The Immortals

by J. T. Ellison

  “Yes, they will. I have an idea, though. I think it’s time we circumvent Fairfax and do this ourselves.”

  “Charlotte, we can’t do that. It’s their case. We’re just consulting, at their pleasure. We push too hard and Goldman will have us off this case in a heartbeat. Don’t think he won’t, he’s getting frustrated.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “Sorry, you lost me.”

  She sighed, hard and impatient, breath coming out in a huff. “Think about it, Baldwin. We have access to the blood evidence.”

  He didn’t like where this was going. All his warning bells began to ring.

  “Yes, we do, but what of it?”

  “All we need is a few drops. A few drops on a handkerchief. We conduct another search of the house, and voilà, there’s the evidence we need to put this bastard behind bars forever.”

  Baldwin’s breath caught in his throat. “Charlotte. You’re talking about—”

  She whirled on him, face contorted. He’d never seen her angry, and the sight of it unnerved him.

  “I know. I know! But what else can we do? We have to take matters into our own hands. No one would ever know. And think of all the lives we’d save, of the closure we could give to the families. It’s for the greater good.”

  She was inches from him now, the fire coming off her body in waves. Righteous indignation didn’t look good on her. He felt every muscle in his body tense, and realized he wanted to hit her. He’d never felt such a pure, fine rage flowing through his veins.

  She grasped his hand and he jerked back as if burned. She ignored that, reached for him again. He froze as her arms went around his body. She began her succubus dance, the moves depending on the siren call in his blood to rise up and meet her. He didn’t feel it. She’d killed whatever feeling he’d had for her, all with one stupid thought spoken aloud.

  This was not what he wanted. This was wrong, every bit of it. He’d always known that, but this, this open ploy at seduction after suggesting they break every code of ethics he stood for, sickened him. He stepped back and grabbed her arms, holding her away from his body. He couldn’t help himself, he gave her a little shake, trying to get her full attention. He stared hard into her eyes, making sure she understood him very clearly.

  “You listen to me. I’m going to forget you said this. I’m going to look the other way while you gather your things and get the hell out of my apartment. I’m taking you off this case. You are not to get anywhere near Harold Arlen. Do you understand?”

  Charlotte’s lips tightened and she wrenched her arms from his grasp. “Fuck you, Baldwin. You can’t tell me what to do. You want me just as much as I want you. You can’t deny that. And you know in your heart that this is the right path.”

  “You couldn’t be more wrong. Get out, Charlotte. Get out now.”

  He was yelling, and it took all his effort to ratchet it back down and calm his voice.

  She stared at him, the hurt in her amber eyes palpable and deadly.

  “Don’t you dare try to throw me out of your life, Baldwin. I will make sure you regret it.”

  “Charlotte, threats? Is that how you keep people in your bed, under your spell?”

  “I love you.” She started to cry, the tears flowing down her face, dripping off her chin. She didn’t try to hide it, stood proudly, back straight, and looked him in the eye.

  “I said I love you. You can’t tell me you don’t feel the same way.”

  Baldwin just shook his head. He didn’t take her threats seriously, really, what could she do? Yes, they’d been having an ill-advised affair, but it wasn’t the first at the Bureau, nor would it be the last. He’d get a nasty slap on the wrist, but that was all.

  He dropped her arms and walked a few feet away. Charlotte continued to cry, but her eyes were wary now. He could see the realization in them, then the fury began to build.

  He turned away and said, “I don’t love you.”

  “Well, we’ve got quite a problem on our hands. Because I’m pregnant.”

  He froze, then turned back to her slowly.

  “What did you say?”

  She set her chin, stared him right in the eyes. “I’m pregnant.”

  He couldn’t identify the emotions running through him. Bullshit. She was bullshitting him. But something in her face told him she wasn’t.

  “Is it mine?” he asked.

  “Fuck you, Baldwin. Fuck. You.” Big, sloppy tears coursed down her face. “How could you say that?”

  “It’s too early to tell. We’ve only been together a few weeks.”

  She whirled away and went to her handbag. She dug inside for a moment, then turned and threw something at him. He caught it in midair—a pregnancy test, with two pink lines.

  Son of a bitch.

  She’d gathered up some of her pride—her face was frozen, all emotions hid away.

  “I’ll abort it. You obviously don’t want it.”

  “Charlotte, I—”

  “Go to hell, John Baldwin. You just go to hell.”

  In a flurry of invectives and flying red hair, Charlotte decamped from the apartment. He didn’t go after her. Too much to absorb. He shut the door behind her and leaned against it with a sigh. God, what had he done? What had he gotten himself into?

  Pregnant.

  Oh, my God. He’d gotten her pregnant.

  And that was only half the problem. For Christ’s sake, she’d suggested planting evidence.

  He was at an absolute loss.

  He slid down the door onto the apartment floor, head in his hands. What to do? He took a few deep breaths. That was better.

  The first step would be to go to Garrett Woods and explain that he couldn’t have her on the team anymore. He’d gauge whether he needed to tell the whole story once he was in the moment; it was quite possible that Garrett would simply take him at his word and have her moved. If not, he’d have to suck it up and take his punishment like a man. It was his fault, after all. He’d been thinking with the little head.

  Should he marry her? Stop her from having the abortion, marry her and have the kid? He never saw himself as a father. Of course, he’d never gotten anyone pregnant before, either.

  His cell phone started to ring but he ignored it. He struggled to his feet, gritting his teeth. He felt such heaviness surrounding him, the pressure of the case, the chaos of Charlotte’s idiocy, the specter of an unplanned child…

  It was too much. He went into the kitchen, splashed cold water on his face, then went to the living room and turned on the television. A breaking news alert flashed red on the screen, and he felt his heart sink. The anchor had tears in her eyes as she delivered the statement.

  “The Clockwork Killer has struck again.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Baldwin hurled the remote across the room. It crashed against the wall in several pieces, the perfect allegory for his life. Broken pieces. Little girls scattered like seed corn in the forest. A suspect with no evidence to tie him to the crimes. And a demented profiler hell-bent on her own personal destruction. His life, turned upside down. How many more disasters could this day bring?

  Charlotte

  Charlotte sat in her car, white and shaking. She couldn’t believe Baldwin had questioned her. Is it mine? That bastard. How could he think otherwise? He’d been fucking her every chance he got for over two weeks. How dare he be so callous? How dare he? After all she’d given him. After what she’d said.

  She did love him, whether he believed it or not. Her love may not manifest itself in the ways others could interpret, but it was love, nonetheless. She’d never given herself so totally to a man before. Look where it had gotten her. Alone and pregnant, in her car, crying.

  She wiped her face angrily. Crying would solve nothing.

  He was just scared. That’s all. She shouldn’t have told him her plan, not until afterward. She should have eased him into this, told him about the baby, let him be happy first. Then he’d un
derstand her plan was flawless, and the right thing to do.

  She put the car into gear. She had so many things to do today. She’d prove herself to him, and he would come back. He would. She would make sure of it.

  Fifty-One

  Nashville

  9:00 p.m.

  Taylor was in the conference room at the CJC, getting briefed about a boy named Schuyler Merritt, who Susan Norwood and Juri Edvin called Raven. The pieces were all coming together, fast and furious. They’d sent the Howells home—there was nothing more Theo could help with tonight. The Norwoods had been dismissed, as well. Susan had been escorted to booking after telling Taylor the whole story. About how the four of them had split the crime scenes between them, gone into the homes of their enemies, held guns to their heads, forced them to take the poisoned drugs. About how Raven and Fane had perverted their love and made a movie of their actions. About their practice of witchcraft and vampirism.

  Lincoln had worked fast, once he had a name to work with. Schuyler Merritt’s history spilled out onto the table with reckless abandon—somewhere, something inside the words might give a clue to where the boy might be.

  “I called the reform school he was attending in Virginia. They say he ran away three weeks ago. His parents were notified—by phone and by mail. They sent back a letter saying they were going to homeschool him. The school happily washed their hands of him. Apparently, he’d been quite a handful.”

  The fax machine in the conference room had been whirring for thirty minutes. The school was faxing Schuyler’s records, including his psych reports. The pages fed out of the machine one after another, regimented as any army, detailing incident after incident in the few short months Schuyler had been a resident with them.

  Taylor glanced through those pages, wondering how a boy could end up so troubled. Not that she hadn’t seen it before, many times. But Schuyler Merritt seemed worse than most.

  “Any word on the location of the mother, Jackie Atilio, yet?”

  “No, and we can’t find Schuyler senior, either.”

  Taylor turned to McKenzie. “Think he got the parents out of the way?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. A cadaver dog is searching the Atilio house and yard, right?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t heard about a hit.”

  “Might want to send them over to the father’s place, too.”

  “They’ve got instructions to go there next. Has anyone been able to place a last-known on either of the parents?”

  “Marcus got through to Atilio’s husband’s commander. He’s been on a training mission and out of touch for two weeks, at least. There’s no way he could have talked to her.”

  “Okay. Keep on it.”

  Taylor flipped over the re-creation of Schuyler’s reform school jacket, the faxed pages three-hole punched and put into a binder to keep them from getting lost. The pictures showed a thin boy, vanilla-blond hair cropped short, blue eyes that bristled with anger. His lips were pressed together, the point of his collars resonating with the sharpness of his chin.

  The reports from the school were crammed full of incidents, ranging from practicing witchcraft to bullying to homosexual liaisons. The psychologists at the school had no control over him. Regardless of their efforts to reach him he retreated, breaking open now and again to shower them all with righteous sparks of fury. When he’d run away from the facility in the dead of night, there’d been a collective sigh of relief from the schools’ administrators. The records also showed that he was grieving the loss of his sister. Separation from her seemed to be the most difficult part of his life.

  The girl was the key, according to Susan and Juri. Everything Raven did, he did for his Fane.

  Taylor had reinterviewed Susan and Juri, making sure the details about their fourth were as clear and real as possible. They couldn’t give her information that was helpful. They didn’t know where he was. They didn’t know where he’d go. They didn’t know squat. Taylor knew they were lying; they held some sort of mythical reverence for the boy they called Raven. But she didn’t know how to reach them. She had nothing to dangle, no bait. They were both being charged with murder, and there was no way in hell she was going to let one of them plead.

  Fane proved to be of little help, as well. She’d taken up some sort of low chant, was sitting ramrod straight mumbling to herself. It was getting late. Taylor went ahead and had the three of them booked into the jail for the night.

  Frustrated, she finally put a call into Ariadne, but there was no answer. She left her a message, asked her to call in. Taylor was wholly unfamiliar with this world, and she had a feeling Ariadne could help. She was sorry she’d sent her away.

  She was pacing the conference room when her phone rang.

  “Taylor?” a breathless voice, Taylor recognized it as Marcus, though the caller ID wasn’t his.

  “What is it, man? You sound all out of breath.”

  “I’m at Schuyler Merritt’s house. I think he was here.”

  “You do? How recently?”

  “Very. The Merritt house is on fire.”

  The moon was hanging low in the sky, a perfect crescent, the pinprick of light that was the planet Venus sparkling at its tip. The evening was clear, crisp and chilly, the air sharp in Taylor’s nose.

  She and McKenzie talked a little as they drove into Green Hills, the night streets of Nashville flashing by.

  “What do you think he’s going to do next, McKenzie?”

  “I don’t know. He might be on the run, especially when he realizes his compatriots are behind bars. He could stand and fight. I just don’t know.”

  “Is he finished? That’s what I want to find out.”

  He didn’t answer, just looked out the window. They were on Twenty-first Avenue, the streets remarkably clear for this time of night. Postholiday letdown; the city was sleepy after their long night on Friday.

  “You called Ariadne?” he asked.

  “I tried. She didn’t answer.”

  “We need to keep an eye on her. She might take it upon herself to try and track him down. You blew her off earlier, and she probably doesn’t trust you anymore.”

  “Listen, I know you don’t put any stock in the occult, McKenzie.”

  “I don’t. But I know enough about it to recognize that some people do. Look at these kids. They’ve been practicing witchcraft. They believe. They think this boy Raven has put a spell on them so they can’t talk. It’s not that they don’t want to talk, they do. But they honestly believe that they can’t. It’s fascinating, the phenomenon. Practically Stockholm syndrome.”

  “You think he has that kind of power over them?”

  “I do. Over the girl, Fane, at the very least. They were all in on this plan, all four of them. I think Raven took it upon himself to hurt Ember’s brother, and that’s where it all went south. He might have thought she wanted him to, but it was a miscalculation anyway. He overstepped his bounds, found the one thing that would break their group apart. You heard what they said about the sex rites. Fane and Raven have been sleeping together. There’s going to be a strong link between them. Incestuous relationships like that are sometimes overwhelming for those in them. She loves him because he’s her family and she’s in love with him as a man. She’s not grown-up enough to separate out love from sex. He makes her feel good and makes her feel ashamed of that at the same time. I’ll bet money that the dad was abusing her, too. She might have turned to her brother for protection.”

  “She doesn’t seem like much of an innocent to me.”

  “Innocent, no. But abused, yes. Looking for love any way she can get it? I assume the boy was mistreated too—look at his bisexual tendencies. He equates sex with love. In someone this young, that pathology is oftentimes learned.”

  Taylor turned on Woodmont, then turned left onto Hilldale Drive. The Merritt house was only a few blocks in, she could already smell the smoke. The usual fall scent of Nashville—burning leaves and rotting grass—was overlaid with the heady stench of ga
soline.

  The house was unmistakable—black, sooty smears around the front door, a crowd of vehicles, some with lights flashing, others with doors flung wide. The ladder truck was regrouping, the firefighters rolling hoses, the fire hydrant being set back to rights. They’d contained the blaze quickly, gotten it under control and extinguished. Taylor knew how hard their fire department worked, was glad that they’d been so responsive tonight.

  She and Simari arrived at the Merritts at the same time, from two different directions. She let Simari pull over, waited for her to secure Max. Marcus was waiting for them, brown eyes haunted.

  “What’s up?” Taylor asked.

  The fire chief was behind Marcus, back to her. When he heard her voice, he turned with a huge smile. He took the few steps over to her, shook her hand. She could feel the small bones in her fingers scrunch together.

  “Lieutenant Jackson. Helluva night. You been out here all this time?”

  “No, sir. We just got here. Chief Andrew Rove, meet Detective Renn McKenzie, my newest acquisition.”

  The chief stuck out a meaty hand, grimy with soot. McKenzie shook it, smiled and then surreptitiously wiped his hand on the side of his jeans. Rove looked like a bear in his full fire suit, his hat perched precariously on his round head. His small blueberry-colored eyes were bloodshot and tired, but his smile was sincere.

  “Glad to have you, son. We’re finished in there. We’ve been working the place over with a fine-tooth comb. Definitely arson. Your crime-scene techs are in there, gatherin’ evidence.”

  “Great. Any ideas how the fire started?”

  “No doubt that gasoline was the accelerant. Ole Sniff found the point of origin where the gasoline had been originally spilled. Started in the basement. Amateur hour. Whoever did this thought the whole house would go up if the fire started low. May have been in a hurry, may have just been lazy.”

  He turned to McKenzie. “Ole Sniff’s our combustible gas detector. Best tracker in the business, can tell any kind of accelerant that’s been used. But we did find an empty gas can. If there’s more, we’ll get it.”