Harsh Gods (35 page)

Roarke cleared his throat, settling back to his side of the elevator. “Another thing we been keeping out of the news—every time we track down the perpetrators, someone gets to them first.”

“And by ‘gets to them,’ you mean kills them, don’t you?” I pressed. One of Remy’s statements back in the parking garage made more sense now. He’d mentioned the dead woman outside of Lake View, and I’d been so fixated on that being my fault, I’d glossed over his mention of
bodies
—plural. She hadn’t been the only one found out there, and I’d let her buddy get away.

“So far, all indigents and vagrants,” Roarke answered. For a moment, I marveled that McMountain even knew what an indigent was. If he caught my incredulous look, he ignored it, continuing, “I found something at one of the scenes that made me think it was a cop, gone all Batman or something. I mentioned my theory to Garrett. Next day, the evidence disappeared from the lock-up.”

Big words, and now a Batman reference. Maybe McMountain had more than a slab of beef between his ears. I still didn’t see us trading stories over a beer any time soon.

“You knew it was Garrett?” I asked.

A shrug rolled like a seismic event. “Didn’t make sense,” he said. “He’s a stand-up officer. Too good. He’s not the kind who breaks the rules.”

As opposed to Roarke, who regularly bent them for his Nephilim master.

Or Bobby, for that matter
, I thought disconcertedly.

“So you didn’t confront him,” I ventured.

He shook his head.

The terrible sights imprinted on the Kramer home replayed across my mental movie screen with excruciating clarity. That hadn’t been Garrett, exactly, but he had the same asshole riding shotgun in his head. Malphael could rant all he wanted about justice, but he wasn’t one of the good guys.

“Probably for the best,” I murmured.

With a faint rattle of machinery, the elevator settled at the end of its run.

“I know it’s asking a lot,” I said urgently, “but, seriously, try to keep as much as you can about the abduction under wraps, and for fuck’s sake don’t tell—”

The chime sounded, and the doors slid open. Bobby Park, his glossy black hair sticking up from the wind, caught sight of me and stopped mid-sentence with Lydia Potts.

“Bobby!” I cried, turning the name I’d been about to say into a greeting. I even managed to smile.

Beside me, Roarke stood silent as a gargoyle.

Bobby blinked once as he processed my uncharacteristic exuberance. Lydia flicked wintry blue eyes between her partner and me. Long strands of her bright blonde hair had worked loose from her ponytail, making her look like some windswept Valkyrie. Whatever she picked up on in our body language, it didn’t make her happy.

She crimped her lips, biting back some comment.

Roarke hunched his shoulders like a kid caught spray-painting the neighbor’s poodle. He sidestepped our little greeting party as he slipped from the elevator. Potts huffed through her nose and gave immediate pursuit, leaving just Bobby and me.

“Zack. What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Uh, a friend called me to pick him up,” I lied.

“Hell of a night to play Good Samaritan,” he said. I stepped the rest of the way out of the elevator just as the doors started closing again.

“Yeah,” I answered. “What’s going on? It looks like the whole station is here tonight.”

Keeping his back to the chaos in the lobby, Bobby restlessly dashed fingers through his mussed hair. He grimaced as he flicked off styling-gel-laced meltwater. It landed on the tiles.

“A real mess,” he sighed. “I’ve got six in the parking garage and a partner who didn’t show for the call.”

“Six?” I echoed, scanning the crowd over his head for any sign of Father Frank or Lil. There were cops and security personnel everywhere.

“No survivors, no IDs, and no witnesses,” he said sourly. Following my gaze, he frowned as an orderly began shouting with one of the uniforms near the hospital’s front doors. Park hovered on the edge of striding over to break it up, but they quieted. Turning back to me, he continued, “Jimmy thinks it’s drug related. Lyds disagrees. With what I’ve seen, I’m siding with Lyds. It’s not your standard shoot-out.”

“Oh?” I asked, not daring to offer anything further.

“If all we had were gunshot victims, Roarke might have a point. The hospital’s right here, and we found oxy on one of them. But the violence done to these bodies…” A shadow of revulsion twisted his features, and he rubbed his eyes as if the gesture could somehow erase the memory. “We found guns and some casings, but bullets didn’t kill these people. One guy’s head was twisted all the way around on his neck, and his back looked like someone had folded him in half.”

I winced, recalling the sound.

“All the cameras out there were down during the power outage and lightning blew out a transformer, so not even the back-up power kicked on. Now we’ve got squat to go on, and I heard on the radio some kid’s gone missing from the children’s ward. I was just heading up there,” he explained, stepping past me to hit the call button on the elevator. With a plaintive note, he added, “I hope it’s a mix-up. I can’t handle any more dead kids this week, Zack. I really can’t.”

That makes two of us
, I thought.

“Hey, flyboy—what are you standing around for?” The distinctive sound of Lil’s heels crescendoed in swift approach. I whirled in time to ward off her hand as she slapped at my shoulder.

She’d lost the harried nurse outfit, trading the lab coat for her recently reclaimed brown leather jacket, zipped snug. Her hair hung loose again, spilling wildly across her shoulders. Bobby’s eyes cut from me to the Lady of Beasts, taking in the whole of her appearance.

“This your friend?” he asked uncertainly.

Her lips pursed for some sharp-tongued answer—then his suit jacket shifted to reveal his badge. She switched personas so fast, it gave me whiplash.

“I’m so sorry for snapping,” she said in a meek voice that belonged on somebody else. Drawing back a step, she tipped her face to the floor so all her hair swung forward. It was a perfect imitation of Remy at his most obsequious. The russet tresses obscured her features, further muffling her voice so I had to strain as she muttered, “You know how I can be when I’m worried.”

If her swift change puzzled Bobby, he buried it under polite professionalism.

“I’m sorry, Miss, but we have to keep everyone a little while longer for questioning.”

“Zack, tell him,” she whined. “The poor man’s nearly seventy. He needs to be home, where he can sleep. He’s been through so much already.”

“Who’s she talking about, Zack?” Bobby asked.

I almost didn’t tell him—Father Frank’s connection to Halley was too direct. We needed to divert Bobby and get the hell out so we could start tracking the girl. Under her lashes, Lil shot me a look. The hand nearest to me twitched, the nail of her middle finger jerking once in a direction back and to my left. I flicked my gaze that way.

Father Frank was already walking toward us, his knotted fingers firmly gripped around a steaming cup of vending machine coffee.

“Father Frank,” I said, both in answer and salutation. Bobby tilted his head as he studied the rangy old Marine.

“Hey, I know you,” he said. “You were the guy who broke up that scuffle during the Feast of the Assumption parade, last August. You say mass sometimes at Holy Rosary, right?”

“Not if I don’t get some sleep real soon,” the padre responded, flashing a smile that was equal measures apology and chagrin. He hefted the coffee cup like a talisman. “Been a long night of praying by the bedsides.”

Without a word, Lil shifted to stand beside the taller man. She slipped one hand through the crook of his elbow, clinging like a frightened toddler. Father Frank stared at his arm as if it had suddenly sprouted a grotesque tumor.

Lil didn’t budge, ducking her chin so any portion of her features not hidden by hair was angled away from Bobby behind the priest’s shoulder. She strained toward the main doors, tugging hard enough that the padre had to struggle not to spill his coffee.

I took the hint.

“We really need to go,” I said.

Bobby scrubbed his palm against the back of his head, looking miserable. At his hip, fragments of harried voices crackled from his two-way. His name stood out in the jumble. He ignored it for the moment, staring pensively at the call buttons for the elevator.

“I don’t suppose you can help much in this chaos,” he sighed.

“We showed up after the cops did, Bobby,” I said. “What could I possibly offer?”

Dark eyes sought my own and lingered, beseeching. I knew what he was hoping for—though he was careful not to say it in front of either Lil or the padre. I shook my head once, firmly. Bobby’s shoulders sagged further and I looked away, sickened by the way I misdirected the earnest young investigator.

Halley’s safety made it necessary.

I’d just keep telling myself that.

Park unclipped his walkie. “I’ll tell the guys at the door you’re clear. No point in everyone having a shitty night.” When he realized he’d sworn in front of the padre, Bobby actually caught his breath.

“Sorry for the language,” he muttered.

Father Frank offered the tightly wound detective a rueful half-grin.

“Son, in your shoes, I’d be swearing, too.”

“I’ve had better nights,” Park admitted. As he arranged things over the walkie, we started heading for the doors. Relinquishing her death-grip on the padre’s arm, Lil pulled ahead, the keys to my car already jingling in her hand.

“We could have been out and tracking him by now,” she grumbled.

I jogged to catch up. “You have a lead?”

She pushed past the two uniforms standing at the main bank of doors. The orderly who’d been yelling earlier started up again the minute he realized they were letting us free ahead of him. I dodged that train wreck, leaving the whole mess for Bobby and his co-workers to sort out.

Once we stood on the sidewalk out front, I asked the question again. Lil shook her head irritably.

“Not Kramer,” she said. “Malphael.”

“Malphael?” Father Frank echoed.

“The Gibburim,” I supplied. Lil rolled her eyes at the two of us, then made a beeline for the car. I grabbed her by the elbow and turned her back toward me. “Malphael’s no good. By the time he gets to Halley, she’ll already be—”

“Don’t say it,” Father Frank interrupted. “Please. I can’t bear to imagine a world where that’s true.”

“Sorry, padre.” To Lil, I demanded, “And how exactly are you tracking Malphael? You didn’t get within five paces of the guy back at the house.”

“You don’t think I gave up that rosary for nothing, do you?” With a grin of triumph, she held up a single bead of green ceramic.

“He told you to destroy that,” Father Frank spat. He lunged, and I stepped between them before things got out of hand. Most of the police were in the lobby, but there were officers visible out here, too. Roarke and Potts stood within earshot, the blonde Amazon clearly dressing down her hill-giant of a partner.

“Is that how this monster found his way to Halley?” Father Frank strained against me, cords standing out along his neck. “I told you, you couldn’t trust this woman, Zack.”

“Cool your cassock, priest,” she responded. “I broke everything that was important.” She dropped the gleaming bead into the depths of her bottomless handbag. “No way I was running around with a direct pipeline to one of the Rephaim. That’s just asking for trouble.”

Father Frank ground his teeth in aggravation. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with Lil myself.

“You were going to tell me about this
when
?” I asked. The wind teased the hair back from her face, revealing her Mona Lisa grin.

“Whenever I decided it was time.”

The padre hissed a curse beneath his breath and tore away from me, pacing a length of sidewalk while he shook aggression from his hands. Lil shot him a contemptuous look.

“While you two dicked around in the girl’s hospital room, I worked up a spell to trace it back to its source,” she explained. “I didn’t have time to finish but I’ve got enough to—” Abruptly, she stopped, nostrils flaring wide. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“Calvin Klein Eternity.” She pronounced it with all the gravitas of a sentencing judge. Her gray eyes settled onto Roarke like a lightning stroke. It took McMountain several heartbeats to realize she was staring at him. He glanced up from his tête-à-tête with Potts.

“Can I help you, ma’am?”

Ignoring the “ma’am,” she marched right over to him and stabbed a shamrocked fingernail in his chest. I tried to be invisible.

“You’re wearing Calvin Klein Eternity,” she accused.

His pale brows furrowed. “So?”

Potts just stared at the smaller woman.

Lil tipped her head back, minutely studying McMountain’s rough-hewn features. Her lips twisted with distaste.

“It won’t last.”

With that, she whirled on her heel, leaving both Roarke and his partner staring after her.

“Of course he’s a redhead,” she growled as she stomped past me toward my car. Taking advantage of her distraction, I plucked the keys from her hand. She punched me in the arm as an afterthought.

“Did you know?” she demanded.

“We’re going now,” I reminded her.

“How
long
did you know?” she pursued.

I slipped the keys in the lock, opening her door without really thinking about it.

“Didn’t you divorce my brother?”

“I died,” she snapped. “There’s a difference.”

Father Frank observed this exchange with an air of baffled exasperation.

“We need to head back to Holy Rosary,” he said, pulling up his coat collar against the stinging cold. “Then you should drop me at Tammy’s place.”

“We’re going after Malphael,” Lil insisted.

“Kramer, you mean,” I corrected. “We find him, we find the girl.”

“I don’t have a tracking spell active on Kramer, you idiot,” she argued. “Mal will find the girl for us. We focus on him.”

“And I’m telling you, if we focus on Malphael, we run the risk of losing Halley. You heard him back at the house.”