She took a series of photos, taking care not to disturb the body, although the whole time she was doing it, she wanted to touch Mahon. To somehow console him.
It would be his family that would need comforting.
They worked for close to an hour without really talking and Fia found that Glen was easier to be around than maybe she had given him credit for the first time around. He was respectful of the body, conscientious of his work, and thorough. He carefully collected samples of leaves, blood, even snapped twigs from the immediate area, bagging them and logging where it was all found.
At the rumbling sound of approaching ATVs, both Fia and Glen took a moment to walk outside the immediate circle surrounding the crime scene. They were both bathed in sweat, their clothes damp and stuck to their skin. The mosquitoes were still buzzing in their ears but as the late afternoon lengthened into early evening, a slight breeze began to rustle the leaves of the trees. When Fia turned her head, she could faintly smell the salt of the bay more than a mile away, but the scent that was strongest in her nostrils, even stronger than the smell of Mahon’s blood and his burnt flesh, was the smell of Glen’s skin. His damp hair.
He smelled good and it was annoyingly distracting.
“Excellent. Two more men to help us move the body,” Glen remarked.
She passed him a water bottle from her backpack. “Three.”
He looked over at her, questioningly, as he twisted the cap.
“Three ATVs,” she observed, watching in the direction they would appear as she gulped her water. “One’s got serious transmission trouble. I hope it’s not the one pulling the trailer.” She screwed the cap on the water bottle, glancing away, realizing that the four-wheel-drive-all-terrain vehicles were still a good quarter of a mile away, and to the human ear probably just sounded like a bunch of noise.
She could tell Glen was wondering how she knew how many were coming. Back in the parking lot at the entrance to the preserve, Uncle Sean had specifically said Malachy had two ATVs. He’d apparently scared up a third somewhere.
“Find anything, Pete?” Fia called, not giving Glen a chance to say anything about the approaching vehicles. She’d have to be more careful. He was more observant than she’d first given him credit for, as well.
“Nothing of the head or hands. Nothing out of place except that path beat through the pines over there. I’m no expert, but it looks to me like someone was following someone else. You think you can take some of those fancy footprint molds like on TV?”
“Possibly.”
The engines of the ATVs grew so loud that they drowned out Pete’s voice. Fia looked up to see one come through the trees, then a second, then a third.
“Good hearing,” Glen remarked, meeting her gaze.
She held it for a second, then looked away. As her uncle and the two other officers cut the engines, she could hear the flies buzzing over Mahon’s body again. The minute she had moved away, they had moved back in again. “Let’s finish up and get Mahon out of here.”
Chapter 10
It was dark by the time Fia and Glen walked out of the woods, hot, tired, sweaty, eaten up by the mosquitoes. The parking lot was as busy as the Dairy Queen on a Saturday night in June, but the townsfolk had the good sense to keep their distance. They stood huddled in groups in the darkness, whispering, watching.
Fia and Glen waited in the gravel parking lot under the circle of light from a security lamp mounted on an electric pole as Mahon’s body was transferred from the wagon pulled behind Malachy’s SUV to an ambulance. He’d be transported to Dr. Caldwell’s morgue.
Uncle Sean approached, hiking up his uniform pants; he appeared to have lost weight in the weeks since Fia had seen him. “I got one officer willin’ to stand watch over the scene overnight, Fee, but I’m worried about him bein’ in there alone, I am, considering the circumstances.”
As he spoke to her and Glen aloud, the police chief tried to communicate telepathically to Fia.
She blocked his thoughts. Not now, Uncle Sean. Not here.
“But a couple of boys from the volunteer fire company are willin’ to stand shifts with him,” he went on. “What do ye think?”
She rubbed her eyes. With the coming of dusk, the no-see-ums, tiny black gnats, had appeared and were more annoying than the dive-bombing mosquitoes. “Just make the rules clear. They’re there to protect the scene until Special Agent Duncan and I can get back at daybreak. I don’t want them touching anything. I don’t even want them taking a leak within a hundred yards of that spot. And I don’t want anyone else there, except those you’ve assigned to the watch.”
“Ye got it, gal.” He hitched up his pants and hurried toward his car where several of his officers waited.
The volunteer EMTs closed the doors on the ambulance.
Fia turned to Glen. “We’ll get some sleep at the motel, come back in the morning.” As she spoke, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a figure standing near her car. She walked toward him. “Meet you there, Glen?”
“Fee,” her father called out of the darkness. His cigarette glowed. “Your mother says you should come stay with us. Bed and breakfast is practically empty.” He didn’t look at Glen still standing under the street lamp. “Room for you both.”
“That’s okay, Dad. We’ve got reservations at the Lighthouse.”
“She won’t charge you for the rooms. Just what meals you eat. She says she can bill ’em or put it on a MasterCard or something.”
“Tell her thanks, Dad. It’s nice of her to offer, but—”
She felt Glen’s fingertips brush her shoulder blade. “It wouldn’t be such a bad idea,” he said quietly, coming up behind her.
“Excuse me a minute,” she told her father, walking away from the car. Glen followed.
“We should stay at the motel, out of the fray,” she said. “Her kitchen is like Grand Central. Everyone in the town stopping by for coffee. Talking, conjecturing.”
“Could be a good thing.”
She could hardly see his face in the dark, but she knew he was watching her. She glanced away. Her father’s cigarette grew brighter then dimmer as he puffed.
“People coming and going,” he continued. “We might overhear something pertinent to the case. Let’s face it, two beheadings in a town this small, Fia. Someone has got to know something.”
“My mother’s nosy. She likes to get into my business.”
“So keep your briefcase and your overnight case shut.” There was a hint of amusement in his tired voice.
He was probably right. At the motel, they were isolated. No one there but a couple of tourists and old Mrs. Cahall who owned the place. With word of Mahon’s murder hours old, the bed and breakfast would be as packed as the pub tonight. Busier tomorrow morning, as the first coffee pot percolated.
Of course, staying at the B and B would mean taking more chances with Glen. Her parents were pretty good around humans; they’d had a lot of years of tourist trade to practice. But with the end of the season in sight, and with what was happening in the town, Fia wasn’t sure how well they were keeping their guards up.
As she stood with her hand on her hip, vacillating, the decision came sauntering their way, hips swaying, cherry-cheesecake lip-gloss mouth pursed.
“Special Agent Duncan,” Shannon cooed. She was wearing a tight pink T-shirt and denim shorts that appeared to be without an inseam. Her pale, untanned butt cheeks glowed in the dark. “I was hoping you’d be back in town. Not that I would wish such a thing on anyone, God forbid.” She giggled. “But you know what I mean.”
Glen barely glanced at Shannon, but there was no way a human male couldn’t notice her. Be attracted to her. It was chemically impossible, and Shannon, of all people, knew that.
“Okay, we’ll have it your way,” Fia said to Glen, walking back toward the car. “Shannon. Go back to work.”
“It’s my night off,” the blonde called after her.
“We’ll follow you into town, Dad,” Fia told
the glowing cigarette. “Special Agent Duncan, you coming?”
“Right behind you.”
As Fia guessed, the kitchen of her mother’s place, the Sea Horse Bed and Breakfast, was packed. The good citizens of Clare Point mulled around, helping themselves to coffee and iced tea and her mother’s famous pecan sticky buns. They spilled out of the kitchen and dining room onto the wide veranda that circled the rambling Victorian home Fia had grown up in. Twice.
It would have looked like a party except that there were few smiles. Even less laughter.
“Special Agent Duncan, I’m so glad you could join us.” Mary Kay Kahill, who was actually Mary K., to keep her straight with the other Marys in town, met them on the veranda’s wide front steps.
“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.” Glen passed his small duffel bag from his right hand to his left so he could shake her hand.
“Mom.” Fia passed her on the steps.
“Fee.”
“Which rooms?”
“The Starfish and the Blue Gill. There’s only two other rooms occupied so you both get your own bathroom.”
Fia had always thought the Blue Gill was a silly name for one of the rooms; after all, bluegills were not saltwater fish. Her mother insisted it didn’t matter; most tourists didn’t know it and didn’t care. Mary Kay, forever the pragmatist, said it beat calling the room the Oyster Cracker Room. Looked a darned sight better on her Internet site and on the hand-painted nameplate on the door.
“Lot of people here, Fee,” her mother called after her. A lot of people wanting to know what you’re going to do about this.
Fia tried to ignore the hint of accusation in her mother’s voice. After all, she hadn’t actually spoken the words out loud.
“You got something quick to eat, Ma? Special Agent Duncan and I need to get some sleep. We want to be back on the preserve by dawn. We get any rain and evidence out there will be washed away.”
“No rain in the forecast. I’ve got a fresh chicken salad I can put in a wrap or I can make up a nice plate with some fruit.”
“Either would be fine, Mrs. Kahill.” Glen followed her up the steps.
“No big-city formalities, here,” Fia’s mother said, cutting her eyes in her daughter’s direction. “My guests just call me Mary Kay. Would you like me to set you a place at the dining room table, Special Agent Duncan?”
“It’s Glen. The dining room would be—”
“Just have one of the boys send it up, Ma,” Fia interrupted. “Glen probably wants to grab a shower. It’s been a long day.” In the front hall, she dropped her car keys in the basket on the marble-topped table, an old habit, and made a beeline for the grand staircase that wound its way to the third floor.
“Thank you, Mary Kay,” Glen said, taking his cue to follow Fia up the stairs.
“Be sure to come down for a nightcap, Glen,” Mary Kay called.
Fia made the first turn on the staircase. The thoughts of the sept members in the rooms below echoed louder between her ears than their voices. Everyone was scared. Angry. Why were they angry with her? “Early start in the morning, Ma.”
On the third floor, Fia pointed to the door marked THE BLUE GILL ROOM. “Key’s in the door,” she told Glen. “Mom will send one of my little brothers up with a tray. Stay clear of the iced tea unless you want to be awake for the next three days. She brews it strong.”
He rested his hand on the doorknob to his room. “You going down tonight?”
She looked up as she pushed open her door. “You?”
“Nah, I’m beat. I think I need to clear my head before I start interviewing again. You’ve got some odd characters in this town, Fia.”
“This town?” Somehow she managed a chuckle. “What about this house?”
“Night.”
She waited until he entered his room and closed the door, then slipped into the room heavily decorated in a seahorse motif and made a beeline for the shower.
It was after midnight and even though Fia hadn’t partaken of her mother’s killer iced tea, she couldn’t sleep. She lay in the dark, in the queen-sized bed, surrounded by ruffles and pillows with sea urchins embroidered on them, thinking of all the times she and Mahon had had a good laugh over a pint at the Hill. In Ireland. In the days before the mallachd.
Mahon had been special to her. He had known Ian, maybe even called him his friend. It was Mahon who had locked her in the root cellar that horrific night. Saved her life for certain because Fia knew with all her heart that she would have faced Ian, had she been able to get to him.
Sometimes, just before she fell asleep, or in that moment before she became fully awake, she liked to think that Ian would have set her free that night if he had come upon her. Or she would have faced him, accused him, but her love for him would have kept her from killing him. But she knew the truth, just as Mahon had known the truth the night he had forced her through the hole in the ground and closed the hatch over her head. Either she or Ian would have died that night. Possibly both.
As she thought of Mahon and her last conversation with him only ten days ago, images of Joseph’s face began to appear superimposed over his. The two men had been nothing alike, and yet she thought they would have liked each other, had they met.
The idea was absurd, of course. She didn’t even know what made her think of it.
She wondered where Joseph was now. Why he hadn’t returned her calls. Had he thought better of his decision to return to the Philadelphia area?
She doubted it. It wasn’t like him to give in so easily.
Fia rolled onto her side, pushing her fist into her pillow, making a dent for her cheek.
It had been after eleven before the downstairs had cleared and people had said their good nights. Her mother had only locked the front door half an hour ago, but she knew she and Fia’s father were already sound asleep, lying stiff and still beside each other in the double-sized bed. The two could barely stand the sight of each other after fifteen hundred years. Fia didn’t know why they didn’t at least get a king-sized bed.
An unidentifiable sound in the hall caught Fia’s attention and she rolled onto her back, gazing at her door. She listened. The house was quiet. No footsteps. No creaking floorboards.
Had she imagined the sound?
She thought about Bobby and Mahon. No matter how she tried to convince herself otherwise, she knew two beheadings weren’t a coincidence. They were not random acts. Someone had known what both men had been, known how to kill them.
She wondered if Bobby or Mahon had heard their attacker approach. Had they known what was coming? Mahon must have. There had been obvious signs of struggle, and then there was the four-foot stake driven through his torso to pin him to the ground.
She heard a sound outside her door again and in a single fluid motion, she rolled onto her side, grabbed her firearm from the bedside table and rolled onto her back to face the intruder. As she rolled, the doorknob turned and two men burst through the doorway.
Blood pounding in her ears, she sprang up, raising her pistol, flipping the safety.
The two figures hurled themselves toward her, landing in her bed.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”
Chapter 11
“I could have blown your heads off, you feckin’ assholes.” Fia flipped the safety on the pistol, her heart pounding in her ears. Thank God her vision was good, even in the dark, or she might have seriously injured one of them. Kahills couldn’t die, but they still bled, got infections, suffered like humans.
“You’re getting slow in your old age,” Fin teased, straddling her at her hips and pinning her on her back, arms to her sides.
“I told him you’d shoot him. I told him it was a bad idea.” Regan dropped beside them, his head on her pillow.
“I should have shot you.” She struggled against Fin’s hold, managing to set her firearm on the table again. “Get off me!” She slapped at him. “When did you guys get back? Mom—”
Distracted by her brothers and th
e hum of the window air conditioner, Fia didn’t hear the bedroom doorknob turn. She didn’t realize someone was there until the three of them were staring into the barrel of a Glock pistol at the end of the footboard.
Fia shoved Fin off her and sat up. “Glen—”
“Fia, are you—” Glen lowered the drawn pistol, obviously not understanding exactly what was going on, but realizing he’d mistaken the situation. “I heard you…the door…the male voices.”
Boxer briefs. Nice. She would have pegged him for a baggy boxer man. “My brothers, Fin and Regan.” She introduced them awkwardly. She knew it had to look bad; her in her bra and panties, two young men in her bed, one on top of her.
Glen took a step back. “Okay, so I feel like an idiot.”
She scrambled off the bed, grabbing a T-shirt off the chair and dropping it over her head as she walked toward him. In the dark, he had probably barely seen her in her state of undress.
No, she could tell by the look on his face. He definitely caught a good look.
“I…they’re asses.” She gestured lamely toward the identical twins in her bed. Twenty-eight in this life cycle and dangerously good-looking, Fin and Regan seemed to be closer to eighteen or nineteen years old and used it to their advantage when they traveled for the sept. While they appeared to humans to be harmless college students, they actually hunted the world’s rapists, murderers, and child molesters.
“Who the hell is this? Jezuz, Fee.” Regan snapped on the bedside lamp. “He looks just like—”
“This is Special Agent Glen Duncan,” Fia cut in. “My…my partner on the case.”
She wished Regan hadn’t turned on the lamp. In the light, she and Glen both looked even more ridiculous, her in her old Temple T-shirt that didn’t come close to covering her red lace panties, and him in his tight boxer briefs that left nothing to her imagination either.
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