Defender

Chapter 2-2

“Yes,” she said. “Colin Campbell. He lives up in Jerome.”

That particular revelation made Jack look at Kate more sharply. All right, just as many civilians lived in Jerome as did McAllister witches, but….

And then it clicked. Colin Campbell had married a McAllister witch — Jenny, whose sister Roslyn had died at Matías Escobar’s hands. Jack hadn’t recognized Colin’s name right away because, after all, the McAllisters weren’t his clan, although his niece Zoe had married one of them a little more than a year ago. The de la Pazes and the McAllisters had always gotten along well enough, and under normal circumstances, Jack would have been happy to meet someone who was connected to the Jerome witches, if only peripherally.

Now, though…..

The night air was pleasant enough, but he couldn’t prevent a thrill of cold from moving down his spine. This had to be a horrible coincidence. This woman’s brother might have married into the McAllisters, but clearly she was living a normal civilian life down here in Scottsdale. It shouldn’t make any difference that Colin Campbell’s wife had a sister who was murdered by a dark warlock.

But Lopez had said it looked like a ritual killing….

“Thank you, Kate,” Jack said as he handed the phone back to her. “I’ll need you to wait with Officers Manning and Lopez while I go take a look at the crime scene.”

“All — all right.” Something about her expression seemed even more stricken as he made the request, but he wouldn’t flatter himself that it was because he was about to leave her with someone else.

She was quiet as he guided her over to the officers’ patrol car. Lopez still appeared to be giving her the side-eye, but Manning was much friendlier, telling her to sit down on the back seat, asking her if she’d like some bottled water. Kate murmured a “yes, please” in response to the offer and then took a seat as directed, sitting sideways so her feet touched the ground outside the open car door.

Jack did his best not to look at her long legs, or at the pretty feet in the high-heeled sandals. It was really insane for him to be paying any attention to those sorts of distractions, considering the circumstances. He’d be the first to admit that he was a devotee of the female form, but there was a time and a place for everything, and a crime scene where a woman’s estranged husband had just been murdered was definitely not it.

After excusing himself, he headed back to the building where the victim’s condo was located. As he paused at the bottom of the steps, taking in the layout of the place, a young woman in a deputy’s uniform approached. Lisa Peters — that was her name. Her face was pale, but her tone precise and level as she said, “We’ve done our preliminary inspection of the scene. It’s all yours.”

“Thanks,” Jack replied. He wouldn’t ask any questions of her now; he always liked to go into a crime scene with his mind fresh, no preconceived notions to possibly fog his perception of the site. Later they’d go over every single piece of evidence in excruciating detail, but that was for later, in the days and possibly weeks ahead. “I’m going up.”

Peters nodded and headed off toward one of the squad cars parked on the street. Jack didn’t even bother to take in a breath, but headed up the stairs to what had once been Jeff Nichols’ condo.

The door stood open, the entrance barred with yellow crime scene tape, even as light glared from the unit. Jack ducked under the tape and paused just inside the door. His heart gave a heavy, disapproving thud. Yes, he’d seen his fair share of homicide investigations, had witnessed more ugliness than he ever wanted to consciously recall, but none of that had prepared him for the scene that confronted him now.

The blood spatter wasn’t exactly spatter. Its coppery stink assailed his nose, but he realized right away that the b****y markings on the walls and the floor weren’t there by random chance, that there were distinct patterns to those markings. Nothing as crude as an upside-down pentacle or the horned symbols used by today’s Satan worshippers, true, but Jack thought he recognized some of them, sigils old as civilization, signs used to invoke the dark powers, to summon the forces of the underworld to the spell-caster’s aid. Some were sharp and spiky in shape, others intricate circles with arcane lettering surrounding them, but all of them were evil.

Again that icy trickle of dread traced its way down his spine. He knew he would have to tread carefully here, because of course none of his coworkers had any idea that he was in fact a warlock, and therefore in possession of knowledge no ordinary homicide detective should have.

Grace Pedersen came up to him as he made himself take a step forward. Her blue eyes, usually cheerful as a summer sky, were shadowed, and the lines around them seemed far more pronounced than they normally were. Even so, she tried to summon a watery smile. “Hey, Jack. Just another night in Scottsdale, huh?”

“Something like that,” he responded. His gaze tracked to the huddled form on the floor, now mercifully covered by a rubber sheet. Even with the sheet concealing the worst of the damage, however, he could tell there was something wrong about the shape of the body under that sheet. “Time of death?”

“A little after seven, near as we can determine without an autopsy,” she said.

Steeling himself, he knelt and pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and slipped them on, then reached out with a thumb and forefinger to pull back one corner of the rubber sheet.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

It took all his effort not to murmur a spell of protection under his breath right then, a barrier of white light against the darkness. Surely he was in need of such a thing, as were Grace, who looked on worriedly, and Ian, who methodically moved along the bloodstained walls and took picture after picture of the various symbols painted there.

Even half-obscured by the sheet, Jeff Nichols’ face was a mask of terror, eyes staring white-ringed, mouth open in a silent scream. A fine mist of red coated his features, residue from arterial spray. Fighting back a sick feeling, Jack looked down and realized the victim’s hands had been severed and now lay neatly on either side of his head. The fingertips were coated with blood, almost as if….

His gaze moved to the sigils on the walls. They were precise enough, and yet the streakiness of the outlines made him realize that they hadn’t been painted on with any kind of brush. No, it seemed that….

He let go of the rubber sheet and stood. “The perpetrator used the victim’s fingertips to paint those signs on the walls?”

Grace nodded, then swallowed. She’d always seemed the soul of competence to him, tough and almost impossible to rattle after twenty-five years investigating crime scenes, but right then she looked as if she was doing everything in her power to prevent herself from throwing up. “That’s what Ian and I think. Of course, it’ll take further analysis to be absolutely sure.” A pause, and then she asked, her voice nearly a whisper, “Jack, who the hell would do something like this?”

“No one sane,” he replied. Normally he didn’t make those sorts of armchair diagnoses — after all, he was no psychiatrist — but he didn’t see how anyone in their right mind could do this sort of thing. “So we need to find them, and fast.”

“Understood.” She hesitated before saying, “Unfortunately, so far we haven’t found anything here except the victim’s blood.”

“No tracks?” Jack inquired. With the amount of blood spilled, you’d think the killer would have stepped in some of it.

“None that we can find.” Her gaze moved down to the plastic covers she wore on her shoes. Jack hadn’t bothered with them, since the bloodstained carpet had already been protected by more plastic, but Grace had taken the precaution since she was one of the first people on the scene. “Maybe the killer had made sure he was protected, and wore gloves and plastic covers on his shoes. The cuts that removed the hands from the victim’s body were done with surgical precision, as far as I’ve been able to tell. Whoever killed Jeff Nichols, he — or she — was very careful about it.”

“And no one saw anything.”

Her shoulders lifted, even as Ian paused in snapping pictures and walked over to them, then said, “No one on this side of the building. The patrol officers also questioned the people in the four units on the north side, but one of those condos is empty — apparently it’s used as a vacation rental — and of the remaining three, only one person was actually home. Lily Perez, fifty-two. She said she was watching Netflix and didn’t hear anything.”

Of course. Right then, Jack wished the public was a little more the way it tended to be portrayed in books and movies, hyper-vigilant and noticing everything. Unfortunately, his experience told him that most people tended to ignore anything that wasn’t directly under their noses.

“What about the surrounding buildings?”

“One of the other uniforms on-scene is going door to door, but I doubt he’s going to turn up anything. Whoever did this was in and out without anyone noticing.”

Jack nodded. Sometimes you got your clues handed to you, and sometimes you had to pry them out of the minutest traces of evidence. So far, it sounded like the killer had taken care not to leave anything behind to identify him — somehow, Jack doubted the murderer was a her — but it was far too early to declare defeat.

Besides, he had all those symbols painted on the walls. Dark magic, the blackest possible…which meant there were few warlocks in the world who would have risked their very souls to perform that kind of conjuring. Certainly no one in the de la Paz clan, and none of the McAllisters, either. A few years ago, he might have suspected Damon Wilcox, but Damon had been dead for nearly four years now, and none of the other Wilcoxes appeared inclined to take over his more dubious experiments.

Which left Jack with…what? The Santiagos? Certainly they had several bad eggs among their clan, but with Matías Escobar and his two cousins stripped of their powers and sentenced to life in three separate civilian prisons, that didn’t leave many other suspects.

Also, there were the Castillos, the witch clan in New Mexico. They kept to themselves, although they’d long been friendly with the Wilcoxes, which made them somewhat suspect in Jack’s eyes. Still, he’d never heard of any Castillos coming anywhere near de la Paz territory. Surely Luz Trujillo, his clan’s prima, should have been able to sense any interlopers trespassing on their land.

He’d have to talk to her, just in case. Actually, there were several people he needed to talk to, once he had copies of all the photos Ian had just taken. There were several in the clan who had knowledge of the old, dark ways, even if they didn’t practice those f*******n arts themselves.

“Okay,” he said, after a long pause during which both his assistants studied him with worried expressions, as if they guessed he had the beginnings of certain suspicions going through his mind, suspicions he didn’t yet wish to share. “I’m going to check out the rest of the condo.”

“You won’t find anything,” Ian said. “Nichols was killed here in the living room. Nothing in any of the other rooms was disturbed.”

“Maybe,” Jack replied. “But I still want to check it out.”

Ian shrugged and returned to his photographs, while Grace went to retrieve her fingerprint kit and head into the kitchen, which appeared relatively untouched. The whine of the camera seemed to penetrate Jack’s eardrums as he moved down the short hallway to the bedroom.