Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(56)
Author: Erin McCarthy

State of Louisiana v. Jonathon Thiroux

January 14, 1850

ATTORNEY FOR THE DEFENSE, MR. SWIFT: Mr. Thiroux, describe to us what the room surrounding Miss Donovan looked like when you regained consciousness and discovered her dead.

MR. THIROUX: It was hot in the room and there was a sweet, sickly odor. It was dark, except for moonlight. Anne was lying on the sheet. She must have remade the bed with the intention of going to sleep because I had actually taken the sheet off earlier.

MR. SWIFT: Why did you do that?

MR. THIROUX: It was tattered.

MR. SWIFT: Tattered?

MR. THIROUX: Yes. She had hosted a visitor in her room prior to my arrival and I was offended by the evidence of that.

MR. SWIFT: So there was another man specifically in Anne Donovan’s room before you arrived?

MR. THIROUX: Actually, he was still there when I arrived. I informed Madame Conti that he needed to vacate Miss Donovan’s room as I had an understanding with her that Anne would always be available to me.

MR. SWIFT: So you were paying a retainer for her services?

MR. THIROUX: Yes.

MR. SWIFT: So it was unusual to see another man in her room?

MR. THIROUX: Yes, very. In the nine months I had been seeing Anne, I had never encountered another man in her room.

MR. SWIFT: Can you describe this man?

MR. THIROUX: I did not get a very good look at him, as his back was to me, and I left the room immediately. But he was dark-haired, with what appeared to be an olive complexion. I can get no more specific than that.

MR. SWIFT: But Madame Conti saw him in Miss Donovan’s room?

MR. THIROUX: Yes. As stated, I demanded she force him to leave, which she did. I heard her offering him three girls for the price of one as compensation for his inconvenience.

MR. SWIFT: Did she refer to him by name?

MR. THIROUX: No, she did not.

MR. SWIFT: Were you inebriated at that point?

MR. THIROUX: Not in the slightest.

Gabriel was shaking the hand of the young, personable physician in the ER who had treated Rochelle, ready to leave now that her parents had arrived, when he suddenly realized what he had never bothered to investigate. He had read all the online articles in reference to Jessie Michaels’s murder case. But he had never seen any pictures. The articles had all been text.

He wanted to see Dr. Rafe Marino, who Sara seemed to think was attractive and charming, with a heart of gold.

Gabriel had his doubts about the good doctor’s true character, especially after his conversation with the Florida journalist.

It was the biblical and Michelangelo references. They had been rolling around in his head, bothering him, nagging that something was not right.

So instead of going home, he headed straight over to the library, ignoring the fact that he’d been up all night and hadn’t eaten. He did a general search on Dr. Rafe Marino. He got what he wanted immediately. A staff picture from the hospital in Naples where Dr. Marino had worked prior to his arrest.

“Holy shit.” Gabriel sat back in his chair, heart pounding. It couldn’t be.

It was Raphael.

A fallen angel.

Once a healer.

And now, obviously, a killer.

The face smiled back at him, familiar and open. Raphael wasn’t suave yet disdainful like Alex, or quiet and intense like Gabriel. Raphael had always been the one who could put people at ease, could draw out a smile, a laugh, even from the most devastated.

How could he take that trust and destroy mortal lives?

Unbelievable, just insane. Gabriel couldn’t believe that Raphael was capable of such heinous acts. It wasn’t possible to understand how anyone could do what had been done to those women, but Raphael, a man he had known, spoken to, shared meals with. That he had committed such evil, it was incomprehensible.

But true. And he was a demon, after all. Raphael had sinned like all the rest of them. He had succumbed to the pleasure of flesh and food and wine and turned his back on his duty. In the nineteenth century he had cared more for the cut of his coat than his position as coroner. But murder? Gabriel would have never guessed. It sickened him.

Tapping quickly, Gabriel did another search. This one yielded an e-mail address and phone number. Raphael hadn’t tried very hard to cover his tracks. Working for twenty minutes, digging up everything Gabriel could—history, education, professional associations—on Rafe Marino, he hit the jackpot when he found that one Dr. Rafe Marino was the sole benefactor of a trust. The very trust that had purchased a house in New Orleans two years prior. On Dauphine Street.

It was the House of Rest for Weary Men.

Owned by Raphael.

Which unlocked the memory of the man, angry and swearing at Madame, leaving Anne’s room. The voice that had sounded familiar to Gabriel, but which he’d spent a hundred and fifty years trying to place without success. It had been Raphael. He was absolutely certain of it, so obvious to him now he couldn’t imagine why he had never realized it before.

Raphael had killed Anne.

Gabriel hadn’t.

Relief and horror mingled together and left him staring blankly at the screen, the words blurring together.

“Are you okay?” the lady sitting next to him asked. “You look like you’re going to be sick.”

And then some.

“I’m fine, thanks,” he said automatically, glancing over at her. She was in her eighties, her skin loose and peppered with age spots and veins. Her navy sweater enveloped her as she hunched over the computer keyboard, her glasses perched on her nose.

She patted his knee with her soft and delicate hand. “Whatever it is, this too shall pass.”

“Sure.” Wherever there was evil, there was always good, and this woman was his reminder of that. A memory of duties long ignored. So he smiled at her, and for the second time that day, he let someone see the depths of his power, the beauty, the promise, the vision of his palace in the sky.

Her hand gripped his knee tightly, the strength in her astonishing, as her eyes went wide. “Have you come to take me?” she asked.

“No. It’s not your time yet.” He could feel that in her. She had years of vitality still.

“Are you my guardian angel?”

The longing rose in his soul, aching and heavy, painful, dripping sorrow for what he had done, for what he had lost, for what he had betrayed and could never be again.

Gabriel stroked the top of her withered hand. “No. Just a friend.”

From the Court Records of

the Willful Murder Trial of Anne Donovan,

State of Louisiana v. Jonathon Thiroux

January 16, 1850

ATTORNEY FOR THE DEFENSE: So, Dr. Raphael, what you’re saying is that in your expert medical opinion, Jonathon Thiroux could not have killed Anne Donovan?