Lauren DiBello’s office looked south over the Chicago River. A lawyer at one of the top firms in the city, she was in her late 30s, with silvery blond hair and a sharp nose jutting from her face.
She stood up as I entered. “Thanks for coming, Tom. Valerie, this is Tom Jurgen, the private detective I told you about. Tom, this is Valerie Carroll, my client. She’s on bail for murder.”
Valerie Carroll looked me over without standing up. She was short, with pale skin and brown eyes, blond hair in a taut ponytail. She clutched her hands in her lap, twisting them nervously. “It was an accident! But they think—they don’t believe me.”
A murder case. I usually get cheating spouses, embezzling executives, background checks, and the occasional vampire. But I’d handled murder before. Recently, even. I was still recovering, physically and emotionally, from a night a month ago where I’d confronted a serial killer who could change his face to fool his victims into trusting him—before killing them.
I wasn’t looking forward to more murder. But sometimes it’s my job.
I sat down. “What happened? How can I help you?”
“Valerie shot her sister’s boyfriend.” DiBello had a reputation for being ruthlessly direct, in court and in her office. “Valerie, why don’t you tell Tom what happened?”
She nodded, but didn’t speak right away. Finally she said, “I got home from work. There was noise in Vivian’s bedroom. I thought—at first I thought they were just having sex, her and Ben. But then there was shouting. I thought maybe someone had broken in. So I got my gun—it’s licensed and everything,” she said quickly, defensively. “I opened her door, and there was all this smoke. It was dark and smoky. Viv was standing there, screaming, and I saw someone on the other side of the room, sort of fighting with something, waving his arms, yelling. He took a step at me, and I—I just shot him. And it was Ben.”
She looked down into her lap, squeezing her hands together.
I looked at DiBello. She asked quietly, “What happened then?”
She rubbed her nose. “I saw Ben fall down. I dropped the gun and looked at Viv. She screamed. Then the smoke—it sort of attacked her, like a swarm of bats. She was waving her arms, screaming, and then she just turned and ran. I heard the front door slam. Then the, uh, the smoke was gone, and Ben was lying there on the floor. They—they’d pushed the bed next to the wall to make space on the floor, and there was a circle of, like, duct tape on the floor, and candles. Ben was in the center of the circle.” She covered her face in her hands. “Then I called the police.”
“So where is your sister?” I asked.
Valerie shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“We need to find her,” DiBello said. “She can explain what happened.”
I looked out the window. “I imagine you’ve called everyone you can think of. And the police have looked for her?”
“Yes, or we wouldn’t need you.” DiBello frowned. ”The police have Valerie. They don’t need Vivian. We do.”
“She hasn’t been in touch? Or gone back home?”
“No.” Valerie sat up. “I haven’t been home. I can’t go back there. I’m staying with a friend. From work. Marketing.”
“Can you think of anyplace she might go? Friends? Ben’s friends?”
She bit her lip. “I’ll—try to think. It’s been . . . hard to focus.”
“I understand.” I stood up. “Is the apartment open? Can I take a look?”
Valerie dug into a handbag and extracted a key from her chain. DiBello wrote out the address on the firm’s stationery.
“I’ll have the firm wire you a retainer.” She took me out to the hall, letting her client compose herself. “She’s—upset. Scared.”
“Naturally.” A paralegal rushed by us, arms full of folders. “Let me know if there’s anything else she can tell me. And that list of friends. Places she might go.”
DiBello nodded. “Good luck.”
I stopped at home before heading up to the apartment. My girlfriend Rachel was working on a project at her desk. I sat down at my computer to check my messages and make some notes.
“What’s the case?” Rachel didn’t turn to look at me. She’s got red hair and hazelnut eyes, and she’s kind of psychic. Cute, too.
“Murder. Looking for a witness.” I found an email from Lauren DiBello with a list of names—friends of Valerie, friends of her sister, friends of the boyfriend, with phone numbers and email addresses. Good. “Georgeanne up yet?”
“Right here.” Georgeanne stood in the office doorway. She was tall and blond, in a T-shirt and panties, barefoot.
Georgeanne was part of a family called the Rossini, who were fighting a centuries-long battle with a doomsday cult called the Raen. It’s a long story, but we’d worked together on a couple of cases, helping the two families come to an uneasy truce that constantly threatened to break down.
She’d been out of the country for two years, doing some work for the Rossini in South America that she couldn’t tell us about. So she had no place to stay, and when she broke up with her latest girlfriend, we let her stay with us.
It had been a little awkward at first.
“I’ve got to go see Rigo this afternoon,” Georgeanne said. Rigo was the nephew of one of the Rossini patriarchs. “He might have an assignment for me, and I’ll be out of your hair. Or he might just want to hit on me again, and I’ll be right back here.” She laughed.
“I don’t mind having you around,” Rachel said from her desk.
Georgeanne walked over and kissed her. “Thanks.”
“Hey, me neither,” I said.
“Jerk,” Rachel said, but Georgeanne kissed me too. Like I said, awkward. But getting better.
I watched her go, then stood up. “I’ve got to check out the murder victim’s apartment. I’ll call.”
“You do that.” Rachel turned to give me a wink. I grinned.
The apartment was in Rogers Park, on the far north side, just a few blocks from the lake. Any DO NOT ENTER tape from the police had been removed from the door. I slipped the key in the lock and went inside.
It was a small two-bedroom apartment. The living room was typical—a TV, two bookcases, magazines on a coffee table, prints from the Art Institute on the wall, a long sofa and a couple of chairs, a wide window looking down on the street.
The first bedroom was tiny and tidy. The bed was neatly made with a pink duvet over the blankets, dirty clothes were in the hamper, the closet door was half open, revealing dresses and clothes on hangers. A jewelry box and makeup kit sat on the dresser. I didn’t go through the drawers.
The second bedroom was a mess. The bed was shoved up to the wall, like Valerie had said, the sheets and blankets tangled. The shades were closed, filling the room with shadows. A big wall mirror was cracked, and the top of the dresser was strewn with broken perfume bottles, photos, candles, and some underwear. Clothes were piled loosely in a corner.
The cops had pulled up some of the duct tape from the carpet, but they’d left half the circle, ragged and uneven. I could see bloodstains in the center.
I opened drawers, looking for an address book or something that might lead me to any of Vivian’s friends. I found just T-shirts and socks and underwear, plus a box of, uh, personal items that didn’t directly relate to the case as far as I knew. The closet, like her sister’s, held blouses, slacks, business suits, and the like. Some boxes on the top shelf contained old journals, photo albums, and holiday ornaments.
Turning away from the closet, I crossed my arms and looked the room over.
On a small table next to the door sat a book, thick, bound in black leather. It looked ancient.
I should have spotted it right away. The title was in Latin. Everything was in Latin. The pages were thin parchment, yellowed with age, delicate under my fingers. The book was at least 500 pages long. I flipped the pages, being careful with the parchment, looking for a familiar word. Words, words, words, some pictures—a pig, a lion, something big and hairy with six legs, an angel . . .
An angel with horns sprouting from its forehead.
Oh hell. I pulled my phone from my pocket to call Rachel. “Do you speak Latin? Or read it?” I asked when she picked up.
She laughed. “I took high school Spanish, and all I can say is Dondé esta la biblioteca? What’s going on?”
“I found a book in the murder apartement. It’s in Latin. I think it’s about demons.”
“Oh.” She was silent a moment. “I think Georgeanne might talk Latin.”
“Is she still there?”
“She went out to meet Rigo, or whoever. I’ll call her.”
“Okay. I’ll be back soon.”
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