The Keeper of Time killed in the Cave of Past and Present.
The gates of evil are open. A fresh cycle of bloodletting has begun.
PART ONE
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
1
A murky fog rises from beneath the Bay Bridge and crawls towards the giant federal buildings crowded near the choppy waters.
Mitzi Fallon stares out from the glass belly of the FBI skyscraper. ‘Some weather,’ she says to no one at her side. ‘I move from LA, for what? To start my morning in the mist, like a freakin’ gorilla? Sheesh.’
Heads turn as the muttering brunette, dressed in grey slacks and a new white top, hauls a box of personal belongings down a thousand miles of corridors.
She shoulders open a door marked: HISTORIC, RELIGIOUS AND UNEXPLAINED CRIMES UNIT and surveys a small but empty open-plan room with four desks. Tucked in the corner is a tiny office created by a floor-to-ceiling glass partition and a barely visible swing-in door.
Mitzi dumps her stuff on an empty desk and reflects on why she’s uprooted herself and two children to join a unit dubbed ‘The Unsolvables’. Some of it’s down to the pay rise and relocation cheque — money’s tight when you’re raising two teenage girls on your own. Part of it is the opportunity to widen her horizons and work with the FBI in a new multi-agency task force. If the truth were known, most of it is about starting afresh. Quitting town. Getting away from Alfie.
Her Alfie.
Alfie Fallon.
One-time love of her life, turned drunk, turned wife-beater.
The lieutenant unpacks. First out of the bubble wrap is a ‘World’s Best Mom’ mug, then a pile of framed photographs of her twins, Amber and Jade. A favourite of her and the girls at Disney gets a kiss before it’s put in place.
The thirty-nine-year-old crosses to a spotless desk that has only one item on it — a thin, stainless steel nameplate proclaiming its missing occupant to be JONATHAN BRONTY. She’s been told the squad’s only man was once a priest in a tough downtown district in LA. ‘Well, Father, if your soul is half as clean as your desk I’m sure you’re going straight to heaven when the big day comes.’
She puts the nameplate down and drifts to the next workstation. It’s heaped with files and documents. Teetering near the edge is a row of old reference books and the proclamation: VICTORIA CANTRELL, UNIT RESEARCHER.
Adjacent is a third desk, that of LT ELEONORA FRACCI.
Mitzi inspects a tube of expensive foreign hand cream, a gorgeous brown Achille Pinto silk scarf and two small blue Murano glass fish used as paperweights. She picks up a silver-framed photograph showing a strikingly beautiful woman in a smart Carabinieri police uniform, flanked by her small but proud mother and father.
The office door opens.
Stood there is her new boss, unit head Sandra Donovan.
‘Quite a looker.’ Mitzi returns the photo to Fracci’s desk. She nods to her cardboard box. ‘I think I’ll sit over there, just so no one thinks me and the lovely Eleonora are part of a before-and-after commercial.’
Donovan doesn’t laugh. The forty-four-year-old’s sense of humour is as short as her masculine haircut. She extends a hand and grips hard. ‘Good to have you on board, though we didn’t expect you until tomorrow.’
‘Hey, if that’s a problem, I can gladly go home.’
‘No. If you’re on the payroll, you’re on the clock. Personnel are useless. Come to my office; we can talk there.’
‘Where’s everyone else?’
‘They’re out on a case. Will be all day. It’s something the cops downtown have been struggling with.’
Mitzi follows her into the small area behind the soundproof glass. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘Maybe.’ She slides into a chair behind her desk and gestures to Mitzi to sit. ‘Week ago cops found a woman’s body buried in her own back garden. Homicide has been grilling the husband ever since.’
‘Sounds like a domestic.’
‘They thought the same. But this is a weird one. Forensics found multiple semen samples on the corpse and none are the husband’s.’
Mitzi frowns. ‘But why call in this unit? What’s historic, religious or unexplainable about a rape-homicide?’
Donovan manages a smile for the first time. ‘The vic was a witch. A full-blown black magic priestess.’
2
Detective Paddy Fitzgerald, the cop everyone calls ‘Irish’, stands outside the antiques store on Howard Avenue, eating a large Danish. At his feet is a bucket of black coffee still too hot to hold let alone drink.
He isn’t going into that stinking hole of a crime scene until he’s finished his breakfast. The stiff in there has been cooking all weekend and from what one of the CSIs has told him, there are enough blowflies to lift him off his feet.
Calliphoridae.
He hates them with a passion. Hates their noise and their way of hanging around even when he’s batted the fuck out of them.
Irish sends uniforms to canvass for witnesses and tries the coffee. Still too hot. He puts it back down on the sidewalk and inspects the gathering crowd.
Human blowflies. Every bit as bad as the bloodsuckers inside. To say nothing about the press. Those cocksuckers are even worse. His vitriol has been sparked by the sight of Tommy Watson, an idiot from the crime desk of the Washington Post, with a long rap sheet for misquoting police.
The reporter raises a hand and with it his voice, ‘Hey, Detective.’
Irish ignores him.
‘You got a minute for me?’
He dusts pastry flakes off an unironed blue shirt that testifies yesterday’s dinner included meatballs and tomato sauce.
‘Come on; give me a break, Irish. You got a quote I can use for the online edition?’
‘Yeah, I got a quote. Tommy Watson don’t know his fat, lazy ass from his chicken-shit elbows — and if he wasn’t screwing the ugliest broad in Dispatch he wouldn’t even know to be here.’
‘Screw you, Lieutenant.’ He flips him the finger.
‘Screw you, Tommy tiny dick.’ He looks up, as he pulls forensic overalls and shoe covers from a police bag. ‘What? You don’t think Big Brenda told us about Tiny Tommy?’ He laughs and starts to suit up.
A hanging bell rings as he opens the door of Goldman’s Antiques and a sign saying CLOSED clatters against the reinforced glass. The light inside is nicotine-brown, as though tainted by too much contact with dark wood, dust and history.
The floorboards bend and creak as he walks a non-contamination route marked out by the forensic teams. The place smells of beeswax polish and brass cleaner.
And death.
The air is fat with the stomach-turning stink of it.
A young, male crime-scene photographer is up a short aluminium stepladder. He’s shooting video of the body, its relation to the entrance, the register, the showroom and the small restroom that, by the look of it, also gets used to make hot drinks.
Medical Examiner Cherrie Archer is on her knees, searching for defence wounds and trace on the hands of the cadaver. Over the stiff, curled fingers, the thirty-three-year-old blonde sees Irish shuffle towards her. He’s six-foot-plus but slouches and seems smaller. His dark, curly hair is specked with grey and looks like he slept the night in a cardboard box. Every time Cherrie sees him, she remembers that half a decade ago he had a brain sharper than her skull saw.