Mark of the Demon (Kara Gillian 1)

“You got it. Thanks again.”

The Blood Had been cleaned up in the kitchen and the tile scrubbed and bleached. The cleaning crew had done a good job; there was no visible sign at all that a gruesome murder had taken place here. But it was still going to be hard for her to rent or sell the place.

The house had been stripped down to the walls, and I found about a dozen boxes piled in a back bedroom. I began looking through them and made the delightful discovery that Dana had labeled each box with a short description of its contents. Oh, I do so love this woman!

But even with the labels, it still took me well over an hour to find which boxes held pictures and then an hour more to find what I was looking for.

I sat down on the floor, holding the picture of a man in a suit standing stiffly next to a grinning teenager, arm draped awkwardly over the boy’s shoulders. The kid was definitely Greg. Even thirty years later, the grin had remained constant. And this picture had likely been taken not long before the summoning-gone-wrong—a couple of years at most. So this must be Dad. I peered at the picture. Slightly above-average height. Light-blue eyes. Brown hair. Nondescript features. Medium build. He’d be in his mid to late sixties now, I figured. I made a note to find out his date of birth when I got back to the office.

I pushed my hair back from my face, frustrated. I still didn’t have much to go on. But this has to be who the killer is. Peter Cerise. It fit perfectly. So, who the hell was he now?

I pulled my cell phone out again and called Ryan.

“Kristoff here.”

“Hiya, Agent-with-the-high-tech-resources-that-I-don’t-have. Can your peeps do an age progression on a photograph?”

“I can get it to someone who can,” he said. “Whatcha got?”

“Picture of Greg’s dad. But it’s about thirty years old. I can’t figure out who he is.”

Ryan gave a low whistle. “That’s terrific. Get it to me and I’ll send it off.”

“You got it. Where y’at now?”

“I’m out and about, but if you email it to me, I’ll forward it to my ‘peeps,’ as you put it.”

“I’m not near a computer. But I’m ten minutes away from the office.”

“I’ll be looking for it in eleven.”

I shut the phone and stuffed it into my pocket, then let myself out the same way I’d come in, tucking the key back under the statue.

As I walked back out to my car, Ms. Dailey was standing at the end of the driveway, dressed this time in a bright fuchsia velour sweat suit. I wondered briefly if her entire wardrobe consisted of velour sweat suits of varying obnoxious hues.

“Young lady,” she said with a stern expression on her face. “May I ask just what you were doing in there?” Her tone was accusatory, as if she thought I was looting the place for valuables.

What, now the woman was concerned about her neighbor? I closed the distance to Ms. Dailey, getting close enough that she was forced to take a step back.

“It’s Detective Gillian,” I said through bared teeth, yanking my badge off my belt and thrusting it into the woman’s face. “I am here on official police business for the purposes of investigating a series of murders. But for you, Ms. Dailey, I have just one thing to advise.”

Ms. Dailey’s eyes widened.

“From now on, why don’t you try minding your own fucking business?”

I turned and marched back to my car, leaving the woman behind me gaping and speechless. And, for the first time, I felt like the warrior woman in that picture.

Chapter 24

My good mood didn’t last long. My pager shrilled before I could make it back to the station, and I had to read it twice before the meaning of the message got through to me. It wasn’t another body. It was six of them.

A local man who’d taken a sick day to go fishing found the bodies piled in an ugly heap about fifty feet from the shore in a rarely traveled or fished area of the lake. Trouble with the engine on his flatboat had caused him to drift into a small cove, where he discovered, to his delight, where all the fish had been hiding from him for the past twenty years. He’d reached his limit after an hour of fishing and then decided to investigate the source of the odor that had drifted to him when the wind shifted.

I had a feeling his sick day was justified now.

It might have been fairly simple to get to the scene by boat, but going by car was another matter entirely—several miles of rutted dirt roads, followed by a ten-minute hike on foot down a narrow deer trail. Fortunately, by the time I made it to where all the other vehicles were parked, some of the good ol’ boys had busted out their ATVs and were shuttling people back and forth through the woods.

I climbed off the back of the four-wheeler with a mumbled thanks to the driver, well aware that he had gone over a few extra bumps in order to get the full effect of my tits pressed up against his back as I hung on for dear life. I would be walking back, thank you very much.