Page 14 of Nightshade

“You’re welcome to have a seat at the table, Detective. Can I get you a drink?”

“No. I won’t stay.” He plopped a little too hard into one of the chairs, making me cringe at the way the delicate wood groaned beneath him. For an uncomfortable minute, he stared back at me. “I cannot get over your eyes. They’re so … unusual.”

My father used to tell me an entire celestial galaxy lived inside my eyes, which was about as disturbing as a gum tree in the stomach.

“I’ve never seen that before.” He gestured toward his own eyes, which I noticed were a deep brown. “All the different colors.”

“They’re a bit unusual, I suppose.”

After another moment of his staring, I wanted to climb right out of my skin. Thankfully, he cleared his throat and lowered his gaze. “I was, um … recently made privy to the information that we attend the same church.”

“I don’t actually attend.”

“Right. You go for confession every few weeks. But you have a fairly strong Catholic upbringing, do you not?”

“Forgive me, Detective, but is there a purpose to all of this inquiry into my personal affairs?”

“Father Bane merely mentioned it, is all.” He glanced around the room in a way that had me feeling as though he was looking for something, and the regret over having invited him inside burned like indigestion in my gut. Laying the folder on the table, he sighed.

Hesitant, I scooted the chair away from him a bit and took a seat at the table.

“Early yesterday morning, I received a call from the Cathedral of the Felician Sisters.” As he flipped open the folder, my pulse raced.

The first picture he showed was an oversized crucifix of Jesus that’d been turned upside down, at the front of what appeared to be a church altar. I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell someone had accomplished the task of twisting it. The thing looked huge against the wall.

“This is their cathedral, where a couple of the nuns were stationed for perpetual adoration.”

“Devil worshipper? Disgruntled parishioner? This seems kind of obvious.”

He made an unamused sound in his throat and slid another image out of the folder. In it, a slightly overweight woman, late sixties, given the gray in her hair and the few wrinkles in her skin, sat on her knees, naked and hunched over. Her body had been propped in place by a pole that impaled her skull. A closer angle showed fingers had been fused together, as if in prayer, wrapped in a metal belt that must’ve held prongs, as blood dripped down her arms. A rosary dangled from her clasped hands.

The worst part, though? Her spinal column had been removed--removed--leaving a grisly trench of mutilated flesh down the center of her back. In its place, thick braids of barbed wire, spun and bent together, had been attached to her skull and sacrum, serving as a grisly, artificial spine.

“She’s their Reverend Mother. Head nun there.” The sound of Hines’s voice was drowned by the thudding of blood in my ears. “One of the sisters from the dorm, or wherever it is they sleep, said she was called over about some noise heard down in the chapel. Said it sounded like banging on a pipe, or something,” he prattled on, his voice getting quieter by the second.

A hard swallow failed to clear the clogging in my ears, as I stared, frozen. Mesmerized by the horror laid out before me. The most gruesome thing I’d ever seen in my life. “Her spine. I don’t suppose you’ve come across it?”

“No,” he answered. “Seems he kept it as a souvenir. She’d apparently referred to the faithless as spineless cowards.”

Breathing hard through my nose was a poor attempt to hide my shallow breathing. “The faithless?”

“We’re assuming she meant Alicia Maxson’s murderer.” The first case he’d brought to my attention with the prostitute in the motel room. “We learned she was a former student of the convent. For a short time, anyway. She left. Ended up on the streets soon after. In spite of her … life choices, it seems she was well-liked by the nuns. Particularly the Reverend Mother.”

“Huh. A spine must’ve made quite a trophy.” My voice cracked at the end, as the acids rushed up my throat.

God, don’t throw up.

Just in case, I covered my mouth with the back of my palm.

“I’m no medical person, but this makes no sense.” Hines shook his head, as if oblivious to my struggle to keep my own last supper in check. “The spine was ripped out. Ripped. There’s no incision. No sawing of bone. The spine is attached to ribs and the skull, and whatever the hell else. The perp would’ve had to use a goddamn Sawzall to accomplish this, and someone would’ve had to have heard the sound of a saw.”

“No one heard anything?”

“A couple of nuns reported hearing screams sometime after eleven. Other than that, no.”

“So, what gives you the impression her spine was ripped out?”

“The cracks in her ribs. They’re splintered as if it was violently torn away. The medical examiner will confirm, of course, but that’s our first impression.”