Stained (5 page)

“I’m not.” Thorn crossed her legs. “I respect them, they respect me.” She ran her fingers through her hair nervously. “But I moved here a couple of years ago, and I’m used to being on my own. I travel a lot and have always been a solitary practitioner.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I make a habit of becoming acquainted with the local coven immediately, when I get somewhere new. We work together but I never join.”

“You would have liked my mamó,” he grunted.

“Were you born in Ireland?”

Sé got more comfortable in his seat. “No, but I spent summers there with my mamó. Where did you pick up your Gaelic?”

“I was born in Ireland. I’ve traveled broadly and lost most of my accent.”

“How did a nice Irish girl end up in Berkeley?”

“I was wandering for a while, looking for a place to settle. There was no one who had my talents per se in the west coast area, so I decided to establish myself here.” She took another drink of coffee. “I thought about San Francisco, but the vibes were better over here.”

“How about you? Have you always lived here?” Thorn asked, uncomfortable with all the personal information about her history.

“No, I’m a transplant. My parents live in New York. I came out here to go to school and never left.”

“Oh? What did you study?”

“Philosophy with a minor in European history,” he said, laughing.

“How does a nice Irish boy with a degree in philosophy end up being a homicide detective?” Thorn asked, turning his words on him with a sly smile.

“I couldn’t get a job in what I went to school for, big surprise there. Berkeley PD was recruiting college graduates. They had great benefits and wages, a pension, so I applied to the academy and got in. I really didn’t know what I was doing. Before I figured it out, I was already a cop. It’s been ten years now. I’ve been in homicide for four.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s always something new. My day is almost never the same. I wish I’d taken psychology. I could’ve used that a lot more in this job.” Sé leaned on the table. “Some days I just want to make my pension and then travel to all those places in Europe I’ve studied. Other days I’m trying to figure out some sick fuck’s head.”

Thorn could see him sitting in the sun in Paris or Tuscany having a coffee and reading the paper. Unfortunately, she couldn’t see herself with him. She was so nocturnal. Maybe he would adapt to moonlight walks and bistros. She shook herself internally and looked away for a minute. He touched her hand and she pulled away quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just trying to get your attention. I was talking but you were somewhere else. Your hand is so cold. Do you want another coffee?”

“No, thank you, I better get back. I have some things to do yet tonight, and Raven needs to feed. We usually take a run on the bike, so he can hunt.” She didn’t want to tell him she was cold because she was afraid. Afraid of the spell he was weaving around her.

“A Ducati?”

“Yeah, did you look me up?”

“We had to when you became a suspect. I ride too.”

“It’s addictive,” she said.

“That it is. Keep a low profile though. No tickets.”

“No problem, thanks for the coffee.” She got up to leave, and he stood too. She left before he could shake her hand, which was what he was going to do. He studied her, like he couldn’t get a fix on her. Welcome to the club, she thought. Thorn rushed out of the aroma-filled coffee shop and hurried the short distance home in the moonlight. She entered by the back, through the derelict alley and pounded up the stairs to get Raven. He looked at her, with his head tilted.

“I know, trouble,” she said.

“Yesth.”

CHAPTER FIVE

By the power of earth, air, fire, water, and spirit, protect me now. Protect me forever.

Sé left the coffee shop with that cop tingle he got when he knew things weren’t what they were supposed to be. He wasn’t sure what he was missing. He knew he liked how Thorn’s jeans rode low on her hips and the way her sweater fit her body. She had all the right curves. Jet-black hair, an aquiline nose, high cheekbones and pouty lips that he found irresistible. He was having a hard time holding onto his professionalism on this case. His would think it a perfect match. Irish, beautiful, and a cailleach. He shook his head and reached for his jacket. Stepping into the cool air cleared his mind some. If it wasn’t only for the fact that she was a suspect in a multiple homicide. He laughed. Just a minor thing.

He headed towards his police issue sedan. Nondescript, beige, needed a tune-up and several years old. The door squeaked when he opened it. It still smelled like smoke from the last guy who had it, even though there was a no smoking policy in the department. He kept the car clean. That’s about the only thing he could say for it. The radio squawked and he turned it down as he made his way towards the station.

He kept his head down as he went into the situation room and went up to the board to see if anything new had been posted on the murders. Scettico was eating a sandwich while going over the coroner’s report on the second vic.

“Anything interesting?” he asked.

“Yeah, here see for yourself,” Scettico said, through a mouthful of egg salad.

Sé gave the man with a shaved head, and no neck, a sideways glance as he took the coroner’s report. Cause of death, decapitation, no big surprise, there. Metal tracings in the wound sites consistent with the metal found in Japanese swords. Wound was a clean cut.

Then things got interesting. The body was different. There was an anomaly with the blood. The blood appeared thick and fit no blood type. The heart appeared to be that of someone who’d had a coronary failure many years ago. In other words, the forensic scientist working the case said the heart was consistent with someone who had died long before that night. The heart was shriveled and hard and couldn’t circulate blood. He scrawled a personal note saying he had never seen anything like it.

Huh, what the fuck, Sé thought. “Do we have any living pictures of the vic?” he asked Scettico.

“Yeah, we got lucky, an ATM picture taken at two-fifty a.m. Just before he went to Stained.”

“Send it over to the coroner. See if he believes that.”

“Will do.”

Sé went back to the file on Thorn. Born in Ireland, in Kilkeel, age thirty-one. Owned a Ducati, black, new. He still preferred his Yamaha R1. Mother Irish, Father American, both deceased. A great uncle, her only living relative, on record. Held dual citizenship between Ireland and the US and was current with all her professional certificates. Owned and operated the establishment Stained, a tattoo parlor. Her passport had stamps from all around the world. When she’d said she traveled, she was modest. Never married. No known siblings. Financial holdings, sketchy. Stained must be very successful, she owned a large house and land in Ireland.

She was somewhat of an enigma—even though he had all the resources at his fingertips he knew very little about her. She had no friends. No associations with people, beyond her work. She was a loner. Much like himself. He liked her, but he held back in spite of it. His gut told him she wasn’t the killer. The witches he’d known didn’t kill, but he knew they could. But she had no alibis, and she was the only one who knew what the talismans that had been removed were.

“I’m going to hit the streets,” he said.

“Sure, talk to you later,” Scettico said. “Oh, hey, Kate called and asked if you wanted help with the case.”

Sé grimaced. Great. Just what he needed, his ex involved in the case. Special Agent Kate Simms of the FBI--blonde, beautiful, and ambitious. They had ended it after a brief romance following a case they worked together. Sé just wasn’t into her. She was aggressive and self-absorbed. She continued to call him from time to time. This was just the excuse she was looking for to spend time with him. She would be on Thorn like a shark in blood-scented water, whether the evidence fit or not. She’d be jealous and hot on the jump, on what little leads they had. She played the game to win no matter the cost, with no regard for the rules.

Sé headed back out to his car, letting it idle a minute, the exhaust building and making his eyes water, trying to decide where to go first. When in doubt, go back to the crime scenes. He drove the short distance to the construction site, off Shattuck, where victim number two was found. The site was so close to the police station it was almost like the killer was mocking them, or sending them a message. He grabbed his Mag light from the glove compartment and turned it on, making his way through the security fence and the rubble-strewn ground to the yellow police tape. He always steeled himself when crossing the police tape. He took his job seriously and knew that tape marked the boundary between life and death. He crouched down and flashed his light, searching through the debris, not really expecting to find anything more, but hoping to jostle something loose in his mind.

What was going through the killer’s head? Why kill here, unless he was desperate? It was mostly commercial in this area. Apartments facing the street and businesses, but quiet at that time in the morning. If he had snuck up on the vic he could have done the job quickly and quietly. The coroner thought that a sword or something similar was used. How the hell do you hide a sword on the street? Who used a sword to kill? It would do the job but it tended to be very messy. Full blood spatters covered the ground and the wall of the adjoining building, so the victim was killed here. Maybe chased here? Too many questions. He rubbed his hands across his day’s worth of stubble and yawned. They wouldn’t get much sleep as long as bodies kept showing up.

His eyes glanced to the side and something struck him as out of the ordinary. A pile of rocks, too orderly to be random. He crossed the few feet to get a closer look. The rocks held a long, dark shiny feather in place. Sé would bet anything it was a raven’s feather. Fuck! What did it mean? Did Thorn come back and put it here as a signature? Or did the killer put it here as a warning? Had he talked to a murderer today or not?

Sé took a minute to let the breeze wash over him as he thought. Soon his hands and face grew numb from the cold air. He wasn’t any closer to a decision about whether he should turn this evidence in or not. He knew what would happen if he did. They’d quit looking and he couldn’t ignore his hunch that there was more to this than a beautiful, lone witch. He’d rather sit on things a bit. He pulled a glove on, picked up the feather, placed it in an evidence bag and put it in his pocket.

CHAPTER SIX

Elements of the sun, elements of the day, come this way. I summon thee. I call upon thee to protect me.

He picked his way back to his car, keeping his light on so he wouldn’t fall on the sharp concrete pieces, like shards of glass, waiting to cut up an unobservant bystander. Sé took a right on Cedar to Euclid Avenue and wound his way up to Grizzly Peak. Driving to the next crime scene where the first body was found, in Tilden Park. As he climbed the switchback hills he thought about Willow Sanchez. Aged 37, lived in Berkeley, a Wiccan according to Thorn. Their files had Willow working as a financial holdings administrator at a bank in San Francisco. She had a live-in girlfriend and no next of kin.

Willow could have been performing some kind of ceremony up here. Many of the witches came here for that. The thick cover of nature called to them. It would have been easy to sneak up on her that way.

He pulled over onto a cutaway and got out of his car. A raccoon shuffled across the road, glaring, puffed up so he was as large as possible. The trees were thick and stretched their branches, like fingertips, to reach the slightest bit of sunlight. Tilden Park was home to everything from wild turkeys to wild cats. The air smelled fresher up here high above the city, Sé thought. He took a moment to look down at the bay and the spectacular view. In the early morning light he could see across to San Francisco. He thought about the requirements of his job—he was a human Geiger counter. Humanity was a dichotomy, constantly balancing between beauty and evil. He knew he couldn’t fix everything and had tried to make peace with it. He knew that the fragile nature of man meant job security.