A Righteous Kill (32 page)

Hero stepped aside so Vince could follow him into her loft. He gave Hero a conspiratorial wink as he slid past her. They’d pushed Luca far enough for now. She wandered in after them while they did their thing. Her apartment looked plenty normal. Warm, inviting, eclectic and familiar. Hero’s eyes went to the fridge and she froze in place until Luca opened it and checked inside.

He paused and made a sound of disgust.

“What?” A familiar surge of anxiety drained the blood from her extremities. “What is it?”

“Just trying to figure out how a fridge can be so full of
nothing
edible,” he bitched.

Hero let out a breath on a laugh that was too high-pitched to be identifiable as her own. No dead animals in her fridge, not from a butcher, a deli,
or
a serial killer. Whew.

Letting out a beleaguered sigh, Luca disappeared into her pottery studio.

Di Petro’s voice carried from her bedroom. “Bat-shit psycho
sonofabitch
!”

Luca leapt out of her studio. “Don’t move,” he ordered as he followed his gun into her room.

Hero swallowed. It wasn’t that she obeyed him directly; she just couldn’t move on feet that she couldn’t feel anymore. A strange permeating numbness radiated from somewhere in her middle and froze her into place. John the Baptist had been in her bedroom. She was certain of it. The voices from inside sounded like they were very far away, or maybe underwater.

“I don’t even know what code to call in,” Vince said, disgusted. “That’s a metric fuck ton of blood.”

“I don’t think there’s a code in the book for this,” Luca sounded closer now. More grim than angry, but if Hero knew anything about Special Agent Luca Ramirez, the anger wasn’t far in coming.

“God,” Vince exclaimed. “This John the Baptist has some balls the size of—”

“What I want to know is where the hell the surveillance team is. Weren’t they supposed to be sitting on the house?” Luca clipped, his voice getting equal amounts louder and deeper.

“Probably they followed Mazure and everyone to Headquarters after that all went down.”

An expectant silence followed. Some shuffling feet. Vince let another sound of disgust.

“Where the hell are you?” Luca demanded. Another protracted silence told Hero that he was on the phone. “I ordered you to sit on the residence.” More silence, shorter this time. “Who approved you to leave after the take down?” Pause. “You
analyzed
the situation? Well, tell you what, get forensics together and get down here so they can help you
analyze
your gigantic fuck up!”

There it is
, Hero thought with an amused sort of detachment. Anger. Right on time. Hero lurched toward her door, still numb, but glad the paralysis had been temporary. She watched rather than felt her hand reach for her doorknob, which was sort of unnecessary as the door was already about two-inches ajar. She could have just pushed it open. But still, her hand needed to wrap around something solid and cold and metal to anchor her back into her body.

“Did I fucking stutter?” From the projection of his voice, Luca stood right on the other side of the door. Hero was pretty sure if she opened it, it would run into him. “Yeah? I haven’t
begun
to show you a hostile work environment, dickwad. And while you file that personnel complaint make sure to mention your gross incompetence, your insubordination to the agent in charge, and your idiot
analysis
that resulted in a felony incident on a high-profile case. Now quit wasting my
fucking
time and get to work.”

“What a mess,” Vince muttered. Hero couldn’t tell if he referred to whatever horror awaited her in her room, or Luca’s conversation. Her hand tightened on the curve of the door knob. She took a few deep breaths.

“I’ve got to tell Hero.” Luca sounded as though he’d rather face the firing squad.

That was her cue. She opened the door until it jammed, probably against Luca’s expensive boot, which didn’t give her much time. She plunged through the space just big enough for her body and was inundated by the color red before Luca blocked the view with his big frame.

Blood. Buckets and buckets of blood.

“Hero, no. I told you not to move.”

“I’m not one of your agents,” she quipped, though she sounded more breathless than she’d meant to. She hadn’t been aware how difficult breathing had become until she needed enough oxygen to speak. “Let me see.” She pushed against him. Compared to her bloodless, trembling hands, the skin beneath his shirt was hot and solid.

His nostrils flared, eyes crackling with an onyx storm. His fists curled at his sides as though considering the option of picking her up by the shoulders and bodily carrying her back into the other room.

For some reason, that strengthened her resolve. “I
need
to see. It was meant for
me
.”

He stood for a second longer, then cursed. “Don’t touch
anything
,” he ordered, and wrenched open the door, palming his phone as he strode from the room, leaving her with the horrific tableau that her bedroom had become.

Hero barely registered Vince’s presence until he stood next to her in his favorite loose-limbed posture. “Any idea what it means?” he asked softly.

Hero could only shake her head as she stared, unblinking—unbreathing. She’d known there would be blood. They’d said
blood
, hadn’t they? And she’d expected— well honestly, she couldn’t really say
what
she’d expected. A dead body, maybe? Another crucified prostitute? Tonight was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, they’d expected him to kill again, and it looked like he had.

But who? There was no body. It looked like Jackson Pollock broke into her bedroom and used blood as the pigment for his next piece. The metallic tang hung in the air, not as thick as paint or pervasive as death, but light and almost sickly-sweet. The macabre artist had to have stood where they did now, because the wall at their backs was the only one unscathed.

No, that wasn’t true. The white space right above her bed had been spared the indiscriminate carnage. It was there the artist had
really
done his work. A monochromatic masterpiece. And they studied it as though it hung in a gallery, inviting their interpretation.
What could the artist have possibly been trying to convey
? They would ask, rubbing their chins and offering obsequious and self-important answers.

Two circles, painted in thick, bloody lines lay one inside the other. Their symmetry was stunningly perfect. Between their outlines, spaced as meticulously as the numbers on a clock, seven block letters mocked them. Vince grabbed her elbow and held her back, pointing at the thin, drying splatters of blood at the foot of her bed. But as soon as she was settled back by his side, he also squinted up at the wall. “YASMODA?” he experimented, but didn’t sound convinced. “Maybe it’s an acronym for something, or could be an abbreviation. Is it at all familiar to you?”

Hero was pretty certain she shook her head in the negative. At least, he didn’t repeat the question. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes from the intricate, confusing design within the inner circle. A vertical line bisected the circle in half, and the left side of the line was conspicuously empty but for what was obviously the forked tail of a devil. The right side of the line however, contained a number of confusing swirls with no particular rhyme or reason.

It occurred to Hero to be alarmed with how numb and cold she felt. It was as though she’d cycled past acceptance, anxiety, horror and hysteria back to a calm sort of analytic remoteness.

This had been John the Baptist. It
felt
like him, and regardless of what Luca thought about feelings and energy, Hero was as certain of it as if his signature graced in the lower right hand corner of the strange depiction. Which, of course, it didn’t.

Hero realized she’d given John the Baptist a perfect canvas. Though she generally dressed and decorated in vibrant colors, her bedroom had been the opposite of all that. She’d done it in different shades of white and off white. Up until this very moment, she’d fancied that when she woke up to her simple, white room every morning, it reminded her that her day resembled the clean tableau. It was a blank canvas for her to paint in whatever shade of life she chose. It had been a break from the constant clutter and chaos of the world outside. Clutter and chaos she invited and accepted into her life, but not her bedroom. When she’d fall asleep at night, she would sometimes imagine she slept in a cloud. The visualization would help her separate her consciousness from the world, and she’d drift off with no problems.

Now, her fluffy eggshell comforter had depressed into a bowl for an obscene amount of blood that was currently congealing into a soupy mixture of liquid and—other. Before today, Hero hadn’t really known that blood still tried to clot, even separated from its host. She swallowed a few times to keep from contaminating the scene with a reappearance of Knox’s Tofurkey.

She suddenly became very aware of her body’s reaction to what she was seeing, though her mind still seemed strangely detached from it. Cold seeped through her bones, but her skin felt as though it had caught fire. A deep, trembling vibrated through her, but the hand she held in front of her was absolutely steady. Her mouth was dry and her palms were wet. Her breathing was rapid and her heart pounded everywhere but in her chest. Sound didn’t seem to process correctly, and come to think of it, she couldn’t trust her vision, either.

Luca returned from the other room. “Trojanowski is rounding up the CSU so they can start their investigation on whatever the fuck that is.” He pointed to the macabre sigil on the wall.

“What is he trying to tell me?” Hero wondered out loud. Her voice didn’t sound like her own, but like it belonged to someone much younger, someone standing in another room, perhaps. “If he wanted to threaten me, he’s certainly pulled that off but… what does that—that
thing
mean?”

Luca reached for her. “Let’s go sit down,” he said gently. “You really shouldn’t be in here.”

Hero brushed him off. “I’m serious! Couldn’t he have just scrawled some sinister ‘I’m going to get you’ message like any other self-respecting serial killer? I mean
come on
.”

Vince cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Most serial killers don’t really…”

Luca shot him a look, and he shut his mouth.

“Does he plan on desecrating every room in my house? Whose blood is that? And how the hell does he keep getting in here? The alarm was on.” The hysteria caught up to her. She visibly shook now, chasing the skitters of nervous chill bumps down her arms with her hands. Her skin crawled. The air smelled and tasted like pennies and dirt. Her mouth was full of it, and she couldn’t take in a breath through the rot and the stench that seemed to be growing stronger with every second. Shadows crept into her periphery, but they were crimson instead of black.

“Hero.” Luca sounded concerned and far away. “Hero, breathe.” Strong hands caught her ribcage and jerked her upright before she even realized she’d buckled. Beneath his grip, her ribs struggled to expand with breath, but her body wouldn’t seem to cooperate. Panic flared. She was suffocating again, drowning in a puddle of blood and muck, taunted by a ridiculous talisman on her wall that didn’t mean shit to her.

The feeling of being lifted off legs that didn’t exist anymore tilted her world sideways. The surreal and insistent pressure of his grip against her ribs and beneath her knees grounded her back into some sense of reality.

She still trembled and nausea roiled around in her belly, but had since stopped clawing its way up her throat. She gripped him, leaning her head against his shoulders and inhaling his salty scent and subtle cologne. He was warm—always so warm against her—and strong. He ate up the length of the loft in a few strides and deposited her on the couch much too soon. Hero didn’t want to be without him, and to her pleased surprise, he didn’t leave her to go back in the bedroom, but sat next to her and settled one of her throw blankets around her shoulders.

“This is our fault,” he muttered, rubbing big hands up and down her arms as though her trembling was a result of the cold. Oddly enough, it helped. “The surveillance team should have stayed at the house until the suspect was confirmed. Heads will roll for this.”

“Don’t be angry at them.” Hero leaned her head against his chest, part of her cheek pressing into his leather holster. His gun was tucked into the other side. “They thought this was over, we all did, for just a second there.”

Luca’s arm went around her, pulling her in close. She could hear the pounding of his own heart against his ribs. He was taking deep breaths, short in, long out. Familiar with the concept, Hero synchronized her breaths with his and instantly felt a little stronger.

Vince came out of her bedroom. He paused when he saw how they were sitting, but if he disapproved, it didn’t show on his face. “After pictures are taken of the room and we’re cleared to check it out, we’ll see if any windows are left open and then we’ll narrow down a point of entry and exit.”

Hero stiffened. “Do you think he has a key?”

“It’s unlikely, but not impossible.” Luca stated. His voice sounded deep, resonant, and a little bit muffled as she listened to it through his chest. “Your landlord swears up and down that she’s never given anyone but her lawyer and maid a spare key to her house or your apartment. She showed me the papers that said she had the locks changed after every tenant, just in case.”

Hero sat up straight, her heart rate spiking once again. “Angora!” she gasped. “Has anyone checked on her?” What if that was her blood? Oh God, what if she’d caused the death of her sweet friend?

Vince was all over it. “She was present and accounted for when they took down Mazure,” he said as he headed for the door. “I’m going to go check the big house. Backup should be here any minute.”

“I’m coming with you.” Hero rose, but was assaulted by a wave of dizziness, and it didn’t take much pulling on the part of Luca to get her to sit down, again.