Rapture (Fallen Angels #4)(47)
Author: J.R. Ward

Matthias just kept staring at Mels, to the point where she felt as if he were trying to tell her something. But he had cold eggs and hot legs to worry about, so his proverbial plate was full enough without her.

She threw them both a wave and fell into the foot traffic funneling out through those revolving doors.

On the far side, the sunshine was bright and cheerful as she headed for Tony’s car, and the sedan was warm inside. Settling into the driver’s seat, she gave herself a stiff lecture before starting the engine—except it didn’t do any good.

Not even the part about how a man who was mysterious and unavailable was likely to, given her reporter’s instinct, seem oh, so much more appealing than your average schlub—but that didn’t make him a good bet.

Maybe this was why she was still single. It hadn’t been for lack of dating invites. It was more likely the fact that the men who had asked her out had had steady jobs, and nice enough looks…and their memories.

No shadows, no excitement.

Nah, she was into someone with a possibly shady past and a breakfast companion who had Barbie’s body and TV-commercial hair.

Healthy, realllllly healthy.

Starting the car, she nudged into traffic, her rendezvous with Monty the Mouth set for a park about seven blocks from the hotel.

At least the timing of it all was in her favor: If she had to go back to the newsroom and pretend to be working while she stared at her computer screen, she was liable to lose it.

Goddamn men, she thought as she found another free meter, pulled a better parallel and got out.

Following the instructions she’d been given, the whole thing with Monty had shades of spy movies, with her going over to a bench under a specific maple tree. All she needed was a newspaper to hide behind and a secret word and they’d be in total shaken-not-stirred land.

Monty showed up ten minutes later, in plain clothes that marked him as a swinger type. He was in a good mood, the subterfuge clearly giving him the kind of drama injection he needed.

“Walk behind me,” he said in a low voice as he passed by.

Oh, for crissakes.

Mels shifted to the vertical when he got ten feet ahead of her, and she kept his meandering pace, wondering why the hell she was putting herself through this.

After a little stroll, they ended up down at the river’s edge, at the big Victorian boathouse where people launched their canoes and sailboats when the weather got warmer.

Stepping inside, her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim interior, the diamond-paned windows not letting much of the sunlight in, the racks of rowboats and stacks of buoys and lineups of paddles and rolled-up sails making the place seem crowded. And it was loud in a sense, too—all around, the water clapped in and out of the docking cribs, the slapping noises echoing through the empty slips—

With a sudden explosion, barn swallows shot out of their early nests, dive-bombing them both before escaping into the open air.

As her heart settled back into a normal rhythm, she said, “So what have you got?”

Monty took out a large, flat envelope and handed it over. “I printed these out at home this morning.”

Mels slipped a finger under the metal butterfly clip and freed its hold. “Who else knows about this?”

“At the moment, just you and me.”

One by one, she slid out three color photographs, all of which were of the victim: the first was a full-body with the shirt down, the second closer with the shirt up, the third tight on what appeared to be a series of runes.

Cecilia Barten.

That was the name that went through Mels’s head as she examined the images: Sissy had been another girl, younger, and far, far outside the kind of life where getting murdered was a job hazard. Her body had been found in a quarry just recently with the samekind of characters carved into her abdomen. She’d had her throat slit, too. And she’d been blond.

“You saw the pictures from the crime scene, right?” Monty asked.

“Yeah.” Mels refocused on the close-up. “The skin was red, but there was nothing like this on it. Wait, so tell me, off the record if you have to—how did this go down? You said you were a first responder—”

“The first responder. I went into the room with the manager, and promptly followed procedure. I cordoned off the door and called for backup.”

“Where was your partner?”

“She’d called in sick, so I was out alone—budget cuts, you know how it is. No replacements. Anywho, while I was waiting, I took the pictures.”

She hated people who used the word anywho. “You moved the shirt.”

“I was examining the body and the scene in my official capacity.”

Creep. “Why take the pictures at all though, if the official photographer was coming?”

“The real question is, Where did that lettering go.”

Man, this just wasn’t right, Mels thought.

Looking over at him, she asked, “So what can I do with this?”

“Right now, nothing. I don’t want to be accused of tampering with the body.”

But you did, didn’t you. “So why give these to me?”

“Someone has to know. Maybe I’ll go to de la Cruz—or maybe you can put this out in the CCJ and just say it’s from an anonymous source. The thing is, the time of death was clocked at around five or six, so the killing happened fairly soon after whoever took the room occupied it. I got there at, like, nine fifteen. That leaves four and a half hours for someone to get in there and get out.”

What he was missing, though, perhaps deliberately, was the fact that those runes had disappeared between when he’d arrived on scene and when the CPD photographer had taken pictures. The body couldn’t have been alone for very long and scarification didn’t just up and disappear.

This was really not right.

“Okay, just let me know what you feel comfortable with on my end,” she said. “Whenever you decide.”

He nodded at her like they had sealed some kind of a deal, and then started to walk off.

“Hold up, Monty—quick question on something else.”

Her source paused in the doorway. “Yeah?”

“You know that man they found dead at the Marriott?”

“Oh, you mean the stiff in the delivery entrance? The one who disappeared from the morgue?”

Mels stopped breathing. “Excuse me?”

“You didn’t hear about it?” He came in close to share the report. “The body’s gone. As of this morning.”

Impossible. “Someone stole it. Out of the St. Francis morgue.”