Remy stared at a drawing, unmistakably done by Zoe’s hand. At first he didn’t understand what he was looking at, and then suddenly it dawned on him. The picture was of a man, kneeling on the ground, and of another man behind him, carrying a knife.
“Oh shit,” Remy said, and spun around to find that the knifeman was conscious again and bearing down upon him.
Knife descending.
The blade dropped in a silver arc, slicing through Remy’s shoulder as he tried to move out of the way.
With a grunt of pain, he pushed backward, away from his attacker, but the man had murder on his mind.
He threw himself at Remy, falling upon him, the knife raised again. Remy grabbed his attacker’s wrist as the weapon dove toward his throat, and was momentarily distracted by a strange mark on the back of the man’s hand. It resembled a pair of pursed lips.
Then the Seraphim inside him howled its fury.
And in a moment of startled weakness, Remy let slip the leash of control. The power of Heaven surged forward with a roar; the angel warrior that he was rejoiced.
He squeezed the man’s wrist with all his divine might, feeling the bones crack beneath his grip. The man screamed in agony and tried to pull away, but the Seraphim would have none of that. Remy drew the man closer, inhaling his fear-tainted scent with a growl.
Immediately his angelic essence recoiled, a convulsive reflex that caused him to hurl the man away and across the room. Remy began to cough, as if his lungs had been filled with some sort of corrosive gas, a foul taste coating the inside of his mouth making him gag.
Remy struggled to rein in the angelic nature and force it back deep inside him where it belonged. Through watering eyes, he glanced up to see the last of the attackers escaping through the open door.
“Shit,” Remy managed, slowly climbing to his feet.
He tried to piece together what had just happened. It had something to do with his attacker’s scent. Something was different. . Something was missing. . and in its place was only the poisonous stench of loss and despair.
And then it hit him.
It was what set humanity apart from all lesser things.
The thing that most separated the human from the angelic.
The man was missing his soul.
Remy had to get out of there.
He started through the kitchen toward the door, and his foot kicked something across the room. It was a wallet. He leaned down, picked it up, and opened it. The driver’s license inside belonged to his red-faced attacker, Derrick Bohadock, forty-six years old, from Michigan.
Remy committed the name to memory, then dropped the wallet on the floor and left Frank’s apartment, willing himself unseen as he closed the door behind him, just in case the struggles inside the apartment had attracted attention from the neighbors.
He was a few blocks away before he allowed himself to be seen again. He removed his phone from the holder attached to his belt and dialed an all-too-familiar number.
“Mulvehill,” announced a weary voice on the other end of the line.
“You are so sexy when you answer the phone like that,” Remy said.
“I don’t know what it is,” the detective replied. “Sexiness just oozes from my pores; makes me feel bad for the poor bastards out there who don’t have a fraction of what I’ve got.” He barely stifled a belch before continuing. “Excuse me; that’ll teach me to have leftover Chinese for lunch. What can I do for you?”
“Got a murder,” Remy said.
“Finally, something to do. What’s the story?”
“The victim is—was—Frank Downes, a therapy assistant at Franciscan Children’s.”
“And what did Mr. Downes have to do with you?”
“A person of interest in a case I’m working on,” Remy explained. “Looks like someone else found him interesting too, only that someone murdered him.”
“Any idea who that somebody might be?”
“There were four of them. I tried to help him, but I was too late. Although one of them did leave his wallet behind—Derrick Bohadock of Novi, Michigan.”
He didn’t mention that the man apparently had no soul, putting this investigation heavily into that weird-shit category that Mulvehill liked to give Remy so much trouble about.
“Are you on the scene?” Mulvehill asked.
“No, I’m on my way back to the hospital to follow up on a few more things.”
“Try not to get anybody else killed,” Mulvehill cautioned.
“I’ll do my best,” Remy answered. “Come by the house tonight. I’ll fill you in, and if you’re good, there might even be a bottle of Jameson in the freezer.”
“Will there be loose women?”
“Sorry,” Remy said. “No loose women.”
“Good, more Jameson for us.”
CHAPTER SIX
Zoe was furiously drawing, her thumb stuck in the corner of her mouth.
Carl returned to the table and dropped a colorful Happy Meal box down in front of her. “Here ya go,” he said. “Time to put your crayons away and eat your hamburger.”
She dropped her red crayon and picked up the black, as if he had never spoken.
“Zoe, you can finish that later,” Carl said firmly as he sat down across from her.
The child continued her work, her face close to the paper, scrutinizing every line she drew.
“All right.” Carl had had enough. “That’s it for now.” He reached across, pulling the paper out from beneath her moving crayon, and she continued to color upon the tabletop.
“Hey!” he warned. “Stop that.”
She seemed to realize what her father had done and set the crayon down beside the others, growing very still.
“You can finish this after you’ve eaten,” Carl repeated as he moved to set the paper down on the far side of the table. But something caught his eye and he stopped, staring at the drawing.
It was of a black man lying on the ground, a puddle of bright red circling his body.
“What’s this supposed to be?” Carl asked the little girl, feeling a chill suddenly vibrate up his spine.
“Frank’s dead,” Zoe muttered as she began to rock forward and backward, forward and backward. . “Frank’s dead.
“Frank’s dead.”
Over and over again.
The sun was on its way down, but the heat still remained, a relentless humidity that made the air feel solid with moisture.
Remy headed back to the hospital, his mind filled with questions. Were Frank’s other attackers missing their souls as well? What was so important about Zoe and Carl that they’d be willing to murder to find them?
And what exactly did Dr. Parsons have to do with four soulless men, an autistic child, and her father?
Remy wasn’t in the mood to be questioned, and so, having learned his lesson earlier in the day, he willed himself unseen as he stepped into the hospital lobby. The lovely receptionist, who had been immune to his charm that morning, was gone, replaced by another who was answering the phones with the same almost robotic efficiency.
The traffic in the hallways was considerably lighter at this hour, and Remy had no problem getting to Dr. Parsons’ office. The door was open a crack, and he could hear talking from within as he approached. Peering inside, he could see the doctor talking on his cell, standing at his desk, the top of which looked as if a bomb had gone off, scattering papers everywhere.
The conversation sounded intense, and Remy could hear panic creeping into the physician’s voice.
“I told you I’m trying,” he was saying, nearly frantic. He fell silent, obviously listening to the voice on the other end of the line.
Remy could just about make out the hum of that voice, buzzing in the doctor’s ear like a fly trapped between a screen and a storm window. He couldn’t make out what it was saying, but it didn’t sound the least bit pleased.
“I’m sorry,” Parsons said with a pathetic whine. “Just give me another chance. . please.” He sounded ready to cry.
Then he began to paw through the papers on his desk. “I have some right here,” he said, picking up a piece of construction paper with drawings on it.
One of Zoe’s drawings.
“I’m trying to figure it out, but. .”
The buzzing from the other side of the phone grew louder, more intense.
The expression on the doctor’s face became pained, and he dropped down into his office chair.
“Please, just give me a chance. . Please. . ”
And suddenly, as if in a fit of rage and despair, Parsons threw the cell phone against the nearby wall. He was sobbing as he pulled open a side drawer of his desk and removed a pair of scissors, trying to saw through the flesh of his wrist with one of the blades.
Remy instantly pushed open the door, strode across the office, and snatched the scissors from Parsons’ hand. “I don’t think you want to do that,” he said, tossing the scissors to the floor.
Parsons stared at him for a moment, his face damp with tears. “I’ve tried so hard for her,” he finally sobbed, covering his face with his hands, shaking his head as he cried.
And that was when Remy noticed the mark on the doctor’s neck, a dark patch on the cocoa-colored flesh—shaped like a pair of pursed lips.
He called upon his angelic nature again, allowing his human senses to become something more. He sniffed at the air around the wailing doctor, taking the scent of the man into his lungs. He could smell his soul, but there was something not quite right about it.
It was damaged, traumatized.
“Get ahold of yourself,” Remy said, moving around the desk and placing a hand on the doctor’s shoulder.
Parsons lifted his head and looked at Remy. “I. . don’t know what to do,” he said, turning his attention back to the desk. He began to shuffle through a pile of Zoe’s drawings, looking at one
