Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Kate Waters Mysteries Book 2) (25 page)

Cain dipped his gloved finger in a pool of blood. “From the viscosity of the blood, I’d say time of death wasn’t too long ago. Probably within the last hour or two.”

“Shit.”

Anderson joined them to record the investigation.

Cain placed his fingers underneath Suzanne’s neck. “There doesn’t appear to be any lacerations around her throat.” Cain lifted Suzanne’s shoulder up and turned her over. Suzanne’s eyes were closed, and Wells was at least thankful for that, hoping peace had come to her in the end. Cain pressed his fingers along her chest cavity and abdomen. Suzanne was such a little thing, it seemed incomprehensible that her body could hold so much blood. “Doesn’t seem to be any entry wounds in her abdomen either.”

“Then where did all the blood come from?” Wells asked. Another vision of Thea’s pants invaded his thoughts, but he tried like hell to ignore it. “It doesn’t make sense,” Wells said. “How can there be this much blood if there isn’t any obvious injury?”

“Maybe it’s not her blood,” Anderson suggested.

Cain crooked a brow at him. “If it belonged to someone else, where’s that body?”

“It could have been moved, to confuse us,” Anderson said.

“The deceased was a practicing witch,” Wells added. “Maybe the blood came from animals.”

“Like some kind of sacrifice?” Cain said with a deep frown.

Anderson eyed the room with a sweeping motion of his head. “That’d be one sick person.”

“Still,” Cain said, “we need to know how she died first.”

Wells leaned over Suzanne and lifted her hair aside at the back of her neck.

“What are you looking for?” Cain asked.

“I find it odd that two women, having had a relationship with Andre Singer, die within days of each other. Brooke Jennings had an unusual lightning mark on the back of her neck and so did another girl, Kate Waters, who was just assaulted in her home two days ago. She’s the one who actually found Brooke Jennings.”

Though it would have raised more questions if Suzanne had the mark on the back of her neck, Wells was perplexed she didn’t have one. “Nothing.”

“Let’s get her to John,” Cain said. “It’s the only way we’re going to know anything for sure.”

“I’ll contact him and let him know,” Anderson said.

Wells continued to stare at the scene while Anderson and Cain stepped from the bathroom. Compiling the events to date, he had a hunch that whoever had done this to Suzanne had also attacked Kate and was responsible for the dead snake pranks. It was the only thing that made sense. Brooke’s death might have been accidental, but he couldn’t see how Suzanne’s was, and somewhere, somehow, there seemed to be a connection he was missing. Or a few of them. There were too many coincidences, and once again, Kate and Thea were at the heart of them.

Wells left the room and peeled his bloodied booties off his feet. He dropped them into a waste can beside the door and approached Officer Anderson in the hallway. “Do we know who called it in?”

“The boyfriend, Andre Singer.”

“Where’s he at?”

“Police are questioning him outside,” Anderson said, gesturing toward the front door.

Wells headed that way.

“Good luck,” Anderson said. “He’s not being very cooperative.”

“They never are,” Wells replied back.

***

Keith made his way through the crowd of officers standing outside Suzanne Jones’ house. A group of black uniforms surrounded a man, who according to the photo he had found in Wells’ office, appeared to be Andre Singer. No doubt they were drilling him about the discovery of his dead girlfriend, maybe even something linked to a large sum of money missing.

Poor bastard, Keith thought, but as he walked by, he didn’t think Andre appeared as anguished by his girlfriend’s death as he was inconvenienced by being questioned. He wore a scowl and shrugged his shoulders with an upturned nose. A gesture of self-preservation. Freedom was everything, and Keith planned on keeping his. He made sure Andre didn’t see him as he passed by him and approached the house. There could be no chance of recognition, especially now that he was in the possession of the man’s half-million dollars, another blow of bad news sure to be coming Andre’s way if it hadn’t already.

Keith believed luck was on his side now. With Suzanne dead and Andre out of the house, he had complete and legal access to search their property—the perfect opportunity to look for the statue. Maybe even more money. A smug smile squatted behind Keith’s straight-lipped cop face.

Still, he had to be careful, play it cool, because the other person he needed to avoid was Detective Orwin Wells, who would certainly be present at the scene, another person he couldn’t risk being seen by. Invisibility was the key. Keith had to assume Wells knew someone had been snooping through his office, someone in uniform even. Grapevine had it that Wells was a sharp detective, so even if Keith did find the statue in the house, getting it out of the house unnoticed would be tricky. Not only that, because of the nature of the woman’s bloody death, access in and out of the house would be tight.

Keith followed closely behind another officer headed through the front door. He steered clear of the bathroom—he didn’t need to see the body. Fortunately, he and the other officer, Gregory Hall, were given orders to check the bedrooms and bag anything of potential interest. It was as if the universe were blessing him, he thought again.

He recollected Officer Hall from the department picnic recently, and how he had been trying to get everyone to partake in a burlap sack race. A sack race. What kind of idiot gets off on sack races? An idiot like Hall.

“You want to go through the closet while I check the dressers,” Keith said to him.

“Sure,” he replied.

Keith searched through the dresser drawers and found nothing but clothes, some tiger-striped bras, and hot pink G-strings—his kind of girl. He would have liked to have seen them on Suzanne before tonight. From pictures around the house, he noticed that she was a little skinny, but not bad looking.

The nightstands, particularly the one on Andre’s side (presumably since on that side the bed pillow was black and the other one pink), caught Keith’s interest. He glanced back at Officer Hall, taking note of his progress in the closet. He dug through shoe boxes, one place he would have liked to have searched himself. He waited to see if he found anything, and when Hall tossed them aside, Keith resumed his search of the nightstands.  

Keith moved to Andre’s side of the bed and opened the bottom drawer first, the one where most people would hide things, he thought. Nothing, in all three drawers. He went around to Suzanne’s side, but no luck. He knelt down and checked under the bed, found nothing but books, and then stuck his hand between the mattresses. Still nothing. At the top of the bed, there was a gap between the headboard and the mattress. He put his hand down. His fingers brushed over an object. Keith glanced back at Hall again and saw him rummaging through things at the top shelf in the closet. Carefully, Keith pulled the object from the mattress. Two figures were bound together by a rubber band, one that looked like a poppet doll and the other…

The statue…the statue of Rán.

Rán.

Keith’s breath balled up in his chest until he almost made a gasping sound. He shook his head, couldn’t believe he was actually looking at the statue. It didn’t seem real. He kept staring until the realization finally sank in. He had found the statue of Rán.

Though he had always imagined this moment—holding it in his hands, Rán, in all of her beauty, the weight in gold, exquisite details, savoring every jewel that mimicked the stars—this wasn’t that moment. It couldn’t be. There was too much risk of someone seeing him holding it. He slipped the statue under the bed while he thought of how to get it out of the house unseen. Nobody could know about this discovery.

Keith untied the rubber band from poppet doll and the statue and then secured the statue to his calf underneath his pant leg using the rubber band and stretching out his sock beneath the bottom portion of it. His plan would have to work.
Have to
. Luck was on his side, right? He grabbed the poppet doll just as Officer Hall was walking toward him.

“Find anything?” Officer Hall asked.

Early retirement, riches, and wealth beyond my dreams? “Just a poppet doll between the mattresses,” he said, standing up. “May or may not mean something.”

“Good. Why don’t you drop that off with forensics?”

“Deal. I think I could use some fresh air. I can smell all the blood from here.”

Hall chuckled. “You’ll get used to it. Don’t go too far. We’re going to meet up with the chief—heard there might be more deaths connected to this one.”

“A serial?” Keith wondered if that was Wells’ speculation or someone else’s.

“Something like that. Still speculative.”

Keith left the room, sifting a new set of facts through his mind. Since Suzanne had the statue, both she and Andre must be behind Kate’s assault. Then Andre got greedy? Killed Suzanne, so he could have the statue for himself?

A jab to Keith’s shoulder woke him from his thoughts. He had been so engrossed in them, that he hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going, and ran into another officer. The man turned around. It was Detective Orwin Wells. They had never officially met, and so Keith acted as if he didn’t know him. “Pardon,” he said, and kept walking. He couldn’t see Wells’ eyes on him, but he knew they were there. His back crawled with what felt like a wildfire.

Andre looked annoyed, not having slept at all last night. He stared vacantly at a cup of coffee in front of him. Wells entered the stark, bare interrogation room at the police station bright and early the next morning. Andre’s slack frame and tilted head suggest he mulled over how he would get out of this one. His hands rested in his lap. Too calm, Wells thought to himself, as he took a seat across from him at the table. Andre didn’t fumble with his clothes, pick at his cuticles, rub his hands together or scratch at his face—all the common nervous and guilt-ridden mannerisms he usually witnessed. Instead, Andre appeared tired and bothered, not worried. He looked innocent, and it didn’t stack well against the wall of evidence Wells had built around him. Mainly because Andre’s girlfriend, whom he had been cheating on, lay in a pool of her own blood.

Two girls with intimate relationships with Andre were now both dead, within a week’s time. Statistics showed the men in women’s lives most always committed the crime, and though Wells didn’t discount statistics, he had also learned some time ago, that the best detective was, ultimately, the one who followed his gut.

Wells set his cup of coffee down in front of him. Andre avoided his eyes, keeping his vision curbed to the mirrored-window and door, where other officers watched.

“Not having a good week,” Wells started. Andre remained silent. “First, your mistress dies in a freak accident, and now your girlfriend is lying in a pool of her own blood.” Andre’s eyes swept over Wells. “I find that strange, don’t you agree?”

Andre leaned over the table and pointed his finger at the surface in front of Wells. “Actually, I find it to be a real shitter, Detective. Somebody’s setting me up.”

Wells had considered that possibility, since he had just witnessed someone stealing money from his boat. “Okay, let’s suppose that’s a possibility.” Andre’s eyes locked on his with surprise. “Let’s pretend someone does have a bone to pick with you. Who and why? Do you have any enemies, Andre?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“Enemies that would try to frame you for homicide? Not everyone likes me, but pinning me with a murder is a stretch even for them.”

Andre shook his head. “No. I don’t know.”

Wells anticipated his “dumb” act, but still, someone had to have come to his mind. Wherever Andre had acquired his money, it most likely came from illegal activities, a topic Andre would want to avoid for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, his bag of money was one piece of information that couldn’t be brought to the table. Not yet anyway.

He looked down at Andre’s wrist and noticed a curved bruised. Hadn’t Kate said she had tried to bite her attacker?

“Where did you get the bruise?” he asked.

Andre glanced down at his arm. “Working on cars.”

Wells had heard that one before. He tried a different route: stark reality. “Brooke’s death was ruled an accident. I can’t say the same for Suzanne. I mean, I haven’t seen that much blood in years. You ever see that much blood? I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it.” Andre remained silent, cemented in thought. “The fact that you’ve had a recent relationship with both is only going to point fingers in your direction. It’s a monster of a coincidence.”

Andre’s glare tightened. “I loved Suzanne.”

“Even though you were cheating on her?”

“It is possible to love two women, Detective.”

“Not to them, it isn’t.” Wells pulled his notebook out. “When did you leave for work yesterday morning?

“Seven-thirty.”

“And did you speak with Suzanne?”

“No, she was still asleep.”

“Where were you last night?”

“At my mother’s house.”

“Where does she live?”

“Hillsboro.”

Wells made a note to talk his mother, confirm his presence at her house, maybe even find a neighbor or two who’d witnessed his car parked outside.

“And then you came home at about what time?”

“Around eleven.”

“But the call wasn’t placed until 11:30. Did you not realize Suzanne was dead in the bathroom?”

“I stayed in my car for a little while.”

“Doing what?”

Andre seemed to wrestle with something, either determining a way to avoid the truth or how to explain it in such a manner that wouldn’t make him look any guiltier than he already was.

The phone in Wells’ jacket vibrated. He checked the display, surprised to see it was Kate.

“You think about that,” Wells said. He stood up. “I still need to ask you a few more questions, so hang tight.” He answered Kate’s call as he stepped outside the door, walking to a vacant corner of the hallway.

“Hello, Kate.”

“Good morning, Detective Wells. I have to talk to you. It’s about Suzanne.”

He questioned if she already knew about what had happened, but before he broke the news, he wanted to hear hers first. “What’s going on?”

“I was over at Suzanne’s last night comforting her because someone left a dead snake on her doorstep. She was scared, and after our last conversation, I thought you should know.”

A sinking sensation tugged on Wells. He didn’t think Kate had anything to do with Suzanne’s death, but her proximity to another possible homicide and the fact that she might have been the last one to see Suzanne Jones alive, tightened like a fist in his stomach.

“What time were you over at Suzanne’s?” At least he now had a more solid time of death.

“Around nine-thirty.”

“Kate, I think you’d better come down to the station.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Suzanne is dead.”

***

Kate turned into her garage with another bout of intense emotions that had nothing to do with seeing David again. She stepped out of the car. The cold, dimly lit space rocked around her, as though she rode on a carnival ride. The ceiling dipped down, the floor waved up, and she barely caught herself on a table situated near the door.

Suzanne was dead.

She couldn’t believe it. She had seen her only hours ago. Now, standing in the garage, her thoughts reeled with the news Wells had given her. She tried to steady the dizzy spell before she went into the house, but the horrific vision of Suzanne dead in her bathroom, the sickening gore Wells had mentioned, mushroomed into her mind with such force, she staggered back against her jeep. Suzanne’s bloody face flashed in her mind, then it was Brooke’s, and next, Jev’s. A cry escaped her throat.

She let her tears run freely for a moment, then wiped them from her face, and shuffled into the house, dazed and shaking all over. Her footing stumbled along the floor as she struggled to pull herself from the nightmare besieging her thoughts. David sat on the couch, scrolling through his iPad. He glanced up when she came in and immediately dropped the iPad on the couch. Kate knew then her shock was clearly visible across her face.

“Kate? What is it?” He went over to her.

Kate couldn’t speak. She dipped her head into her hands and ran her fingers through her hair. She had momentarily lost the ability to put thoughts into words, pictures into meaning, and all the emotions attached to them cluttered her mind like spilled trash. She went into the kitchen and filled a glass with water. She took a few drinks and blinked away tears welling up in her eyes again.

“Kate?”

She turned around to face David. He stood at the end of the counter, giving her the space she had requested earlier, but seemingly wanting to reach out to her.

Words finally came to her, but they escaped as a whisper. “Suzanne is dead.”

David stepped closer to her. “Who’s Suzanne?”

Kate wanted to tell him if he had been home the last few days and not in California with his ex-wife, he would already know who Suzanne was, but this wasn’t the time to dish out blame.

Suzanne was dead.

An ache crested inside Kate, one that pummeled its way through her pounding heart. Her voice shook as she spoke. “She’s a friend, a friend of Thea’s. I met her after Brooke died. She was my new friend.”

Kate detected sorrow in David’s eyes, maybe regret too.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

Kate softened to his words. He meant them. “Thank you, but I don’t even know what to say or where to begin.” Her hand brushed across the protection bracelet at her wrist and a stab of guilt sank into her. She should have given it to Suzanne. Even though it was only a bracelet, what if by some magical means, it could have protected her? She wished Thea would have tried harder to reach her. Suzanne should have been at their protection rite.

David edged closer to Kate and laid his hand on her shoulder. Even though the sharp sting of betrayal still blistered in her thoughts, his touch softened into her, brought warmth to her chills. She wanted to hold him, wanted to be close to him, but was afraid to, was afraid of getting hurt again. What did it matter now though? She had lost so much, the desire to fill those hollowed out places pressed her forth, and she reached out for his hand.

David grabbed her and enfolded her into his arms. “What can I do?”

“Drive me to the police station?”

“Okay, but what for?”

“Detective Wells wants me to give a formal statement since I was the last one to see Suzanne alive.”

“They think it’s a homicide?”

“I guess the scene was pretty gruesome, but he didn’t mention anything else.” Another image of Brooke flashed through Kate’s mind, and she shuddered. David rubbed her back and shoulders.

“Is that where you stayed last night?”

“No. After I left her place, I slept over at my dad’s.”

“Was she okay then?” David asked.

“No. Someone had put a dead snake on her doorstep, just like they did to me and Brooke.” Kate glanced over at the counter where she normally kept her narcolepsy pills and thought about taking one when she realized she had thrown it away.

“Wait, are you saying that whoever attacked you might have killed Suzanne?”

“I don’t know. There is so much you don’t know.”

“Not because I don’t want to.”

Kate sat down on a stool at the counter with him and gave him a condensed version of everything that had happened since she had found Brooke in her home, from Andre’s visit, to stealing the statue from Thea, having the statue stolen from her, and the curse Thea had warned everyone about.

“There’s something else,” she said, standing up to get the iPad from the couch. She brought it over to the counter and pulled up a picture of Rán on a website.  

“See this?” She pointed to the symbol on her chest.

“Yeah?” David said. “What is it?”

“I don’t know, but look.” She twisted around and pulled down her shirt, exposing the mark on her neck.

“How’d you get that?”

Kate shook her head. “The lightning strike at the PNGS. It’s Lichtenberg’s Flowers.”

David glanced back at the screen. “But it’s the same as the symbol on the statue.” He looked back at her neck and ran his hand over it. “Does it hurt?”

“It’s tender, but otherwise, I don’t notice it. Brooke had the same mark too, along with Thea. It seems that whoever has had possession of the statue finds a dead snake on their doorstep and the mark on the back of their neck. Except for Suzanne. She only had the dead snake.”

David rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Lichtenberg’s Flowers don’t normally have repeating patterns,” he said, studying the image of Rán on the screen. “They’re like snowflakes.”

“That’s what Wells said.”

“Did the lightning actually strike you?”

“I don’t think so. It struck right next to Nick and me, but I think it only contacted a tree near us.”

David went quiet at the mention of Nick and swept his eyes away from hers.

Kate sensed his thoughts. “There’s nothing between us, David. Never was, never will be. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time more than once.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Suspicious, don’t you think?”

Kate had considered the same thing at one point, but anymore, Andre continued to stand out. And Thea. “I wondered the same, but Nick has been nothing but helpful.”

“Good for him.” David turned to her. “I’m sorry. I believe you.”

Kate smiled. “Thank you.” She glanced back at the picture of Rán on the screen. “Someone’s bound to do anything to get that statue. I have my doubts about the curse, and…” she looked at David, “as much as I hate to consider the possibility, I wonder about Thea. She has been at the center of everything. I think she’s hiding something.”

“You don’t think Thea killed Suzanne?”

“No, but somehow, she’s involved. Too many coincidences surround her.”

“We’re talking about Thea. She helped save us from Jev’s killer.”

“I know. I’m so confused. I don’t know what to think anymore.”

David reached for both her hands and held them between his. “We’ll get through this.” His head crooked to the side, and he frowned at her. “Are you wearing contacts? Your eyes are silver.”