The Prophet (26 page)

On and on my thoughts rambled as I continued to work. By the end of the day, I had been rewarded with several lovely inscriptions. As I rinsed away the grime from the final headstone, an anchor appeared, a symbol as old as the catacombs. In its straightforward interpretation, an anchor symbolized hope and steadfastness on the graves of sailors, but in olden times, it had often been used as a disguised cross to guide the devoted and the persecuted to secret meeting places. On this day, I found new significance in the symbol because it reminded me that something as innocuous as an anchor—or a songbird—could have hidden meaning.

At four o’clock, I gathered up my tools and supplies, leaving the heavy water jugs behind so that I wouldn’t have to cart them back and forth. Temple had finished her survey of the exhumed graves and left mid-afternoon. Her job was done. From here on out, I’d be working in the cemetery alone. Maybe it was a blessing I had so many things occupying my thoughts these days. I had little time to brood about the past or worry about the perpetual pall that hung over Oak Grove Cemetery.

Still, as I locked the gates and turned my back on the graveyard, I felt a little chill go through me. I didn’t glance over my shoulder but instead ran my gaze along the edge of the woods, searching for movement in the deep shade at the tree line. The sun hung low, but there was still plenty of daylight left. No reason in the world to be frightened, I told myself. And yet…I was.

I tried to shake off the disquiet as I started down the overgrown path to the road. My imagination really was doing a number on me because at one point I could have sworn I heard footsteps behind me. Nothing was there, of course. It was too early for ghosts. Too early even for the shadow beings that stirred just before dusk.

Storing my tools in the back of the SUV, I climbed behind the wheel and turned the ignition. Nothing happened except for a faint, ominous click. The battery was dead, which made no sense since it was fairly new.

I popped the hood and checked the cables, then used one of my wooden scrapers to clear away the chalky corrosion around the posts. Sliding back in, I tried the ignition once more. The engine kicked over immediately, and with a sigh of relief, I hopped out to lower the hood. As I moved back around to the door, I saw that a beetle had climbed onto my shoe, and I bent down to examine it. Unlike the beetles from my dream, which were rounded and huge, this insect had a flattened body and a pale yellow platelike cover near the head.

Goose bumps rose on my arms and at my nape as I shook it off. Until my dream the previous night, I wouldn’t have been disturbed by such a sight. Since childhood, I’d suffered from a mild case of arachnophobia, but insects never worried me, even the giant cockroaches—palmetto bugs—so prevalent along the southeastern coast. Now I had to wonder if the beetle was a warning or a sign. A creepy-crawly with a hidden meaning.

I climbed back into the car and locked the doors as I scanned my surroundings. I told myself I was being ridiculous. Because of a nightmare, I now had a thing about beetles?

But no rationale could convince me that the one crawling on my shoe had been an accident. I no longer believed in the randomness of the universe or the happenstance of everyday occurrences. Everything happened for a reason, and I was very much afraid this current synchronicity would be the death of me.

Chapter Thirty

I
drove straight home and took Angus for a quick walk, then showered, dressed and headed out again. In a way, it was a relief to have a mission, because it kept me from stewing about that blasted beetle or, worse, worrying how Devlin intended to stop Darius Goodwine.

He’d been adamant that his quarrel with Darius had nothing to do with Mariama, but I was hard-pressed to believe it. Darius and Mariama had been raised together as siblings by their grandmother, Essie, so they must have been close. According to Robert Fremont, there had been many in the community who considered Devlin taboo because of his race and background, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Darius was one of his detractors.

Despite his impressive résumé in academia, he obviously identified closely with the magic and mystique of his heritage, going beyond Essie’s teachings as a local root doctor to study and practice with an African shaman in Gabon. By bringing gray dust back to Charleston, he’d placed himself on the wrong side of the law. As a cop’s wife, Mariama might have felt she had to make a choice.

Of course, all of that was based on nothing more than wild conjecture, exhaustion and my overstimulated imagination. I reminded myself that time would be better spent on how to approach Tom Gerrity. As I fought my way through the rush hour traffic on Calhoun, I once again tried to decide what I would say to him. I needed a goal for this meeting, something a little more concrete than Fremont’s assertion that he felt very strongly about it.

And speaking of Robert Fremont, where was he? He’d told me he would be around if I needed him, so why hadn’t he materialized to help me devise a plan? He was the one with the expertise in this partnership, and yet, he’d offered very little in the way of guidance or advice.

I’d never tried to summon a ghost—far from it—but now I focused my thoughts on Fremont, hoping the energy shift would pull him to me. I even said his name aloud three times but to no avail. Either he was unable to come through the veil or he was patently ignoring me, which made no sense because this whole investigation was his idea. He was the one who needed to move on.

By the time I reached Gerrity’s street, I was thoroughly annoyed, although some of my irritation might have been due to nerves and lack of sleep. I drew a few calming breaths as I looked for a parking space.

The shabby neighborhood had once been a quaint, residential haven, but developers had ruthlessly crushed many of the lovely old homes. Now squatty monstrosities of progress resided alongside the fading grace of Victorian-style houses with sagging verandas and long-neglected gardens.

Gerrity’s office was located in an old, two-story clapboard that hadn’t seen a paint job in decades. I couldn’t find a space near the building, so I parked one block over and checked the clock. I was nearly half an hour early and decided I’d prefer to pass the time in my locked car rather than loiter in the dingy hallway outside his office.

I settled in to wait, feeling a little drowsy in the sunshine streaming in through the windshield. I’d brought Dr. Shaw’s book with me and opened it to the bookmarked page. My eyes soon grew heavy, and I found myself reading the same passage over and over:

Among the early root workers that lived in the Sea Islands and along the Georgia-Carolina coast, divination was a highly prized skill, along with dream interpretation and the ability to recognize omens in nature. With the onslaught of urbanization, omen-reading became a lost art, but foretelling remained strong, among the favored methods, reading tea leaves and “throwing the bones.” Candles were almost always used in divination rituals and sometimes a glass of water for scrying.

I must have drifted off for a few minutes because my eyes flew open with a start. The book had fallen from my hands, and as I leaned over to pick it up, I checked the time. I’d only been asleep for ten minutes or so, but I decided to go ahead and walk over to Gerrity’s office. The nap had revived me, and I now felt calmer about the meeting.

The neighborhood was run-down, but despite recent events, I wasn’t overly concerned to be out alone. It was still daylight and traffic was heavy. Even so, I walked with my hands in the pockets of my jacket, fingers curled around phone and mace. I nodded to a few passersby on the street, but none of them seemed to notice me. That was a good thing, I decided. Blending in made me less vulnerable.

As I rounded the corner to Gerrity’s street, I saw a car double-parked in front of his building. It pulled away as I approached, and the back window lowered. For a moment, I could have sworn I saw the gleam of topaz eyes in the gloom. Startled, I turned to track the car. It made the corner and disappeared.

A tiny kernel of my earlier trepidation returned. I hadn’t actually seen anything, but my momentary panic proved just how on edge I was these days. I tried to shake off those lingering jitters as I entered the house.

The once elegant foyer was much as I remembered it from my visit a few months ago. A couple of plastic lawn chairs had been added to the decor, and, if possible, the rug looked even grimier, the Venetian blinds droopier. I didn’t think a mop or dust cloth had touched the place in months. It had the musty odor of an attic, and as I climbed the stairs, I couldn’t help noticing how eerily silent the building seemed. I suspected most of the tiny offices stood vacant these days, and those businesses that remained had probably closed their doors at five.

On the second floor, I headed all the way to the end of the hallway where Gerrity’s office was located. His door was closed, too, but it was just a few minutes before six, so it was possible he was already inside. I tapped on the door and waited for an answer. I heard what I thought was someone moving about, so I knocked a little harder, waited another minute or two and then tried the knob. It turned in my hand, and I opened the door, hovering on the threshold as I warily scanned the dim interior.

A lone candle burned on the floor, the flame flickering wildly from a chilly breeze that blew in through an open window. Not open, I realized almost at once. Smashed. I could see the glitter of glass fragments on the floor and something else…something that moved among the slivers, although I told myself it was merely reflected candlelight.

My gaze flashed to the desk where papers fluttered like bird wings beneath an upside-down tumbler.

Something obviously wasn’t right. I knew I should back away and run out of the building as fast as I could. Darius Goodwine’s fingerprints were all over that office. How else to explain the candle? The broken window? The smell of sulfur that lingered?

How else to explain the lethargy that suddenly gripped me?

I thought of those eyes gleaming from the backseat of the car, and suddenly I knew that I had been brought here for a reason. Not by Robert Fremont’s ghost but by a man capable of invading my dreams. From the very first, Darius Goodwine had been guiding everything. For what purpose, I didn’t yet know, but it had something to do with Devlin. And now with me.

My every instinct warned me to leave, but instead I took a tentative step inside the office. I even called out Gerrity’s name, though the space was so small, I didn’t see how he could be hidden from me.

I moved toward the desk, my movements almost dreamlike. A beetle had been trapped beneath the tumbler. As if sensing my presence, the frantic insect began to scurry about, trying to climb the glass walls of its prison only to crash back down upon the papers. It fell on its back, legs flailing helplessly, and I had a notion that, like the beetle on my shoe, here was yet another omen—perhaps even a warning—if only I knew how to read it.

I reached for the glass, intent on setting the insect free, and that was when I saw Tom Gerrity on the floor behind his desk.

At least…I thought it was Gerrity. The man’s face was obscured by a moving blackness.

I could see no blood or wound, but the beetles were there for a reason. They’d been attracted by death, and I watched in horror as they crawled in and out of the corpse’s eyes and mouth, feeding on the unthinkable.

A scream rose in my throat, but I couldn’t utter a sound. Neither could I make my fingers work to call 911. Instead, I stood frozen, something intangible paralyzing me as my gaze remained riveted on that teeming mass. Then I realized what held me immobile. A scent lingered in the air, so weak it might only have been my imagination. Not the sulfuric remnant of a struck match or even the sickly sweet odor of death, but something dark and musky.

I tried to place it, but already the breeze from the broken window had swept the fragrance away, and I was left with nothing more than a creeping dread that someone I knew had been in that office only moments before me.

Out in the hallway, a floorboard creaked beneath stealthy footsteps. I whirled, certain that at any moment Gerrity’s killer would open the door and find me standing over his body. That the murderer had probably long since fled the building didn’t occur to me. I’d plunged too far down the rabbit hole of panic to think rationally.

I needed to hide, but where? There were no closets, no bathroom. Only one door, only one way in and out except for that smashed window. Glass crunched beneath my feet as I glanced out. A ledge ran the length of the house, but from there it was a two-story drop to concrete.

Whirling, I scanned the office. The only possible place of concealment was beneath the desk, but that meant crawling over the body.

The footsteps were getting closer. I could hear the floor popping right outside the door.

Shuddering, I dropped on all fours and scrambled through the narrow opening, pressing myself up against the back of the desk. One of Gerrity’s arms was flung toward me, and it was all I could do to scrunch myself into a small enough ball to avoid touching it.

Hugging my knees, I tried to suppress the sound of my breathing as the door opened.

All was silent for a moment, and then I heard the crinkle of plastic, followed by footsteps rounding the desk. I could see nothing of the assailant, but Gerrity’s body shifted, and I realized he was being moved. The arm flopped up against me, dislodging a beetle that crawled up my leg, drawing an uncontrollable shiver.

As the hand moved away from me, I saw the gleam of a silver chain wrapped around the dead man’s fingers. A medallion dangled from the end, and I recognized it at once, my mind flashing back to the last time I’d seen it nestled against Devlin’s bare chest.

I blinked away the image as I put a finger on the medallion, pressing it to the floor, so that it remained behind as Gerrity’s killer dragged him onto the plastic.