unicorn and a phoenix. The four often came together to form a superpower of prosperity, luck, love and strength.
Trisha followed her mother into the den, admiring the juxtaposition of modern, white leather sofas bracketing the traditional rosewood table. A black vase at the center held several wicked-looking leather shadow puppets from Bali. The figures were believed to have great spiritual power. They were “brought to life” during special ceremonies performed by a puppet master. Supposedly, the puppets portrayed good and evil, but this collection steered heavily toward the dark side. But then Trisha figured that, if you already knew the future, you could probably sleep pretty well in a house full of demons.
Her mother walked past an altar cabinet holding an impressive stone Buddha. There was a small china plate piled with oranges as an offering. Incense burned alongside, giving off a hint of sandalwood. An enormous plasma screen dominated the wall on the opposite side of the room.
But along with the incense, Trisha smelled something else—something not so pleasant. She wrinkled her nose, following Má into the kitchen.
Really, it was freaky quiet. Trish lived in an apartment off campus, with four other girls. Someone was always up making noise at just about any hour of the day or night. For a minute she thought maybe Mimi wasn’t home, and she could skip the whole ordeal.
Only, that was another thing that didn’t make sense. They had an appointment, and Mimi was nothing if not professional. And the door swinging open like that—no way Mimi would have left her house unlocked if she was out.
Inside the kitchen, Trisha watched her mother open the door to the garage to show that—yes, indeed—Mimi’s white Beemer was still in residence. Again, Trisha smelled something strange mingled in with the sandalwood. It reminded her of Brillo pads. Or the heavy iron skillet they kept on the stove back at the apartment. She looked around to see if maybe Mimi had left something out, some meat that might have gone bad. But the kitchen looked pristine.
Her mother closed the door, for the first time appearing alarmed.
“Maybe we should wait outside?” Trish ventured, hoping that they could just forget the whole thing and leave.
No such luck. Her mother called out again for Mimi in Vietnamese. Trisha could tell her mom thought something was wrong. And maybe it was. She knew Mimi kept a fortune in jewels here at the house.
Leaving the kitchen, Trisha remembered another reason why the quiet house struck her as odd. Mimi had a bird. A small parrot called a conure. She kept it in her office. Every time Trisha had come to visit, that screeching bird had driven her half-crazy. It was like some sort of freakish guard bird, going off every time Mimi let anyone in the house.
From down the hall, Trisha heard her mother scream.
“Má!”
She raced toward her mother’s screams for help. She found her back in the den, standing in front of the altar cabinet, her mouth gaping as she faced the Buddha.
Trisha saw the bird immediately. Or what was left of it.
She hadn’t noticed it there before. It was a small bird. A sun conure, she remembered. The coloring blended in with the oranges, almost disappearing there on the plate with the offerings. The dead bird had been placed before Buddha, a sacrifice.
The head was missing.
Her mother covered her mouth with both hands as if to hold in her screams. Trisha backed out of the room, her eyes still on the Buddha and its strange offering. Her back hit the doorjamb. She let out a small mewling sound.
Má turned to look at her. The expression on her mother’s face, how she stood so still, reminded Trisha of a deer catching scent of something.
Má whispered Mimi’s name under her breath before calling it out louder and louder. She pushed Trisha aside and ran back into the hall.
They found Mimi on the floor of the room she used as an office. She wore one of her beautiful white St. John suits. Where her aunt had been stabbed, the blood blossomed like some crazy Rorschach test over the white knit.
Her eyes were empty, bloody sockets. And there was something stuffed in her mouth.
It was the bird’s head.
This time, Trisha screamed right along with her mother.
2
No one ever gets used to death.
It could stab you through the heart or spray your guts across the wall with a bullet. It could slam into you on the sidewalk and knock you right out of your shoes.
Quick. Clean.
Or it could be a dark business. Strange and wicked. Bent.
Detective Stephen “Seven” Bushard watched his partner walk around the victim’s body. The woman lay dead on a canvas of her own blood, her arms and legs posed as if captured midrun. The white suit seemed almost like an accent, as if maybe there’d been some attempt at a pattern. White carpet, red blood—white suit, red blood. A pebble dropped on a quiet pond.
Seven’s partner, Erika Cabral, knelt alongside the victim to examine her face.
“The parrot’s head in the mouth is a nice touch,” she said.
“Looks like Polly got more than just a cracker.”
Erika rolled her eyes at him, never big on his jokes. Seven’s partner was dressed in a simple corduroy jacket and jeans, her thick chestnut hair pulled back in a messy topknot. On anyone else, the outfit wouldn’t turn heads. But the fit of the jeans, the slight peek of cleavage…If she wasn’t such a ball buster, his Latina partner could lead half the force by the nose.
“You ask me,” she said, “someone didn’t like what the vic had to say.”
“Could be,” he admitted.
“Ever heard the expression, don’t kill the messenger?” Erika asked.
Tran was a well-known psychic, a woman paid to see the future.
The crime scene tech, Roland Le, had already taken video of the scene and had moved on to stills. He snapped photographs in a carefully choreographed dance they knew all too well. Seven had seen it a hundred times, death. But he’d never get used to this.
Whoever killed Mimi Tran was a grade-A whack job.
The victim had been sixty-one, information delivered by the officer who had first arrived on the scene and secured the premises. He’d interviewed the two women, relatives of Tran, who’d been unlucky enough to step into this nightmare. The medical examiner would set the time of death, but Seven could take a stab at it just by the smell in the room. Another blazing day in sunny California and the place reeked of death.
Mimi Tran liked the color white: white carpet, white leather couch, white lacquered Italian office furniture. The color choice made a stunning contrast to the blood.
He knelt down to examine the near-black splatters on the carpet. Teardrop shapes led toward the door, then, abruptly—almost as if she’d been spun like a top—the trail turned in on itself, bread crumbs leading back to where the victim had fallen. Mimi
