“No, you go ahead,” he said. “You called me.”
“You get the ME’s report? It was just e-mailed. You should have gotten a copy,” she said, glancing at her computer screen.
“Hang on. I haven’t checked my e-mail this morning yet. I hate e-mail.”
“I love e-mail,” she said, hearing the tap of his keyboard.
“Nothing but a long list of stuff I have to do.”
“I love long lists of stuff to do,” she came back. Their conversation almost sounded like banter. He was in a good mood. She wondered if maybe he had gotten laid last night. That always put her in a good mood. Since she started seeing Dr. Kettleman, her good-mood mornings weren’t nearly as frequent. She was still having a little trouble with the taking of humans’ blood, but she’d cut way down on the sex with strangers. She liked to think it was progress.
“Here we go,” Glen said in her ear. He was quiet for a second and Fia considered saying something. Anything, just to keep up the tenor of the conversation, but she knew that would be hard to do, considering why she’d called in the first place. She let him read the autopsy report in peace.
“You have got to be shitting me,” he said. “Sorry,” he added quickly.
“You’re right. I’ve never heard that phrase before,” she quipped. Then she moved on. “Can you believe it?”
“Am I reading what I think I’m reading? Did the postman die from having his head cut off?”
“That’s how it appears,” she said, the weight of what had happened settling on her shoulders again.
He was quiet for a minute and she got the feeling that even though he didn’t understand the full impact of what had happened to Bobby, he still felt empathy for the man he had never known. For his family. Maybe even for Fia.
“Still nothing from the lab,” he said after a moment. “I thought I’d give them a call, maybe a little nudge, but I wanted to check with you, be sure you hadn’t already done it.”
“No. Go ahead.” She rocked back in her office chair, staring at Bobby’s autopsy report on her computer screen. “But I have to confess, I’m not too hopeful. Blood that was Bobby’s, stray fibers, dirt that he probably tracked in. I don’t think progress in the case is going to come out of that pittance of evidence we collected.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “I see Dr. Caldwell noted that the only thing he could tell about the decapitation was that it was done with a sharp instrument. I’ve been reading up on decapitations—”
“Me, too,” she interrupted. “Great bedtime reading.”
He chuckled grimly. “After what I’ve read, after going over the photos and interviews again, I can’t help thinking our next lead is going to come directly out of Clare Point.”
Chapter 9
Fia knew the call was from Clare Point before she answered it. There was a sudden buzzing in her ears and a feeling of lightheadedness as she lifted the handset.
Something was wrong. No one ever dared called her at the office, not even her mother.
“Special Agent Kahill,” she said because it was how she always answered the phone. “Ma? Are the boys all right?” she whispered.
When she had talked to her mother two nights ago, she had learned Fin and Regan had still not returned from their fact-finding trip. What if something had happened to them? Vampires were at far greater risk in Europe than in the U.S. Americans were too modern, too technologically advanced to believe in the supernatural, but the Old World knew the Kahills and a few other families from different parts of the world were still out there. There still remained small pockets of human slayers which stayed well-concealed and unknown to the contemporary world.
“Ma?” Fia repeated, glancing around her cubicle to be sure no one was passing by.
“Nay. Fee, it’s not your ma. It’s yer Uncle Sean, it is.”
“Uncle Sean?” She leaned over her desk, keeping her voice low. From this distance, it was impossible for her to read his thoughts. All she was getting was a low hum of jumbled words and emotions, but there was no mistaking the fear in his voice. The terror.
“Fee, Fee, ye have to come quick,” he said, his accent thick. He sounded near to tears.
“Uncle Sean, what’s happened?” Not Fin, she thought. Anyone but Fin.
“It’s happened again,” he blubbered. His next words were unintelligible, just a jumble of pitiful sounds.
“Uncle Sean,” she interrupted. “Uncle Sean, listen to me. You have to calm down. I can’t understand what you’re saying.” Her heart raced, but she was already thinking more clearly. It wasn’t Fin. Fin was safe. She would know if he was dead. She’d know because a part of her soul would be gone. “What happened again?”
The moment she repeated his words, she knew what he meant.
No. It was impossible. Bobby’s death was the single, solitary act of a strung-out junkie looking for cash. A second beheading would establish a pattern. It would indicate that the random, unprovoked murder of Bobby McCathal, member of the Kahill Sept, had not been random.
“Uncle Sean, take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on or put someone on the phone who can.”
She heard him take a deep, strangled breath. “He was found less than half an hour ago on the game preserve. Head and hands gone. Jesus and Mary and Holy St. Joseph, Fee, it’s a bloody mess.”
“I’m coming, Uncle Sean. Give me three hours. I’ll call you as soon as I reach town.”
It wasn’t until Fia hung up that she realized she hadn’t asked who had been murdered.
“I disagree with you, sir,” Fia said calmly. “It doesn’t make sense to split up the investigation this way, especially now, with a second murder.” She gestured. “Some info being sent to Baltimore, some here. Copies all over the place.”
“I don’t give a fat rat’s ass what you think, Kahill.” Jarrel stuffed a forkful of spinach from a Styrofoam take-out box into his mouth. He was reading e-mail as he ate. Thousand Island dressing.
Fia despised Thousand Island dressing.
“Call Agent Duncan. If his office wants to hand the case over to us, fine, that’s up to them. But Senator Malley’s office green-flagged this bipartisan team, and I’m not screwing with it.” There was a spot of pink dressing on the corner of his mouth.
Fia wondered what he would do if she leaned over his desk and licked off the fleck of dressing. She could bite his carotid artery and he’d be dead in less than three minutes.
She touched the corner of her mouth, wondering what the hell was wrong with her. She was usually in control of her thoughts. She rarely allowed them to stray so far.
“Why are you still standing there, Kahill? You need me to make the phone call for you?”
“No, sir.” She turned to go. “I’ll call to touch base before you leave the office today.”
“You do that.” He munched a mouthful of salad. “And Kahill…”
“Sir?”
“Don’t screw this up. Don’t let this petty territorial shit get in the way of your investigation. We can’t afford it, not with a U.S. senator’s office involved.”
“I won’t, sir.” She looked back at him over her shoulder as if she was with him on the whole Bureau politics thing, but in her mind she was already forty-five miles south, trekking through the forest, looking for a head.
“Those your hiking clothes?” Fia glanced back at Glen, who was struggling to match her pace. The dirt road was no more than a three-foot-wide deer path, cut through the forest.
The woods were thick and heavy with undergrowth and the oppressive September heat. The trees, mostly hardwood—ash, birch, poplar, and elm—hung in a canopy over their heads, blocking direct sunlight. The humid air was heady with the rich, damp scent of leafy vegetation, thick moss, and rotting humus.
“You didn’t tell me we were hiking anywhere.” He swatted at a mosquito.
“I told you the body was on the Clare Point Wildlife Preserve, a mile off the main road.”
“You didn’t say road as in t
he only road.” He blocked a branch she released just before it snapped back and caught him in the groin. “I assumed there would be a dirt road, a pickup truck, some way to get back here.”
“I told you, my uncle’s arranging for ATVs. It’s a federal preserve; deer, fox, raccoons, they don’t need paved roads.” She ducked under a tree limb that had grown out over the path and shifted the pack she carried on her back. Inside was her camera, a notebook, plastic bags, and other items they would need to collect evidence. She had her cell phone with her, too, although it would do her little good. There were no towers nearby, so poor or no reception.
“And you’re sure we’re going the right way? Your uncle said there were almost four hundred acres of woods, here.”
“I’m going the right way.”
Fia could have followed this trail in the dark or with her eyes closed. She’d run it many times in the night, over the years. Deer had been running it for the last three hundred years and at least as many before the Kahills’ arrival. An old Lenape Indian village was said to have once sat on the crest of a small hill to the northeast. As a teenager, she and others combed the forest floor for stone artifacts like axes, spear points and arrowheads. Many had been found in the first one hundred years they had lived here, and were now displayed in the town’s museum.
“You want to go back?” she asked, pushing on, refusing to slow down to allow for his polished loafers and creased pinstripe pants. At least he’d had the sense to leave his suit jacket in his car. At her apartment, after throwing a bag together, she had dressed in a pair of khakis, an FBI polo, and sneakers. She was hot in the pants, but they protected her legs from the greenbriers and mosquitoes. “You could wait for the ATVs. Uncle Sean said his cousin Malachy had at least two we could borrow.”
“It’s been almost four hours. We need to process the scene and get the body out of there.” He wiped the sweat on his forehead with the back of his hand, but kept moving.
“You a city boy, Glen?” she asked, trying not to think about the body ahead on the path. They were almost there. No more than fifty yards from the hangman’s tree, Uncle Sean had told her. He’d left Petey Hill to guard the body.
“Suburbs of Baltimore.”
“Ah, the American dream. White picket fence. Dog in the backyard.”
“Hey,” he grumbled, double slapping mosquitoes. “I saw plenty of white picket fences back in your hometown. You didn’t have such a bad life yourself.”
“My father is an alcoholic.” It came out of her mouth before she had time to take it back. She didn’t normally share with coworkers.
“Mine, too. Was. He was killed on the job.”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, holding back a sycamore branch. On the job echoed in her head. In an instant, she had a connection with Glen’s father, a man she had never known. They were all connected…law enforcement agents of every kind, all over the world. A silent brotherhood. Sisterhood. Whatever. “A cop? You’re kidding.”
“Bureau. Firearms deal gone bad. Seventies. I was in middle school. A long time ago.”
Fia nodded. She probably should have said something like how sorry she was, or how much respect she had for agents who had given their lives for their country, but the words seemed unnecessary. Part of the connection they all shared.
She slowed her pace, not sure if it was because she felt bad for giving Glen a hard time about keeping up or because she knew the body wasn’t far. She caught a glimpse of pale blue on the green canvas of the forest. A uniform. “Officer Hill?” she called out. “Petey? It’s Fia Kahill. I’ve got Special Agent Duncan with me.”
“Ah, Jezus,” he swore, approaching them. “About time someone got here. I been alone with him for an hour.” I was scared here alone, Fee, and I’m man enough to admit it, he telepathed. What in Sweet Jezus Christ’s name is goin’ on here?
Not here, Petey. Not now. Not with the human present.
She consciously blocked out his thoughts, trying to concentrate on the crime scene. On her job.
She heard the flies before she saw the body. They were already beginning to lay their eggs. If the body wasn’t refrigerated within the next few hours, the white eggs would begin to appear around the edges of any open wounds or bruises. Within a week, maggots would begin to hatch. As she walked closer, the stench of burnt human flesh, with underlying hints of the first putrid stages of decomposition, grew stronger in her nostrils.
Sometimes enhanced senses weren’t all they were cracked up to be.
Petey met them on the path. He was a nice guy. Late thirties. Married to her Aunt Ruthie. He had a teenage daughter, Katy, who she heard through the grapevine was giving him a run for his money. Drinking. Violating curfew. The usual teenage bad behavior.
“It’s this way.”
“Pete,” she said softly. “You don’t have to show me—” Because I can smell him, she was going to say, but as he drew back the branches to reveal the headless, handless body, sour bile rose in her throat.
“Ah, hell,” Glen muttered, turning his head away to catch his breath.
This close, even a human could smell it.
“Is that—”
“It must be eighty-five out here. Ninety-five percent humidity. Decomposition starts immediately.” She tried to breathe through her mouth as she took a step back. The body lay in a small clearing, just off the path. When Pete let go of the hawthorn branch, her view of the body was blocked again.
She looked to her uncle’s officer. “Officer Hill, how about if you take a few steps back, give Special Agent Duncan and me some room?”
“You want me to cut back some of those thorny branches?” Pete needed no further invitation to move out of the direct vicinity of the body. “Chief said to leave ’em be. Possible evidence, but—”
“No. You did the right thing.”
In another two hours the sun would be setting. They’d have to move fast to process the scene or be forced to haul in generators for light. Two old ATVs wouldn’t be near enough then and she didn’t want to have to call the office for additional backup and equipment. She didn’t want anyone else from the Bureau here.
She swung her backpack off her shoulder and felt for the digital camera in the front zipper pocket. “Officer, why don’t you begin a perimeter check, make a circle around the body, then a bigger circle and so forth. You see anything that could be evidence—blood, a footprint, a piece of fiber, even a broken branch—you holler. I want it photographed and marked clearly.”
“Weirdest thing. No blood outside the clearing.”
“Look anyway.”
“Will do, Fee.”
Petey walked away and she looked to Glen, standing beside her. “You want to take the photos?” She raised her camera.
Generally, when two agents worked together and one took photos, it was the other agent who truly observed the crime scene. As odd as it sounded, the photographer could distance himself or herself from a grisly setting, concentrating on recording it. Without a camera in one’s hand, without the lens to soften the edges, a body in this state could be overwhelming.
“I’m no good at high-tech crap. It will take me an hour to upload them onto my laptop. You get the pictures.” He reached around her, brushing her arm with his fingertips as he pulled back the prickly branches of the hawthorn.
Fia stepped through the natural wall into the small clearing. The leaves and dry pine needles, now singed, were tamped down. It was most likely a place deer bedded at night, or in the heat of the day. Perhaps even gave birth.
Twenty-three-year-old Mahon Kahill was lying in the very center of the clearing, his torso on its side, his legs bent, poised as if still running, even in death. His head was gone. Both arms severed at the wrists, his hands nowhere in sight. His flesh was blackened, but not to the degree Bobby’s had been. It was likely little or no accelerant had been used, just dead leaves and whatever the killer could find nearby.
What was distinctly different between this scene and the one
at the post office was that good-looking, affable Mahon, who liked NASCAR and wet corn bread, had some sort of wooden rod protruding from his chest. He had been pinned to the ground, probably while still alive. It made the decapitation go easier.
Fia tried not to let the screams of the horses, the men that night, pierce her brain. Her brother Gill had been pinned to the ground by a broadsword and decapitated. She remembered the green wool of his cloak, still on his shoulders, bloody, fluttering on the morning breeze.
She heard Glen, just behind her, take a deep breath as he saw what she saw and it snapped her back to the present century. She could have sworn he said “Fuck me,” under his breath and it almost made her smile. Almost.
“Saved the best detail for last, did you?”
She hadn’t told him everything Uncle Sean had told her, but she hadn’t left the impaling out on purpose. Their conversation had simply been very short when she called him from her car to tell him to meet her in Clare Point.
“Look like maybe a bit of a struggle to you?” She glanced around. Some of the leaves and pine needles on the forest floor appeared to be disturbed. A few branches were bent. A couple broken. The disturbances in the ground cover could have come from the assailant scooping up leaves to burn the body, but that wasn’t the impression she got. Standing here, she could almost smell Mahon’s terror in his last breath. She could feel him fighting for his life.
“Came in through there.” Glen pointed to the northwest. “Not a lot of spatter for the quantity of blood here.”
“Soaked into the ground, maybe.” She crouched at Mahon’s shoulder and took a close-up of his neck, the ligaments, muscles, and his trachea easily identifiable. Like Bobby’s, the wound was relatively clean. He had been beheaded with something sharp. But, while Bobby had been beheaded face down, Mahon had seen what was coming.
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