Last Grave (9781101593172) Read online

  Her phone rang, and he swore.

  “You need to have that thing on all the time?” he asked.

  If only Ed could hear you say that, she thought sadly. She never used to carry her phone, and it had nearly gotten her old partner killed. Now it was like it was a lifeline.

  She checked to see who was calling.

  Anthony.

  Her heart stuttered. She couldn’t deal with talking to him, not right now. She declined the call and pocketed the phone.

  “The guy back home who won’t let you go?” Lance guessed.

  “Something like that,” she said with a sigh. Her relationship with Anthony was far too complicated to deal with, let alone explain, especially at three in the morning. What was it Anthony had said to her before she left Salem, about them having a great story? It was something like Boy meets girl. Boy falls for girl. Boy tries to kill girl. And now they were in the phase where boy was trying really hard to win girl back. But she had nearly gotten him killed, and even if he could get over the fact that the coven she was raised in had murdered his mother, Samantha wasn’t sure she could. Even if she was constantly thinking of him.

  “Who calls at three in the morning?” Lance asked.

  “You do,” she said.

  She could see him rolling his eyes at her. “That’s business.”

  The truth was, it was the first time Anthony had called so early. It made her wonder briefly if something was wrong, if he was in trouble. She was tempted to call him back, but, whatever it was, she was sure she didn’t want to be discussing it in front of her new partner.

  “Want me to tell him to get a life?” Lance asked.

  “No, but thanks for the offer.”

  “You know what they say: ‘protect and serve.’”

  She smiled. “So, are we going somewhere, or did you just miss me?”

  “Someone called in a disturbance at the California Academy of Sciences in the Natural History Museum. By the time officers got there, there was no disturbance, just a body.”

  “Lucky us.”

  There was little traffic on the streets, and they soon arrived at their destination. Officers had already cordoned off the scene, and one of them met Lance and Samantha at the car.

  “What do we have?” Lance asked.

  “Winona Lightfoot, local historian, dead.”

  “How?” Samantha asked as she moved toward the building.

  “That’s one for the coroner.”

  “Any witnesses?” Lance asked.

  “Nah. Call about a disturbance was anonymous, and there was no one outside when I got here.”

  “No one? Not even the homeless?” Lance asked sharply.

  “Not a living soul.”

  “So, where’s the body?” Samantha asked.

  “Inside.”

  “Was the alarm tripped?” Lance asked.

  “No, but when we got here, a side door was unlocked.”

  Samantha paused and turned to look at the officer. His name badge proclaimed him to be Zack. “Zack, what made you go inside?”

  Zack looked sheepish for a minute. “My boy and his Scout troop are having one of those overnights at the African Hall exhibit. When I realized the one door was unlocked . . .”

  “You didn’t feel you could not investigate, just in case.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” Zack admitted.

  “Sounds like it’s a good thing you did,” Lance noted.

  “None of the Scouts heard anything?”

  “No. Not a sound.”

  They entered the structure and headed straight back.

  “The body’s in the Swamp area,” Zack explained.

  “What was she doing, filming a PSA? I’m proud to be a Native American?”

  Samantha blinked at Lance, wondering what he was talking about.

  Lance glanced at her. “When I was a kid, they used to make all these public service commercials there. All about being proud of your heritage.”

  “I’m proud to be an Italian American,” Zack said with a grin.

  “And with her red hair, clearly Samantha’s proud to be an Irish American,” Lance said.

  “What does that make you?” Zack asked Lance.

  “He’s proud to be an Asshole American,” Samantha snapped.

  Lance jerked his head around to stare at her. She bit her tongue. She shouldn’t have gotten on him. Lots of homicide cops had a macabre sense of humor. His joking was a way of coping with the death he saw every day.

  Before she could apologize, he nodded. “I’m going to use that.”

  She rolled her eyes, fighting down her annoyance with him. Which was good, actually, because it kept her from focusing too much on her surroundings, which were spooky at night.

  The Swamp was part of the aquarium complex. It was where they housed alligators. Poisonous snakes and spiders also shared the space.

  “Someone didn’t feed her to a gator, did they?” Lance asked as they got closer.

  Zack shook his head.

  Samantha had been through the museum complex, the California Academy of Sciences, once since she’d moved there. She’d gotten sick of having everyone she worked with suggest she see it, so she’d gone on a Saturday.

  Now, with the sound of their footsteps echoing eerily and darkness reigning over much of the area, it was a completely different experience.

  The body came into view, and Samantha caught her breath. The woman was well dressed, wearing a business suit. Her eyes were frozen wide in terror. And her arms were lifted straight up, hands clenched into fists that looked like they were clawing at something Samantha couldn’t see.

  “What the hell?” Lance said, stopping abruptly.

  “We found her like that,” the officer said. “Took us a minute to realize she was actually dead. I’ve never seen a body do that before. It’s like she was frozen.”

  “I’ve never seen rigor mortis like this,” Lance said.

  Samantha grabbed a pair of gloves and slid them on. She knelt down on the ground and touched the body. The skin was warm to the touch.

  “She’s still warm. She can’t have been dead more than a few minutes, so this isn’t rigor mortis and she isn’t frozen.”

  She pushed gently on the arms, then on the woman’s stomach, and finally on her cheeks. Everything she touched was hard. It didn’t even feel like she was touching flesh. She sat back, head reeling.

  “What is it?” Lance asked, kneeling down next to her.

  “It’s like she’s been petrified.”

  “Come again?”

  “Like a tree. She’s warm to the touch, but everything is hard as wood. There’s no give in her skin at all,” she said.

  Lance put on gloves and touched the woman’s cheek. “She feels like stone,” he marveled.

  Samantha stood slowly and backed a few feet away from the body. Something wasn’t right. She walked a few more feet away, leaving Lance with the officers who had discovered the body.

  She swept the ground with her eyes, looking for something, anything that could tell her what had happened to the woman.

  You won’t find anything, a voice inside her head mocked her. Nothing natural, nothing rational.

  She hissed to herself, trying to silence the voice. She walked in the direction away from the African Hall. If the kids and their leaders hadn’t seen anything, then there probably wasn’t anything to find over there, and it was best to leave them alone anyway.

  She stepped lightly, straining her senses to hear and see whatever she could.

  Whoever had killed Winona must have left just as Zack and his partner arrived.

  Unless they’re still here.

  She came to a standstill and struggled with herself. It would be so easy to reach out with her senses, see if she could feel anyone
nearby.

  But that wasn’t going to help her fight the desire to use magic. And if she found something, she’d have to find a way that didn’t sound supernatural to explain it to her new partner.

  Her last partner hadn’t been able to handle the truth.

  She forced herself to keep walking and she reached the rain forest biosphere. She let herself in and then stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust. It would be the perfect place to hide, and it would be easy to slip out in the morning after the Academy had opened.

  She took a step into the darkness and felt a growing apprehension. Another step, and the birds that lived in the rain forest exhibit fell silent.

  And suddenly she wanted nothing more than to be out of there and to be anywhere else.

  It felt as though the trees were actually whispering her name.

  The trees.

  She had seen a petrified tree once when she was younger. People thought it had been hit by lightning, but she’d been able to tell that lightning hadn’t killed it; magic had.

  What killed Winona?

  She began to sweat, and her heart sped up.

  She didn’t want to know the answer.

  She tried to force herself to take another step forward when a large bird screamed and flew at her head, wings beating her face. She threw up her arm to block the bird and felt energy surging through her. It would be so easy to push the bird away with magic.

  Too easy.

  The bird flew away and she took a deep breath.

  Something didn’t want her there and she couldn’t agree more. She backed out slowly. As soon as she exited the biosphere, her heart began to slow again and the feelings of dread slowly ebbed. She made her way back to the Swamp, feeling like there were eyes watching her the whole way.

  When she got there, Lance was talking to a short, balding man who looked like he was shy several hours’ sleep and a gallon of coffee. He had the look of shock people wore when they were woken in the middle of the night with bad news. He was wearing a name badge on his shirt.

  He must be one of the people in charge of the Academy, she thought.

  “I have no idea who could have done this,” he said.

  “No enemies that you know of? How about angry exes?” Lance questioned.

  “Nothing like that.”

  “What about her family?”

  “She has a teenage daughter. That’s all that I know of. This is going to be terrible for her. Imagine losing your mother that young.”

  Samantha didn’t have to imagine. But the loss of her mother had been her salvation instead of the nightmare most would assume.

  What kind of mother were you, Winona?

  “So, there was no one that had a problem with her?” Lance pushed.

  The man shrugged. “She was a treasure, as far as many of us are concerned. Her knowledge of mission-era and even pre-mission-era native settlements was exhaustive. She worked tirelessly to preserve that heritage, that culture. She worked to get some historical sites officially recognized and protected. She even helped spearhead cleanup efforts at some of the ancient sea caves down the coast.”

  “Was she in the habit of working late here?” Samantha asked, easing into the conversation and trying to forget the feelings of foreboding that still swirled within her.

  “No. In fact, she didn’t technically work here. She was here a lot. Doing research. We would bring her in to speak at events.”

  “Was she talking to the Scout troop tonight?” Lance asked.

  The man looked at them both blankly for a moment and then turned even more ashen. “There’s a Scout troop here tonight? That’s terrible. The kids didn’t . . . they didn’t see anything?”

  “No. They don’t even know what happened,” Samantha said.

  “That’s a relief.”

  “So, she wasn’t supposed to be here tonight?” Lance pushed.

  “No. Certainly not. She didn’t have keys, so I don’t even know how she got in here.”

  Samantha glanced down at Winona’s body. The wrongness of it set her teeth on edge. This was no ordinary murder. She knew that, but she didn’t want to know it. Why hadn’t there been someone else free to take this case? The way the department worked, she might have never even heard about Winona Lightfoot.

  No, people would have been talking about this one, she told herself.

  “She live nearby?” Lance asked.

  “Nah, she worked in the city, but she commuted in. She lived in Santa Cruz,” the man was telling Lance.

  Samantha gasped and reached for her cross.

  “Is that a problem?” he asked, turning empty eyes toward her.

  It was a huge problem. Because what had happened to Winona was unnatural. There was nothing Samantha knew short of magic that could have caused the petrification. And before she left Salem, Anthony had warned her that Santa Cruz was home to witches.

  Samantha struggled to find words while Lance and the administrator stared hard at her. Nothing came to her, though. All she could think about was Anthony’s warning. Witches in Santa Cruz. Winona was from Santa Cruz. It should mean nothing. It should be a coincidence. It wasn’t, though; she could feel it.

  Finally Lance shrugged. “My partner doesn’t like hippies,” he quipped. “Now, I have a few more questions.”

  “Yes, of course,” the other man said, turning back to look at Lance.

  Samantha just stood there, struggling to listen, as she let Lance ask all of the questions. He glanced at her a couple times more, and she could tell from the look on his face that she was going to have some explaining to do.

  After standing there for what seemed like forever, as frozen in her own way as Winona Lightfoot, Samantha forced herself to move.

  She crouched down, ostensibly to examine Winona again. Soon the coroner would arrive and, hopefully, a logical explanation for the condition of the body would be presented. She forced herself to take several deep, calming breaths.

  And what if the coroner did find an explanation? Would it be enough for Samantha? Would she be able to shake the feelings that were plaguing her? The months that she had lived here, she hadn’t actually ventured outside of the city. She told herself that was because there was enough to see and do in San Francisco to keep her busy for years. In reality, though, a part of her had been heeding Anthony’s warning about staying in the city.

  Her hand reached for her phone. He knew so much about the occult. Maybe he’d heard of something like this petrification before. A moment later, she pulled away her hand. Even if she did get up the nerve to talk to him, doing it where others could hear was the height of stupidity.

  Get a grip, Samantha. Pull yourself together, she demanded. She’d spent the last few months jumping at shadows, and now that she was faced with the possibility of a real threat, she was a basket case.

  There’s only one way to know for sure, a small voice whispered inside her mind.

  She glanced up at Lance. Her partner had all his attention focused on the man he was questioning. His voice had taken on a bit of an edge. Lance had a way of making even routine questions sound more like an interrogation. At least they were both focused on each other and not on her. Zack and his partner were walking back toward the exit, probably getting ready to escort the coroner or someone else in.

  It was now or never.

  Samantha took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and let herself reach out. In a flash, she could feel everything around her—the animals, the plants, the electrical currents running through the building.

  And around Winona, fading quickly, was the faint pulse of magic.

  2

  Samantha toppled backward, landing on her rump with a thud.

  “What’s wrong?” Lance asked sharply.

  She looked up and was dismayed to see that now she had her partner’s full attention. T
he administrator was looking at her too, but from his glazed-over expression, she was pretty sure he wasn’t going to remember many details about this night.

  “My foot slipped,” she said, hurrying to stand up.

  She could hear voices. The coroner and reinforcements to sweep the crime scene. They wouldn’t find anything. At least, not anything that really mattered.

  Samantha wrapped her arms around herself. She probably looked like a twelve-year-old girl instead of a police detective, the way she was holding herself.

  But the fears of her childhood were hitting her hard. It was because she knew deep down what she had to do. Something hadn’t wanted her in the rain forest, so that’s where she had to go.

  “I’m going to take a look around,” she said to Lance.

  He was still staring at her in a way that told her an unpleasant conversation was going to be part of her near future. That was, if she lived through her immediate future.

  He nodded, and she took off quickly before anyone asked her anything she wouldn’t or couldn’t answer. She hurriedly retraced her steps to the rain forest, her pulse skittering out of control with every step. As she walked, she began to pray, feeling the weight of the cross necklace around her neck.

  It was a simple silver filigree cross. It was the one she had bought herself in Boston just before moving out to San Francisco. It was a pale replacement for the one that witches had stolen from her, but it was still of some comfort.

  The cross she’d worn since she was thirteen had held a secret compartment in it, a centuries-old design, and she had put a drop of her own blood inside as she vowed to God that she would do no more magic. The cross had been stolen from her before she’d had to break that vow. She desperately wanted it back, but the police, who had swept every location related to the coven and its members, had come up empty looking for it.