Blood of Saints

by Maegan Beaumont

  “It’s Wade Bauer’s murder box,” she said, her gaze drifting across the avalanche of filth that stretched in front of her. “He was active for nearly two decades and is thought to be responsible for the deaths of nineteen women. The evidence in this box raises that number considerably.”

  Santos crossed the room, Alvarez trailing behind him, arms finally unlocked and hanging loose. He was carrying files. The same four files he’d been carrying yesterday—she could see the names across their tabs.

  Santos pulled a pen out of his coat pocket to poke through the pile. “None of this is cataloged.” He turned to look at her. “Where did you get this?”

  “A reporter bought it off Bauer’s wife for two thousand dollars,” she said, skirting dangerously close to the truth. “After an uncharacteristic crisis of conscience, he turned it over to me … and before you ask, I’ve had it for less than twenty-four hours, so, no—I wasn’t hiding it from you.”

  “Has any of it been dusted for prints?” Alvarez said, leaning across the table to read the name off the front of one of the paper-sleeved discs. “Run through forensics?”

  “What’s the point?” She shook her head. “We know who it belonged to. It was kept in a storage locker for the better part of two decades—a storage locker no one but Bauer knew about until his wife got notice that it was going to auction for nonpayment.”

  “I appreciate the share, Agent Vance,” Santos said, lifting one of the journals with his pen to get a look at the one under it. “But I don’t understand what any of this has to do with our case.”

  She stood, circling the table to lift a file folder off the table. It was thick, secured with a sturdy binder clip. She slapped it down on the table in front of him. “Love letters from our current whackjob to Bauer. Bauer wrote back. A lot.”

  The confusion deepened, mingling with an odd sort of understanding. “You think—”

  She shook her head. “I know. Wade Bauer was here,” she said, reaching over to lift the journal she’d been reading from where she’d dropped it. “And he taught our killer everything he knew.” She put the journal on top of the pile and watched Santos’s face drain of color when he read the name written across the front of it.

  Rachel

  “Is he in here?” he said, snatching it up to rifle through its pages. “Does Bauer mention Vega by name? If he does we can—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Wade’s careful. He never uses his partner’s given name. He probably didn’t even know it. His partner called himself Nulo.”

  “Nulo?” Santos shook his head. “Not familiar. Alvarez?”

  Alvarez stared at the table’s contents in disbelief. “No. Sounds like a street name.”

  Sabrina cleared her throat before continuing. “As far as I can find, there’s no record of who this kid really is. The closest I got was the PO box used to send and receive the letters between him and Bauer, and that was leased and paid for by Graciella Lopez.”

  “That’s why you went so hard at Vega.” Understanding bloomed across Santos’s face. “You think she took out the box for him.”

  She let Santos recover from the evidence bomb she’d just dropped, turning her gaze toward Alvarez. “You’ve been carrying the same four files all day,” she said, her eyes drifting down to the collection of files clutched in his hand. “Why is that?”

  “Well …” Alvarez gave her a sheepish look. “What you said the other day at Rachel Meeks’s crime scene got me thinking,” he said, smacking the stack of files against his fist. “Every victim was alive because they’d received some sort of miracle. That’s the—are you Catholic?”

  She shook her head.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, that sheepish look intensifying into full-fledged embarrassment, tinged with excitement. He was on to something. “Well, we’re big on saints. We’ve got one for just about everything. And they aren’t born. They’re made.”

  She looked down at the stack of files in his hand. Tried to grasp the string he was dangling. “You think this guy is making saints.” It wasn’t a question and she didn’t phrase it like one. “What does that have to do with them?” she said, jabbing a finger in his direction.

  “Everyone in these files was in dire need of a miracle.” He tossed the first folder onto the table between them. “Sara Pike was born barren. She couldn’t have kids, no matter how many fertility experts she saw. Ed Sherman was paralyzed from the chest down in Iraq. Trudy Hayes was blinded in a boating accident. All of them disappeared a day or two before our victims but, unlike our vics, they’ve never been found.”

  Before she had a chance to digest what Alvarez just said, Church popped her head through the doorway. “I’ve been going through missing persons. I think I found something.”

  Fifty-four

  “Her name was Maggie Travers,” Church said, holding up the missing person’s report she’d dug out from the backlog. “Twenty-three-year old vet tech from El Centro, California.”

  Thirsty for new information, Sabrina lunged for the file, pulling it from her partner’s hand. “El Centro?” she said, thumbing it open. On top was what must’ve been a recent photo of Travers. She was pretty—what her grandmother would have called handsome. Dishwater blond hair, dark hazel eyes. A smile that somehow managed to be both confident and unassuming. Church was right. The young woman in the picture was the same woman found in the ravine.

  “Yeah.” Church reached into the file and pulled out the typed report. “Her mom reported her missing yesterday when she didn’t come home from a dinner date on the nineteenth.”

  “That was five days ago,” Alvarez said, raising his head from a journal he’d been combing through. He closed it and traded it for a nearby manila folder, this one holding what looked like lab reports. The insignia on the front of it wasn’t one she recognized. “Why’d her mother wait so long to report her missing?”

  “She didn’t,” Church said, her mouth flattening into grim line. “She called El Centro PD the morning of the twentieth when she woke up and found her daughter’s bed not slept in.”

  Sounds familiar, don’t it, darlin’?

  “That’s the same thing that happened with Rachel Meeks back in 2000,” she said, staring at the picture in her hand. “He lures them in. Makes them think he’s Prince Charming. A Good Samaritan. Whatever it is they’re looking for. He becomes what they need most. A savior.”

  You should see our boy operate. He’s a natural. Taught him everything I know.

  “Yeah, but if Vega is our killer,” Santos said, shaking his head, “there was no way he charmed Rachel Meeks in order to kidnap her this time. She already knew what kind of monster he was.”

  He was right. Vega was suspected of raping and torturing Meeks for days before she’d been found in 2000. There was no way she’d put herself in the position to have that repeated.

  “What I don’t get is why,” Church said. “I mean, was his targeting her a simple case of unfinished business or did she threaten to finally expose him?”

  “Maybe both,” Sabrina said, placing the photograph of Maggie Travers back in the file. “Assuming our guy is Vega, he would’ve had a lot to lose if she finally spoke out.” She thought about the circumstances surrounding Rachel’s disappearance. What she endured. “Or maybe, to him, her survival was a miracle.”

  “I need some coffee if I’m gonna keep looking through this shit.” Alvarez closed the folder before tossing it on to the table. “Anyone else need anything?” he said as he stood.

  “Chamomile tea, if you have it,” Church said, glancing up from the journal in her lap. Alvarez flashed her the okay sign on his way out the door.

  “So now what?” Santos said, his eyes tired and shoulders slumped.

  Sabrina could feel him looking at her. Waiting for her to tell him what to do. To find who they were looking for. She was the supposed hot-shot profiler. Sh
e was supposed to know what she was doing.

  Think he knows what a fraud you are, darlin’?

  “All right,” she said standing up. “We know this Nulo was busy in 2000. Murdered a prostitute in April. Raped and kidnapped Rachel Meeks in June. That’s our starting point.” She looked at Church. “You and Alvarez are going to go over backlogged cases. Look for any that fit our guy’s MO. Since we now know that he’s not afraid to stray outside his immediate kill zone, I want you to stretch your search parameters from San Diego to El Paso. The more potential victims, the more potential witnesses. Check to see if any of it links up to Paul Vega’s movements.”

  She got halfway to the door before Church stopped her. “Where are you going?”

  Sabrina smiled, knowing her partner couldn’t stop her while Santos was within earshot. “Confession,” she said, on her way out the door.

  Fifty-five

  International Airspace, Northern Atlantic Ocean

  As soon as he got Lark set up with his latest assignment, Ben moved to the back of the plane. In the rows ahead he could see Gail nodding off in her seat, that blasted planner opened and about ready to slide off her lap.

  Ben unzipped the large pocket in the lining of his jacket and pulled out the file he’d liberated from his father’s desk.

  Using his knife, he slit the seal. Inside were copies of Reese’s flight plans. Surveillance photos of Sabrina’s family. Her friends. There was one of her brother, Jason, out with a group of friends. Her sister, Riley, jogging in the park. Valerie and her daughter, Lucy, playing in the park. Sabrina’s old partner, Strickland, standing outside a crime scene. Mandy Black in the parking lot of the Marin County morgue. They were recent, taken within the last few days. Attached to each were detailed reports. Their schedules. Their habits. Everything someone tasked with killing them would need to get the job done.

  Something peeked out at him from the back of the file. Something that dropped his gut to the tops of his hand-stitched Italian leather shoes.

  Topographical maps of Oregon. Washington. Idaho … and Montana. Each of them were marked with fat red circles. A few of the circles had been Xed out. His father didn’t just believe that Michael was alive; he was actively searching for him. And if the maps were any indication, he had a pretty good idea of where to find him.

  Ben looked up from the file in his lap, toward the front of the plane. He could see his latest acquisition, the top of his dark golden head peeking up over the back of his seat. He was still, like he’d been when he’d found him. Like he was sleeping. But Ben knew he wasn’t sleeping.

  He was waiting.

  Closing the file, he slipped it back into the hidden pocket in his jacket and stood, making his way forward.

  “Hey, Naked Guy,” he said, sliding into the seat across from Dunn. “Mind if I call you Noah?”

  A slow smile spread across Dunn’s face and he shrugged. “Truthfully, Naked Guy was sort of growing on me,” he said in a voice full of gravel, making Ben wonder how long it’d been since he’d actually spoken out loud.

  Ben let out a short bark of laughter. Across the aisle, Gail stirred, the planner slipping down her lap. He stood, bent over, and caught it before it hit the floor. On its open pages he could see his life, captured in thin-lined squares. Every minute of it planned out, used up before he’d even had a chance to live it.

  Closing the book, Ben slipped it under Gail’s seat before settling back into his own. As he did, he caught Dunn openly studying him, a slight smile on his face. “You’re different than I thought you’d be. Not how Mason described you at all.”

  The hair on the back of his neck stood straight up. “What did you just say?”

  “Mason—your brother. He always talked about how …” Dunn cleared the dust from his throat. “Normal you were. Removed from all this shit. I think he’d be pretty disappointed to know you finally let your dad get hold of you.”

  “Mason can’t be disappointed,” he heard himself say. “Because he’s dead.”

  Something close to sadness slipped across Dunn’s face before he was able to brush it off. “I know. I’m sorry,” he said to the empty seat in front of him.

  “Why?” he said, his tone a bit too harsh. “Are you the one who killed him?”

  Now Dunn’s head snapped around, aimed in his direction, pinning him with a hard look. “No.”

  Ben forced himself to relax, slumping his shoulders into the seat. “Then you have nothing to be sorry for,” he said, smiling. “How did you know him?”

  Dunn looked away again. “We were friends.”

  There was more to it than that, but Ben didn’t press. There were more important matters at hand than his dead brother. “What about Michael O’Shea? Were you friends with him too? Is that why he ignored my father’s kill order and brought you in alive?”

  “What does it matter?” Like before, the mention of Michael’s name stiffened Dunn’s spine. “From what I’ve heard, O’Shea is as dead as your brother.”

  “You’ve been in a box for four years. Where would you’ve heard that?” he said, even though he had a fairly good idea. His father was the only one with access to Dunn. Ben could imagine him standing on the other side of Dunn’s box, telling him all about the things he was powerless to change or stop from happening.

  Dunn grinned at him like he’d read his mind but he didn’t answer.

  “Do you hate my father?”

  “Yes.” Dunn didn’t hesitate, delivering the one-word answer with enough force that he could physically feel it.

  “Is that why he stuck you in a box?”

  “Your father stuck me in a box because he knew it was the only thing outside of a bullet that would keep me from killing him.”

  “So, why didn’t he just kill you?” he said, pushing in, question by question. “Michael brought you in against orders, but it’s not like there’s a shortage of people willing to do what he wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t know.” Dunn shrugged. “Next time you see him, maybe you should ask him yourself.”

  “You used to be one of them—all wagging tail and lolling tongue when my father snapped his fingers,” Ben said, giving as good as he got. “The way I hear it, you were his number-one Fido. What happened?”

  The question hardened Dunn’s jaw, clouding his eyes. “Your father took things from me I can never get back.”

  Ben knew that look. Understood the kind of loss that shaped it. “Your family.”

  Dunn smiled again, a quick baring of teeth that looked more predatory than amused. “Enough questions for today, Little Brother,” he said before settling into the seat. He closed his eyes and went still again, his face smoothing out into an emotionless mask.

  “I’ve got one more,” Ben said quietly, watching Dunn’s expression. As far as he could tell, the guy couldn’t even hear him. “If I asked you to, would you kill my father?”

  The corner of Dunn’s mouth twitched a fraction of an inch. “Little Brother, I am going to kill your father,” he said without even bothering to open his eyes. “Whether you ask me to or not.”

  Fifty-six

  Yuma, Arizona

  Rather than walk through the lobby, Sabrina took the back stairs that fed directly into the department’s employee parking garage. A quick Google search told her that Saint Rose’s confession hours were from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It struck her as slightly ridiculous that a church that didn’t even have electricity would have a website but she wasn’t about to complain.

  You think you’re gonna get that old fool to tell you the truth? Think again, darlin’. He’s just as guilty of killin’ as the rest of us.

  Entering the parking structure, she looked at her watch. It was almost four thirty. By the time she got to the church, confession would be wrapped up and Father Francisco would be preparing for evening mass. That meant she’d have about an hour to get some answers
. Looking up, she saw the sleek, dark outline of a limousine parked next to the car she and Church shared.

  Her first thought was Livingston Shaw. She should have listened to Church. Believed her when she warned her about the danger of being out in the world, unprotected. The realization reminded her of the man she’d seen at the hotel and later, at Saint Rose.

  She took a step back, ready to retreat into the stairwell but she didn’t get far. Colliding with a broad, solid chest, strong hands bracketed her biceps. She took a step back, planting her foot between his, hands cranked into fists. Before she could make her move, the limo door swung open.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” He stepped through the open door and stood, an amused smile on his face. “She doesn’t take kindly to being manhandled.”

  The man behind her suddenly released her. She wanted to believe it was because of the warning that had been issued, but she knew better. It had everything to do with who issued it.

  “Hello, Phillip,” she said, relief sapping the steel from her bones. “I told you not to come.”

  “I believe,” he said with a shadowy half smile, turning toward the open car door, gesturing her inside, “your exact words were, whatever.” The man behind her stepped to the side and she caught an imposing glimpse. Wide shoulders. Expensive suit. Tattoos peeking out from under his collar and cuffs. Phillip Song’s underlings were as easy to spot as Livingston Shaw’s.

  She complied without protest. Even if he was the last person she wanted to see right now, Phillip Song was her friend. Sliding across the soft leather seat of the car, he followed her inside, closing them in with a soft click. “You look well, Sabrina,” he said, angling himself on the seat toward her while studying her. “Different. Not like yourself at all. Your hair. Your eyes. The shape of your face, even. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “How did you then?” she said, forcing herself to submit to his appraisal. “Recognize me.”