a terrible beauty Read online

  TWO

  least, Sara thought, she had someplace to start. At least the vies now had names.

  She should either call Jake and let him know what she’d discovered, or better yet, go home, get some sleep, and call Jake first thing in the morning.

  Instead, she did neither. She stood at the edge of the quiet churchyard and looked at the church.

  It had been many years since Sara had seen the inside of a church.

  She’d been raised Catholic in a conservative Italian Queens parish. Her mother had been devout. Her father, a cop, less so. He’d gone to Mass sometimes to please Sara’s mother, but he’d died in the line of duty when Sara was very young, and she didn’t have many memories of him. She cherished those few she had, but none of them were of him and church.

  Something inside her made her pause in front of the church, some inner need unconnected with the case. Something deeper than the voices in her head told her to go in, just for a moment. There was something or someone who could help her. The urge was irresistible. She went up the rotten concrete stairs and the voices, started again to whisper in her head.

  “What are you doing-”

  “—do you want with this place—”

  “-nothing for you here—”

  “-nothing to help you-”

  “-only we can hclp.-you.”

  “I’ve had enough of your help lately,” Sara replied aloud. She strode up the pathway to the double-doored entrance. One of the doors had a worn sign whose weathered words welcomed her to St. Casimir’s. She flung open one of the double-doors and entered the vestibule.

  The voices shrieked as her hand touched the door, and .rose to a cacophonous maelstrom as she crossed the small vestibule and opened the door leading to the nave. Her knees weakened as the shouts and shrieks buffeted her brain, but the part of her that was the fighter, the part of her that refused to give in to the voices’ suggestions and sly offers, knew that if the voices didn’t want her to enter the church, she should.

  With the great force of will that had driven her to the rank of detective before she’d reached the age of thirty, Sara bulled her way into the nave, and suddenly the voices were gone. Finally, there was blessed peace in her troubled, tired mind.

  She’d almost forgotten what internal peace felt like. It was such a relief that she had to grab the back of the pew in the last row to keep from collapsing. The tranquility, the utter isolation that she felt, alone at last in her own brain, almost bought tears to her eyes. She wouldn’t, however, allow herself that last bit of release. She held onto the back of the pew and surveyed the church’s interior.

  It looked like what it was: a small, unpretentious church that served a small, poor parish. It was dark inside, lit only by infrequent, dim electric candelabras, and by banks of votive candles alongside the old-fashioned confessional box and- before the low, white railing that separated the altar from the rest of the nave.

  To the right of the altar, opposite the confessional, was a baptismal font-currently dry-and behind the font something Sara had never seen in a Catholic church before. It was an exhibition of crosses. Crosses, hundreds of crosses, some metal, some wood, some plain and severe, some intricate and fanciful, were crowded together in a jumbled mass against the wall behind the font. It was a chaotic, but somehow beautiful display that suggested a mountain, or at least a hill, of crucifixes.

  A handful of people were sitting or kneeling in the pews, praying silently. They were mostly women, mostly elderly. None were as young as Sara or as well dressed. A group of them sat together, saying the rosary in a European language that Sara didn’t recognize. Others were scattered about the nave, some at the banks of votive candles lighting tapers, dropping change into the money boxes and lighting their own offeratories with the long white wicks supplied for that purpose. An old man leaning on a cane, hobbled by his many years, came out of the penitent side of the confessional box and made his way slowly to a nearby pew where he knelt rustily, and started to say his penance.

  It had been years, Sara realized, since she’d made confession. Not since she’d joined the force, certainly not since she’d taken on the burden of the Witchblade.

  If the voices that were the spirits of the Witchblade didn’t like her being in the church, how would they react to confession, penance, and a cleansed soul fit for holy communion? V

  She hadn’t thought of that before. Maybe the voices had purposely blotted that notion out of her mind, until something, some slight lapse of attention on their part, some deepening of Sara’s need to get a respite from them, culminated in this visit.

  Without thinking about it any further, Sara scurried to the confession box along the side wall, entered the penitent side and pulled the curtain shut behind her. She kneeled on the uncushioned wooden rail.

  ., Sara realized that this parish must be at least as conservative as the one she’d grown up in. When she’d been a little girl, twenty years before, many Catholic parishes had initiated a somewhat more informal method of communion. Penitent and priest met privately, but in the open, face to face. However, some parishes with deep roots to their old countries and their old traditions, still maintained the ancient form of the rite, the anonymous confessional.

  The Catholics of Cypress Hills must be more conservative than most, Sara thought. Inside the confessional, you couldn’t tell if it was the twenty-first century or the twelfth.

  It was dark inside the box, but cozy rather than claustrophobic. Sara felt like a little girl tucked safely in her bed. The penitent’s side was separate from the priest’s side by a blank wall with a small, wire-screened window.

  All she could see in the priest’s side was a vague shadow waiting silently. / -

  “Bless me, Father,” she murmured. The words of the ancient ritual came back to her easily across the intervening years. “For I have sinned. It has been ... too long... since my Jast confession.”

  She halted for a moment, then a voice said quietly from the darkness, “Go on, my daughter.”

  She took strength from the voice’s quiet strength. It sounded young, deep and resonant, but soft. Almost, Sara thought, like the trained voice of an actor or singer. It was the voice of a man you could believe in. You could trust. “I accuse myself of the following sins ...”

  She stopped again. The voices hadn’t come back, but memories of them did, like echoes recounting her past transgressions, of the men she had killed, the deeds she had' done while under the influence of the Witchblade.

  The Witchblade... the source of her all her problems and, paradoxically, a great portion of her strength. She still didn’t know exactly what it was, though it had been in her possession for some time now. It was a mystic artifact that had a horrible life—or maybe lives—of its own. It spoke to her constantly in the form of murmuring voices, tempting her, trying to seduce her to abandon herself to its use. She had used it, God knows, used it repeatedly, often to good effect. She had saved lives with it, but she had also killed with it, too often and too easily. And it was hungry for blood. It feasted on the blood of the evil, the blood of the guilty, but it took innocent blood just as eagerly. And it always wanted more.

  But this was the twenty-first century. How could she confess sins such as these, and have anyone believe her?

  Worse, she whispered to herself, what if the priest did believe her? The transgressions she’d committed under the influence of the Witchblade ran too deep and too cold in her soul. Could she ever do sufficient penance to be forgiven of them?

  She stood, suddenly and swept the curtain aside and bolted from the confessional. The voices thrilled somewhere deep in her brain, as if exultant at her weakness as she fled from the box, her shoes clacking on the bare flagstone floor. She glanced back at the confessional as she ran, and saw the priest look curiously out from behind the curtain that shielded his side of the box. He was young and handsome, with a broad brow and the pale complexion and dark compassionate eyes of a saint. He was clearly puzzled as he watched S
ara. She felt a stab of longing as the handsome priest watched her, but was unable to overcome her sudden shame and fear, unable to respond to the offer of understanding and forgiveness on the priest’s face.

  As she stepped outside the church the voices came back, briefly and exultantly, in a quick babble of derision. But they cut themselves off quickly, as if afraid of pushing Sara too hard too soon, and steeling her resolve while she was still close to St. Casimir’s.

  The thought swept through Sara that all she had to do was open the door, go back in, and unburden herself to the priest. After all, he was in the business of healing hurts of the soul and dispensing forgiveness. She stopped, half turned to the door, and then her cell phone rang.

  “Yeah,” she said, half-thankful for the interruption, half-angiy.

  “Yeah, yourself.”

  It was Jake McCarthy, her partner. He was a blond, handsome young surfer dude who had somehow found his way from the left coast to New York City, and traded in his surfboard for a badge and a gun. As a cop he was as tenacious as a bulldog and as honest as Abe Lincoln. He not only watched Sara’s back when they were in action, he guarded her from official inquiry as well. He didn’t know about the Witchblade, exactly, but he knew something spooky was happening with Sara. He was fiercely protective of her, whether from scum in the street or higher-ups in the department.

  “I wake you?”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve been checking out some things.”

  Jake grunted. “Too bad Siry didn’t call you, then. I was sensibly getting some shuteye when he phoned me.”

  “What you got, Jake?" she asked.

  “Another body,” he replied laconically. “Brooklyn, this time. Cypress Hills.”

  Sara paused. “That’s not our turf,” was all she said.

  “Yeah, but you’ll want to see this body. It looks familiar.”

  “Familiar?” Sara said. “You mean, familiar like you know him?”

  “Yes and no. The deceased is one Philip Pierre-Pierre, according to the I.D. in his wallet. When I say ‘familiar’ I mean he resembles certain other corpus dilecti we’ve come across recently.”

  Sara felt a cold finger poking her heart. The voices twittered loudly, excitedly, in her brain. She could feel her nerves twinge, like the hot flashes that raced across her muscles when the Witchblade took over.

  “You mean-”

  ”Yep,” Jake interrupted. “Dude’s missing his head.”

  , CHAPTER

  THREE

  T

  1 wo uniforms stopped Sara at the crime scene tape. It was a big city; she’d never run into either before.

  ■, “Nothing here for you to see. Better move on, miss,” the taller one said.

  They were both taller than Sara, though she was five-ten, and wore their facade of authority as easily as they wore their blue uniforms. Sara suppressed a tinge of anger. She knew she was beautiful. Her looks were an advantage in many social situations. In the cop world they meant that she had to prove herself over and over again. It was tiresome. At times it was infuriating.

  “They are arrogant,” one of the voices whispered.

  “They are weak and puny,” a second took up.

  “Teach them a lesson,” pleaded a third.

  “Show them our might,” ordered a fourth.

  It’d be easier, Sara said to herself, if I just showed them this.

  She took out her wallet and flipped it open, showing them her detective badge.

  “Well, Detective Pezzini,” one of them said after a moment, “come right in.” •

  He lifted the length of sagging tape so Sara wouldn’t have to duck under it.

  “Yeah,” the second said with more than a trace of false solicitousness in his voice, “but be careful. It’s pretty gruesome over there.”

  Sara, already past the checkpoint, turned and looked at the two cops. “I’ve seen worse than headless bodies, boys—a lot worse.”

  She smiled. From the look on their faces, they seemed to believe her.

  Sara was the last to arrive on the scene. The Emergency Medical Technicians were waiting to take the body away in their ambulance, the Crime Scene Unit was crawling all over the street, taking photos, measuring, scouring the vicinity for clues under the glare of their too-bright flashlights. Later, they would come back in the daytime, just to make sure they hadn’t missed anything.

  Jake McCarthy was standing with a heavy-set black guy in plain clothes, watching as representatives from the coroner’s department put a loose-limbed corpse in a body bag, and zipped it out of sight.

  Sara didn’t recognize the other cop with Jake, but she recognized the man leading the coroner’s team. It was Coroner’s Assistant Kilby, well-known to Sara from past cases. His presence on the scene was both good and bad news. Good, in that he really, really liked her and would answer totally and truthfully any question she asked. Bad, in that he really, really liked her and was basically a pain in the ass who didn’t hesitate to make inappropriate suggestions and offers in the mistaken belief that he was being romantic. "

  “Sara,” Jake said, as she approached. “Meet Lt. Carl Dickey. He was first detective on the scene. Carl, Detective Sara Pezzini, my partner.”

  Dickey was a middle-aged black man with a round, sad face. Sara thought he was either a poor dresser or had recently lost a' lot of weight. Though Dickey was more beefy than lean, his unfashionable brown suit hung on him like it belonged to his fatter brother. If Sara’s weight-loss theory was correct, he still had a few more pounds to go.

  “Pleasure,” Dickey said. “Sorry for the circumstances.” Sara shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

  Dickey shook his head. “I’m not. Never will be.”

  Kilby came over to join them like an eager puppy, leaving the body bag to carried away by the waiting EMT’s. ~

  “And you know Kilby, of course,” Jake said sardonically.

  “Hi, Sara," Kilby said eagerly. “Fancy meeting you in a place like this.”

  “Yeah,” Sara said, glancing over the crime scene, her disinterest in him evident. “Fancy, all right.”

  “What you got for us, Kilby?” Jake asked.

  “Strange case, all right Probably not the place of death.” He gestured at the ground. “There’d be blood all over if he’d been decapitated here. Only blood was on his clothes and body. Those were soaked, but maybe not as much as you’d expect in a beheading.”

  “So,” Sara said, “he was killed elsewhere, then dumped here after his heart stopped pumping.”

  “Exactly,” Kilby said brightly, beaming at Sara as if she were his prize student. “But', dumped not too long after he was killed. Minutes, at most. Hell, the body was still warm when we got to it. Kind of surprised that there wasn’t a trail, or anything. No blood, no footprints, nothing being dragged here. It’s almost like he dropped here out of the sky or something.”

  Sara and Jake exchanged glances, but said nothing. “Who found the body?” Sara asked.

  “The classic anonymous informant,” Dickey said. “Uniforms were on the scene in three minutes. As it happened, I was close by and arrived two minutes after the uniforms.” “Could the anonymous informant be the one who killed, moved, and dumped the body?” Sara asked.

  Dickey shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Interesting. Why the call reporting the body, then?” “Killer wants the body found," Jake theorized. “He wants the world to know about this killing.”

  “He does?” Sara said. “That’s a change. Why hide the identities of the first three vies and not this one?”

  Jake shrugged. “He’s getting careless.”

  “Or cocky. What was the vic’s name again?”

  “Philip Pierre-Pierre. How can you forget a name like that?” Jake checked his pocket notebook. “Apparently he owned a restaurant on Fulton Street.”

  “Cypress Hills? I just came from there,” Sara said.

  “You did?” Jake asked.

  “Yeah. Met an informant. He’s
the one who gave me the names of the other vies.”

  “Other vies?” Dickey interrupted, finally able to get a word in. “What other vies?”

  “A couple of possible victims of this so-called Machete

  Murderer turned up earlier in Manhattan," Sara said. “Three to be exact. Two, at least, seem to have ties with Cypress Hills.”

  “That’s news to me,” Dickey said.

  “Don’t you ever watch TV?” Jake asked.

  “Only sports,” Dickey said morosely. “The news is too depressing.”

  “Can’t argue with that*'.”

  “But I shouldn’t have to get information like this through the TV,” Dickey said doggedly.

  “I just identified the first couple of victims,” Sara said smoothly. She wasn’t above spreading a little fudge to smooth things over. “I was just on my way to the precinct to let you guys know when I got the call from Jake about this new killing.”

  . “Uh-huh,” Dickey said, but Sara could tell from his eyes that he didn’t believe her. She shrugged, to tell him she didn’t particularly care.

  Sara turned to Kilby. “This Pierre-Pierre was killed with a machete?”

  “Well...” though clearly happy with Sara’s attention, Kilby was too good a coroner to jump to conclusions. “Officially, all indications are yes. No broken bones. No stab marks from a smaller blade. No bullet wounds. Could conceivably been strangled, poisoned, bludgeoned, and then beheaded to confuse things. The autopsy will tell for sure. But, just for now, for something to go on, I’d say death was probably caused by decapitation by a heavy blade.” “Single blow?” Sara asked. The voices within were getting excited at Kilby’s news. She had to concentrate to block them out.

  Kilby nodded. “Yeah, but it wasn’t clean. The blow cut

  through most of the neck, leaving the head attached to the body by a flap of skin and flesh. Then, it looks like the perp just ripped it away.” He stopped. From the expression on his face Sara knew that he had more to say, but was uncertain if he should reveal anything farther. “What else?1? she asked. -

  “Well, I... I shouldn’t say. Not really certain.” Kilby brightened, and smiled at Sara. “But, for you, sweetcheeks ... There were marks around the stump of the vic’s neck. Teeth marks.”