A Righteous Kill (33 page)

“Like hell you are. You’re staying right here. Vince is waiting for backup before barging into the house.” He eyed his partner.

“But what if he has Angora? What if he’s in there with her?” Hero felt the hysteria bubble again. “What if we’re too late!”

Luca took out his cell phone again and made a call.

It only rang once.

“I answer at this time of night only for tall, dark, and dangerous,” Angora purred by way of greeting.

Hero sagged with relief.

“Mrs. Steinman, where are you right now?” Luca asked.

“Angora,” the lady insisted. “And I’m where Hero ought to be, beneath you in the bedroom.” She laughed at her own naughty joke.

Luca nodded, obviously fighting a smile as he asked. “Is anyone with you? Or has anyone bothered you before or after that incident earlier tonight?”

“I invited Josiah Winthrop over at about eight thirty to keep me company and calm my nerves with a little…
tête-à-tête
, and he left around midnight.”

Hero smiled in spite of herself. Angora was such a lively woman. She hoped to have half her spark at that age. That was, if she made it to that age… If she made it to her next birthday.

“Should I be worried, Agent Ramirez?” Angora sounded a little less than concerned. “Was it the killer you caught in my back yard earlier?”

“I’m afraid not.” Luca ran a hand over his face and sighed. “Mrs. Steinman—”

“Angora,” she said more sharply. “I really must insist.”

“Angora.” Hero could tell Luca was trying very hard not to sound impatient. She silently applauded him. “Did you disarm the security system when Mr. Winthrop was over?”

Angora took a moment. “Only long enough to let him in. It rearms itself automatically. But I double checked tonight.”

“How long do you think that was?”

“It takes thirty seconds.”

“Long enough for someone to break in here,” Vince observed.

Sirens wailed in the distance and Vince made a gesture that he was going to go check the main house.

Luca nodded. “We’re sending Di Petro down to check and make sure your house is safe, can you meet him at the front door?”

“Why? They already cleared my house hours ago.”

Luca took a deep breath, but Angora beat him to it.

“Did something else happen? Is Hero all right?”

“I’m right here, Angora,” Hero chimed in. “But… he came into my room and left me a—a message there while I was gone.”

“How is that possible?” Angora whispered.

“You’re absolutely certain that no one else has the disarm code?” Luca pressed.

“No. It was changed when Hero got home from Mexico and the only person I’ve told the code to, besides Hero, is you and Agent Di Petro.”

Luca frowned, and Hero wanted more than anything to know what he was thinking. It couldn’t have been Di Petro, the house was cleared after they arrested Mazure by multiple agents, and then Vince had been with them all night at FBI headquarters.

“No one has an extra key?” Luca asked. “Not Mr. Winthrop? Do either of you keep one under a mat or in your car?”

Hero shook her head. “I used to keep one in a glass planter, but you made me stop that after the incident with the goat head in my fridge. I told you I gave it to my parents in case of emergency.”

Luca made an affirmative noise.

“I even took my key back from the maid service after all this business began,” Angora said. Rustling on the other end sounded like she was walking in her high-heeled slippers. “I think that’s Agent Di Petro at the door.”

Vince’s unmistakable accent filtered through the phone, though his words were muffled.

Hero blew out a breath of relief. At least her friend and landlady was safe.

“Angora,” she said, effectively cutting off the woman’s flirty greeting.

“Yes, darling?”

“I should—probably move out. I feel like it’s not safe anymore and it’s all because of me. This is becoming… There’s just so much…” Blood. Danger. Death.

“You hush. I won’t hear of it. I adore you, and I honestly haven’t been a part of something so salacious since the Cold War and the communist scare in Hollywood. You worry about yourself, dear, I’ll be all right.” She paused. “But maybe—I’ll stay with Josiah a little while. Until it’s safer. He’s been trying to talk me into spending the holidays with him, and perhaps I’ll relent. Just this once.”

“Might be a good idea,” Luca agreed. “Make sure to stay close to Agent Di Petro until they clear your house. Di Petro will stay with you while you pack and drive you to Mr. Winthrop’s if you need.”

“That will be
perfect
,” Angora sighed. “It is always good for the man you’re with to see you driven about town by someone younger with a sportier car.”

Luca chuckled as they hung up, but then he sobered as he turned to Hero and saw the look on her face. The sirens grew louder, some of them already on the property and they shared a moment of extreme exhaustion just sitting on that couch and clutching each other’s hands. Hero knew what came next. Knew it would take hours. They would strip her bedroom of everything and take it into their lab. She felt violated. They would paw through her things with their powdered latex gloves. Leave the impossible residue of fingerprint dust. Ask her a million gentle, yet probing questions. She began to finger the scars on her free hand.

“He just made his fatal mistake, Hero.” Luca’s voice interrupted her thoughts and she focused on his swarthy, brutal features. “He thinks he left us a threat, but he left us a clue, and a pretty damned precise one. I’m going to find out just what the hell that is, and once I do, I’ll nail whoever put it there.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“O' What may man within him hide,

though angel on the outward side!”

~William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure

“Mind telling me what this is?” Luca slapped the folder down on the desk in front of Father Michael and propped himself against the corner, purposely invading his space. The young priest almost jumped out of his Ikea chair, but to his credit, he regained his composure quickly.

Vince leaned against the open door to Father Michael’s minimalist office, loudly chewing his gum. Luca had asked him to leave Hero with Rown to conduct these interviews. He had a feeling he’d need a witness.

“When you told me you wanted to see me for an interview, I wasn’t expecting blood.” Father Michael’s thin lips whitened around the edges.

Yeah well, neither was Hero last night, but if
she
had to face it, then so could the men who’d just leapt to the top of his suspect list.

“Tell me what it means,” Luca repeated. He knew what the symbol stood for of course. An internet image search and a few other documents had made the research relatively easy, but he wanted to hear it straight from the mouth of God, so to speak.

Father Michael picked up the picture of the symbol painted on the wall above Hero’s bed, looking at it as though a monster might leap right off the page. “Where did you see this?”

“Is it familiar to you?”

“Yes. It’s—I mean it’s not exactly
familiar
. I would call it more recognizable—is that real blood? There’s so much.” His hands began to shake. “Is Hero okay?”

Luca leaned forward, keeping his arms crossed over his chest and his register at an acceptable decibel. “I don’t know if you comprehend how interviews work, but the general idea is
I
ask the fucking questions, and
you
answer them.”

He had to give the priest props, the man met his eyes with the steady, unwavering stare of an innocent man.

Or a sociopath.

“Are you allowed, as a government agent, to always use such foul and abusive language while interviewing witnesses?”

Luca smirked. “No, but I’ll tell you right now, I’m not looking at a witness. I’m looking at a suspect in a serial murder case. Though I’m technically supposed to inform you that if you want to lodge a complaint with my superiors, feel free.” He leaned in even closer. “They’ll add it to the pile.”

Father Michael cast a quiet plea for help to Vince, who have him a helpless shrug. “He always gets to be the ‘bad cop,’ I’m too handsome.”

The priest returned to staring at the picture in front of him, his shoulder flexing against the fabric of his black cassock. Luca noted that, though the garment was loose and slimming, he filled out the robes better than in the previous months. Father Michael had been working out. Building his strength?

“I can’t shake the feeling, Agent Ramirez, that this treatment is personal as well as professional. Have I done something to offend you?”

Luca narrowed his eyes. “Personally? I think you’re worse than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I think you’re a snake.”

Father Michael rolled back from his desk, putting some distance between him and where Luca stood. Luca followed him inch for inch.

“I’d like you to—to stand farther off.” Father Michael gestured over to where Vince remained unmoving, unaffected.

“Why, Father? I’m not going to hurt you. The door’s open. There’s a witness.”

The words weren’t meant as a consolation, and Luca’s soul flared in a dark triumph at the fear in the other man’s eyes as he used his feet to roll himself to the far edge of the modern, black lacquered desk. Maybe he should dial it back, he was enjoying this a bit too much, but Father Michael was the type of man who needed to be cornered before the truth came out.

“You want to know what offends me?” Luca took another step forward. “The way you look at Hero.”

“I don’t—I don’t know what you mean.” He’d backed into the plastic fichus tree in the corner of his small office, upsetting the dust on the leaves. They exploded into the shafts of light from the small window like little flurries of the priest’s racing thoughts.

“Bullshit,” Luca pressed. “You don’t think I watch you look at her? I saw the way you held her hand in the kitchen. The way your eyes find her in a crowded room.”

“No! I don’t—”

“You’re supposed to be a man of God, but you’re a fraud, aren’t you? Do you have a thing for redheads Father Michael? Does guilt drive you to ritualistically kill the ones you pay to fu—”

“Stop!
Please
! Don’t say it.” Father Michael held up his hands as though to ward off a physical blow. “Yes, I
look
at Hero. I may be a man of God, but I’m still a
man
. That woman would tempt a Saint. I’m just a priest! But I have never in the past, and have no intention to indulge my temptation. I’m a stronger man than that.”

Just how strong was he? Strong enough to lift a cross with a woman tied to it? Luca straightened, then leaned back against the desk again.

Father Michael calmed a bit when Luca backed off, his eyes were earnest and pleading as he lowered his hands. “I’ve committed my own share of sins, Agent Ramirez, but I would
never
hurt those women. I understand that symbol may cast suspicion on those closely connected with the Catholic faith, but why are you targeting me, specifically?”

“We know all about your sins, Michael Sullivan,” Vince said softly.

The man froze, the whites of his eyes visible now.

“They started out small, didn’t they?” Vince walked closer, still deceptively relaxed. “Prep school parties, pills, some coke, a few DUI arrests, one too many charges on Daddy’s credit cards to bail you out. You were rich, the original preppie playboy, untouchable by us ‘government agents.’”

Luca picked up the ball. “These women aren’t the first prostitutes connected to you to die of drowning.”

Father Michael slowly leaned against the back of his chair, reminding Luca of a tire losing its air. His defined chin crinkled as he visibly fought a surge of powerful emotion. “That was… more than a decade ago. I was… a kid… a juvenile. I thought those records were sealed.”

“We can’t bring them up in court, but that doesn’t stop us from using information about your past in our investigation.” Luca pushed himself away from the desk with enough force to rattle the paperclip tray. “Besides, there was enough press about it in The Hamptons to make the juvenile records obsolete. Their versions are always more interesting than the official reports.”

Father Michael wordlessly rolled his chair back beneath his desk and stared at the bloody symbol with unblinking eyes. “That incident was so different than this. There was no blood. No religion. No… intent. Just a few guys taking my dad’s yacht for a midnight joyride in the bay with booze, drugs—hired women—and no thought for consequences.” His voice was bleak and toneless. He didn’t look up from the gruesome picture in front of him. “No one pushed those two women over the side. They were drinking and dancing. Then they were running. Then they were…gone. It wasn’t murder, it was an
accident
. A horrible, stupid, God-forsaken accident, and I took—take—absolute culpability for it.” Father Michael’s tear-filled eyes found Luca’s. “It’s why I went into the church. I’m devoting my life to redemption, to penance.”

Luca studied Father Michael for a silent beat. What would Father McMurtry call the apparitions of sorrow, pain, loss, and guilt visibly aging the young and vibrant man in front of him?

Demons. Like the one symbolized in blood on Hero’s wall.

“Tell me about the symbol, Father Michael,” Luca murmured. “Tell me what it means to you.”

Father McMurtry’s graveled voice threaded through the tension. “Is all this really necessary?”

Luca looked over his shoulder as the old man entered the room. Dressed in an identical cassock and leaning heavily on his cane, Father McMurtry stood in the doorway next to Vince. A tremor in the hand clutching his cane was the only indication of emotion the elder priest exhibited. Luca wasn’t singling Father Michael out. He was there for the both of them.

“I was coming to talk to you next.” Luca indicated the chair across from Father Michael’s desk. “Maybe you can answer a few questions since you’re here.”

Vince lifted an eyebrow. The plan was to talk to them each separately, to compare their stories and their take on the symbol.