Sworn to the Night (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 1) Page 5

  “Thank you for seeing us,” she told him. “Obviously, we don’t believe your company has any connection to the shooting incident at the property, but we’re still trying to identify the men involved. Any information you can share would be very helpful.”

  Roth opened the binder. He flipped through page after page of eight-point type, flicking color-coded plastic tabs.

  “Of course, happy to help. Unfortunately, as I told the other detective on the phone, that property was supposed to be vacant. We’ve had it for so long that the original paperwork is, well, paper. We’ve moved almost everything over to digital, but to be honest, keeping tabs on that particular lot isn’t exactly a high priority.”

  “It doesn’t seem to match up with the rest of your company’s holdings,” Marie observed, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

  “It really doesn’t, no. Reason is, and I’m a little embarrassed to say this, it was one of my first purchases when I inherited this company from my father. I was being a ‘radical visionary,’” Richard said, hooking his fingers in the air, “and I was convinced I could buy some random lot in the middle of nowhere and flip it for a massive profit. Because I was a genius who knew everything, and also twenty-two years old. Which is basically the same thing.”

  “And it never sold?” Tony asked.

  Richard laughed. “Have you seen it? Last time I set foot on that property was ten years ago, and it was a weed-infested eyesore then. Can’t imagine what it looks like today. Hard to get to, lousy access road…once I finally got over myself, I mentally wrote the place off as a loss and forgot about it. Until yesterday, anyhow. Ah, here we go.”

  He waved them close, letting them read over his shoulder as he ran his finger down the cramped margins of a ledger.

  “See, here’s the original deed of transfer. Now, if I’d ever rented the property out, there would be follow-up information right here. In this big empty spot.” He put his hands on his hips and shook his head at the book. “Ah, the follies of youth. Say, could I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Tony said.

  “If I heard the news right, the squatters in the house opened fire when a pair of officers came onto the property. Why were the police there in the first place? Was there some kind of complaint?”

  Something about Richard’s routine had rubbed Marie the wrong way from square one, and it wasn’t just the vise-grip handshake. Every word out of his mouth, as he showed them pages in a dead ledger, felt like stage patter. Rehearsed to a T, right up to the question he’d obviously been waiting to ask. While he looked at Tony, Marie slipped a photograph from her wallet.

  “Her,” she said.

  When Richard turned around, he was staring right at Baby Blue. His smooth facade shattered like a wall of glass. It was only a heartbeat, just an instant, but he looked at the picture like a man caught with a bloody knife and a corpse at his feet. Then he blinked and the mask was firmly back in place, nothing but a trick of the light.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “who?”

  “A sex worker who goes by the street name Baby Blue,” Marie told him. “She’s gone missing. A confidential informant suggested she’d visited the property.”

  Richard pressed his palm to his forehead. “You’re telling me people were bringing prostitutes out there? God, that’s all I need, more bad press. You have to believe me, detectives, I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d been paying someone to check up on the place. It was just a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ I never imagined something like this could happen.”

  She almost believed him. He had slick moves and better lines than a used-car salesman, but nothing could conceal that first moment when Richard laid eyes on the photograph. She knew that look. She’d seen it on a hundred suspects’ faces.

  He had recognized her.

  “Oh,” said a woman’s voice from the open archway. “You have company.”

  “Just the police, asking about the lot in Monticello,” Richard said. “Detectives, this is my wife, Vanessa.”

  Marie glanced at the door. And then it was her turn to shatter.

  Seven

  For a moment, there was no one else in the room. Just Marie and Nessa, meeting each other’s eyes across seven feet of mahogany floor. The others faded, the house faded, the world faded, swallowed by the swell of a string quartet. They stood on the edge of a mid-1600s ballroom, French, or maybe Spanish. It was white marble and gilded, the other dancers slow-spiraling shadows beneath murky golden light.

  Ask her to dance, Marie thought. Your entire life, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for.

  “Marie?”

  Tony’s voice jolted her from her reverie. The world slammed back into place, hard-edged and mundane, and Marie blinked, realizing she’d been staring. Nessa stared back. Her lips were slightly parted, a faint blush coloring her high cheekbones.

  “I’m Marie,” she said, then paused. “Detective. Marie Reinhart. Detective Reinhart. Good to meet you.”

  “Delighted,” Nessa said. She looked like she was about to say something else, then fell silent.

  “Are you…involved with your husband’s company, Mrs. Roth?”

  “No, I’m a professor at Barnard College. Anthropology.”

  “Fascinating field.”

  Nessa quirked a lopsided smile. Her blush, standing out on her pale skin, deepened a shade.

  “I think so, but…not as exciting as your job, I’m sure.”

  Richard’s gaze swung between the two women. His brow furrowed.

  “At any rate, detectives, that’s all the information I have for you. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.”

  Tony stepped between Marie and Nessa, breaking their line of sight as he held out his hand to Richard.

  “You were very helpful, Mr. Roth, thank you. We appreciate your time.”

  Richard slapped the binder shut and pumped Tony’s hand. “Of course. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a business trip to get ready for. If you need anything else, I’ll be back in town in a couple of days. Feel free to leave a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I’m able.”

  Marie leaned around Tony’s shoulder. Nessa stood on the other side of the open archway, her body half-concealed behind the wall. Light glinted off her oversized glasses as she slowly tilted her head to one side, peering at Marie, her lopsided smile growing. Then she disappeared. Soft footfalls echoed as she padded up the hallway.

  “We’ll do that,” Tony said. “Detective Reinhart and I will—Detective?”

  “Right,” Marie said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  Out on the front walk, the cold silence of the Roths’ house swept away by the sounds of the city, Tony squinted at her.

  “So what was that, anyway?”

  Marie curled her arms over her chest, walking briskly. He scrambled to keep up.

  “What was what?”

  “That,” Tony said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “You and Roth’s wife. Did you know her?”

  Yes, she wanted to tell him, even though it wasn’t true.

  “No. Never seen her before.”

  “You weren’t acting like it.”

  “How was I acting?”

  Tony frowned. He skirted past a couple of slow-walking tourists.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Weird.”

  “I haven’t slept and I might be a little hungover,” Marie said, searching for an excuse. Though she felt fine. Better than fine. “I’m probably not myself today.”

  “You’ve been saying that a lot lately. I don’t want to tell you your business, but…maybe it’s time you talked to somebody? I mean, you know, a professional? You don’t wanna be self-medicating with a bottle. Cops have higher rates of alcoholism as it is, and I’m not even getting into the health risks—”

  Marie threw up her hands. “Don’t get Mormon on me right now, okay? I can’t have you getting Mormon on me today.”

  Tony laughed. “Hey, I’m not pushing the religion, just the he
alth benefits. No booze, no caffeine, my body is a temple.”

  “Yeah? When you took that waitress home last Friday night, did you show her around your temple?”

  “Touché. Hey, slow down. Let me rap at you for a second.”

  They stood at the edge of the street beside a pair of battered newspaper boxes, out of the flow of foot traffic. Marie fidgeted, uncomfortable standing still.

  “Real talk now,” Tony said. “We had a lead, we checked into it, it didn’t pan out. You gonna let this go and get some rest? I’m worried about you.”

  “I’m not sure we came up empty-handed. Roth reacted when I showed him that photograph. He recovered quick, but it startled him. I think he recognized her.”

  “Maybe he was startled because you jammed it in his face. You sure you saw what you think you saw? I mean, you just told me ten seconds ago that you’re not you today. And considering how you were staring at the man’s wife, I’m inclined to believe you.”

  “It’s worth following up.”

  “How? Right now, we’re safe. We made a routine appointment, had a nice talk, he did his civic duty, and he’s got no reason to think twice about it. We’re clean. You start stalking the man, all it takes is one phone call to the captain and we are busted. Leave Richard Roth alone, okay? It’s not just your job on the line: it’s mine, too.”

  Marie’s gaze dropped to the sidewalk. Her shoulders slumped.

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you.” He squeezed her shoulder. “Go home. Get some rest.”

  He left her at the top of the subway stairs, getting lost in the crowd and disappearing beneath the city streets. Marie stood off to the side, uncertain, wondering if she could gin up an excuse to go back to the Roth house. Say she forgot something, dropped a pen on her way out. A pen? No. She was being ridiculous and she knew it. Still, as she waited at the bus stop and long streaks of wispy cloud grasped like straining fingers across the late afternoon sky, her head was filled with a vision of a dance that never happened. A dress she’d never worn, a room she’d never seen, and a woman she’d never met before today.

  All the same, it felt like a memory.

  * * *

  Nessa sat cross-legged in her workroom, surrounded by canvases, her bestiary of half-finished grotesques. The black book—her book—lay open on her lap. She’d found it four years ago in a SoHo used bookstore, the last bits of worn-away gilt on the cover glinting as it poked out from a random stack of mismatched hardcovers. The gilt had caught the dim lighting just right, a lighthouse beacon flashing in her eye, like it had been positioned just for her. The title, Games for the Cunning, all but demanded she pick it up and take a closer look.

  It taught her games, all right.

  There were games to hear whispers in empty rooms and see fleeting faces in vacant mirrors. She learned games involving poppets made with twists of burlap and black iron nails and a splash of menstrual blood. Games involving jars filled with rusty razor blades and spittle, buried in just the right place. Sometimes her little tricks worked; often they didn’t. Witchcraft was an art, not a science. But she could feel herself growing stronger, more capable. Every session with the book lured her closer to understanding. Then she ran headlong at the “Game of Finding a Guide” and hit a brick wall. Four times she’d taken her book and her offerings to Inwood Hill Park, and four times she’d failed miserably.

  She couldn’t skip ahead. Past that chapter, the second half of the book was gibberish. A cipher, all squiggly lines and uneven curves, glyphs in an alien tongue. To the true witch, read the final English words, the means to understand are given. Once you have found your Guide, all will be made apparent.

  Maybe she wasn’t a failure after all. Something had happened. Something had leaped between her and that detective, Reinhart, like a spark from the blue. Something that tasted like an impossible memory and a connection she couldn’t begin to define.

  Magic.

  Nessa stifled a giggle as she flipped through the pages, looking for insight. Her heart was pattering, her head light. She wanted to run outside, track Marie down and talk to her for hours. About anything, she thought, just to hear her voice again. What is this? I haven’t felt this giddy since I was a teenager. What does it mean?

  A knock on the door jarred her from her thoughts. Richard poked his head into the workroom. She slammed the book shut and held it tight on her lap.

  “Hey, hon. Uh, weird question. That cop, the woman, did you know her or something?”

  “I don’t believe so,” Nessa told him.

  He squinted at her. “Okay.”

  She stared back at him, silent.

  “Oh, once I come home from my trip, we’re hosting a party here at the house. Dad’s flying in from DC and wants to do a meet-and-greet with some local boosters, so don’t make any plans for that night.” He paused, squinting at her again. “Are you putting on a little weight?”

  “No.”

  “Well…just, maybe stick to salads for the next couple of days, okay?” He grinned and cocked finger guns at her. “If we don’t look good, Dad doesn’t look good, right?”

  Nessa bared her teeth in the faintest imitation of a smile.

  Once he finally left, she stole into the kitchen and came back with a ceramic bowl, half-filled with water. She set it down before her, with the book to her left, and killed the overhead light. She struck a match. The wick of a black candle sizzled to life, and she read aloud by the murky light, the instructions for “A Game for Conjuring Distant Sights” laid out beside her.

  “By Cthonia,” she whispered, “I call to my own concealed desires, my deepest currents. By Phosphoros, I call upon the majesty of illumination. Reveal unto me what I seek. Reveal unto me the truth. By Kleidoukhos, unlock wisdom, and I will learn.”

  She chanted, the words slow, serpentine, as she dripped calligraphy ink into the bowl from a slender vial. The midnight-blue droplets hit the water, spattered, and spread, turning it into a lapis mirror. Nessa saw the curves of her own face reflected like a shadow in the dark. As she chanted and stared, and fell into a waking trance, her image dissolved and vanished. She saw new things in the water now. Images floated in the haze, some like people, like distant buildings, like the curve of a farmer’s sickle. This was as far as this spell had ever taken her, vague impressions that might have been simple tricks of the candlelight.

  “Marie Reinhart,” she heard her own voice whisper, unbidden. “Show me.”

  The ripples of ink turned to a gentle blanket of snow. A shadow play unfolded. A horse-drawn cart, rattling across a vast and trackless tundra. Two figures riding side by side. The cart filled the bowl, turning the water black, and then the vista changed. Now the outline of a woman in a flowing dress stood alone in the cold flurries. Behind her back, she cradled a long-handled knife.

  A taller silhouette approached her. The second woman stood before the first and then gracefully knelt down in the drifting snow.

  Static crackled in Nessa’s ears. It was the sound of a distant radio trapped between stations. Snatches of syllables, words spoken over each other. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The ink-scrying spell had always shown pictures, never sounds. Nessa leaned closer to the bowl. Her eyes widened behind her rounded glasses.

  “Hedy,” she heard a woman’s voice—a voice almost like hers—say, “hold the book.”

  The image in the bowl wavered and melted, coalescing in the shape of a lidless eye.

  “My name is Ness—” A burst of static. A garbled shout. “Not sure how this—but if you’re receiving—”

  Streamers of black light twisted around the eye, faster and faster, sparkling in the dark. A squeal rose at the edges of Nessa’s hearing, louder by the second, strident as a war horn.

  “Listen and understand,” the voice said. “You are in terrible da—”

  The candle blew out.

  No wind, not even a draft, but the light died as suddenly as the impossible sound. Nessa slumped forward as an electric wave passe
d through her body, a jolting shock that stole her breath. The spell shattered, the moment gone.

  She sat there alone, in darkness and in silence, perplexed.

  Eight

  Marie caught up with Helena Gorski at 5th Avenue and East 86th Street, right on the edge of Central Park. The price of Helena’s company was an early dinner from one of the roving food carts that lined the sidewalk. Helena’s partner, Jefferson, double-fisted his. The portly detective clutched a steaming taco in each hand, the grilled flour shells nestled in beds of aluminum foil.

  “I’m not asking for much,” Marie said. She tilted her head to bite into her taco. A pepper burst between her teeth, washing over the flavor of spiced meat and queso fresco.

  “Not asking for much,” Helena echoed. She jerked her thumb at Marie. “You believe this?”

  Jefferson chewed fast, swallowing, and shook his head. “C’mon, Marie. Roth is a dead end.”

  “He’s not right. Something about him isn’t right, and I don’t buy his explanation for the house in Monticello.”

  “Sounds pretty solid to me,” Jefferson said. “Besides, of course he ain’t right. Guy’s a real-estate big shot. He’s probably cheating on his taxes, his partners, his wife, and possibly, just possibly, not going to church every Sunday. None of which makes the guy a killer or a drug dealer.”

  “I’m just asking you to take a run at him. It’s your case—”

  “Correction,” Helena said. “It’s Monticello’s case. We’re just playing liaison. And we’re all a little more focused on the drug stash and the murder victim. You’re on leave, Marie. Go home. Get some rest. You’re not doing yourself any good like this.”

  They walked along a sea of hexagonal paving stones between the woods of Central Park and the rows of cars on 5th Avenue. The traffic grew thicker as the shadows grew long, congealing like syrup in the city’s arteries.