A Perfect Obsession

He returned it grimly.

“And I’m Roger Gleason, Ms. Finnegan, owner of Le Club Vampyre—the business and the building. Obviously, we’re very distressed by what’s happened here.”

“Certainly,” she said. Gleason was nothing like the other men. She judged him to be in his early forties. He was tall, stylish and handsome, with a sweep of blond hair that fell across his forehead. His suit, she estimated, had to have cost a month of the average workingman’s wages.

“I hope you can help us,” he said.

“I’m here for Drs. Fuller and Miro,” Kieran said. “Dr. Fuller will be here as soon as he can possibly get through traffic.”

“Yes, well, thank you, Ms. Finnegan,” Gleason said. “Traffic—he could be hours.”

He turned to Craig. “Do you think they can help?”

“Definitely. There’s never a guarantee that profiling a perp will result in apprehending him—no two human beings are really alike. But, yes, profiling has been key in solving many cases. I’ll bring Ms. Finnegan down to the crypt.

“Mike is still there?” he asked Egan.

Egan nodded. “Mike, the detective, the ME and the forensic team,” he said.

Craig nodded and led her behind the main bar—the old altar area. Kieran pictured the place as it had been as a church. Naturally, yes, the crypt would be beneath the altar.

They descended marble steps into the cool dankness of what had been a crypt and now housed spirits of a different kind. Rows and rows of wine and liquor bottles now lined the walls and were neatly arranged on the concrete floor.

The basement area here looked much like it did at Finnegan’s, she observed. Except, of course, at Finnegan’s, the cellar had always been solely for liquor storage.

Not “storage” for the dead.

“I wonder if the staff ever feels uncomfortable down here,” Kieran said.

“The dead who rested in this area are gone,” Craig said. “Besides, you need to—”

“Fear the living, not the dead,” Kieran said.

“Yep. They’re the ones who will hurt you.”

A patrolman stood to the far rear where large chunks of the wall had been knocked down and a broad opening had been created. Two women wearing jumpsuits that identified them as part of the forensic team were hunkered down over a black chest, working with samples. A photographer was snapping pictures.

She spotted Mike standing with another man who appeared grim and weary but calm.

He looked at her and nodded an acknowledgment. Kieran knew Craig’s partner well and liked him very much.

“This is Detective Larry McBride, NYPD,” Mike said. “Detective, this is Ms. Finnegan. She’s with the psychiatrists the Bureau often uses in the city, Drs. Fuller and Miro.”

The detective studied her as he offered a hand. He apparently hadn’t realized that it was still gloved. He pulled off the glove and shook her hand. “Ms. Finnegan. I know Dr. Fuller. Fine man.”

“You know him?”

He nodded, grimacing. “I’m a tennis player.”

“Ah,” Kieran said.

“Let’s do this,” Craig said. “Kieran, this way to the forgotten crypt.”

He turned her around and led her through the broken wall.

He was stoic. To anyone else it might appear that nothing bothered him. But she knew him well enough to know the crypt did bother him. Not because of those who had died long ago, and hopefully through natural means. He was a good agent, Egan had told her once, because he had empathy. He was sorry for the victim, the woman whose body he had already seen.

She realized that she was far more squeamish than he—and she also realized that she had never been on the site of a murder before. The murder hadn’t taken place here, but...

She paused for a minute, taking in what she saw.

The crypt stretched far beneath the earth. There were marble sarcophagi here and there amid the rows of what she could only think of as shelving—shelving for the dead. She thought that the rows seemed to go on endlessly, housing hundreds of interments. She’d been in the catacombs in Rome and this felt very similar, except that slabs for the dead were not just against the walls, they were in those endless rows of stone as well, one on top of the other. It was almost as if the tombs where the dead rested were many tiered bunks in a dormitory. Some of the shelving had broken marble slabs. Some had nothing, and bone peeked from rotting shrouds. Toward the front where she stood, coffins lay upon the same shelving. Most were deteriorating; all seemed to be covered with a haze of dust and cobwebs.

She pulled out her notepad and began sketching furiously, and then reached for her cell phone, taking pictures.

“Kieran?”

“Yes?” She turned.

Craig was watching her. From his expression, she knew that he was unhappy—and not because he wanted to prevent her work in any way. He just hated that she had to see this macabre place.

He tried a dry smile. “None of those is for Facebook, Twitter or any other social media?” he asked lightly.

She glared at him, refusing to answer.

He nodded. “To the left.”

She tensed, knowing she was about to look at the dead woman.

When she forced herself to turn, she felt chills seize hold of her spine and her limbs.

It was surreal.

Jeannette Gilbert still lay in the coffin—much as she had been found, Kieran surmised. The ME had been to the body, but as of yet, it remained undisturbed.

And the woman...

In life Jeannette Gilbert had been truly beautiful. Long, sweeping blond hair had curled over her shoulders, her lips had been generous and beautifully shaped, her cheekbones high. Now, even in death, she looked impossibly like a princess—as if she might be awakened by love’s first kiss.

And yet...

There seemed to be something out of focus. She just wasn’t quite perfect anymore. And, staring at the corpse, Kieran knew what it was.

She was decaying. And coming closer to her, Kieran felt as if the scent of that decay suddenly began to permeate her.

She forced herself not to back away. She saw then that the ME—out beyond the broken-down wall in the basement area—had a mask hanging around his neck. No doubt he’d donned it when he had examined the corpse.

Craig, however, stood at her side unflinching, staring down at the body with sadness and regret—and something steely in his expression that said that he wouldn’t stop until the killer was found.