by Skye Knizley
“This is a ten-thousand dollar American Sentry safe, guaranteed to be resistant to most tools, and someone pulled the door off. You really think it was a home invasion?”
“It’s been known to happen,” Lance said. “Sometimes they get a little weird. This is my case—”
“You know, I used to hate it when Feds did this to me, but now I’m doing it to you. I want you to hand your investigation to officer Kinnamon and bugger off,” Raven said. “She’ll be assisting my team on this.”
“You have no authori—”
“Actually, I do, detective,” Raven said. “The Quinn case is top priority for my department. The Givens murder is tied into that case which makes this my turf. If you have a problem with that, call Agent in Charge King at the FBI.”
Lance pulled his notebook out of his pocket and handed it to Bobbi. “Fine. It’s all yours.”
“Take Luigi with you,” Raven said.
Raven waited for them to leave before turning back to Bobbi. “Do me a favor and take a look at his notes. Let me know if you find anything interesting.”
“Sure, what am I looking for?”
“Probably not much, considering, but see if he noticed anything out of the ordinary while he was here,” Raven said.
“Right. Sure.”
Bobbi turned away then turned back. “That’s not really all that helpful.”
Raven rolled her eyes. “Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it. Just look.”
Bobbi sat down on the sofa and started reading. Meanwhile, Raven closed her eyes and let her senses do the searching. The strange smell she’d picked up at Union Park was there, but stronger. Something sweet with a hint of earthy musk. There was also the scent of fear, if not downright terror.
“Got something,” Bobbi said.
Raven opened her eyes. “What?”
“Looks like Lance had Luigi team tag and bag some things he found. Most of it looks pretty normal, but one of them sounds weird. They found some kind of armored box open on the floor. He collected what he described as a white scarf from inside it.”
“I found one of those at Father Walker’s place,” Raven said. “Does it say anything about a gold disk being found inside?”
“No, nothing like that. Lance thought there might have been a valuable inside, though. The box fits perfectly in the floor safe hidden under the desk,” Bobbi replied.
“That’s two of the victims,” Raven said. “We need to find out if the others had the same thing. It might be the clue that puts all of this together.”
“It might just be a coincidence, Raven,” Bobbi said.
Raven smiled without humor. “With these cases, nothing is a damn coincidence. Get a full blown forensic team in here. They’re looking for fibers, fluids and scales.”
Bobbi gave Raven a look. “Scales?”
Raven turned away. “Yes. Snake scales a little bigger than your thumbnail.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to go check out the Monsignor’s place again and see if I can find a hidden safe.”
Aspen was waiting for her outside. Carole Givens had been loaded and the coroner’s van was just vanishing around the corner.
“Anything?” Raven asked.
“I found the same grease smudge under her nails,” Aspen said. “Otherwise she was clean. And when I say clean I mean freaking squeaky.”
“Scrubbed?”
Aspen nodded. “It’s why she smelled like drain cleaner. It’s a miracle I found the scale, I think she shoved it into her skin on purpose.”
“She left it as a clue.”
“That’s what I think, yes,” Aspen replied.
Raven leaned against the wall and stared at the sky. “Grease, scales, skulls and gold. When we find all the pieces, this is going to be one weird picture.”
“It’s already giving me nightmares. What’s our next move?”
“Do you think you can get a ride back to the lab?” Raven asked.
Aspen put on her innocent student look. “Probably, why?”
“I’m going to go take a look at Monsignor Quinn’s place again. Maybe he had a hidden safe like the other. Meanwhile, I want you and the lab geeks to see if you can match the scale to any kind of normal snake. I have a feeling you won’t.”
“On it. Rupe and I will catch up to you later,” Aspen said.
Raven started toward the Rapide, but Aspen stopped her with a touch of her hand. Raven looked back at her.
“Be careful, love. I have a bad feeling about this.”
RIVERMOOR STREET
WEST ROXBURY, MA. 10:42 A.M.
LEVAC PARKED HIS FBI ISSUE Ford in the employee lot of the City Archaeology Lab and crossed to the main office where Dr. Drake Anthony had agreed to meet. The receptionist, an attractive young woman with red hair, directed him to Anthony’s second floor office and Levac took a seat outside the frosted glass door to wait. Dr. Anthony, an older man in his early sixties, opened the door a few minutes later.
“Agent Levac? I can see you now.”
Levac followed him into one of the most cluttered offices he’d ever seen. Books and take-out containers covered every available surface. Even the chandelier had books resting precariously on its brass arms. A microscope and other easily portable scientific instruments were placed around the desk.
Anthony dumped a stack of books off of the chair opposite his desk and motioned for Levac to have a seat.
“What can I do for you, Agent? You said something about a gold coin?”
Levac nodded and pulled a clear evidence bag out of his pocket. Inside was the gold disk Raven had collected at Walker’s residence.
“My partner found this at a crime scene yesterday,” Levac said. “I was hoping you might be able tell me what it is.”
Levac handed him the object. He opened the bag and dropped the disk onto a mat on his desk.
“What’s spread all over it?” Anthony asked.
“Blood,” Levac replied. “Human blood. A tech identified it yesterday.”
Anthony picked up the disk. “I thought so. It looks old. The blood, I mean. A decade or more.”
“Our forensic team agrees. What can you tell me about the disk itself?” Levac asked.
Anthony pulled a magnifying glass out of his desk and examined the disk, his eye looking like something from a giant squid to Levac, who’d had some very odd dreams about lobster.
“Just looking at it, I’d say it is Mayan, or pre-Mayan,” Anthony replied. “The language is definitely proto-Mayan which places the item as at least three thousand years old, possibly more. It’s difficult to say, really. Things like this are spread all over Mexico and Guatemala.”
Levac flipped to a new page in his notebook. “Tell me about Proto-Mayan.”
Anthony turned the disk over and ran a finger over the inscription. “There are several distinct, but similar Mayan dialects, some still spoken today. Proto-Mayan is the original language the dialects are descended from, much like many modern languages are descended from Latin. It hasn’t been heard in three thousand years.”
“Can you tell me what the inscription says?”
Anthony shook his head. “I’m not exactly an expert on Mayan culture. I studied it a bit in college, but that’s about all I can tell you.”
“Do you know anyone who might be able to help translate it?”
“I have a friend at Southwestern University in Kansas who might be able to tell us more. If you like we can ship the item to him for study,” Anthony said.
Levac shook his head. “I don’t think so, doc. It’s evidence in a murder case. I can’t let it out of my sight.”
He leaned back and studied his notes. “So it’s a gold disk, approximately three-thousand years old with an inscription written in proto-Mayan. What about the design itself, can you tell me anything about the meaning of the skull symbol?”
“Skulls are very common in Mayan culture,” Anthony said. “They appear in much of the artwork, pottery and
earthworks that have been found. In this case I believe it is being used as a symbol of Ixtab.”
Levac was blank. “What’s an Ixtab? It sounds like pain medication.”
Anthony smiled and steepled his fingers. “Ixtab was the ancient Mayan goddess of suicide. Suicide was considered a valid way to reach the gods, not quite as good as blood sacrifice. People who committed suicide were conveyed to the next life by Ixtab, if I remember my mythology correctly. She was their version of the ferryman.”
Levac added that to his notepad. “Ixtab. Thanks, doc. Can you do me a favor and contact that friend of yours? I’d like to speak with them, if they have time.”
“I’ll call Dr. Stone right away. It will take him some time to get back to me, I’m sure, but I will call you as soon as I hear back.”
Levac fished out one of his rumpled business cards and placed it on the desk. “Thanks, doc.”
He re-bagged the coin and initialed the outside, then put it back in his pocket for safe-keeping. He suspected Raven would kill him if he lost it.
Outside, he walked toward the Ford with a chocolate bar in his hand. He chewed thoughtfully and mulled over what Anthony had told him. The only motive he could think of was someone killing for the gold itself, assuming there was more than one disk. So far it was the only thing that made any sense in this screwed up case.
He finished the chocolate and pulled out his phone. As far as he knew, they hadn’t found anything like that with Father Casside, but Raven said she’d found it in a hidden lockbox. They hadn’t known to look for one at the time, now they did.
He was dialing Dr. Zhu when his blood-enhanced nose detected an odd smell. He turned to see a hooded figure moving toward him with a knife in its hands. Levac dropped the phone and drew his pistol in what he would later say was the fastest move in his entire life.
“Drop the knife and put your hands on your head!” he yelled.
The figure spun the knife in its hand and Levac heard an unearthly chuckle come from the depths of its hood. “Hello, Rupert. Give me the coin and I won’t bleed you like a Pagan offering.”
“Do I know you?” Levac asked.
“You used to,” the figure said. “Give me the coin.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Levac said. “You have three seconds to drop that knife.”
“You have two seconds to give me the coin,” the figure replied.
Levac had learned a lot from working the weird cases with Raven. He squeezed the Sig’s trigger. Death exploded from the barrel and punched three holes through the figure’s torso. It toppled to the pavement and lay still.
Levac kicked the knife away from the figure’s hand and squatted beside him. The man’s face was pale and was smoldering in the sunlight that streamed through the trees, making identification hard, but Levac could swear he knew the man.
“Rupert? It’s Ming, were those gunshots?”
Levac raised his phone to his ear. “Hey, Ming—”
He was cut off as the figure’s hand clamped around his throat.
“I need that coin,” it hissed.
CHESTNUT STREET
BOSTON, MA. 11:00 A.M.
MONSIGNOR QUINN’S HOUSE LOOKED MUCH the same in the light as it had in the gloom of night, though in the sun Raven could see that the house was freshly painted and the shutters had been replaced in the last few years. It didn’t surprise her that the shutters were made of steel and were functional, not decorative. Somehow Quinn, like Walker, had known this was coming.
Again she entered through the back door, but this time she moved slowly, taking the time to search the kitchen from top to bottom before repeating the process in the rest of the house. She was in the living room when she heard a creak from upstairs. By the sound of it, someone was in the spare bedroom trying to move quietly. Raven drew her pistol and padded toward the stairs, her boots almost silent on the hard wood floor. At the top she turned toward the bedroom where she found that the bed had been moved and a section of floor had been removed. An armored steel box sat next to the section, the lid ripped open by brute force.
Raven turned away. Whoever had opened the box was still here. She moved back into the hall and noticed that the bathroom door was closed; she’d left it and all the doors open when she left. She crept toward it, her senses stretched taught. There was a faint sound of movement from the other side of the door and she stopped.
“I can hear you in there. Come out!” she ordered.
The knob turned, but the door didn’t open.
“Don’t make me shoot you through the door,” Raven growled.
The door jerked open and a figure bolted out, its hooded coat trailing behind it like a cape.
Raven fired. The first bullet hit the figure’s chest. The second two hit its neck and the center of its forehead. It stumbled and fell on its face, sending the gold disk it had been clutching rolling down the hallway. It fell over with a soft clank a few inches from Raven’s foot. She kicked it behind her then moved toward the body. The way it had moved, she wasn’t taking any chances. She rolled it over with her foot and looked down into the emaciated face of Monsignor Quinn.
What the hell? He’s in the morgue!
She was bending over to check his pulse when the bullet hole in his head closed and his eyes opened, the green orbs slit like those of a reptile. Raven jumped back, but Quinn moved with snakelike speed; his fist collided with her knee with bone-numbing force and Raven fell back in surprise.
Quinn was up and moving before she could react. He ran for the door, only pausing to reach for the disk. The Automag barked, filling the hallway with its roar and Quinn went headfirst down the stairs. Raven scooped up the disk and followed. By the time she got to the street, Quinn was gone. She spun, sniffing the air for any hint of his unique scent. In the cold silence she heard her phone ringing.
“Storm,” she growled.
“Raven? It’s Ming. Is Rupert with you?” Zhu asked.
“No, he’s following up a lead across town, why?” Raven asked.
“He called me, then I heard gunshots and then he was cut off mid-sentence. I heard a man’s voice say something about a coin—”
“I’m on my way,” Raven said.
She hung up and dialed Levac on her way back to the Rapide. When there was no answer she called Bobbi Kinnamon.
“Hi Raven,” Bobbi said.
“Bobbi, I lost contact with my partner Rupert, can you get some cars over to the City Archaeology Lab? I’m almost half an hour away.”
“Sure can,” Bobbi said. “And I’ll go myself.”
“Thanks. Keep me posted, I’m on my way.”
Raven dropped the phone on the passenger seat and brought the V12 engine to life.
Rupert? Rupert, where the hell are you? she sent.
She’d only tried it once with him, but had done it often enough with Aspen to know what a familiar’s mind should feel like. And Rupert’s was dead cold.
BETH DEACON HOSPITAL
BOSTON, MA. 11:45 A.M.
RUPERT LEVAC SAT ON AN exam table in the emergency room of Beth Deacon hospital a few miles from the City Archaeology Lab. Bobbi Kinnamon and her partner had found him lying beside his Ford, unconscious and bruised, but alive. Aspen hurried through the door and hugged him, with Raven not far behind.
She leaned against the wall while Aspen checked him over. “How are you doing, partner?”
Levac touched the purple and black bruises on his neck. “Better than I thought I’d be.”
His voice was hoarse, as if he was having trouble talking.
“The doctor says if the guy had held on any longer, I’d be a corpse.”
“I’m glad you’re not,” Aspen said.
“Me, too,” Raven added. “What happened?”
“I was checking out that disk thing like you asked,” Levac said. “I met with Dr. Anthony at the lab, he gave me the lowdown about it being Mayan. When I came out some guy in a hoodie was waiting for me.”
&n
bsp; “What did he want?” Raven asked.
Levac sighed. “The disk. It isn’t with my things and I doubt he left it at the scene. You don’t seem surprised, though.”
Raven shook her head and turned her attention to the nurse. “Can you give us a second?”
The young man shrugged. “Sure, I think he’s well enough. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
Raven closed the door behind him and leaned against it. “I ran into a guy wearing a hood at Monsignor Quinn’s place. He’d found another of the disks beneath the floorboards. I got the disk, but he got away.”
“Are you alright?” Aspen asked.
“I’m fine,” Raven said. “That’s not the only thing. The guy I ran into? He was the spitting image of Ronen Quinn.”
“I thought he was the first victim,” Aspen said. “He should be taking up a drawer at the morgue.”
“He was. I’m going to check with the morgue as soon as we’re done here, I have a feeling they’re missing a corpse.”
“They might be missing more than one,” Levac said. “The guy I fought with looked like Father Casside.”
“The victim from back home?”
“Bingo,” Levac said. “He took three of Thad’s finest to the chest and still kicked my butt.”
“Quinn took three, as well. So we’ve got victims rising from the dead as something immune to silver, iron, oak and holy water,” Raven said.
“That’s not good,” Aspen said. “But it limits the possibilities. I’ll get on it as soon as I finish identifying the scale we found.”
“Considering what I saw, there is a good chance the scale is related to people rising, maybe that will narrow your search,” Raven said.
“Gotcha. What are you and Rupe going to do?”
“Rupert is taking a ride back to the hotel and commence sleeping off those bruises,” Raven said.
“Hey! I’m fine! I can—”
He trailed in a fit of coughing.