Coms. I’d left the lights off and a womb of silence and dark surrounded me, something to match my mood as I waited for the inevitable.
My thumbs caressed my piano tie as I slid the silk through my fingers. It had been found amidst the rubble of my office, hanging like a banner from a shard of desk. The penny-sized brown stain had been removed, and the fabric looked better than brand new. I’d told Alex to set milk out for the Brownies and some extra Oreos, Double Stuff. They deserved it. Hopefully they still resided in their toy Winnebago—now parked under the desk in my new office.
No thinking allowed. If I thought too much I would remember terrible things. Hard enough just staying alive in this job.
The wall in front of me flickered.
“In fine form again, Kal.” BB’s spectacled face appeared larger than life.
“Sorry, boss,” I rasped, rubbing my chin with a gauzed hand.
“How are your knuckles?”
I held up both damaged paws. “More scars, but I’ll be okay.”
“Have Alex heal them.”
“No. The scars will be a reminder of my screw-ups.”
Exasperation edged his voice. “You can’t keep doing this every time one of your team dies. It’s what prompts the psych evals.”
“I’m okay.” What the good people of the Bureau never seemed to understand was that my rage—the dark, hot force of my violent passion—was often a comfort. They doubted my ability to control it, but I knew it existed for my use, that my will directed its ebb and flow.
“Really?” Amazing how that one word contained so much sarcasm. “First it was just punching holes in a wall, now it’s destroying whole offices. You’re getting worse.”
“I can hack it,” I rumbled with no conviction.
“One of these days you’re going to go around the bend and not come back.”
“I suppose.” No use trying to deny it. BB would think I was shoveling something that smelled like what came between 1 and 3.
BB hunched forward like he was shouldering a massive burden. “Listen, Kal, maybe it’s about time you quit fieldwork and come to work with me in D.C., okay?”
I shook my head. “You really see me fitting in with all the stuffed shirts in the capitol? Sooner or later I’d kill one.” I fingered my Lahti. “Besides, I need to stay active.”
The gesture wasn’t lost on BB, who sighed heavily. “After you clear up Denver, you’re on vacation. No ifs, ands, or buts.” He sounded so much like Dad I nearly laughed. Then he hit me with the H-Bomb. “When you get back, it’s time for another formal psych-eval.”
“Oh, hell no!”
He leaned forward far enough so that his eyes filled the entire wall. “Your latest tantrum brought it on, Kal. I can’t cover for you on this one, so it’s got to be done. Check?”
I nodded to the screen.
“I’m sorry,” he said sharply. “I didn’t catch that. I said, ‘check?’”
Trapped, I replied, “Check, boss.”
He leaned back and smiled like the benevolent dictator he was. “Good. Now … how’s the new Green Pea doing?”
“Surprisingly, not too incompetent.”
“High praise from you.”
I stretched my aching arms. “Yeah, well don’t go doing any happy dances yet; she’s still half an idiot. And that’s the good half. However, she’s got the rest of the DEA beat cold.”
“Do you think she’ll work out?”
It hurt to laugh, but I did and that’s all the answer he got.
Disapproving eyes met mine. “Your disdain is noted.”
Once again I held up my hands. “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have disdain for her … I nothing her. She’s not even on my radar until she proves herself against a Supernatural. So don’t take indifference for disdain.”
“So how do I know when you are being disdainful?”
I raised an eyebrow toward my hairline.
“Got it,” he commented dryly. “Imagine my enthusiasm … my best, most successful man looks like a Scandinavian linebacker, is scarred like a boxer and has the sarcastic bent of a political analyst.”
“Wide receiver.”
“What?”
“I was a wide receiver for the Huskers, not a linebacker. I may be big, but they’re really big.”
BB snorted once and shook his head. “Right. Clean up Denver, take a vacation, get your psych eval, in that order. Capiche?” Without waiting to see if I capiche-d or not, the wall blacked out.
Did I really have a choice?
Didn’t think so.
Later, after I noshed on cream cheese and bagels, with some highly caffeinated diet soda, Ariel strode into my office treading as if the place was mined with Bouncing Bettys.
“Easy there, Tex,” I drawled. “I’m not going to break anytime soon.”
She produced a champion level look of disbelief.
“No, really. I’m done for the day. Besides, my hands are really starting to hurt.”
“Well,” she said. “I wasn’t too sure. I heard this happens whenever one of your team dies.”
I swear the office was filled with more loose lips than a political convention. “I have my moments, but for right now let’s put it behind us. What we really need to do is figure out our next move.”
Color heightened her cheeks. “About that …”
Uh-oh. “You did something clever, didn’t you? Should I be worried?”
“As a matter of fact, I contacted Detective Wilkes. We have an appointment with him.”
“We do, do we?” I inquired, sounding a tad ruffled.
“Yes, we do.” Lips pressed into a firm line, she continued, “I identified myself as Agent Finger of the ATF and told him we were having some trouble with Special Agent Briegan.”
Interesting and interestinger. I stared hard at her.
She wilted only slightly. “Briegan is the kind of creep to cut Wilkes out of the loop entirely, even though he’s still the lead on the Organ Donor case,” she said defensively. “And I was right. When I told him of our deceased ‘undercover agent’ and Briegan’s hostility, he was more than happy to offer up whatever he’d dug up on the case. As long as we buy him dinner.”
“What’s this ‘we’ crap, Kemosabe?”
She raised an eyebrow. Hmph … I’m better at that trick. “Why should I pay?” she asked archly.
“You want to wear the grown-up pants and take some initiative, you pay the freight.”
“Whatever.” She tried not to sound pleased with herself, but I could tell.
I stood. “Good … feeling a little hungry. Where are we going?”
“The Chop House.”
My smile was predatory. “Good. I’m real hungry, Pea.” I shrugged into my sport coat, only a little damaged from my earlier temper tantrum, and checked the Lahti. “You know what, Pea? That was a really good idea. Smart move, actually. I’m very impressed.” She smiled, but it faded quickly as my face clouded up. “But if you do anything like that again without my authorization, you’re fired.”
The Chop House is located near LoDo, next to Coors Field, home of the Rockies. All during the drive there Ariel regaled me with a record-breaking power sulk complete with outthrust lower lip and crossed arms.
That lower lip sure looked tasty.
Whoa … I jerked on my mental leash. Thinking like that can lead to Bad Things.
I parked the Vic in a handicapped spot (or is Physically Challenged? Disabled? I can’t ever keep up with the latest PC crap) and waltzed in like I owned the place. It wasn’t hard to spot Wilkes; he was the only guy there whose clothes and bearing screamed, ‘Look at me! I’m a cop.” Before the smiling twenty-something hostess could grab a menu, I brushed past her with a grin and strode up to the detective.
Even sitting down, he dominated the table, a big side of beef with shoulders that looked a yard across. His black hair had been cut in what I like to call Marine Formal, close to the bone on the sides and about a centimeter on top. It made my own short blond hair look like Shaggy’s from Scooby Doo. He wasn’t much in the looks department; his cheeks and nose had been used as a punching bag far too often to be called handsome. However, something about him was curiously familiar.
Ariel rushed past, holding out her hand. “Detective Lieutenant Wilkes? I’m Agent Finger.” He rose from his chair and gripped her hand, obviously delighted to be greeted by such a succulent morsel.
“A pleasure, ma’am,” he purred with a wide smile showing about four hundred teeth.
Up close, he was taller than my own six four by an inch or so and, despite the jokes about cops and donuts, didn’t carry an ounce of flab. He looked as lean and mean as they come.
Ariel reluctantly released his hand, eyes a little starry. What did she see in him? It looked like she’d begin to slobber any second. Without taking her eyes from the hunk in front of her, she started to introduce the hunk behind. “This is Agent—”
“Kal Hakala!” he finished, dropping her hand and engulfing mine in his big paw. It felt like gripping a bunch of bananas. “Haven’t seen you fifteen years!”
“Huh?” Not my most brilliant comeback.
Never met anyone who knew you from before, Alex pattered in my ear. This should be interesting, to say the least.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Wilkes looked slightly disappointed, retrieving his banana fingers from my grasp.
“Fifteen years is a long time, Detective.”
His grin was surprisingly boyish. “What were you doing fifteen years ago in October?”
“Easy, playing for Neb— Holy crap!” My mind wobbled a bit. “You’re Big Buffalo, the guy who chased me around Folsum Field? Broke my arm in the fourth quarter? I missed the last three games of the season because of you!”
Laughing, he offered us both seats. “And you humiliated the Buffs with nine out of ten catches for over a hundred yards and three touchdowns.” His eyes went to a place far away, the glory days when we were young and immortal. At least his did; I learned about mortality at the tender age of fifteen.
“Those were some good times, man.” Switching to Ariel, “Back in the day, it was my job to cover him like a wet blanket, but he ran past me so fast it felt like I stood still.” Her smile did little to cut through the testosterone infused air.
“So what happened to you after college?” I asked.
“Ahh … joined the army, became a Ranger and the rest is history. You?”
“Became a Fed right out of college.”
We stopped for a moment to order from a perky brunette server with a killer body who didn’t mind flirting with tall, blond, Scandinavian me. Ariel rolled her eyes and ordered the beef tips with mash while both of us He-Men settled for 19-ounce Delmonicos, mid rare with baked potatoes.
Ariel snorted. “It’s like you guys are trying to prove machismo by what you eat.”
I shook my head. “Nah, you’re buying, remember? I wanted to order something nice and expensive.” That earned me a glare from her and a muffled laugh from Wilkes.
He stared for a moment. “What did you do to your hands?” Gesturing toward my gauzed mitts.
“Cut myself shaving.”
“Right. How silly of me not to have guessed.” Shaking his head, Wilkes cocked an eyebrow at my Green Pea. “You said over the phone that Krouse was one of yours—an undercover man looking into arms smuggling, right?”
She nodded.
“And Briegan wouldn’t cooperate with you?”
My turn to nod.
“So what makes you think I can help you?”
I gave Ariel the go ahead. “You’re still lead on the Organ Donor case, even though Briegan’s cut you out of the loop. But something tells me that you probably have an ace up your sleeve.”
“More like a Jack. Of diamonds.” Something about the way he said that unnerved me.
I pretended nonchalance. “What you do mean?”
“It means I’ve discovered robberies coinciding near or on the same days as the murders.”
Now my ears pricked forward. “Really? What kind of robberies?”
“A jewelry store near where the second victim was dumped got hit for eighteen ounces of platinum and a nearly flawless emerald. Rings, Earrings, wire, the whole bit. Near the third victim, an aquamarine the size of my thumb was lifted and a fake put in its place. I went back and checked the store videos, but the recordings were blank for days.”
“How the hell did he … never mind. I’m on it, Kal.” Alex was more than a little irritated that someone beat him to the punch. It matched my own irritation at not checking out the recordings.
“In-ter-est-ing.” I drew the word out long and slow. “Whoever it was must have been casing the place for quite a while.”
He wasn’t fooled, some cop-ly sense was alerted by either my words or manner. His eyes narrowed. “This isn’t news to you,” he accused.
“Uh-oh, Kal.”
Next to me I felt Ariel tense. “What do you mean, Detective?” she asked mildly. She was no actress.
The glance he gave her, once filled with a good heaping of flirtiness, now contained only annoyance. “You know what I mean,” he said, voice soft and low.
It was time for the truth. “You’re right, Detective. During our initial investigation, one of our computer geeks tripped on the connection. We’re still looking into it, but you helped connect the dots.”
“No lie?”
“No lie.”
Wilkes digested this for a moment, just long enough for our food to arrive so we began to digest that as well.
“So what now?” he asked after tucking in the last of his Delmonico, a tender bone-in rib eye named after the famous steakhouse in New York City.
I hid a belch. Damn, that was some good eats. “You tell us what you tried to show Briegan. The thing that he’s ignoring for now.”
“How do you know I have anything else of value to add to this investigation?”
“Kal, I just confirmed the two other robberies. It looks like someone wants to make a lot of gem batteries. An aquamarine the size of your thumb—assuming almost no inclusions and the cut is perfect—could store nearly a teramerlin worth of energy, or you could Shape a Summoning spell to call up a class six demon.”
Crap, a class six demon? One of the minor lords of the Pit. A Minor Lord could reduce Madison Square Garden to rubble. Thank god for the rarity of the magic gene, or we’d be swimming with magicians stealing gems left and right.
“Ghost just came back from checking the digital recordings on the other jewelers. Each one had a week’s worth of recordings erased.”
“Kal?”
Wilkes’s voice brought me back. “Mmm ... what? Sorry, just thought of something.”
“How do you know I have anything else to add to this investigation?”
Ariel jumped in. “Because you’re a good cop, because you’re not as closed-minded as Special Agent My-Crap-Don’t-Stink Briegan. He only wants to stick to his profile, what he knows best.”
Wilkes chewed on this for a few seconds. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” He grinned with considerable wattage. It faded after a moment. “Okay, you win. Here’s what I believe … The Organ Donor is a woman.”
I nearly fell out of my chair. Out of the corner of my eye, Ariel paled, open mouth ready to catch flies.
“Is this true?” I breathed. I wasn’t talking to Wilkes.
“I don’t know, Kal, I can only think of about five or six female serial killers in the entire twentieth century. Those that have been recorded, that is.”
“You don’t believe me?” No anger, only a kind of resignation in his voice.
“No, no, no … I believe you,” I assured him. “It’s just…”
“Unexpected?”
“Quite.”
“What sort of evidence?” Ariel inquired, eyes wide. “DNA? Fiber?”
He shook his head. “Nothing so CSI … it was the first victim, the prostitute. She had bruising on the back of her neck. Examination showed it came from a fist, a small one. Too small for a man … ergo, a woman.”
Ariel shook her head. “How do you know she didn’t get into a fight with another prostitute?”
“According to the ME, the bruising occurred shortly before her death.”
“Accessing the autopsy report now.” A few moments of silence. “Damn, he’s right, it’s all there. We missed it.”
Why did our killer get physical with the first victim? If this Renfield was a magician, she could’ve just hit the victim with a minor spell, too small for our sensors to pick up, and render the prostitute unconscious. Unless …”Detective, the first victim, what was she wearing when she died? Any jewelry? Gems?”
Wilkes scratched his head. “The other girls said she liked to wear a lot of metal. You know, necklaces, big earrings, etc.”
“Silver, gold?”
“Good thinking!
“I guess, why?”
If the victim was wearing enough pure silver and/or gold, it certainly would interfere with a minor spell. Her own little Faraday jacket. When the spell didn’t work, or only partially worked, the Renfield would probably have used brute force.”
Shaking my head, I spared a glance toward Ariel who still looked a little dazed. “I dunno, something about this feels really weird.” I’d love to tell Wilkes what I was thinking but he’d try to lock me up in the loony bin.
“Weird isn’t the half of it. I tried to bring this to Briegan, but his holiness dismissed it. He can’t see that a woman can be a killer.”
“Then he’s more stupid than I thought,” Ariel rumbled, a dangerous glint in her eye.
Wilkes smiled.
The sun sets quickly on the Front Range, ducking behind the Rockies. It’d been a long time since I’d enjoyed a sunset, perhaps seven years previously on vacation in Las Vegas. Since then I’d never cared to look.
For some reason I found myself caring as I sipped an amaretto sour on my balcony and watched the light fade from the sky in shades of pink and gold. Maybe it was this state, maybe it was this case, but for whatever reason, I was enjoying the end of the day.
I had driven the Vic back to the office, dropping Ariel off at her rented Hyundai and made my way back to the apartment, belly pleasantly full from dinner. Wilkes turned out to be good company and our mutual distaste for Briegan fueled a budding friendship. One I couldn’t really indulge. My job didn’t lend itself to long-term relationships of any sort. Not even among co-workers. When the job in Denver was done, one more member of my team would retire, her contract over. I’d miss Sue—a good, tough agent and capable killer. But that’s business as usual for the Bureau … always a new face.
When full dark fell, I re-entered my apartment, strangely discontent. Seeing Wilkes, reminiscing over glory days, reminded me there was more to this life than vengeance. But not for me.
I closed my eyes as a vision of Iku-Turso, the Thousand-Horned one, the Father of Diseases, swam in my mind’s eye and a very familiar rage threatened my momentary peace. Another sip of amaretto sour helped me quell the feeling.
There came a tap-tap-tapping on my apartment door, breaking the spell.
Might as well. “Nevermore,” I called.
The door burst open in a shower of splinters.
Leaping through, hideously long arms tipped with black razor nails, the ghoul grinned horribly at me through a mouthful of needle teeth. “I hate that poem,” it said.