Possessed

Ethel nodded slowly as if to suggest that she took her civic duty very seriously. “Of course I will.”

Cass stood and reached for the woman’s elbow, helping her to her feet even as Dougie reached for the woman’s other arm. On legs that probably weren’t as steady as they had been when she’d set out that morning, Ethel managed the few cement steps until she was back on the sidewalk. “You’ll catch the person who did this? That’s your job.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Satisfied, Ethel led Muffy to the blond kid in the blue uniform.

Once she was out of earshot, Cass asked, “Does the PPD thank me, too?”

“No,” he growled softly. “The PPD wants to know what the hell you’re doing here.”

How could she tell him? What would she tell him?

There was a monster in my mind.

To her it sounded a lot like having one under your bed or one in your closet. Like the kind of nightmare a child might have. Only she wasn’t a child and it, whatever it was, hadn’t been a nightmare. She was pretty sure of that now.

She was afraid that Dougie, despite all his good intentions to be open-minded where she was concerned, wouldn’t get it. He might believe she spoke with the dead, but this was asking too much of anyone.

“I think you must be grumpy because they got you out of bed.”

“Absolutely I’m grumpy but not because of a lack of sleep. It’s the lack of answers that’s annoying me right now. Talk to me, Cass.”

She took a breath and tried to explain. “I had a thing. A weird thing. I felt…”

Fear. A deep and gut-wrenching fear of the dead, something she’d never felt before. And a darkness. She’d felt that, too. Beyond the beast, there had been inky blackness rather than the hazy fog she’d become used to.

As if the horns hadn’t been sinister enough.

No, there was no point in telling Dougie this. Not when she couldn’t explain what it meant.

“I heard a dog barking,” she said. “I came out here, followed the sound and there she was.”

“That’s not even remotely convincing.”

Cass shrugged. “It’s the best I can do for now. Let’s just say…I had a gut feeling.”

“Right.” He snorted somewhat disgustedly. “Look, I’ll let it go for now until I can pull all the facts together. But we’re eventually going to have to talk about this. Whatever happened to this girl…”

“She had her tongue cut out, Dougie.”

He didn’t bother to issue the standard police line that nothing was certain and that until evidence was gathered and analyzed nothing would be accomplished by leaping to conclusions about the relationship between two seemingly unconnected victims. She knew better.

“I don’t have to tell you to keep this quiet.”

That made her laugh. “Who am I going to tell?” Her world consisted of about three people, one of whom was standing in front of her.

“I’m just saying we don’t need the press…”

“Dougie? It’s me. I’m not going to talk to the press. Ethel you might have to talk to.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Two women, a few blocks apart, both missing their tongues and no signs of sexual assault. This doesn’t smell right.”

“At least one thing is for sure,” she reminded him. “You know now that Malcolm McDonough didn’t kill his sister.”

“Great,” Dougie muttered unenthusiastically. “Mr. Connections goes free, but there’s a wacko loose in the city.”

“A psycho-city wacko,” Cass repeated, recalling his description from last night.

Dougie looked back to the stairwell where they were finally bringing the body up. That they had tried to be careful with her was obvious, but the body bag was still covered in the woman’s blood.

“Definitely.”

Chapter 5

Cass walked through her front door and instantly started shivering. She hadn’t realized how cold she’d been, almost numb from it, until the warmth had started to creep back into her skin. She didn’t know what she’d been thinking, running out of the house barely dressed late in October.

Actually, that was the point. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been reacting and she found the idea unsettling.

To combat the cold, she found a sweater in her bedroom and then went back to the kitchen to make some soothing lemon tea. Five minutes, that’s all she wanted. Five minutes to not have to think about anything.

But that wasn’t going to happen. The image of the woman’s body being carted off haunted her. Then, as people came outside ready to start their day, a crowd had gathered around the scene, as tends to happen when there is trouble. Neighbors spoke about the woman, talked about suspicious characters that she called customers. Apparently there was no boyfriend in the picture, no obvious enemy. Nobody that anyone could instantly finger as a murderer, anyway.

After an hour of Cass sticking to her story about simply hearing the dog, Dougie had relented and let her go. It wasn’t as if telling him about the monster was going to get him any closer to the person who did this. Trace evidence, detective work, finding out whatever link there was between Lauren and the palm reader—that would be helpful to him.

Ghostly monsters in her head…not so much.

Cass dipped her tea bag and sighed. She was lying to herself and she wasn’t very good at it. The real reason she hadn’t told Dougie about it was because she didn’t want there to be a connection. She didn’t want to believe that she was ever going to have to see that thing again. Shame descended on her as she considered what she’d done. If the monster was related to the murder and she was ignoring it because of that god-awful fear that she’d experienced during contact, then she was nothing better than a coward.

What had the palm reader suffered? What had Lauren? Certainly more than mere fear.

Thinking about Lauren brought Cass back to the night when Lauren had been killed. There hadn’t been any monster then. No unusual dreams at all that she could recall. Did that mean that the monster and the murders weren’t related? Or did it mean that maybe Lauren’s murder and the palm reader’s death weren’t related?

No, that didn’t make sense. They had to be. Dougie had said so. Two women, blocks apart, both stabbed and both with missing tongues. Philadelphia could be a dangerous city, but such gruesome deaths weren’t exactly standard fare.

Who the hell cuts out a tongue?

“A sick bastard,” she told the empty room. Who the hell else cuts out a tongue?

Cass thought about the serene young woman who had made contact through her to reach out to her brother. Lauren was beautiful. And there was an aura around her spirit that suggested sweetness and gentleness. Two qualities that her half brother obviously didn’t share. To have her life end that way—so abruptly, so brutally—was wrong. Unjust.

Of all people, Cass knew better than to expect fairness in life. She hadn’t been born cynical. Growing up with television and movies, where the good guy always won, the bad guy always got caught and the right thing, whatever that was, always happened in the end, had given her a rose-colored view of life and the people in it. Being raised by old-fashioned grandparents who believed in things like trustworthiness and honor only reinforced those lessons.

But that all ended the night the nurse locked her into her room at the asylum.

A phone ringing startled Cass out of her memories. There was no point in going back there, not when it only brought sadness. She put down her cup of tea and reached for the phone, but stopped when she recalled that Dr. Farver now had her new number. She waited for the three rings to pass and for the answering machine to pick up.

Only it wasn’t Dr. Farver—it was Kevin, the manager from the coffeehouse.