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Excerpt from Mortal Sin
Book Three in the Seven Deadly Sins series
Chapter One
Santa Louisa Sheriff Skye McPherson stared at the bludgeoned body of Dr. Richard Bertram, a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach—and not from the dried blood that darkened the beige carpet or from the office that had been torn apart by someone looking for something. It was the lingering rage in the room, an anger that was almost palpable.
Equally frustrating was the fact that Dr. Bertram was her best lead in finding two murder suspects. Fiona O’Donnell and her daughter Serena were both wanted for questioning in multiple homicides.
That they were witches was irrelevant to Skye. They were cold-blooded killers, which was enough reason to put them at the top of her Most Wanted List.
She glanced at Deputy Bruce Jorgenson, who’d been one of her few allies in the Sheriff’s department since the riots three months ago. She couldn’t very well explain to anyone that something supernatural had caused people to act violent. She hadn’t even discussed it with Jorgenson, but he seemed to intuitively understand. Skye had a few other supporters—cops who’d seen things they couldn’t explain, but hadn’t gone off the deep end like her lead Detective who hadn’t been back to work in months.
Assistant Sheriff Thomas Williams, who was her only opposition in the upcoming Sheriff’s race, had been amassing endorsements and support right and left—blaming Skye for every unsolved crime and the increasing acts of violence in their previously quiet coastal California town. The election was five weeks away, and Skye was pretty sure she was going to lose. But damn if she was going down without a fight.
She said to Jorgenson, “What do you know?”
“His housekeeper found him this morning.”
“He’s unmarried? Lives alone?”
“Affirmative. Single, never been married, no children, forty-four years of age. Edith Martinez is his housekeeper—”
“Edith?” Santa Louisa was a small town, and Skye knew more than half the residents either by name or association, but Edith was a long-time friend of her family, as well as the mother of Detective Juan Martinez, who’d been on-leave for nearly six months.
This couldn’t be a coincidence. Juan had been on disability for six months. He’d been injured in the line of duty, but there was far more to the story than recovering from a simple knife wound. While his body was healed, he was mentally slipping further from reality every time she saw him. He’d been possessed by a demon and had killed a man. A friend. Skye had covered it up because no one else would believe something supernatural had killed, but she doubted Juan would ever be the same. He certainly couldn’t return to active duty.
“You know Mrs. Martinez?”
“Detective Martinez’s mother.”
Jorgenson wasn’t from Santa Louisa; he’d moved here after being honorably discharged from the Army three years ago because his only living relative—his grandmother—was here. He lived with her in a big, rambling Victorian in the downtown area and helped keep her house in order. He was a big cop, formidable in appearance, but kind-hearted and a bit soft around the edges. Skye still couldn’t picture him on a battlefield, but he made a good cop.
“Where’s Mrs. Martinez now?”
“Next door, with a neighbor and a patrol office.” He glanced at his notes and continued his report. “Mrs. Martinez comes in three mornings a week. Cleans, shops, prepares meals. She arrived at eight a.m. and didn’t expect the doctor to be here. She walked in and smelled something foul, thought it was rotten food, went to the kitchen but it was clean. She then saw his briefcase in the dining room, called for him, walked past his office where she saw the mess, then his body. She immediately left the house and called 911 from next door.”
“Call the hospital, find out when he left. Then canvass the neighbors, see if anyone remembers when he came home or if they saw or heard anything unusual last night. Have you called Dr. Fielding?”
“He’s on his way.”
“Go out and wait for him, bring him in as soon as he gets here.”
Rod Fielding was the acting medical examiner. He’d been in charge of the CSI unit until the former M.E. retired early, shortly after the massacre at the mission that left twelve reclusive priests dead. Though Rod was a rock and rarely talked about the horrors they had seen over the last six months, Skye knew those murders had shaken him. Rod was planning on retiring as well, but promised he’d wait until after the election so as to not give her opposition additional fodder against her.
Rod understood that what they faced was not wholly natural. He processed evidence and information like the scientist he was, but he also listened to alternatives, things she couldn’t well explain. She hoped the murder of Richard Bertram had nothing to do with the supernatural, but considering he’d been in the middle of some crazy-ass things that had been happening in Santa Louisa, she feared there was more to his death than she could see in front of her.
Skye stood in the doorway of Bertram’s in-home office. The foul smell that Mrs. Martinez had mentioned to the responding officer was coming from here. Bertram was long dead, his body stiff, eyes open and glazed—at least the one visible eye. The rest of his head had been caved in by whatever he’d been hit with. There had been multiple blows—at least, Skye didn’t see anything in the room that could have made that big of a gash with only one hit.
Bertram was on the floor, partially obscured by his desk which faced the room. She tried to picture what happened, but every scenario didn’t work for her.
For example, if he’d been working at his desk—as it appeared he had been based on the location of his body—why was his briefcase still in the dining room as if he’d just entered the house? If he’d heard something in the den and confronted the intruder, why wasn’t his body closer to the doorway? Though CSI would process the entire house, there had been no sign of forced entry. Had Bertram known his attacker? Had he brought someone home with him? Had they argued? Had he been killed in a fit of rage? The violence in this room certainly suggested anger at work.
Because of the destruction of the room, it was impossible to see what might have been on his desk. A phone had been pulled from the wall and thrown into the corner so hard it had left a deep gouge and now lay broken on the floor. Maybe Bertram had gone to his desk to call the police because of a break-in, the attacker grabbed the receiver, yanked the cord from the wall, and threw the phone. That theory seemed to hold with the evidence. But why would Bertram have used a house phone? Wouldn’t he have a cell phone? She made a note to locate his cell phone and pull the records of both his cell and his house phone.
A file cabinet had been pulled away from the wall and rested precariously at an angle on the extended drawers. Papers were strewn everywhere. Pictures broken. Glass shattered. Skye couldn’t tell if the destruction was out of anger or if the killer was looking for something. Or both.
She snapped several pictures with her phone so she could look at them later. It might take a day for her office to get the official crime scene photos.
“Shit,” Rod Fielding said as approached her and looked into the room. He was alone. “I told the crime techs to hold up for a minute because I didn’t know what to expect when I heard the victim was Bertram. But this looks like a run-of-the-mill murder. I hate to say I’m glad.”
“It’s still Bertram. Nothing run-of-the-mill about him.”
“Are you worried about Cooper?”
“Bertram was his doctor. Rafe believes Bertram kept him in an artificial coma for who knows what reason. Bertram has denied it, and that’s it. There’s no way to prove Rafe’s accusations, especially without bringing in the idea of witches and demons and all other manner of weirdness.”
Rod asksed, “Is he still staying with you?”
That would certainly be a conflict, not that where Rafe Cooper now lived wasn’t.
“Rafe and Moira moved into my dad’s old cabin halfway between town and the Mission. It was getting a little crowded in my small house with them and Anthony.”
The Santa Louisa de los Padres Mission—also known as the Lost Mission of California—was thirty minutes out of town up a winding mountain road. Skye’s dad had been a forest ranger before he’d died when he fell off a cliff. The cabin had been in Skye’s family for generations, and her dad had fixed it up over the years so it now had running water, an inside bathroom, and kitchen. Skye couldn’t bear to part with it, though she’d rarely gone up there since his death.
Her boyfriend, Anthony Zaccardi, hadn’t liked Moira and Rafe moving into the cabin together. He didn’t like a lot of things about their relationship, and Skye hated being the mediator. She loved Anthony—sometimes, she became terrified that she loved him too much. It had been her idea to get Moira and Rafe out of the house and into the cabin, because the tension between the three of them—Moira, Rafe and Anthony—was giving her an ulcer. Anthony’s thinly veiled anger and hostility toward Moira troubled her, but it had improved since Rafe and Moira moved out. Unfortunately, Anthony spent far more time at the Mission supervising the reconstruction, reading his books, sleeping there as much as coming to her bed. She hadn’t seen him in two days.
She felt she was losing him. Especially since he’d returned from his trip to St. Michael’s in Italy three months ago. He’d gone to Olivet, an American monastery in Montana, several times for so-called meetings and refused to discuss anything with her. She didn’t completely understand his work as a demonologist, but she did get that it was important. They were all working double-time to locate Fiona and Serena, to track down the remaining Seven Deadly Sins, and to stop the violence that seemed to become the life-blood of Santa Louisa. But Anthony’s distance from her had increased, and that disturbed her on multiple levels.
“I love you, Skye. Trust me.”
She wanted to trust him, but it was becoming more difficult as time passed.
Skye pushed aside thoughts of her struggling relationship. “Deputy Jorgenson is working on locating potential witnesses—when Bertram left the hospital, when he came home, if anyone heard anything.” That was doubtful. Bertram lived on a winding street in the hills above Santa Louisa. The nearest neighbor was more than a hundred yards away. “TOD would be helpful, the sooner the better. Cause of death seems obvious. The killer may have left prints or DNA all over the place, considering the destruction.”
“It’s odd, from a forensics stand point, that the violence is contained to this one room.”
“Maybe this is a simple homicide, as you said when you first got here,” she said. “Nothing unusual about it.” She didn’t believe it, and neither did Rod.
“Sure, if you say so.” He sounded skeptical.
“You think I should call in Moira.”
“I didn’t say that.” He paused. “But I was thinking it.”
She’d been thinking the same thing.
She didn’t want to bring in Moira O’Donnell unless she had no other ideas. She could wish all she wanted that Bertram was killed by a drugged out thief or a golfing buddy gone mad, but Bertram was in the middle of everything odd and weird and most likely, something equally odd and weird was responsible for his murder.
Some people, the few who accepted supernatural reasons for the rising crime rate and unusually high murder rate, called Moira psychic. Moira said she wasn’t. What she did do was sense both magic and demonic activity—something Skye had never believed in until she’d seen it with her own eyes. If something supernatural was at work here, then Moira would know exactly what and how. Maybe she could ask Moira to come over simply to rule out the woo-woo whacky stuff so that Skye could focus on what she did best: investigate a homicide.
She said to Rod, “Find the weapon and get me a good TOD.” Then she left him to do his job.
She walked out of the house but before she could take in a deep breath of fresh air, she came face-to-face with District Attorney Martin Truxel. Truxel had been born and raised in Santa Louisa just like her. He was only a few years older than she, and while she’d become a cop after getting her two-year degree at a nearby community college, he’d gone to UCLA to become a lawyer. He returned and ran for D.A. Of course he won. The Truxels were well-known and had money. But she’d never expected him to stay. She’d been surprised he’d returned, considering he’d always had grand plans. When he ran for student body president as a senior, when she’d been a freshman, he’d said he planned to be the first black governor of California.
She’d always wondered why he’d come back to small Santa Louisa if he planned to run the entire state.
“A little early for you to be involved,” she said to the D.A. “We got the call forty-five minutes ago. The M.E. just arrived. We’ll have more by morning.”
“Just checking on things.” Truxel tried to side-step her.
She put her hand up. He turned and glared at her. If he wasn’t such a prick, he would have been handsome, but he loved himself more than anyone else. There are been some rumors that he was aggressive with women, but she’d never been able to find anyone who would press charges against him.
She wasn’t afraid of Truxel. Except for his money. He was funding her opponent in the Sheriff’s race. Tom Williams wasn’t a bad cop, but he was older and easily led. He—perhaps rightfully—thought he should have been appointed Sheriff three years ago when the Sheriff died of a heart attack. That the City Council had voted to appoint her to complete the term had been a blow to the seasoned cop. She thought she’d smoothed it over with Tom, but Truxel got to him.
“You can’t go into the house without gloves and booties.” She motioned for one of Fielding’s CSI’s to approach. “The D.A. wants access. Dress him up and stick with him.” She stared Truxel in the eye. “We wouldn’t want the crime scene compromised.”
He hesitated, just a fraction of a moment, then said, “I don’t need access. I just want to make sure you’re not giving civilians free reign here. Dr. Bertram was one of our most respected citizens.”
She knew exactly what he meant, but she wasn’t going to let him push her buttons.
“Dr. Bertram is just as important as Joe Smith, the homeless vet who was killed in an abandoned building last week,” she said. “And I will investigate both homicides with equal diligence.”
“At least for the next month,” he said clearly, then walked away.
“Fuck him,” Skye muttered. Truxel had made a stink about her bringing in Anthony to consult on the murders at the mission last November, especially when he learned that Anthony was a demonologist. Truxel had made her professional life miserable, and it was getting worse as the election grew nearer. He’d mocked her, leaked information to the press, and created a division in her department that she didn’t know if she could rectify.
She meant what she said—she wanted to solve Joe’s murder. Joe had been living on the streets since she was a kid. He’d been a veteran from Vietnam and her dad used to bring him leftovers at least once a week. He was a drunk, and lived like a homeless drunk, but he had never caused problems in town. No theft, no vandalism, no trouble. He’d been brutally gutted ten days ago and their investigation was stalled. No evidence, no witnesses, no hope to solve the crime unless something new popped up. But she wasn’t going to let Joe’s death get buried under a pile of bureaucratic bullshit.
Yet, even though she didn’t like the man, Richard Bertram was her responsibility. He was most likely a criminal affiliated with Fiona O’Donnell; he’d possibly drugged or poisoned Rafe Cooper and may have been involved in the mass murder-suicide of the twelve priests at the mission; but there was no proof to any of it. Someone violent had killed him, and he deserved justice as much as kind, drunk Joe Smith.
And Skye wanted her town back. She wanted the violence to stop.
She watched Truxel drive away and then called Anthony.
“Skye, mi amore, I am sorry I did not come home last night,” he said in lieu of hello. “I was caught up in work until dawn.”
“Richard Bertram is dead.”
Silence.
“Anthony?” she prompted.
“He is dead? How?”
“Looks like he was beaten to death with a blunt object, but I’ll await Rod’s autopsy for the final answer. His home office was tossed, we don’t know what was taken.”
Again, silence.
“Anthony, I’m still here. Talk to me.”
“I had a semi-public disagreement with Dr. Bertram yesterday morning at the hospital.”
Her stomach flipped. Please, no. “I told both you and Rafe to stay away from him.”
“Rafe’s headaches are getting worse. We must learn exactly what Bertram did to him.”
“Yet, he didn’t tell you anything. You knew he wouldn’t talk. So why did you even try?”
“I had hoped to appeal to his greed.”
She lowered her voice, but still looked around to make sure no one was paying attention to her conversation. “You bribed him?”
“I had approval from St. Michael’s to make him an offer we didn’t think he would refuse.”
She couldn’t believe this was happening. Anthony had tried to bribe Bertram, the doctor refused, and now the doctor was dead … and Anthony didn’t have an alibi.
She wanted to talk to him, to find out what was going on with him, and the Mission, and this ridiculous bribe. She wanted to see him. Everything she’d thought they had built over the last six months was fading away.
Not only was Anthony a potential witness, he was a possible suspect. He may have been one of the last people to see Bertram alive.
“Where have you been for the last twenty-four hours?”
Again, the silence. The damn silence! “Skye,” he whispered.
“Tell me.” She was letting her emotions—her relationship—get in the way of her job. She shouldn’t have asked him on the phone. She should have brought him into the station. Or at least asked him face-to-face.
What job? You’re going to lose the election. You know that.
Formally, he said, “I spoke with Bertram yesterday at the hospital, in his office.”
“Who was with you?”
A slight hesitation. “No one.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I do not lie,” he said, his voice rising in anger. “No one was in the room with me.”
But that meant either Rafe or Moira had been nearby. She knew it as much as she knew that Anthony wasn’t telling her everything.
“What time?”
“Noon. I was there for twenty minutes.”
“And then?”
“I went to visit with Juan, like I do every Wednesday afternoon.”
Skye wanted to ask how her detective—how her friend—was doing, but if there was a change, Anthony would have told her.
You hope he would tell you.
Anthony had been counseling Juan for months; so had Rafe who had more training in this type of thing. But Juan seemed to be getting worse. Skye couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen him—months ago, right after they’d captured the Demon Envy.
“Did you know that Juan’s mother was Bertram’s housekeeper?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Dammit, Anthony!”
“Juan and Edith are my friends. Of course I would know. I would never use an old woman, Skye, if that is what you’re getting at.”
Maybe she had been making the insinuation. “After you saw Juan?” she prompted.
“I went to the Mission. I was there all night.” He paused. “You want me to have an alibi.”
“I need you to tell the truth.”
“I always tell you the truth.”
Doubt filled her heart. Bertram was dead and Anthony had hated him. Anthony would deny it—he would say he didn’t hate anyone—but she’d seen his anger at Bertram. She’d seen his anger directed at Moira. Anthony didn’t want to hate anyone, she believed that, but the feelings were still there, whether he believed they were or not.
“Anthony?”
“Yes.”
“Stay at the mission until you hear from me.”
“I should be there, with you. To help.”
“Not until I figure out what the hell is going on.”
“Are you certain Bertram was murdered? Maybe this is—”
“He was bludgeoned to death,” she said bluntly. “His office was trashed. The person who killed him will be identified and arrested. And if you are holding back anything from me, Anthony, now is the time to tell me.”
“I didn’t kill him,” he said.
Skye hung up. She glanced at the sky. She’d gotten into the habit of doing that, looking skyward, since Anthony had come into her life. She didn’t pray, she didn’t really believe in much of anything, except that there were things in this world she didn’t understand.
But she understood murder. Bertram had been murdered, and she would find his killer.