Michael Spilham.” Monty laid the file down on his cluttered desk. “Vanished from a bus stop out near Percoa Park last night. We have a verified sighting at ten-fifteen, when a coworker drove by and saw him waiting for the bus due at ten-twenty-six. The driver on that route doesn’t remember him, says she wondered about that because he’s a regular. His mother filed a missing-persons when he didn’t come home on time; says it’s not like him. It might be nothing, but it’s in the same area as the other disappearances.”
I nodded. Percoa Park. A brief cold wave slid down my spine—we’d found bodies there before. “That’s a small window.”
“The bus might have been off by five minutes or so. Still, you’re right.”
If Monty hadn’t had something else up his sleeve he would have given me the location over the phone, and I’d already be there searching for clues. The other disappearances on the east side were all the same—people vanishing without a trace, outside, often in very short spaces of time. Small windows in disappearances are common enough, but this one smelled fishy to me.
It stank of hell, actually. Or something unnatural. Still…. “I dunno. Everything about this fits except the gender of the victim.”
But that meant very little too. Women are just bigger targets of opportunity most of the time.
“Can you look at it?” He stared down at his desk. The bottle of whiskey was down by a quarter.
“That’s the plan. Want to tell me what’s bothering you?” I hooked my thumbs in my belt, my dangling fingers brushing the bullwhip’s oiled curve. The precinct building quivered, phones ringing and thin predawn wind boiling against the windows. Monty’s office didn’t have any outside portholes. It was more of a luxury than you’d think—on a summer’s day, the air conditioning didn’t have to fight for primacy.
“I got autopsy reports on the widow.” His shoulders dropped, and he cast a longing look at the Jack Daniels.
I picked up the bottle, uncapped it, took a swallow. It burned on the way down. I used to drink a lot of this stuff, before Saul happened along. “And?”
“Hyoid crushed and damage to the strap muscles, but no cervical vertebrae snapped and no rope burns.” Monty dropped down in his chair. “We’re waiting for toxicology, but there was… she was… there was vaginal bruising. And semen. We might get DNA.”
Oh, Christ. “So we’re looking at a murder here, not a suicide.” I said it so he didn’t have to.
“Whoever set it up didn’t work that hard. There was nothing for her to stand on to get up there. The rope was tied to the—”
“I saw the scene, Monty.” I didn’t want to revisit it. As gruesome as hellbreed get—and they get pretty damn gruesome—I’m still more upset by things human beings do to each other without needing any extra help. It’s in a hellbreed’s nature to be vicious, just like a cancer cell or a rabid animal.
I’m still not sure why people do it.
Monty stared at his desk. “Her bedroom was torn apart. Looks like someone was looking for something, or maybe the attack started there. Carp and Rosie are betting on both. The screen in the master bathroom window was torn loose, but it’s too small for anyone but a five-year-old to shimmy through.”
That was odd, too. I replayed the scene in my head. Something about that bathroom nagged at me. “Who sleeps with their window open in that neighborhood? Even with bars on the window.” And why not tear up the rest of the house if they were looking for something?
“The neighbors aren’t worth jackshit.” Monty smoothed the fresh manila folder on his desk, the one with Jacinta Kutchner’s name on the tab. “Nobody can remember anything out of the usual.”
I exhaled sharply. “Monty. This isn’t my type of case. There’s no inhuman agency at work here. I’ve got those disappearances to look into and—”
“Jill.” He dropped down into his chair and glared at me. “I never asked you for anything like this before. Marv was my partner.”
I looked down at the file. Lots of people don’t understand that about cops. The partner isn’t quite a spouse, but they’re the person whose head you think inside of, whose judgment and reactions you trust your life to, the person you spend so much time with you might as well be twins.
It may not be love, but it’s close.
It wasn’t Monty’s tender feelings that made me reach across the desk and tug the file out from under his hand. It was the vision of Jacinta Kutchner’s body, gently swinging just the tiniest bit as her empty house breathed around her.
Hyoid crushed. Vaginal bruising. Bedroom ripped to shreds.
“I’ll look into it. Can’t promise anything.” Even though I already had.
Monty almost visibly sagged. His chair creaked, and he dropped his gaze to the top of his desk, drifted with paper. Silence bloomed between us, a new and uncomfortable quiet.
Finally, he shifted and his chair creaked sharply. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” What are friends for, Monty? And if you’ve got one, you might as well use her. “I’ll check in.”
“Yeah. Try not to destroy any property, will you?”
For Christ’s sake. I was already at the door. “I can’t promise anything, Monty. See you.”
His curse was like a goodbye.
The plastic of the bus shelter’s window-walls was scarred and starred with breakage. I examined it minutely. Cigarette butts, an overflowing trashcan, the smell of despair.
Just like waiting for the bus anywhere, really. Dawn was coming up fast, the sky full of scarves dyed indigo, rose, streaks of gold and soft threads of orange over the furnace in the east. There was a blank brick wall behind the bus shelter, and a drift of paper trash in an alley to the side. Across the street, Percoa Park simmered under a pall of early morning half-vapor, trees breathing in relief as the sun rose.
Michael Spilham. Thirty-four, college dropout, living with his mother and working in a shipping warehouse four blocks away from here. He’d be tired at the end of his shift, overtime wearing down his feet and shoulders. So, he’d probably stand here, leaning against the shelter’s support post. A nonsmoker, the file said, so he didn’t light up while waiting. He probably just stared down the street, thinking a normal man’s thoughts.
I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. Smelled exhaust, the odor of poverty and footsore wandering, trash and concrete.
A sudden cessation of subaudible buzzing made my eyes fly open. The streetlamp to my left had switched off. I glanced down the street to my right. Edges of broken glass glittered like diamonds as the star we all roll around lifted itself higher over the horizon.
I left the shelter, cautiously. Intuition tingled and prickled down my spine, raised the fine hairs on my nape under the weight of silver-laden hair. My trenchcoat, still damp from hosing, whispered and fluttered. Time for a new coat; hellbreed claws are death on leather.
This lamp was busted, broken glass on the pavement. A star-shape of expended force glittered, bits and pieces arranged along rays of reaction. Intuition turned chilly, raising prickles along the backs of my arms. A faint distinct perfume evaporated as soon as I got a whiff. Corruption, and sweetness like burned candy.
Huh.
I crouched easily, my bootheels digging into the pavement and my leather pants making just the faintest noise as dead cowskin rubbed against itself. My smart eye saw the strings under the surface of the world resonating to a powerful burst of bloodlust and fear.
My dumb eye wasn’t so dumb. Streaks and smears along the base of the streetlamp gleamed. Blood dries fairly quick out in the desert, but this close to the misty park it wasn’t completely flaking off yet.
Huh again. These were transfer prints. Someone with bloody hands had clasped the bottom of the streetlamp. Now that I was crouched down I could see smears on the filthy sidewalk too, oddly pale—pink instead of red.
Blood shouldn’t look like that. Another chill touched my nape, tickling little fingers. “Shit,” I breathed, reaching down to touch the smears on the post’s concrete base. “Shit.”
My fingers came away with powdery pink clinging to them. As I lifted my hand, I turned a little so the sunlight hit my skin.
The powder vanished, little puffs of steam rising from my fingertips. “Goddamn shitsucking son of a bitch,” I whispered. “Motherfucking hell.”
There’s only one thing that dries blood to powder evaporating in the sun. And as much as hunters hate, hunt, and loathe hellbreed, there’s only one thing that a hunter fears enough to cross herself and shiver, one thing that sends us looking for backup and polishing whatever weapons make us feel a little safer.
I settled on my haunches, my right hand dropping to the butt of a gun. “Shit,” I breathed one final time, before rising slowly to my feet and looking down at the long jagged wet-looking marks on the sidewalk. They pointed toward the mouth of an alley, yawning and shadowed even with the clear light of dawn coming up.
No time like the present, eh Jill?
I headed for the alley as traffic ran like water in the distance. The next bus wasn’t due for about ten minutes and the street was deserted. A ruffle of paper twisted in the intersection two blocks away, and I eased a gun out with my right hand and a knife in my left. Wish I had a flamethrower. Dammit.
The alley swallowed me with shadows you only get in the morning—knife-edged and clear, like stiff black paper cut into animal shapes. A Dumpster loomed in the alley’s throat, and I sniffed cautiously, seeking that perfume of burnt sugar and weirdness. Should have recognized that first-off. Goddammit. My heart kicked up, high and wild in my throat, a bitter taste in the back of my mouth. Training clamped down on my hindbrain, regulating the cascade of adrenaline through my system. Too much and I’d be a jittery mess, and if this turned ugly…
I eased into the dark maw, clicking the hammer back. They’re not going to be in the alley, not with day coming on. But they dragged him back here, you might find something. Pray you don’t find something.
One step. Two. Easing down the side that held a little more light, though the entire alley was shaded. The Dumpster was full of garbage, and as a stray breath of breeze touched my cold cheeks, the smell strengthened.
Oh God. Please. I quelled the tremor in my hands by the simple expedient of putting it out of my mind. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen. Nothing to be done about it now.
I stepped toward the Dumpster. It was a big green number, half its heavy plastic lid closed and the other half open, resting against the wall of the alley. At the end of the alley’s confined space was a huge rolling door, probably for whoever took out the trash. I scanned the alley again—no, it was a blind hole. No place else to hide.
Don’t let me find anything, God. Please. Cut me a break on this one.
Unfortunately, God wasn’t in a giving mood today. I saw telltale frosting along the metal edge of the Dumpster, a fine powdery substance drifting in complicated whorls. And I heard, straining the preternatural acuity of my senses, a faint rustling.
Yup. God’s not in a good mood today, Jillybean. You’ve got a scurf infestation on your hands.