight against his skull and large, dark eyes. His hands, Sara noticed, were large and well-kept with short, neat nails. He seemed to be regarding them with bland suspicion, as if they were tourists who’d been caught remarking on the quaintness of the local customs. Which, of course, they had been.
Sara pulled out her wallet, and flashed her equalizer, the badge, which gave them the upper hand in almost every social confrontation.
“I’m Detective Pezzini,” she said. She nodded at Jake. “This is my partner, Detective McCarthy.”
The man before them seemed unaffected by her revelation.
“Yes,” he said coolly.
“You are?” Sara pressed.
“Paul Narcisse. This is my shop. Is there a problem?”
“Do you know Philip Pierre-Pierre, who owned the restaurant next door?” Jake asked.
Instantly, Paul Narcisse’s eyes became hooded. “Owned?”
The voices in Sara's brain started to chitter. It seemed they didn’t like Paul Narcisse. It seemed they were wary of him. Grateful for the warning, Sara nevertheless wished they would shut up so that she could concentrate.
She also wished that Jake wouldn’t blunder through conversations like a bull in a china shop. She put her hand on Jake’s forearm, stopping him from answering the question. “We’re sorry, Mr. Narcisse. Did you know him? Was he a friend?”
Paul Narcisse nodded. “Yes. He is.”
“He was killed earlier this evening. Murdered,” Jake said baldly.
If Jake expected Paul Narcisse to gasp aloud, run away screaming, or make any other kind of incriminating gesture, he was disappointed. Paul Narcisse’s gaze narrowed further and his expression hardened.
“Killed with a machete?” he asked.
“How’d you know that?” Jake asked quickly Paul Narcisse shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “He would not be the first from this street to die that way, would he?”
“No,” Jake admitted.
“Mr. Narcisse-” Sara began.
“Call me Paul,” he said. “Most do.”
“Paul, then. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
He gestured toward the rear of the store. “I have an office in the back. Please—”
Paul Naricisse waited for the two policemen to precede him, and stopped to have a few words with a young woman who had been behind the counter, working the cash register.
“This way.” He led them through a curtained doorway and down a short hallway, opened the door to his office and gestured to them to enter.
It was a small, comfortable room with an old wooden desk heaped high with paperwork, a recent model PC, near-shapeless old chairs, and an old, over-stuffed sofa along one wall. The Serpent and the Rainbow, Sara could see, was not exactly making money hand over fist.
Along another wall an amazing collection of artifacts rested on a wooden table that was set up like an altar. In the middle of t|te table a tree branch was braced against the wall. Carved, cleverly jointed and brightly painted wooden snakes climbed around it. Set up beside the limb were empty wine and rum bottles, some with white candles stuck in their open mouths. Dozens of earthenware pots and jugs jostled for space. A small bowl with a cluster of chicken eggs occupied a central place of honor, and the wall behind the altar was covered with framed religious lithographic portraits: a whole cast of Catholic saints.
Paul Narcisse took the seat behind the desk, watching as Sara and Jake took in the altar.
“Yes,” he told them, “I am an adherent of voodoun, the religion of my native country. That is my shrine to Damballah, my personal loa."
“There a lot of that in this neighborhood?” Jake asked.
“A lot of voodoun?” Paul Narcisse asked. “Of course. Cypress Hills is home to many thousand Haitians, more than anywhere in the United States, except Florida. More Haitians live here than in most cities in Haiti.”
“This Damballah dude,” Jake pursued. “What’s he all about?”
Paul Narcisse smiled. “You mean, does he encourage his worshipers to go around chopping off peoples’ heads with a machete?”
Jake was unembarrassed. “For starters.”
“Hardly,” Paul Narcisse said. “Damballah is the cosmic snake. The world was hatched from his egg. He is a loa of life, regeneration, and3 rebirth. Together with his wife Aida-Wedo, who is the rainbow, he rules the sky.”
“Loa," Sara said, “what’s that?”
“Loa are sacred spirits. Those on the right hand, like Damballah, Papa Legba, and Erzulie Freda, are the good spirits who help mankind. Those on the left are the mal-facteur, the dark loa. Er^ulie je Rouge, Baron Samedi and his brothers, are those whom the bokor— the evil sorcerers—call upon.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “Any of them have machetes?” “Some,” Paul Narcisse said with a smile. “Some don’t need weapons. Their teeth and claws are potent enough.” There was a brief knock at the door, and it swung open. “Hello, Paul,” said the newcomer. “Clarisse told me you had visitors.”
Paul Narcisse nodded. “Indeed. Come in, Father Bal-tazar. I’d like you to meet Detectives McCarthy and Pezzini.”
“I’ve already had the pleasure of meeting one of your visitors,” he said, nodding at Sara.
She looked at the newcomer with surprise. It was the handsome young priest from St. Casimir’s. Seeing him in good light gave Sara an even more favorable impression. He was every bit as handsome as she’d thought he was. His hair was thick and black. He wore it combed back and long enough to fall to his shoulders like a thick mane. His face was pale, not with the pallor of ill health, but rather the purity of fresh ivory. His forehead was broad and unlined, his cheekbones high and prominent, his jaw strong and charmingly dimpled. His eyes were dark, almost black, and Sara could discern both compassion and wisdom in them, for all his comparative youth. He looked like a model portraying a saint. As Sara looked at him her pulse raced, but that might have been caused by the voices which had begun to stir in her brain when he’d first appeared.
“We should continue our little talk,” Father Baltazar said to Sara, “whenever it Would be convenient for you.” “Sure . . .” Sara said. Desperate to change the subject, she blurted, “Baltazar.*That’s an odd name.”
The young priest smiled, showing a set of straight, white teeth. “Not where my family came from.”
Sara flushed. “Of course.”
McCarthy, not fearing to rush in, said, “Where’s that?” Father Baltazar turned his smile to Sara’s partner. “Poland by way of Lithuania. It means ‘Baal protect the king.’ Somewhat ironic for the name of a Catholic priest, no?”
McCarthy shrugged. “I guess. So, Cypress Hills is a mixture of—what?—Haitian, Jamaican, Indian, and Lithuanian?”
Paul Narcisse nodded. “That’s right. The Lithuanians came mostly at the turn of the century, the Indians after World War II. The Jamaicans in the 1960s, the Haitians last of all.”
McCarthy smiled, as though he found this all very interesting. “And how do you folks all get along?”
Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar looked at each other. It was Narcisse who answered the detective’s question. “We get along fine.”
McCarthy smiled again. “Yeah. Until bodies started showing up without heads.”
“That is not a question of race or ethnicity,” Father Baltazar said firmly. “That is a question of good against evil.”
As he spoke Sara almost staggered. The voices in her head had turned up the volume from a gentle background murmuring to a full-fledged roar. They were agreeing, it seemed, with the priest. He was telling the truth. This wasn’t a simple gang-inspired conflict. Some aspect of it existed on a cosmic scale, which made it the provenience of the Witchblade.
McCarthy didn’t say anything, but Father Baltazar obviously read the skeptical look on his face. “You don’t believe me, Officer?”
“Well, this is the twenty-first century. I believe more in gangs and guns than I do in evil spirits.”
Father Baltazar turned to Sara. “How about you?”
She couldn’t look away from his eyes. They seemed to captivate her, draw her inside his own. The voices were yammering at her. She couldn’t quite understand what they were saying. There was warning and approval mixed in their fragmentary messages. Screw the voices, she finally told herself. She couldn’t let them make all her decisions for her.
“I-I have an open mind,” she finally told the priest. Priest and bookseller looked at each other, and seemed to come to some kind of silent decision.
“All right,” Paul Narcisse said. “We shall take you at your word. We’ve been reluctant to take this matter to the police because we’ve felt, first, the police wouldn’t believe us, and, second, couldn’t help us if they did.” He looked at Jake McCarthy. “There are some things the police are ill-equipped for, possibly precisely because this is the twenty-first century. But not all knowledge was bom in this century, nor was all evil.”
McCarthy frowned. “What do you mean by that?”
Father Baltazar smiled. “You can see tonight, if you want.” r
Paul Narcisse smiled, too, and it made Sara uncomfortable. “You shall look upon the face of evil. And your guns will do you no good.”
In Sara’s mind the voices finally all spoke as one. And what they said was, “But we will. We will!”
CHAPTER
I don’t know,” Jake McCarthy said. “This isn’t exactly my thing, but I wouldn’t call it evil.”
. , , The detectives stood in a tight knot with Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar at the rear of Club Carrefour. It was packed with an audience that was going wild to the heavy, yet eerily melodious sounds of the Goth Rock band on the small raised stage at the end of the hall. The music was so loud that everyone had to lean towards Jake to hear his words, despite the fact that they were well in the club’s rear.
Narcisse shook his head. “Not the band. Listen, and wait.”
Sara had to agree with Jake. This music was not really her thing either. But there was something to it, some vital, original beat that she could feel in her heart which was throbbing almost in time to the music. And the voices in her head really dug it. They went silent as the band played. She could feel them absorbing the sound like it was energy, absorbing it and pulsing wordlessly in time. Odd that, but she couldn’t see exactly how this was forwarding the investigation. She was tired. She didn’t feel like clubbing, and she was regretting the impulse that had caused her and Jake to accept the priest’s offer.
Still, the voices seemed to approve of their presence at the club, and while she was more than a little wary of them, she also knew that frequently it was worthwhile to follow their often-ciyptic advice. Besides, she was more than willing to give Father Baltazar some slack and let him prove himself. Or, maybe, disprove himself.
She leaned forward and got Father Baltazar’s attention by tugging on the sleeve of his cassock. She took her hand away quickly, not wanting to let it linger on his arm. “Who are they?” she asked.
“What?”
“The band. What’s their name?”
“Oh. Mountains of Madness. A local group that’s just made the national scene.”
She nodded, and turned her attention fully to the group, as the male lead singer said, “I think you might all know this one-our first charting hit, ‘Dreams in the Witch House.’ ”
Sara wasn’t familiar with it, but almost everyone else in Club Carrefour roared ecstatically.
There were five musicians in the band. The lead singer was tall, broad shouldered, and long-legged. His black hair fell in a torrent around his shoulders. Sara was too far away to discern his facial features, but he was dressed all in black with leather boots and a long black duster that was probably way too hot for a crowded club on an evening that was as warm as mid-summer. His voice was strong and deep, and sang lyrics too complicated for Sara to follow, even if she’d been interested enough to try to understand them. Which she wasn’t. She was more interested in gathering an overall impression of the band to see where they might fit in with the recent odd occurrences in Cypress Hills.
A pale-faced girl who also was wearing layers of black clothing played the keyboards and supplied counterpoint vocals. She, too, had long black hair, heavy dark eye make-up, and red, red lips. Her voice was light and soaring, perfectly complementing the lead singer’s bass tones as they wove a complex set of lyrics around the eerie melody supplied by harpsichord and guitars.
The guitar and bass player couldn’t have contrasted more with the other band members. Their pale hair was short and they were dressed simply in jeans and T-shirts, one bright orange and the other a vibrant yellow. They dashed frenetically around the stage, making faces at each other and the audience, cavorting where the singer and keyboarder were serious. They were underdressed by rock star standards and colorful by Goth standards. Sara couldn’t be sure from a distance, but they looked like twins. They certainly resembled each other so closely that they had to be brothers.
The drummer, the final member of the band, was so far in the rear of the stage that Sara couldn’t really see him. He was black, and lost in the darkness among his drum-set. It seemed as if he was someone who didn’t seek out the limelight.
Sara could catch only the barest essence of “Dreams in the Witch House.” It was evocative of lost dreams and forgotten hope, of spirituality in a mechanistic age. When it was over the lead singer raised his hands, bowed deeply, and left the stage. The rest of the band followed him as the crowd went nuts.
“Let’s go,” Paul Narcisse said.
Though Sara and Jake stood within a couple feet of him, they could barely hear him for the delirious crowd noise. They followed him and Father Baltazar as they made their way toward the stage. When they reached the curtained door heading to the wings, a big bald black dude with biceps ^the size of baby heads blocked them for a moment, then obviously recognized either Paul Narcisse or Father Baltazar, 6r both, and let them pass.
“You’re better than a backstage pass,” Jake said as they went past the curtain.
Father Baltazar smiled. “We’re not unknown in the community.”
As they went backstage the band was retaking the stage for an encore. A short, balding man in a gray rumpled suit was standing among the light and sound crew. Paul Narcisse went to him.
“Kristoforas-good to see you again, my brother.”
The man turned a harried face to them, and relaxed somewhat as he recognized Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar. He was young, not much-if any-older than Sara, but was prematurely balding, prematurely chubby, and his face had what seemed to be a perpetually worried expression. But he did seem genuinely glad to see Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar, though he cast a momentary suspicious glance in the direction of Sara and Jake.
Paul Narcisse turned to the cops and gestured at the man he’d just greeted. “Detectives Pezzini and McCarthy, this is Kristoforas Gervelis. He manages The Mountains of Madness. His brother, Aleksandras, is the lead singer.” The worry was suddenly back in Kristoforas’ eyes. “Detectives? They’re police?”
Jake looked at Sara, his eyebrow quirked significantly, but Father Baltazar laughed. “Relax, old friend. Don’t worry so much. We .were just showing the detectives around the neighborhood, and what better place to take them than the triumphant return of Mountains of Madness to Cypress Hills?”
Meanwhile, on stage, the band had settled back behind their instruments, and Aleksandras was shouting, “Thank you! Thank you, my friends! We’re so happy to come home for tonight’s befiefit, hosted by our first and greatest patron, Mister Guillaume Sam!”
Aleksandras pointed to the opposite stage wing and a large black man wearing a silk Armani suit strolled out onto the stage to take a bow. He was huge, with great shoulders, a wide, deep chest and an expansive gut. He wore dark sunglasses that hid his eyes. A three-inch-long gold crucifix dangled from his left ear. He waved at the crowd, and they responded vociferously, as if most knew him. Then he turned, bowed politely to the band, and made his way back into the darkness of the wings.
As Aleksandras gestured and the band swung into their encore, Sara suddenly froze, her gaze on Guillaume Sam. She almost didn’t need the confirmation of the twittering voices in her head. She could tell from his arrogant posture, from the self-satisfied set of his mouth. He was the one. He was the evil that Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar had brought them to see.
As the band began to play their signature song, “Rats in the Walls,” he looked up across the back of the stage and caught Sara in his gaze. The voices in her head bleated with sudden urgent warning, and, almost unheard of from them, fear.
“—power, awful power—”
“-the one to watch-”
“—the blade, call upon the blade!”
For a moment Sara was almost unable to fight them down. For a moment her gaze darkened, her will weakened, and she could feel the constricting bands of cold metal began to appear upon her flesh, shredding the fabric of her jeans to her upper right thigh. But she clenched her teeth and drove the Witchblade back, telling herself, telling the voices,-“No! Now is not the time!”
For once they obeyed, and the Witchblade flickered and subsided. She could only hope that no one would notice her ruined jeans, or if they did, just think them fashionable.
But as her eyes came back into focus, she found herself still staring across the back of the stage. As The Mountains of Madness rocked into “Rats in the Wall” she saw Guillaume Sam looking at her with unconcealed interest. And there was something, some dark thing sitting crouched on his shoulder, unseeable in the dim light, save for two glaring red eyes.
She broke Sam’s gaze with a conscious effort, and turned her head to see Father Baltazar looking steadily at her with concern, wonder, and, yes, even a little suspicion in his eyes.
It took only a simple request from Paul Narcisse to get them all invited to the post concert party on the second floor of the club, which consisted of Guillaume Sam’s office and, as Kristoforas imprecisely put it, “private function space.” Club Carrefour’s second floor was a bit more intimate and furnished a lot fancier. The bar was almost as big as in the club downstairs, but was much more ornate, with a marble top over a teak and mahogany base, a huge mirror dating to a previous century or two, and bottles of liquor, wine, and brandy that were also aged and rather more exotic than those found downstairs.
To Sara’s eyes there seemed an inordinate amount of religious iconography about the place. Crosses, saintly icons, and the like festooned the bar, the walls, and even the metal candleholders on the tables adjacent to the dance floor. Music rumbled on a stereo system that sounded almost as good as the real thing. One end wall was dominated by a large throne-like chair that was set atop a three-step dais.
As Sara and the others entered the hall the throne was empty, though there were already several dozen people dancing, collecting drinks at the bar, or attacking the buffet laid out on a series of long tables set against one of the long walls of the rectangular room.
McCarthy spotted the spread, said a hasty “Excuse me,” and headed for the food at a run. Clearly, he hadn’t been to the donut shop lately.
“Can I get you a drink, Ms. Pezzini?" Kristoforas asked with genuine solicitude.
“A soft drink,” Sara replied. “On duty and all that. And please, call me Sara.”
Kristoforas smiled briefly, a smile that was extinguished as the Mountains of Madness guitar and bass players approached.
“Hey,” one of them said.
Close up, Sara could see that they were indeed twins. They were about Sara’s height and probably not much more than Sara’s weight. Skinny would be an accurate description of their build, and not quite endearingly ugly an accurate description of their features. Their eye color was as non-committal as their hair, gray-green and
brown-blond. Their front teeth protruded, their chins were almost non-existent.
“Hey,” the other one said.
“We’re in the band,” the first said.
“We’re brothers,” the second said.
“I’m Roger Stem.” ‘
“I’m Jerry Stem.”
They got on either* side of Sara and each put an arm around her waist.
“Want to be the filling in a Stem sandwich?” they asked in unison.
“Jesus, Jerry, and you, too, Roger,” Kristoforas said, “behave for once. This is Sara Pezzini. Detective Sara Pezzini, N.Y.C. Police Department.”
“Wow,” Roger said.
, “Cool,” Jeny said.
They looked at each other.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done a cop before,” Roger said.
“I know I haven’t,” Jerry said.
“Rog-Jer-” Kristoforas said in warning tones.
Sara began to understand why he had a perpetually harried look. She stepped back out of their grasp.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I can take care of myself. I’m armed, after all.”
“Wow,” Jerry said.
“Cool,” Roger said. “Can we see your gun?”
“Later.” Sara looked at Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar, who had been bemusedly watching the exchange. “Right now I’d like to meet the rest of the band.”
“Sounds like a good idea,” Paul Narcisse said. He took Sara’s arm and guided her away. “Come along.”
Sara glanced at the brothers as they ambled off to the bar with Kristoforas.
“Are they for real?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” Paul Narcisse said. “Pretty much harmless though. Shameless hedonists, but they can play. Alek is the only one who’s ever been able to keep them in line for more than a couple days at a time. I’m not sure how he does it, but he does have a somewhat dominating personality.” They stopped at the buffet table, where the lead singer of Mountains'of Madness was helping himself to some chopped liver from the statue shaped into the Angel of Death. “Right, Alek?”
Alek turned around slowly, smiling. He was a tall man, perhaps six-two, and the wild hair and dark clothes and leather boots made him loom even larger. His pale face was untouched by the usual Gothic make-up. His eyes were dark like Father Baltazar’s, but they had a different quality to them that made him seem harder, tougher than the priest’s. He was as handsome and impressive as a man could be. When he spoke, his deep, rich voice only added to his aura of power and dominance.
“Paul,” he said, smiling. “Great to see you. I’m glad you made it to the benefit.”
He turned toward Sara and their eyes met. His smile widened. It was difficult to say which was more attractive, his eyes or his smile. She felt herself smile back automatically, and caught herself, angiy at her unthinking response. Sure, he was a handsome, charismatic guy with great eyes, a great smile, and a great voice, but she had to watch herself. This was developing into the weirdest case she’d run across in a very weird career. She had to maintain her distance from all those involved, as well as her hard-edged perspective.
“Hello.” His voice oozed charm, but it was a natural, almost unconscious ooze. He wasn’t tiying to charm her. He just did. “I’m Aleksandras Gervelis. Please, call me Alek.” “I’m Detective Sara Pezzini,” she said, her voice harder, more formal than she intended it to be. “You can call me Detective Pezzini.”
Damn! Sara said to herself. She sounded like she had a stick up her butt. But something was making her keep her distance from Gervelist Were the voices, though quiet, perhaps exerting a more subtle control over her mind?
“Certainly, Detective Pezzini,” another voice said, interrupting her thought. “Can I ask why the New York City Police Department sees fit to make its presence felt at my little get-together?”
Sara turned toward the new speaker, and caught her breath. The voices in her head suddenly chittered like .mad mice, offering a mixture of challenge tinged with fear, which was most unusual for them. Normally they feared nothing.
It was Guillaume Sam. He loomed taller than Alek Gervelis, and bulked much larger. His face was bland and expressionless, though Sara could well believe that his eyes could bum with fire and emotion if he’d let them. His suit was impeccable, his large, powerful hands faultlessly manicured. The beady-eyed creature still sat on his shoulder, its long, naked tail looped around his neck, great bucked teeth gleaming in its pointed muzzle. “Excuse me,” Sara said, “but is that a rat?”
Guillaume Sam laughed. It was deeply musical and seemed genuine.
“You are not much of a naturalist, Detective. This is Baka, my pet possum.”
“That’s ... unusual...” Sara said.
“Much about Guillaume Sam is out of the ordinary,” Paul Narcisse said.
Guillaume Sam turned his eyes upon the bookstore owner and for a moment he let the power in his gaze shine through. “Ah, Paul, always good to see you. I trust you’re enjoying yourself.”
Paul Narcisse bowed. “As you say, monsieur."
A palpable tension was' in the air, broken when Kris Gervelis hustled up to the group with the drink he had promised Sara. He bumbled forward and there was a moment’s confusion as if he realized he was breaking up something, but not sure what, then Guillaume Sam excused himself, saying he had other guests to attend to. The female member of Mountains joined them an instant later. Kristoforas introduced her as Magdalena Konsavage. Like the Gervelis brothers, she was a member of the Cypress Hills Lithuanian community. She and Sara chatted amiably for a few minutes. Alek asked if she wanted to dance, but Sara made her excuses to go hunt down her partner.
She was wary of Alek, whether it was the voices subtly warning her or whether she was subtly warning herself she couldn’t say. She also felt that it’d be more useful if she drifted and mingled. So she did.
The results were interesting if not conclusive. She wandered through the crowd, collecting impressions and what information she could. Guillaume Sam was now es-conced on his throne-like chair, drinking rum like it was water, Baka sitting on his shoulder and observing everything far too intently. She passed Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar, who seemed to be keeping their eyes out for her, and also her partner, who seemed more interested in the food and the females present than police business.
She ducked the Stem brothers, who were drinking up a storm and eating and chatting up everything in a dress.
At one point she noticed they were with someone who seemed familiar, so she let the eddies and swirls of the crowd’s tidal flow deposit her close behind them where she could watch and listen unobserved.
“Hey,” Rog-or maybe it was Jer-was saying, “how’d you like to be the filling in a Stem sandwich?”
They were standing with their arms around a woman’s waist, each looking a little worse for wear from the everpresent drinks in their hands. This woman was as tall as Sara, though slimmer. Her short, blonde hair was slicked back and she was wearing masculine evening dress, an elegant black tuxedo and tails, as if she’d escaped from a Fred Astaire movie. It took a moment, but Sara recognized her as the woman who’d come into the notions and lotions store earlier that evening. She was elegantly seductive, and, as Sara watched, left the ballroom arm in arm in arm with the twins.
It was, Sara thought, all a mysteiy. Unfortunately, she wasn’t Sherlock Holmes. Jake wasn’t even Dr. Watson. But she’d figure it all out in the end, somehow. In the meantime, she realized that she’d been awake for over thirty-six hours, and was running on empty.
She looked around the room to track down Jake. Finally she spotted him and Magdalena Konsavage engaged in what seemed to be earnest conversation. When she made her way over to them she heard them arguing the merits of the Beach Boys versus Nick Cave and the Bad Seed. Jake wasn’t winning, but was obviously willing to give the discussion the good old college try. He paid Sara minimal attention as she said her goodnights.
Before she left the ballroom she hunted down Paul Narcisse and Father Baltazar. -
“Thanks for an interesting evening,” she told the pair. “Is your mind still open?” Father Baltazar asked.
Sara shrugged. “Yeah, but I don’t want it so open that my brain will fall out. Still. A .”
“Think about what you’ve seen tonight. We’ll talk later.” t'-#
“That’s a promise,” Sara said. “Right now, though, I need some sleep.”
Father Baltazar nodded.
“Pleasant dreams, Detective,” he wished, or perhaps predicted, for her.
But, unfortunately, he was wrong.
CHAPTER
Sara fell into the bed as if it were the welcoming arms of a long-sought, sorely-missed lover. Her head hit the pillow, her eyes closed. For once it seemed that the voices were as tired as she was. At any rate they didn’t bother her with unnecessaiy chatter as she reviewed the day’s events like she always did when she was on a case. Sometimes as she approached the walls of sleep her subconscious gave her insights that her wide-awake mind missed. Sometimes, she even remembered those insights upon awakening.
Four bodies were now laid at the hands of the Machete Murderer. One, found in a Manhattan Dumpster minus hands and head, was still unidentified. Two had washed up on the Manhattan side of the East River, also minus heads and hands. Also with no I.D., but tentatively identified as Haitians living in Cypress Hills. One had been a doctor, perhaps a respected citizen, the other a not-so-respected gang member. Both probably had been killed if not together, then at about the same time. Finally, one found in an alley, in the Cypress Hills neighborhood itself. No head, but identified by cards found in his wallet.
The differences in the last killing bothered Sara. It seemed as if the killer really wanted to hide the identities of the first three victims, but could care less about the fourth. Assuming, of course, that the murderer took Pierre-Pierre’s head for some arcane purpose of his own. Perhaps there was a reason for the decreasing attempts at secrecy. Or perhaps the killer was getting a little more out of control with each slaying. Maybe the Machete Murderer was feeling more invincible after each murder, more contemptuous of the police.
If that was the case, he would get caught sooner than later. The killer would get sloppier and sloppier and make a critical mistake. At least, Sara fervently hoped that it would be sooner than later.
In the meantime... meantime... her mind conjured up a pair of eyes, brown and soulful. Father Baltazar looked at her with kindness and understanding. She realized that she was attracted to him ... but he was a priest. Untouchable. Vowed to celibacy. Not like Alek Gervelis. His eyes held understanding, too, understanding of what she wanted, what she needed. They were dark, too, brown ... no ... red ... Red glaring pinpricks that burned with a feverish heat.
Sara sat up, startled. She was sitting on a thick grassy sward, a clearing in a luxuriant jungle lit only by the light of the full moon. She was wearing the short silken chemise she’d worn to bed, and could feel warm breezes whisper about her face, her bare shoulders, and long, lean legs. Vines entwined about the trees surrounding the clearing and night-blooming flowers were everywhere. They perfumed the warm, caressing breezes with their heady musk.
“Welcome to Guinee, blanc,” a voice said.
Sara stood slowly. The voice was soft and pleasingly feminine. Sara couldn’t fear it. In fact, she felt more at peace than she had for months. It took a moment before she realized the voices in her head were utterly silent. It was as if they’d vanished. She searched for them among the corridors of her mind, but if they were still present they were hiding.'That seemed good enough for now.
Sara turned to see a beautiful black woman who had thick, wavy hair that feM to her waist. She wore heavy eye make-up: mascara and eye-shadow, and probably false eyelashes as well because no natural lashes could be so luxuriantly long. She had large hooped earrings and a shiny necklace of silver and gold, as well as three bands on the ring-finger of her left hand. A crimson and gold orchid was enmeshed in her hair behind her right ear. Her dress was long and flowing with rather more flounces and of a costlier fabric than an ordinary peasant’s shift. She looked like a goddess.
“Guinee?” Sara repeated. “Where is that?”
The woman gestured around herself.
“Guinee is here, where you are. More importantly,” she said, “you should ask what is Guinee?”
Sara smiled. “All right. What is Guinee?”
The woman smiled a smile that was the definition of charming. “It is the dream-home of the voodoun loa, the spirits of voudon.”
“Are you a loa?"
“I am Erzulie Freda Dahomey, patroness of love and lost dreams. Someone has asked that I watch over you. Come, blanc, walk with me, and we shall talk.”
Erzulie gestured and Sara fell in step with her as they went down a path Sara hadn’t noticed before, leading out of the clearing.
“Who set you to watch over me?” Sara asked.
“Ahhh,” Erzulie said. “That is the mystery, is it not? Who are your friends, who are your enemies?”
“Can’t you tell me?” Sara asked.
On a branch above them there was a sudden stirring where moments before there had been only silent darkness. A black shadow leapt down to the ground, and Sara started as she realized that a leopard had landed right next to them. She drew bdCk in fear and surprise, but Erzulie didn’t seem to notice her reaction. She simply put her hand out and the leopard slunk down low, as if bowing, then licked her hand with his long, raspy tongue.
“Your enemy,” Erzulie said, scratching the leopard on top of its sleek head, “is Guillaume Sam. You know that, even if you don’t quite believe it. He is a malfacteur, a person of the worst sort. He never sacrifices to me, but to my sister Erzulie je Rouge—someone, believe me, you never want to meet. Baron Samedi is his patron.”
The leopard joined them as they walked down the trail, pacing along calmly by Erzulie’s side.
“Samedi?” Sara asked. “Who’s he?”
“He is the head of the Guede Family,” Erzulie told her. “Baron Saturday. The loa of Death, Guardian of the Cemetery, and Protector of Sorcerers. He is very powerful. Though you seem to have your own odd... abilities ... you would never be able to defeat him.”
“Defeat him?” Sara said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with him. I just want to catch a murderer. I just want to be—“
Sara abruptly shut up. She was about to say: I just want to be normal again. I’m sick of these voices whispering in my head. I just want to be a cop, go to work, catch the bad guys. Maybe meet somebody someday and fall in love . . .
Erzulie laughed. “Yes, ma petit, you do not want much, do you? Still-” She shrugged. “People have asked for more than you do. You are not unreasonable.”
A white dove fluttered down from the branches of one of the trees over-arcing the trail and landed on Erzulie’s shoulder. Erzulie put a soft hand on the bird’s back, caressing it.
“I must be going. Be sure to thank the houngan for his sacrifice to me, in your name. Think of me sometime. I cannot fight your battles. It is not our way to contend against each other. But I will give you what information I can. For now, a final gift: I am not the only loa who knows you walk in Guinee tonight. Beware Bakula-baka.” Sara looked at her, confused. “Houngan? Sacrifice? What are you talking about?”
, But Erzulie and her leopard were only broken spirals of mist, shimmering on the hot night breeze.
“What’s a Bakula-baka?”
“Not what, foolish bland Who!”
Sara whirled at the unexpected voice coming from behind her to face something out of a madman’s nightmare. It was a huge dark figure, taller than Sara, broader by far. It was human-shaped, but could hardly have been alive. One of his eyes was missing. The empty socket was dark as the mouth to hell. Half of his face was exposed skull, skin and flesh stripped away to the white bone underneath. He was clothed in tom, filthy rags, and Sara could see that other parts of his body were missing flesh as well. White bone gleamed here and there as he moved toward her. He dragged several lengths of thick chain, as if he had been tied down but had burst his bonds. As he approached Sara smelled him on the night breeze. She gagged at the waves of noxious corruption that came off him in waves. He smelled like a recently opened grave. He smelled of death and corruption and black hatred, and in his right hand, half flesh, half naked bone, he carried a machete.
“I am the least of Samedi’s brothers,” Bakula-baka snarled. “If you dare to oppose him, you must face me first.”
The part of Sara’s mind that wasn’t cringing in fear wondered how he could speak so clearly with a mouth that was half naked teeth and bone, but she quickly realized this wasn’t the time to worry about such petty things. Bakula-baka was bearing down on her like a riptide. She could see dried blood caked on his machete blade. She thought she knew where the blood had come from.
The Machete Murderer had taken the lives of four men, but now, she thought, he faced the wielder of the Witchblade. She held her right hand out pointing at the creature, and called silently, imperiously, for the mystic artifact to appear, to sheath her in its invincible armor, to put the razor sharp blade in her hand or blast the charging loa with its sphere of deadly fire.
She called upon it, but it did not come. The voices remained silent in her head.
She stood there a moment, stunned, her mind blank. She gestured again, but nothing happened.
“Jesus!” the word sprung from her lips, prayer or curse she didn’t know, and the thing was upon her.
Sara took a deep breath, choking on the creature’s char-nal house stench as he loomed above her, machete starting the downward sweep of a death blow, when her subconscious, or perhaps her instinct to live, made her move her feet, twist, and duck away. Bakula-baka’s machete just missed her. She felt the wind of its passing, heard the creature grunt as the force of the blow buried the blade of the machete in the dark jungle soil at their feet.
The voices are gone, Sara thought, and so is the Witchblade.
It had refused to come to her before, she thought, but this was not the time for it to-be sulky. She knew full well that wherever this place was, she could die here. Permanently. And without help, having to face Bakula-baka bare-handed, her death seemed pretty likely.
She sprinted down the path, trying to put some distance between herself and the horrid creature, looking for a weapon, a way out, anything she could turn to her advantage. The loa followed with thundering footsteps. Once she risked a glance backward and to her horror saw that despite his size and awful bulk, he was fast on his feet. He was catching up to her. She was losing the distance she’d put between them when he paused to wrench his blade from the ground.
He was charging like a deadly tsunami. She could smell his awful stench get stronger and stronger. The flesh between her shoulder blades crawled as she imagined the terrible pain of the machete biting into her back, perhaps cutting through her neck. Bakula-baka growled an inarticulate cry of hate and bloodlust and Sara, heart bursting, tried to put on more speed.
But she couldn’t.
Crying out in frustration, she decided to turn and throw herself upon her foe and hope for a miracle, and suddenly there was an imperious ringing sound and she sat up in her bed, drenched in sweat, the Witchblade blossoming around her body as she became a flower enshrouded in thorns.
Her chemise ripped to shreds. The metallic armor of the Witchblade cupped her soft flesh in its hard, cold grasp as she gasped for breath.' The imperious ringing continued to shrill in her ear. She took two, long shuddering breaths, and reached for the phone that sat on the night table by the side of her bed.
“Hello?” she gasped. •
There was a momentary silence, then a familiar voice came over the line.
“Sara?”
It was Jake.
“Yeah, what?” she shuddered out.
“I, uh, you, uh, alone?”
“Of course,” she said sharply. And she was. The Witchblade vanished, leaving the shreds of her chemise hanging on her like it had suffered the death of a thousand .cuts. “What do you mean?”
“Well, uh," Jake said, “you sound all out of breath and all. Like you’ve been running a marathon. Or something.”
Sara lay backward. Her pillow was soaked with sweat.
“You woke me out of a dream,” she said. She took a long breath, calming her shuddering lungs. “It was a nightmare.” It was, Sara thought, more than that. It was her death. “Thanks.”
“Sure. No problem.”
Sara closed her eyes. She didn’t want to think about what had just happened. She wanted to put it away, and, maybe examine it more closely when the sun was shining, when the stench of Bakula-baka was gone from her nostrils. It still lingered there, more than a mere memory. Meaning, perhaps, that she’d just experienced more than a mere dream ...
“So what’s up?” she asked her partner.
“Thought you’d want to know first thing,” Jake said. “The first vic’s been ID’ed.” -
“And?” Sara prompted.
“His name was Tom Jackson. He was an agent for the Immigration and Naturalization Service-”
’’Working out of Cypress.Hills,” Sara interrupted.
She could almost see Jake nod his blond surfer-boy head.
“That’s right,” he said. “His office was in Manhattan, but the region he was in charge of included Cypress Hills.”
It was a nice late September day, warm, slightly breezy. The Mets were in first place. The city was in a good mood, but Sara wasn’t. There was too much on her mind. The case of the Machete Murderer was too hard to fathom, just too damn weird. And now she had to visit the morgue.
That place always put her in a bad mood, and when she was in a bad mood to begin with it was really a downer. It was never warm enough down there in the basement and the air was always dank. Kilby assured her this wasn't so. They had to keep the humidity low because of—as he put it—their clients. But it always felt clammy on Sara’s skin. The smell didn’t help any, either. It was always antiseptic but not fresh. There were undertones to the morgue’s odor that Sara didn’t like. No matter how hard they scrubbed, they couldn’t rid the place of its aura of loss, sadness, and incipient decay.
Plus, Kilby was always so damned cheerful. He grinned like a demented cherub. Today was no different as Sara came in, still rather shook up by her experience of the night before.
“Hello, Detective,” Kilby said, bustling up to her, white lab coat rustling, clipboard clasped to his chest like a shield.
“Jake said you had some info on the vie from the dumpster.”
“Right-o. Come this way/
On the best of days, the morgue was a downer. This wasn’t even close to the best of days.
“I don’t want the tour,” Sara said. “Just the information.”
“Right-o,” Kilby said in the same happy tone, incapable of taking offense. He looked at Sara with the eyes of a devoted puppydog, and Sara sighed. “Here we go.”
He handed Sara the clipboard. She scanned the form on top.
Thomas Clayton Jackson. 38. Caucasian. Divorced. Two children in the custody of his ex-wife, Mildred Jackson, Forrest City, Queens. Death by physical trauma (decapitation). Employed by Immigration and Nationalization Services, Manhattan branch.
“I picked his name out of missing persons,” Kilby said proudly, “and ID’ed him from an old football injury. Compound fracture of the left tibia.”
Sara glanced at him.
“Good work,” she said, and he practically wagged his tail.
“Everything else seemed to fit, so we had the wife come down and ID the, uh, body. It’s him, all right. No doubt about it.”
“Donuts, anyone?” Jake appeared with a grease-stained paper bag and a couple of cups of coffee.
“Any cream-filled?” Kilby asked.
Sara sighed. “Try not to so stereotypical, Jake. Donuts. Would it hurt to eat healthy for a' change? How can I maintain my figure on a diet of sugar and grease?”
“It looks great to me!” Kilby said gallantly.
“Hmmm,” she said, non-commitally, but she did take one of the plastic-cups of coffee as Jake and Kilby fought over the cream-filled donuts.
“The problem,” she said, sipping the cold brew, “is that we have almost too much to look at, but no leads leading anywhere in particular.”
“Let’s split ’em up,” Jake said around a mouthful of his second donut, “and run ’em down. I’ll take the restaurant guy-”
”Uh-uh. I know why you want to take the restaurant guy. Juliette lurks nearby. I’ll take the restaurant guy, the doctor, and the gangbangers. They’re clearly all connected. Maybe. You check out the details on this I.N.S. guy.”
Jake sniffed. “And I know why you want to go back to Cypress Hills. I saw the way you looked at that priest.”
“What?” Sara and Kilby said simultaneously.
Kilby looked at her with hurt in his eyes.
“A priest?” he said.
He sounded disappointed as well as hurt.
Sara made a sound of annoyance. “God, it’s nothing like that.”
Jake and Kilby looked at each other and nodded.
“Sure,” Jake said.
“Is that all you guys think about? Yes, there are some questions I’d like to ask him-questions about the case.”
Jake and Kilby exchanged looks again.
“Of course,” Kilby said. “Whatever you say.”
Men, Sara thought, as she stormed out of the morgue. Outside, it was warm and sunny.'Inside, she was cold and shivering. The voices chuckled quietly in the back of her mind.
, CHAPTER