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“I’ll bet you didn’t see this coming,” she mumbled, more to break the morbid silence than anything else.
There was no reply to the bad quip. Not that Cass expected one. She never communicated directly with the dead. Except in one case, which was completely different altogether.
Of course, there was the monster to contend with, but the resolution of what that thing was, was still too far off to consider. Was it connected to the woman at the bottom of the steps? Was it too much of a stretch to believe that it wasn’t?
Cass wasn’t ready to think about it. Better to wait for Dougie and let him decide what had happened before she started leaping to conclusions she couldn’t back up with facts. She trembled involuntarily and Muffy squirmed in her arms. She set him down, careful to keep a firm grip on his collar so he couldn’t return to the body. Turning to her right, she spotted the older woman scurrying down the sidewalk as fast as her aging body would carry her.
“The police are coming. They’re coming,” she huffed as she came within hearing distance of Cass.
Cass nodded in thanks, then handed her back her dog. The woman reattached Muffy’s leash and together they all stood in front of the stairwell like sentinels standing guard over the body.
Minutes later, sirens broke through the early-morning quiet. Two cars screeched to a stop as uniformed officers popped out and started barking orders to one another.
“Do we need an ambulance?”
Cass shook her head at the stocky officer who approached her first. “No. Maybe to take her to the morgue…”
The cop’s face didn’t change with her answer. “Right. We’re going to ask you to wait over there. We’ll need to ask you some questions in a little bit.” He was pointing to a stoop a couple of feet away and numbly Cass nodded. Sitting suddenly seemed very necessary. She tugged on the arm of the woman, who was trying desperately not to look down the steps as the uniformed officers secured the area.
“Come on. We should get out of their way.”
From the third step of the stoop, Cass watched as two standard-issue city cars pulled up. She wondered how it was that detectives were always so shocked when they were made so easily by the criminal element. The car reeked of cop.
Dougie’s long form emerged from the vehicle and instantly he spotted her. Ignoring her for the moment, he checked on the scene. The uniforms had taped off the stairwell, and soon the techies would be by to snap photographs and collect evidence from the apartment and from the victim. Evidently satisfied with the progress they were making, Dougie made his way to where she sat with the old lady at her side.
“How…”
“I don’t know. I think she was stabbed.”
“No, I meant how are you here?”
Cass knew what he meant, but there wasn’t an easy answer. She certainly didn’t want to elaborate with the woman, Ethel, she’d come to learn was her name, and her dog sitting next to her.
“My Muffy found her. My Muffy was very brave,” the woman interjected.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dougie replied politely. “Very brave. The PPD thanks you very much for calling this in and for waiting so that we can question you. If you would head over to the officer with the blond hair, he’s got some questions for you.” Dougie pointed to one of the uniformed cops, who looked to be just out of school. Surely someone so young wasn’t able to handle the responsibility of standing between evil and the rest of society? Someone with a job like that should at least be shaving, Cass decided. Then again, given her youthful appearance and the fact that Ethel called her honey as if she were soothing a child, she guessed she couldn’t throw stones.
“Just tell him everything you saw and heard. And don’t leave anything out,” Dougie said.
Ethel nodded slowly as if to suggest that she took her civic duty very seriously. “Of course I will.”
Cass stood and reached for the woman’s elbow, helping her to her feet even as Dougie reached for the woman’s other arm. On legs that probably weren’t as steady as they had been when she’d set out that morning, Ethel managed the few cement steps until she was back on the sidewalk. “You’ll catch the person who did this? That’s your job.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Satisfied, Ethel led Muffy to the blond kid in the blue uniform.
Once she was out of earshot, Cass asked, “Does the PPD thank me, too?”
“No,” he growled softly. “The PPD wants to know what the hell you’re doing here.”
How could she tell him? What would she tell him?
There was a monster in my mind.
To her it sounded a lot like having one under your bed or one in your closet. Like the kind of nightmare a child might have. Only she wasn’t a child and it, whatever it was, hadn’t been a nightmare. She was pretty sure of that now.
She was afraid that Dougie, despite all his good intentions to be open-minded where she was concerned, wouldn’t get it. He might believe she spoke with the dead, but this was asking too much of anyone.
“I think you must be grumpy because they got you out of bed.”
“Absolutely I’m grumpy but not because of a lack of sleep. It’s the lack of answers that’s annoying me right now. Talk to me, Cass.”
She took a breath and tried to explain. “I had a thing. A weird thing. I felt…”
Fear. A deep and gut-wrenching fear of the dead, something she’d never felt before. And a darkness. She’d felt that, too. Beyond the beast, there had been inky blackness rather than the hazy fog she’d become used to.
As if the horns hadn’t been sinister enough.
No, there was no point in telling Dougie this. Not when she couldn’t explain what it meant.
“I heard a dog barking,” she said. “I came out here, followed the sound and there she was.”
“That’s not even remotely convincing.”
Cass shrugged. “It’s the best I can do for now. Let’s just say…I had a gut feeling.”
“Right.” He snorted somewhat disgustedly. “Look, I’ll let it go for now until I can pull all the facts together. But we’re eventually going to have to talk about this. Whatever happened to this girl…”
“She had her tongue cut out, Dougie.”
He didn’t bother to issue the standard police line that nothing was certain and that until evidence was gathered and analyzed nothing would be accomplished by leaping to conclusions about the relationship between two seemingly unconnected victims. She knew better.
“I don’t have to tell you to keep this quiet.”
That made her laugh. “Who am I going to tell?” Her world consisted of about three people, one of whom was standing in front of her.
“I’m just saying we don’t need the press…”
“Dougie? It’s me. I’m not going to talk to the press. Ethel you might have to talk to.”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “Two women, a few blocks apart, both missing their tongues and no signs of sexual assault. This doesn’t smell right.”
“At least one thing is for sure,” she reminded him. “You know now that Malcolm McDonough didn’t kill his sister.”
“Great,” Dougie muttered unenthusiastically. “Mr. Connections goes free, but there’s a wacko loose in the city.”
“A psycho-city wacko,” Cass repeated, recalling his description from last night.
Dougie looked back to the stairwell where they were finally bringing the body up. That they had tried to be careful with her was obvious, but the body bag was still covered in the woman’s blood.
“Definitely.”
Chapter 5
Cass walked through her front door and instantly started shivering. She hadn’t realized how cold she’d been, almost numb from it, until the warmth had started to creep back into her skin. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking, running out of the house barely dressed late in October.
Actually, that was the point. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been reacting and she found the idea unsettling.
To combat the cold, she found a sweater in her bedroom and then went back to the kitchen to make some soothing lemon tea. Five minutes, that’s all she wanted. Five minutes to not have to think about anything.
But that wasn’t going to happen. The image of the woman’s body being carted off haunted her. Then, as people came outside ready to start their day, a crowd had gathered around the scene, as tends to happen when there is trouble. Neighbors spoke about the woman, talked about suspicious characters that she called customers. Apparently there was no boyfriend in the picture, no obvious enemy. Nobody that anyone could instantly finger as a murderer, anyway.
After an hour of Cass sticking to her story about simply hearing the dog, Dougie had relented and let her go. It wasn’t as if telling him about the monster was going to get him any closer to the person who did this. Trace evidence, detective work, finding out whatever link there was between Lauren and the palm reader—that would be helpful to him.
Ghostly monsters in her head…not so much.
Cass dipped her tea bag and sighed. She was lying to herself and she wasn’t very good at it. The real reason she hadn’t told Dougie about it was because she didn’t want there to be a connection. She didn’t want to believe that she was ever going to have to see that thing again. Shame descended on her as she considered what she’d done. If the monster was related to the murder and she was ignoring it because of that god-awful fear that she’d experienced during contact, then she was nothing better than a coward.
What had the palm reader suffered? What had Lauren? Certainly more than mere fear.
Thinking about Lauren brought Cass back to the night when Lauren had been killed. There hadn’t been any monster then. No unusual dreams at all that she could recall. Did that mean that the monster and the murders weren’t related? Or did it mean that maybe Lauren’s murder and the palm reader’s death weren’t related?
No, that didn’t make sense. They had to be. Dougie had said so. Two women, blocks apart, both stabbed and both with missing tongues. Philadelphia could be a dangerous city, but such gruesome deaths weren’t exactly standard fare.
Who the hell cuts out a tongue?
“A sick bastard,” she told the empty room. Who the hell else cuts out a tongue?
Cass thought about the serene young woman who had made contact through her to reach out to her brother. Lauren was beautiful. And there was an aura around her spirit that suggested sweetness and gentleness. Two qualities that her half brother obviously didn’t share. To have her life end that way—so abruptly, so brutally—was wrong. Unjust.
Of all people, Cass knew better than to expect fairness in life. She hadn’t been born cynical. Growing up with television and movies, where the good guy always won, the bad guy always got caught and the right thing, whatever that was, always happened in the end, had given her a rose-colored view of life and the people in it. Being raised by old-fashioned grandparents who believed in things like trustworthiness and honor only reinforced those lessons.
But that all ended the night the nurse locked her into her room at the asylum.
A phone ringing startled Cass out of her memories. There was no point in going back there, not when it only brought sadness. She put down her cup of tea and reached for the phone, but stopped when she recalled that Dr. Farver now had her new number. She waited for the three rings to pass and for the answering machine to pick up.
Only it wasn’t Dr. Farver—it was Kevin, the manager from the coffeehouse.
“Uh, hey, Cass, I heard about what happened last night from Susie. Look, I hate to do this, especially over the phone, but…you don’t need to come back to work. It’s just…nobody will work a shift with you. You’ve wigged them all out and if it’s a question of you or everybody else…well, I’ve got to let you go. If you could mail back your apron and keys that would be cool. I’ll mail you your final check. You don’t have to worry about stopping by. Uh, well, see ya.”
Fabulous.
She didn’t have to worry about stopping by. Translated: please don’t show your face around here anymore. Fired. By a kid who she knew carried a fake ID.
Cass took her tea, flopped down on her futon and waited for her cats to come and comfort her, which they did in short order. There was no point in getting upset over it. It wasn’t as if this was the first time she’d lost a job because of her gift; it was just that jobs in general weren’t the easiest things to come by for her. She didn’t have a college degree; for obvious reasons, she never had good references to offer a prospective employer; and if anyone looked too closely into her past, there was that whole “committed to a mental asylum” strike she had against her.
Fortunately, her lifestyle didn’t require much money. The minimalist style she’d adopted helped to keep costs down while giving her flexibility if she needed to leave in a hurry, as she did when she’d decided to leave Dr. Farver and the institute in D.C. Not to mention, she wasn’t the type of person who needed things. Cass imagined that came from a very intimate understanding few people had: possessions didn’t follow you to the other side.
Luckily, this time she would have a check for her consulting work, which would be enough to tide her over until she found something else. Maybe another coffeehouse or an ice-cream parlor. Something where she could connect with people because she believed it was important for her to do that, but not so many people at once that the connections overwhelmed her. Like at the waitressing job she’d taken last year at a popular roadhouse. She’d been so bombarded by energies knocking at her door that she’d ended up dropping more plates than she’d served.
Better to wait and find something that fit. If she had to, she could always go back to doing readings for money.
Cass cringed. The thought of using her gift to make a living had always made her uneasy. Oh, she knew others who had done it, had in fact grown rich as a result of their talent. She didn’t resent them, but to her it too closely resembled selling herself. Not unlike a hooker.
“Get over it,” she mumbled to herself. “You’ll do what you need to, to survive. You always have.”
A knock on her door had the cats bolting off the futon in opposite directions.
“Let’s see,” Cass said as she stood and made her way to the door. “This day started with a monster, then a murder, then being fired. What do we think is behind door number two, Stan?”
More than likely it was Dougie coming to bug her again for answers she wasn’t ready to give. Cass checked the peephole and gasped in surprise at the ominous presence of Malcolm McDonough.
This just wasn’t her day.
Cautiously, she opened the door. “What do you want?” Instantly, she found herself on the defensive. Considering his prior verbal assault, she decided it was the smart place to be.
“To talk.”
“We talked last night. I heard every word you said.”
As she moved to shut the door, he put his hand against the frame. Part of her felt no qualms about slamming the heavy door against his fingers. A few broken appendages might teach him a lesson, but it wasn’t her style.
“Let me rephrase. I need to talk to you.”
And that’s when it occurred to her why he had come. He knew about the second victim.
“Someone told you.”
“I have…”
“Connections,” she finished.
“Yes. Can I come in?”
Against every reasonable instinct she had, she backed away from the door and let him inside. “For a few minutes. That’s all.”
Malcolm came in but stopped short as he took in her apartment. “You don’t believe in furniture, or you can’t afford it?”
“Don’t need it,” she answered quickly, remembering his comment about her coat. She took note of the Rolex watch on his wrist. Even his blue jeans sported a brand name that probably wasn’t often found on construction sites. This was a man who believed in having things. She almost felt sorry for him. Almost. “Don’t worry. I’m not a destitute waif.” Just jobless and short.
“I’m not,” he said quickly. “Worried that is. What happened to your lip?”
“Bit it. You wanted to talk.”
Malcolm hesitated. Staring down at her in her pajama bottoms and oversize sweater, he was immediately seized with the realization that the idea that had brought him rushing to her door could very well be absurd.
Suddenly agitated, he moved inside the spartan room.
It’s just that when he received the call about the second attack, his contact at the police station had told him that the body was found by the same woman who had questioned him at the station the night before.
It couldn’t be a coincidence. Instantly Malcolm had phoned Brody to let him know that he wanted her brought in for questioning regarding the murders, but he’d been practically laughed off the phone and assured that he was wrong.
He should have suspected as much. Detective Brody had seemed quite friendly with her. The two of them must have some sort of relationship. He concluded that they were sleeping with each other. Maybe she had seduced the detective to protect herself from suspicion. Or possibly to get close to the case. To know every move the police made. It didn’t matter.
What did matter was that she was involved in his sister’s death. There was no question about that in Malcolm’s mind. He knew it because she had obviously known Lauren. She’d spoken with her, learned about her life and her history with him. Heard the story about the nurse from her.
It was the only explanation. If she knew Lauren, had gotten close enough to her to extract such insignificant details like that story, then why hadn’t she said as much to the detective?
The only reasonable answer was that she’d had something to do with her death. If the police weren’t going to arrest her or even question her about it, then he was.
However, standing here now in front of her, he didn’t see how it was possible.
Lauren was at least several inches taller. Probably twenty pounds heavier, too, yet she’d been overtaken, beaten, stabbed…by a waif?
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what to call you,” he began, unsure of how to address her.
“Cass is fine.”
“Short for Cassandra?”
She nodded once.
“Cassandra is lovely name,” he said, stalling for time. This was insane. He should go, but the story kept banging around inside his head. Only Lauren, him, the nurse and his parents had known about what happened in that hospital room. Yet she knew. How?
Exhausted after being up for more than thirty hours, he tried to force his brain to make some sense of the facts. The waif knew Lauren. Lauren was dead. The waif was lying. To protect someone?
What if the murderer was here? Or, if not, maybe he left something behind. He should search the apartment. Search it and find…what? The bloody knife lying in the sink under a stack of dirty plates? It didn’t seem likely.
“It’s Greek legend stuff,” Cass said, filling in the silence. “Cassandra could predict the future. Apollo came down from the mountain one day to woo her, but of course she would have none of it. Apollo sounds like an ass, doesn’t he? Always forcing himself on the mortals.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m not up on Greek mythology.”
Malcolm moved beyond the kitchen into the living room and saw the cats. He also saw the yoga mat and next to it some rubber bands that he knew from his experience in gyms were Pilates equipment. He turned and studied her again, this time concentrating on her body under the oversize sweater. Thin, yes. But that didn’t necessarily mean weak.
“Ahh.” She winced and gripped her stomach with her hand.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Cramps. Anyway, when Cassandra spurned Apollo, he cursed her. No one would ever believe her prophecies again. A hell of a thing to know you speak the truth, but to have no one believe you. I give my mother credit. She picked the absolute right name for me before she split.”
He looked up from his continuing assessment of her body when she stopped talking. He knew she’d caught him looking at her, staring really, but he didn’t care. Maybe she would chalk it up as typical male perusal. With her elegant face, jet-black hair and green eyes, he had to imagine she was used to the attention.
In fact it occurred to him that she was stunning. He hadn’t noticed that last night when he’d called her disgusting.
The knife, he caught himself. He was supposed to be looking for a knife.
“Do you mind if I use your bathroom?” he asked. “I want to splash some water on my face. It’s been a long night.”
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