What You Can't See (7 page)

It wouldn’t stop a powerful demon, but it would slow and weaken it. It would have to be enough.

He returned to the kitchen, but Skye wasn’t there. Panic clutched his heart and he started toward the kitchen door, fearing she’d already walked off the cliff. Someone, or something, wanted her dead. What if he wasn’t strong enough to protect her? What if his faith wasn’t powerful enough to save her?

He listened, heard running water, followed the sound and found the bathroom door locked.

“Skye?” he called.

“Leave me alone.”

Guilt flooded him. He’d taken advantage of her. He’d known something was wrong, that Skye wasn’t completely herself, but he craved her. Their shared kiss earlier in the evening had fueled a flame he’d kept under control for the better part of his adulthood. Her claim on him was greater than he’d realized, and then she lay on top of him and he saw her in all her beauty, her inner goodness, and he wanted her.

His desire had consumed him and he’d allowed it to happen, potentially damaging their already strained relationship. Worse, he’d given in to wants that he should rightfully postpone until the demon returned to Hell.

He’d let his guard down, a deadly sin in his vocation.

“Are you okay?” he asked through the door.

She didn’t answer him, but the water shut off. “I’ll be out in a minute,” she said.

He wandered through Skye’s house and saw her life as clearly as if he were a psychic. True crime books on the shelves. Furniture that was clean, but old and worn. Decorations that, while free of dust, seemed to be remnants of another generation. A lone picture of a young Skye with her parents.

A sense of loneliness assaulted him, a sorrow he understood all too well. It was a pain he lived with every day.

“I have to get down to the police station,” Skye said, standing behind him. “Someone destroyed the journal.”

He turned around, embarrassed to be assessing her home. She’d put on her uniform and was pulling her damp hair into a ponytail.

“Skye,” he murmured.

She was still wary around him. Embarrassed, perhaps, and he wished he could ease her fear. Tell her how he loved to hold her. Of course he couldn’t, she’d push him away. He understood that about her.

He noticed the crucifix he gave her was around her neck. She glanced down, shoved the cross under her shirt.

He needed to reach out. “Skye, don’t feel—”

“Did you do it?”

He didn’t understand. “What?”

“Did you destroy that journal? Break my things?”

Her voice cracked and he saw the strain, uncertainty, and unease in her eyes.

“No,” he said.

“It’s all my fault.” She looked both irritated and physically ill. “It was evidence, and I brought it home, left it in my bedroom. Stupid.” She ran a hand over her face.

“It was two in the morning.”

“I don’t care! I broke protocol and now the journal is ruined. Someone shredded it and must have bleached the pages or something while—” Her voice tapered off.

“Skye, something happened to you this morning. Tell me everything.”

“Why?” Her eyes bored into his. “Did you have something to do with this?”

He quashed feelings of anger and frustration. That he would use sex as a ruse to keep her from her house? “You know I didn’t.”

“I don’t know anything right now,” she snapped. Her voice softened, full of anguish. “I don’t jump strange men on the cliff every day of the week.”

Anthony tried not to be hurt by her comment. “How did you get out on the cliff?”

“Walked,” she said sarcastically. Her defense mechanism.

“You know what I mean.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “I was tired. I wasn’t thinking straight.” She avoided his eyes and crossed over to the coffeepot. It was half full. She picked up a mug from the counter and poured. As the mug touched her lips, Anthony stepped forward and grabbed it from her hand. Hot coffee sloshed over the edges, scalding them both.

“What the—” she exclaimed, jumping back.

Unmindful of the burn, he smelled the coffee, grimaced.

“What?”

“You drank some of this already, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I have coffee every morning.”

“Someone poisoned your coffee.”

“That’s a crock.”

He shoved the mug under her nose, trying to be patient. “What do you smell?”

She breathed in deeply, wrinkled her nose. “It’s sort of metallic.”

“I think it’s mercury. Deadly in large doses, but on a small scale it’s a hallucinogen. My guess is that someone added it to the coffee grounds or water. The bitterness of the coffee would mask the taste.”

“Why didn’t I notice it before?” she asked, still skeptical. “I need to get this to the lab.”

“You were tired. You’d had two hours of sleep. My guess is that something woke you up, but you don’t know what. You rose, started the coffee.” He pulled the tray that held the grounds from the coffeemaker. “Poured a cup.” He looked at her. “Then what happened, Skye?”

She blinked rapidly, her eyes coated with tears. “I…I started thinking about my parents. I don’t know why, it’s stupid, really. I told you about my mom leaving for some whacked-out religious cult, and my dad dying eight years later. I’ve been on my own for a long time, I don’t get all sappy about it, but…” Her voice trailed off and she wasn’t looking at him.

“But it hurts.”

She nodded, probably without realizing she was doing so. She seemed disconnected, and Anthony knew the drug was still having an impact on her.

Skye’s inhibitions were down. When he saved her on the cliff, her emotions went from one extreme to the other. Despair to joy to relief to passion. He didn’t stop her. They made love, but it wasn’t Skye. It was the drugs. Guilt and nausea swept over him. He knew something had been wrong, but he’d ignored his instincts. He accepted her offering like a dying man would water.

“Skye?”

“Just leave me alone.”

“You’re still under the influence.”

“How do you know? Did
you
drug my coffee? You could have followed me home, drugged my coffee while I slept, then waited for me to hurt myself so you could ride to the rescue. So that I would
trust
you.” She spat out the word as if it were a curse.

“That’s paranoia talking, Skye,” Anthony said calmly, taking a step toward her. “That’s the drug.”

“Bullshit. That’s deductive reasoning.” She rubbed both temples with her fingers, a pained expression crossing her face.

“Come here.”

She stared at him, doubting. He stepped forward, took her wrists, lowered her hands, and led her to the couch.

Her living room was sparse and functional, like the rest of the house. He sat on one end of the couch, pulled Skye down next to him.

“Close your eyes, Skye,” he said.

Skye felt so out of balance, but here, sitting with Anthony, she was regaining her footing. Her bottom lip trembled. Slowly, she closed her eyes.

His thumbs pressed her temples and his fingers grasped the back of her head. For a fleeting second she pictured Spock performing the mind meld, but as soon as Anthony started rubbing, his fingers moving in firm circles, all thought ceased and she relaxed for the first time since walking into the mission massacre twenty-four hours ago.

The pain faded, from sharp and burning to dull and throbbing. She relaxed and sighed in relief.

“Turn around and put your head in my lap.”

His deep, European voice sounded far away, as smooth as butter, as exotic as a tropical rain forest.

She lay on her back, Anthony turning to a forty-five-degree angle on the couch to hold her head and shoulders comfortably. He continued to massage her temples, moving down to her cheeks, behind her ears, and her body gave up all its tension from sleep deprivation and drugs.

“Do you really believe in everything out there?” Skye asked, keeping her eyes closed.

“You mean in demons?”

“Demons and Heaven and Hell and everything in between.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I’ve seen the gates of Hell. I’ve felt the presence of evil. It’s real. I can’t conjure up a spirit to prove it to you, I can only tell you that you had a visitor, you smelled him, you sensed him, but you’re only thinking with your head, not listening with your heart. You want a logical explanation, but there isn’t one.”

He paused, and she opened her eyes. His eyes held hers, strong, deep, fathomless. She whispered, “And?”

He leaned down, kissed her forehead. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

Skye didn’t know what to think anymore. Anthony was so ethereal and real at the same time. One minute she had everything sorted in her mind, knew exactly what she needed to do; the next, she wanted to place her entire faith in a man. In
this
man.

She’d never fully trusted anyone but herself. Even then, she doubted. Worried over her decisions. But always, she had her reasoning. It had gotten her this far in her life and career, how could she place her trust in someone else now? That would be like turning her back on herself, on the very thing that had kept her sane and whole during years of loneliness.

What would she have if she listened to Anthony? She’d be just like her mother, wanting to believe in fantasy because real life didn’t satisfy her.

As if he could read her mind, he said, “You can’t live in the past. Your mother hurt you, and then she died and you couldn’t tell her how much she hurt you. It’s easier to be angry with her and God than it is to acknowledge you miss her, that she killed your trust.”

She closed her eyes, trying to trap the tears that came, but they slid out the corners. Anthony brushed them away with his thumbs.

“It’s the drugs,” she said, not wanting to admit that after twenty years she still ached for her mother.

“It’s your heart, and it’s okay.”

His lips touched hers so lightly, so tenderly. Her heart skipped a beat. This quiet intimacy, the emotion, was difficult for Skye. She choked back a sob.

Anthony pulled her into his lap and held her, rubbing her back, his chin on her head. She could stay here in his arms forever.

“My mother abandoned me,” Anthony finally said. “And while I knew it was for a higher purpose—that I had a calling—there were times, especially at night, especially when I was young, when I cursed God for giving me this life. For forcing my mother to sacrifice me. But in the end, it had been her choice.”

“You never had a real family,” Skye said, feeling a kinship with Anthony she didn’t expect to have.

“We were a family, but I missed—we all missed—having a mother. Skye, I know how betrayed and hurt you feel. But you are strong, beautiful, smart. It’s your mother who lost out on knowing what an incredible woman you have become.”

She tilted her face to Anthony and said, “You’re a miracle worker. My headache is gone.” She spontaneously kissed him, then turned away. Almost embarrassed. But this felt—right.

“I need to talk to Rod about the fire, follow up with my detective about the housekeeper—”

“Let me drive you. Just until we know the drug is out of your system.”

She felt herself—more herself now than she had for a long time—but she nodded.

Her cell phone rang, and she jumped up, popped the phone from its charger, and said, “Sheriff McPherson.”

“Skye, it’s Rod Fielding.”

She glanced at her watch. “I thought we weren’t meeting for another hour.”

“After you called about the fire, I came back to the morgue. I’ve had a guard posted outside all night.”

“You think someone is going to come after the bodies?”

“Possibly. But now I have a larger concern.”

“What?”

“I ran the tox screen myself. Twice. These men were drugged.”

“Drugged? So they couldn’t fight back?”

“I don’t think so. I think they were drugged to become aggressive, and it’s been happening for a long time. Months, up until two weeks ago. But I’m checking their blood for more possibilities.”

Two weeks.
The same time the housekeeper was fired.

“How can you tell?”

“Hair samples. It’s not a routine screening, but after the fire I decided to test for a wider range of narcotics, hallucinogens, and heavy metals.”

“Test for mercury poisoning.”

“Mercury? That would explain my findings. How did you know?”

“I’ll explain when I get there. What about Cooper?”

“The hospital drew his blood, he had no alcohol or recreational drugs, but I’ll need to broaden the panel. Now that I know what I’m looking for, it won’t take long.”

“Good.”

“There’s one more thing. I think I know what happened.”

Finally, answers based on hard physical evidence. “What?”

“You need to come down and see for yourself. You won’t believe me if I tell you over the phone.”

O
N THE WAY
to the sheriff’s department, Anthony asked Skye about the conversation he’d overheard between her and Dr. Fielding.

“They were drugged?”

“Apparently it had been happening for months and ended two weeks ago. The same time as your friend fired the housekeeper.”

“Housekeeper?”

“Corinne Davies. Know her?”

Anthony shook his head. “Do you know anything about her background?”

“Not much. Detective Martinez is working on it. She came from Oregon highly recommended from the diocese up there. The bishop was ticked off that Cooper fired her, but apparently has no control over the workings of the mission. She’s on vacation.”

Corinne Davies. “I can make some calls,” Anthony suggested. “Someone in the church might feel more comfortable talking to me than the police.”

Skye didn’t say anything for a moment, and Anthony wondered if she was going to tell him to stay out of the investigation. Instead, she surprised him and said, “I’d appreciate that. Anything about her history, complaints, background. She has a daughter, Lisa, but there’s no father in the picture. I don’t even have his name.”

She’d taken a step toward trusting him. Anthony was elated.

“What happened to the journal, Anthony? How did”—she paused—“the killer erase all those pages?”

She couldn’t say
demon.
But asking for his advice was a huge step. “I think Rafe used blessed ink.”

“Excuse me?”

“When the demon touched it, the ink disappeared.”

“Disappearing ink.”

By her cool tone, he was losing her. He changed tactics, using a cop’s logic. “Rafe must have written something the killer doesn’t want us to know,” Anthony suggested. “Maybe evidence of who had been drugging the priests.”

“Why wouldn’t he have just called the police?”

“Maybe he didn’t have proof. Maybe he didn’t think you’d believe him.” But Rafe had suspected something supernatural, that’s why he’d called Anthony in the first place.

In light of the evidence of the men being drugged, everything made sense. Their odd behavior. Rafe’s unease, but unable to explain why. Why hadn’t Anthony seen it? He hadn’t expected the trio of humans. He’d been looking at demons only, not at the ritual of summoning one. He’d bypassed the process of elimination and looked only at the obvious. Had his personal arrogance jeopardized Rafe and killed the others?

Whatever Rafe had sensed that spurred his call to Anthony was the beginning of the ritual to bring Ianax from Hell. And perhaps, in light of the long-term drugging, one of the priests had been concerned and asked Rafe to come to the mission in the first place.

“Why did he write it in Latin?” she asked. “To keep the information from the priests?”

“They all knew Latin,” Anthony said. “The only reason to write in that language would be to keep the information from laypeople. Those who have reason to be at the mission. Repairmen, housekeepers, deliverymen.”

Skye asked, “Do you know a Dr. Wicker?”

Anthony couldn’t lie. “Yes.”

“And?”

“What do you want to know?”

“You want to help, right?”

“You know I do.”

“Then why were all these priests seeing a shrink?”

“I explained that to you. They’ve all witnessed evil.” Anthony remembered the conversation he’d had with Rafe right before he left Italy.

He thinks one of my men is communicating with a spirit. But he doesn’t know who.

“The bishop implied they were all mentally unbalanced.”

“Dr. Wicker is a psychiatrist specializing in helping those who have witnessed the worst man can do to man,” Anthony responded. He didn’t tell Skye about what Rafe had said. She wouldn’t believe him, and right now keeping her trust was his highest priority.

Skye frowned.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Juan was supposed to call me after talking with Wicker.” She flipped open her cell phone. “No missed calls.”

Had he missed something? Was the rest of Skye’s team in danger? “Have you spoken to him?”

“Not since we saw the bishop yesterday, but that was late.”

“Call him.”

“Why?” she asked.

“This case is dangerous.”

“Well, if all you need is
faith
then he’s fine,” she snapped. “Juan’s the most devout Catholic I know.”

Anthony winced at the derision in Skye’s voice. He’d thought they’d been closer to a real understanding.

Skye said into her cell phone, “Hey, Juan, call me when you get this message. I’m on my way down to the morgue. Meet me there.”

She hung up, concern clouding her eyes. Before Anthony could say anything, she was justifying Juan’s inaccessibility. “He’s probably in the shower. It’s still early.”

“He’s married, call his wife.”

“How do you know he’s married?”

“He wore a wedding ring, did he not?”

Skye mumbled something, dialed. “Hi, Beth. It’s Skye McPherson. Has Juan left yet?” She frowned as she listened to the wife speak. “No, I’m sure everything’s fine. He’s investigating a difficult case right now. I’ll make sure he calls, I’m meeting him in thirty minutes. Right. Give the girls big kisses for me.”

She slowly closed her phone. “He didn’t come home last night. He called Beth after I talked to him about the fire and said he was working late and would sleep at the station.”

She called headquarters. “Detective Martinez, please.” A minute later, she hung up. “He’s not there.”

Anthony couldn’t placate her. His fear for the detective had grown almost as much as his fear for Skye. Whoever was responsible for Ianax roaming the earth had piqued Martinez’s interest.

“First things first,” he said. “We need to find out what Dr. Fielding learned. Maybe it will help us find your detective.”

She nodded. “Remember, you’re not a cop. I shouldn’t be bringing you in at all, except—” She stopped.

“Except you don’t trust me,” he said as he pulled into the police department parking lot and turned off the ignition.

She shook her head. “No.” She looked him in the eye and he saw how conflicted she was. “I trust you, Anthony,” she said softly. “I trust that
you
believe something supernatural killed those men. I don’t, but I think you can help me figure out what happened at the mission. You have insight and experience. And you’re not as, um, wacky as I first thought. Okay?”

It was a start. And it kept him by Skye’s side, where he needed to be when the demon came calling.

He squeezed her hand. “Okay.”

The morgue was in the basement of the hospital down the street from the police station. The coroner, a small wiry man in his late sixties named Rich Willem, who’d been here since before Skye was born, was preparing the first body for autopsy when they arrived. Dr. Willem, who never appeared happy, looked particularly sour. Skye would be, too, if she had to face twelve butchered men on the slab.

Rod was agitated and excited at the same time. He barely gave Anthony a second glance. “Look at this.” He shoved a printed report into Skye’s hands.

She’d seen tox reports before, but she didn’t want to take the time to decipher the shorthand. “What does it say?”

“The three men I tested all had evidence of being drugged with a heavy metal, up until two weeks ago.”

“Mercury,” Anthony said.

Rod shot him a look. “How did you know?” He glanced at Skye. “Is that why you asked me about mercury?”

Skye nodded, handing Rod a box that contained her coffee maker, coffee, a sample of her water, sugar bowl, and the remainder of the coffee she had brewed this morning. “My coffee was poisoned this morning. If Anthony hadn’t—”

Anthony could tell how uncomfortable she was. “I came by early this morning to ask about the investigation and found Skye out of sorts.”

“I’ll test it immediately.”

“Whoever poisoned my coffee also destroyed the journal.” Skye explained how she had found Rafe Cooper’s journal at the mission before the fire.

“I’m more concerned about you. The effects of mercury poisoning can be severe: death, suicidal depression, or extreme aggression,” Rod said. “And that would be consistent with my theory.”

“I thought you only believed in facts, not theories,” Skye said, irritable. Her headache was returning.

“Our crime scene is destroyed. The fire chief said it started in the sacristy. Nearly everything is gone except for the courtyard.”

Where Anthony and I were.

Anthony asked, “What do you think happened, Doctor?”

“I think these men killed one another.”

“Why on earth would you think that?” Skye exclaimed.

Rod led the way into the main morgue. Dr. Willem gave them a perfunctory nod, continuing about his business without comment. Three bodies were displayed, and on the far wall Rod had put up photographs of the bodies as found. “I asked Dr. Willem to start with these three because they were found here, close together, and they tell a story.”

He used a metal pointer and tapped the picture of what used to be a tall, physically fit young man. He lay across the floor. “He killed himself. When we X-rayed the bodies, we found the tip of a knife in his abdomen. From the angle, he stabbed himself and bled out. Took less than five minutes, but he was unconscious most of it. The same knife nearly decapitated this man.” Rod tapped the photo of the man lying on the stone floor, his head almost completely severed from his body. “And it was used on this man, who was stabbed in the chest fourteen times. We tested the blood—the decapitation occurred first. Other than external blood spatter, no foreign blood was found in his wound. He was also, I believe, the first to die based on other blood evidence.”

“Are you saying that Father Jordan killed this old priest?” Anthony said, his voice shaking in the first sign of stress Skye had seen.

“I can’t prove it, but it holds with the evidence. There is blood from this priest in the stab wounds on the second man’s chest. The striation marks are the same. Absolutely the same knife.”

“So you think that Father Jordan killed first this man, then this one, then committed suicide?”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t another attacker have killed him? Where is the knife?” Skye asked.

“That’s your domain, but the angle suggests that it was self-inflicted and—look at his hands.” He gestured toward the body on the table. “These cuts are consistent with an attacker blindly wielding a weapon, not defensive wounds. In virtually every knife attack, the attacker nicks himself.”

“Someone else was in the room. Someone collected all the weapons,” Anthony said.

Rod nodded. “Someone had to, and it wasn’t Father Jordan. The knife was lodged in his rib. That’s why it broke. Someone had to really tug to remove it. Father Jordan was dead for at least thirty minutes before the knife was removed.”

“Maybe he had an accomplice. He killed himself out of guilt,” Skye suggested.

“I don’t know why, all I can tell you is that my theory is consistent. Dr. Willem and I are going to piece together the blood evidence on the victims and determine how many weapons were used. I have the lab working on the other collected evidence. I think we can put together exactly what happened, given enough time.”

“How much time?” Skye asked.

Rod shrugged. “We’re working on this twenty-four/ seven. Three days for a preliminary report. Some tests will take a little longer.”

“If the mercury poisoning stopped two weeks ago, why did they turn violent now?” Skye asked. “What about their stomach contents?”

“We’re working on that. The tox screens I originally did were on blood and hair samples. I haven’t received the blood tests back yet. That would show if they were drugged more recently. The hair samples are for long-term poisoning.”

“Rush it, Ron.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” he said.

“There were no footprints,” Anthony interjected. “How did the killer remove the weapons?”

“That’s where I think the killer—or the accomplice—messed up. There
were
footprints, and that’s why I think they burned the mission. At least that’s the most obvious reason. Let’s go to my office.”

“Have you talked to Juan Martinez today?” Skye asked as they walked.

“No. I assumed he was working with the arson investigator up at the mission.”

“I haven’t been able to reach him.”

Skye pulled out her cell phone and dialed dispatch. “Milt, can you plug in to Martinez’s GPS and give me his whereabouts?”

“Two secs.”

Why hadn’t she done this before, when she knew he hadn’t gone home last night? She pinched the bridge of her nose. The headache was still there, taunting her. A hand rested on her back. Anthony.

Milt said, “He’s stationary on Highway 1, one-point-three miles south of Arroyo Grande.”

“What the hell is he doing all the way up there?” That was halfway to San Luis Obispo.

“His radio is off.”

“Off?” That was against regulations. “Keep trying to reach him on both radio and cell phone. I’m heading up there.” Juan wouldn’t have gone off half-cocked. He was a by-the-book cop, one she trusted implicitly.

“I gotta go. Juan’s in trouble. I feel it.” She was about to leave, then asked, “What about those footprints?”

“We took hundreds of photos. No one involved in the carnage left the chapel. But
someone
came in after the fact, walked over to several of the bodies, and left.”

“Rafe Cooper,” Skye said.

“But he didn’t leave, and the prints don’t match his. Cooper was barefoot when he came into the chapel. I easily traced his path. He came in through the side door, the one closest to his bedroom, walked halfway around the room, then ran up the center aisle and fell.”

Rod continued. “I think one of the killers was still on the premises when you arrived, Mr. Zaccardi.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked, his voice tight.

“You wear a size-twelve shoe, we matched your prints earlier. Someone intentionally slid their feet to make it impossible to match. But the individual crossed over your prints, Mr. Zaccardi, and the only way they could have done that was if they left after you.”

“Which would explain how the mission was locked from the inside when Zaccardi arrived,” Skye said. “And if these men killed one another, then perhaps only one person needed to be involved. But it still doesn’t explain how. If they hadn’t been drugged for nearly two weeks, why now?”