I hiked the four blocks up, one block over, not knowing what to expect, but expecting not to like it. It was the second body in as many days. As soon as Barb got wind of this, my already parched client list would dry up altogether. Whatever this was, I needed it over and done with before the powers that bleed sucked all the life out of my business.
I don’t think anyone followed me to the scene, but the walk and the drugs made noticing a difficult prospect.
What was left of the two-story, brick façade jutted out of the hill like broken teeth from a ruined jaw. It had been a fraternity hall once upon a time, but now it was a scorched husk of blackened bricks and crumbling mortar. The hall had been awe-inspiring before the fire gutted it and left its entrails strewn across the ground. For a moment, it struck me as the mandible of some terrible creature, torn loose from its master, still trying to bite holes in the sky. Justin stood on its lower lip. smoking a cigarette.
“Nice tie,” I said, as I got closer. “Put up much of a fight?”
“Nope,” he said, studiously cleaning his spectacles with the monstrously loud strip of fabric hanging around his neck. “I shot it before it could escape.”
He looked at me in a way that made me want to check my nose for stray blobs of snot. He smiled and flicked his cigarette out into the street.
“Isn’t that littering?” I asked.
“Probably,” he said, motioning towards the burned-out ruin. “Come on up.”
He started walking without waiting for my reply.
“Who found the body?” I asked, following him up the slight incline.
“Some frat boy,” Justin said without turning back. “He brought a girl up here to show her the spooky, burned-out frat hall.”
“Don’t college kids watch horror movies anymore?” I asked, falling into step beside him.
“I thought so,” Justin said, “but apparently they aren’t making college students any smarter now than they used to.”
I had seen more than my share of dumb kid things. Living and working out of The Fort Sanders area, I had plenty of chances to witness stupid college boy stunts. I couldn’t disagree with Justin’s assertion.
“Anything on the body?” I asked.
“Nope,” Justin said, stopping just before crossing the charred threshold, “I thought you might be able to shed some light on his identity.”
“What makes you think…” The words died in my throat as my eyes fell on the corpse.
Drink a pint of whiskey, then a pint of castor oil, then vomit it all up onto a pile of charcoal briquettes, and you will have a mass that is in better shape than the thing that lay before me. Crispy-black limbs jutted at unnatural angles as if he had been flash-fried in mid writhe. Here and there, charred, gray flashes of bone shone through missing hunks of flesh. Any distinguishing features had been seared off the head, leaving only a remnant that might have once called itself a face. What remained looked like a heavily smeared photo negative, streaked with black and bone. The hands were curled into nightmarish, charcoal fists of pain. One crumbled when Justin tried to move it with his pen. Nothing but black, sooty dust now.
Like yesterday, but not like yesterday.
This body did not look serene; did not look like it spent its last few minutes at peace with the world. This corpse died in agony. Also, not like yesterday, not all of the body was burnt. Patches of skin and hair stood out amongst the charred bits like wilted tufts of tall grass in a bog, little places to set a foot on and not get sucked in – trapped in the choking decay. I was fighting the urge to retch.
I failed.
Justin handed me a handkerchief when I had finished revisiting lunch.
“Not a pretty sight huh?” he asked, trying to make light of it, I knew, for my sake.
“You’d think they’d look worse totally crisp, but no,” I said, still spitting stomach acid.
“You’d think,” he said.
I stumbled from the building and plopped down on the cool grass of the hill. Not long after, Justin joined me. We sat while I took a long string of deep breaths and tried to remember how to keep my stomach below the level of my Adam’s apple. It took a while.
“You ok?” he asked.
“Fine, Fine,” I said.
Justin took out another cigarette. I shot him a look that was half warning and half pleading. He nodded and pushed it back into the pack.
“So,” he said slowly, “What do you think?”
“I think,” I said between deep breaths, “That the son of a bitch was tortured to death.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he said.
“But not here,” I added.
“Why?”
“Someone would have heard the screams,” I said, “And he definitely screamed.”
“Definitely.”
“The next question,” I said, “Is why was he tortured?”
“A good question,” Justin said, “but not my next one.”
“Really?”
“Really,” he said. “Do you recognize the victim?”
“Not really,” I said, “but he seems to fit the description of the punks that jumped me last night."
“Seems to?” Justin asked.
"Some shitty, dyed black hair left on that scalp. What remains of the clothes is black. Those boots might look familiar," I said. "Plus, he's roughly the build, or he looks like he was."
“Ever figure out why they jumped you?”
“Still not sure,” I said.
So, this is why you brought me out here, a little interrogation after lunch. What’s his angle?
I really didn’t know why they had jumped me. The fire in my veins made remembering what the lead shadow said pretty much impossible. I was beginning to make guesses – none of them educated. Problem is, guesses don’t hold up in court. I didn’t see any use in going off half-cocked; too great a chance of misfire.
“Think you’re fit enough to take another look?” He asked.
I didn’t know. The expression on my face said so. Justin reached into his pocket, and then flipped me a small jar of mentholatum.
“Probably have better luck this time,” I said, smearing some of the stuff under my nostrils.
I made to hand back the jar, but he waved me off. I didn’t like the idea of needing it often enough to keep a jar, but I pocketed it just the same.
The odor of menthol and burnt flesh mingled with the lingering taste of acid on my tongue to create a hellbroth of acrid funk that I’m certain could be seen with the naked eye when I exhaled. In most cases, the menthol covers up the worst of the smell – just not this one. I could feel the greasy odor of human barbeque seeping into my pores. I suddenly had the urge to scrub every inch of my skin with steel wool.
I chanced a second look at the corpse. The sight didn’t help the rolling sensation in my gut.
The poor bastard had obviously been wracked with pain as he died. But, the more I looked, the more I saw patterns emerging from the random swaths of charred and blistered flesh. An arcing swipe here, a laser-straight streak there. Transcribed onto paper it might have been a symbol or series of symbols. I told Justin as much, and he jotted a note for the M.E. in his notebook. When I turned back to the body, something odd stood out. I just couldn’t figure out why. Then I got it.
“His boots,” I said, partially to Justin and partially to hear myself speak.
“What about them?”
“They’re clean,” I said.
He shot me a quizzical glance.
“Ok,” I said, “Not exactly clean, but there aren’t any burns on them.”
“So?”
“So, there isn’t another large, uninterrupted patch of clothing on his body,” I said, tracing my finger in the air along the crisscross of burns.
“He died with his boots on?”
“Very funny,” I said, “He died standing up.”
Justin shot me another puzzled look.
“Look at the burn pattern,” I said, “Some of the arcs trace clearly from front to back and back again. He had to be standing.”
“Or hanging from chains.”
“Could be true,” I said, “but we won’t know that for certain until the M.E. can give us something on the state of his wrists, what’s left of them.”
“Yeah,” Justin said, his tone closed off, “Never seen that before.”
“Me neither,” I said. “Contrary to what the papers say, I really don’t have much experience with dead bodies.”
“Seen a few in my time on the force,” he said, absently. “None of them were good, but not a one of them was this bad.”
I let the comment hang in space for a minute.
What could I say to that? And why say it?
It was obvious, even in my semi-delirium, that Justin was expending a lot of energy to remain cool and professional. Why fuck with that?
I couldn’t think of a good reason.
A slight breeze wisped from some warm corner of heaven and pushed the scent of charred flesh away from my nostrils. For a brief moment, the air smelled as clean as it gets in Knoxville. I was glad of the break. The yellow police tape rippled gently in the cool wind. The whole scene felt distant, like something seen in a photograph taken from far away. The drugs still left in my system were not dampening the sensation of surrealism but making it more intense: more disjointed.
“Need to see anymore?” Justin asked.
“Maybe,” I said, “The crime scene guys already give it the once over?”
“Yeah,” he said, “They were packing up when I called you.”
“Ok,” I said, with a heavy breath, “I think I need to take a closer look.”
Justin's eyes asked if I was going to be ok. The answer in mine was one word: tired.
I was suddenly so goddamn tired.
Holding up a section of tape, he ushered me under it. Within a few steps, we were standing on either side of the body. We stared at it for a while. I can’t recall what I was thinking, but I think it probably had more to do with not puking than the task at hand.
“See anything?” Justin asked.
“Not just yet,” I said. “Can we roll him more onto his back?”
By way of answering, Justin nudged the corpse over onto its back with the toe of one of his immaculately polished wingtips.
“How do you get by in this job with those shoes?” I said, suddenly distracted by the shine of his footwear.
“Wingtips are classics.”
“Yeah, but hard to run in,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I make sure to put on running shoes if I think I’m going to do any chasing. Don’t get much of that at detective grade.”
“Probably better that way,” I said.
When faced with the monstrosities of everyday life, sometimes humor is the only refuge. I wish I could remember who said that.
Fucking memory.
“The left shoulder is unburned,” Justin said.
“Still fabric covering it and everything,” I said, “I wonder if that has any special significance?”
Justin smirked at my attempt at a joke.
“Left side is where energy enters the body,” he said. “The left arm is the one connected to the heart.”
“Doing your homework?”
“Time Life books mostly,” He said.
“Lift up the sleeve,” I said.
Justin took out a pen and pushed the tattered cloth back from the skin. Standing out on the shoulder was a neatly healed brand: a triangle, point up.
Something in me recognized it before my brain even registered. I broke out in a sweat. A ghost of the pain I had felt the night before floated up my spine and rattled its chains behind my eyes. Heat started radiating off my skin. It was fainter, like an echo, but a loud fucking echo. I froze in place.
“You ok?” Justin asked.
It snapped me out of the paralysis. The heat ebbed from my blood. Perspiration felt cool on my skin.
“Yeah,” I lied, “Just can’t seem to get used to the painkillers.”
“Don’t get used to them,” he said. “Too easy to get addicted. And you don’t need any more problems.”
I need a damn drink.
“I guess I don’t,” I said instead. “What do you make of that?”
Justin stared, hard, at the brand for a few moments.
“Not homemade,” he said.
“How do you figure?”
“Lines are too clean,” he said. “Homemade brands usually use a hot clothes hanger – bent into shape. It’s messy, and this is much too neat. I’ve seen cows branded before and it’s not this clean.”
“Cows struggle,” I interjected.
“Sure do,” he said. “People struggle more. This brand is old and healed well enough to tell me it was well taken care of.”
“Taken care of?”
“Yeah, like someone wanted to display it as a badge of honor. Some kind of group or status symbol. But the gang and frat brands I’ve seen aren’t this,” he paused, “Not this precise.”
The comment about precision rung a bell in my head. I could almost hear Terry telling me about the power in a thing being dependent upon the precision of the working or symbol.
Fucking magic?
“Frat houses?”
“Nope,” he said. “None of the frats around here are allowed to do this kind of thing anymore. When they do, it’s usually homegrown, hot, bent wire stuff.”
“Ouch.”
“Ouch, indeed.”
“So, this was a serious job?” I asked, “Like maybe there was an actual hot iron involved?”
“That and a whole lot of self-discipline,” he said, “but yes, definitely the real deal.”
“How many places around here could a person get something like that made?”
“Maybe three, in the whole county,” he said. “This isn’t exactly farm country anymore.”
“This used to be farm country?”
“Very funny,” he said. “We put up a wrought iron fence, a low picket thing, around the church a year ago. Had to dig up a shop that would do it well and for as little money as possible.”
“Wrought iron shop huh?” I said. “Think you could dig up a location or two?”
“Yep,” he said, already punching numbers into his cell phone.
Ten minutes later we had two addresses. The only other shop was out in the sticks and had gone out of business a year and a half ago. I hoped the fools hadn’t been into this for that long. I also hoped I had pegged them correctly as city boys. Hell, it was a long shot anyway. One of them could have been a blacksmith, for all I knew. But it was a lead in a case that was dreadfully short on clues. I had a bit until my appointment with Whitehall. So, why not schlep across town chasing wild geese? What else was I going to do? Justin and I each took an address to cover.
“Caleb,” Justin said as we walked down the hill, away from the broken remains of the hall, “You’re going to tell me when you know something.”
I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a command.
“When it matters, yes,” I said.
“Yeah, well, before you jump in over your head, call me.”
“I’m not sure I’d be doing any favors for your career,” I said.
“No, probably not,” he said. “Just the same, I see you wading into this thing up to your neck. I know something strange is going down, and I know you’re going to run headlong into it…”
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting him off.
“Yeah, the cracked ribs testify to that,” he said.
“Listen,” I said, the anger and desperation rising in my voice, “There is nothing you can do right now. And even if there was, I wouldn’t know what to tell you because I haven’t got it even vaguely figured out myself.”
If he was offended by my tone, he didn’t show it.
“Tell me what you’ve got,” he said.
“What I’ve got are hunches and not much more,” I said. “The last time I checked, hunches don’t stand up in front of grand juries.”
“No, they don’t,” he said, pensively, “but you’ve got an idea swirling around in that whirlpool you call a brain, and I want to hear it.”
Maybe I was just too worn out to argue. Maybe I just wanted someone to help carry all the shit I’d been lugging around on my back since this case began.
“They’re weirdos,” I said. “Whoever they are.”
“Like the last ones?” he asked. “Into black magic and the rest of that nonsense?”
“Yeah,” I said, the weariness creeping steadily up my back and into my shoulders, “Pretty much. And they’ve got some connection to Yvonne’s death.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how,” I said, “but I know they do. Like I said, a hunch.”
“And they’re the punks that jumped you?”
“More than likely,” I said, “but I really didn’t get a good look at them.”
“According to the statement Mr. Horrowitz made, it wasn’t that dark at the time of the assault.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“So why can’t you identify them?”
“I couldn’t make them out,” I said, suddenly completely frustrated. “My eyes wouldn’t adjust to the dark. Why? I have no idea.”
“Could have been the twilight,” he said, absently tapping a cigarette against the side of his Zippo.
“Or it could have been black magic,” I said.
If someone would have asked me why I said it, I couldn’t have come up with an answer – not then. Maybe it was because I was starting to believe it. Maybe it was because I knew Justin wouldn’t. I’m still not certain myself. Whatever the reason, it made Justin laugh, loudly.
“Bullshit,” he said. “No such animal. Jesus, Caleb. It’s bad enough we have to deal with these crazy mothers who actually believe this shit without you getting into the act as well.”
Perhaps he was right. I mean, magic? Real fucking magic? Whoever heard of it really happening? How many credible witnesses were there on the subject? And why was a little voice in my head, despite all the evidence, still keeping me from writing the whole thing off as nonsense?
The little things that didn’t rationally add up were beginning to add up to something totally irrational. I still wasn’t sure that magic was a real phenomenon, but I was closer than Justin. And Justin would need something more than a hunch from me to take any serious steps in that direction. I hoped it would come before he got into more trouble than he was capable of dealing with.
Truth was, I didn’t have a fucking clue how I was going to deal with it, and I was wading in it up to my neck. I had the cold suspicion that the water was going to continue to rise.
“Well,” I said, reigning in my weirdness, “It’s enough to know that, however crazy these fuckers are, they believe in it. And we need to get to them before their insanity spills over into the rest of the vaguely sane world.”
“With that,” he said, “I wholeheartedly agree.”
Justin called me a cab and stuck around until it rolled up to the curve. I have a car, I just couldn’t drive it with double the normal dose of prescription painkillers pumping through my brain. I had been taking more just to keep standing and walking when I should have been laid up and resting. I told Justin I’d get in touch later, especially if I found anything useful. He promised to do the same.
I gave the cabby the address and waved bye to Justin as he pulled past us and on down the street. The coroner’s van pulled up to the scene, behind us.
“Sheesh, what are they doing here? You guys kill somebody?” the cabby asked without turning around.
“Not yet,” I said with an edge in my voice I hadn’t noticed until that moment.
The cab driver didn’t say much after that. He drove, and we didn’t talk. Fine by me, I wasn’t in much of a mood for conversation. I needed to use the cab ride to get that way if I hoped to get anything out of the shop’s owner.
When you have a badge, people tend to talk. Something about the presumed power of authority, I guess. When you don’t have a badge, there are only three other methods for extracting the information you need. One is to take it by force, not as reliable as one might think and fairly messy. The second is to pay for it. Cash in the hand tends to loosen the jaws. The third, and the one I rely on most is to con the mark into telling me what I need. It doesn’t work as well as cash, but it’s a damn sight better than a beating. I still had bills to pay, and I wasn’t in any shape to throw someone a beating. Talking would have to do, and I needed to get my head in the right space to do it.
The cab rolled on. I watched the buildings slide past and tried to come up with a good line of bullshit to feed to whoever was going to be waiting for me at the end of this trip.