Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Kate Waters Mysteries Book 2) (26 page)

In all the chaos, Kate had forgotten about what her dad had said regarding signs, and those her mother used to get before something bad occurred. She turned to a picture of her mother on the wall in the living room. In it, her hair was the color she had always remembered it, light brown with highlights. According to her dad, they weren’t always highlights. She streaked her hair to hide the patches of white.

“No, just tired, that’s all,” Kate replied, not wanting to discuss the change in her eyes further, mainly because she wasn’t sure if she believed it yet. If the sign was true, then the change of color in her eyes meant things were about to get worse. Kate wasn’t sure how that could even be possible, unless whoever killed Suzanne, likely the same person who had attacked her, was coming back to finish what they had started.

Kate’s eyes drifted back to the iPad on the counter, to the image of Rán. She remembered holding the statue in her hands, studying the design in the wheel and the inlay of jewels on the statue. She peered closer at it.

“What is it?” David asked.

Kate suddenly noticed a repeating pattern of four in the wheel, each branch of line had four more, and the lines on Rán’s belt had four jewels. Even the rattles at the tip of the snake’s tail had four. She looked down at her bracelet, one of four. At the protection rite, there were four of them and four elements. So far, three deaths. Jim Kelley, Brooke Jennings, and now, Suzanne Jones. There would be one more.

A shudder passed over Kate. “It’s nothing. I just forgot to tell Detective Wells something.” She grabbed her purse from the counter. “Thanks for the talk, David. I’ll be back soon.”

She hoped she would. Time was running out for one of them.

***

Kate sat across from Detective Wells at the large table in the interrogation room. He sensed she was nervous. She had barely spoken a word since her arrival, fidgeted with her hands, and her gaze flitted between him and the mirrored window behind him—all signs he usually saw in the guilty—but Wells couldn’t imagine Kate would ever be capable of a criminal act. Today, however, it was his job to. He had to entertain the thought. If Thea, then at least Kate too.

“How are you feeling?” he asked her, gesturing to the bruise around her brow. It had deepened to a yellow-green at the outer edges.

“I’ve been better, I guess.”

“I called you in here today, because so far, you were the last one to see Suzanne alive. I need to know everything you know. Everything.”

Kate nodded back at him with more guilt.

“I have two dead girls,” Wells pointed at her, “and I almost had three, but one of them was lucky.”

Kate bent her head down. Wells could tell she knew she was the lucky one.

She let out a long sigh and rubbed at her head, avoiding the bruised side. “It must have been around 8:45 that I went over.”

“How long were you there?”

“Maybe about forty-five minutes.”

Wells jotted a timeline down in his notepad. He knew then that sometime between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. Suzanne was murdered. What plagued him most was that Suzanne’s house was only a fifteen-minute drive across the Ross Island Bridge to the Willamette Moorage Park. He met up with Thea at the docks around 10:30. Hypothetically, that gave Thea an hour to kill Suzanne, and Wells knew it only took minutes to kill a person.

“Was Andre there when you arrived?”

“No.”

“Were you alone with Suzanne the entire time?”

“Yes.”

“Just for your information, Kate, this would have been another good time to call me.”

Kate folded her hands on the table and picked at her cuticles. “I’m sorry. I planned to tell you in the morning.”

Wells associated her situation with Julie’s, how even when she had known something was wrong, she still hadn’t called him either. It took the extremes for both of them to grasp the severity of their situations, and in the process, innocent people had been hurt. “I could have sent a patrol car by her house, even cruised by a few times myself. Now Suzanne’s dead. Nobody can help her anymore.”

“Are you saying this is my fault?”

“No. Of course not, but I need you to understand the graveness of this situation, Kate. Have you looked in a mirror lately? I don’t want you to end up like Brooke and Suzanne.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not blaming you. Whoever did this would have done it one way or another, but I hope you get it now.”

Kate nodded. “I do.”

“Did Suzanne have any idea who might have put the snake on her doorstep?”

Kate shook her head. “No, she didn’t.”

“What was her mood when you saw her?”

“She was upset, scared. She had all the lights off in the house and was hiding behind her bed.”

Wells let out a hard sigh. The killer had to be one of three people: Andre, Thea, or the man who broke into Andre’s boatshed. “Tell me, when you and Thea first went over to Brooke’s house, you said that you went there because Thea was concerned about Brooke, concerned for her well-being.”

Kate tilted her head. “That’s true.”

“Why do you think Thea worried about Brooke?”

Kate paused, her eyes seeming to conceal something disturbing.

“What, Kate? I need to know.”

Kate’s gaze had fallen to the table again, and she seemed to be struggling with something, the same something she had been struggling with since she’d walked into the room.

“I’m your friend, Kate. You can open up to me.”

Kate took in a deep breath of air. “Brooke had a very old statue of the Goddess Rán. Thea thought the statue was cursed, and took it from her to keep everyone safe. She believes the dead snakes on our doorsteps and the deaths are all a part of the curse of the Goddess Rán.”

“Where’s the statue now?”

“I had it, but the person who attacked me stole it.”

It all hit Wells like water spray from a fire hose. The missing link to the Kelley-Jennings-Waters case. He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms. Thea was down at Andre’s dock looking for the statue. “How much is the statue worth?”

“I couldn’t say exactly, but enough to tempt some to the dark side. It’s inlaid with jewels and gold and looks very old.”

Wells stood and paced around the room to sort his thoughts, piecing together the facts, the person who had snooped through his office, the man he saw down at the boatshed, the individual who left snakes on Brooke, Thea, and Kate’s doorsteps. The case was a tangled web of simple motive, and seemingly, more than one person was involved.

“Detective?” Kate said.

Wells turned back to the table and sat down. “When was the last time you saw or spoke with Thea?”

“Last night. We were at the river.”

“Doing?”

“A protection spell.”

“When and where?”

“Down at the river, across from the island around 6:30.”

“Anyone with the two of you?”

“Yes, two other girls—Erika and Donna. You remember Donna?”

“Donna Reynolds?”

Kate nodded.

Wells jotted down their names, time, and place in his notebook. “Was there ever another man around, during your rites, or with Thea, or at Suzanne’s? Someone other than Andre?”

“No. Thea’s coven is all women.”

“What time did you leave Suzanne’s again?”

“Some time after 9:00.”

Wells closed his notebook. He needed to question Thea and Andre again. Also search through the case database system at work, see if he could track down any other officers who had logged onto his case files. Whoever was in his office might know something about Andre that he didn’t. Maybe a partner he was working with, a partner who had wanted more than his share of money.

“I think that’s all for now, Kate. I’ll call you if I need anything else. Please stay out of trouble, okay?”

“Believe it or not, I actually do try,” Kate said.

Wells smiled at her, patted her on the shoulder, and walked out of the interrogation room. He wondered if Thea was doing the same, because unfortunately, trouble was coming for her, and even worse, it would have to be by his own doing.

A pit of acid burned in Wells’ chest as he pulled up to Thea’s house. He didn’t want to be there doing what it was he had to do, but once again, it was his job. To seek justice and truth, even if it meant the truth was not what he wanted to believe in, and justice led him down the wrong path, specifically to the door of the woman he cared for.

He had let himself get too close to the people involved in this case, and now it was affecting his judgment. He knew this, and still, a part of him fought it off like an illness as he walked up the sidewalk to Thea’s house. He tried to detach himself and focus only on the job at hand. Thea wasn’t guilty, not yet, he reminded himself. He was only collecting data. Nothing more. He doubted she would see it like that, and that was the part that hurt him the most.

Wells knocked on her front door and took a step back. His heart hammered like a train piston. He heard footsteps inside. Thea opened the door. Her face brightened with surprise when she saw him, and then darkened with worry. She sensed something wrong and shifted her weight before putting on that beautiful, practiced smile of hers, the one she would use on customers at work. But now, the smile was for him.

“Hello, Detective. You don’t look happy to see me.”

He wanted to smile at her, but couldn’t. He tried to talk, but the words weren’t coming.

“It’s that bad?”

Wells let out his breath, sour and heated like his thoughts. “I’m afraid so.”

Thea’s smile faded completely. She opened the door. “Would you like to come in?”

He knew he shouldn’t, but his mouth listened to his heart. “Sure.”

Wells stepped inside, ignoring the screaming voices in his head, the ones that said to keep his emotions at bay, physical contact at a minimum, and his mind on the task at hand, but all he wanted to do was travel back to last night, before the phone call when it was just the two of them in the water beneath the night sky.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked.

“No.” Wells was afraid to walk any farther into her house. It was his first time there, and as much as he wanted to look around and get to know Thea better, her tastes and style, that she had a green thumb and a fondness for dream catchers, he had to stay focused.

She twisted around and folded her arms across her chest. “What’s going on?”

“You haven’t heard, because I asked Kate not to say anything to anyone.”

“Okay,” Thea replied, but in a tone of hesitation.

“I hope that you will appreciate how hard this is for me to ask you.”

“I take it this isn’t about a date?”

“I wish it were.” They locked eyes on each other for a moment, a moment that surged into Wells with the hot rush of want, then fear. He continued. “I need to collect the pants that you were wearing last night.”

“My pants?” Thea said.

“The tan ones with the blood stain on the hem.”

“All right, but why?”

“It’s about Suzanne Jones.”

Thea dropped her hands to the side and took a step back. Wells knew he didn’t need to finish his next sentence, because by the expression on her face, she knew what he was going to tell her, and it seemingly came as a genuine shock to her.

“Suzanne is dead,” Wells said. “The autopsy will be completed later this morning, but from the looks of it, she was murdered last night in her house.”

Darkness grew in Thea’s eyes like a winter’s dusk.

“Kate mentioned she was with you around 7:00 p.m. down at the river, but unless you have an alibi between 9:15 and 10:30 when I ran into you at Andre’s dock, you will have to come in for questioning. I’m so sorry, Thea.”

Thea pursed her lips together. “I’m sorry too. How is Kate taking all this?”

“I can’t say much, but better than expected.”

“I know what you want to ask me, so, off the record, friend to friend, ask me now?”

The floor swayed beneath Wells. Before he could stop himself, he asked her what he really wanted to ask. “Could we ever be more than friends?”

She hadn’t been expecting that, and neither had Wells. A real smile broke across her face, and she let out a laugh. “Well, not if you’re going to arrest me. I thought you were going to ask—”

“Stop,” Wells said. “Okay. Why were you down at Andre’s dock? Were you looking for something or hiding it?”

“I was looking for a valuable statue. I think it’s cursed, and is what killed Brooke, and now, probably Suzanne too.”

Wells nodded. He believed her. Thea might be secretive, might even steal when necessary, but she wasn’t a liar.

“I thought that if I kept it, everyone would be safe.”

“From the curse?”

“Yes.”

“I believe you, Thea, in all honesty, for all that it’s worth, but I still have to do my job.”

Thea blinked her eyes from him and headed into another room. Wells waited in the entryway, taking in more of her things, decorative pieces of wood on the walls, snowshoes in the corner, candles… He reeled himself back, thinking what he should be scanning for is anything potentially related to last night’s crime, doing his job as a detective.

Thea returned a few seconds later holding the tan pair of pants she’d been wearing.

“Washed?” Wells asked.

“No.” Thea walked to the door and reached for the knob. “For the record, the blood belongs to Kate.”

“From the protection spell?”

Thea looked away from him. “The spill of blood is necessary in protection rituals.”

As Wells stepped from the house, it took every bit of energy in him to not stop and grab Thea in his arms and kiss her.

“Just for the record, I didn’t want to do this.”

“I know. Good-bye, Jay.” She shut the door and he heard the lock click. He wondered if she stood behind the door fighting back the same emotions as he.

***

Kate sat at her desk in the back room of the PNGS, her mind not fastened on the magnetic shifting of the poles, but instead trying to bend itself around Suzanne’s death, the statue, the repeating patterns of four in the curse, and where she and David were headed in their relationship. With David, it seemed as though things had smoothed over, and maybe that was good enough for now. She looked at the compass on her desk…staring at another repeating pattern of four, North, South, East, West. The needle had been shifting even as she sat still.

“Do you see that?” Bruce asked, pointing to the compass on her desk. He sat across from her, compiling data from magnetic modeling software. “Yeah. The needle is moving south.”

Logically, the magnetic reversal explained everything. The storms that accounted for Brooke’s death and maybe the dead snakes too, coming up through the sewer, the freak accidents she had attributed to Rán, the Lichtenberg’s Flowers, and the heightened energy that coursed around her. It was all about magnetic reversal. Everything else was just coincidence.

Kate pulled the picture of the statue of Rán from her pocket and set it down next to her compass at East. The needle wavered to the side, back to north, then back again, as if trying to point to Rán. All coincidence, she reassured herself.

Stewart came into the room. He carried the glint of adventure in his eye whenever something big stirred. He sat on the corner of her desk. “You look like you’ve got answers, and I want to know them.”

“Well, either the magnetic poles will switch completely, triggering a massive global electronic reboot, or a vengeful goddess is about to unleash a deadly curse upon us all.”

Bruce emitted a laugh.

“Huh?” Stewart’s eyes went wide-eyed on her. He turned to Bruce. “Now that I have Kate’s interesting interpretation,” his eyes rolled to her, then back to Bruce, “what do you have to give me?”             

Bruce was still chuckling over Kate’s response. Little did he know how much she teetered between the two theories.  

“You’re not going to like my explanation any better,” Bruce said, smiling. He swiveled his chair around to them and began talking with the aid of his hands. “I think our galaxy is crossing over into the middle of the universe and is aligning with a million others. NASA has witnessed other planets in our solar system also switching gravitational poles too, so something is going on.” He circled his hands in the air. “The storms and the earthquakes are a forewarning of something larger on our planet’s horizon.”

“Yeah, I think I liked Kate’s idea better,” Stewart said.

“Okay, you know what a centrifuge is?” Bruce asked the two of them.

“It’s a machine that spins fluid samples in order to separate substances,” Stewart replied.

“Exactly,” Bruce said. “The Sedimentation Principle is when rotation is applied on a fixed axis. Denser substances will collect at the bottom of a test tube and the lighter matter at the top.”

Kate frowned. “You think the universe is undergoing particle separation?”

“Not necessarily a separation.” He leaned over and picked up the compass on Kate’s desk. “But I think our planet is crossing a gravity field and entering into a vortex. That might not only change the magnetism of our poles, but it might also affect orbits and rotations based on planetary mass and volume,” he threw his hands up, “and who knows what else?”

Kate turned to Stewart and nodded. “Sounds like the wrath of a storm goddess to me.”

“Jesus, and you two are the best I’ve got.” Stewart took a sip of coffee from a mug that said, “I didn’t ask for this.” He pointed at Bruce casually. “So what you’re saying is that the magnetic pole reversal, the storms, and the earthquakes are related to this…crossing the middle of the universe concept?” Stewart said it in a way that seemed to question Bruce’s intellectual stability.

“Einstein’s principle of relativity is only sixty years old. There is still so much that we don’t even know yet.”

“Well, regardless of whether we are entering a vortex or not,” Stewart said, now with a wide sweep of his hands, “we still need to have emergency contact flowcharts and evacuation procedures mailed to all official offices by the end of this week in case another storm hits, the big one.”

It was always about the “big one” with Stewart. The big volcanic eruption, the big earthquake-generating tsunami, the big spotlight on the news.

“Aaron’s already on it,” Kate replied.

“Great, then I’m off to lunch,” Stewart said.

“And I need to leave early again,” Kate added.

Stewart frowned at her.

“This time, it’s actually a police matter.”

“Coming from you, I’m not surprised,” Stewart said. “It’s not that hard to stay out of trouble, Kate. You should give it a try.”

“Not when it keeps following you,” she replied.

“No worries, Kate,” Bruce said. “Aaron and I’ll man the fort.” He glanced back at his screen and then to Stewart. “It’s only the universe falling apart. I think we can handle it.”

Stewart and Kate shared a smiling glance at one another as they walked out of the building, but once Kate stepped into her car, it wasn’t so funny anymore. It did feel like the universe was falling apart, and she was getting sucked down into the black hole.

***

Kate hadn’t talked to Thea since the rite, and clearly, many things had happened. She assumed Wells had already spoken with her about Suzanne, and Kate wanted to know what Thea had told him—what she thought about Suzanne’s death, what she thought might happen next. She knew Thea would believe it was the curse of Rán. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was a real person, like Wells suspected.

She dialed Thea’s number while sitting in her car at the PNGS building. Thea picked up.

”Hello?” She sounded distant, without emotion. Numbed.

“We have to talk.”

“Sounds like you need to talk.”

“Have you spoken with Wells yet?”

Thea didn’t respond.

“Can you meet me somewhere?” Kate asked.

“How about Mt. Tabor, in an hour?”

“I’ll be there, near the watershed.”

Kate hung up. Mt. Tabor, an extinct volcano in the middle of the city, was a twenty-minute drive away. She stopped for a quick sandwich and then headed over. At the top of the hill, there was a watershed with a fifteen-foot fence wrapped around a deep, blue-green pool of water. A sidewalk circled around it. Thea waited for her at the start of the sidewalk. Wind whipped her hair about her face. She appeared troubled, face pale, hair straight, and clothes baggy, not a common look for Thea.

Thea continued staring at the water as Kate walked up and stood beside her.

“I’m sorry about Suzanne,” Kate said. “I wanted to speak with you last night, but Wells wouldn’t let me.”

“I know.”

“What’d he say?”

“More like, what’d he take?” Thea turned to Kate. Her eyes were red.

“What do you mean?” Did she have the statue again…and Wells took it?

“There was blood on my pants. Wells noticed it and took them in for evidence.”

“What? He thinks you had something to do with Suzanne’s murder?”

Thea stepped around Kate, and hooked her fingers into the fence holes. She fixated on the water, as though she wanted to dive in, swim to the bottom, and never surface. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s your blood, anyway. He’ll discover that, but things have changed. The damage is done.”