Midnight Sacrifice (26 page)

“She died a week after Evan was born. Pulmonary embolism.”

“So he was a widower for over twenty years?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did he ever date anyone in town?” A girlfriend, past or present, might know personal details about Nathan.

“I never saw him date anyone.” Mandy tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Twenty years is a long time for a man to go without a woman,” Danny said.

“I wouldn’t know.” Mandy’s eyes flitted toward the window overlooking the tree-ringed backyard.

If he didn’t have a local woman, did Nathan have one-night stands or rendezvous with women in other towns? Prostitutes? All questions Danny wasn’t going to ask sweet, small-town Mandy, who was clearly uncomfortable talking about her ex-boss’s sex life.

Just how sheltered was she? Danny shook his mind from the thought of Mandy and her sexual innocence. This was not the time.

Danny walked to a door between the kitchen and family room. He opened it. A stairwell led down. There was nothing down there. He knew it. But the darkness was intimidating. On the way down, he flipped a switch on the wall. Nothing, which was exactly what happened when electric bills didn’t get paid. Danny pulled the small flashlight he’d taken from his glove box out of his pocket. He swept the beam around the dusty room. Scant light filtered through a few dirty, narrow windows at ceiling height.

The basement looked ordinary. Raw concrete floor, whitewashed cinder block walls, unfinished ceiling. Empty shelves lined the walls. A long workbench spanned the far wall. Had Nathan prepared the props of his religion on its scarred wooden surface? There were no signs of the evil that had been planned here. Until Danny looked closer. A circle in the center of the room was dotted with globs of hardened wax in different colors. Danny squatted next to it. Under the dust, faint symbols drawn in chalk decorated the concrete around the space. Spirals. Interlocking triangles and rings. Pentagrams. Afraid of indoor lightning strikes, he avoided church unless someone was getting married, baptized, or buried. But the Catholic boy inside him cringed. He could practically hear his mother saying the rosary from heaven.

This was where it happened. A human sacrifice had been planned right here.

He looked over at Mandy, who was hugging herself at the bottom of the steps. She took a step backward, up onto the last wooden step, as if she were also repulsed by the remnants of pagan rituals on the concrete.

He pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of the circle. The flash illuminated more symbols painted on the rough walls. Stick figures and bonfires galore. Danny photographed everything.

What had he hoped to accomplish by coming here? The police had taken everything that could possibly be considered evidence. But nothing could clear the dusty air of the desperation that clung to the space, or eliminate the taint of ruthlessness that drove a man to kidnap and slaughter innocents to save his own family.

Brutality lingered because the events that were put into play here weren’t over yet. Evil was sticking around.

“What about all the artifacts that were down here? Did anyone know about them?” Danny asked.

Mandy lifted a shoulder and moved up two more steps. “Sure, everybody knew about Aaron’s collection. He had a degree of some sort in Celtic history. Collecting artifacts from Scotland was his hobby. That’s where he was born.”

In that light, Danny supposed it didn’t seem strange at all.

“I’m getting out of here.” She tripped up the stairs.

Danny swept his light over the space one last time. The beam settled on a dark discoloration on the floor beneath the far window. He walked over. The window was cracked an eighth of an inch open. The lock was busted. Water had dripped onto the cement, and mold had grown over the winter.

Was the window jimmied before or after Nathan disappeared? If it happened over the winter, who had broken in and why? The answer could be as simple as a vagrant looking for a dry place to weather a storm. Or Nathan could have returned.

Danny went upstairs at a jog. He couldn’t get out of the cold, dank cellar fast enough. The patio door caught his eye. He walked out back to the broken basement window and shone his flashlight on the shaded frame. Definitely jimmied from the outside. He swept the beam over the surrounding area. Something was crushed between the cinder block foundation and the weeds that grew around the building. Danny stuck his finger in the mud and pulled it out. He put it in the palm of his hand. A faded white lollipop wrapper.

Ray?

He remembered a flash of his first night in town. He’d seen someone in the alley next to the diner. Could that have been Ray? What would he be doing in the vacant restaurant?

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Feeling trapped, Mandy scurried out of the basement. Above ground, she rubbed at a tight spot in the center of her chest. Under her sweater, her skin was clammy and damp. She could barely draw a full breath.

Just a few more minutes, then she could get out of here. What else needed to be searched? The steps leading to the second floor pulled at her gaze. Mandy crept upstairs alone. She stuck her head in the first room. Dirty clothes and used plates vied for surface space, and the air smelled of many, many things gone sour. Evan’s room, no doubt.

The next door led to a spartan space. Nathan’s uncle’s room? Shelves and surfaces were bizarrely bare. The police had taken most of Aaron’s personal possessions. Small picture frames lay on their backs, the photos removed. Mandy walked to the dresser and opened a drawer. Sweaters. She looked in the other drawers. More clothing. The closet held pants and jackets. Nothing unusual. A few boxes sat on the floor, the tops off-kilter, summer clothes hanging over the sides.

Nathan’s room was orderly but not insanely so. Most of his personal items were missing from the medicine chest and dresser tops. Mandy wandered into the closet. Traces of his cologne sent nausea ripping through her stomach.

She’d slept with a killer. He’d lied to her, but she’d been honest. Foolishly, she’d thought they were in love. She’d confessed her private thoughts, and now he knew many personal things about her. Things he could use to hurt those she loved. As he’d
proved in getting threats to her, Nathan might be crazy, but he was smart. She wrapped her shaking hands around her middle. If he wanted to kill her brother, he’d do it.

“Anything in here?”

She jumped.

“Sorry.” Danny put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s just creepy being in here.” Mandy put a hand to her chest. Her heart pounded against her palm.

“I know. Relax.”

Mandy sucked in a deep breath. Not helping. “No, I didn’t find anything in here. How about the basement?”

“Nah. Looks like the cops got everything interesting.” Danny shook his head

Small lights twinkled in Mandy’s vision. Her knees buckled.

“Whoa.” A strong hand supported her elbow.

“I need to go outside.”

“Yeah. Sure, of course.” Danny steered her from the room, down the stairs, and out the front door.

“You OK?”

She gulped pine-scented air until her head cleared. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Looked like a panic attack.” Danny’s hand was still under her elbow.

“I don’t have panic attacks,” she protested.

“OK.” But his expression and tone made it clear he didn’t believe her.

“But no more breaking and entering.”

“No argument from me. Good girls aren’t cut out for criminal activity.” Was he holding back a grin? If he knew why she was so upset, she doubted he’d be amused.

“I need to go.” She pulled away from his support. Nothing wobbled. She was good to go.

“You’re sure you’re all right to drive?”

“Fine.”

“I’m going to make a stop on the way back.”

Distracted, Mandy closed the door and started the car. The upbeat music of Maroon 5 thumping from the speakers sounded obscene after viewing Nathan’s home. Misery lingered in that cellar like black mold after a flood. She clicked off the radio in her car and drove back to the inn in silence.

Danny filled up his tank and drove through town. As he passed the doctor’s office, Carolyn Fitzgerald was getting out of her red sedan. Her beige suit was spotted with blood. Danny pulled over. He got out of his car. “Do you need help?”

“No, thank you.” Tension added ten years to her face since he’d seen her. She opened the passenger door for a frail-looking man in his sixties.

The man shook his head. “No.”

“Please, Walt,” she begged. “We’ll go right home afterward. I promise.”

A teenager emerged from the back of the sedan and stood at her side. Danny recognized the sullen slouch and moody eyes of an angry adolescent. It was like looking in a mirror during his own youth. “Come on, Dad. Dr. Chandler needs to look at your head. You fell, remember?”

Danny had been better at covering the pain in his voice with insolence. Practice makes perfect and all that.

The old man sawed his jaw back and forth. His eyes were wide and had a confused sheen. He turned his head to look at Danny. Stubbornness and hostility lingered behind the fear, much like his son’s expression. Blood was dripping from
a long cut on his forehead, but he seemed oblivious to the injury.

Keys in hand, Danny hesitated. Carolyn didn’t seem to want assistance, but he hated to just leave her in obvious distress. “Are you sure I can’t help?”

Carolyn moved closer to Danny and lowered her voice. “I don’t know. He gets confused. Sometimes strangers are good. Sometimes not. My husband is hard to predict. It’s so hard to see him like this. He used to be a colonel in the army.”

Danny looked over at her husband. A vague, opaque film clouded his eyes. The colonel squinted, as if he knew the truth was in front of him but he couldn’t focus on it. Frustration tightened the age-slackened muscles of his face. Alzheimer’s? If not, something similar.

“Let me try.” Danny pocketed his keys and strode to the car. “Colonel.” Danny snapped a salute. “Sergeant Daniel Sullivan. We’re ready for you, sir.”

The colonel blinked and straightened in what appeared to be a reflex to Danny’s formal address. Purpose filled his movements as he reached for the door handle. Danny itched to help him but restrained himself. Carolyn stepped forward. Danny shook his head, and she backed off. With great effort, her husband climbed out of the car. Danny hustled to the doctor’s office door and opened it wide. He stood tall, gaze straight ahead, and saluted again as the frail old man shuffled through.

Carolyn wiped a teardrop from her cheek. “Thank you. Sometimes I forget he still needs respect.”

“Anytime.” Danny closed the door behind the family. Now that he knew the extent of the old man’s illness, Danny agreed with Mandy. The relationship between Carolyn and Dr. Chandler was normal.

He considered the parallels between Nathan’s disease and Alzheimer’s. Danny imagined the heart-wrench of watching a
loved one succumb to dementia. Had seeing his uncle descend into darkness pushed Nathan into madness? The colonel’s son looked to be about fifteen. How would watching his father’s decline into dementia and death affect him? And what had become of Nathan’s son?

He jogged back to his car. Back at the inn, he parked his car next to Jed’s truck. Not good. Danny wanted some privacy with Mandy. Whether she liked it or not, they had things to discuss.