Night of the Raven

Giving the mug to the bartender, McVey turned her hand with the iPhone and read the name on the screen. A name Amara’s terrified mind didn’t want to see or to acknowledge. Willy Sparks.

* * *

SHE PACED THE back office of the Raven’s Hollow police station like a caged tiger, dialing and redialing her cell. At the front desk Jake muttered about the Harden brothers being allowed to go home while he had to ride herd on a bunch of drunks in a town that wasn’t his and didn’t even supply its officers with a decent coffeemaker.

On his side of things, McVey was seriously wishing he’d never made any kind of deathbed promise to his father. Raising his eyes, he watched Amara pace. Okay, maybe not so much wishing as wondering what the hell he was supposed to do with this mess.

“Come on, McVey, give me one good reason why I can’t haul these boozers to the Cove. Cells there are way more comfortable than here.”

McVey scrolled through a list of New Orleans police officers. “Paperwork, Jake. Triple the usual amount if we start shuffling prisoners around. And you’ll be doing every last bit of it.”

The deputy gave his rifle a resentful pump. “I could get me a job in Bangor, you know.”

“Any time you want that to happen...” A raven-shaped wall clock told McVey he’d been on his iPhone for more than forty minutes. Out of patience, he took a procedural shortcut to a friend of a friend on the New Orleans force. “Samson’s texted me three times since we left the Red Eye,” he said absently. “Wants me to pay for the beer he didn’t get to drink.”

Amara kept pacing. “Sounds as though Samson’s spent some time around Uncle Lazarus.... There’s still no answer at the lieutenant’s apartment, McVey. I’ve tried his BlackBerry and his landline a dozen times each.”

McVey flicked her a look but said nothing. Didn’t need to; she knew the score as well as he did.

It took the better part of an hour to connect with someone in a position of sufficient authority to have Michaels’s apartment checked out. Another hour and a blistering headache later, the captain from the lieutenant’s parish contacted him personally.

“Michaels is dead.” The man’s tone was lifeless, a condition McVey understood all too well. “Officers found him on his back, staring at the ceiling. He had both hands clamped around his BlackBerry.”

“Cause of death?”

“Given the situation, I’d go with some kind of off-the-radar toxin that simulates a stroke. Forensic team’s scouring the apartment as we speak. I’ll let you know what they turn up.”

Amara rubbed her forehead with her own phone after the captain signed off. “Michaels is dead because he helped me get out of New Orleans. This is my fault.”

Figuring sympathy wasn’t the way to go here, McVey countered with a bland, “You know that’s a load of bull, right? And if we all just went with it, Willy Sparks would go on killing cops and civilians ad infinitum.”

She shot him a vexed look. “Thanks for the shoulder.”

“You don’t want a shoulder, Amara. You want to pound your fists. If I tell you it’s not your fault, you’ll get angry and say it should’ve been you, because that’s who Jimmy Sparks was gunning for.”

“He was. He is. And as emotional releases go, angry words are better than furious fists.”

“Not always. Back on point, what if Sparks’s nephew, godson, second cousin—whatever—had killed you instead of Michaels. Then what? True, he’d get paid, maybe bask on a tropical island for a while, but what he’d really be doing is waiting for Uncle Jimmy to crook his finger again and point it at a new target. The way things stand, this job’s not done. In fact, it’s a good bet Willy Sparks is either en route to or has already arrived in whatever Raven town the lieutenant entered into his BlackBerry.”

Amara frowned at her cell, then at him. “He said he buried the destination and phone number.”

“There’s buried, and there’s buried, Red. The phone wasn’t taken, therefore there was no need to take it.”

“As in the killer got what he wanted from it before he left.” She closed her eyes. “My ex is a geek. He could hack into just about any device.”

“Geeks can murder as effectively as anyone, Amara.”

“So it seems.” She looked around the office. “I need to leave before he gets here.”

McVey regarded his iPhone screen, shook his head and pushed off from the windowsill where he’d been leaning. “You’re not getting this, are you? Skip past the beating-yourself-up part, Amara, and think.”

“I’m not beating myself...well, yes, I am, but that’s because I feel responsible.”

“Did you kill him?”

“You’re joking, right? I’m a doctor, McVey. Psychology doesn’t work on me.”

“Fine. Here’s the reality. You leave town, Willy arrives. He’s pissed off to start with. Then he stops and thinks. And being a pro, sees a golden opportunity to draw you back.”

“By hurting members of my family.”

“Wouldn’t you, in his position?”

“Let me think. Uh—no.”

“Put your mind in his. We’re talking about a killer here.” When she didn’t respond, McVey held his arms out to the sides. “Look, if it’ll help get you past the guilt and make you see reason, you’re welcome to take your best physical shot. All I want in return is a handful of Tylenols, a couple hours of sleep and no argument from you about where you’ll be spending the night. You have two options. Come with me to your grandmother’s place or hang with Jake on a cot in the back room.”

“That’s quite a choice. Seeing as I know all the hidey-holes at Nana’s house and wouldn’t trust Jake not to sell me out for cab fare, I’ll go with the lesser evil and take you. As for the gut punch, I’ll take a rain check.”

“Excellent choices,” McVey returned.

Although it felt like a betrayal of sorts, he deliberately neglected to tell her about the text message Michaels’s captain had sent him less than a minute ago. But it continued to play in his head like a stuck audio disk.

In the captain’s opinion, if one of his most experienced detectives could be taken out as easily as Michaels apparently had been, then it was only a matter of time—likely short—before the fourth person on Jimmy Sparks’s hit list followed him to the grave.

Chapter Six (#ulink_64d8dfd3-f92d-5c19-8391-e2c875a75f73)

If you believed local lore, the wind on Hollow Road was an echo of Sarah Bellam’s dying wail. A final protest, Amara supposed, against the unfair hand she believed she’d been dealt.

As a child, Amara had loved hearing stories about Sarah. As an adult—well, suffice it to say the last place she wanted to be was on a twisty, turny, extremely narrow strip of pavement that wound an impossible path to the edge of the north woods, listening to the wind howl like a raging witch.

She glanced out and up as the road forked. The left side made a steep and treacherous climb to the imposing structure that was Bellam Manor. The first time she’d seen it at four years of age, all the Gothic points, tall gables and arrow-slatted windows had struck her as extremely castle-like. Bad castle, not good. This was where Sarah had been born, raised and, most agreed, confined for the final years of her life. The locals of the day had branded her evil, and the description had stuck.

The same description could be applied to Jimmy Sparks. Unfortunately, even in prison, Sparks wielded sufficient power to have people murdered.

The picture of Lieutenant Michaels’s face that swam into Amara’s head caused pain to spike and spread. Had he died because of her, or had Jimmy Sparks wanted him gone in any case? Would she ever know? Would it make a difference if she did?

“So, Red, is it the wind, Michaels’s death or me that’s bothering you?”

McVey’s question shattered the beginnings of a dreadful memory. Amara pressed on a nerve at the side of her neck. “The death’s the worst. But as we get farther and farther from so-called civilization, I am starting to wonder why you’ve taken such an active interest in my welfare.”

A smile grazed his lips. “It’s my job to be interested, isn’t it?”

“It’s not your job to play personal watchdog. You could have fobbed me off to any number of relatives, including Yolanda and her extremely strange brother, Larry.”

“The sleepwalking streaker who spends his winters working at a Colorado ski resort?”

“He’s part of an avalanche control team. Helps bring the snow down before it gets too deep and dangerous. Nana said he wound up in the hospital with frostbite after one of his naked nighttime walks. I guess he knows his way around plastic explosives. Have you met him?”