Impossible. No one died because they didn’t have sex.
Grant wanted to divert Johnston’s attention from his physical condition to the case at hand. “Did you get anything on the man in the photograph Nina gave us?”
“Nothing. I sent his pic to Missing Persons and maybe they’ll have something. I looked into the P.I.’s death, talked to the responding officers. The witnesses were solid; his staff reported that he was acting paranoid and skittish, and more than one thought he was on drugs. He had a drug problem years ago, was clean, but as you know it just takes one time to go back.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Cocaine.”
“Did they find the dealer? Evidence of cocaine during autopsy?”
“I said that the witnesses thought he was on drugs—it went to his state of being.”
“Do you have the autopsy report?”
Johnston sighed. “No.”
“I need to contact the morgue anyway. Find out about our frozen waitress, and Nadine Anson’s autopsy. Maybe I’ll go down; sometimes showing up gets more answers.”
“I’ll go,” Johnston offered.
“You hate the morgue.”
“But I like that cute pathologist.”
“Fern?”
“Yeah. The one with the sexy little nose ring.”
“Maybe you should let me talk to her for you.”
“I can hit on a woman all by myself,” Johnston said.
“Yeah, but I’ve known Fern for years. Come on too strong and she’ll knock you down.”
“I wouldn’t mind that too much.” Johnston grinned. “I like women who stand up for themselves.”
“Fine, come with me.”
“You should go home. You look like shit.”
“Fuck you,” Grant said without animosity.
“Right back at you.”
“If we split up the workload, we can both be home in time for a late lunch.”
“You want the morgue,” stated Jeff.
“Yep. And I have seniority. You can interview Pam Erickson again, feel her out about how she really felt about her husband’s relationship with other women and see if you can push her a bit, without letting on that we think she had something to do with it.”
“So does this mean you believe Nina?”
“I don’t know what I believe. But Nina is a straight shooter, and I’m more inclined to trust her instincts than I am to trust a woman who was having sex with her ex-husband while her otherwise healthy current husband died. And then after Mrs. Erickson, talk to Marcus Galion about both his brother and Nadine Anson. Both his brother and girlfriend dead within a week?”
“Don’t you want to do it?”
“You’re good at making people comfortable. Feel him out. If you think we should bring Marcus in, we’ll bring him in.”
Grant just wanted Jeff to leave, because it was getting harder and harder to keep up the act that everything was fine. In fact, he couldn’t. He shut down his computer and stretched. “I’m going to take a leak, then head to the morgue. We’ll touch base this afternoon.”
“Roger that, Boss.”
Grant knew he should go home. He was in no condition to talk to anyone or go to the morgue. Events were spiraling out of control and he didn’t know what to do about it. What the hell was wrong with him?
In the bathroom, he locked the door. Though the police station never closed, it was midshift Saturday morning. Quiet. He’d seen something this morning in the mirror—thought he’d seen something—but in denial, he hadn’t paid much attention to it.
But he hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind.
He stripped off his shirt, hoping the mark was a figment of his imagination and lack of sleep. The bathroom had one long mirror above the sinks, and if he angled his body right he could look over his shoulder and see most of his back.
On his lower shoulder blade was the mark. He could lie to himself and say it wasn’t exactly like the odd tattoo-like marks on the two dead guys, but he didn’t. It was as close to being identical as he could remember. Red, like a port-wine-stain birthmark. The edges seemed to bleed into the surrounding skin, but there was a fine red line, like a blood vessel, that created an odd image.
He didn’t need to see more. He pulled his shirt back on and walked out.
How the hell had he gotten that thing on his back? It hadn’t been there yesterday morning. It didn’t hurt. The skin was slightly raised when he felt it, so slight that he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t seen it.
It was not possible—but it was there. He considered calling Moira O’Donnell, the cult expert. Psychic or not, that woman knew a hell of a lot more than what she’d told him.
He drove to the morgue while contemplating bringing in Moira O’Donnell to help. His head ached in spite of the milk, the coffee, and an untold number of aspirin. The bright sunlight burned his eyes and he fumbled for his sunglasses on the visor, nearly hitting a parked car. Though he had only drunk one beer last night, he felt hungover.
One beer. At Velocity. He could have been drugged. He’d gone home with Julie. He couldn’t imagine that Julie—whom he’d known for two years—would have done anything like drugging him or tattooing his back. But he’d been at her place, and his memory was spotty. Those dead men with the marks were all connected to Velocity, and so was he. Had he stumbled upon a criminal activity where someone would kill a cop to keep it secret? Was Julie part of a conspiracy?
A ghost of Julie’s image on the YouTube video of Nadine’s death seemed impossible, but right now Grant could almost believe she’d been there. Right now, all he knew was that something was wrong with him.
He flashed his badge to the guard at the morgue parking lot and called Moira O’Donnell.
“Hello, Detective, miss me?” she asked, exaggerating her Irish accent.
“Meet me at your hotel.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I have questions.”
“Okay, when?”
He looked at his dashboard clock. It was nearing the lunch hour. He had the morgue, then needed time to cross town and find food somewhere, though the thought of eating made him ill. “Two o’clock. Your room.”
“We checked out—”
“I told you not to leave town!”
“It was a little pricey for me. We’ll meet you in the Palomar lobby.”
“Fine.”
“What’s going on—”
He hung up. Her voice was so damn unique, so seductive with that Irish lilt, his penis began to throb painfully and he reached down to adjust it. Grant had the overwhelming urge to jerk off. He was so hard that he was afraid someone would see, or that he’d have some sort of waking wet dream.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered to himself as he got out of his car and walked in through the employee entrance, flashing his badge to the receptionist. He found the bathroom; there was no lock on the main door. Fortunately, no one was inside. He went into the stall, slid the lock in place, and pulled down his pants. His penis was large, red, and painful to the touch. Damn, this couldn’t be natural. Something was wrong.
What could he tell his doctor? That he had a perpetual hard-on all day? Maybe someone at the station spiked his coffee with Viagra or something. Some sick joke because he’d stepped on some asshole’s overly sensitive ego. Not Johnston—but there were a couple of cops who didn’t like Grant. He wanted to believe it was a prank, but he knew it wasn’t. More likely he’d been drugged at Velocity last night, and his rock-hard cock was a side effect.
He couldn’t live like this. He reached down and, embarrassed and angry and in pain, he jerked off. He pictured Julie last night and the things that he’d done to her, and he felt ashamed. He’d never been that callous before, that unconcerned about pleasing her. He closed his eyes and pictured himself fucking her, over and over, and then Moira O’Donnell’s face replaced Julie’s and Grant moaned, then bit his tongue so hard his mouth filled with blood as he spurted semen into the
toilet.
He stood there, head down, flushed, ashamed at what he’d pictured, what he’d done, and what he wanted to do. He spat into the toilet, a bright red wad of saliva.
Still feeling ill, Grant washed his hands and face with icy water, then went to the main morgue level and asked the desk to page Fern Archer.
While he waited for Fern, he called Julie on her cell phone. No answer. He hoped she wasn’t angry with him about last night. She had every right to be. He wanted to make it up to her, but didn’t know how—or if he could. Fool. She’s the one who most likely drugged you. Have Johnston pick her up for questioning.
How could he do that to Julie?
How could he not? He was a cop first.
He called Jeff. “Hey, Johnston, I need you to track down Julie. I have some questions for her.”
“About what?”
He couldn’t very well tell Jeff the truth because he didn’t know what the truth was, and his theories were insane. Sure, tell his partner that he’d been drugged and assaulted last night. That he practically raped his girlfriend. That he was so sick he jerked off in the bathroom and was still hard and uncomfortable.
“Don’t tell her why, just find out where she’ll be this afternoon. Tell her we need to ask her some follow-up questions.”
“What are you thinking, Grant? I’m your partner—tell me what’s going on.”
Fern walked into the lobby. Grant used her as an excuse. “I’m at the morgue; I can’t talk now. It’s about Nadine and drugs,” he added to get his partner off his back.
“I’ll let you know what I find out.”
Grant hung up. “Hello, Fern.”
She smiled, her nose ring of yesterday now an emerald green stud. “Hey, Detective, what can I do for you?”
He glanced at the receptionist and said, “I wanted to ask you some questions about the woman who was brought in yesterday, as well as Erickson. And I need an older autopsy report.”
“Sure.” She hesitated. “I could have faxed you a report. You didn’t have to come all the way over here.”
“I wanted to take another look at the marks on the bodies.”
“Whatever floats your boat. Right this way.” Fern handed him disposable cloth booties for his shoes and he slipped them on. “We finished the suicide yesterday.”
“She was a suspect in the death of George Erickson.”
“Yeah, I saw the video on YouTube.”
“Shit, who hasn’t seen it?”
“No one in L.A., that’s for sure. It’s rare that you get such a fabulous, public confession.”
“What did the autopsy reveal?”
“She died from massive internal bleeding—a no-brainer since a bus ran over her. She didn’t live through it, which I suppose is lucky for her. She obviously was suffering enough before she went over the edge. Her ribs were crushed. A mess, really.”
Grant didn’t need to know the details. “Blood tests?”
“Not back yet. We ran a few in-house—no alcohol in her system—but the biggies won’t be back until the end of next week. We’ve been sending more than our usual number of blood tests to the lab, and they’ve been complaining, damn lab bureaucrats.” She shook her head. “We have a pool going here among the pathologists. PCP is leading, though without the alcohol chaser I don’t see it having the effect I saw on the video. She was paranoid and panicked. I think it’s a newly engineered LSD, probably made in some kid’s basement, and she tripped. She was lucid and disoriented at the same time. She spoke clearly, but she sure wasn’t acting sane. She was also dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in more than twelve hours.”
Grant really didn’t care about the morgue’s betting pool. “Did she have the same mark on her body as Erickson, Monroe, and Galion?”
“No, but I found a tattoo.”
“You’re certain it’s a tattoo?”
Fern glanced at him as she stood outside the crypt. “Of course I’m sure. High-end, too. Quality ink, intricate design. Gorgeous, really. Almost makes me wish I were white.” She laughed. “Not.”
She opened the door to the crypt. “Monroe’s family is taking possession of the body today. It’s being shipped back to his home state; the transport company will be here this afternoon.” She pulled off the sheet. Grant stared at the mark on the pale body, dull but still red against Monroe’s skin.
“Have you figured out what that mark is?”
“No, but the coroner is going with a tattoo.” Fern frowned. “His theory is that it’s a new kind of process that uses an organic ink.”
“That’s bullshit. We’d be able to know whether it was a tat or not.”
“I agree, but he didn’t want to hold up the body when it’s clear Monroe died of cardiac arrest.”
“You’re certain.”
“Well, we know his heart stopped. We have the initial drug panels back. We’ve sent the blood for additional screens, and the coroner is agreeing to cardiac arrest with a possible secondary cause unknown narcotic since his endorphin levels were high. Which makes sense. If your suicide victim comes back with something else, we have enough of Monroe’s blood samples to run more tests. Some labs have been engineering Ecstasy with LSD and other drugs. Nasty shit, and we’ve seen teenagers come through here pumped up with drugs that are variants of what’s popular. They end up in the hospitals, too. Some are brain-dead; some just die. I promise, we’ll keep at it. We want to know, and I know your Narcs want to keep up with anything new hitting the streets.”
“Any other bodies come in?”
Fern tilted her head. “We’re a morgue; we get dozens of bodies a day.”
Grant rubbed his temple. “Bodies with marks like Monroe and Erickson.”
“Actually, yeah. They weren’t my cases, but I’ve seen a couple marks like this over the last week.”
“Can you send me copies of the files?”
“Sure. On one condition.”
He raised an eyebrow. “What condition?”
“Put in a good word with your hunky partner for me. I’m calling him my first day off.”
Grant smiled even through the pain in his head. “He wanted me to do the same with you.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. He’s receptive.”
“Screw that then, he can call me. But if I don’t hear from him by tomorrow—I have Sunday and Monday off—I’m calling.”
Grant handed her Jeff’s cell phone number. “Can I see Nadine?”
“It’s not pretty. We call her Humpty Dumpty.”
“I want to see her tattoo.”
“That’s easy, I took a picture. This way.”
Grant followed Fern to her small cubicle near the intake area. Her space was filled with photographs of the morgue and the dead. Though all were eerie and bordering on the sick side, they were quite phenomenal. “You’re talented.”
Fern grinned. “Thanks. I know, it’s a morbid hobby—can you believe Takasugi tells me that I’m morbid when he’s the one with a mummy in his living room?” She shook her head and handed Grant a picture. “You can keep it; it’s a copy. I have another in the file.”
But Grant barely heard Fern. He stared at the tattoo. It was a perfect circle, with an intricate pattern that was the same if you looked at it from the top or the bottom. It had been on the small of her back.
Julie had the identical tat in the same location.
TWENTY-SIX
Wendy gloated as she strode through Velocity casting a protective spell. She smiled, pleased that everything was coming together better than she’d planned—considering the disasters that had occurred over the last twelve hours. Losing Rachel as a vessel had been devastating, and having Raphael Cooper and Moira O’Donnell steal her chalice—Wendy was more than a little furious. That chalice had been in her coven for generations. If her mother were alive, she’d be irate that her precious chalice had been stolen by another coven.
Nicole emphatically believed that Moira wasn’t practicing magic and intended to destroy
the chalice, and even the idea of destroying such an immensely powerful and valuable tool was lunacy. Moira was likely rogue, not aligned with any of the loosely knit covens, which was why Fiona O’Donnell wanted her head on a platter. Dead or alive was the word on the street, with rewards either way.
Living prisoners made better bargaining chips. There was no doubt in Wendy’s mind that Moira had valuable information on how to gain power to leverage into a high position within Fiona’s growing circle of covens. It would be fun to play with Moira, torture the information from her, use Wendy’s newfound talents to make up for the embarrassment of losing the chalice, for having to make another agreement with her new demon.
Nicole was weak; no matter what her sister said, she’d obviously been banished and had come running home. Wendy had never been weak. She didn’t need her sister, but it would be nice to use her.
Wendy finished casting the protective spell around the empty club so that she would be forewarned if anyone drew near. Only a few more hours and the demon would be able to locate Grant Nelson, but Wendy wanted him in a special place. She’d spent half the day preparing Kent Galion’s house for the ritual. Wendy needed space to give the demon what she wanted—an agreement she wouldn’t have had to make if Moira hadn’t stolen the chalice. And Moira wouldn’t have been able to steal the chalice if Julie hadn’t hidden Grant Nelson from them last night.
Wendy did not like being made the fool. Julie deserved everything she got. If she survived the night, when the demon left her body Wendy would call on an incubus to deal with the traitor. She’d watch Julie suffer until she begged to die.
Wendy had wanted to die many times. Her mother, Susan, was not a kind woman. Punishments were never as simple as spankings and time-outs. When Wendy was sixteen, she’d been raped by an incubus when her mother found out she’d been practicing sex magic outside of the coven.
Susan Donovan didn’t tolerate betrayal, insolence, or anyone in her coven seeking power outside of her authority.
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