Still, this gave new meaning to her conversation with Miles at the cinema. He — or whatever she had actually spoken to — had told her that Maggie wasn’t alive. She’d assumed that meant the girl was dead… but apparently Miles had meant something else. Maggie wasn’t alive because Maggie had never existed.
McKenzie was standing outside her door, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He greeted her with an expression of annoyance. “You’re late.”
“I remembered that I had an appointment this morning.” Violet unlocked her apartment and stepped in, holding the door open for McKenzie. He cast a quick glance around the living room before taking a seat.
“It’s been awhile since I’ve been here,” he commented. “Hasn’t changed much.”
“I should show you the bedroom.” McKenzie’s eyebrows shot up and Violet laughed. “I just meant the chalk outline and bullet holes.”
“Oh.” McKenzie smiled. He had arrived at the tail end of the investigation the other night and hadn’t even set foot in the building. “Look, Violet, there’s a few questions I have to ask and… well, I hope you won’t take any of them the wrong way.”
Violet sat down on a padded chair, a few feet away from McKenzie. She lit a cigarette, not bothering to offer McKenzie one. He didn’t smoke. Her eyes flitted over to a photograph on the mantle. It showed a slightly younger Violet, her arms around a dashing man only slightly older than her. They were at the beach, the wind catching their hair. She suddenly felt wistful for days that were long past.
“Violet?”
“Sorry. My mind was wandering.”
“That’s okay. It’s been stressful, I know. You and Miles were close.”
“Yes.” Violet’s face became quite calm and she reclined in her chair, taking a long drag on her cigarette. She crossed her legs and noticed that McKenzie’s eyes caught the movement. “What do you want to ask me, Will?”
“Well, I do need to know about the case Miles was working on… but before we get to that, I need to ask something else.” McKenzie took a deep breath. “Did Miles ever talk to you about Satanism?”
Violet’s face momentarily lost its sense of calm. Her lips dipped downwards in shock before she recovered her cool. “What are you playing at?”
“I’m serious.”
“What do you mean by ‘Satanism’? You know as well as I do that Miles wasn’t religious.”
“Well, Satanism is mainly about the worship of the Devil. Black Mass, sacrifices, orgies…”
“None of that sounds like Miles.” Violet held her cigarette away from her face, perched between two fingers. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Because we found some interesting things during the autopsy. Did you know that he had a tattoo behind his left ear? It was hidden by his hair.”
“A tattoo of what?”
“A five-pointed star. A pentagram.”
“No. I didn’t know that.” Violet shifted in her seat, feeling a bit uncertain. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. I can show you the photographs. Given the combination of the pentagram tattoo along with the bizarre injuries he suffered… well, it’s got some folks around the station wondering what Miles might have been into.”
Violet stood up, shaking her head. “Miles was no Satanist. The pentagram doesn’t always mean Satan, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It wasn’t that long ago that the pentagram was a commonly used Christian symbol. The five points were believed to refer to both the five senses and also to the five wounds that Christ suffered on the cross. People used to wear the pentagram as a ward against demons and witches.”
McKenzie was watching her closely now. “How do you know all that?”
Violet smiled bashfully. McKenzie had rarely seen her look more girlish and he found the effect very pleasing. “I used to love stories of knights and chivalry. One of my favorites was the poem Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. Gawain had a pentagram on his shield and the poem talks about how the pentagram’s five points have five different meanings; the five wounds of Christ, the five senses, the five joys that Mary had of Jesus — the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Assumption — and the five virtues of Knighthood: generosity, purity, fellowship, courtesy and compassion.”
“That’s incredible.”
Violet looked away, her smile vanishing. McKenzie got the feeling that she felt vulnerable and didn’t like it. She puffed away on her cigarette, offering a brief shrug. “It’s strange the things you remember,” she said.
“So it’s possible that Miles had the tattoo for some other reason than devil worship. That’s good to know. Did you and Miles ever talk about any of this stuff?”
“No. Never.”
“Well, then… maybe we should talk about the case Miles was working on.”
Violet placed her cigarette between her lips and closed her eyes. Where to begin, she wondered. “A young girl — a looker with the face of an angel — came to us and wanted us to find her little sister, who she said had fallen in with a pornographer. The girl’s name is Abby Whitehead. The man we were supposed to tail is Sidney Morehouse. I normally handle the fieldwork myself but I wanted to go to the movie premiere and Miles offered to handle it. I think he was a little sweet on her.”
“And then you saw him at the theatre?”
Violet looked at him and nodded. “Yes. Only nobody else could see him. He apologized for getting us involved with the case and said something about it being a lot more than he’d thought it would be. He said he’d met Abby’s sister. Then he walked off.”
McKenzie said nothing, letting her continue at her own speed.
“Last night, after meeting with you, I came back here and tried to get some sleep. I couldn’t so I left a little early this morning and went to see Armitage.”
“Why would you do that?”
“To see if he was involved in Miles’ death.”
“And what did you find out?”
“He’s clean. Of that, anyway. So I headed over to the hotel where Miss Whitehead was staying. Come to find out that she doesn’t have a sister — the girl we saw in the pornographic pictures was actually her. The name she gave us for the sister is her stage name when she strips at The Topaz. According to my source, Whitehead lives with Morehouse.”
“So this was all a set-up?”
“Looks that way. I’ve got Morehouse’s address but I figured I should speak to you before heading over there.”
McKenzie stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
“This is all so strange.”
The handsome young police chief grinned. “I’ve seen worse, believe me.”
“Have you?”
“Oh, yes.”
Violet nodded. Something in his eyes made her believe him. “Still… a pentagram tattoo on my partner’s head? A set-up designed to kill one or both of us… and that strange bit at the theatre. Was it some sort of ghostly vision or something? I’ve never believed in that sort of thing.”
“There’s a lot more out there than most people have ever imagined.”
Violet stepped closer to him and put a hand on his chest. “You sound like someone who needs to unload a little. What’s been going on with you? Is it work? Or have you found God?”
McKenzie laughed but there was no joy in it. “I can’t go into it. Not now. But I’ve seen things that would get me locked up in a loony bin for talking about them.” He placed his hand over Violet’s and gave a squeeze. “You ready to go?”
Violet’s lips parted and her tongue appeared, moistening them. “Do you want to be with me again, Will? For a little while?”
“Is that what you want?”
Violet noted the husky tone in his voice. “It’s probably not a good idea… but yeah, I do. Right now I want to feel you next to me. Something solid. Something real. All these lies are making my head spin.”