Heather Graham - Let the Dead Sleep

More gunfire flared from within the blue house. Quinn drew his weapon and moved toward the entry.

He burst in, but too late.

A woman lay on the floor—young, dressed in shorts that left the curves of her buttocks visible, a halter top and five-inch gold-spangled spike heels. She was dressed like a hooker and—living in an obvious crack house—probably was.

For a split second, he felt torn. The killer might still be in the house.

The bust might still be in the house.

But she lay gasping and trying to breathe.

He hurried to her side and crouched down.

“Help me!” she gurgled, large brown eyes staring into his.

“Lie quiet, don’t try to talk,” he told her, ripping his shirt for a bandage to staunch the flow of blood pouring from the bullet hole in her chest.

No good. She gripped his arm with bloody fingers as he pressed on the wound.

He watched the light fade from her eyes.

A door to the rear slammed.

Quinn stood; the hooker was dead.

He followed the sound of the slamming door.

* * *

The book had chapters on all manner of creatures and things.

One of the first sections Danni read was on witches. It wasn’t a bunch of mumbo jumbo about boiling cauldrons and spells; it began with the definition of the word, how witch became an evil creature in medieval Europe, and how there was a fierce difference between the pagan religions that had brought forth the medieval fear of witches and the religious practices then common throughout the colonial America.

She felt as if she’d picked up a history book.

But then, as she came to the end of the section, there were instructions on disabling a “practitioner of black magic and those worshipping the evil creations within satanic churches.”

Danni sat back, staring at the old tome. It went from being an educated treatise to a magician’s manual.

She flipped one beautifully printed and illustrated page after another. There were pages that dealt with ghosts, or “spirits remaining despite the pall of death.”

“Where would I find evil statues—or busts?” she murmured aloud. There were all kinds of ghosts, apparently, and a great deal of information on “intelligent or active” hauntings and “residual” hauntings.

There was a section on banshees.

Nothing in these pages on funerary busts.

But then, of course, the book was huge. There were at least a thousand pages in it.

She yawned, blinking, and realized she was exhausted. The words began to swim before her eyes and she decided to give up for the night.

There was nothing she could do for Gladys Simon now. The book wasn’t going anywhere; she could continue reading in the morning.

But once again, she lay in bed awake. It suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t even know what the bust looked like. She tried to remember how Quinn had described the piece—and as she tried to visualize it, she rose, turned on the lights again and went to her computer.

She keyed in a number of variables, including funerary busts, New Orleans cemetery bust thefts...ancient busts...stolen artifacts...and assorted combinations. Finally, under a website titled Really Weird Stuff That Really Happened, she found what she was looking for.

The bust was beautiful. It was sculpted out of marble in the likeness of a Roman with handsome, refined features. Even in a picture, however, the eyes were strange. They’d been carved in careful detail. Though the bust had only shoulders and a head, its incredibly realistic appearance was chilling. The shoulders were covered by a mantle, which flowed in a way that seemed to suggest angel wings. But because of the expression in the eyes, the whole of it struck her as far more demonic than angelic.

“It’s a thing!” she said once again. “An object.”

Still, it was easy to understand how a fragile or damaged mind might see something more ominous in the bust, or even believe that it talked or whispered to them.

The website didn’t have much more about the bust—other than that death and mayhem seemed to follow it everywhere. And that, most recently, it had been placed in a cemetery in New Orleans.

Most recently! The site hadn’t been updated lately, not with background on the bust.

Now that she had a picture, Danni went through other sites looking for more background information. After an exhaustive search, she was delighted to discover an obscure site dedicated to the bust. The writing was in Italian. She read some Italian, but quickly became frustrated and then remembered that all she had to do was find a translation site on the internet.

That took another few minutes but soon she was reading away—and it was a sad and tragic story. Well, sad for the family of Pietro Giovanni Miro, if not for the brutal man himself.

Tragic for those he’d used and murdered.

He’d been a contemporary of Lorenzo de’ Medici, son of the Count of Abacci and heir to his family’s fortunes and estates. Ambition had been the driving force in his life—something initially admired by his father and contemporaries. But he hadn’t liked to lose, not in battle and not in gaming with his friends and certainly not when it came to his passions.

The first person reputed to die at his hands was a mistress who’d supposedly betrayed him with a member of the de’ Medici household; her name had been Imelda and, perhaps, since her family had a pedigree but no money, she’d been trying to force Pietro to marry her. She died horribly when a fire broke out in the stables at her modest estate and she was trampled by the six massive horses within. An accident, of course. But accidents seemed to occur whenever Pietro was angry. Friends met with bizarre and mysterious deaths. Luigi Bari died when a griffin made of stone toppled from a parapet; he’d won a sum of money from Pietro in a card game. Bartollo Gammino, an actor in a show that spoofed local politicians, including Pietro Miro, died when his costume combusted, burning him to a crisp.

At Pietro’s small private palazzo, there were parties every night, but even the noble youths who attended them most often went only once or twice. The depravity practiced at the parties went far beyond their expectations—and their tolerance. Pietro enjoyed provoking an orgy and slaughtering animals over the sexual participants, noting who did and did not seem to wallow in the blood. It was whispered that he was a satanist, killing animals in the name of his evil lord. Many whispered that they’d seen men and women slaughtered there, as well, but none would speak of it to the authorities.

Local girls disappeared after a night with Pietro or at his beautiful palazzo. Most were peasant girls, and at first, little was noted. Pietro always had an alibi or the ability to appear as a victim. Once, when a body was discovered on his grounds, he killed one of his closest servants, blaming the man for the girl’s death.

Nobility could get away with a great deal.

Finally, when Lorenzo de’ Medici was at the height of his power, one of his cousins, Emiliglio, came afoul of Pietro. It was over a woman again. She was found in the Miro tomb in the la Chiesa di St. Antonio e Maria, outside the city proper—stabbed, disemboweled and decapitated. Just as workers discovered her body while repairing a wall to the crypt, Emiliglio de’ Medici was found, strangled in a horse’s harness.

Emiliglio, a man with no hope of acquiring the family money or power, was still a beloved figure among the people of Florence at the time.

Lorenzo de’ Medici received a petition for Pietro’s arrest, but it didn’t come to that. Pietro was brought down by a mob in the center of the city, hanged and slashed to ribbons by the furious people whose lives he had touched through his brutality.