Last Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 3)

by Stephen Penner

  Iain frowned and shook his head. “That’s your clan’s motto, Maggie. Not mine. Mine is ‘Stand Fast.’” He sighed and turned away. “Goodbye, Maggie.”

  Maggie could only watch as Iain folded his large body into the other woman’s sports car. The woman glanced back at Maggie, then planted a kiss on Iain’s check before darting out into the roadway and driving away.

  “Mo cridhe,” Maggie whispered to herself. “My heart. There goes my heart.”

  7. Body of Evidence

  The two police officers burst out of the stairwell, one smiling the other gasping for air.

  “Bloody Hell,” wheezed the gasper, Officer Thomas Haskins, a young, heavy-set man with thick brown hair that stuck up in the back. “That’s a lot of stairs, that is. Her flat would have to be on the top floor, wouldn’t it?” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Well, I’m taking the lift down.”

  His partner, Officer Jack MacKinney, chuckled. He was the shorter of the two men, thinner with thick biceps. “Come on, then, Tommy, it’s good for you. Gotta stay in shape. Taking the lift down won’t save you any energy, you know, so it’s good you took the stairs coming up.”

  Haskins shook his thick head. “Aye, well, I guess it was only two flights.” He stopped to take in a deep breath. “But I’m telling you, Jack, I’ve either got to get in better shape or find a new partner.”

  “Keep me as your partner, Tommy, and you’ll get in better shape.” MacKinney pulled up in front of the last door on the left. “Here we are. Flat number twelve.”

  “And why are we here again?” Haskins panted, holding his side.

  “Welfare check,” MacKinney replied. “The caller said there was a bad smell coming from inside.”

  Haskins took a deep sniff. “Aye.” He nodded. “I smell something too.”

  MacKinney frowned. “Aye.”

  They’d both been cops long enough to recognize the smell.

  MacKinney knocked on the door anyway. “Hello? Is anyone home? This is the police. Please open the door.”

  Nothing. Which is exactly what they expected.

  Another knock-and-announce. Again, no response.

  “I suppose we can go in now,” Haskins said. He reached into his pocket and extracted the master key the landlord had given them.

  MacKinney nodded and stepped aside for Haskins to open the door. Haskins slipped the key in to the lock and twisted it without ever checking the door first to see if it was even locked. When he tried to open it, it didn’t budge, so he turned the key all the way the other direction and felt the deadbolt pop. He finally pushed the door open with a sheepish grin.

  But any further thoughts about the difficulty in opening the door were swept away by the overpowering smell that rushed out of the darkened flat.

  “Oh.” Haskins covered his nose and turned away. “That’s rank.”

  MacKinney grimaced against the stench. He nodded but elected not to reply, lest he breathe in more than absolutely necessary. He jerked his head toward the apartment and the two officers stepped inside.

  Although it was the middle of a sunny afternoon, the flat was dim. All the shades were drawn and the lights off. They crept in slowly, glancing around, wondering not so much what they’d find, but where they’d find it.

  The answer, after a cursory search of the kitchen and living room, was the master bedroom. It was a two-bedroom flat, comfortably furnished and nicely decorated—save the corpse suspended by its neck on the bedroom closet door.

  “Oh,” Haskins said again through his hand. “There she is.”

  His first instinct was to take the body down, but MacKinney grabbed his arm. “Leave her there, Tommy. She’s beyond help. The detectives will want to see the room exactly as we found it.”

  Haskins frowned. “I suppose you’re right,” he admitted, again through his hand, pressed even tighter in such close proximity to the decaying body. He peered up at the lifeless face of the dead woman. Her eyes were wide open, bulging out, criss-crossed in red with the broken blood vessels that accompany strangulation when the blood can’t get out of the head again. Her tongue, also swollen, jutted out slightly, and her skin was already starting to stretch and mummify in the heat of the stuffy flat.

  “I wonder what she looked like when she alive,” Haskins said.

  MacKinney shrugged. “A hell of a lot better than she does now, I’d wager.” He turned away and scanned the room. “Ah, there it is.”

  “What?” Haskins asked, also turning from the distorted corpse hanging off the floor.

  “The suicide note,” MacKinney answered. He was standing at the small writing desk on the other side of the bedroom. Haskins joined his partner and read over his shoulder.

  I’m sorry. I just couldn’t bear it anymore. God forgive me.

  MacKinney frowned. “Not a lot of detail,” he observed.

  “Oh, so you’re going to criticize a woman’s last thoughts before she kills herself?” Haskins scolded. “That’s cold.”

  MacKinney shrugged. “Well, it’s hot in here. And it stinks. Let’s go. The detectives can do the clean up.”

  Haskins agreed and they stepped toward the exit. But as they left the bedroom, Haskins turned around and, looking up again at the dead woman, he crossed himself.

  8. Message in a Bottle

  The next few weeks brought both clarity and confusion. Her patchy memory slowly solidified until she could remember everything up to Iain walking away under Visegrád Castle, and everything after waking up in the Edinburgh hotel. But just as clearly as she could remember all that, she could absolutely not remember anything at all during those missing Lost Weeks. It was a hole in her memory, its edges as sharp and clearly defined as a picture frame.

  Similarly, her emotions came into focus. Her disbelief at Iain fleeing to Edinburgh with some blonde floozy crystallized into angry betrayal. Her vague comfort at returning home coalesced into welcome stability. And her anxiety at having lost her Dark Book solidified into abject panic.

  She could worry about Iain later. Or not.

  But she had to find the Dark Book.

  The only problem was that she had absolutely no idea where to start. But she remembered reading once that the best place to start is at the beginning. So early one morning, after a sensible breakfast of cereal, coffee, and a banana, she pulled her backpack over her shoulders and headed for the university, hoping to find some clue as to the fate of her fortuitously found, and mysteriously lost, grimoire.

  She stepped out into a bright, September morning, and locked the door behind her—just before her laptop alerted the arrival of a new email that would prove to be the real clue she was after.

  *

  She took the long way to campus. Not because she didn’t want to get there right away, but because she wanted to reconnect with the city. Even though most of her memories had returned, she still felt a vague dissociation. As if the memories were someone else’s, or scenes from a movie she’d seen. In any case, walking through the streets and quays of the district surrounding the university helped to push the dissociated unease to the edge of her consciousness. Stepping onto the campus grounds kicked it over that edge. She was home. Or at least, she was where she was happiest. On campus.

  The skyline was dominated by the stone crown sitting astride the arches atop the King’s College Building. She followed it like a Wise Man after a star. Her destination lay tucked between the King’s College building and the equally impressive Elphinstone Hall with its gothic turrets and arched doorways.

  But the real prize was between the two buildings, a smallish construct bearing a plaque with the simple yet glorious words:

  HISTORIC COLLECTIONS

  MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES

  Maggie recalled the first time she stepped into the building, grateful for the treasure she’d found then, and relieved for her current ability to remember.

  The main reading room was just as impressive as it had been that first time she’d walked in nearly a year ago, but
it was decidedly less populated. September had arrived and the semester was approaching, but the term wouldn’t start until the end of the month. The campus held that anticipatory sort of busy which a university takes on when classes are imminent, but preparations are still incomplete. There were a few students, some faculty, and luckily for Maggie just then, most of the staff. She walked to the circulation desk and was greeted by the same heavy-set, gray-haired, and bespectacled woman who’d first given her a key to the university’s ancient book collection the previous fall.

  “Well, hello again,” the woman said as Maggie stepped up. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  Maggie was impressed by the woman’s memory. For Maggie, there was only the one—well, maybe two—‘women who worked at the historic collections circulation desk.’ But Maggie was just one of literally thousands of students at the school.

  “Thanks,” Maggie replied, a smile blossoming on her face. After everything that had happened since waking up in Edinburgh, it was nice to be remembered. “I’m back.”

  The woman smiled, squinching her eyes behind her dark-framed glasses. “I can see that. Headed for the ancient book collection again, are you?”

  Maggie nodded. “Yes. Is it still in the sub-basement?”

  “Oh, aye,” the woman laughed. “We couldn’t have moved it all in that short of time. Far too many books in far too delicate a condition.”

  Maggie recalled the fragile state of some of the older books she’d seen on the dim shelves. “Can I go down today? I know the semester hasn’t started yet.”

  The librarian waved the suggestion away. “Of course. You’re a doctoral student, aye? You have access whenever you need it, as long as the building is open, that is.”

  Maggie considered the early hour and supposed she was unlikely to return upstairs after closing time like on her first visit. “Thanks. I don’t expect it will take long.”

  “Enjoy yourself,” the woman replied. “I’ll be here if you need anything.”

  Maggie thanked the woman again then headed for the stone steps that descended beneath the building toward the sub-basement and the treasure vault that had once held her Dark Book. She hoped it might again—although if it did, she’d be faced with the mystery of who had returned it.

  The aged stone steps quickly gave way to the ugly modern steps that truly led to the ancient book collection. The study carrels on floor B-3 were vacant and she passed no students sitting between the stacks reading whatever tome they’d pulled from the library’s lower floors. It was deathly silent as her shoes clacked to the back of the room and she found herself standing before the wooden door marked with small black, painted letters:

  ANCIENT BOOK COLLECTION

  She pulled off her backpack. The first time, she’d brought a notepad, pens, her grandmother’s book of Old Gaelic literature, and a bottle of water. Each had proved useful in its own way. This time she brought the one thing she’d need: a flashlight.

  It was dark in that corner.

  She pulled her keys from her pocket and unlocked the door. She turned the switch bolted to the cement wall and waited for the loud electric buzz to activate the aging light fixtures, one crackle-buzz-pop at a time.

  Maggie surveyed the room as it lit up, section by section. As far as she could tell, nothing had changed since her last visit. Or her first, for that matter. The four bookshelves still stood against the far wall, the three rows of lights hanging off-center enough to cast the last row into unhelpful darkness. The single table and anachronistic card catalog seemed to be coated with same layer of dust she’d encountered the previous fall. She even craned her neck half-expecting to see a clean spot on the floor from spilt water. But there was no indication the floor had ever been anything but uniformly dusty.

  The room appeared undisturbed, but really it simply absorbed its disturbances the way all ancient places do.

  She narrowed her eyes and realized that her memory of the room was almost too vivid. It was a welcome change from her the vague, incomplete, or entirely absent memories she had endured for the first days after The Lost Weeks, but it was disconcerting in its own way. She could recall details from a year ago which naturally should have faded. It was almost as if whatever had caused her to lose certain memories had also strengthened the memories that remained. Like a broken bone that, once set and knitted, was stronger than it had been before.

  She lingered over the thought of a healed bone for a few seconds as it prompted a new thought to take hold. She glanced at the last, dark row where her present quest ended. Then she looked at the perfectly illuminated first row. It would be a quick detour, she decided, and one she felt suddenly compelled to follow.

  She stretched her left hand out against the wall and began a slow descent down the worn steps, without the benefit of a handrail on either side, and a painful drop-off onto the card catalogue threatened to the right. Her hand traced the stone wall, the sticky dust lightly coating her fingertips as her eyes fixed themselves on that first row, and the book she knew was there.

  Or not.

  Its call number was ‘Art.-1.’ She recalled that as if it had just been whispered in her ear. And she remembered the title as well: ‘Deailbh ann an Alba anns a’ Seachdamh Linn Deug,’ Gaelic for ‘Painting in Seventeenth Century Scotland.’ And she recalled the painting of the noblewoman within, labeled, in Gaelic, ‘A Healer. 1621.’

  She also remembered where it was situated on the shelf, immediately after ‘Arch.-1.’ and so she was absolutely certain that she hadn’t overlooked it when she reached the place it should have been and it was absolutely, definitely not there.

  “Checked out,” she muttered. By some art history major, no doubt. She would have cursed the uselessness of such a course of studies if she herself had not been a graduate student in Celtic languages. Not exactly the next big hiring trend, she knew.

  Her mouth tightened into a puckered frown and she shrugged, forcing herself to be content with waiting to see the portrait of her ancestor, Brìghde Innes. The Healer.

  She could feel a small spark of rage within her at not getting what she wanted, and wondered at it, recalling similar emotions after using the magic. But she knew she hadn’t used the magic since she’d awoken in Edinburgh. How could she? The Dark Book was missing.

  Then again, she had mastered some of the spells enough to cite them without referring to the source material. For a moment she considered trying to levitate a book off the shelf, just to see if she could, but then she recalled her last nightmare and thought better of it.

  Instead, she refocused her attention on her true goal, and extracted her flashlight from her backpack. She wasn’t going to stumble again on the uneven floor. And, she decided as she looked down at the tool, she still wasn’t going to call it a ‘torch.’ It was a flashlight. Cultural assimilation had its limits. Words had import. She wouldn’t be needing a torch until the next time she stormed a castle.

  With a grin, she wondered whether that might not happen sooner than she expected. It had been a hell of year, almost literally.

  She exited the first row and proceeded directly to the last row, trading the bright lights directly overhead the art and architecture books, for the shadow cast over the religion books by the unfortunate placement of lights directly above, and inches away from the top of, the third bookshelf.

  She shined her flashlight into the recess and smiled. She knew the Dark Book almost certainly wasn’t there. But she hoped it was anyway. And either way, it was nice to be back in a place that no one else knew about. Not even Iain or Sinclair. They might have had an inkling about the magic. Might have seen it in action, still doubtful of their own eyes. But no one else had been in this corner; no one knew where she had found the Book; no one else knew the importance of this lost place beneath a forgettable building.

  She walked in slowly, illuminating the floor. There was the uneven stone she had tripped over. There was the row of books on the bottom corner. There was where the light from above co
mpletely disappeared as the call numbers reached ‘Rel. Gael.-7.’

  She knelt down onto the hard, dirty floor. The light shone on the gap between ‘Rel.Gael.-6’ and ‘Rel. Gael-8.’ Just as she had suspected. It wasn’t there.

  She’d had to look, but it wasn’t there.

  And just as her mind started down the road of next possibilities, it was pulled back by the slightest reflection of light from within the depths of the shelf.

  Bending down so her cheek was almost on the cool stone of the floor, she flashed the light in again and confirmed a book tucked behind the others. A familiar situation.

  Disturbingly so.

  She reached in and pulled out the book.

  It wasn’t her Dark Book. She had known that as soon as she had spied the white binding. Her hand confirmed it was also considerably thinner and lighter than her Dark Book. Nevertheless she pulled it out and appraised the cover, her surprise almost greater than it would have been had she actually been holding her Dark Book.

  It was the missing art history book. ‘Painting in Seventeenth Century Scotland.’ The title was actually in Gaelic. So was the note tucked in at Brìghde’s portrait.

  “Don’t believe it’s gone,” Maggie translated aloud. “She didn’t.”

  What’s gone? she wondered. And who didn’t believe it?

  Maggie thought she might know the answers. Then she set her mind to the bigger question: who could have known to leave such a note for her. She thought she knew that answer too.

  “Sarah.”

  *

  “Sarah MacKenzie.”

  The visiting inspector from Edinburgh announced the name as if Warwick should have recognized it somehow. It was familiar enough to the Aberdeen sergeant, but Sarah was hardly an uncommon name, and MacKenzie was one of the larger clans in Scotland. The name was like a Highland ‘Joan Smith.’

  Warwick had been relieved when Cameron had pulled her from her perusal of the grave-robbing file. She wasn’t happy that someone was defiling graves in her city, but she would have preferred using her skills to solve, even prevent, more recent deaths. When Cameron had told her an inspector from Edinburgh had arrived, wanting to discuss a recent murder that appeared to have ties to Aberdeen, Warwick spied an opportunity to shove the grave-robbing case off onto Sergeant Willis or someone else who could handle a case where the cause of death wasn’t at issue.