Читать книгу Unexpected Destinies - Constance Ruth Clark - Страница 5

Chapter 1

Island of Forever, Palace Gardens

Soft breezes playing with the curls of her silky black hair and gently tugged at the white silk dress, doing all they could to distract and annoy. Agatha ignored them, concentrating on the scene before her.

Not another one.

Staring into the pool of water in the stone basin that served as her viewing pool, she frowned in dismay. Long ago, Hades, the god of the underworld, had charged Agatha with the task of reuniting soul mates. Hades’ wife, Persephone, had been upset when her father, Zeus, had torn them apart during an argument with his wife, Hera. It wasn’t as easy as she’d thought it would be. Mortals were surprisingly stubborn. Even when directed toward a course where it seemed there could be only one option open to them, they inevitably chose another, compromising their future happiness and making Agatha’s task difficult.

Stubborn humans.

Staring down into the pool Agatha sighed with frustration. This couple had been well on the path toward completion as young adults. Why were they living separate lives? Both were plodding along, believing they were happy, but deep down she could see that both felt there was something missing. Couples like this were the reason that Agatha suspected her task would never be complete. She would make sure they had found each other and move on to the next couple, but when she checked back, something always seemed to happen to break them up. If she didn’t know better she’d think she was being sabotaged.

I should have known better than to trust Hades.

Hearing footsteps behind her, Agatha waved her hand over the stone basin and the couple she’d been studying disappeared as the water shimmered. Turning, she faced the interloper in her garden.

“Having trouble?” Cupid strolled lazily toward her, hands in the pockets of his modern jeans. It always amazed Agatha how he could look completely at home and completely out of place at the same time.

His relaxed attitude was all an act. It had taken him a few thousand years to realize what she’d been tasked to do, but he’d taken it as a personal insult. She suspected he had sabotaged some of her matches and deliberately made it harder to complete her tasks. Seeing him come toward her she was sure her suspicions were correct.

How like a man to sulk in such a way.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she said, smiling serenely at him and folding her hands in front of her.

He snorted and threw himself down on the stone bench opposite the path where she stood.

“From what I’ve seen, you have a bigger mess than you might realize on your hands.” He smirked, crossing one foot over his knee and lounging on the bench as if he owned it.

“Oh?” She’d perfected raising one eyebrow and put that talent to use as she looked down on him. Cupid shifted on the bench, his demeanor no longer casually comfortable.

Yup, he was starting to squirm. Good.

“What if you’ve got the wrong girl?” he asked.

“Impossible.” Agatha dismissed his question with a shake of her head and started to walk briskly down the path toward the garden entrance, the crushed white stone crunching quietly beneath her leather sandals.

“How do you know?” He caught up with her, jogging a little to keep pace.

“I just do.”

“I doubt you know as much about the business of love between humans as I do.” Cupid shrugged his shoulders dismissively. “After all I was born to bring them together. It’s just a job to you.”

Agatha gritted her teeth as she walked past a white marble fountain with a statue of a young girl pouring water into the pool. Annoying arrogance was why she avoided men, and this one in particular.

Men were the reason for all her current troubles and she wanted nothing to do with them. She loved the task Hades had given her. Helping others find happiness completed her in a way nothing else could. It was not just a job to her.

“If it is what you were born to do, then why, pray tell, are you so bad at it?”

She tried not to laugh at Cupid’s open-mouthed astonishment.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You can’t go around pricking your poison arrows into people who aren’t meant to be together. You of all people ought to know that,” she said. “It changes the course of their lives and they are unable to find their true soul mates because they’re so fixated on the wrong ones.”

“My arrows aren’t poison, they’re gold and I only prick those whose soul mate isn’t around or not born yet,” Cupid said, hunching his shoulders defensively. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Do I?”

She used her eyebrow trick again, since it had worked so well the first time. It was almost fun, teasing him this way. If only he wouldn’t take it all so seriously, they might actually be able to work together.

“I don’t like what you’re implying.” He sounded annoyed and she hid a smile.

“I don’t imagine you do.” She nodded to signal the handmaiden stationed at the garden gate to open it.

Passing through the elaborate golden gate, she crossed the pure white marble foyer, to the entrance of her home, her sandals padding softly as she walked. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the marble pillars, bathing them in a golden glow. As a goddess she’d been given this not so modest home, scores of handmaidens and servants.

Ah, but the best part?

Another god couldn’t enter unless they’d been invited. And Cupid hadn’t been invited. Agatha turned to him and he scowled from between the columns of her foyer.

“Stop interfering with my couples,” she said. “It’s not fair to them.”

“They’re my couples,” he shouted, stabbing a finger into his chest for emphasis before snapping his fingers and disappearing in a flash of bright white light.

* * * *

Nick cursed the hot coffee he’d spilled on his pant leg when he had grabbed for the radio. He knew already it wasn’t going to be his day

“Nick, do you read?” Steve’s tart voice said again and he grabbed the CB and responded to his partner.

“Get over to the corner Central Park South and Grand Army Plaza for a 10-54 possible 187.”

“Ten-four,” Nick replied, and flipped his lights on. Pretty posh neighborhood for a homicide, still there was no accounting for taste. This must be what Steve was upset about. He hated working homicides alone.

Five minutes later, he came to a stop amid other cruisers and flashing lights. Yellow tape had been strung across the sidewalk on the Central Park side of the street and pedestrians were either crossing to avoid it or gawking, showing that they probably weren’t native New Yorkers.

Avoiding the news cameras was easy but their presence was unwanted.

Damn media couldn’t have waited until they knew more?

“No comment,” he said into a microphone shoved into his face. The perky black woman holding it pulled it away.

“It seems the police still don’t have any leads about the body found in Central Park this afternoon…” Her voice faded as he strolled toward the yellow tape. Flashing his badge at an officer set at the perimeter, Nick ducked underneath the tape and headed down the stairs into the park.

“Over here, Detective,” Steve was already there and waved to get his attention.

“What do we have?” Nick asked.

“Definitely homicide,” was his grim response. “Female, approximately twenty to twenty-five. Looks like she might have suffered for a while before the monster who did this finished the job.”

Nick cursed, pulling on the gloves Steve handed him. He followed his partner toward the body lying on the ground.

“Could you tell what the cause of death was?”

“Nothing’s official but it looks like strangulation. From the bruises on her neck, bastard choked her with his bare hands.” Steve said spitting on the sidewalk as if to get the taste of disgust out of his mouth. “She was placed here, this isn’t the crime scene.”

Walking up to the draped figure Nick flipped over the top of the sheet. A beautiful dark haired woman stared unseeing into the distance. She was nude, her neck bruised with obvious finger marks and Nick drew the sheet up to protect her modesty. There was something familiar about her features but Nick couldn’t put his finger on exactly what. He crouched beside her and gently moved some hair from her face.

“Any idea on the victim’s ID?”

“Not yet. We’ve got forensics working on it but there was no purse around,” Steve said. “The guy who found her thinks he knows who she is though.”

Nick gently replaced the sheet and touched her forehead for a moment out of respect before standing and glancing around the scene.

“Who found her?” he asked.

“Carriage driver,” Steve replied. “He’s pretty upset about it but we did manage to get a few details from him.”

He flipped open his notebook.

“He found her around 7:30 AM when he came down here to take a leak after securing his horse on Central Park South. He claims he saw her a few weeks ago when she did a photo shoot with the horse and carriages, so he thinks she’s a model.”

“Can you confirm his story?”

“We have him at the station now and we’re checking into it,” Steve replied.

“Let’s do a search on all Manhattan Modeling agencies and find out if anyone is ah…missing a girl.”

“I’ll get on it,” Steve turned away.

Nick scoped the area around the victim who was currently being processed by the coroner before being placed in a body bag. He couldn’t see anything that might have been left by the sick bastard who had done this, but he scanned the area for any possible clue. There were no signs of a struggle, no clothes or anything that would indicate a crime had been committed here. The perpetrator had brought his victim here and placed her deliberately in this spot. How did he manage to sneak her into this particular part of the park? He must have known she’d be discovered right away as she was just a few yards off a very popular walking path.

“We got a hit,” Steve said returning to Nick’s side. “Her fingerprints match those belonging to a Rita Wood, aka Regina Max. She’s a model all right, signed with Ellis Modeling over on Fifth Avenue.”

“That was fast,” Nick said, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected to have an ID before the body left the park.

“They reported her missing this morning. She’s been missing since Tuesday but it wasn’t until her agent saw the news and put two and two together. She sent over the copy she had of her driver’s license and bingo.”

“Damn,” Nick said and headed over to where the coroner was zipping up the body bag.

“What do you estimate TOD?” he asked.

“I won’t know for sure until I get her on my table, but from preliminary examination of the condition of the body I’d say she’s been dead for about eight hours. That would put the time of death at 1 or 2 AM,” the coroner said. “I’ll have more for you later today once I’ve had a chance to do the autopsy and do a liver temp.”

“Thanks, Doc. Let me know when you’ve got something I can use.”

Turning away, Nick walked back to the spot where the body had been and resumed his search for clues.

* * * *

Three weeks later, they had another victim. Another model from a different modeling agency left in Central Park. When the third body was found, it was clear they had a serial killer on their hands and they were no closer to solving the crime.

“There’s got to be something these girls have in common,” Chief Hammond said, the twitching of his foot giving away his agitation.

“We’re looking into it, sir,” Nick said. “So far we’ve come up with nothing apart from them all being models.”

“The media is all over that first one,” Steve commented. “At least they haven’t found out that the other two were models.”

“Yet,” Chief Hammond said grimly. “You can bet some snoop dog reporter will figure it out. Nick, I want you and Steve to put a team together. Figure out when and where he’s going to strike next. Let’s find this asshole and put him away. Dismissed.”