CHAPTER TWELVE #2
“She didn’t say that.” Molly shook her head, hard enough to swing her braids.
“She just said they had warned her about saying stuff she shouldn’t say.
Something like that.” Her expression crumpled.
“I thought she was being dramatic, lying for attention or something. Why would something she said get Sister Catarine killed? What could she know that would be so important? Or – or so evil? It can’t be true, right?
” She seemed on the verge of full-on panic.
“We aren’t sure of much of anything right now,” Keen said soothingly. “But what you are telling us is very helpful, Molly. Don’t think otherwise. Here, have a drink of water.”
White faced, Molly nodded and took the cup Keen pushed across the table toward her. Hero turned to her partner to give the girl a moment to compose herself. “The hellhounds,” Keen murmured to her. “Someone wanted to keep the Graham girl quiet, even in death.”
Hero nodded. Someone had certainly gone to great lengths to silence Sister Catarine, too. Her soul had been eaten.
Keen waited for the girl to grow calmer, then asked, “Did she tell you any names, Molly? Anyone she was afraid of specifically?”
Molly shook her head, toying with the cup in her hands. She glanced to the side, her expression pained.
“You didn’t believe her,” Hero said softly. “Is that why you feel so guilty about it?”
Molly started, then pulled herself together, wiping at her eyes with her sleeves. “I didn’t, not at first. Then she said something so awful, I knew it couldn’t be a lie.” She spoke tiredly, fatalistically, as if she’d accepted that she couldn’t avoid this any longer.
“What did she say?”
Molly hiccupped, then squared her shoulders with remarkable courage. “She said they took her to see Sister Catarine’s body. High in a meadow, cold and still under a full moon.”
Hero swallowed disappointment. Damn it, was this another bust? Everyone already knew the details of Catarine’s death, that the body had been dumped on the mountainside.
“Molly…” she started to say, but then Molly met her eyes unflinchingly and blurted: “Cassie said she had no tongue. Someone had ripped it out.”
Keen sat back in his chair, jaw slack. Hero had to snap her own mouth closed once she realized she was mirroring his expression. They exchanged another long glance, the unspoken hanging between them: No one knew that.
Molly caught their look. “So. She wasn’t lying.” Silent tears flowed down her cheeks. “Goddess forgive me…” She began to sob.
Hero’s shriveled, half-demon heart felt a pang, sharp and undeniable. “Get Sergeant Liam,” she said into the room, knowing the right ears would hear her. “Tell him his daughter needs him.”
Sergeant Franke took his weeping daughter home for the day, leaving Hero and her partner alone to process their notes from the interviews.
Her brother had given her a stiff nod as he escorted his child from the room, perhaps so she wouldn’t think he blamed her for sending him out of the interview.
She’d just been doing her job, after all.
That’s the way she chose to take the gesture, anyway.
Some progress had been made with their interviews.
Molly Franke had been especially helpful.
Now they knew for certain that Cassie Graham’s death was connected to Catarine’s murder.
Perhaps no one had intended Cassie to die the way she had, but the girl was dead nonetheless, and silenced – except first she’d spilled her secrets, whatever they were, to Sister Catarine.
“We’ll have to talk to the brother,” Hero said.
She and Keen were back at their shared desk – borrowed from a couple of uniform PKs who’d been relegated to a file room – with piles of paperwork between them.
She’d given him some of Catarine’s correspondence to read through while she went over his prodigious notes.
He was observant, detailed, but he hadn’t picked up on anything she’d missed.
“And the Grahams, too. They might know what had their daughter so upset.”
“If she’d talked to them, she wouldn’t have needed to confide in Sister Catarine,” Keen countered, opening another of Catarine’s letters, brow furrowing as he scanned the page. “Who do you suppose this Mr B is? They seemed to have been exchanging letters. Quite recently, by the postmarks.”
Hero shook her head. “I don’t know. Not yet.
” He was probably right that the Grahams wouldn’t know what had upset Cassie, but she still wanted to question the family, to get a sense of the girl’s home life.
Maybe her parents were part of this nightmare.
They’d put her brother in a reform school, after all.
Her twin brother. It had to have been hard on her.
“He mentions missing children in his letters. Kids this Bright Renewal Academy list as runaways. Apparently, he didn’t believe them.”
She’d read those letters, too. They were short, pleading, persuasive, playing on Catarine’s sympathy.
Yet none of the missing kids were from Clementine Prep.
These were townie kids, the “bad” kids Molly had mentioned.
“If Bright Renewal is a reform school, I’m not surprised kids run away from it. They can be hard places.”
“We need to see this school,” Keen said emphatically. He shook the letter in his hand. “Catarine seemed awfully concerned about what goes on there.”
Hero frowned. It did seem important to their case, but she couldn’t help feeling it might be a distraction.
She wanted to focus on Clementine, on the revered mother and Father Kellan.
The deaths, the murders – a teacher and her student – had originated there, not at this mysterious Academy.
Was someone trying to steer them down a dead end?
“Some sort of summoning killed Catarine, according to Dr Virchow,” she said, plucking the autopsy report from the pile. “The instruments for such powerful magic often leave residue…”
Thrown by the abrupt change in subject, Keen riffled through his own papers to find a copy of the same report. “They did,” he said. “Around her neck.”
She shook her head, skimming through the report again. “We have to visit the crime scene.”
“But there was no evidence at the scene,” he protested. “Just what was found on the body.”
“No evidence that the PKs could see. I was foolish to leave it to them, especially after I failed to find Catarine’s shade.
Then that dead girl distracted me. Damn amateurs.
Damn hellhounds. Damn nuns. Hidden letters and obfuscations.
” She adjusted her glasses and tossed the report back on the pile. “We need to go and see for ourselves.”
He looked doubtful, but he followed her lead like a good PK. “I’ll acquisition some horses, Inspector. First thing in the morning. It’s a long ride and it’s already getting dark.”
“Oh.” She looked out of the window and was surprised to see he was correct. They’d spent all day with their interviews. She ground her teeth. This was all taking so long . “Fine. Tomorrow, then.”