Rock Harbor Series - 04 - Abomination (3 page)

“Here, sit down.” Bree lowered her onto the sofa.

“I’ll get blood on your couch,” Elena muttered.

“It’s leather. It will clean. Kade, get me some hot water and soap. And some clean rags. Call Dr. Matilla.”

“Let me see,” Bree said. Without waiting for an answer, she lifted the woman’s top and winced when she saw the slash. Long and nasty, but probably not life-threatening. “You’ll need this stitched.”

“I think I’m going to pass out,” Elena whispered.

“Here, lie down.” Bree raised Elena’s bare feet onto the sofa, and she laid her head back. Bree kept pressure on the back of her head. “Better?”

“Yes.” The words were faint but clear.

Kade came in carrying a pan of water and some clean rags. “The doctor is on his way.”

“Lie still.” Bree began to dab the blood from Elena’s abdomen. The woman winced when the cloth passed over the raw edges of the cut. The water soon turned as red as the cloth. “I need some fresh water,” she told Kade.

He nodded and took the pan.

“Mama?” Terri said, her mouth puckering.

Bree had forgotten the little girl. “Mommy will be okay. The doctor will fix her.” She looked at her son, who stood watching the situation with a somber expression. “Davy, take Terri to your room and show her some of your toys.”

“Okay, Mom.” He took the little girl’s hand in a protective stance. “Do you like LEGOs? I’ve got lots of them.”

What a little man. Bree’s smile dimmed. He’d asked for a little brother or sister for months. It wasn’t as though she and Kade hadn’t been trying, but her womb remained stubbornly empty.

The doorbell rang, and Kade sprang to answer it. Bree heard the doctor’s deep voice. He lived just down the street and was always willing to help out in an emergency.

Kade ushered him into the living room. “Looks like a knife cut,” he told the doctor.

Dr. Matilla went straight to the sofa and began to examine Elena. “She’s going to need some stitches.” He touched the lump on her head. “You might have a concussion. Double vision? Memory problems, nausea?”

“All the above,” she murmured.

“We need to get you to the hospital.”

“No!” The woman rose on her elbows. “I can’t go to the hospital. I have no money. Can’t you just put butterflies on the cut?”

The doctor sighed. “Yeah, but you’d be better off in the hospital where a nurse could monitor your symptoms.”

“There’s no real treatment for concussion. I can rest better here.”

“That’s true.” The doctor stared at her. “Do you have medical training?”

“I don’t know.” Elena closed her eyes.

“She was a little confused earlier,” Bree murmured. “The only reason she knows her name is because it’s on her necklace.”

“Is that true? You don’t know who you are?” the doctor asked.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine in the morning.”

“What do you remember?” the doctor asked, drawing supplies out of his bag.

Elena bit her lip and shot a pleading glance toward Bree, who ignored it. The doctor needed to know the full story. “She doesn’t remember anything. Not her name, where she lives, what she’s running from, who did this. Nothing.”

“Could be emotional amnesia, or retrograde amnesia from the injury. Someone worked her over pretty bad, and it could be either the blow itself or the emotional trauma of it. You may be fine in the morning,” the doctor told Elena.

Tears slid from under her lids, and Elena rubbed her forehead. “My head hurts.”

“I’ll give you something for that,” the doctor said. “Now let’s get that wound closed.”

Bree and Kade stepped into the kitchen while the doctor stitched her up. Bree could see the questions in Kade’s eyes, so she told him how she’d found Elena stumbling along the side of the road.

He shook his head. “Only you, Bree.” His tone held admiration.

“You would have stopped too. Anyone would have.”

The doctor called them from the living room, and they stepped back through the doorway. Elena’s eyes looked a little clearer.

“Get some rest,” the doctor advised. “I have office hours tomorrow. Stop by and see me when you get up.”

“I’ll see she does.” Bree ushered him to the door and thanked him. When she returned to the living room, Elena was sitting up, but she was as pale as Bree’s sheer curtains. “I’ve got two spare rooms, but I imagine Terri will feel more secure if she stays with you,” Bree said. “Let me show you.” She carried the backpack up the steps and down the hall to the guest suite at the end. “There’s a bathroom here if you’d like to shower.”

“I . . . I don’t have any clothes,” Elena said. “I’ve got things for Terri though.”

“My underwear might fit you, but there’s no way my jeans would fit. You’re so tiny.” Bree tried to think if she knew of any woman as slim as Elena but couldn’t think of any. Her best friend, Naomi, was a little heavier than Bree. “I’ve got a nightgown you can wear. You’ll swim in it, but that’s okay. What are you, about a 2?”

“I don’t know.” Elena’s gaze darted past Bree to the dark spare room.

“It’s okay, no one’s here,” Bree said, flipping on the light. The soft overhead light illuminated the queen bed covered with a peach-flowered quilt. White ruffled curtains gave the room a homey feel she hoped would reassure the woman.

“It’s lovely,” Elena said, stepping through the doorway. “I can’t thank you enough.” Her lids drooped, and her body sagged.

Terri peeked into the room after them, and Elena called her daughter and began to undress her for bed.

“You’re exhausted. Let me get the nightgown.” Bree set the backpack on the floor and went to the master suite. She found the smallest nightgown she had in the big dresser just inside the door and grabbed a pair of her panties as well. At least Elena could have clean underwear, even if they were a little big. Tomorrow they’d go find her something to wear.

When she went back down the hall, she peeked in on Davy and found Kade slipping their son’s pajamas over his head. “Thanks,” she mouthed, then went on to the spare room. Elena had Terri in her pajamas.

“She’s too sleepy for a bath, and I . . . I think she’s clean.” The woman’s voice quivered.

“That’s a good idea. You should just fall into bed yourself. Don’t worry about getting the sheets dirty. We can change them tomorrow.”

Elena nodded. The little girl was asleep when her mother slipped her between the sheets.

A head injury, a knife wound. Bree had to wonder if whoever had hurt Elena might come looking for her. She leaned against the door frame. “Should I call the sheriff? Are you in danger tonight?”

“No! No police.”

“Why? I don’t understand.”

Elena rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know, but I just know I can’t talk about it.”

Bree walked to the bedroom window. “I won’t do anything you don’t want. But we need to keep you safe.”

“I think I’m safe here.” Elena’s voice trembled.

Her fear was beginning to transfer itself to Bree, and she glanced out over Rock Harbor, peaceful and serene with the village lights twinkling.

Elena slipped into bed next to Terri. “Thank you so much for your help, Bree. I’ll try not to be a bother.”

Bree crossed the room and turned off the light. “You’re no bother at all. Get some rest.”

She was going to have to be patient. Her heart welled at the other woman’s predicament. Whatever it was, it was very bad.

3

T
HE SMELL OF STALE COFFEE, SWEAT, AND DESPAIR SEEPED through the Michigan State Police District 3 headquarters like an invisible stain. Captain Nikos Andreakos—Nick to his friends—propped his boots on his desk and stared at a glossy eight-by-ten crime scene photo from yesterday’s sniper attack. His stomach gave a sour rumble from too much caffeine and too little food, and his brain felt about as alert as a turnip at this unreasonably early hour for a Saturday. As the lead in a special violent crimes unit, he saw these types of photos too often to sleep well at night. He hadn’t slept at all in the last twenty-four hours.

What would possess a man who had just lost his job to go on a shooting spree? The perp had positioned himself on an overpass and taken potshots at passing vehicles. Three people died in a fiery car crash before he dropped his gun and hightailed it out of the area. It was Nick’s job to track him down. He sighed, dug in his pocket, and pulled out a pack of Rolaids. He thumbed one loose without looking and popped it into his mouth.

The door to his office burst open, and his father stepped into the room. Colonel Cyril Andreakos stood at Nick’s height of six feet. Their broad shoulders fit the same size shirts, but Cyril’s waist had spread out to about thirty-eight inches. People who saw pictures of Cyril at Nick’s age thought they were looking at Nick.

“We’ve got a bad one, Nick.”

Nick thumped his feet back on the floor. “Worse than snipers?” He grabbed a pen and paper.

“Couple of geocachers found a floater at Wilson’s Pond about an hour ago. Nasty. The perp took her tongue and her face. And here’s something weird—there was a partial peanut butter sandwich tucked inside the corpse’s clothes, next to her skin.”

Nick’s fatigue fell away as it always did at the prospect of a new case. “Geocachers? What’s that about?”

“Geocaching. A new sport. Players use a GPS unit to find stuff other people have hidden. People plant what they call
caches
, then log the thing on a Web site for other people to find.”

“Kind of a treasure hunt?”

His father nodded. “Exactly. Thousands are doing it all across the country. Even more thousands in other countries. This body was found at what the geocachers call a
benchmark
, in this case a historical marker. The GPS coordinates of the benchmark were listed on the geocaching Web site. When the geocachers got to the marker, they found a white bucket with a logbook and a note inside a plastic bag. The note told them to check the lake. So the perp was clearly having fun with the sport. It wasn’t a fluke.”

Nick jotted down some notes. “It doesn’t come across like a crime of passion. Too much planning involved. I don’t like the sound of this.”

“You and me both. Maybe this is a serial killer coming to call in our area. It feels ritualistic. Fraser is looking for similar cases elsewhere in the U.S. Look at the stuff posted at the site.” He handed Nick a paper.

Nick scanned it. “The first part is what the cache is called?”

His dad nodded. “‘Abominations will find you.’”

Nick read on to the clues. “‘Then Musa cast down his staff and lo! it swallowed up the lies they told.’” He looked up. “Do we know where it’s from?”

“The Koran.”

“And he took her tongue.” Nick grimaced. “What leads do we have from the post?”

“The geeks are on it. Give ’em an hour.”

“Any ID on the vic?”

Cyril shook his head. “Not yet. The on-site coroner said she’s got the build of a dancer.” His eyes locked with Nick’s for an extra second.

Nick rubbed his temples.

“If it pans out, maybe you could ask Eve—”

Nick gave a short, bitter laugh. “Eve is steamed that I didn’t show last night. She hasn’t returned my messages.”

His father’s mouth turned down. “I’m sorry, Son. I know it hurts. You thought about asking Evie for one more try?”

“No.” Nick narrowed his eyes to warn his father to back off.

“She loves you, and you love her. Work it out.”

“Drop it, Dad.”

“Your mother won’t drop it. Expect her to bring it up on Sunday.”

“Sunday?”

Cyril sighed. “Her birthday. I won’t tell her you forgot. She’s been cooking all week.”

Nick nodded, suppressing a wince. If there was one thing his Greek family loved, it was a chance to have a big family dinner. His mother’s birthday was something none of them was allowed to miss, though he’d sure like to sidestep her interrogation.

Eve’s face flashed into his mind, but he refocused on the computer screen and pulled his keyboard toward him.

“Did anyone check out the abomination angle?” he asked his dad.

“What abomination angle?”

“The listing.” Nick pointed. “‘Abominations will find you.’”

“What kind of angle?”

“Who uses the word anymore? It’s old-fashioned, kind of literary, religious. Might be a clue.”

Cyril shrugged.

“I’ll check it out,” Nick said. Intent on the computer screen, he barely noticed his dad close the door behind him. He typed the word
abomination
into the search box and watched the results appear. The first result took him to Wikipedia. All sorts of references were listed, so he clicked the first entry, the biblical references. Considering the passage came from the Koran, he figured the perp intended some kind of religious significance.

He scanned down the list of possibilities. Shepherds were an abomination to Egyptians. That didn’t seem obviously relevant. There was an end-times reference that might be a possibility. Maybe the guy thought he was a prophet.

He stopped at a reference to Proverbs 6:16. The verse encompassed a whole list of things that were an abomination to God. He read them, then read them again. The woman’s tongue was missing. “A lying tongue,” he said.

Realizing he was talking to himself, he hit the print button. It was too soon to jump to conclusions, but he could keep the list for reference. His phone rang. He picked up.

“Andreakos.”

“We got a name on the geocaching Web site post, Captain. Guy goes by Gideon.”

STATE FOREST FRONTED THE COMPLEX ON THE NORTH, MAKING IT easy to forget that the city was only an hour away. Gideon rolled the van through the gate under a sign that read “Mount Sinai,” then parked in front of the meetinghouse. The enclave of twenty or so cabins and tents cluttered the clearing around it.

The white-board structure had once been a Methodist church and still turned blind stained-glass windows toward the road. Gideon nodded to several members as he strode up the steps. Inside, the wooden planks of the church resounded under his heels. He walked tall, knowing those in attendance whispered about him in a respectful tone.

The church held about forty people. Moses Bechtol, the group leader, rubbed his hands together as he approached the podium. The place quieted. “We’re honored to have our special guest today. Just as Gideon judged the children of Israel and led them into the right worship of God, so our man Gideon has much spiritual wisdom for us today.” He clapped, and the rest of the group joined in.