Magnolia, California, had eight hundred or so people living in it. At least, that’s what the sign said. Levi didn’t believe it when he’d driven into the town this morning and he didn’t believe it as Trish drove them back there now.
He also didn’t think a magnolia had ever grown in this armpit.
Trish drove them straight to the sheriff’s office: a red brick structure that shared a parking lot with a red brick town hall. Across the street from the two red brick buildings were two others, both a light tan, one with a post office on the ground floor and the other with a lawyer’s office. In the middle of the street was an 8’x8’ raised plat of grass that housed a non-working fountain.
Levi rolled his eyes at the monstrosity as they drove past it. A fucking fountain in fucking Death Valley.
Trish pulled in and shut the engine off. “I’m not sure which is your car…”
A clear sign for him to go. Fat chance. She’d effectively silenced him with the loud radio and if he never heard another fucking Hollywood socialite’s name again, it would be too soon. But Trish needed to share her files with him. All he’d seen was what the mayor had chosen to show him, he was sure there was more.
“We have work to do,” he told her, shoving open his door.
The heat was oppressive, but so much better here than out in the desert. He still tore off his suit jacket as soon as he was standing. He slammed the car door behind him and stalked off toward the sheriff’s office.
Fuck if he’d wait for her.
He didn’t look to see if she followed, no doubt she did, but he wanted inside of air conditioning right now. He blew in through the doors and past an unmanned desk, around a counter and directly to Trish’s office.
When he’d come to town he’d met the mayor and the sheriff here. They’d given him a “tour” of the office. Levi hadn’t lied when he said he’d helped law enforcement before, but he’d never been called out to a shitty hole-in-the-wall place like this before. He didn’t even do this anymore. What the fuck was he doing here? He was supposed to help look for relics, supposed to man the fucking online auctions and underground deals on the dark web. No, instead he gets a fax with grainy photos and about fifteen words and he hightails it to Death Valley.
He tossed his jacket onto one of the two chairs facing Trish’s desk. He ran his hands through his hair and tried to contain his frustration. Sure these were horrible murders. Sure some shit was going on. Sure some innocents were dying. But he had other things to do and yet here he was, trying to help a woman who didn’t want the help, trying to help a town that didn’t know when to die, trying to be a fucking hero.
He spun around, his hands still in his hair.
And froze.
Trish was a goddamn marvelous detective.
He dropped his hands and went closer to the wall. Trish had filled the wall with corkboard and covered it with her case. There were 8x10 glossy photos of the crime scenes, even photos of those that found bodies or came to gawk. Every picture was labeled in a neat, bubbly hand. There was a large sheet of paper where she’d written Victim #1 and all the information she knew. Then one for Victim #2. Levi stood there, dumbstruck. Funny how the mayor hadn’t shown him this.
“Oh, yeah. My wall.”
He spun to see her standing in the doorway, her brow knitted in concentration. Her big blue eyes were glued to the wall. She came forward and tapped the first victim’s picture.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything this fresh and this macabre. One time, when I was a rookie detective, we caught a man who’d just killed his wife. She was still warm, still bleeding, but already dead. That was probably the closest I’ve come to fresh. But this…” She shook her head. “The blood was still wet.”
He looked down at her, at the crown of her head, the thick brown hair and the massive elastic band that held her tresses in a ponytail. For a second, he wondered what all that thick hair looked like around her face.
“We still don’t have names,” she continued, oblivious to Levi’s stare. “We know all the victims are male, but that might not mean anything. Not a lot of people hitchhike through that area and the missing person reports haven’t dredged up anything new over the last few days.”
“No one missing from town?”
She shook her head. “No. And believe me, if someone was missing from town, about half the town would know. The other half would find out when they talked to their neighbor.” She sighed. “The ME doesn’t even know race. Teeth are gone. Skin is flayed off of fingers, so we can’t get prints. This is probably the most heinous thing I’ve ever seen.”
Levi let out a deep breath and looked back to the photos. “Yeah. This isn’t normal.”
“You’ve never seen anything like this?” she asked.
He grunted. “No, thank God.” He half-smiled. “Probably not what you wanted to hear.”
“Yes and no,” she said with a shrug.
He sighed. “So can we start over?”
“Again? How many times can we do that?” She moved away from him and went to sit behind her desk. He watched as she pulled a notebook out and then grabbed some papers from a tray. “I have paperwork to do.”
He sat down in front of her desk and hitched a thumb to her wall. “When did you do that?”
She didn’t look up. “After the first one.”
“Did you think there would be a second?”
Her pen paused, but then moved swiftly across the page. “Yes.”
“I can help you with this, Trish.”
He sat silent as she stopped writing, eventually putting down her pen. If she’d put makeup on that morning, it had sweated off in the heat of the desert. Didn’t matter. She still had clear skin, deep blue eyes with thick lashes, and luscious lips. She looked up at him, her thick bangs still holding moisture, some strands of hair even sticking to her neck. Her head tilted to the side as she regarded him.
“Why?”
Levi leaned back in his chair. Wasn’t that always the question? Why did he do what he did? Why did he leave Curse and Sin and Ram and Bar alone to run off after murderers? Especially when Astaroth had asked him nicely to stay at home in Vegas. Especially when they realized that relics were being bought and sold. That the devil was looking for daughters and hopefully sons. That Lilith was also looking for daughters, but not to welcome them into her family, instead to kill them. So really. Why?
“This is what I do,” he stated flatly.
He’d done it the first go around on earth. Found murderers and flung them into hell, destroyed their souls. Then, after falling, he’d welcomed them to hell, gave them their souls back. This was penance. A chance to fix what he’d broken all those years ago.
“It’s what I do, too,” Trish said softly. “The mayor thinks I can’t find the person responsible. But I will.”
“I want to help.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “You have to know that I’m capable.”
“I know you are.”
“Do you?”
He leaned closer to her desk, his elbows resting on his knees. “Trish, you’re probably the most capable detective I’ve seen in years,” he told her honestly. “I think you could solve this thing yourself. But if I’m here, willing to help, maybe we can save some people from that fate,” he finished, hooking a thumb toward her wall. “Not for the mayor. Not for the sheriff. Not even for you.”
Trish let out a puff of breath. Her big blue eyes dropped to her desk and the paper she’d been writing on. “For them,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
She lifted her head and now her eyes were narrowed. “I don’t know if I like you yet. And I don’t like that you were brought in behind my back.”
He held his hands up. “I’ll give you that.”
“So you’ll have to prove yourself.”
He lifted one eyebrow. “Prove myself?”
She gave a curt nod, then shoved her chair back. Bemused, he watched her rattle around in a file cabinet, finally wrestling three big binders from a drawer. He could see papers hanging out the sides, papers slipping onto the floor, sticky notes covering the front of each binder. She heaved them onto the desk in front of them, one sliding off the stack and hitting the floor with a loud snap.
“Not everything’s on my wall.”
*****
The hulking black dog nuzzled through the foliage in a long forgotten park. The parking lot was taken over with vines and cracked concrete. An old steel swing set and merry-go-round were rusted into silence. Wooden seats in picnic benches had split apart, some eaten by insects, most turned to dust. Yet the dog still snuffled through, his chain clicking, as he looked for anything to eat.
Under one picnic table, the earth had turned black and hard. The dog paused, sniffed, and recoiled. He reached with one paw, scrubbing at the blackness, one nail digging into the hardened soil. A furrow appeared, scratched deep, and the dog leaned forward, sniffing the air above the groove. He sneezed. Sneezed again.
A black bug burrowed through the firm soil, appearing on the surface with blackened wings and legs. Its body shook excess dirt off and the little insect turned around three times before finally facing the dog.
The creature hissed.
The dog jumped back.
Wings opened on the bug’s back and flapped at the dog. More hissing. All six legs stomped. The cacophony shook the small furrow the dog had created, pieces of soil breaking off and zigzagging through the black area like a mini-earthquake. More bugs poked their heads out of the cracks, pulled their little bodies through the earth and joined the first creature on the surface.
The dog watched first in wonderment. Then all the insects hissed at him.
He turned and ran.
Some gave chase.
The dog flew through the undergrowth, the hissing and spitting insects nipping at his heels. He heard several hit trees, splattering against bark, but not dying, digging deep into the wood. Even small, the wings made a hearty sound and the dog kept running and running until he could hear them no more.
Now further away from the abandoned park, he stopped, listening, his black ear twitching every which way. When he didn’t hear the bugs anymore, he trotted back to where he’d been spending his nights, deep in the forest.
In a sparse clearing, a green tent stood, held securely to the ground with thick rope. The dog entered the clearing and approached the tent. A fire smoldered near him, but he ignored it. He shook his big body, arching his back, straining. The chain around his neck clinked louder, covering the sound of snapping bones and rupturing muscles. The dog growled, the sound reverberating through the trees, until it turned into a high-pitched whine and finally, a man’s scream.
After it was all over, Orrie lay on his side on the ground, his chest heaving, his skin covered in sweat, the dog gone. A cold breeze blew over him and he shivered, but he didn’t get up.
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply, getting his bearings, before he gently lifted himself to his hands and knees. He reached out with a shaking hand and unzipped the tent, crawling inside.
Once there, he flopped over and then onto his back. He gazed up at the sloped sides of the tent. What the fuck were those little bugs?
Briefly, he closed his eyes and let that breeze, once cold, ruffle over him again. He’d spent most of the day as his dog, but now he had to call in. Tell what he’d seen.
He sat up and leaned forward to zip the tent. No need to have anyone find him here, naked as a jaybird, making an important phone call. He plopped back down on his ass and dug through the dirt by the entrance. He’d buried his money and cell phone in a black box when he first got here, knowing that he’d be spending most of his time as his dog.
He pulled the box out, shaking off the dirt, and carefully put in the combo. Not like he could carry a key around. He flipped the lid and scooped out his cell phone.
As he made his call, he shook his hair out, the blond strands full of leaves and grass. He scuffed a hand down his face and felt the beard growth. It had been a while since he’d been in the company of other people.
The phone on the other end of the line clicked and someone answered.
“It’s Orrie. We got a problem.”