Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men 6)

Moore flipped open the portfolio he’d brought in under his arm and one by one, flipped the pages for me to view.

Blood.

Everywhere there was blood.

Oh, it was a messy crime scene, sloppily done, a crime of passion, not one of cold, calculated methodology.

I almost snorted. I’d never killed a man like that, not even my first kills that last day in my motherland. I’d been passionate then too, before the fire in my soul sputtered out forever, but even then, the kills were clean, thoughtful. I’d spent years planning them down to the very last detail.

The female victim was torn to ribbons by knives, a poor mockery of my form, but in one picture, a close up of her face, I recognized who it was.

Fuck.

The next picture Moore slid across the table with one finger, overly dramatic prick.

It was a photo of the victim days earlier at Hephaestus Auto, her gleaming dark hair catching in the pale winter sunlight, her smile soft as she waved goodbye to someone obscured just inside The Fallen clubhouse.

“Her name was Natalie Ashley,” Moore said, knowing that I knew. “She worked at Entrance Bay Academy teaching History and Social Studies, and, apparently, she was sleeping with a member of your club.”

I looked up at Moore calmly, but my mind was working, clicking and whirring as I thought through the ramifications of this.

I was not sleeping with Natalie Ashley.

But Kodiak was.

“Mr. Moore, I’ll tell you once more, keep to the facts, or I’ll be leaving with my client. So far, I see no cause why you brought him in for questioning,” White warned, and for a pale, short, old suit, he didn’t do half-bad.

“He assaulted an officer,” Moore reminded him.

“Doesn’t have a fucking scratch on him,” I said mildly. “Listen, Natalie Ashley is friends with King’s woman, she visits her at the club sometimes. You gonna arrest me for that?”

“She was a good, churchgoing woman,” Moore attempted. “If she was lured into your club, I believe only a man could’ve done it. Women think with their hearts.”

Bea.

Her name sat on my tongue, burned there like a communion wafer.

She thought with her heart and it brought her to me.

It was sexist, the motherfucking prick, but he wasn’t entirely wrong.

“You wanna arrest me for shit I didn’t do just like you arrested Zeus for the murder of a man committed by a man in fuckin’ blue, get on with it so we can sue your motherfucking asses,” I suggested with a little shrug. “Otherwise, White and I are gettin’ outta this pigpen. It fuckin’ stinks.”

Moore glared at me. If this was a tug of war, he’d just lost hold of the rope.

“Did you find a note at the crime scene?” White asked. “As I understand it, they’ve been accompanying murders of late.”

Moore hesitated then nodded. “There was something written in blood, but it doesn’t exactly follow the modus operandi of the killer. It seems more likely the work of a copycat.”

He slanted me a suspicious look, but I ignored him in favour of the photo he flipped over for us.

Written poorly in blood on the inside of the garage door was the phrase ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’.

For the first time during this entire tedious interchange, I frowned. Leaning closer, I traced my finger over the words on the photograph and muttered them under my breath.

This passion was unusual, the carelessness of the body hacked to pieces wasn’t biblical in any obvious way nor was the scripture left at the scene.

It didn’t follow the path of the previous religious kills. It could have been that this was a personal message delivered to me to warn me to stay away from their crimes or maybe away from Bea herself, if they’d fixated on her as solidly as I had. Or it was something else entirely, someone with a vendetta against me who was taking the opportunity to frame me because it had presented itself to them.

Either way, they’d done a piss poor fucking job. My DNA was probably at the scene but not in conjunction with the crime. I lived in the property beside the garage, but these fucks didn’t know that and they wouldn’t be able to get a warrant to search the property unless they had hard evidence I might be the killer.

Sloppy, amateur hour at best.

But interesting.

“Priest,” Moore said musingly, gearing up for some dramatic bullshit. “It all ties together so well despite what you say. A biker with a thing against religion, targets the pious people of B.C. to teach them his own kind of lesson. You got trauma in the church?” He paused to narrow his gaze at me, hoping that might magnify his intrusive stare maybe. I yawned again, so wide my jaw cracked. “I just bet you do. I bet some old priest back in backwater Ireland bent you over the altar as a choir boy and––”