Chapter 1
In Japanese and Chinese mythology, the kirin or qilin is a chimerical single-horned, bearded, sometimes-winged creature with the body of a deer, the hooves of a horse, and the tail of an ox. Often compared to the dragon or unicorn of Western mythology, the beast is commonly found in Buddhist iconography.
Buddhist sources depict the creature as so gentle and peaceful that it walks on clouds so as not to harm even a blade of grass. Taoist folklore, however, casts this chimera as a divine judge of good and wickedness. Human judges were said to rely on the creature to determine guilt or innocence in difficult court cases. The qilin would use its horn to gore a guilty party to death.
* * *
November 29, 2012
Damon Tenley stared down at the lifeless body, his hands hanging limply by his sides. The paperweight, slick with blood and brain matter, slipped from his grasp and hit the hardwood floor with a loud thud. He flinched at the sound and, instinctively, looked to the woman on the bed for her reaction.
He instantly realized his mistake and snorted. She’s dead, you idiot.
The bedroom was overheated, steam rising from the hissing radiators, and sweat beaded on his forehead. But Damon shook. He was cold. Freezing, actually.
You’re going into shock, some remote part of his brain informed him. You need to get out of here, fast.
He staggered across the room to the bathroom and lurched through the open door. He barreled into the vanity, his hip bone connecting with the corner, but the pain didn’t register. He gripped the cold water faucet and turned it on, full blast. He cupped his trembling hands under the stream of water to catch it. Then he splashed his face, rinsed his mouth, and spit into the bowl. He inhaled deeply, trying to slow his rapid heartbeat.
He hadn’t expected to feel anything. He’d grown up hunting. Done two tours in Afghanistan. Buried both his parents. He was no stranger to death.
But he hadn’t killed a deer. Or an insurgent. The body on the bed didn’t belong to a cancer-ravaged senior citizen who chose hospice over another round of toxic cocktails. It belonged to an innocent. She was vibrant and young and stunningly gorgeous. Or at least, she had been. Now, with her dented skull caved into her bloodied, slack face, she was gruesome.
His eyes flicked toward the bedroom. There was no time for this. The husband could be on his way home right now.
He grabbed one of the festive red-and-green plaid hand towels from the rack on the wall and patted his face dry. Then he wiped down the sink basin, the faucet, and the light switch.
He stuffed the towel into his pocket and hurried through the bedroom toward the hallway, averting his eyes from the dead woman on the bed. Her husband was at a department holiday party. He shouldn’t be home for hours; but Damon had to get out of the house now. Before he lost it.
He hurled himself down the wide, walnut staircase, skidded to a stop at the bottom, rounded the corner, and ran down the hallway to the kitchen and the stairs leading to the cellar.
He plunged down into the dark, earthen basement, not bothering to pull the chain to turn on the exposed bulb. Even in the growing darkness, he knew he could find his way to the casement window he’d smashed to gain entry.
The blustery wind howled through the broken window, calling to him, guiding him toward his way out.
He crunched over the scattered shards of glass and hoisted himself up onto the metal utility sink. Then he shuffled along the edge like a tightrope walker until he reached the rough wall directly below the window.
He curled his fingers around the bottom lip of the window frame and scrabbled up, his feet swinging wildly. He maneuvered onto his stomach and eased through the opening, ignoring the sting of pain when his right cheek grazed the jagged glass shards that stubbornly clung to the pane.
He rolled out into the window well and crouched on the cold cement long enough to catch his breath.
Then he ducked low and crept through the small backyard. Once he reached the cover of the trees, he stood upright and darted to the short back fence. He vaulted it easily and melted into the dark alleyway’s shadows.
His heart thudded in his ears. He’d done it. He’d gotten rid of Raina Noor, like he promised he would. He’d earned his twenty thousand, and then some. Hell, there might even be a bonus in it for him.
But that wasn’t why he did it. It wasn’t about the money. Not at all.
Chapter 2
The present day
“It was a paid hit. Damon Tenley murdered Raina Noor in exchange for twenty thousand dollars cash,” Detective Burton Gilbert rumbled. His deep bass voice filled the hushed room as he explained the history to the inquisitive uniformed officer at his side.
Officer Meredith Vitanni stared down at the corpse sprawled across the bed. “And Noor was married to this guy?”
“Right. This poor SOB is Giles Noor. Killed in the same house, in what looks to be the same bed, by the same apparent method. Six years ago, Tenley bashed his wife’s head in right here in this room.”
“Damn,” Vitanni breathed. “What are the odds?”
Was she serious?
“I doubt it’s a coincidence, Officer.”
A bright red stain spread up her neck and across her cheeks. “I … wait … you think Tenley did this?”
“How in the hell would Tenley have killed Giles Noor?” an amused voice said from the doorway.
Burton knew before he turned who he’d find standing on the threshold. Detective Chrysanthemum Martin, the only other person on the homicide squad who’d been in the department when Raina Noor was murdered. Chrys had been the first to respond to the original Noor murder. She’d been comforting a sobbing Giles Noor when Burton had arrived.
Now she arched one groomed eyebrow at him, as if to ask where the department had found Vitanni.
He gave a short head shake. Damned if he knew. “Detective Martin,” he said by way of greeting.
“Sir.” She nodded, her dark eyes unreadable as ever, then turned her attention to the uniformed officer. “Tenley wasn’t the doer. I talked to the warden myself. Damon Tenley is present and accounted for in his cell.”
Burton wasn’t surprised. But he couldn’t deny he’d harbored the smallest, ridiculous hope that Tenley—who was serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Raina Noor—had somehow managed to escape from a maximum security facility and kill the woman’s husband. That turn of events would make closing the first homicide of the new year a slam dunk.
But it looked like he’d have to let that fantasy die. There was no way Tenley would break out, kill Giles Noor, and then break back in. No, someone else had borrowed Tenley’s playbook to bludgeon the man. It was the only possibility he could fathom. Any other explanation … was just too much to accept.
Meredith Vitanni raised her pen. “Sir, the Noor murder was before my time. Did the person who hired Tenley get a life sentence, too?”
It was a solid question. And he could see where Vitanni was headed.
“We never found the contracting party.”
Vitanni blinked. “How’s that possible. Weren’t there bank records or emails or something?”
Martin left her post by the door and ambled over to join them near the bed. “Nope, and nope. The arresting officers found a shoe box stuffed with twenty grand in cash under a loose floorboard in the hall closet outside Tenley’s bathroom. Payment for Noor job was literally written on the lid. And one of the Noors’ hand towels was shoved into the opening with the box. Tenley had taken it from the bathroom.”
“Tenley wasn’t exactly a genius,” Burton added unnecessarily.
“But he never flipped?”
He shook his head. “Never breathed a word. That’s why he went away on state charges. Prosecutors said there was no way to meet the federal burden without the other party, or something like that.”
“So it’s possible the same person who hired Tenley to take out Raina Noor contracted with someone new to kill the husband?” Vitanni mused.
“Six years later?” Martin wanted to know.
Burton raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Why not? If he was a patient man. Or woman.”
“It’s freaking eerie the way this guy, whoever he is, staged the scene just like the first murder.” Martin jerked her chin toward the bronze paperweight being bagged by a white-suited crime scene investigator. “That looks like the same damn paperweight.”
The CSI, an affable guy saddled with the name Fredrich Froelich, coughed delicately.
“What’s up, FF?”
“The paperweights were a set. The second wife says she could never convince the vic to get rid of them after the first wife’s murder. The professor kept the original murder weapon tucked away in a box after the prosecution returned it. This one here was on his desk in the study down the hall because she didn’t like looking at it.”
Burton eyeballed the female officers. “Is that romantic? Or sick?”
“What, hanging on to the weapon some creep used to do in your wife?” Martin countered.
“Yeah.”
She considered it. “Pathetic, mostly.”
“Whatever keeping it says about him, let’s hope the thing is as fruitful as the first one was,” Froelich weighed in.
A bronze paperweight had been found near Raina Noor’s body, covered with her blood, some bits of her brain matter, and Damon Tenley’s DNA.
“Amen to that, brother.”
Martin had a question of her own. “Back up. There’s a second wife?”
“Giles Noor remarried eighteen months after the death of his first wife.” Vitanni flipped open her notebook. “Hope Noor, the victim’s wife, called nine-one-one at approximately twenty-three hundred hours yesterday evening, the eighth of January. She attended her Tuesday evening yoga class with a friend. They stopped for a glass of wine and an appetizer afterward. She dropped the friend off at home a little after twenty two hundred hours and proceeded to her residence.”
“This friend corroborates the timeline?”
She nodded. “Yeah, the wife’s story checks out. She came home, puttered around in the kitchen, posted some pictures on her social media accounts then went up to bed. Professor Noor was scheduled to teach an early class this morning, so she entered the bedroom quietly and didn’t turn on any lights. After attending to her nightly bathroom routine, she slipped into bed next to her husband, who she assumed was asleep. She felt something sticky and turned on the bedside lamp.”
The room went silent as the hardened police officers and crime scene technicians imagined the widow’s gruesome discovery.
“Damn,” someone said low, under his breath.
Burton thought it must’ve been Froelich. If memory served, he was a newlywed.
Vitanni went on, her mouth set in a thin line. “Hope Noor said nothing appeared to be missing. She’s sure the front door was locked when she got home. She gave us a list of people with keys—cleaning service, neighbor who brings in the mail when the Noors are out of town, that sort of thing.”
“Where’s the wife now?”
“She gave her statement last night. She was pretty wrecked. The social worker on duty had a doctor call in a prescription for a sedative and a uniform took her to the pharmacy to get it then dropped her at the next-door neighbor’s place to get some rest. According to the neighbor, she’s still asleep.”
“You want me to go wake her up?” Martin asked.
Burton frowned. “Let her sleep. He’ll still be dead when she gets up.” He craned his neck to peer over Froehlich’s shoulder. “Are you getting much?”
“It’s early. But unofficially? Yeah. It’s a physical evidence buffet in here. I already called over to the medical examiner’s office to let them know this is coming and it’s a high priority.”
“Good. Maybe we’ll get lucky with the DNA the way you did with Tenley,” Vitanni offered.
These young ones all thought DNA evidence was the holy grail, better than an eyewitness, a confession, and fingerprints wrapped up in one. The result of watching too much CSI on television, as far as Burton was concerned. DNA evidence was only useful when it matched a known sample. Or when the department had the fairytale budget to go around swabbing large populations of possible suspects, which was exactly never in his experience.
Take Damon Tenley. He hadn’t been in the system, but he’d served in the Army, and Uncle Sam had kept a sample. It was pure luck that they got a hit when they ran his DNA.
Burton Gilbert thought he should be so lucky a second time.
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