“In the confessional booth?” I grab on to Julian’s sleeve to keep steady. “You’re positive it was in the booth?”
The stranger I spoke to had been in the booth. Either Father Paretti came upon him after I left or he’d been dead the whole time I was confessing to his murderer.
“Yes, they did a sweep of prints and there was nothing but Father Paretti and an empty bottle of wine someone had kicked over.”
I feel like puking. A bottle of wine that someone had kicked over. I was the one that had kicked over that bottle of wine. When I came out of the confessional booth, I’d run right into it on my way running for the door. I hadn’t been looking whereI was going, but the bottle had been thick and heavy. The clattering sound of it bouncing across the marble floors echoes in my ears while Josie goes on talking.
“But here’s the creepy thing, boss,” Josie lowers her voice even though it’s only us in the newsroom, she pauses before she speaks, eyes going to Julian.
I nod at her. “He’s okay. This is Julian Vale, he’s a friend, um, the new doctor in town. You can say it in front of him. He’ll find out sooner or later when they take his body in.”
Josie nods. “Nice to meet you, Doc. Wish it was under better circumstances.”
“Likewise,” Julian murmurs. He rubs my back, the gentle touch makes me relax and reminds me to take a breath.
I close my eyes and take a deep inhale before I let it out and ask, “What did they find, Josie?”
“No blood in the body,” she tells me and looks down at the papers in her hands. She shuffles them like she thinks they’ll tell her something new but then snaps them down at her sides. “There was no fucking blood in his body, Maris. Someone drained him and left him there for the police to find.”
I clap a hand over my mouth and feel sick. “Oh my god.”
“They’re saying that it’s a homicide, of course. No one knows the motive but they’re suspecting occult reasons.”
I push away from Julian. “Occult? What the fuck? Like-like a sacrificial ritual or some horror movie shit?”
“Exactly.”
A few years ago they thought there was a group of devil worshipers sacrificing animals after they found a string of squirrels and rabbits skinned and gutted hanging neatly in a line at the edge of town. The entire town had gone crazy looking for the supposed satanists. Turns out it was just a local hunter that got a call his wife had gone into labor and had left his site without cleaning up. When word came outabout the hunter, it had been too late for Vesper Point. The community was in shambles. Overnight, the town had turned on itself, cannibalizing itself to the point of becoming a fucking reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials.
This was going to be so much worse than that.
Vesper Point is about to become a war zone.
Twenty-One
JULIAN
Maris seems upset about the priest that I ate.
Fuck.
I don’t miss the way her heart speeds up or how she looks sick at the mention of Father Paretti’s bloodless body being discovered. Next time, I’ll check if the person means anything to her before I eat them.
“Who could have done such a thing?” We walk into her office and she rubs her temples and drops her sad breakfast wrap onto her desk with a thud. “I can’t-murders don’t happen here.”
I hum in agreement like she’s right and keep my mouth shut. The woman in front of me has committed two of them, but it’s part of her charm.
“We aren’t that kind of town. We’re just…we’re not that kind of town,” she says again and slumps forward in her seat. She’s at her desk. It’s old, but the good kind of old, wide and broad, made of dark walnut, the sturdy kind of old. It’s probably been around for a hundred years and will be around for a hundred more if it’s left alone. It’s built to outlast Maris. I frown at the thought of Maris not being here one day.
You almost lost her in the graveyard.
I recoil at the thought and turn away from Maris so she doesn’t see it. She has her existential crisis and I have mine. The entire night and the better part of the early morning hours while I watched Maris sleep beside me, the reality that if Maris wasn’t a murderer, I’d have lost her preoccupied me. Twice over now.
First when her house was broken into, and second when she beat his son’s brains out with a candle. Maybe neither would have resulted in murder, but I don’t believe it. I almost lost my wife to not one but two redneck fishermen in this backwater town. I clench my fists. And then there’s Billy. That makes three. It’s easy to see he’s up to no good with Maris, demanding that she ‘leave the light on’ and telling her when he’ll be coming by.
I might not have been there for the other two but I’m going to enjoy teaching Billy a lesson.
“Maris, I got some news from the sheriff.” Josie, a grizzled reporter in her sixties with salt and pepper hair and the kind of voice that tells you she’s a pack a day kind of gal rushes into Maris office and slaps down a stack of papers. “He said that in addition to no blood being found in Father Paretti, they found two lacerations in his neck.”
