J. Robb - Possession in Death

“Beata.” The woman's eyelids flickered, opened to reveal eyes so dark Eve could barely gauge the pupils. “Trapped. The red door. Help her.”

“Help's coming. Give me your name,” Eve said as Lopez pulled padding from the first aid kit. “What's your name?”

“She is Beata. My beauty. She can't get out.”

“Who did this to you?”

“He is the devil.” Those black eyes bore into Eve's. The words she pushed out held an accent thick as the heat.

Eastern European, Eve thought, filing it in her mind.

“You . . . you are the warrior. Find Beata. Save Beata.”

“Okay. Don't worry.” Eve glanced at Lopez, who shook his head. He began to murmur in Latin as he crossed himself and made the sign on the woman's forehead.

“The devil killed my body. I cannot fight, I cannot find. I cannot free her. You must. You are the one. We speak to the dead.”

Eve heard the sirens, knew they would be too late. The pads, her own hands, the street was soaked with blood. “Okay. Don't worry about her. I'll find her. Tell me your name.”

“I am Gizi. I am the promise. You must let me in and keep your promise.”

“Okay, okay. Don't worry. I'll take care of it.” Hurry, her mind shouted at the sirens. For God's sake, hurry.

“My blood, your blood.” The woman gripped the hand Eve pressed to her chest wound with surprising strength, scoring the flesh with her fingernails. “My heart, your heart. My soul, your soul. Take me in.”

Eve ignored the quick pain from the little cuts in her palm. “Sure. All right. Here they come.” She looked up as the ambulance screamed around the corner, then back into those fierce, depthless black eyes.

Something burned in her hand, up her arm, until the shocking blow to her chest stole her breath. The light flashed, blinding her, then went to utter dark.

In the dark were voices and deeper shadows and the bright form of a young woman — slim in build, a waterfall of black hair and eyes of deep, velvet brown.

She is Beata. I am the promise, and the promise is in you. You are the warrior, and the warrior holds me. We are together until the promise is kept and the fight is done.

“Eve. Eve. Lieutenant Dallas!”

She jerked, sucked in air like a diver surfacing, and found herself staring at Lopez's face. “What?”

“Thank God. You're all right?”

“Yeah.” She raked a bloodied hand through her hair. “What the hell happened?”

“I honestly don't know.” He glanced over to where, a foot away, two MTs worked on the woman. “She's gone. There was a light — such a light. I've never seen . . . Then she was gone, and you were . . . ” He struggled for words. “Not unconscious, but blank. Just not there for a moment. I had to pull you away so they could get to her. You saw the light?”

“I saw something.” Felt something, she thought. Heard something.

Now she saw only an old woman whose blood stained the street. “I have to call this in. I think you're going to be late for Mass. I need you to give a statement.”

She pushed to her feet as one of the MTs stepped over.

“Nothing we can do for her,” he said. “She's cold. Must've been lying there for a couple hours before you found her. Fucking New York. People had to walk right by her.”

“No.” There were people now, crowding the sidewalk, ranged like a chorus for the dead. But there hadn't been . . . “No,” Eve repeated. “We saw her fall.”

“Body's cold,” he repeated. “She's ninety if she's a day, and probably more than that. I don't see how she could've walked two feet with all those slices in her.”

“I guess we'd better find out.” She picked up her 'link, called it in.

After cleaning the blood from her hands, she secured the scene, retrieved her field kit from the trunk. She was running the victim's prints when the first black and white rolled up.

“She's not in the database.” Frustrated, Eve pushed to her feet, turned to the uniforms. “Keep these people back. Talk to them. Find out if anybody knew her, if anybody saw anything. There's a blood trail, and I don't want these people trampling all over it.”

And where the hell were they, she wondered, when the woman was staggering down the street, bleeding to death? The street had been empty as the desert.

“What can I do?” Lopez asked her.

“Peabody's on her way — small slice of luck having a bunch of murder cops a few minutes away. I want you to give her a statement. Tell her everything you saw, everything you heard.”

“She had an accent. Thick. Polish or Hungarian, maybe Romanian.”

“Yeah, tell Peabody. Once you've done that, I can have one of the cops drive you where you need to go.”

“If you need me to stay — ”

“There's nothing more you can do here. I'll be in touch.”

“I'd like to finish giving her Last Rites. I started, but . . . She's wearing a crucifix around her neck.”

She debated. He'd already had his hands all over the body, and his clothes were stained, as hers were, with the old woman's blood. “Okay. You can do that while I start on her. Try to keep contact to a minimum.”

“Your hand's bleeding a little.”

“She dug in pretty hard with her nails. It's just a couple scratches.”

Lopez knelt at the woman's head while Eve got gauges and tools out of her kit.

“Victim is Caucasian or possibly mixed race female of undetermined origin, age approximately ninety. Before expiring, she gave her name as Gizi. Multiple stab wounds,” Eve continued, “chest, torso, arms. Looks like defensive wounds on the arms, the hands. She didn't just stand there and take it.”

“She should have died at home, in her bed, surrounded by her children, grandchildren. I'm sorry,” Lopez said when Eve glanced up. “I interrupted your record.”

“Doesn't matter. And you're right.”

“That's the difference between death and murder.”

“It's the big one. Do her clothes look homemade to you?” As she asked, Eve turned up the hem on the long skirt with its wide stripes of color. “This looks handmade to me, and carefully done. She's wearing sandals — sturdy ones with some miles on them. Got a tattoo, inside left ankle. Peacock feathers? I think they're peacock feathers.”

“She's wearing a wedding ring. Sorry,” Lopez said again.

“Yeah, wedding ring, or in any case a plain gold band, the cross pendant along with a second pendant, starburst pattern with a pale blue center stone, gold earrings. No bag, no purse, but if it were a violent mugging, why not take the jewelry?”

She slid her sealed hand into the pocket on the side of the skirt, closed her fingers over a little bag. It was snowy white, felt like silk, and tied precisely with silver cord in three knots.

She knew what it was even before she untied it and examined the contents. She'd seen this sort of thing before. “Woo-woo,” she said to Lopez.

“What?”

“Magic stuff. Witchcraft or whatever. We got herbs, little crystals. I'd say she hedged her bets. Amulet and crucifix — and a spell deal in her pocket. Didn't help her.”

Though she'd already noted time of death, she used her gauge to confirm. “Damn it, this thing must be broken. It's given me TOD at just past thirteen hundred. She died right here in front of us at sixteen-forty-two.”

“Her skin's cold,” Lopez murmured.

“We watched her die.” Eve pushed to her feet, turning as Peabody jogged up, Morris in her wake.

“This wasn't on the party schedule,” Peabody said as she looked at the body.

“I bet it wasn't on hers either.” Eve took the weapon and harness she'd asked Peabody to bring, and after strapping it on covered it with the jacket her partner held out.