Angel Condemned (9 page)

He stopped and made a move to take her in his arms, then seemed to think the better of it. “You’re looking kind of washed out, Bree. Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

He stooped to pat Sasha on the head. “I just called the house. Antonia said you’d gone out for a walk. I’m glad I caught you.”

Bree didn’t say anything. Her sense of unease was more urgent now. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Hunter’s eyes were gray. They glinted silver in the light from the street lamps. “We’ve got a homicide. A dishwasher headed toward a late shift found a body in the parking lot next to your office building. I’d like you to come and identify it.”

Bree didn’t ask which office building had a body behind it. No temporal ever found the way to the Angelus Street office. It had to be Bay Street.

“Who is it?”

“We’re not sure who he is. We need you for an ID.”

Bree hadn’t realized her hands were clenched. He. Not Cissy, then. Not EB. And Antonia was safe inside the house, wasn’t she? Sam had just spoken to her.

“He had his card in your pocket.” He pulled out his cell phone and jabbed at the keypad with one finger. “It’s a head shot. But it’s not pretty. You ready?”

Bree nodded.

Beazley’s contorted face flashed onto the screen. His yellowed teeth were drawn back in a snarl. Blood smeared the lower half of his face. She let out a long, puzzled sigh. “Yes, I know him.”

“Well?” Hunter asked impatiently. “Who is it?”

“Beazley. I think his first name is Zebulon. I don’t know him well, but, yes, that’s him.”

“Seems to be an attorney loosely attached to one of your cases. Can’t raise either of his partners, and he doesn’t seem to have any family to speak of. The most recent correspondence we found is with your office. He served a summons on one of your clients?”

“He’s suing Aunt Cissy’s fiancé, Prosper White.”

“Can you come down to the morgue and make a formal identification?”

Bree looked up at the sky. The moon still swam among the clouds, slender and indifferent. The sense of something coming was almost a taste in the night air.

“I’ll take you out for a glass of wine afterward.” He shook his head, as if to get rid of something unpleasant. “You’ll need it.”

Bree’s fingers curled into the thick fur at Sasha’s neck. “Can I bring Sasha?”

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not. I’ll take you down and bring you back.”

“Okay, then.” She followed him down to his car. He opened the passenger door for her and the back door for the dog.

The Chatham County Morgue—part of the City of Savannah’s Department of Cemeteries—was located on Reynolds Street, a few minutes away. Bree checked the time as they pulled into the parking lot. Just going on nine, and the place looked deserted, except for a blue-and-white police cruiser parked at the entrance.

Bree hadn’t had a lot of experience with morgues until she’d taken over the Angelus Street practice. She’d bet they smelled the same and looked the same countrywide, just like any other institution: hospitals, schools, and government offices. The floor was white ceramic tile. The walls were an institutional gray. Despite the pervasive reek of disinfectant, the place looked dingy and ill-kempt. She and Sasha followed Hunter down the narrow hallway to the viewing area—a small room with a thick Plexiglas window shielded by a drape.

Hunter’s red-haired sergeant, Mellie McKenna, stood next to the window, her hands clasped behind her back. Her freckled face brightened as Hunter came down the hallway and then fell as she glimpsed Bree behind him. “Haven’t turned up any next of kin, Lieutenant,” she said. “Guy seems to have sprung out of nowhere. That home address on the driver’s license? It’s smack in the middle of St. Bonaventure Cemetery. Guy seems to have been a joker.”

Without looking at Bree, McKenna let herself into the viewing room and pulled the drapes open. A body draped with a rubber sheet lay on a gurney directly in front of the window. A white-coated attendant stood behind it. McKenna punched at the intercom button on the wall, and her voice crackled into the hallway. “You ready?”

“She just needs to see the head, McKenna,” Hunter said.

McKenna, seeming not to hear him, helped the attendant fold the sheet all the way back.

Despite herself, Bree gasped.

The body had been totally eviscerated. Some giant claw had ripped Beazley from throat to belly.

“Sure you’re okay?” Hunter handed Bree a glass of Chardonnay and settled next to her on the couch. He’d driven her straight back to the town house after she’d signed an affidavit that the corpse in the morgue was known to her as Zebulon Beazley.

Antonia was out. Sasha was subdued. The town house still had the air of unreality that had driven her out into the street an hour before. She bent and ran her hand over the small Oriental rug beneath her feet. It had been her great grandmother’s. She picked up the cloisonné vase that always sat on the coffee table. It was a relic from a relative who’d fought in the War Between the States. She’d been around these things all her life; and now? It was all in a kind of hy-perfocus. She was intensely alert. The air hummed like wires in an electrical storm. “I’m fine,” she said. “Just fine.”

Hunter took his shoulder holster off, placed it on the coffee table, and put his arm around her. “Something’s wrong. I wish you’d tell me about it. I know you’re not upset about identifying the victim. You’re getting to be an old hand at that. It’s you in general. Ever since the accident. Physically, you recovered from that broken leg pretty damn quick. Mentally—I don’t know. It feels like you’re looking at things I can’t see. Maybe you ought to give yourself time off.”

Startled, Bree looked at him. He’d spoken lightly, but she could see the concern in his eyes. Slowly, she cupped his cheeks with both hands. Hunter wasn’t a handsome man. His nose had been broken more than once. His features were blunt. He was thirty-five, but looked ten years older.

He cleared his throat. “I’m due some vacation time. I thought maybe the two of us could take off for a day or two. We could drive down to the Florida shore.” He covered her hands with his own and drew them down to his chest.

The strangeness of the room ebbed, leaving her very aware of how close he was to her. How solid he was.

Hunter was always confident. That surety, that clear sense that he knew who he was and what he was meant to do, was one of the most attractive things about him. She felt it, clung to it, and the sense of utter dislocation that had plagued her from the moment she’d picked up the Cross at Chambers’s store was replaced by a surge of affection for this man.

“Maybe you’ve had better offers? I hope not.”

Bree smiled at that. Then she turned and kissed him. Really kissed him. It was warm and deep. She folded herself into his chest. His arms slid around her, a soft, steady insistence that made them feel like one person, not two.

She lay back, and he swung himself over her and looked down.

Hunter was real. The objects in the room became real again. Bree opened her eyes and looked over his shoulder, smiling, and her gaze fell on the mirror over the mantel.

It roiled with yellow smoke. She caught a tinge of sulfur. A smear of shadow appeared in the mirror’s center. A horned figure, huge, dark, with its back to her. The figure turned slowly.

Sasha leaped to his feet, lips curled back over his teeth, snarling.

A thin stream of pustulant yellow oozed from the mirror and crawled across the floor. Bree’s heart pounded. She pushed Hunter away. The thing in the mirror was huge against a vast plain licked with flame and dirty billows of smoke. Bree shouted, “Get back!”

Startled, Hunter leaped to his feet and whipped his hand to his chest, grabbing at the gun that wasn’t there.

Sasha’s growls ramped up to deep, ferocious barks. The mirror flared orange red, as if the horned figure had exploded into fire. A huge black hand tipped with talons passed over the surface.

The reflection that remained was of the room, the couch, and the back of Hunter’s head.

“Sasha,” Bree said. Her voice was hoarse. “It’s okay.” She sat up and put her hands to her hair. Her braids were loose, and she tucked them in. “Sorry. He’s . . . not used to male visitors.”

“I guess I should be glad of that.” Hunter looked at the dog, perplexity fighting with annoyance. “You know me, Sasha. It’s okay, buddy. Settle down.”

Sasha trotted over to her and leaned his chest against her hip.

Bree stroked his head and looked up at Hunter. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem.” He extended his hand to the dog. Sasha acknowledged it, tail wagging. “It’s a good dog’s job, to look out for you. A little discrimination might be in order, though, Sash.”

“No, I mean I’m sorry that . . .” Bree trailed off. Then she looked at her watch. “It’s getting late, Hunter. And it’s been a long day. Maybe you’d better go.”

“I see.”

“Hunter, I . . .”

“No. No. You look like you could use some sleep. And some food, maybe, too?”

“Sure.” She blinked. “I guess I missed dinner. As a matter of fact, I brought some home with me from B. Mitchell’s. There’s a lot of it. Why don’t we . . .” She saw the confusion in his eyes and her heart clenched. “Look. Let’s grab the wine and sit down in the kitchen and eat. And maybe I can explain. About me. About the two of us. It’s not that I’m not attracted to you, Hunter. I am.” She smiled at him. “I guess you could tell.”

He smiled back. “I thought I could, anyhow.”

She bit her lip, thinking hard and fast. She couldn’t give him the real reason. If she convinced him of the reality of Angelus Street, he’d be in danger. That one kiss and the appearance of the infernal figure in the mirror told her that. If she told him and he didn’t believe her, she’d lose him. He wasn’t the kind of man who wanted a crazy woman for a lover.

She could try the it’s-too-soon-after-my-last-relationship line, but Hunter would see that for the lie it was. She settled for a half-truth: “Antonia’s due back any minute. I’d really like better privacy when we . . . I mean if we . . .” Then, hastily, “Let’s have something to eat. It’ll settle the wine.”

The kitchen was at the other end of the hall to the front door. It was small, but Francesca had updated it with a blue-tiled center island and a fresh coat of cream-colored paint on the old pine cabinets. A small gateleg table sat by the window that overlooked the concrete courtyard. Bree settled Hunter at the table and turned the burner on. “It’s fish tacos,” she said. “That okay with you? If I take them apart and reheat them, they shouldn’t be too squashy.”

“Very domestic.”

Bree made a face.

Hunter stretched his long legs out on the tiled floor, cradling his glass of wine. “Is that it? Are you afraid of losing your independence?”

“I think it is,” Bree tried to look thoughtful. “Yes.” Antonia was fond of afternoon talk shows, and she repeated something she’d overheard. “Of being swallowed up by a man. Of losing myself.”

Hunter choked on his wine, set the glass on the table, and said, “Bullshit.”

“Hey,” Bree said indignantly. “That’s a perfectly acceptable fear for women.”

“For some, maybe.” He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared up at her. “I can’t think of a woman surer of herself, more independent than you. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

The word hung in the air. Bree made another face. “If I had a tennis racket, I could whack that word back at you.”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“‘Love,’” Bree said briefly. “
That
word. But you’ve got that same kind of surety. It’s why I . . . I’m so fond of you, Hunter.”

“You ducked the word again. Pretty good volley.” His gaze held hers for a long moment. She turned away, breaking the look, hoping that he read in her face what she felt in her heart:
Don’t push it. Not yet. Soon.

She separated the black beans from the rice and turned the fish in the skillet, and said, too casually, “Any leads on what happened to Beazley?”

He took a breath, as if to protest the obvious change in subject, then smiled easily. “Way too early yet. I haven’t come across the firm before. Have you met him on a case? Somehow he didn’t look the type to attend the monthly Georgia State Bar Association meetings.”

Bree concentrated on the fish. “I was about to sit down with him over this suit he’s bringing against Prosper White. Or was bringing. Maybe his partner will take over. I hope not. I hope the case died with Beazley.”
If he is dead. Or maybe he was already dead. But if he was already dead, how could he run a temporal practice?

Hunter pulled his notebook from his shirt pocket. “The other partner? Would that be Caldecott or Barlow? Bree? Are you with me, here?”

“Sorry. I forgot about Barlow. I haven’t met him. Caldecott, yes. Not any more prepossessing than the deceased, I’m afraid to say.” She thought a minute while she slid the tacos onto plates. “Now I remember. They represented the company that insured the car that broke my leg. They offered a settlement.”

“So that’s where you ran into him before.” He seemed relieved. “Any merit to the current case?”

Bree shook her head. “I don’t know.” The summons was on file at the courthouse, so she wouldn’t break client confidentiality if she told him about it. “I’ll save you a trip to the records department and tell you. Then see what you think.” She summarized the cause of action and then wound up, “I went to see Chambers, with Beazley’s permission. The case feels like a grudge match, to tell you the truth. Prosper White seems to have made his reputation on exposing the Cross of Justinian as a fraud. Chambers claims the artifact he turned over to White was authentic. He says he got a fake one back.” She put the plates on the table and sat down across from him. “I don’t trust either one of them, but if push came to shove, I’d take Chambers’s word over White’s.”