Rapture

Chapter Thirty-three

Mel didn’t make it into the CCJ.

Her phone rang just as she left the house, and as she got it out of her purse to answer, she groaned. There were three voicemails that she hadn’t picked up over the course of the night, and this was Dick the Prick.

Something had happened while she had been…otherwise occupied.

“Hello?”

“Don’t you check your damn phone.”

“I’m sorry.” And no, she was not going to explain that she had been “busy” or Dick might jump to the conclusion as to why—and be right for once. “What’s up?”

“You know, a reporter’s job is twenty-four/seven, Carmichael.”

Well, the last two days were the first time he’d really treated her as one. “Has something happened?”

“Didn’t your radio wake you up this morning?” When she said nothing, he cursed. “There’s another dead blonde—found on the steps of the Caldwell Public Library. I wanted you there an hour ago—”

“I’m on my way now.”

This got her a heartbeat of silence—like he’d been looking forward to shanking her on a get-moving rant. “Don’t screw this up.”

“I won’t.” Mels smiled to herself. “By the way, I’m working a special angle on that prostitute with a source at the CPD. I know something no one else does.”

Now he actually sounded a little impressed. “Really?”

“More later.”

As she hung up on him, she left out the “hopefully” part, because she didn’t want to be equivocal with her boss—and besides, there was no way Monty wasn’t going to let her come forward. He was going to need the hit that snitching provided him.

Turning the radio on, she—

“—homicide department is downplaying the possibility of another serial killer in the city, but a source inside tells WCLD exclusively that the term is being used in connection with this victim and the case of another young blond woman found…”

Gee, wonder who that “source” was?

Monty was not monogamous, that was for sure.

Caldwell’s municipal book repository had always reminded her of the one in Ghostbusters—a.k.a. the New York Public Library. In fact, you had to wonder if there hadn’t been some conscious modeling on the bigger-and-better that was down in Manhattan: Across the facade, there were the requisite Corinthian columns and up above, a pediment with the gods and, yes, even two massive stone lions stood guard on either side of the imposing Neoclassical entrance.

Parking her mother’s car at a meter, she put in four quarters and jogged across Washington Avenue. It was obvious where the body had been found, and yeah, score one for visibility: The screening that had been put up was smack-dab in the center of the stone stairway that rose to meet the three main doors.

With police tape running from one lion’s perch to the other’s, all access was cut off, so she hung back, trying to find Monty.

For some reason, he wasn’t around, and like the other reporters, she didn’t get much from anyone else: nobody from the CPD was saying anything other than, “News conference at eleven.”

Eventually, Mels took a break and hit the Au Bon Pain across the way, scoring a piping-hot no sugar/no cream and a pecan roll the size of her head. Back out by the crime scene, she ate her sugar bomb and found the walkie-talkie was not her friend. Fueled by stimulants, her mind replayed every second of the night before….

Although all of her thoughts weren’t of the boom-chika-wow-wow type. Doubts lingered in the spaces between the kisses that she remembered, a strange, ambient fear making her edgy.

Even if they had dinner tonight, he was still leaving.

And other issues remained…

With a grim resignation, Mels took out her phone. Hitting up Tony’s cell, she waited one ring…two…three—

“Where’s my breakfast?” he said.

Mels laughed. “Still at Mickey D’s, I’m afraid.”

“You know, I could always make you borrow my car again.”

“I’ve got my mom’s today. Tomorrow, though? We could be in business again. Listen, did you happen to talk to any of your ballastics guys?”

“Oh, crap. Yeah, I did. I have one who’s willing to meet with you.”

“I don’t suppose he’s on the force?”

“Mind reader, are you?”

“Well, I have to go over to H.Q. for a news conference in about an hour, so I’ll be down there.”

“Okay, here’s the thing. He’s a little uncomfortable about it. He doesn’t want any trouble, and he’s only doing this because I set him up with his wife a couple of years ago. His name’s Jason Conneaut, and he’s in the CSI unit. Let me give him a call and see how he wants to handle things—he may not want to meet you on CPD property.”

“Thanks so much, Tony. Just call or text me.”

“Roger that.”

As she hung up, she thought, man, wasn’t it going to be awkward if the casing she’d found in her pocket with her change matched certain others.

And part of her wasn’t sure she wanted to know—but that anxiety was precisely why she had to follow through. It was one thing being off-kilter because she was falling in love and she didn’t want to get hurt—and the guy in question was not a safe bet emotionally speaking. It was another to let that crap get in the way of her job, her safety, or the public interest.

Staring over at the library steps, she really didn’t like where her thoughts went.

And it wasn’t just the unknowns about Matthias.

For so long, she had lived a tamped-down, flat life, frustrated but unwilling to make any changes, trapped in neutral in Caldwell—to the point where she hadn’t even recognized the hole she’d dug herself.

The question now was, What was she going to do about it all.

“So you’re going to see the reporter again, right?”

As Matthias sat on Jim’s sofa and loaded the borrowed gun, he really didn’t want to talk about Mels. “Thanks for this. And for the early lunch.”

The pastrami and ryes that the guy’s roommate had shown up with had seemed a little much to tackle at eleven a.m., but his stomach had gotten on board, and now, all that was left of the meal was the crumpled paper the sandwiches had been wrapped in, and a bunch of dead-soldier potato chip bags.

“Aren’t you?” Jim said again.

Matthias rubbed an eyebrow with his thumb. “Yeah. But after tonight, I’m leaving.”

“Where to?”

“Here and there.”

“Caldwell’s a good place to be. Big enough to get lost in, small enough to be able to control.”

Not the point, Matthias thought. And, as much as he trusted Heron on some levels, he wasn’t saying a damn thing about going to Manhattan.

Over in the corner, the decrepit TV flashed the logo of the local NBC affiliate, and then cut to the news desk. The instant the change happened, Jim shifted around and stared at the screen, his focus so intense, his eyes looked like they might blow the thing up.

“—WCLD-Six news team bringing you the latest in news, weather, and sports.” The anchorwoman was an Almost There, her hair a little too blond, her voice a little high, her hands a little twitchy, the package not quite on a New York level, but certainly a cut above the Midwest markets. “Our top story today is the discovery early this morning of a victim on the steps of the Caldwell Public Library. Caldwell Police Chief Funuccio held a news conference at eleven this morning and our crew was there….”

Matthias let the report drone on in the background as he focused on the change in Heron. And he wasn’t the only one: the roommate came in with the empty trash bin, took a look at Jim, and did a one-eighty with a curse, heading right back out the door.

What the hell was going on?

“—a strange pattern on the lower belly of the victim. The images that we are about to show you are graphic, and viewer discretion is advised.”

On the screen, a close-up of what was clearly skin and scratches was flashed, the etches that had been carved into the flesh appearing to be some kind of language—

Matthias blinked once. Twice. And then a part of his brain broke free so violently he let out a holler and threw his hands up to his head—

A black prison…bodies writhing…one who didn’t belong…

Oh, God, there was one who hadn’t belonged….

Pain racked him, his body remembering things that had been done to him on a visceral level as memories careened into him, the nightmare he’d had the evening before revealing itself as a vital living memory, what had happened in the recent past locking onto him with teeth that tore and claws that ripped through him—

“Matthias? Matthias—what the hell’s happening?”

Jim was in front of him, except he couldn’t see the man, both his eyes blinded as his lids fluttered up and down.

“Oh…God…” he heard himself moan as he listed to the side.

Hell…he had been in Hell, tortured and claimed, sucked down into the eternal prison after he’d been shot by…

“Isaac Rothe,” he blurted. “He killed me, didn’t he. He shot me because—”

Alistair Childe. The one Jim had told him about, the man whose son had been taken and whose daughter was in danger…Matthias had gone after the daughter, but she’d had a protector, a trained, highly effective protector, who, in the end, had prevailed by shooting Matthias in the chest.

He had died on the floor of the elder Childe’s house—

More memories came to him, the impacts like physical blows, the agony dragging screams from his joints and limbs.

“Matthias, buddy—”

Abruptly, the vision of a blond girl, a young blond girl with runes on her stomach and a tattered, bloody sheath around her, cut through everything…and stayed with him.

“She was down there with me.” Abruptly, his voice became strong and clear, untempered by the maelstrom in his skull. “The girl…was trapped with me.”

There was a pause. Or maybe his hearing had gone, too?

“Who,” Jim said in a frozen voice.

“The girl with the blond hair…”

Twin grips locked on his forearms, and he knew Jim had grabbed him. “Tell me her name.”

“The girl with the blond—”

“What was her name?” Jim’s voice cracked at that point. “Tell me—”

“I don’t know….” Matthias felt himself get shaken hard, as if Heron were trying to rattle loose the answer. “I don’t— I just know she was an innocent…who didn’t belong….”

Cursing, low and vile, got his attention.

“Who is she?” Matthias heard himself ask.

“Was she okay?” Jim demanded.

“There is no shelter in Hell,” he replied. “We were all in there together, and they were merciless.”

“Who were?”

“The demons…”