All the Blue-Eyed Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

burned. Their bodies were twisted and bloody, their eyes black with agony. The frame was partially rotted away, and the painting itself was stained in places and barely visible in others. It didn’t matter, though—I still remembered every grotesque detail. Long before the fire, it had been the centerpiece in more than one childhood nightmare.
    Isaac’s twisted artistic sensibilities had also been the inspiration for the Church’s primary source of income. There were examples of these in the meeting room as well, though I wasn’t nearly as tickled at sight of the marionettes as I’d once been. The adults in the church worked together to make the handcrafted angels, then sold them on the mainland at local shops and craft fairs.
    One of the angels lay on the ground just a few feet from the fireplace. It was all but dust, the strings disintegrated, clothing and wings eaten away. Now, just a naked wooden body and a head with faded but strangely mesmerizing blue eyes were all that remained.
    Before I could stash the doll from hell somewhere where the blue eyes would quit following me, there was a commotion outside. I knew something was up because Einstein was barking like a rabid banshee—the desperate, high-pitched bark usually reserved for creepy neighbors or suspicious-looking postal workers. I narrowly missed colliding with Diggs on my way out the door.
    “I found something. Bring your camera.”
    He looked a little green around the gills, so I did as I was told, following him to the edge of the tree line behind the house. He’d tied a very unhappy Einstein to a birch nearby. At sight of me, my mutt howled in protest, nearly strangling himself to get free.
    A moment later, I understood why Diggs had needed him out of the way.
    The smell hit first—damp and sickly sweet, like meat long past its expiration date. I followed my nose to a mid-sized wooden box that definitely hadn’t been there when we’d walked the grounds just half an hour before. The top had been removed. I peered inside, where a bloody mass swarming with flies was nestled in newspaper. I nudged the box with my foot. Once the flies had cleared and I wrapped my brain around what it was, my stomach turned.
    “I think it’s a lamb,” Diggs said.
    “A lamb’s head, actually,” I said. I looked around, but saw neither hide nor hair of the rest of the carcass. “Young, by the look of it—maybe newborn. Where the hell did it come from? Einstein ran the grounds up and down when we first got here—he would have caught the scent the second we passed the gate.”
    “It certainly begs the question, doesn’t it?”
    I knelt, the wet ground soaking through my denim-clad knees. Diggs stood with his head turned away, his arms crossed over his chest. Since he was being no help, I told him to go set Einstein loose before the mutt had a complete breakdown.
    “There’s something in its mouth,” I called after him.
    After my mother took me away from Payson Isle, she settled in Littlehope as the county physician. I was her not-so-eager assistant on more than one midnight call to patch up drunken fishermen or their wayward wives. A lamb’s head, regardless of the shape it was in, didn’t hold a candle to some of the things I’d seen by the time I was thirteen.
    “How can you touch that thing?” Diggs called to me with a grimace.
    “I’m not touching it. I’m just poking it a little.”
    Einstein raced to my side as soon as he was free. Diggs looked mildly annoyed, but I just gave the one order Stein knows by heart.
    “Leave it.”
    The dog’s tail dropped. His grin vanished. Dejected, he turned around, walked a few paces, and sat down. Despite everything, I could tell Diggs was impressed. I couldn’t really take the credit, since Michael was the one who trained him.
    Diggs went to stand beside Einstein as I continued my exam.
    “Its neck was cut straight through—this is a clean cut, no ragged edges. No hesitation with the kerf marks.”
    “And