by Skye Knizley
Raven moved to follow and was stopped by Valentina.
“That was cold, Ravenel,” she said.
Raven met her mother’s eyes. “Not if this job kills me, Mom. I never meant to find a familiar, let alone a life partner.”
“It is a hollow life you lead, then, and I am sorry it is what we have given you,” Valentina said. “There is more to existence than shooting the bad guys.”
Raven brushed past. “It works for me, Mom. I’ll call you later, please give my love to Dominique.”
“I will. Be well, my child.”
Outside, Aspen was waiting behind the wheel of a blue Aston Martin Rapide. A four door Aston wouldn’t have been Raven’s first choice, but she had to admit, it was a beautiful car, and where Caderyn was going he wouldn’t be needing it anymore. If he was lucky he’d be spending the next twenty years looking at the underside of a cheap pine lid six feet down.
She climbed into the passenger side and leaned back into the plush leather seat.
“Where to?” Aspen asked.
“Head back to the Lenox,” Raven replied. “Wregan should be there, assuming she didn’t call in the National Guard or an air strike.”
Aspen pressed the gas and the car took off like a rocket, the 562 horsepower V12 howling. “Do you really think she would do that?”
Raven pulled her hair into a tail and secured it with a scrunchy. “I have no idea what she might do. She’s the most clueless preternatural I’ve ever met.”
“I noticed.”
Aspen didn’t speak for the rest of the ride into Boston.
UNION PARK
BOSTON, MA. 5:42 A.M.
RAVEN AND ASPEN HAD RETURNED to the Lenox Hotel to find Kole once again pouring over the file and the evidence they’d collected thus far, which actually amounted to very little. After an effort to lecture Raven on proper police procedure, an argument that hadn’t gone well for her, she’d left and everyone had made an attempt to get some sleep.
It was now 5:42 a.m. and they stood in a loose semi-circle inside a line of yellow police tape. The tall, thin body of Father Caleb Walker had been found face down in a fountain less than an hour before. The lab technicians had pulled him out and he now lay on a white plastic sheet intended to catch any trace evidence that hadn’t sunk to the bottom of the shallow basin.
He’d bled out during the wee hours of the morning and his hair had been dyed pink from blood in the water. Like Monsignor Quinn, his throat had been cut and his tongue pulled through the pink-lipped slit in his neck.
Kole unfolded the photograph of Quinn’s high school class. After a moment she tapped the face of one of the surviving boys. “Here he is. Caleb Walker, member of both the chess team and the archaeology club.”
“Why didn’t we have protection on him?” Raven asked.
“We did,” one of the patrolmen said. “It’s the damndest thing. I turned my back to light a smoke and he was gone. By the time we found him, he was dead and two men were running toward the alley. My partner Bobbi gave chase while I called it in.”
“Where is Bobbi now?”
The patrolman pointed toward a blonde female officer sitting on a bench about twenty feet away.
“See what you two can do with the vic,” Raven said. “I’m going to talk to Bobbi.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Aspen said.
“Shouldn’t I go with you?” Kole asked.
Raven shook her head. “No. Put that nose of yours to use, I smell something I can’t place. I’ll be right back.”
The female officer sat on the bench, a distant look in her eyes. Her cap was missing and her business-like bun had come loose, spilling golden-blonde hair over her shoulders. She also had a bloody, tattered piece of cloth wrapped around her hand. Whatever had happened, she hadn’t given up easily.
“Bobbi?” Raven asked.
The officer blinked and looked up at her. “Yes, ma’am?”
Raven sat beside her. “Your partner says you gave chase to a pair of potential suspects in Walker’s murder, can you tell me what happened?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bobbi said. “Joey was escorting Father Walker on his stroll through the park, I was waiting in the patrol car for them to come out on the far side. About ten minutes into their walk, Joey called in and said he’d lost Walker. I radioed for backup and entered the park. I found Father Walker in the fountain, he was already bleeding out. At about the same time I spotted two men in black running north toward Tremont Street. I called it in and chased them out of the park.”
Raven nodded. “I figured that, then what happened?”
“We crossed Tremont and they started climbing the drainpipe of the business on the corner. And when I say climbing, I mean like a pair of squirrels in spring. I swear I heard them laughing, Agent Storm. I followed and was almost to the top when one of them kicked the pipe loose. A parked Toyota broke my fall and my hand.”
“Did you see their faces?”
Bobbi shook her head. “No, ma’am. They were wearing masks.”
Raven frowned. “Masks? Like for Halloween?”
“Yeah. Skull masks, with black eyes.”
“Do you have a sketch artist at the precinct?” Raven asked.
“Not at mine, but we have one at our disposal, why?” Bobbi replied.
“When you get released from the hospital, get them to sketch the mask you saw.”
Bobbi began to stand. “I’ll have it done right away.”
Raven pulled her firmly but gently back down. “When you’ve been looked over and your hand put in a cast. You did good, don’t push it.”
She pulled one of her business cards from her pocket and handed it over. “When you get the sketch, call me.”
“Yes ma’am,” Bobbi said.
Raven smiled. “And for God’s sake stop calling me ma’am. Raven is fine.”
Bobbi pocketed the card. “Thank you, Raven. Nice to meet you.”
Back at the victim’s side, Raven saw that Aspen had a small collection of trace evidence bagged beside what Boston’s tech had collected.
“What did you find?” Raven asked.
“Definitely the same m/o as the first vic, right down to the missing skin on his back,” Aspen said.
She picked up a small evidence bag that contained what looked to Raven like yellow wax. “This is some kind of grease that was under his nails.”
Raven took the bag and inspected the yellow globs inside. “Grease?”
Aspen nodded. “Yep. Under four nails of his right hand and three of his left. I bagged both hands separately.”
Raven handed it back. “What else?”
“He had black powder residue on his right hand, not modern gunpowder, but old-school black, as well as traces of lead. My guess is he was handling a black powder firearm recently, though the officer says not,” Aspen said. “We also found a business card for someone named Kieran Blake in his pocket. It looks well worn.”
“Kieran was the gunsmith I went to see a couple days ago,” Raven said. “Which would explain the powder. It’s also another connection to the first victim. But it doesn’t give us much in the way of leads.”
“Not so much,” Aspen said with a grin. “Luckily, that wasn’t all we found.”
The local technician, who had been silently watching, rifled through the other pile of evidence. “I’d already bagged and tagged quite a few items when Ms. Kincaid arrived.”
He plucked two bags from the collection and held them out for Raven to examine. One contained an ivory-handled knife with a black blade about four and a half inches long. A stylized skull was carved into the handle, inlayed with gold and silver.
“This was under his body, in the fountain,” the tech said. “I won’t have a positive match on it until the boss can do his thing, but I’m pretty sure this is the murder weapon.”
Raven examined the blade through the bag. The fountain water had washed off most of the blood, but with any luck, they would be able to match it to the wound, which
was better than nothing.
She ran a finger over the insignia and almost dropped the bag when the blade retracted into the hilt.
“Holy shit!”
The tech smiled and took it back. “That isn’t the coolest part. The coolest part is I figure this blade is a couple hundred years old, yet functions like a switchblade.”
“Great, when this is all over we can figure out how it works,” Raven said.
She turned her attention to the other bag which contained an old leather-bound book thick with makeshift bookmarks.
“What’s this?”
“It looks like a journal of some kind, we found it in his inner pocket,” Aspen said. “His clothes saved it from getting wet.”
“It’s been logged and photographed, but I left it open so you could look at it,” the tech added. “Maybe something in there will be useful.”
Raven donned a fresh pair of gloves and pulled the book from the bag. It smelled of old paper mixed with leather and cheap tobacco. A leather thong held the book closed and Raven pulled it loose so she could rifle through the pages. The first page was dated in February of 1978, just a few months after the school’s dormitory had burned. Much of what followed was in some kind of code, but the last page was in plain text and said simply:
I’m seeing them again, the magik didn’t work. Ronen and Casside are dead, I’m certain to be next.
Salem
“What the hell does that mean?” Aspen asked.
“Sounds like he knew someone was after him,” Raven said.
“Why didn’t he call the cops?” the tech asked.
Raven continued flipping through the book. “I have no idea.”
She caught a brass key as it slipped from the book and held it between two fingers. It was a small, plain key with a number on one side: 79.
“Looks like an old safety deposit key,” the tech said.
“Yeah, it does,” Raven said. “But for where?”
Raven handed it to Aspen, who examined both sides. “It doesn’t look like there are any bank markings, just the number. It smells like it was wiped down with some kind of sanitizer recently, too.”
“Do you have any idea who still uses old brass keys on their deposit boxes?” Raven asked the tech.
“Sorry, Agent Storm,” he replied. “I don’t make enough money to even go in the vault.”
Aspen tagged and bagged the key. “That’s all we’ve got so far.”
“It’s more than we had,” Raven replied. “What about family?”
The patrolman who had been standing nearby listening stepped forward. “Father Walker lived alone a few blocks from here. He has one sister who lives upstate, the Lieutenant is going to call her later today and let her know about his death.”
“Do you have his home address?”
The patrolman pulled out his notepad in a gesture that reminded Raven of Levac. He wrote a few lines and handed the torn page to her along with the keys from Father Walker’s belongings.
“Thanks. Asp, if you and Kole have this I’m going to go check out his place.”
Aspen nodded. “We’ll finish up here and I’ll catch up to you later.”
Raven squeezed her shoulder then turned and walked south across the park toward Shawmut Avenue. She climbed the steps and pushed through the heavy wood double doors into a narrow hallway. To Raven’s surprise, there was no elevator. There were two doors in the hallway with a staircase at the end that led up and down. She hurried up the stairs through the second floor to the third, where she found Father Walker’s apartment. She unlocked the door with the keys the officer had given her and passed through into the foyer of the apartment.
As she’d expected, the apartment wasn’t large. A small but serviceable kitchen sat to her left while a living area was placed just ahead. Doors ahead and to the right led into the bedrooms and bathroom.
Raven didn’t waste time with the living area or kitchen, she moved instead to the secondary rooms. The first door opened into a bathroom that smelled of Old Spice and antibacterial soap. A crucifix hung above the mirror.
The second door was a bedroom decorated with a variety of holy items from all over the world along with watercolor paintings of woodland and water scenes. Raven completed a thorough search that turned up nothing but a stack of dog-eared science-fiction paperbacks and a set of high school yearbooks from Bridgewater.
The last room was more promising. Walker had converted the larger of the two bedrooms into a spacious office. One half was devoted to the study of some kind of antiques while the other was for his religious work. Raven went through the religious items first, not at all shocked to find that the good father had planned all of his sermons well in advance. She thought it odd, however, that he hadn’t planned one for the upcoming Sunday. Had he known he was going to die?
The other side of the office was more cluttered than the business side, but also far more interesting. The first item on the pile was an antique pistol that looked like it must weigh over five pounds. Next to it was a small pyramid of silver balls, an antique powder flask and a box of caps. Put it all together and you had an old but serviceable revolver. Raven ran a gloved finger over the carved grip of the old weapon. The name S.H. Walker was engraved in the hand-smoothed wood.
Interesting, Caleb Walker fancies himself a descendant of Sam Walker, Raven thought. I bet he asked Blake to make the silver rounds for him. For all the good it did.
The next thing she examined was the collection of Mayan and Aztec artifacts. Raven wasn’t a specialist, but some of them looked very similar to the ones she’d seen at the Givens household. She took several photographs of the masks then started going through Walker’s notes. As with his notebook, most were in code and Raven had a hard time making any sense out of the ones that weren’t. Some were coherent, if she had some kind of context to put with them, while others seemed as if Walker was out of his mind. There were a lot of entries about ‘voices’ and ‘them’ without any explanation at all about what he was talking about.
In the bottom drawer of the desk she found a locked security box made of thick, grey metal. She examined the lock and pulled the set of lock picks from her pocket. The lock was tricky, but after several minutes with her picks the box popped open. Inside was something wrapped in very old white silk, a scarf or similar garment stained by age and sweat. Raven withdrew it from the box; even before she unwrapped it a sickly, coppery scent was assaulting her nose. Whatever was inside the bundle had come in contact with blood. Lots of blood.
She unwrapped the item with uncharacteristic care and laid it on the desk. It was a gold coin, perhaps two inches in diameter. The surface was blackened with old blood that was somehow still sticky; it ran when she tilted the medallion for a better look. The front was the same skull she’d been seeing the last two days surrounded by Mayan runes set in concentric circles. On the back was what looked like a tower or ziggurat beneath a blood-black sun.
Raven dropped the coin into an evidence bag and slipped it into her pocket. She had a feeling it wasn’t the sort of thing that should be used in open court, but Section 13 had special rules.
She took another photograph of everything as it was and turned to leave. She was near the windows when she picked up another scent, welcome after the stench of old blood. Gunpowder. She turned and followed the scent to the window and, after a moment, to the blackened curtains and the silver ball embedded in the frame. She took a photo with her phone then used her pen knife to retrieve the ball. When she did, a slim trail of silvery-white liquid poured out of the hole carrying with it the noisome stench of death.
“What the hell is this?” she muttered. “It looks like snot.”
She scraped some of it into one of her small evidence bags and sealed it. She’d give it to Aspen when she got back.
Raven took one last look around, then headed for the exit, locking the apartment on her way out. She stepped out into the cold a few moments later and turned back toward Union Park, where she’d left th
e Aston Martin. She’d just stepped off the sidewalk to cross the street when she heard someone yell, “Help, police!” followed by what she thought was a shotgun blast. She turned to see a shopkeeper dropping to the street and a hooded young man climbing onto the back of a late-model sport-bike.
Every month, Raven thought. Every month this happens to me.
She ran to the injured shopkeeper’s side. He lay on the sidewalk, his blood crimson in the early morning light. By the looks of things he was just opening the store for the morning breakfast rush when the robbery happened. The cash for the register hadn’t been worth his death.
Raven closed his eyes and picked up his keys, which had a Volkswagen key fob attached. When she pressed the button the lights on a nearby Beetle flashed. A heartbeat later it was racing after the bike with Raven behind the wheel. She caught sight of the bike a few blocks away as it slowed to turn into a wide alleyway. She followed, the old Volkswagen’s suspension rattling and squeaking with every bump in the road. They crossed several main roads at breakneck speeds before turning into another alley. As Raven’s commandeered Beetle turned the corner, the passenger looked back and pointed his shotgun. Raven swerved and the blast took the Beetle’s outside mirror off in a shower of sparks and glass. She drew her pistol and fired three shots. The first went through the passenger’s thigh and he dropped his weapon with a cry of pain, a cry that was cut off as her second and third shots turned his brain into so much red paste. His body fell from the back of the bike; Raven had no choice, but to run it over if she wanted to catch the lead rider. She thought she heard bones breaking beneath the car and made a face.
Ahead of her the bike accelerated and turned onto a main road. Raven followed, her expert hand keeping the Beetle under control in spite of its collapsed suspension and narrow tires more designed for comfort than handling.
There was no way the Volkswagen was going to catch the bike. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and punched a key. Aspen answered a ring later.
“Hey babes, where are you?” Aspen asked.