Shattered Souls (19 page)

“I told them I don’t know nothin’.” Donnelly’s eyes teared up, and he stared at the ceiling. “This ain’t happenin’, man.”

“Oh, it’s real, but the thing is…” Sam sat forward, casting a gaze at the mirror, then angling a shoulder as though trying to keep the conversation private.

Cait leaned against the wall next to the door, keeping both Sam’s and Donnelly’s profiles in full view. She loved the way Sam worked a suspect. Had missed seeing him in action, whether he played the hard-ass bad cop or the guy she saw now, the one who only wanted to help.

“Michael…can I call you that?” Sam asked softly.

Donnelly glanced down and nodded, wary tension in the fine lines beside his glassy yellow eyes. “Sure. But I still want a damn lawyer.”

“How’s he gonna help you, Michael?” Sam flicked his fingers in an underhand wave. “He’s not gonna believe your story any more than the detectives you talked to before. He won’t know how to help you.”

Donnelly’s mouth trembled, and then his whole body shook with a violent tremor. “I swear, I don’t know nothin’.”

“And I believe you. Something happened to you. Something that scared the shit out of you, didn’t it? At the dig site…”

Donnelly’s gaze sharpened and shot to Cait, who gave him a reassuring nod. In a quick move, he leaned over the table as far as the cuffs attaching him to the table allowed. “They told me I was makin’ up shit,” he whispered harshly.

Sam hunched closer, keeping his voice low. “It happened when you messed with the body the students found?”

An eager nod preceded a tear leaking from one eye. “Yeah, I wasn’t gonna hurt anything,
but it was weird
,” he said, his voice rising. “I thought I heard something. A voice, tellin’ me to come closer. Freaked the fuck out of me.”

“But you didn’t run.”

“Couldn’t, man. I got down close to hear, but its face was covered up. I thought for just a second it wasn’t dead, that maybe there was someone in there still alive. I pulled the strips from around its face.” He shook his head. “The thing was dead all right, but…” His body started shaking harder. “Something came out of its mouth,” he whispered. “Kinda like a snake, but not. It coiled up and came at me, but I tripped and fell back…and that was all.”

Cait nodded again. “What’s the first thing you remember when you woke up?”

“I was on the ground, cops coverin’ me. I started screamin’, but they held me down so hard I couldn’t breathe. Said I was under arrest for a fucking bombin’. They brought me straight here. I don’t know nothin’ about no bombin’.”

“But you know where to get dynamite, don’t you?” Sam whispered, his tone smooth as silk.

Donnelly’s face whitened. “They think I stole it?”

“Where did you have access? And I know you did.”

“Last job. Clayton Pools. We used dynamite sometimes to dig into rock. They think I stole it?” When Sam didn’t answer with a move or a word, Donnelly’s face crumpled. “Man, I’m so fuckin’ screwed.”

“Michael, I won’t lie. It looks bad. But my partner and I know something happened to you.” Sam laid his hand flat on the table. “We know it wasn’t you doing those things. But we need your help. The thing that crawled out of that body into yours did some terrible things.”

“It wasn’t me.” Donnelly sniffed and the corners of his mouth dragged down. “Swear.”

“I know, buddy. But it would be good for you if you could help us piece together where the thing might have gone. While it walked around inside you, it went places. Maybe places you know. Can you help us figure out where it might have gone?”

His face was pasty white. Sweat broke out on his forehead and upper lip.

Cait resisted the urge to curl her lip, but his sour scent intensified. She breathed in shallow breaths, glad she wasn’t Sam and sitting so near.

Sam tapped the table with his forefinger. “We’ve been looking for your place. Think he might have been there. Where have you been living?”

Donnelly glanced away. “Don’t got no place.”

“But you’ve been living somewhere. You won’t get into any trouble telling us. We just want to help. Get this all sorted out.”

Donnelly’s shoulders slumped. “I’ve been workin’ a couple of places. Homes. Doin’ odd jobs. Sometimes the owners aren’t there…”

“So you’ve been squatting?”

He hung his head. “I haven’t been messin’ with nothin’. Haven’t stole a thing.”

“I understand. You just wanted a place to sleep.”

He nodded, his head drooping toward his chest, his breaths rattling.

“Can you give us the addresses?”

Donnelly glanced up. “Thirsty.”

Cait straightened from the wall. “Want some water?” She noted his pallor turned from parchment white beneath the dirt to gray. She stiffened. “You OK?”

He shook his head. His body convulsed. Vomit, yellow bile, oozed from his mouth.

Sam lunged up and circled the table to go to Donnelly, who hunched, body slackening.

Cait wrenched open the interrogation door and stuck her head out into the hall. “We need medical help in here. Donnelly’s goin’ down.”

The door from the room beside interrogation slammed open, and Leland barreled out. “What the fuck just happened?”

“Don’t know,” she said, moving aside as more officers entered the room.

Leland’s face screwed up in a scowl. “I knew you’d be trouble.”

Cait didn’t reply. What could she say?

He shoved through the officers ringed around Donnelly as they unchained him and laid him flat on the floor. Through the spaces between the many bodies she saw Sam beginning chest compressions.

“Dammit, Donnelly, hang in there,” he growled.

But the voices she hadn’t been paying any attention to grew louder, clamoring as another joined their chorus.

Cait shook her head and walked away, knowing Donnelly was dead. Her gaze went to every uniform she passed, looking at their eyes, wondering which of them might have been taken by the demon.

She raked a hand through her hair and found it shaking.
Damn, I need a drink.

She sat in the straight-backed metal chair beside Sam’s desk, not looking up because she felt a half dozen gazes on her. Donnelly had died inside that interrogation room. No one could stick her with it; the ME was sure the cause was natural, a heart attack, due to malnourishment and dehydration he’d deduced given how parchment-thin Donnelly’s skin was. The stress of the arrest had killed him.

Sure, it was a natural death, but still damn strange. Everyone whispered. She’d been there. Cait knew all the old stories about the strange things that happened every time she’d worked one of her full moon cases. She was a jinx. A loose cannon. Nothing was ever her fault, but like some damn black widow, Donnelly had dropped dead before he’d been made to confess where the girls were. Never mind the police didn’t have a bit of proof he was the guy. It was her fault they didn’t know where to look.

“Got it.”

Cait jumped as Sam dropped the plastic bin with Donnelly’s possessions on his desk.

Then he eyed her, must have noted her posture, slumped and sullen, because he trained his gaze around the room at the other detectives, who suddenly glanced away and began to get busy.

He took his seat. “You OK?”

She shrugged. “Would have liked to trace his steps.”

“Maybe we can find some clues in this,” he said, pointing at the bin. “I also have someone looking through his banking information to find any checks for handyman work. We can pull addresses from those.”

Cait straightened in her seat. “Just feels strange. Being back here.” She realized her hands were balled into fists on the chair arms and slowly unrolled her fingers, which still shook.

Sam leaned toward her. “This isn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, but they look at me like I put some kinda mojo spell on the dude.”

“They were hyped about catching Donnelly.” He jerked his chin toward the cops sitting in desks. “Thought it was over. That they could pin Henry’s death on him, find the girls, and be heroes. Now they have to keep working. Sucks for them.”

“Sucks worse for Donnelly.” She met his gaze and shrugged. “I just wish he’d died on someone else’s watch.”

“I know. So do I. But you don’t see me blaming you, do you?”

She cupped her hands and smoothed them over her hair, tucking it behind her ears before sitting forward, elbows on the padded arms of the chair. “I hate the way this feels. When Officer Rebozzo went down, I was the only cop around. When I followed his voice to his killer, then dropped him, they thought I might have had something to hide. Like I was involved.”

“IA cleared you.”

“Doesn’t mean everyone didn’t still have doubts.” Her stomach knotted.

“Fuck them.”

Her lips quirked upward. “No thanks. One cop’s all I can handle.”

Sam’s gaze skimmed her one last time, but he must have been satisfied with what he saw, because he reached into the bin and chucked Donnelly’s wallet her way.

Relieved at having something concrete to do, she emptied it, searching through paper scraps of his life. Receipts for takeout. For lumber and drywall tape. Two crumpled-up, grungy dollar bills. Pictures of him in a tux standing beside a girl in a fuchsia prom dress. Once, even a loser like Donnelly had been innocent. He’d died that way, but no one would ever know that sorry truth.

Sam sighed and tossed a utility knife and a scarred-up flip phone into the bin. “Have anything there?”

“Not sure. I’ll list the receipts, have Jason track down the businesses. See if they knew Donnelly or where he lived. Might be something.” She carefully replaced everything else in the wallet and put it into the bin. “Only other thing I can think we might need is to figure out who Worthen’s demon jumped into. We need to know every single person Donnelly came into contact with during his arrest and booking.”

Sam nodded. “Any suggestions what I should tell the guys about why I need that information?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Tell them he might have had a communicable disease. That everyone who touched him’ll need testing.”

“That’ll hold only until the ME finishes his exam and determines cause of death.”

“Might stall him a bit if someone puts the bug in his ear that he has to use extra precautions.”

Sam nodded, smiling. “Glad you’re on my side. I’ll be right back.”

She caught his shirtsleeve. “I want to see Celeste today, too. But I need something of Donnelly’s. A piece of clothing. She’s a medium. She might be able to pick up something.” At his tightening lip, she added, “It’s just another lead.”

Sam’s gaze flicked over her again. “You look wrung out. Why not head over to Celeste’s? I’ll meet you there. You don’t want to go to the morgue.”

She’d never liked the smells. And morgues were almost as noisy as graveyards. She gave him a little smile. “Think I’ll puke my guts?”

“No, but why go if I can handle it without turning interesting shades of green?”

Cait smiled. Such a considerate gesture. “Thanks, Sam.”

“No problem.” He drew in a deep breath. “Wish I could kiss you.”

She glanced around. “Better not. They might think I’ve rubbed off on you. You’ll be their new Full Moon Babe.”

His fingers slid atop hers and gave her a pat. Then he jerked his chin toward the door. “I won’t be long. Go. I’ll arrange for a uniform to drive you.”

Cait stood, stiffening her back as all gazes swung her way again, pasted an I-don’t-give-a-fuck look on her face, and strode out.

After she’d been dropped at her place, grabbed her car keys, and headed out again, she was halfway to Celeste’s when her cell phone sang “Bad to the Bone.”

“Were you gonna call and tell me what the hell’s happening?” Jason asked, his voice crisp.

“We still have a case. For now. You heard about Donnelly?”

“Yeah. News is saying there’ll be an investigation into his death.”

“Protocol. He died of heart failure.”

“And you know this how?”

She heard an interested note in his voice. “I was there when it happened.”

A whistle blew in her ear. “Bet Leland loved that.”

“Between the bombing and Donnelly croaking, let’s just say I’m not his favorite person at the moment.”

“I spoke to Lisa’s parents. They know about Henry and Donnelly. They’re ragged. Want answers. Do we have any?”

“Not yet, but if you’ll meet me at Celeste’s I have a list of places for you to hit to see if we can develop any new leads. Only thing me and Sam can think of is to trace Donnelly to any work sites or places where he might have squatted.”

“I’m out the door. See you in ten.”