Night of the Raven Page 15

  “Only in my lurid imagination.” He made a sideways motion. “I’ll camp out in the living room.”

  She watched him lumber away, grunting out an old Johnny Cash song.

  McVey went to take stock of the yard through the kitchen window. “I don’t see Sparks braving a storm like this on the off chance he might be able to get to you. Not sure about our mysterious other.”

  From spectacular sex to abject terror—she’d run the gamut tonight, Amara decided. And dawn was still several hours away.

  “You missed a spot, Red.” McVey surprised her by coming up from behind and tugging on her hair. “Don’t get tangled up in all the loose threads. You’ll only freak yourself out.”

  She rubbed at a smear on the rim of a wineglass. “I’ve been freaked out since I walked onto a hotel balcony in the Vieux Carré and watched Jimmy Sparks put a bullet in a woman’s chest. She took one step, McVey, and dropped like a stone. It happened in a back alley on a night almost exactly like this. Sparks didn’t check to see if there might be witnesses. He just stormed into the alley and shot her.”

  “Jimmy Sparks is famous for his volatile temper.”

  “His lawyers claimed it was a drug-induced homicide. He takes a number of meds, all of which are strong, but none of which, even in combination, would drive a rational man to commit murder. The victim was a call girl. She tried to roll him. He took exception. That’s not good when the John in question is known to fly into violent rages without warning.”

  “What were you doing on a hotel balcony in the Vieux Carré?”

  “I was visiting a patient, doing a follow-up to a surgery I’d performed. She wasn’t a friend exactly, but I liked her and I wanted to make sure she was happy with the results.”

  “She being Georgia Arnault, former registered nurse and mother of six. Lives in a small town in the bayou. Her cousin works at the same hospital as you.”

  “You’ve done your homework.” Amara arched a brow. “Should I be impressed or flattered?”

  “Fact-finding’s easy when you’re a cop. In this case, the deeper I dug, the more I learned.”

  “And didn’t like.”

  “It’s hard to like a police officer who’d abuse his badge the way your patient’s boyfriend did over—what was it?—a ten-year period.”

  “Twelve. Every cop on the force in the town where they lived knew he was beating her. That’s five men who refused to see or act. Georgia said it was a solidarity thing, good old boys sticking together. I say all of them, and her so-called boyfriend most especially, should be subject to the removal of certain body parts.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with that.” McVey tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “You reconstructed Georgia’s face—nose, cheekbones, chin—and erased as much of the damage as you could.”

  “She’d been working on the emotional side of things, seeing a psychologist in New Orleans, which was why she was in a hotel the night of the murder. We were both on the balcony at one point. But Georgia’s afraid of thunderstorms, and the storm that night was wild.... What are you doing?” Amusement swam up into her eyes when he scooped her off her feet. “I saw that knee of yours, McVey. You can’t possibly carry me all the way upstairs and down the hall without experiencing tremendous pain.”

  Hiking her higher, he caught her mouth for a mind-numbing kiss that stripped away her breath and her mild protest. “I won’t be experiencing any pain, Amara. Not until tomorrow anyway.”

  She repositioned herself in his arms and used her teeth on his earlobe. When his eyes glazed, she whispered a teasing, “Wanna bet?”

  * * *

  OWING TO THE fact that Bellam Bridge appeared to be standing more out of stubbornness than any true structural support, Brigham reluctantly showed them an alternate route off the mountain.

  “Mention this to anyone,” he warned, “and not only will you be ‘uncommon’ faster than you can blink, but you’ll also find yourselves being watched by ravens every night.”

  Clinging to the base of a sapling and preparing to jump off a six-foot ledge into a puddle of mud, Amara didn’t ask the obvious question. She merely reminded herself that he was on her side and not trying to help Willy Sparks achieve his murderous goal.

  It took them more than ninety minutes to access the main road. They backtracked for another twenty to McVey’s truck, then squeezed into the cab for the remainder of the bumpy trip.

  Fanning her face with a clipboard from the dash, she pushed on her cousin’s massive leg. “I’m not six inches wide, Brigham.”

  “You want me to ride in the back like a dog?”

  “No, I want you to tell me what the deal is with staring ravens.”

  He grinned at her cross tone. “Hell, that’s Legend 101, Amara. Feathers delivered to doorsteps by a raven mean death. Ravens that sit and watch are doing it on someone else’s behalf.”

  “Someone good or someone evil?”

  He bared his teeth in a menacing smile. “That’s for you to figure out.”

  She frowned up at him. “Are you trying to scare me because I landed on your foot when I jumped from that big boulder earlier?”

  McVey, who’d remained silent until now, chuckled. “More likely he’s cranky because he’s hungover and Hannah’s coffee tasted like crap. Ravens fly, land and occasionally stare, Amara. So do crows and no one thinks twice about it.”

  Brigham snorted out a laugh. “Unless the people those crows are staring at live in Bodega Bay and they’ve watched The Birds one too many times.” At Amara’s exasperated look, he shrugged a beefy shoulder. “Just saying.”

  “You know as well as I do that ravens have a stigma attached to them. When he was a raven, Hezekiah’s action—leaving feathers on doors—portended death, but didn’t actively cause it. He was a sort of middleman.”

  “Middle raven,” McVey said.

  Because she knew he was trying not to grin, she jabbed an elbow into his ribs before reaching for his ringing phone.

  “We’re driving, Jake,” she said. “On a road that requires skill and concentration. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  The deputy opened with an irritable, “There’s a bunch of raven tamers wandering around the Hollow, McVey. People keep giving them the thumbs-up sign. Can I arrest them on the grounds that they’re gonna get half the town tanked tonight on their illegal hooch?”

  “It’s not hooch,” Brigham shouted over Amara. “It’s frigging superior whiskey and wine that goes down like honey.”

  McVey’s lips quirked. “Been a while since you’ve drunk your own wine, I think.”

  On the other end of the phone, Jake growled out a terse, “Tell me you’re not giving a raven tamer a police escort into town, McVey. Some old crone tried to tell me you were tight with them now and I should mind my own if I want to go on being a deputy, but I figured she was drunk on her own stuff and hallucinating.”

  McVey braked for a deer. “Leave the raven tamers alone, Jake. Their parade kick-starts the festivities. It’s tradition. What’s the real problem?”

  “I got six positives from the DMV for the name Mina Shell. Two of them might be her. I did background checks. North Carolina Mina has brown hair, not blond, and I can’t see her eyes very well. She’s twenty-eight and works in a bank. Nashville, Tennessee, Mina is a dental hygienist and looks thinner than corpse Mina, but weight changes and these printouts are lousy anyway.”

  “Did you run our Mina’s fingerprints?”

  “Er, yeah. Just.”

  McVey swore softly. “Get a clear set, Jake. Is the sheriff still there?”

  “He left two hours ago. Something about a domestic hostage-taking five blocks from his office.”

  “Send the victim’s fingerprints off to the county lab before I get back. You’ve got about thirty minutes....Shut up, Brigham,” he said in the same uninflected tone after disconnecting. “Deputies are as hard to come by as police chiefs in these parts.”

  Amara sighed. “It wouldn’t matter how good either o
f them was if I’d gone into hiding in New York instead of here.”

  “We’ve been down this road more than once, Red.” McVey eased through a deep puddle. “Hannah’s not dead because of you.”

  Inasmuch as she could, Amara folded her arms. “Westor is. And probably Mina.”

  “Westor came here wanting revenge on me.”

  Brigham bumped Amara’s leg with his. “We in the raven tamer community call a death like his poetic justice.”

  “What do you call Mina’s death?”

  “Would you feel better if everyone hereabouts just said to hell with it and told this Willy Sparks person where to find you?” Brigham demanded.

  She worked herself around to glare. Then an idea occurred and her animosity dissolved. “Actually, that could work.”

  Brigham glanced at McVey, shrugged. “You had to figure. Descended from Sarah Bellam and Ezekiel Blume, the crazy was bound to pop out at some point.”

  Because any other movement required too much effort, Amara kicked the big man’s foot. “I’m talking about setting Willy Sparks up, not running through town with a target painted on my chest. Have you ever done that, McVey? Drawn a murderer out using bait?”

  “Twice.”

  “Did it work?”

  “We used a ringer the first time. He got shot in the shoulder and the leg. The second time, circumstances forced us to go with the intended victim. He survived but three officers were hit. One died.” A brow went up. “Answer your question?”

  Unfortunately, yes. But that didn’t mean she had to like it or to close her mind completely to the possibility. This was small-town Maine, not Chicago or New York. They might be able to minimize the risks in a more constricted environment.

  Or more people might die and Willy Sparks would slip away into the night.

  Guilt gnawed at her for the remainder of the drive.

  They dropped Brigham off at a service station half a mile from her uncle’s motel, which was apparently where the raven tamers would be staying during the Night of the Raven festival. They stayed, they paid. When it came to money, Lazarus Blume seldom missed a trick.

  While Brigham leaned in the window of McVey’s truck for a final chat, Amara bought coffee and used the station’s restroom.

  Locked in, she stared at her reflection in the hazy mirror.

  She could leave right now, today, and not tell a soul. She only had to let McVey become embroiled, then she could borrow her uncle’s truck and disappear. Force Willy Sparks to come after her.

  Give Willy Sparks a perfect opportunity to kill her. “Because, face it, Red,” she mocked her reflection. “He’ll do it before the day runs out. Everyone who’s dead will still be dead, and like McVey said, he’ll simply fly off to a tropical destination and wait for new orders.” She huffed out her frustration. “I hate cop logic.”

  She saw McVey heading toward the building as she stepped back outside. “I was thinking...” She frowned when he grabbed her hand and pulled. “What is it?”

  “Jake called.”

  She had to trot to keep up. “Obviously with bad news.” Her blood turned to ice and she clutched his arm with her free hand. “Please tell me no one else is dead.”

  “No one else is dead, Amara.” He didn’t wait for her to climb up, but caught her by the waist and set her in his truck.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded again. “What did Jake say?”

  For the first time since they’d met, McVey turned on the flashing lights and siren. “He tried to take Mina Shell’s fingerprints. He couldn’t get anything.”

  She opened her mouth, considered and closed it again. “That’s impossible. Everyone has fingerprints. Unless Mina...”

  “Yeah.” He tossed her a look rich in meaning. “Unless Mina.”

  Amara stared at her own fingertips. “Are you saying she deliberately removed them? Well, yes, you are. But—ouch.”

  “Big ouch. Done for a big reason.”

  “She didn’t want to be identified.”

  “Exactly.” A grim smile appeared. “All we have to do is figure out why.”

  * * *

  AMARA DISLIKED EXAMINING CORPSES. She actively hated touching them. But she had to see Mina’s fingers for herself.

  “I’m not a complete moron,” Jake called across the back room at the station house. “I know how to take prints. Another hour and it would have been out of our hands. Mina Shell and Westor Hall are scheduled for transfer to the county morgue at 1:00 p.m.”

  Amara heard him, but only as a curious buzz in the background. “Why do I find this so incredibly creepy?” she wondered aloud.

  “No idea.” Jake inched cautiously closer. “I find the idea of raven tamers way creepier.”

  “Only because you’re afraid of them.”

  “Isn’t everyone? They’re freaking lawbreakers who make themselves seem mysterious by living in the north woods and selling booze local crime labs can’t analyze.”

  “Really?” She laid Mina’s hand down but didn’t rezip the body bag. “Maybe they incorporate some of Sarah’s roots and powders into the mix.”

  “You’re talking, lady, but I’m not hearing... Aw, crap sakes, Amara.” Jake jerked back in revulsion when she pulled the flap down farther. “I don’t wanna look at a naked dead woman.”

  “Neither do I, but I saw the photos you showed McVey. She has tattoos.”

  “A leaf, a splat and a heart with initials inside it. Who cares?”

  Amara regarded the red heart over Mina’s left breast. “WS, Jake.” She raised speculative brows. “Willy Sparks, maybe?”

  “You mean the guy McVey said is after you? You think she had his initials tattooed on her chest? You think she came here with a hit man?”

  The clinic door opened and closed. Amara recognized McVey’s long stride, but she didn’t remove her gaze from the dead woman.

  Jake stabbed a finger. “Amara thinks Mina Shell came to town with that hit man you’ve been looking for. Is she North Carolina Mina or Tennessee Mina, McVey?”

  “Neither.”

  Amara examined the tattoo on Mina’s hip. “That’s a spark, isn’t it?”

  “Be my guess,” McVey said.

  “And the leaf on her shoulder. Some kind of poisonous plant?”

  “Go with hemlock. I’ll explain why later.”

  “Okay, I take it back.” Jake stepped away, palms up. “She’s as creepy as the raven tamers.”

  “Mina...” Amara let the name roll off her tongue.

  “You’re almost there, Red.”

  Something cold and slippery twisted in her stomach.

  “Excuse me, people, but am I missing something?”

  “WS, Jake.” Amara said softly. “I’m willing to bet Mina’s full name is Wilhelmina. Meaning Mina Shell is really Willy Sparks.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What would you have done, McVey, if Mina Shell, aka Willy Sparks, hadn’t brought along a passport in her real name?” Pacing her grandmother’s kitchen, Amara shook her still-tingling fingers. “Would you have sent a picture of her corpse to Jimmy and had the prison guards watch to see how he reacted?”

  McVey straddled a hard chair. “It’s been done before. But thanks to the fact that she stashed her shoulder bag at the bottom of one of the sleeping bags in the apartment Westor was using as a flophouse, not a necessary tactic. You were right, by the way, about Willy and Westor.”

  “They must have walked into the alley together and at the worst possible moment—for them anyway.” She ticked a finger. “But back to Willy. Could you have identified her without her passport?”

  “Passport and tattoos aside, Red, Willy Sparks had a scar where her appendix was removed.”

  “Saw that. It’s at least ten years old.... Ah, right. Hospitals keep computer records.”

  “And more criminals than you might expect use their real names for surgeries. On top of that, at eighteen years of age, most girls aren’t thinking they’ll become hit men for their uncle
s after college.”

  “I don’t know, McVey. I had my career path firmly in mind at eighteen.”

  “Willy’s appendectomy was an emergency surgery. No time for fake IDs.”

  She smiled. “I love a thorough man.”

  “It never hurts to double-check. As for her picture, I might have sent it to Jimmy Sparks—if my motive had been anything other than pure spite.”

  “Probably just as well. Lieutenant Michaels said Jimmy’s health has been declining steadily since his incarceration. Seeing his niece in a morgue might be too traumatic for him to handle.” Amara’s brows came together. “Am I feeling sorry for a man who murdered a call girl and three people I knew in cold blood?”

  “You’re a doctor, you’re allowed to be compassionate.” A smile touched McVey’s lips. He caught her hand in passing. “Makes you better than him.”

  “Right. Good.” She regarded their joined hands. “Why am I still spooked?”

  “Because there are significant questions that still need to be answered.”

  “Like who killed Willy Sparks and Westor Hall? Or did they kill each other?” She considered for a moment. “Maybe Westor saw Willy tossing a Molotov cocktail into the Red Eye. Willy pulled a gun on him, he pulled one on her and they both pulled the trigger.”

  “It’s a tidy theory, Red.”

  “I’m getting more invalid than tidy. Why?”

  “The only weapons Westor ever used were knives—specifically his own—and rifles. Willy was shot with a Luger.”

  “And Westor?”

  “Same weapon.”

  Frustration swept in. “So what now? With Willy Sparks out of the picture, am I safe from Uncle Jimmy? Or will he have a contingency plan I should worry about?”

  “I doubt if he knows about Willy yet, unless they had some prearranged check-in that she missed.”

  “Meaning my extended family and I are safe?”

  “From Jimmy Sparks, probably, for the moment. From our mysterious other? That depends on his or her motive, which unfortunately we haven’t established.”

  Amara drilled the fingers of her other hand into her temple. “My head feels like a centrifuge. You’re telling me Willy and Westor were both shot with a Luger in the alley outside the Red Eye the night the bar was firebombed. Are we assuming the mysterious other who killed Hannah is the firebomber, or are we going with a different person?”