Wicked Tempest: A Kate Waters Mystery (Kate Waters Mysteries Book 2) (8 page)

Kate combed a hand through her hair. She peered in a large mirror that ran the length of the conference table. Dark circles outlined her eyes. “That’s a possibility,” she thought aloud. “With my luck, I’ll probably get eaten by a pack of octopi.”

“This is no time to entertain humor,” Thea said. “You shouldn’t be putting yourself in any needless danger. Diving? Why don’t you just jump off the Banfield Bridge and see how many seconds it takes you to hit the water.”

Kate clucked her tongue. “I am certified to dive, you know.” She questioned why Thea hadn’t mentioned the statue, that it had been stolen from her. If she did say something about it, then she would also have to admit she had lied and stolen it in the first place, two things Thea wouldn’t do.

“The storm is coming, and the Goddess will kill again,” was all Thea said before she hung up the phone.

Great. Kate walked back to her desk and listened to the local weather channel on the radio. She didn’t believe in things like prophetic storms and curses, and she said it aloud to herself after hearing the storm warning advisory for the central Oregon coast.

***

Wells slowed his patrol car to 25 mph on the main street of Multnomah Village. He drove to the house of Suzanne Jones, a friend of Brooke Jennings who had called this morning regarding concerns she’d had about her friend’s death. She said she had something important to tell him.

It didn’t sit well with him. Not only because Brooke Jennings had died of natural causes—M.E. John Collins couldn’t have made an error—and that Brooke had been a practicing witch in the same coven as Jevanna Waters, whose death had also started out as an accident, but because of the way Suzanne Jones had said it. Whether or not her information provided any insight into Brooke’s case, something had struck her deep enough to put a chill behind her words. Essentially, so long as nothing suspicious developed from this visit, he considered the case closed. No secrets. No hidden threats. Just the usual routine questioning, he told himself.

Nevertheless, Jev’s sister, Kate, and Thea had been at the scene of another crime.

Thea. He had dreamt of her face last night, a woman he found just as attractive as she was unsettling. He found himself returning to the moment when she walked by him on Brooke’s porch, the way her body brushed against his arm ever so lightly. He shivered once more, then shook his head and returned his attention back to work.

He parked his midnight-blue patrol car in front of Suzanne’s house, 2304 Sherwood Lane, a gray bungalow with plum trim and an assortment of wind chimes dangling from the roof’s edge. Two young girls walked down the block, too young to be living alone, and his thoughts took a sharp turn to Julie again. Like these girls’ parents, he couldn’t watch her at all hours either. Julie had crossed into womanhood, and she had to learn to protect herself, but how in a world filled with danger? The movement of a curtain in Suzanne’s front window caught his attention. He covered his worries behind a welcoming smile and stepped from his car.

The melody of the chimes rang softly as he walked up her steps to the front door. Though most people would have found the sound calming, it rattled him instead—as if someone or something awaited him.

Overhead, a flock of crows dove into a fir tree in the middle of Suzanne’s yard. Their cries escalated and resounded with the strength of numbers. He gaped at the branches and realized what he had thought were limbs and pine cones were actually crows, hundreds of them nestled in the tree. A meeting of animal minds. In the sky, streams of crows flocked to the overcrowded fir tree in Suzanne’s yard. Of all places, Wells thought, the gathering had to be in the yard of the witch he was visiting.

Suzanne opened the door before he had a chance to knock.

“Hello, Suzanne Jones?”

“Hi, Detective Wells. Please, come in.”

Suzanne had dark, multi-colored hair pulled up into a high ponytail. She dressed in punk fashion: tall, black leather boots, a plaid turquoise and white skirt with black tights, a black glitter sweater, and two shades of red in her hair. She was as tiny as a pre-adolescent teenager. Given her size, Wells suspected she struggled with either bulimia or anorexia, but despite her gaunt features, she was a very pretty girl.

“Good afternoon,” Wells said as he stepped inside.

“Thanks for coming.”

The inside of her house reflected her taste in clothes: dark blue painted walls, abstract art, stacks of electronic devices, and a pile of half-folded laundry, darks of course. Wiccan furnishings embellished the room—candleholders with silver pentacles, Celtic symbols, and on the coffee table, occult books on protection, midnight ritual, and psychic meditation. Light afternoon reading, he thought to himself.

The gurgle of a coffee pot puffed from the kitchen, wafting a sweet nutty smell. “I have coffee brewing or I can get you a glass of water,” she said.

“Coffee would be great.”

“Why don’t we sit in the kitchen?” She pointed to the kitchen table and moved a pile of books onto the counter next to the toaster.

“Sure.” Wells took a seat near the window.

Suzanne sat down opposite him, her boney fingers, nails painted black, folded together. She appeared nervous, so Wells spoke first.

“Suzanne, why don’t we start with how you knew Brooke?”

“I met Brooke in Thea Wright’s coven, the Blue Moon Coven. We immediately hit it off and became blood sisters.”

“Blood sisters?”

“Yeah, that’s when you consume a drop of each other’s blood during a Wiccan rite.”

He nodded, trying to imagine Thea performing such acts.

She stood to pour two cups of coffee and brought them to the table.

“Sugar?”

Wells shook his head. “No thanks.” He watched her pour a heaping teaspoon of sugar into her own mug.

Suzanne leaned forward with her elbows on the table. “A few days ago, Brooke came to me about someone playing pranks on her.”

“What kind of pranks?”

“She said that she’d found a dead snake on her doorstep.”

“What else?”

“It was more than one, which is why she thought someone was trying to give her a sign.” Suzanne’s expression deepened. She took a drink of her coffee. “The snake was laid out in a wheel shape, in a way that didn’t seem natural if it had died of natural causes, you know?”

Wells wrapped his hands around the heat of the coffee mug. “Did she name anyone?”

“Not exactly, but she and Thea weren’t getting along.”

Something shifted inside Wells’ gut at the mention of Thea’s name again. Warmth flushed his cheeks, which wasn’t an effect of the coffee. “What would she have accused her of?”

“Thea once said she wanted to curse Brooke.”

“Why would she want to curse Brooke?”

Wells tried to keep an open mind while Suzanne explained, because while she sat there telling him that she believed Thea might have been the one playing the pranks on Brooke, a voice in Wells’ head assured him that Thea wouldn’t have done or said those things. There must be some mistake or another explanation. Not Thea, he wanted to say.

“I don’t know,” Suzanne said with a heavy sigh. “I gather Thea didn’t like the decisions Brooke made in her personal life.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“No. Thea never told me, and Brooke said she didn’t want to get into specifics, but I think Thea frowned upon something Brooke did.”

That was good. He could accept that. Thea was a woman with morals and values, and maybe some people needed to be cursed. He could think of one young boy in particular.

Regardless of whether Thea had cursed Brooke or not or even left the dead snakes at her door, Brooke still died from natural causes. There was nothing more to it.  

“Do you think Thea was serious about cursing her? Do you think she would have hurt Brooke?”

Suzanne paused. “No. We all know Thea practices black magic from time to time, but I think she does it for balance. I can’t see her hurting Brooke, at least never killing her. Maybe she planted the snakes to warn her, but she wouldn’t have hurt her. Harming others goes against the law of hurting none, something central to our beliefs.”

Wells wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or not.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Suzanne said. “But after Brooke found the snakes, things started happening to her, strange things…almost otherworldly.”

“Such as?”

“She kept having close encounters with death. An embankment along the river gave way when she passed over it. Another time, a brick broke loose from the roof of a building downtown and nearly landed on her head, and then lightning almost struck her. The bolt struck so close to her, it demagnetized all of her credit cards.”

Wells didn’t like the coincidence of lightning strikes, but then he remembered John mentioning that more people would probably suffer them as the intense storms passed through Portland.

Suzanne strung a lock of her bangs back behind her ear. “I’m sorry if this is a waste of your time, Detective Wells. I just thought you should know.”

Wells took a sip of his coffee. It was strong and bitter. Like Thea? His gut told him otherwise. She may be strong, but not bitter. “It’s always best to follow your gut,” he said to Suzanne. “Is there anything else that you can think of? Arguments Brooke may have had with anyone, visitors at her house that you know of? Something or someone that stands out?”

Suzanne thought for a moment. A glimmer crossed over her eyes. “Yes. Brooke had a mark on the back of her neck but she couldn’t recall how she’d gotten it. She was convinced it was the mark of a curse.”

“A curse of Thea’s?” he asked Suzanne, even though he knew that they were Lichtenberg’s Flowers.

“No. A curse from a god or goddess or some malevolent spirit.”

“What did this mark look like?”

“Kind of like a wheel with a bunch of lines extending out from it, like tree branches.”

“You say Brooke was almost hit by lightning. How many days before her death did that happened?”

“Two days, maybe three. It was after she came back from the beach.”

“Which beach was that?”

“Rockaway.”

Rockaway…the name sounded familiar. Another case he had heard of recently? He made a mental note to research the town. “Did she go to the beach by herself?”

“As far as I know. She usually stays at the Ocean Villa Condominiums where she takes pictures of the beach and surrounding hillsides.”

“You’ve been very helpful, Suzanne. Unless there’s anything else, I should be going.”

“No, I think that’s all.” Her eyes drooped at the corners, a look of sadness.

“I’ll take another look into Brooke’s file, but I can’t guarantee that you’ll have any more answers.”

“That’s okay.”

Wells reached his arm over the table and touched her hand. “Thanks Ms. Jones. I can see myself out.”

He stood from his seat. “Call me if you think of anything else.” He handed her his card.

“Sure. Thank you.”

Wells stepped outside, mindful of the squawking crows high up in the tree when he had arrived at the house earlier. They were still there. The weight of a hundred watchful eyes followed him back to the car. He sat inside, contemplating Suzanne’s comment regarding the “otherworldly” things that had happened to Brooke before she died. His thoughts lingered back to Thea’s black magic, and another shiver swept down his neck. Thea had wanted to curse Brooke. Thea and her black magic. Thea with her unruly, auburn curls, her fair skin, rounded lips, and dark, green eyes. The chill he had felt a moment ago persisted, and he wondered then what his unease was really linked to. Not the crows or the curse. It was Thea. She made him nervous—she was a witch—but nervous of what she was or what she was becoming to him?

The two-lane highway meandering toward the central Oregon Coast pushed a wave of sickness into Kate’s gut. She and Bruce rode in the back of Stewart’s silver, 2013 Land Rover. They drove past berry groves, agricultural countryside, and forested state parks. Clouds drifted overhead like smoke, casting a gloomy shade over the landscape. The forecast had warned of choppy ocean swells, which Kate hoped was nothing their boat, the Dawn Maiden, couldn’t handle. She glanced back at one giant charcoal-blue cloud in particular. Now lightning…that posed a different threat entirely, she thought.

Conversations dipped in and out of geology and politics, but a corner of Kate’s mind continued to mull over the statue she had found in Thea’s house. Brooke’s statue to be exact. Thea had lied to her. Why? For what purpose did she steal it? Could she have killed Brooke? Kate forced her thoughts aside with a heavy sigh. Thea wasn’t a killer. Just a witch, not necessarily a comforting alternative.

They arrived at Scott’s Mooring Dock in Newport, Oregon, just before 8 a.m., and were three miles out to sea before 10 a.m. The expedition consisted of their team (Kate, Stewart, and Bruce), plus oceanographer Nick Bratton, geophysicist Linda Jeffries, software specialist Barry Crawford, and an intern from Washington University, Scott Walker.

Nick had golden flecks in his eyes and the tanned, boyish face reminiscent of a nautical lifestyle. He wore cargo shorts, a black microvelour zip-jacket with a white stripe on the shoulders, and water sandals. Linda looked like Amy Adams—blonde, freckles, and petite—so when Stewart noticed her, Kate wasn’t surprised to watch him let the rest of the world around him fall into space. Linda didn’t seem to mind, Stewart could be charming, but the occasional sideways glance at her coworker, Nick, hinted at her need for conversation rescue. He was busy with Barry, who was the typical mold for a computer guy, striped, faded polo stretched across a gut protruding over a saggy pair of jeans. The intern, Scott, appeared the most professional of the three, clean-shaven, hair trimmed and combed, and a polite, eager-to-be-here smile.

Kate busied herself with the diving equipment, while Nick showed Bruce how to operate the sonar dashboard controls of the Dawn Maiden. Then he and Stewart went over the remote-sensing instruments using topography radar. Linda and Barry studied real-time data on his laptop, recording the ocean floor movement 3 miles off the Oregon Coast. Their goal was to pinpoint the region affected by the earthquakes and plant seismometers around the area, so they could better monitor earthquake activity and landslides. Two of them would string a network of seismometers along the ocean floor via an optic cable clamped down with giant staples. It seemed easy enough, but at a depth of 100 meters, movement was difficult, and visibility nonexistent without lights.

“The first swarm of data we picked up came from the North Gorda Point and the Blanco Fracture Zone,” Bruce said, pointing at the screen Linda, Barry, and Scott studied. Kate leaned over to get a better look. “Then, just this morning, when the Axial Seamount began to tremor, it caused another minor slide in this area here.”

Kate checked her reports. “There were five earthquakes 3.0 or higher at that position.”

Overhead, the shrieks of sea gulls drowned out her voice. There were tens to hundreds of them, a massive cloud of high-pitched calls and flapping white feathers. The team waited for them to pass before continuing. Kate thought the birds flew in a disordered manner, knocking and swiping into each other, a few even attacking one another.

“The birds must be after something in the water,” Nick commented.

Kate looked out across the ocean with binoculars. She scanned the starboard side of the boat. “I don’t see anything. Must be just below the surface, maybe a dead seal.”

The boat slowed with a swaying force, throwing Kate off balance. She caught herself on the seat in front of her, before falling into Nick, who was ready to catch her.

“What the hell is that?” Barry said.

Everyone looked out over the water in front of the boat. Waves rocked and splashed against a crowd of sea life, all kinds, from fins to feathers.

In the middle of the sloshing waves, Kate thought she saw tentacles. “Is that an octopus?”

“I think so,” Nick said, seemingly in disbelief too.

“Seafood buffet,” Bruce said. “Looks like happy hour.”

The seven of them watched on, taking in the unusual sight. Squawks, bellows, and cries filled the air. Water kicked and sprayed up as life in the sea fought and struggled. Two whales swam at the outskirts nearby.  

“What’s going on?” Scott asked. He moved up next to Nick and Stewart.

“Maybe there are sharks in the area, stirring things up,” Nick said.

“But there’s an octopus out there,” Stewart replied, squinting through his binoculars. “It looks like it’s attacking a seal.”

Barry turned the boat sideways so that everyone could get a better view. A young seal thrashed its tail against the tentacles of the giant octopus. Other seals in the area dived around the octopus, smacking it with their tails and forcing the octopus to let go of the seal.

The behavior of the animals reminded Kate of the strange behavior she had witnessed in the neighborhood animals when she and Thea were on their way to Brooke’s house. “The animals in town are acting strangely too,” she said. In fact, my cat just had a seizure the other day.”

“No kidding,” Nick replied. “Hopefully she’s okay?”

“I think she will be, but as far as I know, she’s never been epileptic.”

Bruce turned in his seat. “Come to think of it, this morning I had to dodge a group of squirrels in the road. It was almost like they were all deaf and blind, just sitting there in the road, not even moving out of my way.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Linda said.

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “Maybe they’re reacting to the earthquakes.”

“Or the big one is coming,” Stewart said. “Seismic waves travel differently through water than they do over land. I imagine even subtle tremors in the crust are more pronounced and detectable.”

It occurred to Kate then that maybe, somehow, Thea had detected something too, that an imminent earthquake was actually the storm she worried about.

“But would that really explain this type of behavior?” Linda asked.

“Either that or Mother Nature is pissed off,” Bruce said. “With all the storms and quakes, something’s got her upset.”

“The storm goddess seeking her revenge,” Kate said aloud. Nick’s gaze landed on her, sharp and keen. “Just kidding,” Kate added, jokingly. Nick smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes where it looked like his own storm was brewing.

***

They docked at the crustal ridge of a fault line south of Devil’s Cove. Kate took her time putting on her gear, making sure it was right. The belts and tanks felt awkward at first, but as she moved about, buckling this and strapping that, the familiarity of it all came back to her. Stewart, Linda, Barry, and Nick would make the dive with her, a hundred and fifty feet below the surface of the cold Pacific, while Bruce operated the boat with Scott. After traversing the submerged rocky slope, pinpointing the nearest and safest zone to detect future earthquakes, they would string cable and plant the seismometers.

The water rocked against the boat and reflected the billowing clouds rolling across the sky. The four of them sat on the edge of the boat, resembling alien robots masked and armored with tubes and tanks. Stewart had another pack clipped to the front of him that carried the seismometers and cable.

Kate waited for Nick’s thumbs-up, and then she and Linda both flipped over backwards off the side of the boat. The coolness of the water squeezed around Kate. She breathed in hard, willing her body to fight off the desire to paddle back to the boat. She propelled her arms and kicked her legs vigorously, trying to warm up her inner core. Once the whole team had plunged into the water, they covered a few of the basic hand signals for both communication and safety before descending into a darkness, darkness Kate thought was similar to deep space.

Equalizing was always the hardest part for her. The sharp pressure in the ears, that at times felt as though her head would implode, always slowed her descent. Nick hung back with her, lowering into the deep at her rate until they reached a depth of 70 feet. At that point, Kate relaxed a little, having acclimated to the pressure of the water.

Stewart and Nick turned on their headlamps. Tiny particles floated around them, clouding the water and impeding their view of anything past the surrounding five feet. Visibility was less than normal from debris and earth kicked up during the landslide, but as they went deeper, the particles thinned and visibility increased. They swam along the side of the ridge, searching for the location of recent landslides. Schools of fish crowded past them every so often. Stewart and Linda followed along the embankment where the slides had occurred. The exposed rock had brighter hues of red and brown compared to areas that had accumulated sediment and sea life.

Stewart unzipped his bag and worked with her and Nick on locating points to place the seismometers. Barry took pictures and assisted them when needed. Stewart brushed away sediment at a spot on the floor and handed the seismometer to Kate. Once she had it buried in place, he strung the cable to another spot for positioning the next seismometer. Kate showed Linda how to secure the staples around the cable and helped her insert the next seismometer into the ground. Stewart gave Linda the thumbs-up and motioned for her to help him with the next one. He handed her a staple and a seismometer from his bag.

Kate looked over to her left where rock and earth had piled into massive boulders, marking the bottom of the seafloor like giant gravestones. Barry and Nick drifted down the embankment, collecting samples. She decided to follow them, seeing that Stewart and Linda were working well on the cables alone.

Barry’s light zigzagged through the water, growing smaller. He was swimming fast. Nick swam close behind him. Kate struggled to keep up with them. She considered turning around, but when she glanced back, she couldn’t see Stewart and Linda anymore. The dilemma now was that Nick and Barry didn’t even know she had followed them.  

The two of them slowed a little when Nick had caught up with Barry and grabbed a hold of his leg. Barry pulled back and spun around fiercely. Nick waved his hand at him, as though telling him, No. Barry gave Nick a shove and swam off. Nick followed him, and the two of them disappeared around a bend where fresh ocean rock had given way, an area too dangerous to swim through. Kate’s pulse quickened as she swiped her headlamp through the water. She hadn’t realized how far she’d descended—135-feet according to her gauge. Stewart and Linda were too far away now for her to swim back alone.  

She continued on, following Nick and Barry but they seemed to have disappeared into the rock. Kate stopped and waited, hoping they would return soon. She swung in a full circle, her headlamp lighting up nothing but darkness and the occasional dart of silver fish. She was alone, and if that wasn’t bad enough, her oxygen gauge read, 25 percent full.

***

The fading afternoon light turned the walls of Wells’ office the same green as he remembered seeing on the hospital’s floor, a gray-tinted dullness. He sat hunched over his desk looking at Brooke Jennings’ file, searching for anything he might have missed. Even though John had ruled out foul play, the new facts about pranks just before her death threatened to disentangle the tidy cohesion of his near-closing investigation.

Broken objects found near Brooke’s body were originally thought to have dropped on the floor from her fall. For peace of mind, Wells had to confirm this, because Suzanne’s account regarding Brooke’s fear for her own life before she died triggered a coiling shadow of doubt in his mind. It reminded him again of Jevanna Waters’ death, how the slow accumulation of seemingly random evidence had finally exposed the truth. She had been a victim of vehicular manslaughter, though forensic evidence had shown otherwise. Jevanna Waters had skidded off the road, but only because a madman chased after her.

He mulled over his conversation with Suzanne, paying close attention to the details that sparked further questions. The one that stood out the most was her comment that Brooke had been at the coast before her death—Rockaway Beach. He typed in the city and the search parameters for death and March. A case pulled up under the name, Jim Kelley. His body had washed ashore on the same beach, a body with Lichtenberg’s Flowers just like Brooke’s. It didn’t seem plausible.

Wells noted a sign-in date for the last statement regarding the autopsy, which listed fluid asphyxiation (drowning) with voltage burns occurring postmortem. He downloaded the attached pictures taken during autopsy. It showed a mark on the back of his neck and shoulder area, with crooked, red lines that fanned out from the center. Almost identical to what he remembered seeing on Brooke.

Wells opened Brooke’s case file and compared the pictures of her neck and Jim’s shoulder. Lining up the pictures together, he had the sudden sensation that the building had moved. He looked closer at the marks, at the uncanny similarity of the two. It seemed too much of a coincidence. Someone had to have drawn them on the skin. The patterns were nearly identical in color, shape, size, and location.

He picked up the phone and dialed the number to the medical examiner. John answered on the fifth ring.