Chapter 20
Twenty
MARIS
To say this morning has been weird is definitely an understatement.
The man has been hanging on my every word this morning.
I take another sip and clear my throat. “So, this morning wasn’t normal.”
“And yet, you said it was a good day.”
He’s got me there.
“Well, yes…”
Julian stops walking, so I do too. “You know that makes me wonder what exactly a bad day is, right?” He sounds off. Upset. I get that he’s a compassionate doctor. He took the time to heal me. No one else in this town would have bothered to spit on me if I was on fire.
I shrug. “Its just that, a bad day,” I say, aiming for casual but Julian doesn’t buy it.
“Someone needs to teach this town manners.”
“Fat chance of that happening. You can’t change things in Vesper Point.”
Julian’s blue eyes cut to mine. His eyes look sharp, cold and there’s a drag to his voice when he speaks. “I can. I will.”
“What?”
Julian doesn’t answer me, instead he takes my elbow and urges me forward. “We ought to keep walking. You’ll be late.”
He’s right. I will be late and I didn’t show up yesterday.
The paper can run itself for the most part but if I’m gone for too long things go sideways.
Last time I didn’t show up for three days because I was on a wine bender and I walked in on Josie, Greg, Lyle, and Mary reenacting Lord of the Flies.
It was bad. I’ve got another two days left before they elect their very own piggy, so I’m not too worried about what is waiting for me when I walk through the doors of the newspaper.
Big mistake.
The second I see the big glass windows of the Vesper Point Call, I know something’s off. Normally it’s calm. Maybe Josie is outside having a smoke while I see Mary and Lyle going over a story at each other’s desk while Greg drinks his coffee and looks over edits. That’s normal.
But like I told Julian earlier today isn’t normal.
Today it’s chaos.
“What the hell is going on?” I stop in my tracks and watch as Josie sprints through the newsroom with her arms full of papers and a phone tucked to her ear.
Mary and Lyle are both on the phone at their desks and furiously taking notes while they stop to shout information to Greg who is frantically writing on the giant whiteboard that normally sits unused in a corner of the office.
Last time I looked at it, there were scribbles about a high school football game and a few random games of tic-tac-toe.
“Come on, something's up.” I take off for the newsroom and I’m proud that I don’t trip on my way up the stairs in my heels. It’s been a while since I’ve run in heels but it’s definitely like riding a bike. Once a woman learns to sprint in heels, there’s no taking the skill from her.
“Boss!”
I’m immediately assailed the nanosecond I set foot in the news office. “What is it? What’s going on?”
“They found a body,” Greg yells from where he’s scribbling on the white board.
“A body?” I feel like the floor is dropping out from under me and if Julian wasn’t at my side, I probably would faint but I don’t. He loops an arm around my waist and keeps me standing. “What do you mean they found a body? Where?”
“St. Edward’s.”
“Fuck,” I whisper and the room does well and truly spin.
Of course, it’s the day that I feel alive that my murdering ass gets thrown in jail.
Why today of all days? Couldn’t it have happened yesterday when the will to live hadn’t set up shop in my body?
Is this what they talk about getting a second win before you die?
I lean in closer to Julian and let him take more of my weight. “Who’s body?” I rasp, still clutching the bag with my feta wrap in it. The damn thing is probably a mess by now. Good thing I’m not hungry anymore. A dead body turning up where you offed a jackass will do that.
“Father Paretti’s,” Josie tells me on her way past. “I’ve been talking to the police chief all fucking morning. The cleaners found him when they went in to do their morning clean before mass.”
Today’s Friday. That makes sense. There’s no mass on Thursdays, not after the evening Wednesday at five sharp. My granny used to go to the Friday morning service religiously. Every morning at seven am, she was sitting in the first pew ready to start her day.
“The weekend is full of fun, may as well get ready for it,” she used to tell me on her way out the door.
My heart pangs thinking about granny being gone.
Now that Father Paretti is gone, it feels like another part of her has been chipped away.
Father Paretti was a decent enough man, he was good to me and granny. He never judged me.
That’s why I ran to the confessional booth without thinking after I’d killed Brian. I’d done it on instinct. The need to feel safe, to feel understood, seen. I think in some way I had linked Father Paretti to granny. If I talked to him about what I’d done then it was like I’d talked to her, except…
It wasn’t Father Paretti that I spoke to that night was it?
“Where did they find him?” I ask.
Josie makes a face. “That’s the thing of it. They found him in the confessional booth, he was tying one on in there but someone killed him.”
“In the confessional booth?” I grab on to Julian’s sleeve to keep steady. “You’re positive it was in the booth?”
The stranger I spoke to had been in the booth. Either Father Paretti came upon him after I left or he’d been dead the whole time I was confessing to his murderer.
“Yes, they did a sweep of prints and there was nothing but Father Paretti and an empty bottle of wine someone had kicked over.”
I feel like puking. A bottle of wine that someone had kicked over.
I was the one that had kicked over that bottle of wine.
When I came out of the confessional booth, I’d run right into it on my way running for the door.
I hadn’t been looking where I was going, but the bottle had been thick and heavy.
The clattering sound of it bouncing across the marble floors echoes in my ears while Josie goes on talking.
“But here’s the creepy thing, boss,” Josie lowers her voice even though it’s only us in the newsroom, she pauses before she speaks, eyes going to Julian.
I nod at her. “He’s okay. This is Julian Vale, he’s a friend, um, the new doctor in town. You can say it in front of him. He’ll find out sooner or later when they take his body in.”
Josie nods. “Nice to meet you, Doc. Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Likewise,” Julian murmurs. He rubs my back, the gentle touch makes me relax and reminds me to take a breath.
I close my eyes and take a deep inhale before I let it out and ask, “What did they find, Josie?”
“No blood in the body,” she tells me and looks down at the papers in her hands. She shuffles them like she thinks they’ll tell her something new but then snaps them down at her sides. “There was no fucking blood in his body, Maris. Someone drained him and left him there for the police to find.”
I clap a hand over my mouth and feel sick. “Oh my god.”
“They’re saying that it’s a homicide, of course. No one knows the motive but they’re suspecting occult reasons.”
I push away from Julian. “Occult? What the fuck? Like-like a sacrificial ritual or some horror movie shit?”
“Exactly.”
A few years ago they thought there was a group of devil worshipers sacrificing animals after they found a string of squirrels and rabbits skinned and gutted hanging neatly in a line at the edge of town.
The entire town had gone crazy looking for the supposed satanists.
Turns out it was just a local hunter that got a call his wife had gone into labor and had left his site without cleaning up.
When word came out about the hunter, it had been too late for Vesper Point.
The community was in shambles. Overnight, the town had turned on itself, cannibalizing itself to the point of becoming a fucking reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials.
This was going to be so much worse than that.
Vesper Point is about to become a war zone.