The Thirteenth Sacrifice (3 page)

“She didn’t die in a car accident,” Samantha began.

“She was murdered,” Ed finished.

And she watched Brad’s eyes as the news shattered him. Grief, pain, and disbelief flashed across his face in quick succession. Rage would come soon enough. It was a critical moment, the one when you realized the world wasn’t safe and that those you loved could be ripped from you by evil. It would likely be a defining point of his life. She wondered, as she always did, what it was like to be innocent and then to lose it. Her own innocence had been destroyed when she was too young to even remember it.

“Was she religious?” Samantha asked.

Brad nodded. “Very. She’s Mormon. I am too. That was one of the things that was so great. You don’t meet as many Mormons out here as you do back home.”

“Was she interested in Wicca or anything like that?”

“You mean witchcraft?” Brad asked, looking somewhat shocked.

Samantha sighed. Wicca and witchcraft were two different things, especially in the way he obviously thought.

“Yeah,” Ed said, pressing on.

Brad shook his head. “No. I mean, I know her roommate was into some weird stuff, but not Camille. She was only staying there until she could find a better place to live. The fraternity is coed. She applied for a spot in the girls’ building. I was really praying she’d get it so she could get out of there.”

“When was the last time you heard from her?” Samantha asked.

“Three nights ago. We went out to dinner. We were supposed to go to the movies tonight…”

The tears he had been trying to stop started to flow.

“Did anyone ever threaten her in any way?” Samantha asked.

“Who would do that? It was Camille. She was so… nice.”

The guy who had answered the door and two others had gathered at the far side of the room. Samantha stood and nodded, and one of them moved over and sat down next to Brad, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“If there’s anything we can do to help you find her killer, let us know,” he said, looking Samantha straight in the eye.

Brad had begun sobbing uncontrollably. Samantha and Ed took the names and phone numbers of the others in the room and then left.

“That got us nowhere,” Ed complained when they were finally back in the car.

Samantha wished she could disagree, but Brad didn’t know anything. She was sure of it.

“Someone wanted her dead. There had to be a reason, right?” Ed continued.

“Well, we’ll just have to keep looking until we find it.”

Samantha’s phone rang.

“Look at that—it does have an On button.”

Samantha grimaced as she went to answer it.

“Let’s hope that’s the coroner with some good news for us,” Ed said.

“And that would be what? ‘Oops, our bad—she’s still alive’?” Samantha snapped.

Ed looked at her, clearly startled, and she turned away to answer the phone. She could tell by the caller ID that it was George at the coroner’s office.

“Do you know the cause of death?” she asked with no greeting.

“Hello to you too,” an older male voice said. “No. There’s no easily discernible cause. I’ll be running a tox screen.”

“If you don’t have anything, why are you calling?”

“Wanted to let you know that the pentagram was drawn in nail polish.”

“Not blood?”

“Nope. Looks like it was applied several hours
after
she was dead.”

“Thanks, George,” she said and hung up.

“What is it?” Ed asked.

“Pentagram was drawn in nail polish, not blood.”

“I think we need to go back to the apartment and do some color checks to see if it might have belonged to her or Katie,” Ed said, steering into the right-hand lane and preparing to turn.

“Agreed.”

It felt morbid, going through a dead girl’s bathroom, looking for her makeup. Three flavored lip glosses, a pale pink blush, and a bottle of clear nail polish turned up in the third drawer Samantha checked. That was it. No eye shadow, no mascara, no liners, not even any powder. The nail polish bottle was nearly full. The blush looked like it had been used only a couple of times.

Samantha searched the other drawers, but she knew she wouldn’t find anything else. It fit with the picture of Camille that she had been forming.

Camille’s bathroom was the one shared with guests. Katie had the master bedroom with her own bathroom, which Ed was searching. Samantha exited Camille’s bathroom and headed for Katie’s room.

Katie was sitting on the couch in the living room, arms folded across her chest, clearly upset that as soon as forensics finished their job she was going to be locked out of her apartment for the next couple of days to preserve the scene.

A couple of days on a friend’s couch won’t hurt her, but a couple of days in prison might,
Samantha thought.

Samantha walked into Katie’s bathroom just as Ed was whistling and bending over the trash can.

“Look what we have here,” he said.

“Red nail polish.” Samantha confirmed it as he used tongs to pull the bottle out of the trash can and deposit it in an evidence bag. They returned to the living room and Ed held the bag high.

“Care to explain?” he asked.

“Duh. It’s nail polish,” Katie said.

“Why did you throw it away?”

“What? I didn’t throw it away.”

“Then why was it in your trash?” Samantha asked.

“It… I don’t know,” Katie said.

“Did you put it in there, or drop it accidentally, after painting the pentagram on Camille’s forehead?” Ed asked.

“What? That was blood, and I didn’t do it!”

“It was nail polish, not blood, and you need to start talking to us before this gets any worse for you,” Samantha said.

“Worse for me?” Katie squeaked, her eyes widening in fear. “But—but I didn’t do anything.”

“So who are you covering up for?” Ed demanded.

“I… uh—no one. No one!”

“Who are you protecting?”

“I’m not protecting anyone!” Katie said, beginning to sob.

But she was. The question was, who would someone like Katie protect? She seemed more the kind to be loyal to herself first. What would someone have to do to gain her loyalty? What would someone have to be?

Samantha stared hard at Katie. The girl was scared and she was hiding something. “Tell us about your boyfriend,” Samantha said suddenly.

“Kyle?” Katie asked, blinking at her in confusion. “Why do you want to know about Kyle?”

“Is he the kind of guy that likes pentagrams a little too much?” Ed asked, gesturing first to Katie’s necklace and then mimicking drawing a pentagram on his forehead.

“What? No. He’s, like, a normal guy. Anyways, he’s not even my boyfriend. We broke up like six months ago.”

And yet on some level she still thinks of him as her boyfriend,
Samantha thought.

“I mean, he and Camille never even met.”

“Are you sure about that?” Ed asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you have any enemies?” Samantha asked.

Katie went pale. “I hope not,” she whispered. There was fear in her eyes, a fear that was much deeper, much more primal than her fear of the detectives.

Ed’s cell phone rang. After a few seconds he moved several feet away. Samantha turned her attention back to Katie. She wanted to know what the girl was hiding from her, what she was afraid of.

You could make her tell you. It would be easy,
a voice whispered in her head.

She set her jaw and tried to ignore the promptings, the urges. A spell of revelation perhaps… Samantha shook her head fiercely. She didn’t do that anymore, not
for years. She took a deep breath, struggling to control herself. It had to be because of the nightmare. Every time she had a nightmare she had to remind herself that she wasn’t that person anymore. No spells. But convincing Katie to trust her would be so very easy.

Samantha squatted down slowly, bringing herself to eye level with the girl. She tilted her head slightly and waited for Katie to meet her eyes.

“Look at me, Katie,” she said, dropping her voice into its lowest range. “You’re going to trust me. You’re going to tell me—”

A hand descended on her shoulder and Samantha gasped and nearly fell backward onto her rump. She caught herself with a hand on the floor and took several quick breaths. Guilt rose up in her at what she had been about to do.

She glanced up and saw Ed looking at her with raised eyebrows.

“What?” she snapped, more forcefully than she meant to.

“We need to go. Now.”

She stood up.

“Don’t leave town,” Ed said to Katie. She nodded, eyes wide, still looking at Samantha.

“Joe,” Ed said, turning to one of the officers still on the scene, “make sure you drive her to her friend’s house, see that she gets settled, and get all the contact info for her and her friend.”

Joe nodded his understanding. Ed turned and headed out of the apartment, Samantha trailing behind him. As soon as they were in his car he turned to her. “What was that? Trying to hypnotize her? Watching too much television again?”

“Yes, that was it exactly,” she said, letting sarcasm
drip from her voice. “I was just trying to calm her down and get a better look at her eyes when I asked her questions.”

“Did it work?”

“I didn’t have long enough,” she said.
Thank God,
she added silently. “Where are we going?”

“Across town. St. Vincent’s Cathedral.”

“Can’t they put someone else on it?”

“No, we’re the go-to guys for this one.”

“Let me guess,” she said with a sigh. “Local color?”

“Worse. There’s a dead nun with a pentagram on her forehead.”

St. Vincent’s Cathedral was one of the oldest in the city. Smaller than some of the newer cathedrals, it held an eerie charm that drew both locals and visitors alike.

When Samantha and Ed arrived they were met by a uniformed officer on the steps outside and escorted in. Unlike many cathedrals in the city, the interior was dark, with the light that streamed in from the stained-glass windows high above rarely reaching the pews or the ground beneath them. It took a moment for Samantha’s eyes to adjust, and then she and Ed walked slowly to the front, where police officers were clustered close to the altar. When they were still several feet away, the crowd parted enough for Samantha to get a good look at the body of a woman lying on top of the altar.
Just like a sacrifice
.

Her stomach clenched as they stopped next to the body. The young woman’s blue eyes were wide-open, frozen in a look of terror. Camille, by comparison, had looked peaceful. The nun was wearing her habit, but her head was bare. The pentagram on her forehead was bloodred, just as Camille’s had been, but Samantha could tell at a glance it wasn’t drawn in blood or even fingernail polish.

“What is that?” Ed asked.

“Wax.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure,” she said grimly.

She glanced around. In addition to the police officers, there were two older nuns and a young priest present. All of them looked deeply shaken. The nuns were talking to an officer, but the priest was sitting alone in a pew, head bowed.

Samantha walked over and sat down next to him. “I’m Detective Samantha Ryan. You okay?”

He looked up at her with troubled eyes. “Not really.”

“What can you tell me about her?”

“Sister Mary Ellen had the gentlest spirit of anyone I’ve ever known. She joined the convent when she was fourteen, after her parents died in an accident. She was truly devoted.”

“Did she have any enemies?”

“None,” the priest said, throwing up his hands in a gesture of despair.

“Does the church?”

He stared at her like he couldn’t believe she had asked him that. “As a whole, l’d say the Catholic Church has many enemies who would like to see harm come to her. If you’re referring to this cathedral in particular, there are none that I can think of. We have been blessedly free of scandal and view ourselves as an integral, and welcome, part of the community.”

It sounded rehearsed, but she let it go for the moment. “Any friends or family?”

“She has a sister, Jane Daniels. She’s in a mental institution—some tragedy a couple of months ago. I’m not sure of the details.”

Samantha got out her notepad and jotted down the information. “Do you know which one?”

“No, but I can find out for you.”

“I’d appreciate that. Who found the body?”

“I did. I was going to light a candle for my grandfather. When I came in, I saw something on the altar.”

Samantha twisted her head to look at the prayer alcove where white candles flickered, representing prayers for deceased loved ones offered up by the devout. Those prayers were supposed to speed the departed souls to heaven.
Candle magic
. She winced as the words came unbidden and then sighed. Candle magic wasn’t done with only white candles any more than it was done with only black ones.

And right now I need to find a red one.

She blinked and stood to get a better view. One of the candles in the alcove didn’t appear to be white. She walked over and found herself staring at a white candle with remnants of red wax dripping down it. Was it the remains of the red candle that had been used to make the pentagram?

On the floor, a bit of paper caught her eye. She stooped to pick it up just as Ed came over to her side. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

She nodded. “Crayon wrapper, from a red crayon.”

“And crayons are made of wax.”

“Exactly.”

“What is that?” the priest asked as he walked up and also noticed the red drips on the candle.

“Don’t worry—it’s not blood,” she reassured him. “It’s red wax, probably from a crayon. Do the Sunday school rooms have crayons in them?”

He nodded. “I believe the room for the preschool kids has some.”

“We need to check to see if any of the boxes are missing red crayons,” Ed said.

Five minutes later they were able to confirm that four of the boxes were missing the red crayons. Together they would provide enough wax to form the pentagram. Samantha pursed her lips. She was willing to bet that pentagram also had been drawn after the woman died. And the killer in both cases had used found items on the premises to make the pentagrams.
First nail polish, now crayons. Sick but creative.