Voodoo Priest (Blaire Thorne Book 2) Read online

  I heard Ralph’s car before I saw it. Everyone at Ulysses Assassins drove the ugliest and oldest car they could find. Mine was an old blue Honda, which was still being forensically investigated in a warehouse somewhere, after Sebastian and I had found it with a Ulysses employee’s torso and severed hand in the trunk. We still didn’t know who had killed Shane, but his body had been dismembered in our boss Marcus’s house—and even he had no idea who was responsible.

  Miles and Danny, the two were-animals who had attacked me, had denied killing Shane. And Roland, the vampire who orchestrated my assault, would never get his own hands dirty, so I was fairly certain it wasn’t him, either.

  Ralph’s Land Rover stopped at the curb beside me, a cloud of smoke trailing behind it.

  “Geez, Ralph, when are you getting rid of this piece of shit?” I asked as I climbed into it.

  “Leave my baby alone.” He rubbed the dashboard tenderly.

  “Gross.” I scrunched my face.

  His full lips curved into a smile baring all his teeth. Ralph was handsome in a rugged, outdoorsy kinda way. The first two times I saw him after the attack, he had looked different each time. He had been wearing a fishnet shirt with leather pants the first time, sporting a beard and curly hair that fell to his shoulders. He came to my house the second time, dressed in a business suit and with his beard shaved to leave only a mustache. His hair was still long these days, neatly framing his face, and with the beard gone, I could see the dimple in his chin that softened his face.

  Today, his face was cleanly shaven, but he had left the soft brown curls to fall where they wanted to. His eyes, beneath the long dark eyelashes, were the color of the sky just before nightfall.

  When he wasn’t working, we had spent time together. And apart from those two occasions where he had dressed up, he would usually wear sneakers with jeans, a vest, and a loose shirt to disguise the shoulder holster for his gun.

  As I settled into the seat, I could see that Ralph was in recon mode, ready to observe and survey potential targets. Today would be the first time I was tagging along on an actual contract. In response to the excuses I always had not to go with him, Marcus, our boss at Ulysses Assassins, had said that if I didn’t start pulling my weight, he would forfeit my salary. Which I understood; he couldn’t keep paying someone who wasn’t working. I had enough money to last me a while, but then what? What would I do once the money ran out? Unless I had a stash of cash somewhere and I miraculously remembered where it was, I had to work—even if it was sitting in the car and watching someone all day.

  When Ralph pulled away from the sidewalk, he had his serious face on. “Your gun is in the glove compartment.”

  “Ralph—”

  “Don’t Ralph me,” he said, cutting me off. “You’ve had time on the range to retrain your eye—so wear it already. Anything could happen, Blaire. You need to carry it with you always. What if that witch had tried to hurt you, but you couldn’t protect yourself because you were unarmed?”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and pouted.

  “Put it on. You know it makes sense.”

  I rolled my eyes, but he couldn’t see me. I opened the glove compartment and took out the shoulder holster, slipping it on over my top and securing the gun—a Glock 19 pistol. I put my coat on over everything, zipped it up to the top, and fastened the seat belt again.

  “Are you happy?”

  “Yes,” he said, but he didn’t sound it.

  “What’s wrong now, Ralph?”

  He looked across at me when we stopped at a red light. There was a somberness in his eyes that couldn’t be mistaken. “I can’t lose you again, Blaire.”

  My chest tightened and my throat hurt. I turned away from the pain in his face because if I kept looking at him, I knew that I would cry.

  Instead, I said, “The light has changed.”

  He pulled away slowly, and we cruised onward with the rest of the lunch hour traffic.

  “So, what’s this new job?” Changing the subject was easier and helped me think about something besides the attack and the nightmare that had followed. Ralph was my best friend, there to hold me at night when I cried out and I didn’t want to go back to sleep. He had stayed by my side for a month until I had told him to go. He couldn’t babysit me forever, and he had his own life to live.

  Ralph cleared his throat. “A suspected murderer.”

  I frowned and turned in the seat as far as I could to look at him. “So why aren’t the police arresting him?”

  “They don’t have enough evidence.”

  I frowned harder. Either I was slow, or the cops were just useless—which was already my opinion, given that I had been left to solve my own mystery around who had attacked me.

  “I don’t understand, Ralph. Gathering information and getting the bad guy is usually the cops’ job. Why are they handing it over to us? We usually only get jobs where all that’s been done, and all we have to do is pull the trigger.”

  “When there are jobs the cops can’t handle, or because it could cause political uproar, they pass it over to us to handle quietly. This is one of those jobs.”

  My eyes narrowed at him.

  “What?” he asked when he saw my face.

  “What aren’t you telling me, Ralph?”

  His sigh had weight to it. “Fine. They arrested him and charged him with the murders, but then there was another murder with the exact same MO as the others. They knew it couldn’t have been him because he was in custody when it happened, so they had to release him. They knew he was connected to the murders; they just didn’t know how. So, they asked us to figure it out.” He hesitated. “To get rid of the problem.”

  “Shit.” I sat straight in my seat and focused on the cars ahead of us. “So, is that where we’re going now?”

  “Yup.”

  “How many people has he killed?”

  “The folder is on the floor near your feet.”

  I looked down and saw a thick manila folder, which I picked up and started to page through. I glanced over the police reports. There had been seven murders; each so similar that they had to be the handiwork of the same person. All the victims were male, all six foot two, between two hundred and two-hundred-and-twenty pounds, and all Caucasian.

  I gasped when I saw the first crime scene photo, closing the folder so quickly that a few of the photos fell to the floor.

  Shit, now I had to look at them when I picked them up. My stomach turned, and I felt dirty, like the pages in the folder were crawling with insects and I didn’t want to hold it anymore. I dropped the folder on the floor again and looked up at the traffic.

  “Are you okay?”

  “You could’ve warned me, Ralph.”

  He gave a hearty chuckle, found a parking spot, and cut the engine. “That’s his shop over there.” He pointed to the center across the road. All the shops looked ordinary enough; a barber’s, a pet shop, a convenience store—and then there was the voodoo shop. It looked much the same as all the others in Sterling Meadow.

  Did this killer perform rituals or tarot readings? Was that how he chose his victims?

  “Did any of his victims buy anything from him?”

  “I don’t know. Was it mentioned in the folder?” His eyes flicked to me and then to the folder on the floor by my feet. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

  “Dammit, Ralph.” I picked up the folder. “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “No, I need your take on it, Blaire. We’re a team, okay? And before you say anything, I know you don’t remember, but I know you still have that inquisitive mind. We just need to bring that part of you to the surface again.”

  I huffed, opened the folder again and read the full reports.

  The victims all held very different jobs; there was a magician for kid’s parties; a bus boy; a lawyer; a teacher; a data analyst; a cartoonist; and, lastly, a homeless man. Yep, all very different, and, from the looks of it, they all belonged to very different social circles. I couldn
’t see any connection between them at first glance.

  The first victim had been the magician; he had attended a kiddie’s party and never came home. His wife had filed a missing person report the next day when she couldn’t locate him using an app on her phone. The magician was average looking, with short brown hair, brown eyes, and thin lips.

  He had been found in a field near a school, minus both hands. During the autopsy, the medical examiner had discovered an item sewn into his hollow cavity, in place of his organs. The photo I now held was that of a little voodoo doll made from brown material; it had two buttons for eyes, a smile stitched with red cotton, and a little bell sewn to the middle of its body. It would have been a cute little doll—if it hadn’t been for the bright red blood that had stained it.

  The tuna sandwich I had eaten only an hour ago was ready to make a reappearance, but I swallowed hard—I would not throw up today.

  The picture of the magician’s corpse was in black and white, and I breathed a sigh of relief; I had seen enough red on the doll. The magician’s body had been dumped. As in thrown-out-of-a-car-while-it-was-still-moving kind of dumped. His body had come to rest on its side, the arms sprawled in unnatural positions and the legs crossed. The report said his entire body had been covered in dirt, as though he had rolled into that position and collected sand before he had stopped moving.

  The other six bodies were found in very similar circumstances, the only differences being the locations, which were scattered all over the city. There was nothing connecting them; nothing about their background, or where they worked, or who they knew was connected. They seemed to be random victims, yet they must have been specifically selected because of their corresponding height and weight.

  “How tall is our man and what does he weigh?”

  Ralph’s smile was a good one. That made me smile because something I said thrilled him. I had said something worthy of that smile.

  “I knew you could do it.”

  “What?”

  “Your question. It was perfect. Just the kind of question the old Blaire would have asked.”

  “Glad I can be of service.” My smile mirrored his.

  “He is six foot two and weighs two-hundred-and-ten pounds.” He removed a piece of paper from his pocket with the information on, unfolded it and handed it to me.

  My eyes narrowed at him. “You were testing me?”

  “Someone’s got to, seeing as though you won’t push yourself.”

  “Fine,” I said, placing the piece of paper inside the folder. “What are we going to do now?”

  “We wait.”

  Chapter 3

  IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER 4pm when the man exited the shop. From where I sat, I could see that he had hair as white as snow, and his skin was morbidly pale. He surveyed the area and then locked his shop. He walked to an old red Chevy truck, climbed in, and drove out of the parking lot.

  Once the Chevy had passed us, Ralph started the engine and pulled into the flow of traffic behind a green Ford.

  “Is that Ross McNielty?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do you think he saw us?” I asked, keeping my eye on the red Chevy truck.

  “Not sure. We’ll soon see if he makes any sudden turns. I know his home address, so if he does decide to go on a joy ride, we can wait for him there.”

  When Ross McNielty stopped at a drive-thru, we parked on the other side of the road as he ordered his dinner. Once he had been handed his food, he drove off in the direction we had just driven, so Ralph had to make a U-turn. We kept a little distance between us and the red Chevy truck in the hope that he couldn’t see us tailing him—or at least that was the plan, anyway.

  Instead of going back to the shop, McNielty turned left before the center where his shop was, passing a school with kids playing ball, two churches and a mall. After fifteen minutes of driving, he eventually stopped in a driveway.

  “Is this his house?”

  “Yup,” Ralph said, as we slowly drove past his house and parked around the corner, which was four houses away.

  “What now?”

  “Now we wait.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Should I have worn an adult nappy?”

  He snorted with laughter. “No, Blaire, we won’t be waiting here that long.”

  “I hope not.” I unbuckled the belt and settled lower in the seat until I was comfortable.

  Ralph opened his window. The breeze was chilly, I shivered and hugged my body tightly.

  More cars parked in the various driveways as more and more people came home from work. It was 4:30pm and the cold was creeping in; the sun hadn’t even set yet. We still had an hour and a half left of daylight, and it was already chilly, hinting at a freezing winter if autumn was this cool already. I made a mental note to buy a warmer jacket from the outlet mall.

  The houses in the neighborhood were all typical of suburban life. Some were double story, but regardless of the number of floors, each of them was massive. They all had immaculate gardens.

  “What else does he do at his voodoo shop to be able to afford this place?” I asked while surveying the other houses.

  “You tell me. His house is worth at least nine hundred thousand dollars, and I doubt selling shitty trinkets from the shop covers his mortgage.”

  “What else do we know McNielty does in his spare time?”

  “Apparently he plays poker every Wednesday. He should be leaving around five, which will give us time to look around.”

  I flashed wide eyes. “Do you mean go into his house? As in break in?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Shit.”

  The first stars of the evening were twinkling in the night sky when we entered McNielty’s house through the back door. It took Ralph less than a minute to unlock and open the simple lock securing the door. The kitchen was neat and tidy, with the smell of disinfectant still in the air. There was a kitchen island in the center of the room with a bowl of fruit atop it and an eight-seater dining table across the room near the door.

  Ralph handed me a flashlight. He switched his on, and we scanned the room.

  “Touch nothing,” he said.

  “I know,” I replied, a little petulantly.

  On the far side of the living room stood two cabinets lined with shelves. All were full of jars. The cabinets cordoned off a small section of the room that obscured our view. It was only as we walked further inside that the smell caught me off guard. I preferred the disinfectant smell—at least it was clean and sterilized.

  “What’s that smell?” I whispered to Ralph, pinching my nose closed.

  “I think it’s coming from the bottles.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the cabinets.

  Each of the jars held different items, immersed in some kind of preserving liquid that was yellow in color at the top and red toward the bottom.

  “He has tongues, ears, eyeballs… even a penis in these jars.” I pointed to a jar near the floor. I shuddered. “There’s even a shrine back here.”

  Ralph stood beside me, and we stared. It took me a couple of seconds to register what exactly it was we were staring at. There were dried ears hung from a string that surrounded a number of candles like a curtain, which had been dotted around a framed picture of a woman and an open metal box that had been placed in the middle of the table.

  “Jesus, what the fuck is that?”

  “I think it’s lady parts.”

  Ralph’s eyes were wide. “You’re joking?”

  “Well, what does it look like to you?” I said, pointing to the contents of the metal box.

  He looked again, but I still didn’t think he registered what the object was. I could see him concentrate and try to make sense of it, but his mind seemed to be rejecting the horrific concept behind the display.

  The labia and clitoris had been arranged like a flower on a bed of tissue paper inside the metal box. Once Ralph’s mind finally accepted the grim truth, he turned away from the table and swallowed hard.

  “
Let’s go see what else there is,” he said in a strained voice.

  “Agreed.” For the second time that day, my lunch almost repeated on me. I hoped that the woman was dead before that had been done to her.

  I tried to breathe through my mouth, but the smell from the bottles burned the back of my throat and my eyes. I wiped my eyes dry with my hands as we entered the first bedroom.

  The bedroom was dark; the light from our torches revealed black walls and drawn black curtains. The silver chains caught my attention first. Connected to the chains were leather straps—the ones used to hold someone against a wall with their arms above their head. In the middle of the room was a large bench connected to a single beam, which was covered with a soft leather cushion.

  I frowned. “What is that for? Is it a seat or something?”

  Ralph shook his head and said something, but I couldn’t quite hear him.

  “What? I can’t hear you.” I approached him and saw that he was pale, his blue eyes dark in comparison to the color of his face. “What is it, Ralph?”

  I looked back at the seat.

  “It looks like a Spanish horse, but without the spikes. It was used as a device for torturing women.” He looked at me, his eyes still drowning in horror. “It’s been modified for pleasure.”

  “What?” I looked at the horse again, frowning, and shone my light onto the legs. There was an ankle strap on each of the legs to keep the woman bound and her legs apart. On the soft leather seat itself were more straps, which would bind her hands in front of her as she lay over the horse, her bits flashing whoever was standing behind her. There was a step on the floor so he could reach her.

  “Shit, Ralph. I want to get out of here. I don’t like this fucking horror house.”

  “We still need to check the other two rooms. Then we can go.”

  I reluctantly nodded in agreement.

  The second bedroom was normal by comparison, containing only a bed, a couple side tables, and a cupboard.

  Thank heavens. I didn’t think I could stomach another torture room.

  The main bedroom had a huge bed in the center. In actual fact, it was two king-size beds pushed together, made for an orgy of people. The carpet was white fur; I knelt down, and it was soft to the touch. The curtains in this room were open, and car headlights suddenly blinded me. As I clambered away from their glare, the car engine died, and someone climbed out the car.