Hunter's Blood Special Edition (Cursed by Blood Saga) (25 page)

A confused frown spread across Lily’s
brow. “Have it your way…” She stopped and looked over at him. Ryan tensed. If
she got even a sniff of his little fantasy, it was game over.

Pokerfaced, he turned to meet her
gaze.

“Detective, whatever it was you
sensed, you’re going to have to share it with me at some point,” she said
softly.

Again, her expression didn’t match
what he expected, and it wasn’t lost on him that she’d caught herself, dialing
it down on the boss lady bit. She acted as if this was routine, same shit
different day, but maybe it wasn’t, and her over the top attitude was just a
cover. He unclenched his jaw and exhaled quietly. Either way, it didn’t matter.
He was here to observe and to make sure she played by the rules.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “I get touchy
when it comes to talking about things I sense on the job. I’m sure you can
understand why.”

“I do. Believe me, you’re preaching to
the choir. I’ve been queen of the freaks for more years than I care to count,
not that I think you’re a freak or anything.”

He gave her half a smile. “No harm, no
foul. But let’s take this step-by-step, okay? We still need to get through your
initial investigation at the morgue. How about we make that our jumping off
point into the world of weird, okay?”

“Deal.”

His police radio chirped, and dispatch
interrupted in what sounded like a rush of crackling static. Ryan squeezed the
side button on his radio. “Ten-four,” he answered.

“What was that?”

He shrugged. “Central just confirmed
with the deputy M.E.”

“Confirmed what?”

“Our meeting with him at the morgue.”

She leaned back in her seat, and
turned to face him. “Now? But we’re almost there. What if he wasn’t around to
confirm our meeting? Don’t they care about wasting taxpayer money, not to
mention our time?”

He grinned. “And how long did you say
you’ve been away?”

She exhaled, shaking her head. “Too
long.”

Chapter Four

***

They parked on the street outside
Bellevue Hospital and got out of the car. The morgue was located in a separate
building, adjacent to the main hospital. Martinez flashed his badge at the
entrance, and reception buzzed them in immediately. He knew the way like the
back of his own hand, and led Lily through a set of double doors and down the
back corridor toward a set of elevators marked ‘employees only’.

The facility was situated on the lower
level, and the elevator doors opened onto a stark white hallway. “This is still
a police matter, so let me do the talking, okay?” he asked, stepping aside to
let Lily pass. “Once we’re in, you can take over from there.”

The fluorescent lights added to the
already sterile, empty feel of the place, and as they walked, the sound of
their footsteps echoed in the corridor. Martinez stopped just outside another
set of double doors.

“Just so you know, the bodies were
tagged and bagged at the scene, but the deputy M.E. should have pulled some
from cold storage for us to start with,” Martinez said with his hand on one of
the doors. “Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” Lily said,
trying to squash the creepy feeling edging its way up her spine.

Martinez knocked before pushing the
doors open. The two entered and stood, waiting just inside. The facility was a
large rectangular shaped configuration, opening directly into an area housing
row after row of
mortuary
-
style
refrigerated units. Forensic examination tables lined one side of the room,
each compartmentalized into individual operating suites, complete with surgical
lights and attached to stainless steel counters, together with sinks and hoses.

Microscopes
and medieval looking instruments, skull saws and rib crackers, gleamed in the
overhead lights next to what looked to be deli slicing machines and grocery
scales.

Lily swallowed
hard against the sick,
Sweeney Todd
-like feeling that lurched in her
stomach.

A man in a bloodstained lab coat
looked up from behind one of the stainless steel examination tables. “May I
help you?” he asked, his hand resting on top of a body half covered with a blue
sheet.

“Dr. Weaver?”

The man nodded. “What can I do for
you?”

“I’m Detective Martinez. Homicide,” he
answered, flashing the man his badge. “This is Lily Saburi. Special Services. I
believe Detective Sergeant Shaw called to let you know we were coming.”

“Yes. Right this way.” He led them to
the far end of the refrigerated units. Lily shot Martinez a questioning look,
but he ignored it.

The deputy M.E. swept his hand toward
the stacked squares at the end of the row.
“The drawers pertaining to your
case have been marked with post-its. Please take your time, but I ask that you
don’t disturb the bodies or remove them from the cadaver trays. I have to head
to pathology, but I’ll be back shortly. ”

Martinez
nodded. “No problem.”

The doctor
headed back toward the double doors where they had first come in, and Martinez
looked at Lily. “Ladies choice,” he said with a sideways nod toward storage
units.

Lily took a
cleansing breath to ground herself and center her focus. The underlying smell
of disinfectant stung the inside of her nose, and her stomach flip-flopped as
memories from the morgue in Portland where they prepared Terry’s body to ship
back to New York, rushed back.

Holding her
breath, she swallowed, forcing herself to focus.
“That one,”
Lily said, pointing toward the first drawer on the bottom left.

Martinez pushed the lever down and
slowly pulled open the square, stainless steel door. Cold air drifted out from
the opening, along with a deep sense of foreboding. The cadaver tray slid out
from the refrigerated unit without a sound, a narrow gurney on drawer glides.
Lily shivered. The body was covered with the same blue sheet they’d seen on the
one prepared for autopsy across the room.

He pulled the sheet back, exposing the
victim. The body was that of a young man, no more than eighteen or twenty years
old. Even with the medical examiner’s handiwork, it was easy to see his throat
and his chest had been ripped open prior to death. The typical “Y” incision
used in autopsies had navigated through the ravaged and missing flesh. Martinez
whistled low. “Wow. This one is definitely 3D,” Martinez said, wiping his hands
on his pants. “Definitely Done Dancing.”

“Oh, God.” Lily’s hand went to her
mouth, her stomach turning again. Her vision swam as a wave of lightheadedness
gripped her, and she clutched onto Martinez’s arm for support.

“Some NYPD Profiler you are if can’t
stand the sight of a stiff,” he joked, steadying her on her feet.

Lily swallowed hard. “It’s not that,”
she said shooting him a dirty look between gulps. “Can’t you sense it? It’s
absolute terror. Christ in heaven, it’s practically radiating from the body!”

She dragged in a deep breath and
placed her hand on the victim’s forehead. Immediately, images flooded Lily’s
mind. He’d been out for a good time with friends. Rich boys slumming it, out
trolling for drugs and illicit fun.

“I’m sorry...I’m so sorry…”

Lily jerked her hand back, her eyes
losing focus. “What?” She blinked, turning her perplexed gaze toward Martinez.
“Did you say something?”

He shook his head. “No, why?”

 She frowned, peering at him from
across her shoulder. Maybe her brain was on overload and it was nothing more
than a leftover auditory impression.
Or not…

Lily froze. “Oh, God,” she muttered
and turned slowly back around toward the body.

“What? What is it?” Martinez asked,
but Lily didn’t answer. She kept her eyes trained dead ahead.

“Remember when I said I wasn’t sure if
my talents ran toward channeling?”

“Yeah…” he answered cautiously.

“Ding. Ding. Ding.”

Martinez took a step forward and stood
next to Lily. “Here? Now?”

“Yup.”

Lily slid her eyes to the side
expecting to see the detective’s face blanch. Instead, he looked quizzical.

“Are you all right? Do you hear something
too?” she whispered.

His shook his head, again. “Not a
thing.”

“Hey! I’m over here, there’s no need
to whisper…”

Lily slid her gaze back to the front.
The ghost stood next to the cadaver tray, a young man, his face pale and
translucent white. He was so young, it broke her heart. Way too young to have
been involved in all this. “Um… Who are you?”

“Patrick Quinn Kelly.”

Lily sucked in a breath. “It’s the
Kelly kid,” she whispered to Martinez, and felt him stiffen beside her.

She took a step forward, keeping her
movements slow and non-threatening. Outside of Terry, she didn’t have much
experience with talking to the dead, but the kid looked scared and as ludicrous
as it sounded, she didn’t want to frighten the ghost further.

“Patrick, can you tell us what happened
in the bar? Can you remember?” Lily’s heart clenched at the regret that
shadowed his pale, translucent face. His wounds were raw and puckered, even in
his ethereal form, but the terror that had hit Lily in the gut earlier was
gone. There was no trace of physical pain, either, only a pervasive sadness and
regret.

“Tell my mother I didn’t mean it,”
he said,
flickering in and out.
“I never meant to hurt anyone…it…it got out of
control.”

“Didn’t mean what? Patrick, wait,”
Lily said, reaching out as if she could touch him, help him.

“What? What’s he saying?” Martinez’s
eyes flicked back and forth between Lily and the blank space on the other side
of the gurney.

“Please…”
The ghost
said, placing a hand on Lily’s forearm, making the hair on her arm stand on
end.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do where I’m supposed to be…”
he
trailed off, his face a mask of fear and uncertainty.

“Tell my mother I’m sorry. I should
have listened to her…I never did. Tell her I love her…”
He dropped his
head. A glistening tear dripped from his cheek, disappearing into nothing as it
fell toward the gurney.

The fluorescent lights above them
flickered and popped, and the air crackled subtly with electricity. The ghost
turned abruptly, and Lily’s gaze followed his toward the back of the room.
“Something’s
coming…”
His voice cracked with panic. He took a step and then turned back.
“Don’t forget,”
he said, and then vanished.

“No!” Lily yelled, banging her hand
down on the stainless tray. “God, I hate when they do that! One magnanimous,
all-encompassing statement and then poof, they disappear.”

“He’s gone? For good? Did he say
anything about the attack?”

Lily shook her head, raising her hand
in frustration. “I don’t know.”

“What does that mean? You said ‘an
all-encompassing statement’. Does that mean he told you who did this?”

Lily shook her head.

“Then would you mind telling me
exactly what he did say?” Martinez asked, his voice rising.

Lily’s shoulders slumped. She turned
to face him, knowing full well he expected more than what she was about to tell
him. “He wanted me to tell his mother he loves her.”

Martinez blinked. “You’re kidding me,
right?”

“Detective. He was just a kid. He’s
disoriented. I’m not even sure he knows he’s dead, let alone where he is, and
I’d bet dollars to donuts he doesn’t remember what happened—at least, not in
any kind of cohesive way.”

They stood in awkward silence for a
moment. Ryan nonplussed, and Lily not knowing what else to say.

“Doesn’t matter, anyway,” she said,
shoving her hand through her hair. “Ghosts are historically unreliable. Their
perception is skewed by their own personal unfinished business, and you can
never tell if the clues they give you pertain to the questions you ask, or to
some random memory.” Exhaling, her breath fogged out into the cold from the
open refrigerated unit. “It’s better if we do this the old fashioned way.”

Lily rested her hand on the body’s “Y”
incision, just above the heart. Immediately, her shoulders hunched and she
gagged, her senses overwhelmed by the smell of booze and blood. Disjointed
images flash through her mind: Patrick sliding a c-note across to a bartender,
a private room, drugs, sex and…

Lily’s eyes flew open and she jerked
her head around toward the detective’s waiting gaze.

“
Jesus Christ
, what now?”

Lily’s gut matched the apprehension
she read on Martinez’s face. If what she sensed was true, they were in for a
shit load of trouble. Her eyes met his. “We need to go to the crime scene.
Now.”