A Scrying Shame (7 page)

“What happened?” Arie asked the question even though she’d already guessed the answer.

“This job happened,” Grady said. “He started seeing things.” At the look on Arie’s face, Grady shook his head. “Not like imaginary things. He just started seeing how things happened, you know, like, to the victims. You work here long enough, you start to figure things out. Probably every single one of us could be one of those CSI techs. Take this job—it’s obvious she tried hiding in the bathroom. If you let your mind go there, you can see it. Her running to the bathroom, some dude chasing her. She gets there, she thinks she’s safe, but he gets there, too. And she can’t get the door shut. There you go. You can see it, right? The whole thing. And that’s just the start. ‘Cause then you can see them cross the hall. Maybe he’s dragging her. Maybe she took off, trying to find the phone. Whatever. It’s all right here, laid out like a story. If you start telling yourself that story, you’re going to lose it. You can’t let that stuff into your mind. You’ll go crazy. And you won’t be the first.”

If he only knew.

After they had fully suited up, Grady handed Arie a box of red, heavy-duty garbage bags. The bathroom was too small for them to both work inside, so Grady settled in there and sent Arie to the bedroom to start clearing away items contaminated by fingerprint dust.

“But how do we know if the family wants some of this stuff?” Arie asked.

“You got to make a judgment call. The more personal it is, the more you know you gotta keep it. Just make sure you mark the bags and set them aside for the family. And for Pete’s sake, don’t mix them up.”

Arie steeled herself as she went into the bedroom. Like the living room, the decor was white-on-white, except, of course, for the surfaces that had been splashed a gory brownish maroon or coated in black fingerprint dust. A four-by-five puddle of blood pooled at the foot of the bed. There was no way the carpet could absorb the amount of blood that had been shed there. As Arie stared the center of the pool, it began to shimmer and glisten. A tendril of fear twisted through her body.

Arie shut her eyes and took a deep breath. When she was certain she wasn’t going to succumb to another vision, she opened her eyes, careful to look away from the puddle.

Her eyes fell on an object on the floor near the walk-in closet. It was easy to understand how she’d missed it. Like everything else in the room, it was white.

And it would certainly qualify as a personal item.

Arie walked closer and picked it up. A wedding dress. An expensive one, by the look of it. A bloody shoe print on the embroidered bodice was its only imperfection. She checked the label. Yup. Vera Wang.

The dress reminded her of the engagement ring from the death vision. That had also been pretty spendy. The embroidery glittered.
So pretty
. An alien trickle of pride flittered through Arie’s chest. Arie shuddered, dropped the dress, and backed away.

Closing her eyes didn’t help this time. Someone else’s fear swamped Arie, flooding her from the inside out.

Flash.

The hands at my throat . . . squeezing . . .

A crash from the bathroom jolted Arie out of the trance. She leaned against the dresser, trying to catch her breath.

“Sorry about that,” Grady called from the other room. “I knocked over the bucket.”

“No problem,” Arie managed to say.

“You okay in there? You don’t sound good.”

“I’m okay. I just, uh, it’s just hot in this suit.”

To Arie’s relief, she heard Grady mutter his agreement from the bathroom. With grim determination, she grabbed a fresh garbage bag and approached the Vera Wang as if there could be a cobra hidden in its folds. A thought occurred to her.

“Hey, Grady? This dress has blood on it. It’s evidence, isn’t it?”

He came and stood in the doorway. “If it was evidence, they would have taken it.”

“But look.” She spread out the dress. “It’s got a bloody footprint. Maybe they missed it.”

“I doubt it. Cops don’t miss things like that.” At her expression, he sighed. “Okay, stick it in a separate bag, and we’ll have Guts call ‘em. And see if you can hustle a little bit more. You should be done clearing by now.”

This was going to be a long day.

Grady wiped the walls as Arie continued clearing the room of blood-contaminated objects. She started with the Vera Wang. The bloody smear seemed to hum when she picked up the dress, but she took a deep breath and forced herself to stuff it deep into a large red biohazard trash bag. She moved to the dresser, a modernistic black-lacquered monstrosity. Its surface was so shiny, her face loomed out of the black depths when she peered down at it. Suddenly, a red haze misted over her reflection. An atonal chorus sang,
“Holy, holy, holy . . .”
Arie gasped and pulled back as though from an abyss.

The blood cries to Me . . .

Teeth chattering, she cleared the dresser, tossing a hairbrush and a deodorant stick into the bag as she went. When she came to a jewelry box, she set it aside. There wasn’t any blood on it, but it was covered in fingerprint dust and needed to be wiped down.

Arie moved to the nightstand beside the bed. Sprays of blood streaked across the top, and it looked as though it had been shoved to one side. A drawer was open a few inches. Had the victim been trying to reach into it? Some people kept guns in their nightstands for home protection. A can of mace, maybe? Or had the killer rifled through it, looking for something? Arie glanced at Grady. She knew he was right about the dangers of speculation, but she found it nearly impossible to resist.

She glanced at the small pile of books on the stand. Romance novels. Something stirred inside Arie. She bent over and picked one up.

Not a romance this time. This was a hardcover in a paper jacket. The title,
Rich Bitch
, was embossed in a glittery gold font. A wedding ring set with a rock the size of Gibraltar sparkled just below the title. In fact, the set looked a lot like . . .
My engagement ring—so large it weighs my hand down.
It sparkles like sunlight reflecting off a crystal-clear lake
.

Arie dropped the book, and it slid under the bed.

Grady glanced at her. “You all right?”

“I’m fine. I just, uh, dropped a book.” Arie picked it back up and waved it at him.

“Dude, you left your gloves on. That’s cross-contamination. Now you gotta toss her book.”

“Damn. I’m sorry.”

“It happens, but you really gotta watch it. And make sure you never, ever forget and touch your face when you’re wearing them. So gross.” Grady turned back to his task.

Arie grabbed the nearest bio-bag, but the photograph on the back of the book caught her eye. She looked closer. It was a slightly older version of the girl in the mirror. Something about the woman seemed familiar but Arie couldn’t chase down the connection, if indeed there was one. She flipped the book back around to verify the author’s name. Marissa Mason.

“Didn’t Guts say that the victim here had written a book?”

“Yeah,” Grady said. “Why?”

Arie waggled the book again. “I think this is her. The victim. This must be the book.”

Grady shrugged. “What’s the big deal? She wrote a book. Oh, wait. I get it. You want to read that book, huh? Gonna figure out how to catch a rich guy?” He turned back to the wall and resumed scrubbing. “Can’t say I blame you. It’s not like I want to be doing this job for the rest of my life, either.”

Arie mumbled an agreement and, tucking the book under her arm, grabbed the trash bags. “I’m taking these to the van.”

As soon as she reached the parking lot, Arie wiped the smear of blood off the book cover and hid it under the front seat of her car. As she bent over, she realized she’d forgotten to take off the outer layer of booties.
Crap.
She hoped Grady hadn’t noticed.

She snatched them off and, intending to throw the bloodstained footwear inside, started picking at the ties on one of the trash bags. Then stopped. At some point, she was going to have to figure out what worked and what didn’t with this scrying thing. And for that, she would probably need blood.

Grabbing a wadded-up fast-food bag from the back seat, Arie dumped a couple of straggler fries onto the ground and shoved the stained booties inside. The bag got stuffed beside Marissa’s book.

After slinging the trash bags into the back of the van, she hurried back to the condo.

Unfortunately, the rest of the day didn’t go any better. Death visions popped up everywhere she looked. Anything shiny or reflective, including liquids, served to channel the dead woman’s last moments straight into Arie’s brain.

After the first hour and a half, Arie had worked up a migraine and was sick to her stomach. She tried to play it off, but when it came time to pull up the blood-soaked carpet, she couldn’t handle it anymore and ended up running for the bathroom.

“Hey! Not there. I just sanitized that room,” Grady shouted after her.

Too late.

On her way home, Arie called Chandra and begged her friend to let her sleep over. With all that she had to wrestle, she couldn’t handle thought of going back to Grumpa’s alone.

“Of course you can,” Chandra told her. “Do you want to swing by Subway or somewhere and grab something to eat on your way?”

“Don’t even talk about food,” Arie groaned. Apparently, relentless visions from murder victims worked as an appetite suppressant. Who knew?

She gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles blanched, and her eyes throbbed with the effort of concentrating on the road. Every time her gaze landed on something shiny or reflective—not a rare occurrence on a highway—the threat of a death vision vibrated inside her head. She managed to keep them at bay, but fighting them made her stomach roil. She pulled into a gas station so she could call her grandfather and let him know her plans.

As delighted as Grumpa seemed about having the house to himself, it didn’t stop him from complaining. “What am I supposed to say if your mother calls? She might want to know what you made me for supper. That’s part of the deal, isn’t it? Taking care of your poor old grandpa? I suppose that’s too much to ask nowadays.”

Arie sighed.
Nice try.
“Of course not, Grumpa. I can come home, and we can spend the whole evening together. Just you and me. I’ll just swing by the grocery store, so I can pick up some healthy food. You know Mother wants you on a gluten-free, low-carb diet anyway.”

“Never mind. I guess one night won’t matter. I can make a sandwich.”

“Well, if you’re sure.” Arie smiled for the first time that day. Her migraine slid back a notch. “And maybe we should keep this between us. We don’t want Mother worrying over little things.”

“That’s true. And she probably doesn’t need to know about a couple other things, either.”

Arie’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, really? Like what?”

“Never you mind, little girl. Never you mind.”

They hung up, and this time Arie’s grin stretched cheek to cheek.
What was that cranky old man up to, anyway?

“What do you mean, they won’t stop?” Chandra looked horrified.

“I mean the visions won’t stop.”

Arie scrunched up in the yellow beanbag chair with her eyes closed. “I keep seeing them. It’s not just happening in the blood this time. They’re constant, everywhere I look.”

“What about with your eyes closed?”

“It’s okay now. But when they’re open, I can’t keep from seeing them.” Arie burst into tears.

Chandra knelt and wrapped her in a hug. “That sounds hideous. I just can’t imagine it. But, Arie, listen. We’re going to figure this out.”

Eyes still closed, Arie smiled and leaned her head on Chandra’s shoulder. Her friend smelled like cake.

They sat like that for a few minutes, and then Chandra asked, “What’s different, Arie? I mean, about this particular job.”

Arie took a deep, shuddering breath. She’d been too upset to share any of the details. Chandra scooted back to her favorite orange pillow and waited.

“I guess the big thing is it’s a murder scene.”

“Holy crap. I guess you could call that a difference.”

Arie nodded at the understatement. “You know, now that I think about it, there has been something different about each of the scenes. At the suicide’s, there was a gray fog I was looking through. It felt cold. But at Agnes’s—that was the one where the little old lady just died—the fog wasn’t gray. It was green. And it exuded a feeling of happiness.”

“That is so flippin’ awesome.” Chandra hugged herself.

Arie smiled at her friend. “I guess it is. That one, anyway.”

“So, you’re thinking, what? That the color of the fog matches the way they died?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? Leonard killed himself. The gray fog, the sadness. But with Agnes it was like . . . it was the same peace I felt when I was on the Other Side. I think Agnes was ready to die. She was okay with it. But with Marissa—”

“Marissa?”

“Marissa Mason. She wrote a book called
Rich Bitch
.”

Chandra’s face scrunched in thought. “Her name sounds familiar. I’ll have to check it out.”

Arie got up, grabbed the book from under her purse, and handed it to Chandra. Making an “ick” face, her friend held it with the tips of her fingers.

“I wiped it off,” Arie assured her.

“Oh, hey. I
do
know her. I read this.”

“You read
this
?”

For the first time in the  thirteen years Arie had known her, Chandra blushed.

“Well, I’m not saying it’s great literature, but everyone was talking about it. I was curious, that’s all.” As Chandra paged through it, a stiff rectangle of paper slid out from between the pages and fell to the floor. Arie snatched it up. Creamy white paper embossed with a border of flowers. Gold ink. And just the faintest . . . Arie sniffed the card. Yup, it was scented. Roses again.

“What is it?” Chandra asked.

“It looks like one of those wedding programs. You know, the one that tells you when they’re lighting the candles or whatever, and who’s in the wedding party?”

“Maybe she was using it as a bookmark.” Chandra went back to studying the book. After looking at the table of contents, she flipped it over and looked at the back.