CHAPTER TEN
I walked across the field with Merick in silence. I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to say when I was on the scene with him. Clearly Mason didn’t know the connection between Merick and I, and I wasn’t exactly willing to give up that information.
“Your partner, he’s bound to know me on sight.” Merick motioned to where Nick was talking to Jason. “I’ve meet with him a few times and he’s not so friendly towards me.”
I shrugged. “He’s going to have to get over that. You’re officially on the case to help us with the runes.”
“But I know the runes and why they are there.” Merick stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “I’m here to watch over you, Abby.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know why everyone thinks I need a guardian angel. The last year Levi had Simon glued to my side, the department is refusing to move Nick to his own cases, and now you think I need protection. Last year you were giving me death threats on behalf of your Cult.”
He shrugged one arm. “We’re realizing you aren’t as big as a threat as we thought and that you can be more useful to us. But for that, we need you alive.”
I continued walking without giving a response, there was no reason I should have to justify anything to him. I approached Nick and Jason, noticing that Merick went straight into the house instead.
“Jason.” I nodded to him. “Find any more skeletons for us?”
“Sure have, Agent A. We’ve configured seven more from the bones we’ve found.”
That meant there were ten total now. We hopefully had all of our thumb victims. “That’s great to hear. And any news on the victims in the basement?”
He nodded. “I was hoping you’d meet me at the morgue to see a couple of them.”
I wasn’t a fan of the morgue, but I wanted to get a look at those victims. I also wanted to get back into town so that I could go visit Mr. Borneheart to figure out what he was hiding about all of this. “Sure, let me just finish up something inside and I’ll head that way. Are you and your team done here?”
“Nick is going to stay with them to see if there’s anything else they happen to find, but we combed the area several times to make sure there wasn’t anything there that we were missing. Should we have seen something other than the skeletons?”
I shook my head. “No, anything else would have been our department. Thank you for your hard work. I’ll see you at the morgue.”
Jason nodded and trudged over to where the cluster of vehicles was parked. Nick put a hand on my shoulder when I turned towards the house. “The man in there. He’s from the Cult. I don’t know how he got on our crime scene, but I plan on making sure that Detective Mason removes him.”
I shook my head. “Good luck. I know him too and I know exactly how stubborn he is, and when he’s determined, he’ll succeed.” I started towards the house.
“And that doesn’t worry you?” Nick jerked me back.
I glared at him. “No, it doesn’t, I plan on using his expertise and using him to help solve the case. If you have a problem with that, then maybe you should step back.” I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice. “I want this case solved and I want to continue on with my life and putting some of the pieces back together.”
“But at the cost of letting the Cult further in?” He raised a brow. “Abby, I think your judgment is clouded.”
“By what, Nick? If he’s steering us away, we’ll know. The thing is, the Cult is already close to the case. So what’s the harm in letting him in?”
“Do you trust him?” Nick shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at me. “Can you honestly say that you can trust him at your back and not to lead us astray on this case?”
I thought about what he was asking. Originally, Merick had been giving me death threats, but now he swore that the Cult was backing away. Then he reappeared in my life, without me signaling him, when I needed to talk to him. He’d led us to the crime though and had tried to protect me from the poltergeists. “Right now, yes. I can.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t owe you any explanation. You can trust me or you can’t. I’m your partner, Nick. If I thought this was going to put you in danger, I’d be right there backing you up when it comes to talking to Mason.”
“Go talk to Merick then. Just don’t get yourself killed, hexed or otherwise.” He muttered and turned away from me. I didn’t know what else he was expecting, I wasn’t going to lay down and let him walk over me. I shook my head and walked up the porch. I took a deep breath before stepping into the house.
“Problems in partner paradise?” Merick asked, leaning against the wall to the left of the doorway. “I’m surprised they still have you with a partner.”
I shook my head. “He doesn’t trust you.”
“Yet you do.”
I shrugged. “Other than the hex, you haven’t really given me a reason not to trust you. You got the Cult off my back, you tried to keep a poltergeist or two from killing me, and now you’re here trying to help.”
“Let’s go take a look at that room.” He motioned and I led him to the room off of the kitchen. There was no power left to the runes painted on the wall, broken the moment the door shattered against the floor. I hadn’t taken a closer look after the door fell, so I wasn’t sure what we were looking for. I had assumed that the hinges gave out. Something Merick was certain shouldn’t have happened.
“Take a look.” He motioned to the door jamb. “It wasn’t the hinges.”
I leaned in and tilted my head. There were no hinges still attached to the doorway. The flat metal flap that connected the hinges was gone. Left in its place were dents and screw holes. I pulled out a pair of gloves. Putting them on, I looked closer at the doorjamb and the holes. I touched one with my finger, digging at it a little bit.
“Someone unscrewed it. This isn’t stripped.” I looked at the next one. The same thing. I pressed my lips together. “So someone did this, and I don’t think this is the work of a ghost.”
He shook his head. “Who else had access to the scene?”
“That’s the million-dollar question. We have that small horde of vampires who have been around it.”
“No one knew that these runes were meant for you. Only you did after Nick walked in and couldn’t stand them.”
I nodded. “There’s no reason someone would think destroying the barriers would put me in danger. Unless it’s someone connected to the case and knew what you were trapping in here.”
“Have Nick process the room. You go to the morgue. I’ll tell Nick what I can about the runes. He may catch on to some of the lies because he knows the language. But better that I lie to him than you.”
Lying to your partner could be deadly. “I’ll talk to you later, then.”
“Be safe, Abigail.” He nodded.
I walked out and looked around for Nick. I was betting more than anything that he was off talking to Mason about trying to get rid of Merick. I sent him a text about the room and went to the Hummer. He could answer me or not, but it was out of my hands for now. I climbed into the Hummer. Leaning back in my seat I turned on the radio, twisting the knob to turn the sound up. This was the kind of day that required loud angry music.
A woman stood at the front desk of the morgue, her long legs covered halfway in a pencil skirt, and a business jacket creased just slightly as she crossed her arms. Her eyes narrowed at me behind small wired frames. She was much more attentive than the last receptionist that I’d met there, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about the sudden scrutiny.
“I’m—“
“Yes, I know, Jason is expecting you.” She pushed off the desk and teetered behind it in her little heels. I walked up and handed her my ID. She wrote some things down and then handed me a plastic visitor badge. “Here you go, Agent Collins.”
I clipped my badge on my shirt and walked down the hall. Jason walked out of a room a few doors down, wiping his hands on the white apron that was slung crookedly a
cross his body. “Hey, Abby. Ready?”
I eyed the smear of liquid his hands left. “Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves?”
“I was, but I ripped a hole in one.” He shrugged. “It happens. Don’t worry, it’s just water.”
I relaxed a little bit. “Let’s go take a look then. What’s first?”
“Full corpses. I have a couple things to show you and then we’ll move to one of the skeletons.” He motioned to the door. “Ladies first.”
I walked in and grabbed my own pair of gloves out of the mounted box on the wall. I wiggled my fingers into the latex and went to the first silver table in room. The body looked more tan in the harsh lighting of the morgue, which helped clear a bit of the dark green color my memory kept trying to pull up. The head lay on a block of some sort; the skin had drawn away from the teeth, adding to the illusion that the body was silently screaming.
I leaned forward to look at the neck and wished I would have held my breath. “Oh man, he smells.”
“I know, sorry, between the decay coming and God only knows what fluids he was sitting in, he’s not a bed of roses.”
I scanned the skin over where the artery would have been and found what I was looking for. Puncture marks stretched to about an inch from the skin being pulled against bone, but they were in the right spot. “Vampire victims.”
“They all have similar marks in various artery locations.” He nodded. “They weren’t gentle. I’ll be able to get some measurements for you, but I can’t promise that they will be completely accurate because of the decay and mummification.”
“I’ll take what I can get. We have a database that we can use those measurements with.”
“That only takes into consideration vampires who have been prosecuted for non-consensual feeding.”
I nodded. “Yes, but do we really think that whoever did this has only committed one crime?”
“Point taken.” He motioned to the ankle. “Each victim is pretty much the same, shackled on the left foot, fed from frequently, but it wasn’t the feedings that killed them.”
“What was it? Please don’t tell me they died slowly in that basement.” I put my wrist to my head. “Their situation was bad enough as it was.”
He shook his head. “No, there’s traces of blood transfusions.”
“Wait, what?” I went to the wrist and gently flipped it over, looking for some type of IV insert.
“Modern, so you have the right idea, looking for the IV marks. I found it in the labs. Whoever did it was sloppy, and I don’t think they were a doctor, because the blood types are not matching.”
I shook my head. “Is that how you placed the age of the bodies?”
“No, I placed the ages of them by science and calling in a couple people to look into it as well. Second opinions and all that. The mummification threw me off. But they are closer to a decade old than a century.”
Which put them there the same time that Jerry owned the house. “Okay, that takes me back a step. I need to bring someone in for questioning. Now, what about the skeletons?”
He nodded and led me over to another table. “Like the corpses, all the skeletons are male victims.”
“What am I looking at here?” I looked down at the bones. I knew enough that I was looking at a human skeleton, but not enough to know what Jason wanted me to get out of it.
“The thumbs, well…” He let it trail off.
I compared the hands and knew what he was getting at. “The lack of thumbs.” I muttered. “The sick-o took all the thumbs, not just thumbs on one hand.” Which made me wonder if there was another message. “I’m calling in another agent on this case, she joined PIB about ten years ago, when PIB was new. I’m hoping she can provide some insight.”
“You have an idea of what’s going on, then? That’s more than Nick.”
I hadn’t really shared with Nick yet. “I’m hoping it’s an old case, and since there weren’t that many agents then, I’m hoping it was her case or one that she’s heard of at the very least.”
“Send her my way if she has any questions on the skeletons. I don’t know what she’ll be able to find out from them, but you never know.”
I nodded. “I will, thank you.” I paused at the corpse.
“Something else bothering you?”
Most of it was personal, but I nodded. “I’m wondering how ten years ago twenty-five people went missing and no one really noticed.” Levi was also in this territory ten years ago and there was some bizarre feeding prison he claimed he didn’t know about, but there was no need to let Jason in on that.
“People go missing every day. Some get reported, others don’t. It’s just how it works.” He sighed. “The statistics aren’t pretty.”
I knew they weren’t. I never wanted to work missing persons because I didn’t like facing odds like that. “Thanks for all the hard work.”
“If you think of something else that’s bothering you, let me know. I’ll pull the bodies out for you.”
I chuckled. “Thanks. For now, keep them on ice. We can’t release remains until we finish the case.”
“I’m working on getting them all identified for you. Have a good night, Abby.”
“You too, Jason.” I stripped the gloves off my hands and threw them in the biohazard trash can before walking out.
On autopilot, I walked to the desk, handed the receptionist my visitor badge, and went out to the car. I sat in the front seat and struggled with the reality that Levi might know something about the case that he wasn’t telling me. Vampire business had finally crossed over to my case so deep that I was on the edge of bringing him in for questioning. Speaking of questioning…I glanced at the clock and noted I still had time for someone to bring in Jerry for me to question.
I put the phone on the hands free system and called Mason. He answered on the third ring. “Agent Collins, have something for me?”
“Be on the lookout for ten more thumbs.”
“Really?”
“Yes really, why the hell would I lie to you?” I snapped.
“Okay, point taken. What else?” He grumbled.
“I need you to have your men bring in Jerry Borneheart for questioning. I’ll text you his last known address. New evidence shows he lived in that house when the basement was sealed up. Nick and I found some pretty convincing evidence that he knew about the ghost girl.”
“Do you think he knew about the other bodies?”
I took a moment to choose my words carefully. “I think it would be hard not to know that there were fifteen living creatures in that room. He said he heard voices, so maybe he didn’t know about it. But he knew about the regular basement.”
“That’s enough to bring him in. Nick came to me screaming about Merick.”
Of course he did. “Yeah, I got a pretty healthy lecture too. Don’t worry about him. I think he’s just being paranoid.”
“Said you were trusting a psychopath.”
“I don’t think Merick counts as a psychopath, honestly. But it doesn’t matter. Did he get to be a consultant on legit terms?”
“He did, references and everything.”
I imagined Mason holding up his hands. “Then we’re past that. Next item on the docket. Bring in my man so I can question him and we can move forward on this case finally.”
“Tired of running into dead ends?”
“And dead bodies. Did the containment team get there for our horde of blood-starved vampires?”
“They did, no one came to stop us, so I don’t know where their maker is.”
“Me either, but I’ll make sure to let you know if one comes after PIB for them.” I kept my voice light, but my guess was the vampire was powerful enough, like Levi, to be awake during the daylight if needed, which meant he was probably watching from some safe place.
He grunted and then disconnected. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but I assumed it was bye. I put the Hummer in gear and backed out of my parking spot at the morgue. I didn’t know ho
w long it’d take Mason’s men to bring in Jerry but I’d head to the station anyways. There wasn’t anything else that I could do at this point, but wait. Just like the rest of the case.
The station had the hum of people working, that white noise that was part chatter and part typing, the rustling of papers, and the tapping of fingers on desks. The PIB office tended to be quieter, but we also didn’t have several desks in one area. I walked by the rows of desks to head to the hall where the interrogation rooms were. A few officers waved and smiled at me when I passed by, but most of them were busy with their own work.
I stepped into the hall to be greeted by a female officer I’d never met before. “You must be Agent Collins.” She held her hand out.
I took her hand and her fingers wrapped around in a firm grip. She had a familiar face, but I couldn’t place where I might have seen her before. Maybe she just had one of those faces. “I am, and you are?”
“Officer Denar, Mason had my team bring in your suspect. He didn’t give me much about the case.”
“He wouldn’t because it’s a PIB investigation. I appreciate your help bringing Jerry Borneheart in.”
“I’m to sit in because he’s human.” She walked towards the door.
I paused, that hadn’t been the case before. “New rule?”
“It’s always been the rule, Agent Collins, Mason just doesn’t follow it very well when it comes to you.” There wasn’t anything snide in her voice, just a matter of fact tone.
“I had no idea.” I checked to make sure my badge was visible before I followed her into the interrogation room.
The little table sat in the middle of the room, Jerry sat there with his hands folded and a strange smile on his lips. He wasn’t exactly what I had pictured. I assumed that he was older because of the information I had on him, but the house file hadn’t contained an age. The only sign that he might have been pushing forty was the small lines starting to form by his eyes. His auburn hair didn’t have a streak of gray in it, his brown eyes were still clear and almost youthful.
The Trouble with Ghosts (Here Witchy Witchy Book 3) Page 13