Blood Rites

By Barry Nazarian

Aiding in the search for a missing coed gradually leads Michael Marsten, her teacher and advisor, to the unsettling discovery that there may be other young women from other schools who had already met similar related fates. And then as his pursuit of the most unlikely perpetrator he could have imagined becomes increasingly more intense and personal, the involuntary investigator confronts the greatest revelation of them all. Namely that the person he suspects of being responsible for the disappearance of one young woman after another might himself have been the most tragic victim of them all. So that by the time it has reached its unforeseen conclusion, "Blood Rites" has become a mystery without a detective, involving a criminal whose desperate actions owe their motivation to a unique and startling form of innocence all its own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Nazarian
• Release date: Apr 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301049301

Book preview

Blood Rites

by

Barry A. Nazarian

.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Barry A. Nazarian

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

.

For Carmen, John, and Frank

Table of Contents

Prologue

1. One of our number is missing...

2. Lieutenant Marnell...

3. A new recruit...

4. Adoption...

5. A haunting...

6. A drawing in...

7. A deadly pattern...

8. Narrowing in...

9. Renegade...

10. An untimely death...

11. Tempting fate...

12. Brooke...

13. Going it alone...

14. Lisa

15. Obsession...

16. Cutting loose...

17. Breakthrough....

18. Setup.....

19. The end of the beginning...

20. Bad company...

21. Closing in...

22. End game...

Prologue

Let's stop a minute.

She caught the excitement in his voice and twisted away from the darkened window to face him. He avoided her eyes, giving the furrowed shoulder of the road his attention as he guided the car off the macadam and into the fragrant shadows of the overhanging trees.

Out here? she asked, guessing his intention, surprised by the tremor in her voice and the shortness of breath that made her aware of her own excitement.

He secured the emergency brake with a stab of his foot. After a quick glance over his shoulder to assure himself they were close enough to the darkness of the trees to avoid the sweeping headlights of any passing motorist, he smiled across the seat at her and hooked a finger in the open V of her blouse. Why not? he whispered.

She shuddered slightly under his touch as he worked his way down the front of her blouse, twisting the buttons away from the eyelets, darting an occasional finger through the opening folds for a deliberate brush against her breasts. Sliding his hand inside, he let his fingers trail across her bare breasts, gently squeezing an erect nipple. Take that thing off, he murmured into her ear, his tongue flicking at the delicate pink lobe.

She nodded and pulled the silky garment over her head. Her hand was on the zipper of her skirt when he began moving away. Where are you going? she said, surprised, the tips of her breasts swaying as she turned to look behind herself.

I'm only going into the backseat, he assured her in a hoarse voice. He opened the door on his side of the car with a sudden push of his shoulder, and she ducked down below the line of the windows, surprised by the glare of the courtesy light.

Wait for me, she whispered. She twisted around to confront him in his new position behind her, intending to slide over the backrest rather than step out of the car without her clothes.

No! The warning was abrupt, too emphatic, so he smiled behind her reassuringly. I want this to be special. He leaned over the backrest and turned her deliberately by the shoulders so she sat facing the windshield again.

She nodded and smiled, sitting in obedient anticipation. She caught her naked reflection in the moonlit glass of the windshield, and felt suddenly ridiculous, like women she had seen in surrealistic paintings, inexplicably naked in the everyday context of a restaurant or an elevator. Do you want me to touch myself, like we did . . . before? she asked tentatively, glad that she couldn't see him.

Who said anything about touching yourself? he said, and she could feel his breath in her ear as he leaned over the seat and brushed her cheek with his. I'll do the touching.

He reached down and cupped her breasts lightly before he pulled her halfway over the backrest with a firm grip under her arms. Her back arched uncomfortably over the top of the seat so her upper body lay in his grasp while her legs dangled awkwardly and helplessly in front of her. Before she could protest, he had found the soft folds of flesh between her thighs, and he kept his hand there, rubbing lightly without entering her with his fingers. Okay now? he said softly, soothingly.

Oh, God, yes, you know it is! She sighed luxuriously against his touch. It's just that I can't move in this position.

I know, he said thickly, finding her mouth with his and rising slightly from the backseat. And for a while there was silence between them, punctuated by the quickening rhythm of their breathing.

It was only when her motions came awkwardly and involuntarily, reflecting the peak of her excitement, that the hand cupped under her chin, the hand held motionless but firm, became a restraint.

Please, she protested, pulling lightly at the fingers near her neck while she continued to writhe under the touch of the other hand.

But he seemed oblivious of the sound of her voice, unaware of the growing pressure of her nails against the hand that was coming to life at her throat, intruding on their mutual pleasure like a sudden and incongruous third party neither of them had anticipated.

Her excitement was ebbing rapidly, and she found herself pushing with her free hand against the roof of the car in an attempt to shift her weight from her awkward position back down onto the support of the front seat. The motion seemed to enrage him, and he moved his fingers from between her legs, restraining her even more by finding a grip on the other side of her neck that turned the knuckles on the back of his hand white with effort.

Her skin turned a deep red, flushed by movements that were increasingly frantic. But his hands only tightened with each twist of her neck, and when she opened her mouth, only the mockery of a scream played soundlessly from lips opened in a grotesque twist. There was no time for her to think, to make any sense of the choking pressure that grew steadily inside her chest until her bare legs flailed out, finding the smooth sweep of the windshield, then locking with the spoke of the steering wheel in a frenzy of kicking. Her body flip-flopped in a series of convulsions that failed to free it from the anchor of his grip on her neck.

Now there were sounds from his mouth. Murmurings at first, that grew in volume and duration with her movements, until he was moaning openly in a wail that betrayed the shaking strain of his locked arms. Finally, when she froze in the midst of one last desperate arching of her body, he stiffened with her, emitting a scream of his own that was lost in the drone of the horn that came to life under the thrust of her foot.

It fell silent only when she ceased to strain any longer, falling back across the seat, limp and spent in a grip he seemed to release as an afterthought.

Afterward he climbed out of the car, and held her cradled in his arms, her cheek cushioned warmly against his shoulder while he walked to the edge of the tree line. He stood with his knees against the metal retaining wall and leaned out over the steep bank below him, nuzzling the side of her face with his lips. Then he straightened his arms and stepped sharply back without taking his eyes from her body, which sometimes slid, sometimes rolled down the rain-soft soil of the embankment until it came to rest at the bottom of the incline below him, a white blur in the leaf-filtered moonlight that poured down through the encircling trees.

Maybe it was the perfect silence of his surroundings, as if the deserted rural landscape was representative of a special place that would never fail to yield the same excitement it had first aroused in him so long ago, but already he was looking forward to the next time.

1. One of our number is missing...

Michael Marsten finished crating the last of his books and paused to lean over his desk and rub his forehead slowly in an attempt to focus on some final detail that may have eluded him. As if on cue, his office phone came shrilly to life, and he remembered Higgens even before he had raised the receiver to his mouth.

English department. Marsten.

Did you find her yet?

Marsten sighed and leaned back in his chair; the headmaster had made no attempt to hide the impatience in his voice. Not yet, Higg. Actually, I've sent one of the boys over to the gym, and he hasn't returned.

Mrs. Tully's still waiting.

Marsten was fairly sure that Mrs. Tully was doing her waiting in the headmaster's office, or the irritation he had detected in the other man's voice would have been a good deal more pronounced. As it was, he checked himself in the act of explaining further. The line had already gone dead.

We mustn't keep Mrs. Tully waiting, he complained to the empty office, slamming down the receiver and stepping over the cartons that stood between him and the door to the hall. The last few days before graduation never failed to be one of the most trying times of the year. In a period of less than a week, he would be free; but for now, three intense days of grading exams and two mornings of faculty meetings separated him from the vacation he regarded as the greatest fringe benefit offered by any profession.

See you next year, sir! one of his younger pupils called out over the excited clamor in the hall that always marked the day before vacation. Marsten acknowledged the comment with an absent-minded nod of his head and made his way to the opposite end of the school complex where a large dome housed the gymnasium. He waved lazily to several members of the faculty engaged in one of the eternal pickup games of basketball, lamenting the fact that he wasn't playing himself.

With a few quick strides he was leaning through the doorway that marked the athletic director's office. Fred Picker was hunched over his desk eating a sandwich, ignorant that his duties left him immune to the year-end agony of final exams. He nodded amiably at Marsten without lifting his head from his sandwich and motioned to one of the chairs facing his desk. Marsten smiled in spite of himself; he liked Picker.

Have you seen Alison Tully? he asked without bothering to sit down.

Picker nodded. Yeah! he said with enthusiasm, after allowing himself a moment in which to swallow. He put down the sandwich and cupped a hand suggestively under each pectoral of his immense chest.

Marsten shook his head. No, dummy, I'm serious. Higg told me she didn't show up to meet her mother, so I sent a kid down here to find her. Higg's in kind of a twit.

Picker wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and emitted a thoughtful belch. Let me see if we got her locker key. He came ponderously to his feet and shuffled across the office toward the large metal cabinets lining one of the walls. He swung open the doors of the largest cabinet and ran his finger down a row of small keys suspended from hooks and marked with round cardboard tags. His hand came to rest at one point along the last row. Son of a bitch. It's not here. Marsten frowned. You mean she didn't turn it in?

Nope. Only one who didn't, as far as I can see. Unless Carol put it on the wrong hook; and I don't see two keys on one hook.

Marsten shook his head in thought.

Think she cut? Picker offered, shutting the doors of the cabinet and fitting his key into the master lock.

What the hell for? It's the last day of classes, for God's sake!

Picker shrugged. Who knows? Maybe she did it out of force of habit.

Marsten turned with an exasperated wave of his hand and made his way out toward the hall.

Hey, be careful! Picker called after him. If she's too late getting home, I don't want her daddy taking back my new gym!

* *

The headmaster's secretary motioned Marsten past her desk as soon as he appeared in the doorway. He pulled back the heavy paneled door that led to the inner office, and found J. Forsythe Higgens standing directly in front of him. Over to the right, Mrs. Lisa Tully stood with her back to the single stained-glass window that faced the circular school driveway. Marsten was not happy to find Lisa Tully there; her presence made the job of confronting Higgens's inquisitive frown even more difficult.

Higgens looked like the sort of headmaster a Madison Avenue ad agency might have contrived. He was in his late fifties, with snow-white hair and rimless glasses. He was tall enough to appear formidable, yet slim enough so that his blazers and tweeds hung with the tapering fit of a mannequin.

I'm afraid I haven't located Alison yet, Marsten explained, nodding politely in Mrs. Tully's direction without actually looking at her. It seems she hasn't turned in her locker key, so she's probably still here somewhere on campus.

She is not, Mrs. Tully said before the headmaster could respond to Marsten's report. Mr. Higgens has just heard from the masters he sent to cover the other buildings.

Marsten could only look dumbly in her direction. His silence was due in part to his relief over finding that he had not been singled out to account for the missing girl, as well as to his surprise at being addressed so authoritatively by a woman he had met on only one or two occasions.

I see, he answered, keeping his own tone as neutral as possible while confining his resentment to continuing to look only in Higgens's direction.

Well, said Higgens, rubbing his hands together and smiling at no one in particular, I'm sure we can make a few concessions for year-end excitement. He looked over at Mrs. Tully. Ordinarily, students are not permitted to leave the grounds without permission from a member of the family. Unless they wait for the four-thirty dismissal, of course. Alison has obviously overlooked turning in her locker key as well as forgetting to meet you. Higgens gestured toward his office window, where the voices of departing students were muffled but audible through the stained glass. I guess we can forgive that from a junior on her final day.

It was a neat job of negotiating, Marsten reflected. Higgens had pointed out subtly that the girl was partially to blame for leaving school early. And he had parlayed that into an offer of ignoring the offense if Mrs. Tully could accept that the school had somehow allowed her daughter to slip away. It was a good example of how headmasters earned their salaries.

I'll call you as soon as I get home, Lisa Tully replied, flashing Higgens a cold smile. If she's returned from school, someone will know where she is. The implication of this last remark was no more lost on Higgens than it was on Marsten, but the headmaster smiled broadly and nodded.

Please do, Lisa. I'll be waiting for your call. He looked over at Marsten. Thank you, Mike. Marsten accepted the dismissal with a smile of his own. He nodded