Devil Hath Come (an FBI/Romance Thriller ~book 7) (32 page)

Chris watched her from his peripheral vision, and desperately wanted to go to her.
Every part of him wanted to hold her and pull the woman against his body to kiss her.

He wanted her to know
that he was sorry, and that he wasn’t some wacked out nutjob.

It was a precarious position to be in, and he didn't know how to work through it. Here on one hand was his mother, the woman
who raised him and gave him life. Yeah, she was a little nutty, but she’d been a great mom. They walked the woods, learned about bugs and science, and she was the reason he became a doctor.

Then there was Cyra. God, he was lost when it came to her. When she s
miled at him, his heart stopped, his brain didn't function, and all he wanted was to hold her in his arms.

Now
, he needed to find a way to blend bizarre and odd with normal and perfect. Chris needed the woman that gave him life, and the woman who made him come alive to exist together in harmony.

Yeah good luck with that.

“Doc, we found some hairs,” Christina said excitedly.

It drew his attention back to the dead woman.
At least everything on the work front was moving smoothly. He wasn’t sure he could handle a mess there too.

“Run them
and see if they match our victim. If they don’t, then maybe we have our killer’s DNA.”

Cyra arrived at the door
and knocked before entering. When she was told to come in, she took a seat wordlessly. The three directors were staring at her. She might as well get it out in the open and deal with whatever punishment they had planned for her. She’d been late to the crime scene, and Cyra was sure Thomas Rickard had reported his findings at her room.

“Yes, I slept with Chris.”

Elizabeth started to laugh. “We weren’t going to ask. In fact, we were going to tell you that we shipped your partner back to FBI West, but thank you for your sex update.”

Callen and Ethan were grinning.

The woman went bright red. Today was turning into a really big nightmare.

Elizabeth
decided to cut her a break for Chris Leonard’s sake. Since they went way back, she’d be gentle for a friend. “We called you up here to give us an update on your search. What did you find on the shop?”

Cyra
was grateful it was going to be work related. That she could do with her eyes closed. She began to focus and went into cop mode. “
Mystic Memorabilia
is owned by Artemis and Ares LaFay. They’ve been running it now for the last five years. I pulled some cross comparisons with previous financials and found that it has been very profitable. Most of their revenue is due to the internet. They sell all kinds of trinkets, incantations, mojo bags and other various things online to anyone interested in getting their ‘spell’ on.”

“So, they hock witch goods. I find that interesting,” she stated. “In fact, I look forward to wandering
around their store.”

Cyra continued,
“I checked and the business lists no employees, but that doesn’t mean they’re not doing it under the table.”

“Well, we know one victim worked there, so let’s plan on showing them some pictures and see if they know Dyana Carlos
too. I would rather talk to the witches about her than the grieving family.”

Ethan
agreed, glancing down at his watch. “Chris is about to start the autopsy. We should head there first and get that taken care of before we head out to the interviews.”

They gathered all their files and tablets
as they prepared to leave.

“Maybe
, if we’re incredibly lucky, our killer will have left us a little clue,” Elizabeth said hopefully.

“One can only hope,” Ethan replied, holding the door open for the wom
en.

The sooner they caught him, the quicker they would get Elizabeth away from the
devil worshiper and a lunatic calling her out.

Right now, there really was no place like home.

Downstairs, Chris leaned against the counter
to finalize his last checklist. The other ME stood not far from him, as did the police chief and the two officers who had been on scene.

“I don’t know what we’re waiting for,” Patrick Parrish said, glancing at his watch.

“The boss,” answered Chris. “I don’t start until she shows up.”

“It’s not like you’re doing anything
that she hasn’t seen, she can catch up.”

Chris looked over. “I like my assistants to keep one thing in mind. Just stand there and do your job, don’t tell me how to do mine.”

The man looked at him in shock.

Elizabeth took that moment to roll into the room,
only catching the tail end of the tension. “Sorry, if we’re late, Doctor Leonard, but we had some reports to work on, and now we’re ready.”

The man gloved up and moved towards the woman. He glanced up at Cyra
and the look on her face forced him to look away.

“Okay, let’s cut her open,” he answered, doing the Y-incision. “We did all the swabbing and it’s on
its way to the lab, as is the blood work.”

“Thank you, Doc,” Elizabeth answered.

He nodded but kept his gaze adverted.

Yeah, t
here were issues that needed to be settled. Elizabeth could feel it surrounding them. Generally, Chris Leonard was fun and jovial. Even when he worked, he was known to chatter and spew out useless information. If he was silent, there could only be one reason.

There were woman troubles brewing on his horizon.

“I can tell by looking at her that she was struck in the face fairly hard, and it wasn’t right before death either. The blood pool under the skin had already formed. That usually takes a couple of hours.”

“Could that have been how he disabled her to abduct her?” asked Agent Austin, keeping her voice cool and neutral as she did her job.
She’d already screwed up by admitting she was sleeping with him to her bosses. The last thing that she needed was for them to watch her pine away for a man who was suddenly chilly.

“It could be, Agent. If he was large and strong, it could have disabled her enough for him to bind her hands and feet
. That would have made it easier for him to handle her. I found rope abrasions on her hands and ankles, much like the first victim.”

“Anything else?” asked Gena Lowry. This was her first autopsy, and she was finding it fascinating.

Chris glanced up at her and noticed that the woman looked excited. “Would you like to move closer? As long as you don’t touch our victim, I don’t mind.”

The woman did just that.

“The pentagram carved into her body is the same also. A little more crooked this time, as if he was in a hurry. I also noticed that she has a few broken teeth. It might be from having something shoved down her throat or again from the strike to her face.”

“Like the last woman’s necklace?” Elizabeth asked.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking, Director. I’ll open her larynx first to cut this short for everyone. I know that watching a full autopsy isn’t fun.”

They
had seen enough of them that one more was just the same old thing. They would take the abridged report after the fact, since they had a full day ahead of them. “Thanks, Chris.”

He
started rooting around in the general location and making a long slit in the esophagus. When he paused, the room went silent. “There’s no necklace in her throat.”

“Really?” Ethan asked, a little surprised
by that news.

“
No, there’s none at all. I’ll have to check her stomach contents next. It is possible that it was swallowed if she wasn’t dead at the time it was shoved down her throat.”

Both cops moved closer too, getting a better look. All the Feds knew better. The minute Chris dumped the gut juice, someone was going to puke. The smell was just that bad. They all started holding up fingers, picking a candidate.

The majority were picking the cops. Men tended to have a worse reaction, at least in their experience.

Chris cut out the stomach
and freed the pouch. As he poured everything into a large evidence jar, the Feds tried not to make a peep. The sound alone was disgusting and could take down the strongest of people. If the locals wanted the full effects of an autopsy, here it was.

As if
on cue, Officer Murphy made some gagging noises.

“Away from the body,” Chris ordered, pointing.

The man ran from the room.

The Feds began laughing. Cyra and Elizabeth lost that one to Ethan and Callen. They each reached into their pockets and pulled out some cash. It was passed to the winners.

Chris glanced up at his team. “No fair, I was busy!”

Ethan grinned. “
If you snooze then you lose.”

The police chief looked around confused. “What?”

The ME let her in on what she’d just missed. “There’s a little game we play in autopsy. It’s called ‘
guess the puker
’ and the game just concluded. You were each assigned a number in the order you were standing. When I dumped the bile and stomach contents, they were picking the one that would toss first.”

She didn't look amused
that they were the butt of some joke. In fact, Lowry looked downright pissed.

Elizabeth jumped in to head off any oncoming explosion.
“Hey, no one picked you. You should be proud. I really thought it was going to be Officer Marsh.”

“Why?”
The man didn't look offended in the least.

“With all the donuts and shit Officer Murphy eats, I assumed he had a cast iron gut. I was way off. That didn't take long at all.”

Callen grinned and as usual he went with the silver lining of it all. “I’m glad I don’t have to see regurgitated raspberry filled donuts. It would ruin it. They were damn tasty.”

Gena Lowry stared at them, trying to figure out if the
y were serious. “You’re a weird bunch of people,” she stated.

Elizabeth shrugged. “When you have to see five or more autopsies a week, you try and find something less miserable to focus on at the time. We’re trying to keep our sanity in a wor
ld of lunacy. Don’t read into it too much, Chief Lowry.”

At the sloshing sound, they all focused on Chris. His hand was in the jar and he was feeling around for anything metallic.
He began pulling out anything that had some substance to it. “Well, most of the food is dissolved, but I found a piece of gum,” he said, holding it up. “She must have been chewing it before she was taken.”

Now o
fficer number two was beginning to look a little grossed out.

H
e went back to stirring up the contents as he felt for anything hard. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we don’t have anything.”

Ethan made a mental note of it all, trying to relate it to his profile.
“So, on this one, we don’t have a necklace. That’s odd.” He knew that a killer didn't switch up mid kill.

Patrick Parrish finally spoke
, “Maybe he’s keeping them as a souvenir? Isn’t that something killers do?”

Elizabeth made note of it. “He could be.”

Chris sealed up the jar for testing. “Boss, I’m going to do the boring stuff now. If you want to head out, I’ll be here working on it, and I’ll update you later as soon as I have something to report.”

She
was appreciative of that. “We have some interviews to handle, so we’re heading to the shop where Scarlet Red worked and then the Church of Satan.  If you need us, we’ll be in the field.”

Chris glanced
nervously at Cyra. If there were two interviews and just as many teams, that meant that Rickard would be alone with her. “All of you?”

Ethan took over. “The situation
we discussed has been handled.”

There was immediate relief on his face. “Thank you,” he answered
as the tension left his body.

“That’s what friends are for
, darlin’,” Elizabeth replied. “Tag us if you find anything that’s pertinent.”

“Can we stay and watch the
rest of the autopsy?” Lowry questioned, hoping that they would get the okay.

Chris didn't mind either way. Now
, he could focus on the body and not be worried about Thomas Rickard. “I don’t mind the company. I’m accustomed to having someone talk as I work. My partner, Doctor Magnus, never shuts up, so have at it.”

The Feds walked out and passed
a sick looking man sitting on the floor.

“Hey, you okay?”
Blackhawk asked, trying not to find humor in the man’s discomfort.

He nodded. “I’m not doing an autopsy again, until it’s my own.”