Carnal Sin (4 page)

He wasn't going to tell her. She hated him right then. What a fool she was! A guinea pig, a lab rat, for what she didn't even know. Why had she done any of this? Why hadn't she just run away after Peter died and never returned to St. Michael's? Never gone to Olivet? She could have fought Fiona on her own terms, and so what if Moira had died and gone to Hell? At least she would have taken Fiona with her. Peter's death would have been avenged. Now Moira was tied to St. Michael's Order, and they wanted her blood.

Rico released the rubber strap. "Relax."

"Right." She swallowed heavily as he swapped out one vial and replaced it with another empty tube. He took three samples, put them in the box, closed it, and put it back in his jacket. She glared at him. "What are you going to do with my blood?"

Rico's expression softened just a fraction, and she knew him well enough to read that he regretted what he had to do.

But duty always won.

"I'm proud of you," Rico said as he put a small Band-Aid over the puncture.

That was the last thing she'd expected him to say. She put her jacket back on.

"You didn't answer my question." Moira's imagination ran the gamut of possibilities. Did she have some demonic virus? Had the demon infected her when it bit her? Or when Rafe sliced open her hand? Did they think the Seven Deadly Sins had affected her or her judgment? Were they working on a cure? She almost laughed at the thought, as if St. Michael's would look beyond their battle toward a medical cure for losing one's soul to a demon.

"I don't have the answers you want."

He turned away, signaling the conversation was over. She almost pushed him--verbally and physically. She wanted answers, and she'd fight to get them. But there was something subtle in Rico's expression that had her backing down.

Instead of pushing, she said, "We should go back. I'm sure Anthony is wondering why you're late."

"I'm not late."

She glanced at her watch. "He said twenty minutes--oh, about forty minutes ago."

"Anthony will wait." He turned back to face her. "Your emotions are dangerous not only to you, Moira, but to others. You care far too much. In our war, casualties are unfortunate but necessary. You can't think logically if you act solely on your feelings or your loyalties are divided. There is a balance; you must find it. I thought I'd taught you better."

"And you can forget Father Philip that easily?
Snap
, no feelings? No damn
grief?
I'm still human, just the way God made me,
right?"

Rico reddened. She'd rarely seen him react to her needling. "I will say this once. I loved Father Philip and I grieve for our loss." His voice quivered on the last sentence; then he said with firmness, "But I will not allow pain, sorrow, hatred, or rage to stop me from my sacred duty."

Moira touched his arm, wishing she hadn't pushed him. "I know you cared; I was out of line."

He dipped his head and squeezed her fingers. "I cannot expect you to control your emotions any better than you have. You weren't raised on the island."

In other words, she was an outsider. Loneliness washed over her. Why did she think something had changed? Why did she think she belonged? She was as alone now as she'd been the day Peter died. One year of bliss in a lifetime filled with pain, loss, and violence.

"I must ask you," he continued, "did Raphael use magic?"

Another unexpected question. Rico was full of surprises.

She answered as truthfully as she could, but still felt as though she was betraying both Rafe and Rico. She didn't want to lie, but what was the truth?

"I don't know." She didn't like the look on Rico's face. Though he didn't display any emotion she could identify, she knew Rico well enough to know that he was concerned about something--almost
worried
. Very unlike him. "Why do you think he did?"

"I read Anthony's report. There are questions. Anthony may be too close to Raphael to ... be impartial. And he doesn't understand magic like you do."

"There was so much magic flying around I could barely discern individual spells, let alone who was wielding the power. It was awful." She paused, then asked Rico the question that had been on her mind since the moment she first saw him. That it effectively changed the subject was an added benefit. "Have you heard anything about Fiona? Where she's hiding?"

He shook his head. "You will be the first to know, Moira. I can search for her all I want, but you'll be the one to find her. You know that. For seven years, you've been the only one who could."

"Oh, joy."

He took both her hands and held them. How unlike Rico, showing compassion. "I am not going to lie to you, Moira. Our war will get harder. Defeating Fiona is only part of the whole. You must destroy the
Conoscenza."

"That damn book!" She looked around at the dead earth. That book--the Book of Knowledge, the ancient
grimoire
filled with spells allegedly written in demon blood--was supposed to have been destroyed more than a century ago. But Fiona had searched for it and found it, believing it would give her the key to immortality. And perhaps it would. Fiona didn't care about the cost; she didn't care about anything but her own selfish desires. The Seven Deadly Sins she'd released from Hell were only the beginning, and Moira would do everything in her power to stop her.

Except use magic. Her attempt to stop Fiona with magic before had left the only person she'd ever loved dead, and Moira herself somehow connected to the underworld in ways she certainly didn't understand. She doubted even Rico or Father Philip understood. Which was why everyone was wary around her. Suspicious, like Anthony.

"Have you figured out how I'm supposed to get rid of this book?"

"No. But Dr. Lieber has agreed to meet with Anthony. We hope to have answers very soon."

She should be happy with the news, but the way Rico said it, a blanket of foreboding suffocated her.

"Terrific!" she said with fake enthusiasm. "I can hardly wait."

"Moira, please be careful."

"Always." She winked at him. "I'm running back to the house. See if you can keep up."

She ran, not waiting for an answer to her unspoken challenge, sure he wasn't telling her everything, but not knowing whether it was because he didn't want to or whether his silence was due to orders from a higher power. She wished she knew exactly who was calling the shots. She hated being a pawn.

Either way, Rico was keeping secrets from her and those secrets were going to hurt her.

Or get her killed.

TWO

After seventeen years on the force, the last nine as detective, Detective Grant Nelson trusted his gut instincts. They were rarely wrong. While he would wait for the evidence, Grant was confident that the death of George Erickson was the result of sex games turned deadly.

Grant assessed the murder scene. Private home in upscale Westwood, wife out for the night with friends, bedroom set up for a romantic tryst with candles, champagne, and the sultry voice of Patsy Cline playing in the background.

And of course the dead guy, on his back buck naked on the fully made bed, with no visible cause of death. Heart attack or OD; Grant opted for heart attack because there was no vomit or signs of violent convulsions, no obvious signs of drug use or abuse. Did the mistress panic and bail? If so, they'd probably pick up her prints. Or did Erickson collapse from the exhaustion of his sexcapade? Walk the woman out, then drop dead of a heart attack? Or maybe the wife caught him sleeping off a drunk, realized she hadn't been the recipient of the mood music and champagne, and suffocated him with a pillow. Whichever scenario, they had some legwork ahead of them to put together the pieces. This was the part of police work Grant enjoyed--the puzzle.

"Only one glass of champagne." Grant's new partner, Jeff Johnston, walked slowly around the room. Johnston, who looked like the football lineman he'd been in college, had been a uniformed officer in the Devonshire Division before his recent promotion. He peered into the trash can in the corner. "Scratch that. There's another glass in a million pieces. Think CSI can put Humpty Dumpty back together again and print it?"

Grant stared at the shattered crystal. Why toss the glass? Another puzzle piece for him to fit. Not reporting the death is one thing; covering up her identity quite another. Could be a hooker with a rap sheet.

CSI and the deputy coroner arrived. Grant and Jeff left them to process the scene while they sought out the deceased's wife. Officer Ann Timmons had been consoling Mrs. Pamela Erickson. She stood and approached them when Grant and Jeff entered the living room.

She rolled her eyes. "Good luck."

Odd, Grant thought as Timmons met up with her partner on the front porch.

Pamela Erickson was pretty--though on the skinny side--with red-rimmed eyes and her long brown hair up in the back. She was pissed off.

"Who's the bimbo that walked out on my husband?" she demanded. "What woman
does
that? Walks out on someone who's dying?"

Grant sized her up. He'd interviewed hundreds of next-of-kin and he'd seen all sorts of reactions to death. But this was a shade different. Why did the wife assume Erickson was dying while his mistress was still in the room?

"We don't know for certain that anyone was here with your husband," he said, though he didn't believe that for a minute. "Or, if someone was here, whether Mr. Erickson was dead before or after she left."

She stared at him. "You can't be that dense--I found him. I saw the bedroom.
Someone
was with George last night and it wasn't me!"

"Did you know your husband was having an affair?"

She laughed, a tinge of bitterness lacing her humor. "He wasn't having an
affair
. He was fucking around. Of course I knew it. He wouldn't screw around behind my back."

Swingers. Married couples who had an agreement they'd sleep around. Grant knew something about that. He'd never seen it end well--it sure as hell hadn't worked for him and his failed marriage--but it was accepted practice these days among the movers and shakers in L.A., and had spread to suburbia. "Do you know who he was with last night?"

"No."

"And I'm guessing you weren't out with friends?"

She glared at him. "I'm not going to be judged by a
cop
on how George and I lived. We
respected
each other, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say about some marriages!"

"If there's anything suspicious about your husband's death," Grant said, "I'll need to verify your alibi."

It may have hit Pamela Erickson at that moment that maybe her husband
hadn't
died of natural causes. Her lower lip trembled and she swallowed, looking from Grant to Jeff and back to Grant. "Someone hurt him on purpose? B-But, George?"

"Was he well liked?"

"Everyone loved George! He's the nicest guy on the planet. He makes me laugh, which is why I married him. We have a good time. We like each other. The sex is good. We're
happy
. People love him at work. He's a lawyer--not stuffy and stuck-up, but a good lawyer."

"Criminal defense?"

She blinked, not expecting the question. "No. Copyright law. He works for musicians and indie labels, to protect artists from piracy. He loves music. That's why he goes to--"

She stopped, and Jeff prompted. "Goes where, Mrs. Erickson?"

"Velocity. A club in Westwood that has up-and-coming bands playing Thursday nights. I usually go with him, it's our night out, but my ex-husband came to town unexpectedly and George told me to go out with Adam."

Tears fell. They seemed real, but Grant was cynical--he couldn't rule out Pamela Erickson as a suspect until he verified her statement and alibi. "George never brought anyone home before. This was our place. Adam and I went back to his hotel. If I had been with George instead, he would still be alive." She sobbed. "I'm going to miss him so much."

Grant abruptly walked out while Jeff gave the standard thanks, got her contact information, and followed him.

Velocity.

Shit
.

"What's going on, Grant?" Jeff's posture was casual, but his eyes were all cop and looking closely at Grant. Was he acting that guilty? And hell, what was he guilty of? He was single and he had been off duty last night. And just because he went to the club didn't mean he had gone there to get laid. Even if he did get laid.

"Hell if I know," Grant said. "Could be just what it looks like." But something seemed ... not what it looked like.

"You're thinking something."

"Did you hear about that college kid who died half-naked in the alley behind Velocity Wednesday night?"

"The case Cole Pierce pulled?"

"Yeah. I'll call Pierce, see if there are other similarities. Two deaths in two nights? Both patrons of the same club?"

"But that was a frat boy; this guy's a respected lawyer."

Grant stared at the wall without seeing anything. Just a week ago Velocity's owner, Kent Galion, had been pumped up on something unidentifiable and died after attacking a waitress.

"Do you think there's a connection?" Jeff asked. It made no sense, but
damn
it was a strange coincidence. "Maybe they knew each other."

It was something to consider, but from what Grant remembered hearing from the night watch was that there was nothing unusual about the college student's death. It was being looked at as an OD ... yet that's exactly what Grant was thinking about Erickson. OD or heart attack. What if someone was dealing bad drugs out of Velocity? Julie was going to have a shit fit, but Grant realized he couldn't tell her about it. He'd have to talk to Narcotics, see if they were looking into something--and push the damn coroner's office off their asses and give him the tox screen on the frat boy. Pierce would be happy to share with Grant--anything to get out from under their towering workload.

Grant said, "I was at Velocity last night. I didn't see anything and don't recognize the victim. I got there late and walked Julie out. After Galion lost his head last week, I've been worried about her safety."

"I thought you and Julie broke up."

He shrugged, avoiding looking his partner in the eye. "We're friendly. She might know who Erickson went off with--she has a good eye, but if there's a connection, we need to keep Julie out of it. If this is a drug case, we'll need to bring in the narcs."

"What if the motive is financial?" Jeff looked around the house and whistled. "Erickson was loaded."

"We'll talk to the widow, make sure nothing is missing, check into his finances. I'll talk to Pierce, get him to bump the other case to us, and you can follow up on the money angle. I'll talk to Narcotics. And it might help our case if we go down to the morgue and put some pressure on whoever is doing the autopsy on our stiff. See if I can rush both reports and expand the drug and tox screenings."

If there was a connection, the coroner could prioritize the bloodwork and additional tests. If the cases were drug related, they could get the DEA or FBI involved, get them to pay some of the lab costs. And the FBI lab had greater capabilities than Los Angeles.

Jeff looked at his notes. "Wife says Erickson left the house just before eight to catch the first set of a new band, told her to enjoy herself with her ex-husband and he'd see her in the morning. That told her, according to Mrs. Erickson, that either he expected her to screw her ex or he would be out screwing."

"She said that?"

"Not in so many words," Jeff said. "I read between the lines."

"You don't approve."

"It's not my job to approve or disapprove."

"But?" Grant prompted.

"I don't get them." Jeff glanced over his shoulder to make sure the wife couldn't hear him, and said in a low voice, "She never said she loved him. She
liked
him. She
respected
him. He made her laugh. But everyone else
loved
George Erickson. No one would want to kill him. Why get married?"

Grant didn't want to tread into that territory. Jeff was still new to the Pacific Division; he probably didn't know Grant's reputation, however deserved it was ... or wasn't.

Why did he care what the big black ex-jock thought of him? They didn't have to be friends. Jeff was a decent cop, with sharp instincts; Grant liked working with him because he
appeared
to be a dumb jock, and the appearance loosened people--especially suspects--into talking. It helped. But Jeff was anything but a dumb cop, and Grant didn't want anyone scrutinizing his life. Maybe because he didn't like looking too closely at it himself.

"I did marriage once," Grant said, trying to lighten the conversation, though he felt as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders and he didn't know why. "Didn't work out. I'm through."

"Cynical much?" Jeff joked.

"You got a few years under your belt answering domestic calls. Is there any such thing as a perfect marriage?"

"Doubt it," Jeff said, "but my parents have been married for forty-two years and I still catch them copping a feel when they don't think anyone's looking."

"Too much, Johnston." They walked out front where the deputy coroner pushed George Erickson's body, tucked and zipped into a black body bag, to the meat wagon.

What happened last night, George? Too much fun for the ticker?

"Hey, Nelson!" Timmons approached. "Just got a call in from Glendale PD wanting to talk to you."

"About what?" He didn't have any active cases that crossed into Glendale's jurisdiction.

"A stiff found in some dude's freezer. The detective in charge said you might want to come over--the house is Kent Galion's and the dead woman is Stephanie Frazier, a waitress from Velocity."

If people had told a younger Fern Archer that she'd not only work at the morgue but
like
her job, she'd have laughed them right out the door, telling them to sober up.
She
was going to be a photographer, thank you very much, and she didn't like dead things.

Shows what you really know about yourself when you're a kid.

Ironically, it was her love of photography that had landed her in the morgue in the first place, when she trailed a pathologist for an assignment called "Day in the Life." Don Takasugi hadn't wanted a smart-ass black girl with a nose ring in
his
lab, regardless of the coroner's agreement with Pierce College, and he'd gone out of his way to shock her.

Instead, Fern had found her true calling. For all of Don's antics that day, when she saw the compassion and respect he showed for the dead, it reminded her of her Grandpa T-Rex--nicknamed such because of his temper and build--who was as mean as a pit bull, except when he cared for her dying grandmother.

The next week she signed up for an internship at the morgue. She got her AA in human biology, and Don hired her a year later. He still tried to shock her with his dark humor, and though he was her toughest critic--both of her job and her photography--she also knew that she was his favorite.

"What are you doing?" Don's voice broke into her thoughts.

Fern jumped and nearly dropped her camera. She glanced around the morgue's intake room, where she was processing the latest arrival, laid out on a gurney in front of her. "He just came in. Wife found him naked and dead in their bedroom after an apparent night of hanky-panky."

"What are you doing with the camera?" he asked again as if she needed clarification, rather than simply more time to come up with a plausible lie.

"I'm just ..." She bit her lip. "It's the birthmark." She couldn't lie to save her soul. Her mama always told her that when she lied, her skin darkened. Fern didn't know how that was possible--her skin was quite black naturally, thank you very much--but her mama always seemed to know exactly when Fern was lying.

"What about it?"

"It's pretty darn near the same mark as the guy who came in yesterday morning
and
the guy who came in Friday night with the brain."

"The brain" was an intriguing case because Don hadn't seen anything quite like the enlarged brain stem, and if Don hadn't seen it before, Fern certainly hadn't. While the guy's body had been cremated, his brain was stored in a room off the main floor, awaiting the neuro specialist who came in twice a month to inspect unusual brains, primarily for genetic abnormalities.

"The same birthmark?" Don asked skeptically. "We had dozens of bodies come through here yesterday."

"Forty-seven," she said without even thinking. "And I thought I'd seen the mark before, thought it was a tat. Now?"