A Touch of Murder

by Donna Raider

  She fell on her knees beside Mika. Mika’s left hand was mangled, hanging from her arm by shreds of skin, but she was alive.

  “Thank you, God,” Leah whispered as she reached for her wife.

  “No!” Sara’s cry ripped through the halls of the hospital. She had run into the room when she heard the gunfire.

  Only then did Leah realize that Mika was kneeling over Jennifer’s body. Most of the blood was coming from the young doctor’s wound.

  The struggle of Jennifer’s damaged heart to continue pumping caused blood to spurt out with each beat until it slowed to a faint gurgle. Sara pushed between her parents and clasped Jennifer’s hand. She placed her hand over the hole where her wife’s heart should have been. Sara watched in horror as blood continued to ooze slowly through her fingers.

  Jennifer clutched Sara's hand against her chest. The pain was unbearable. “I love you, Sara. I will always love you.” The coldness spread through Jennifer as her eyes closed. She could hear Sara's cries of agony. She tried to return to her love, but she knew she was slipping away. She saw the priest's face as Mika loomed over her. Thank God she was there to give her last rites. She knew she would be dead soon. The blood stopped. The heart had ceased beating.

  “Mika, do something,” Sara cried. “You can save her. Please, Mika, don’t let her die. I don't want to live without her.”

  Mika had never willed life back into anyone who was undoubtedly dead. Although God had never told her she couldn’t, she had always thought she shouldn’t do it. She watched as the blood from her mangled hand dripped into the gaping wound in Jennifer’s chest. Leah clutched her good hand and began to pray. Mika joined her as they prayed to their God.

  Mika watched in amazement as the blood from her hand healed the hole in Jennifer’s chest. First, the heart healed—she could see it begin to pump—then the wound closed. Jennifer’s eyes fluttered open. She gasped, pulling air into her lungs.

  Sara clutched her wife to her and wept loudly. “I thought I had lost you,” she cried.

  “So did I.” Jennifer grinned weakly.

  Leah grabbed a white towel and quickly wrapped it around Mika’s damaged hand. They would take care of it later.

  The hospital room filled with police officers. Mika’s security team was trying to explain to Carlie why they had lost track of the priest.

  Carlie checked the pockets of the dead gunman. Latimore Cruzar’s passport identified the killer. “Get him out of here,” Carlie growled. A hospital orderly stood in stunned silence, wondering where the gunman’s head was.

  Sara led Jennifer and her parents to the doctor’s office. She couldn’t keep her hands off her wife. She constantly hugged her, afraid to let her go. She smiled slightly when she realized her mother was doing the same with Mika.

  Leah carefully removed the towel from Mika’s hand. It had already healed. She blinked and the hand was wrapped in gauze. Her arm was supported by a sling.

  “What the hell just happened?” Carlie stormed into the office. She grabbed Jennifer by the shoulders and looked at her. “Are you okay?”

  Jennifer nodded. She didn’t know what happened. She had seen the intern’s gun aimed at Mika and had pushed the priest out of the way. Too late, Mika had tried to grab Jennifer and pull her down with her. The bullet had gone through Mika’s hand and struck Jennifer in the heart. It was the most painful thing she had ever experienced. Jennifer couldn’t breathe. One minute she knew she was dead and the next minute she felt better than she had ever felt in her life.

  Sara possessively kept her arm around her wife’s shoulders.

  “You were shot,” Carlie cried.

  “I was shot,” Mika said softly. She held up her bandaged hand. “The gunshot went through my hand and splattered blood and tissue onto Jennifer.”

  “We just finished dressing her wounds,” Leah continued. “Thanks to Jennifer, she will be okay.”

  Carlie held Leah’s gaze. She knew the woman was lying, but there was no evidence to prove it. Maybe these Catholics do have a direct line to God, she thought.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” The detective continued to glare at Leah. “I didn’t see you in the hallway. How did you get here so fast?”

  “I wasn’t in the hallway when I realized what was happening,” Leah answered truthfully.

  “At least we got your hit man.” Carlie turned to Mika. “Latimore Cruzar. Apparently, he shot Father Darius just to draw you here. What a bastard.”

  Leah sagged against her wife. “I need to go home, darling.”

  As they all exited Jennifer’s office, Riley Rabbit’s live newscast surprised them. The newswoman bombarded them with questions. The five looked from one to the other. No one spoke.

  “Tonight, we apprehended an international terrorist,” Carlie took control of the situation. “He was attempting to kill Priest Mika Cross. He was killed in the exchange of gunfire. That is all we know at this time.”

  ##

  Watcher dropped his burger as he listened to Riley Rabbit’s breaking news. He had been waiting for Lat to join him in the bar. He smiled as he realized the threat to Priest Mika and the Pope was over. He threw bills on the table for his check and ran out the door. “Come, Jax,” he called his dog.

  In his apartment, Watcher gathered all the evidence he had retained to frame Cruzar. He quickly made his way to Lat’s apartment and hid the items in a loose floorboard in Cruzar’s bedroom.

  He took the burner phone Cruzar used to contact his handler. He replaced it with his own burner cell that showed calls to the priests in Peru and calls from Iran and in Santa Fe.

  ##

  Detective Carlie Carlyle dropped her blood-soaked clothes into the bathtub. She turned on the walk-in shower as hot as she could tolerate and watched the blood wash from her body. Blood was caked under her fingernails and dried in her hair.

  She dried her long black hair and crawled into bed. She was bone tired. It had been a hell of a night.

  Scarlet stirred beside her. “Are you okay, sweetheart?” the actress mumbled.

  Carlie kissed her affectionately. “Go back to sleep, love. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”

  ##

  Mika held Leah in her arms as she vented. She beat her fist against Mika’s breast until she no longer had the strength to hit her. She collapsed against her and slid down her body, falling to her knees in front of Mika. Loud sobs racked her small frame.

  Mika was glad she didn’t resort to magic. She was so emotionally distraught, her fury was directed solely at her.

  Mika bent down and picked up her wife. She was trembling. She held her tightly against her breast as she carried her to their bedroom. “I hate you,” she whispered. “I hate you, Mika. I hate you for leaving me. That could have been your brains sprayed all over that hospital room instead of some criminal’s.”

  “But it wasn’t, darling,” Mika soothed her. She kissed the top of her head as she held her closely. “Everything is okay. We can stop looking over our shoulder all the time. Jennifer and Carlie saved my life.”

  “I hate you, Mika. I could have lost you. How could I ever live without you? You are the only true love I have ever known. You are my life.”

  “And you are mine, darling,” she soothed Leah. Mika rocked her in her arms like a baby until she fell into an exhausted sleep, haunted by visions of her wife on her knees, covered in blood.

  ##

  Mika awoke the next morning with Leah cradled in her arms. She had slept in the chair holding Leah on her lap just as she had done so many years ago before they were married.

  Leah kissed her lips lightly, then hungrily as she responded to her kiss. She moved her full, soft lips sensuously against Mika’s. There was no feeling in the world like the sensation of caressing Mika’s lips with hers. She needed to feel her, hold her, and taste her. Only God knew how much she loved her wife.

  “I still hate you,” she hissed, “but I need you so badly.”

  “The
babies,” Mika argued as her clothes disappeared.

  “You’re an angel, darling,” Leah murmured into Mika’s ear. “You can make this happen. I need it so much. Please, baby.”

  ##

  Carlie left Scarlett sleeping soundly. She called Holly and Benson to meet her at the address on Cruzar’s passport. She knew her captain would want her gun. She knew the drill when an officer killed a criminal. She wanted to wrap up this case before she was suspended, pending investigation.

  “Tear this place apart,” Carlie instructed her team, pulling on her gloves. “I want to find something—anything—that will tie this bastard to the other priests’ murders.”

  “Carlie,” Benson shouted from the bedroom. “I think I have something.”

  Carlie watched as Benson pulled a loose board from the floor. A black case was hidden beneath it. Benson filmed everything with his cellphone. Carlie unzipped the case and removed a pair of black-rimmed glasses with a scratch on the lens, Martin Tate’s glasses. She looked at the passports to Peru and Iran. There was a passport for Marshall Lincoln Crockett. There were airline tickets and hotel receipts from Iran. She thumbed through the used airline tickets to New Mexico and Florida. A bottle labeled monkshood and a list of names completed their evidence. All the names of the murdered priests were on the list. Obviously, the hit man had been working for someone.

  Carlie studied the list, written in perfect calligraphy. She had seen the handwriting before. She knew of only one person who wrote calligraphy so beautifully: Priest Mika Cross.

  All the names on the list had been scratched through. A single name, in different handwriting, remained: Monsignor Yiannis Abusir.

  Congratulations, Monsignor, Carlie thought. You are safe. We have the madman.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Watcher absentmindedly stroked Jax’s back. It was time to put his plan to eliminate Abusir into action.

  Watcher raised his eyes to meet the two dark men walking toward him.

  “Sean, your friend was killed last night,” Hussein said. “That dyke detective shot him. We should kill her.”

  “We have bigger fish to fry.” Watcher grinned maliciously. He hoped the men would trust him as they had Lat.

  “Yes,” Hussein hissed, “the church bombing.”

  Hussein and Sahab were members of the Islamic terrorist group Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Watcher knew they had personally murdered several Catholic families just for the fun of it. He managed to foil their attempted bombing of St. Peter’s Catholic Church by offering them a plan to kill the Pope.

  “We are still planning on killing Cross, right?” Sahab had been obsessed with killing Priest Cross ever since the priest’s daughter had married the female doctor. “Women like that should belong to men,” he had raged, “not to each other.”

  “Cross is just a minnow swimming with the great white.” Watcher frowned. “We can’t let her distract us from our ultimate goal. Lat gave his life to kill Cross, now we must accomplish the only truly important goal: the death of the Pope.”

  The men nodded in agreement.

  ##

  Watcher removed a beer from his refrigerator and sat down beside Jax on the sofa. He scrolled through the calls and texts on Lat’s phone. They were all to and from one number. He took a deep drink from the bottle then pushed the button to dial the number.

  After three rings, the phone was answered. There was silence on the other end.

  “My name is Sean Bonner,” Watcher said in his best Irish accent. “I work with Latimore Cruzar. Lat is dead.”

  The silence on the other end was deafening.

  “I plan to complete the assignment for which Lat gave his life, but I need help.”

  “You want money?” a voice finally said.

  “No,” Watcher growled. “Revenge.”

  After a long silence, the voice said, “What do you need from me?”

  “Access,” Watcher said. “How do I get access to the Pope?”

  “We will arrive in New York on Thursday at four in the afternoon,” the voice informed him. “I will be staying in the Baccarat Suite at the Baccarat Hotel. Find a way to be in the suite before I arrive. After my arrival, the security will be impenetrable.”

  “Will the Pope be with you?” Watcher asked.

  “No!” The phone went dead.

  ##

  “Holy Father,” Mika said with a bow, “may I present my wife, Leah.”

  Leah had never seen such pomp and circumstances. Even as queen of her realm, she had never witnessed such security and ritual.

  She bowed but was glad the Pope hadn’t extended his ring to her.

  The Pope studied the beautiful, arrogant woman for a long time. He understood why Priest Mika had risked everything for her. She was glorious. She was a perfect match for the beautiful priest.

  “Your Holiness.” Leah smiled her most genuine smile. “It is a pleasure to see you.”

  “Thank you for your hospitality.” The Pope smiled.

  ##

  Detective Carlyle double-checked her security details. The Baccarat Hotel was surrounded by agents. The entire hotel had been shut down to the public in order to accommodate the Pope and his entourage. Men were stationed on every floor at every elevator. No one made a move in the hotel without her knowledge.

  As far as the world was concerned, the Pope was in the Baccarat Suite, under extensive security. The truth was that only Abusir was in the suite. The Pope was in the penthouse of the Cross Towers.

  Mika was still concerned that an attempt might be made on the Pope’s life. He had convinced Carlie to put the Pope in the Towers. Using Abusir as a decoy had worked beautifully. Even Homeland Security thought they were guarding the Pope.

  The Pope dined with the Cross family. He enjoyed the exchange with the Cross children and was astounded at their varied interests and incredible intelligence. They were beautiful replicas of their parents.

  For the first time in a long time, the Pope felt safe. He knew no harm would befall him in the care of priest Mika and her wife.

  ##

  Monsignor Yiannis Abusir peered around his suite. There was no sign of the man he had told to meet him. He pulled the burner phone from his inside breast pocket and pushed the number to call. The phone rang inside his own suite.

  He turned around as a man dressed in a room-service uniform stepped out from behind the heavy drapes. “Ah, I see you were able to accomplish the task.”

  “Yes.” Watcher nodded.

  “I was sorry to learn of Latimore’s demise.” Abusir smirked. “Was he your friend?”

  “We worked together,” Watcher said. “Where is the Pope?”

  “That information has been kept from even me,” Abusir huffed.

  “Obviously, you can’t help me,” Watcher snarled.

  “Yes, I can,” Abusir insisted. “I have his complete itinerary. I know his every move. We need to go over it and decide where he is most vulnerable.”

  “Everyone thinks the Pope is here.” Watcher frowned. “They are using you as a decoy, aren’t they?”

  “Yes.” Abusir grinned maliciously, “I am expendable. That is what makes this so easy. I have all the security. Wherever the Pope is, he lacks the protection I have.”

  “How do I get to the Pope?” Watcher said.

  “In the morning,” Abusir said with a smile, “we will switch places. As we go to the breakfast meeting, I will arrive in the papal limousine. The Pope’s unmarked limo will pull in behind mine. All security will shift to him. Just before that happens, he will be unprotected.”

  “How vulnerable is the limo?” Watcher grimaced.

  “It is indestructible.” Abusir shook his head. “It is the equivalent of an armored tank.”

  “How long do I have?” Watcher asked.

  “Three minutes at the most,” Abusir growled. “Don’t miss. How do you plan to proceed?”

  “The less you know, the better.” Watcher shrugged. “We will accomplish our goal. Is there
any way I can be the driver of your limo?”

  Abusir scribbled information on the hotel notepad. “This is the room number and name of my driver. A man as cunning as you should be able to find a way to take his place.”

  “Who will be riding in the limo with you?” Watcher asked.

  “No one,” Abusir snorted.

  ##

  Pulling on his leather gloves, Watcher observed the two terrorists.

  “This is going to be a piece of cake.” Hussein grinned as he turned over the canister in his hands. He pitched it to his buddy Sahab. They had obtained the deadly gas from a local arms dealer.

  “Careful.” Watcher took the container of Sarin gas from the terrorist. “One sniff of this and you two will be history.”

  Watcher placed the Sarin gas container in a plastic bag and sealed it, carefully preserving the fingerprints the two had left on the canister.

  Watcher pulled out a map of the area around the building where the Pope would be dining with Catholic leaders from across the nation.

  “I have made arrangements to drive the Pope’s limo. I will open the canister and lock the Pope in the car,” Watcher explained. “You two will be waiting for me here at this intersection. I will casually walk to your car and we will be home free.

  “Let’s go get dinner and some beer.” Watcher laughed. “All this work has made me hungry.”

  ##

  Abusir smiled at his reflection in the mirror. After today, he would be rid of the People’s Pope. There were several men—including himself—waiting in the wings who were sterner and more demanding of their followers.

  He was dressed in the Pope’s clothing, carrying off his impersonation perfectly. Security teams engulfed him, allowing no one to see his face.

  Amid much bowing and scraping, he entered the limousine. He recognized his driver as the man he had met last night. He briefly wondered if the man had killed his driver.

  “I see you are a man of your word,” Abusir spoke to the driver. “Perhaps you would like to take Latimore’s job. I will always have use for a man with your talents.”