A Righteous Kill (35 page)

Luca and Vince were a bit conspicuous during their short walk to the Buckley Center. Their suits and ties stood out amongst the sparse but assorted co-eds splattered among the campus.

Vince’s eyes followed one particular blonde into a building across the way and he bit into his knuckles. “
God,
I miss college.”

Luca opened the door to the Buckley building and consulting the helpful map tacked to a corkboard, which was rapidly disappearing beneath advertisements for roommates, bands, and one very concerning amateur acupuncturist. Finding the correct room number for Professor Graham, they navigated the nearly empty hallway in silence.

Some of the more tenured faculty members wore what seemed to be the accepted professorial uniform of wrinkled slacks and light-colored blazers, some equipped with elbow patches, or dull roped sweaters. Apparently, intellectualism was mutually exclusive to hairbrushes and shaving regularly.

Luca reached up and ran a hand across his black hair, cut short enough to the scalp to hide its tendency to curl, and peered over at Vince, whose light brown hair was clean cut and disciplined with a comb and some gel.

Christ. Conspicuous didn’t begin to cover it. They stood out like Mormon missionaries at a swinger’s bar.

Wide gazes followed them the entire way. Some feminine eyes banked with naked interest, the male ones with curiosity or, in some cases, suspicion.

They turned the corner to the hallway where they would find Professor Graham’s office clustered among those of his colleagues in the History Department. His next hour was set aside for office appointments for his theology grad students to discuss their final grades.

They’d just have to reschedule.

A receptionist, who could have stunt-doubled for Bea Arthur looked up from her desk where she sat and polished bifocals hanging from a chain around her neck. “Can I help you?”

Vince drew his badge from his suit-coat pocket and threw some extra wattage into his smile. “We’re here to see Professor Alexander Graham.”

“You’re not students,” she informed them.

“No, ma’am,” Luca said. “We’re with the Federal Bureau of—”

“I can read your identification, sir,” she interrupted, glaring up a Luca with a look that told him she’d already made up her mind not to like him. “Do you have an appointment?”

“We don’t,” he confessed.

“Then, do you have a warrant?”

Luca flinched. She’d just said the word that made every law enforcement officer across the nation cringe. Getting a warrant just to talk to someone meant you didn’t have enough evidence to arrest, interrogate, or search, and the suspect didn’t have to talk to you or allow you into their home or place of business. Which was true in this case, and also a huge pain in the ass.

Luca could almost see Vince pull up his big-boy pants and accept the challenge posed by the battle axe in front of him. Vince never met a woman he couldn’t charm. His partner checked her nameplate and his smiled turned from friendly to fiendish.

“Mary-Louise St. Clair. Is that Mrs. or Miss St. Clair?”

“It’s
Ms
,” she said sourly.

“Fair enough. We’re working on a very important case, and we’re hoping that Professor Graham can use his expertise to help us identify some iconography. I’ve heard this department was the best in the state.”

The woman’s pinched features relaxed a little, interest flaring in her gaze, whether for Vince or the case, Luca couldn’t be sure. “We do have a sterling reputation. Is this iconography religious in nature?”

“I can’t discuss the details of a case, Ms. St. Clair. I have to keep my secrets,” Vince chided with a devilish grin. “But, I’ll tell you what, clear the professor’s schedule for the next half hour and you can grill him about what we discussed. I’ll bet you can be
very
persuasive.”

She preened beneath his attention and Luca rolled his eyes. It was like the Southie had some kind of voodoo mind-control powers.

“Come on, Mary-Louise, we all know who runs this office. You can make anything happen.”

She returned to cleaning her glasses, obviously discomfited. “And what is the… the nature of the case? Is it very terrible?”

Vince leaned on her desk. “The worst you can imagine,” he said conspiratorially. “The details would shock and appall you.”

Returning her glasses to the bridge of her hawkish nose, she considered Vince for a moment. “I can give you fifteen minutes.”

“I’d consider it a personal favor.” Vince threw a victorious smile over his shoulder, and Luca just shook his head in amazement.

“You’ll find Professor Graham down the short hallway, second to the last door on your left.” She pointed past a cluster of front offices behind her desk and down a hall haphazardly lined with file cabinets that often overlapped tall wooden doors.

“You’re a gem, Mary-Louise.” Vince strolled past her desk, rapping his knuckles on it.

Luca nodded at her, but by the time she inclined her head at him, all the warmth had left her eyes. Figured.

Professor Graham’s office door stood slightly ajar as though he expected visitors. Luca enjoyed a stab of perverse pleasure at the man’s reaction to his presence in the doorway. He smothered the initial shock and displeasure with a chillier expression. He shot for polite condescension, but the arrow landed closer to agitated impatience.

“Agent Ramirez.” He clicked a few things on his laptop and snapped the lid closed before he stood and offered his hand over the desk. “What brings you here?”

Luca shook hands briefly as he could get away with, noting that the professor surreptitiously wiped his palm on his tan slacks when they were through.

Feeling’s mutual, douche bag.
“This is my partner, Agent Di Petro.”

“Professor.” Vince’s handshake was a bit friendlier.

“Call me, Alec, please.” He casually piled a few papers and files on top of his closed laptop. “I’ll admit I’m quite surprised to see you here. Is something amiss?”

Luca and Vince exchanged a look. Amiss? Seriously?

“We’re here in a professional capacity, actually.” He reached his hand out to Vince, who gave him the folder with the macabre photo. “We needed help deciphering a symbol.”

Alec regarded the closed folder with unrestrained skepticism. “Don’t you have people who can do that? I imagine the FBI has quite an intelligence department.” He motioned to the organized chaos that constituted his desk. “As you can see, I’m very busy. I’m in a rush to finalize grades before the holiday and I have scheduled meetings with students today.”

Luca was this close to grabbing the pretentious dipshit by his toolbag sweater and grinding his face into his own desk. He took a deep breath in through his nose, released it while counting and summoned a smile.

Professor Alec blanched.

Must not have been the right kind of smile.

Flipping open the file folder, Luca held the picture suspended over the cluttered desk. “We’ve exhausted our resources.” He peppered his lie with some truth. “Even went so far as to consult with Catholic clergy, but it was decided we needed a more
expert
opinion. As you happen to be the only iconography expert I’m acquainted with, I thought I’d give you a stab at it. But if you’re not able, I’ll just—”

“That’s Hero’s bedroom.” Alec snatched the photo out of Luca’s hand in a quick and desperate move, bringing it closer to his face. “Jesus, is she okay?”

The reminder that the professor was acquainted with Hero’s bedroom almost had Luca leaping across the desk. “She’s safe,” he forced out through tight lips.
Safer than you are right now, asshole.

“This was
him
, wasn’t it? John the Baptist?” Alec’s eyes touched every detail of the page, whether scanning or savoring, it was hard to tell.

“That’s the theory,” Luca confirmed, watching the man’s face very closely. “It’s the symbol of Asmodeus, a demon—”

“Lust.” Alec’s gaze flicked to Luca, both meaningful and secretive. “Apropos, wouldn’t you say?”

Luca’s nostrils flared as he had a fantasy of setting Professor Alec’s scholar-meets ken-doll face on fire and then putting it out.

With a hammer.

Vince saved the professor’s life by reminding Luca there was a witness. “So we know the demon’s name. We know he’s supposedly one of the seven Princes of Hell whose patron sin is lust. The Catholic priests told us as much. They weren’t so clear about the origin of the symbol though, nor did they have much of an idea why it would end up on a victim’s wall.”

“That’s because they only had the education of a Catholic perspective.” Alec stepped from behind his desk, gave Luca a wider berth than needed, and ran his fingers over a series of old leather-bound resource books on the floor to ceiling shelves that lined the far wall. Probably, he had the resource material available in digital format, but Professor Alec was the kind of guy that liked to pose with an old book in his hands.

“Asmodeus or Asmoday as the symbol indicates in the picture has origins much older than the Catholic church. Older than Christ, if my memory serves.” Selecting a book, he opted to reclaim his place behind the desk, which amused Luca to no end. Was he trying to establish authority as the one behind the desk? Or did he just need a barrier between them? Either way, it was a good strategic move.

Luca noted the soft, effeminate fingers as they flew through pages and his lip curled in disgust. Those hands had touched Hero. Probably everywhere. Had they pleasured her? Had they been worthy of the epic morning after coffee?

He swallowed a sudden onslaught of nausea. Jealousy had never been a problem of his. Scratch that—He’d always been smart and careful enough to understand the chemical equation of his territorial tendencies combined with any feelings of possession and fear of losing something he cared about was a volatile concoction. He avoided it like the red button on a missile launcher. Tie that together with his short fuse and the fact that he was perpetually armed, and the situation became downright explosive.

As he stood in the quiet, sun-lit office of a man who’d once been Hero’s lover, feeling his blood begin to catch fire, Luca forced himself to focus on the one thing that could bring him back from the brink. The cipher in blood.

Professor Alec’s movements were frenetic and excited as he searched through the reference book. He seemed less perturbed by the blood than by the symbol, itself. Could that be because he’d put it there? “Here we are!” He smoothed out a page with an almost exact replica of the symbol in front of him, this one stamped on the acid free paper and the size of a small thumbnail in thick, dark ink.

“Before Asmodeus became a Catholic demon, he was Asmoday. According to the Apocryphal and Gnostic Gospels, he was a fallen arc-angel who followed Satan during the Great War in heaven. Before that, he was a Talmudic Judaic demon by the name of ‘Ashmedai’ who was the result of an adulterous affair between the Devil and Lilith, Adam’s first wife before Eve. But in every incarnation, his main reason for existing was promoting the excess of lust and all the foreboding variables thereof.”

“Such as?” Vince prompted.

Alec didn’t look up from the page as he shrugged. “Oh, the usual stuff, perversion, rape, incest, homosexuality, adultery.”

“Prostitution?” Luca supplied.

“Of course.” Alec’s finger skimmed the page as though caressing a lover, causing Luca to shudder in revulsion once more.

“It says here his genesis was Persian, the name derived from the words
ashma daeva
literally meaning ‘raging fiend.’ So there are also violent connotations connected with his origins.” His eyes again found Luca and he recited his next words, not glancing down at the book once. “According to ancient Persian texts, those afflicted with an
ashma daeva
are forever cursed to be a prisoner to their lusts, and not necessarily those of a sexual nature but, more specifically, their lust for vengeance and blood. Those possessed by this particular demon tend to raid and conquer, to pillage and steal things that were not theirs to begin with.”

Luca’s vision narrowed into a tunnel, focused entirely on the unspoken suggestion in Professor Alec’s sardonic expression. Was lust a component of this case? Absolutely. Prostitutes were the economically available fulfillment of sexual desire. His own lust for Hero may or may not be taken into consideration by the killer. Her actions to incite lust remained in this unequivocal grey area. But here was an unexplored aspect that had completely escaped them all until this very moment. What if the message
wasn’t
intended for Hero?

“May I see that?” Luca’s voice sounded decidedly less threatening as he reached for the book splayed on the desk.

“Of course.” Alec picked up the book and handed it to him. “Be careful not to break the spine.”

Luca clenched his teeth, but nodded, feeling like he’d just been handed someone’s newborn. His heart wasn’t just pounding, it threw itself against his sternum as though trying to beat its way out of a cage. The words blurred a bit as he scanned them. Apparently, there was no recourse available if afflicted with the
ashma daeva.
It was some karmic blight of birth. The victim, or deserving villain depending on your perspective, was damned to spend his life fighting non-stop lust for power, vengeance, and death until their deeds stained their soul beyond any hope for redemption. In this life or the next.

Vince, who’d been reading over his shoulder, made a thoughtful sound. “Respect to those ancients. They were hardcore.”

“Yes,” Alec agreed. “With a perspective like that, it’s little wonder the more accepting and forgiving traditions of Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism took root with the masses.”

“I think there are several million corpses who would argue the idea that neither Christianity, Judaism, nor Islam offers much in the way of forgiveness or acceptance.” Vince’s eternal cynicism dripped from his voice like acid.

“Perhaps not for the mortal body,” the professor conceded. “Yet outlined within all Abrahamic scripture, be it the Bible, Apocryphal texts, the Torah or the Quran, are rather precise, specific, and often interchangeable commandments for procuring the safety and redemption of one’s eternal soul.”