Carnal Sin

Rafe took her hand and kissed it. “Anthony is working on answers, but he says by sunset we need to have Grant Nelson protected in a reverse spirit trap. The demon will find him whether we use him as bait or not.” But that didn’t make Rafe feel any more confident. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

“You can watch my back, okay?” She was trying to make light of the serious situation. Rafe took her face in his hands and kissed her softly.

He’d do a lot more than watch her back.

TWENTY-FIVE

Grant tried to ignore his partner, who was watching him too closely. Grant felt as if he were onstage. He rubbed his head and finished filling out the report on his interview with Moira O’Donnell.

Witness claims she’s a psychic and saw deceased kill Craig Monroe in Velocity alley. Called it a death imprint.

He tore up the report into tiny pieces. This was ridiculous. No one would believe her; he didn’t believe her. He didn’t know what game Moira O’Donnell was playing, but he had to stop thinking about her because all he wanted to do was screw her brains out.

He froze. Where had that thought come from? He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead.

Johnston said, “Hey, Nelson, you’re exhausted. I’ll take care of the rest of the paperwork. You should head home.”

He shook his head. “I just didn’t sleep much. Julie was upset about what happened to Nadine and we stayed up half the night.” More like all night. And he still didn’t feel satisfied. When Moira O’Donnell walked into police headquarters, all Grant could think about was taking her to bed. Hell, forget the bed. He just wanted to have sex with her. Grant had always enjoyed sex-too much sometimes-but he’d always put his job first. Now he couldn’t get sex out of his mind. It was making him physically and mentally uncomfortable. He felt like a randy teenager who wanted to convince the head cheerleader that if she didn’t put out he was going to die in agony, just to get in her panties. Only now, he had the uncomfortable sensation that he was dying.

Impossible. No one died because they didn’t have sex.

Grant wanted to divert Johnston’s attention from his physical condition to the case at hand. “Did you get anything on the man in the photograph Nina gave us?”

“Nothing. I sent his pic to Missing Persons and maybe they’ll have something. I looked into the P.I.’s death, talked to the responding officers. The witnesses were solid; his staff reported that he was acting paranoid and skittish, and more than one thought he was on drugs. He had a drug problem years ago, was clean, but as you know it just takes one time to go back.”

“What kind of drugs?”

“Cocaine.”

“Did they find the dealer? Evidence of cocaine during autopsy?”

“I said that the witnesses thought he was on drugs-it went to his state of being.”

“Do you have the autopsy report?”

Johnston sighed. “No.”

“I need to contact the morgue anyway. Find out about our frozen waitress, and Nadine Anson’s autopsy. Maybe I’ll go down; sometimes showing up gets more answers.”

“I’ll go,” Johnston offered.

“You hate the morgue.”

“But I like that cute pathologist.”

“Fern?”

“Yeah. The one with the sexy little nose ring.”

“Maybe you should let me talk to her for you.”

“I can hit on a woman all by myself,” Johnston said.

“Yeah, but I’ve known Fern for years. Come on too strong and she’ll knock you down.”

“I wouldn’t mind that too much.” Johnston grinned. “I like women who stand up for themselves.”

“Fine, come with me.”

“You should go home. You look like shit.”

“Fuck you,” Grant said without animosity.

“Right back at you.”

“If we split up the workload, we can both be home in time for a late lunch.”

“You want the morgue,” stated Jeff.

“Yep. And I have seniority. You can interview Pam Erickson again, feel her out about how she really felt about her husband’s relationship with other women and see if you can push her a bit, without letting on that we think she had something to do with it.”

“So does this mean you believe Nina?”

“I don’t know what I believe. But Nina is a straight shooter, and I’m more inclined to trust her instincts than I am to trust a woman who was having sex with her ex-husband while her otherwise healthy current husband died. And then after Mrs. Erickson, talk to Marcus Galion about both his brother and Nadine Anson. Both his brother and girlfriend dead within a week?”

“Don’t you want to do it?”

“You’re good at making people comfortable. Feel him out. If you think we should bring Marcus in, we’ll bring him in.”

Grant just wanted Jeff to leave, because it was getting harder and harder to keep up the act that everything was fine. In fact, he couldn’t. He shut down his computer and stretched. “I’m going to take a leak, then head to the morgue. We’ll touch base this afternoon.”

“Roger that, Boss.”

Grant knew he should go home. He was in no condition to talk to anyone or go to the morgue. Events were spiraling out of control and he didn’t know what to do about it. What the hell was wrong with him?

In the bathroom, he locked the door. Though the police station never closed, it was midshift Saturday morning. Quiet. He’d seen something this morning in the mirror-thought he’d seen something-but in denial, he hadn’t paid much attention to it.

But he hadn’t been able to get it out of his mind.

He stripped off his shirt, hoping the mark was a figment of his imagination and lack of sleep. The bathroom had one long mirror above the sinks, and if he angled his body right he could look over his shoulder and see most of his back.

On his lower shoulder blade was the mark. He could lie to himself and say it wasn’t exactly like the odd tattoo-like marks on the two dead guys, but he didn’t. It was as close to being identical as he could remember. Red, like a port-wine-stain birthmark. The edges seemed to bleed into the surrounding skin, but there was a fine red line, like a blood vessel, that created an odd image.

He didn’t need to see more. He pulled his shirt back on and walked out.

How the hell had he gotten that thing on his back? It hadn’t been there yesterday morning. It didn’t hurt. The skin was slightly raised when he felt it, so slight that he might not have noticed it if he hadn’t seen it.

It was not possible-but it was there. He considered calling Moira O’Donnell, the cult expert. Psychic or not, that woman knew a hell of a lot more than what she’d told him.

He drove to the morgue while contemplating bringing in Moira O’Donnell to help. His head ached in spite of the milk, the coffee, and an untold number of aspirin. The bright sunlight burned his eyes and he fumbled for his sunglasses on the visor, nearly hitting a parked car. Though he had only drunk one beer last night, he felt hungover.

One beer. At Velocity. He could have been drugged. He’d gone home with Julie. He couldn’t imagine that Julie-whom he’d known for two years-would have done anything like drugging him or tattooing his back. But he’d