by Kay Hooper
“I’ll take any resource I can get,” the sheriff was saying. “But don’t you have to be in court?”
Ash shook his head. “Not at all this week, and hardly next week. Unless something unexpected happens, at least. Even my paperwork is all caught up.”
“Just bored and have time on your hands, huh?”
“Jake, it’s your investigation. Want me to keep my nose out of it, just say the word.”
It wasn’t really a challenge, Leah thought. And yet it was. If Jake refused Ash’s offer of help, it wouldn’t be a smart move; Ash had worked as an assistant DA in Atlanta for several years, and whatever rumor had to say about why he left, nobody doubted he had gained considerable experience with murder investigations while he was there. More than Jake had, when it came right down to it.
Refusing the offer of that sort of experienced help might well be something the voters would remember come the next election, particularly if the situation worsened. Plus, it made Jake appear either insecure or jealous of his authority.
Or just plain jealous, period.
So Leah wasn’t very surprised to see her boss accept the offered help, albeit with little grace or gratitude.
“As long as we’re clear about who’s in charge, I got no problem with you helping out, Ash.”
“We’re clear.”
“Okay, then.” Jake looked at Riley. “See anything there the rest of us missed?”
“I doubt you missed it,” she said calmly. “The blood in the vic’s stomach contained glycerol.”
“An anticoagulant, yeah. I got that. And an ingredient in all kinds of things, from antifreeze to cosmetics, so not exactly difficult for someone to get their hands on. Which means virtually impossible to trace.”
Leah asked, “So what does that mean? That there was glycerol in the blood?” She hated to admit to ignorance, especially when the sheriff had—rather surprisingly, to her—chosen her to assist him on this case, but she didn’t feel less of a cop for not having specialized knowledge, and she needed to understand.
It was Jake who said, “Somebody didn’t want the blood to clot too quickly.”
“I’m still in the dark,” Leah complained.
Riley said, “What it probably means is that the blood the victim drank—whether willingly or because he was forced to—wasn’t fresh. Someone had kept it for that purpose. Maybe for quite a while.”
Leah grimaced. “Bucket of blood. Oh, yuck.”
“Was it so much?” Ash asked.
“At least a quart,” Riley answered. “That’s way more than is used in any ritual I know of.”
Ash said, “And more than anybody could have swallowed without vomiting some of it back up, I would have thought.”
Riley looked at the M.E.’s report again. “Some minor abrasions inside the esophagus. I’m betting they used a tube. Probably while he was unconscious. Poured the stuff straight into his stomach. And I doubt he lived long enough after that to get rid of it.”
“Then what was the point?” Jake demanded. “Fill his stomach with blood and then decapitate him—why?”
“I don’t know,” Riley said. “But there had to be a reason. Blood in a ritual represents life, power. Human blood much more so than animal blood.”
Leah’s thoughts were running along a different track. “You mean the stuff I’ve heard about that is true? Human blood really is used in occult rituals?”
“Some very rare black-occult or satanic rituals, yeah. But the donor—or donors—offer up only a small amount of their blood, willingly, as part of the ceremony. By pricking a finger, usually, or a cut across the palm. It’s pretty much a symbolic thing. Nobody gets bled to death.”
“But somebody did this time? I mean, other than the guy we found in the woods?”
Riley frowned slightly as she gazed at the now-closed folder on the table before her. “Like I said—there was at least a quart in his stomach. All of it the same blood type, so likely from the same donor, though we can’t be sure without DNA testing. But if it all did come from one person, that’s a lot of blood to lose at one time.”
“Too much?” Leah asked.
“Could someone have lost that much blood and lived? Sure. Five or six quarts in the human body, depending on size and weight. Losing a quart would be serious but not necessarily fatal, especially if it was a ritual blooding and not some traumatic injury.”
“Thing is, at least some more got splashed all over the scene.” Jake nodded when Ash looked at him. “We’ve got two blood types in all that, most from the vic but some apparently from the same…donor…who provided what was in his stomach. No real way to measure how much, especially since the ground soaked up a lot. I’m betting it was more than a couple of quarts, all told.”
“Then there’s likely to be another murder victim we have yet to find.”
“Maybe.” Riley was still frowning. “Or maybe not. Maybe the anticoagulant was necessary because it took a while to get enough blood without killing the donor. Or donors. You could probably take a little bit every day for several days without too much danger, if you were careful, knew what you were doing.”
Ash said, “So, we’re looking for somebody with anemia?”
“Failing a second victim. Or a first victim, rather.” She looked at the sheriff. “Any luck finding some kind of pattern in the blood spatter at the scene?”
“So far nada. Melissa says the software hasn’t run its course yet, but her gut feeling is that there’s nothing to find.”
“It was a long shot.” Riley shrugged.
“What would you have expected, if there had been a pattern?” Ash asked.
“Well, whoever this is seems to be big on signs. So I would have expected another sign or symbol.”
“Here there be devil worshippers?” Jake suggested dryly.
“Something like that. Subtle they aren’t.”
“They?” Leah asked. Then she shook her head. “Of course—it would be a group, wouldn’t it?”
“Probably. There are solitary practitioners in most religions, but for any major ritual there would have to be more than one. Anything up to a dozen or so participants is most likely.”
“Conspiracy in murder,” Ash noted neutrally, “is very rare.”
“They wouldn’t have viewed it as murder,” Riley said.
“Still, for a group of people to keep this sort of secret…How likely is that?”
“If they practice Satanism, very likely. Or at least very possible. Ash, these groups can only survive if they keep their…less conventional activities to themselves. And they learn that early. They’re just too far out of the mainstream for community tolerance, much less acceptance.”
Leah was faintly surprised. “Do they need community acceptance?”
“If they live in the community, sure. Their religion is only a part of their lives; they shop, go out to eat, go to the movies and the theater, usually send their kids to school. It’s not all that uncommon for some of them to hold public office, especially at the local level. So, generally speaking, they keep quiet about occult practices.”
Ash was frowning. “But you said whoever we’re looking for in this case isn’t being very subtle. Deliberately?”
“Maybe. Or desperate. That was a very public place for a ritual,” Riley said. “Especially a major ritual involving sacrifice. Add that to the obvious arson sites, all the signs and symbols…It’s either deliberately blatant or very careless. Either way, somebody is moving fast. Maybe too fast to avoid mistakes.”
“Any idea what that major ritual would have been?” Jake asked her. “You said these things had a purpose, right? So what purpose was there in torturing a man and then beheading him?”
Riley shook her head to the repeated question, and repeated her earlier answer. “I don’t know. Yet.”
He nodded as though expecting it. “Well, while you’re working on that, I’ve got some people checking out that group in the Pearson house. Because as far as I can tell, they’re
the only ones in the area who worship Satan.”
“Openly, at least,” Riley murmured.
He ignored that. “Soon as the background checks are done, probably in the next couple of hours, I mean to have a talk with that bunch. You game?”
“I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Okay,” Ash said as soon as they were left alone in the conference room, “I did what you asked. Got myself included in the investigation. Want to tell me now why that matters?”
Riley felt a little shock, and her mind raced. She didn’t remember asking him to do any such thing and, since awakening to the missing twelve hours or so, had been too preoccupied to ask or even wonder why he had accompanied her to the sheriff’s department.
She didn’t doubt he was telling the truth, but she also had no idea why she would have asked this of him. Unless…
“Riley? Look, I’m not running away with some fatuous idea that you need me to hold your hand, but—”
“Actually,” she said slowly, “I think maybe I do. In a manner of speaking.”
He waited, brows lifting in a silent question.
Riley hesitated only a moment. “Jake said the background checks he’s waiting for would take a couple of hours. There’s something I want to check out myself in the meantime. And I don’t think I should do it alone.”
“Let’s go,” he said.
It wasn’t until they were in his Hummer in the parking lot that he asked the obvious question.
“Where to?”
Riley drew a breath. “The clearing where the body was found.”
He frowned. “I know Jake’s kept the area roped off and guarded, but you’ve already seen whatever there was to see. Haven’t you?”
“With my eyes, yeah.”
He didn’t need that explained. “But you said you weren’t able to pick up anything clairvoyantly.”
“I wasn’t. But there were a lot of people around. It might be different now.”
“Might?”
“I need to try, Ash.” Because I lost more time, and maybe that changed things. Maybe.
He looked at her steadily for a moment, then started the engine. “Mine not to reason why.”
“Long as you don’t do and die,” she murmured. “Or even ride into the mouth of hell.”
Ash smiled. “Have I mentioned how much I appreciate having a well-read lover? I would have had to explain that reference to just about anyone else I know.”
“Books and imagination see you through a lot as an army brat.” Riley dug into her shoulder bag for a PowerBar. “I have a mind filled with facts, poetry, and way too much useless trivia.”
“It’s only useless until you need it.”
She paused in unwrapping the bar to eye him. “You get that out of a fortune cookie?”
“Probably.” He glanced at her. “I do have one question. Why me rather than your pal Gordon? He knows all about the clairvoyance, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So why not pick a former army buddy as backup if you’re expecting trouble of some kind? Not that I’m complaining, you understand. Just wondering.”
Riley was wondering about that herself. She had no way of knowing for certain that she had asked Ash to join the investigation for this reason; it was merely logical to assume. Because she’d known from the beginning that she couldn’t just accept the status quo, accept her MIA psychic abilities, that she’d have to push herself at some point, have to try with all her strength to tap into what that Taser’s electrical surge had damaged.
She had no idea what would happen then. But logic also told her she shouldn’t be alone when she tried. As for why she’d picked Ash over Gordon, logic provided a possible answer for that as well.
“Gordon’s a civilian now,” she said finally. “He can’t be officially involved in a murder investigation. You can.”
“Ah. Makes sense.”
Yes, it made sense. It was logical.
She wasn’t sure she believed it, however.
The problem, of course, was that Riley had no memory of what had prompted her request that Ash involve himself in the case officially. Maybe it was because of this, because she’d intended to try her damnedest to tap into her seemingly absent abilities and wanted someone she trusted standing by in case it knocked her on her ass.
Maybe.
Or maybe it was something else. Something that had occurred to Riley as her mind raced when Ash told her about a decision made, apparently, in those missing hours.
What if it happened again? What if she decided things, did things, made choices today that she wouldn’t remember tomorrow? It had happened a second time now; had she somehow guessed or known that her spotty memory and damaged senses had only been the beginning of her problems? What if her mind, her brain, had sustained even more damage from the attack on Sunday night than she had any way of estimating?
What then?
Again, logic demanded that if she intended to remain on the case under these circumstances—and she did—then she needed someone trustworthy who not only knew the truth but was also in a position to stick close and observe her virtually around the clock. At any other time, another SCU member would have been the automatic choice. But that simply wasn’t possible now.
Her lover, the DA of Hazard County, was the best choice she was left with.
But to say that Riley felt either confident in or comfortable with that decision would have been to overstate the matter. For one thing, it was a very unofficial way to conduct herself during an investigation, and not at all in character for her. For another and far more vital thing…
Can I trust him? I feel I can. Sometimes. Most of the time. But not always.
Doubts she couldn’t even put into words nagged at her. It was like catching a glimpse of some movement from the corner of her eye, only to see nothing when she looked directly at it. She felt that way about Ash, that there was more going on than she could see, could know, and it made her wary.
But can I trust my feelings? Any of them?
And even if I can trust him, will he understand?
Can he?
She hadn’t yet made up her mind how to explain the situation to Ash. How much to tell him.
Do I tell him how out of control I feel? Do I tell him I’m scared? Do I tell him I don’t remember us?
She didn’t know.
“Riley?”
She realized she had tied the empty PowerBar wrapper into a knot, twice, and forced herself to stop. “Yeah?”
“You haven’t told me a whole lot about the work you do, at least in specifics. But what you have said, and what I know of you, tells me that you’ve used your abilities most of your life. Yes?”
“Since I was a kid, yeah.”
“And we’ve already discussed the fact that both your army and FBI training and experience have prepared you to face just about any eventuality.”
Riley didn’t reply since it wasn’t a question, and as he pulled the Hummer into a space near the dog park she turned slightly in her seat to look at him.
Ash turned the engine off, then met her gaze and nodded slightly. “All that being the case, I have to ask what makes this situation different for you.”
“I told you I’d never gotten involved with anyone during an investigation.”
“Yeah, but I’m not talking about us. I’m talking about you.”
“Ash—”
“You’re scared. And I want to know why.”
After a moment, she said, “Does it show so plainly?”
He shook his head. “As a matter of fact, if I didn’t know you so well I never would have seen any sign of it. There was nothing you said or did that gave you away, not really. You’ve just been…a bit off the last few days. Quieter. Slower to react, to answer a question. And you’ve been tossing and turning a lot every night. So not quite yourself.”
“And you read that as fear?”
“Not at first. I’d venture to guess very little scares you, and I’m pretty sure you�
�ve seen things that would make my hair stand on end. So fear wasn’t the first possibility I thought of when I realized something was wrong.”
Riley waited.
“But then it dawned on me that despite what you were telling me, the way you’ve been burning energy so quickly during the last few days was unusual. Even for a case. And that either you didn’t know why it was happening, or you were shaken because it wasn’t something you could control. Control is a big issue for you, we both know that. It’s a trait we share.”
“Which is why you realized I was probably afraid.”
“If there’s something you can’t control in your life, fear is possible; it’s a natural response no matter what kind of training you’ve had. If there’s something you can’t control in yourself, fear is fairly inescapable, at least for people like us.”
“Makes sense,” she said, echoing his earlier comment. “And it’s a good read.”
“Accurate?”
Riley nodded reluctantly. “Accurate enough. This is—I haven’t encountered a situation like this one before.”
“In what way?”
She hesitated again, her mind still racing, still torn with uncertainty and wariness, then finally took that leap of faith. She had to trust him. She had no choice. “The burns on the back of my neck?”
His eyes narrowed. “Yeah?”
“Not from a curling iron. Apparently, I was…immobilized by a stun gun sometime Sunday night.”
“You were attacked?”
“Apparently.”
Ash drew a breath and let it out slowly. “That’s twice you’ve used that word. Apparently. You don’t know?”
“I don’t remember.”
He got it quickly. “The electrical charge. It affected your mind?”
Riley nodded. “My memory. My senses. All my senses, even the extra ones. I’ve been scrambling ever since. To catch up, to remember. To figure things out.”
“Christ, Riley. Do you remember what you were doing, who you were with?”
“Not so much. And it’s been a bit difficult to piece things together without admitting I don’t have a clue what happened.”