by S. A. Hunt
“Weaver’s Wonderland?”
“That’s it.”
Bowker sighed in a way that seemed like dejection to Robin. Or perhaps disappointment. “Sounds like the old fairgrounds out in the woods off the highway.” The pen tapped the clipboard. Reaching up to the radio on his shoulder, he keyed the mike. “Hey, Mike. This is Eric. Can I get a ten-twenty?” They all sat staring at each other expectantly for an awkward moment.
“I just got done with lunch and now me and Opie are uptown goin’ south down Hickman,” said a static-chewed voice. “Ten-eight.”
“Want you to do me a favor.” Bowker examined the clipboard. “We ain’t got a key to the gate out there at the fairgrounds, do we?”
“The city probably does, somewhere, God knows where,” said the radio. “But that don’t stop me from getting out of my cruiser and walking around it. What’s goin’ on?”
“I’m taking a statement from a fella says he escaped from involuntary confinement in that location. He was put there by someone he describes as a serial killer.” Bowker coughed into his fist and keyed his mike again. “I want you to head up there and see if you can find anything shady.”
“Ten-four.”
Bowker sat there, breathing through his teeth and staring at the clipboard. Robin could almost hear his gears grinding. “Okay,” he said, rising up out of his seat and adjusting his patrol belt. “Gonna go get this keyed into the system. I’ll be right back.”
As soon as he left, Joel leaned over to Robin and Kenway. “These redneck-ass small-town cowboys,” he growled under his breath.
Robin hugged herself. The break room was cold, it seemed, colder than the actual October day outside. Must be the slab floor, she thought. “He gon’ send those two cops out there by themselves? To look for a serial killer?”
“He probably ain’t even believe there is a killer. He probably still just thinks it was a—” Joel made air-quotes with his fingers. “—sex game.”
The conversation dwindled into silence, and Robin finished off the last of her coffee, putting the empty cup into a trash can that was already full of garbage. Digging some quarters out of her pocket, she went to the snack machine and browsed the junk food inside.
“How long it take?” asked Joel.
“You know these country boys,” said Kenway, poking at the table with his index fingers. “Hunt and peck typists.”
Bowker stepped into the break room and Kenway looked up from his impersonation of the man’s keyboarding skills, casually leaning back and folding his arms, nothing to see here. The officer paused awkwardly, then sat down and shuffled a stack of papers against the table.
“Okay.” He folded his arms and leaned on his elbows, speaking confidentially. “I’ve got the report filed. You’re on the books.” He twiddled the pen between his forefingers again. “How come it took you so long to come down here and talk to somebody?”
“I don’t know.” Joel sat back and anxiously picked at his fingernails. “Guess I was so freaked out and glad to be away from it, going to the cops didn’t really occur to me.” Of course, he glossed over the necessity of getting Wayne back to his father at the hospital, the explanation of which would have thrown a real wrench into the situation.
“Fair enough.”
“Besides.” Joel pointed at his face. “I’m black and gay. Goin’ to the cops ain’t gon’ be my first instinct.”
Bowker gave it some thought and tapped the pen on the table. “Mr. Ellis, we here don’t discriminate, okay?” He pointed at his own face, to the military haircut. “Now, I may look like Cletus T. Slowboat, third in line at the Asshole Parade, but I want to assure you, you’re as important to me and everybody else here as the next guy.” He glanced at Robin. “Or gal.”
Joel nodded quietly. “Okay.” He bit down on a tight smile. “All right. Aight, we’re cool.”
“Now, you said you met him at his apartment. I’m assuming your vehicle is still over there on the property, if this ‘Big Red’ hasn’t moved it to another location.” Bowker fetched a huge sigh. “What I’m gonna do is, I’m going to follow you-all over there to his apartment and we’re gonna kill two birds with one stone—get your car and see if this fella is at home.”
* * *
The closer they got to Riverview Terrace Apartments, the antsier Joel became until he cracked the window and bummed a cigarette off of Kenway. Robin sat in the middle, the twenty-sided-die gearshift between her knees. She reached over and took his hand. “It’s gonna be okay, bro,” she said, smiling. They were shoulder to shoulder. “You’re gonna be safe and you’re gonna get your car back.”
As soon as they came around the corner of the building and started seeing the 400 block, Joel threw his head back and swore in anguish.
Black Velvet was gone.
“I’m not surprised,” said Kenway. “It’s probably at the bottom of Lake Craddock.”
Robin shot him a look, and he winced.
“You better hush your mouth,” Joel told him. “I’d sooner you take the Lord’s name in vain than insinuate somebody’s hurt my baby.” He slipped into a loud and vehement string of curses, his fists clenched. “I just had that sound system put in there. This is some grade-A bullshit.” The truck curved to a stop in front of the 400 block and Bowker’s cruiser slid into a space next to them.
They all got out, except for Joel, who stayed in the Chevy. As soon as Robin shut the door, he locked her out.
The bitter, clean smell of cut grass lingered in the air.
Bowker knocked on Red’s door. “Police.” No answer. He knocked again, this time more insistently. After there was again no answer, he went to the front office to fetch the property manager and get a key. Robin pressed the rims of her hands to the apartment’s window and peered through them, trying to see past the blinds, but they were turned so the cracks between the vinyl slats afforded no visibility at all.
Even though she knew full well the front door was locked, she took hold of the knob and tried to turn it.
(gotta go gotta get out pack it up go go go)
She snatched her hand back.
That was strange.
Disembodied smells filled her nostrils: expended gunpowder, sizzling steak. The green scent of cut grass became stronger. She stepped away, cautiously, as if she’d encountered a beehive, and was overcome by the sudden and intense need to flee, mixed with a cold cloak of guilt. Not remorseful guilt, but only the clear recognition of culpability; she felt chastised. No: chased. Abstract words flickered in her head, Polaroids of excited fear.
(stupid let your guard down shoulda done em both)
“What was that about?” asked Kenway. “You jerked like you touched a live wire.”
“I don’t know.” She looked at the palm of her hand. Residual paranormal power? Am I picking up on it? If so, it was the first time anything like that had ever happened. She wasn’t even sure if it was a thing that could happen—the witches were the only ones with any paranormal ability, weren’t they? The sigils and runes decorating her body deflected paranormal energy like a sort of metaphysical armor, but other than the hallucinations of the owl-headed Sasquatch, Robin had never been privy to any kind of paranormal sensitivity. The sigils were an umbrella, but she had never felt the rain itself before. It was a bit like discovering a new sense.
Maybe her sigils being overpowered by Weaver at the hospital had left her sensitive, like sunlight on a burn. Maybe … maybe it was the proximity to Cutty. The creases in Robin’s palm shined in the sun as she flexed her hand. Was Cutty so powerful her power overflowed into the streets?
Could simply being the daughter of a witch mean Robin could siphon off surplus power like some kind of psychic vampire? She had certainly wondered over the years whether she had inherited some modest fraction of whatever paranormal talent lay within her mother Annie. As far as Robin knew, witchcraft began with a singular ritual, and had nothing biologically to do with the witch herself—it was all on the paranormal side of the equatio
n, spiritual, exterior to genetics, initiated by the symbolic sacrifice of the heart to Ereshkigal.
Witchcraft did not live in your DNA.
This might even be why she’d been seeing the Red Lord more and more since getting closer to Blackfield. Maybe it’s—maybe the Red Lord is like their patron. No, that’s not right. Witches derive their power from Ereshkigal. Maybe it’s their amplifier. Is that even a thing? No doubt Heinrich would have mentioned it in our studies back in Hammertown.
He doesn’t know everything, she told herself.
Maybe it’s their pet. Maybe they knew I would come back to Mom’s house one day, so they stuck a monster in there as a trap. Weaver had said the Red Lord didn’t belong to them, but it wouldn’t be the first time a witch had lied to her face. They’re all full of shit. Shit and shadows.
If the coven didn’t conjure it and didn’t make her hallucinate it, and Annie didn’t,
(“We don’t talk about magic in this house,” dream-Annie had told her over their dream-breakfast a thousand times in half the motels in the Midwest)
then who did?
Maybe—That little voice in the back of her mind, a little Jiminy Cricket, a tiny Doubting Thomas.
Maybe what?
Kenway was still staring at her, alarm slowly overtaking his face. She realized she was mouthing her internal monologue to herself, and the heat of embarrassment coiled up her neck into her face, glowing in the curve of her jaw. Maybe your mother did conjure that thing.
And it scared her so bad she swore off witchcraft forever.
She checked her cell phone. Call me back, Heinrich, damn you. I need to pick your brain.
… Heinrich.
Did Heinrich put it there?
No, she told the cricket. He’s about as magical as ten hours of fuckin’ C-SPAN.
“You okay there, Pedro?” asked Kenway. “Doing some long division?”
She snorted. “I’m fine.”
Eliminate the impossible, said the Sherlock Holmes standing next to her mental Jiminy Cricket, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Okay. So—
Hallucinations don’t scratch gouges in bathroom doors.
So it’s not a hallucination.
Whether Mom could or couldn’t—and I have no reason to think she could—she wouldn’t conjure something that would terrorize her own daughter for as long as this thing has, and completely ignore the witches and their Groundskeeper Willie.
So it’s not Mom’s.
Heinrich couldn’t conjure something this powerful. He can barely get his dick out of his pants, much less pull a rabbit out of a hat. Hell, I’m more magic than he is.
So it’s not Heinrich’s.
Then it’s real. And it has to be from the coven.
“Elementary, dear Watson!” she said to herself.
“I think you need to lay off the caffeine,” said Kenway. “I’m grounding you from Starbucks for a week.”
She glared at him. “Do you want to see me cut somebody?”
“Okay, a day then. I think your eye is twitching.”
“What?”
Interrupting her impromptu impression of Travis Bickle, Lieutenant Bowker came back with the property manager, a limping stump of a man with big staring eyes and a salt-and-pepper beard. His golden bouffant was parted in the center like a monkey’s ass. The name embroidered on his shirt was ROGER.
The manager unlocked the door and stepped aside for Bowker, who strode in with his hand on the butt of his pistol.
“Well, damn,” said the officer.
The living room was completely devoid of furniture—of anything, really, that said a human had been living here until last night. The walls were bare, and the spotlessly clean carpet wasn’t even marred by the footprints of a sofa’s legs.
No appliances stood on the counters. No food in the cabinets, no food in the fridge except for a single Arby’s sauce packet in the crisper.
Bowker came out of the bedroom. “Can you tell me who the apartment is leased to?”
“Yeah, sure.” Roger stared at the clipboard in his hand. “Says here it’s a fella by the name of Richard Sutterman.” He looked up and shrugged. “I don’t get back here much other than to check on old Mr. Brand in 432. Always havin’ to snake his toilet out, sewage backin’ up into his bathtub and whatnot. I don’t recall what this Sutterman looks like.”
Startling Robin, Joel leaned against the front door’s frame. He must have mustered enough courage to get out of the truck.
Bowker asked him, “That name mean anything to you?”
“Never heard it before in my life.”
Bowker rubbed his face in exasperation and tossed a hand. “I can head back to the station and look through the database, or maybe go talk to the county clerk and see if he can find any info more concrete on this Sutterman fella, but…” His offer tapered off, the unspoken admission hanging in the air. It ain’t much to go on.
Psychic whispers still lingered in the air, tracing cobweb fingers along the rims of Robin’s ears.
She got a faint mental flash of a vial, and a hand using a hypodermic needle to draw out a tiny bit of the contents. Then she flashed on an image of that same needle being injected into a grilled steak. She also got a flash of a word—Yee-Tho-Rah—but had no idea what it meant.
“Come on, the trail’s cold for now,” she said, sidling past Joel. The GoPro on her chest gulped footage. “I got some editing to do while I think, and then I want to go have a look at my old house.”
22
Leon had rented a couple of movies from Redbox—one of the Avengers movies, a sci-fi movie with starships and aliens with extremely gnarly faces, and whatever the latest Nicolas Cage flick was. Except for Wayne, the kids all sat in the living room eating pizza and watching the movies, Katie lying on the floor drawing her pictures.
The sun settled on the purple-gold horizon, fleeing from a speckle of stars, and the summer’s last serenade of frogs and crickets trilled in the trees.
The kids had gone home to get permission from their parents to spend the evening at 1168. Katie’s grandmother had been more than happy to have the night off, and started filling a hot bath before Amanda even left. Pete’s mother and Amanda’s dad, on the other hand, came over to get the lay of the land.
Pete’s mom Linda sat on the stoop, hunkered over a cigarette. She was tiny and mousy with a husky radio-DJ voice and a twitchy, good-natured personality.
“Yeah, that’s fine,” she was saying to Leon. “Pete needs good friends. I’m proud of that guy, what he did with that big ol’ hammer. He can be kinda moody sometimes, and he swears a lot, but he’ll surprise you. He takes care of people he likes, he really does. He’s a good kid.” She had apologized profusely for Pete taking the kids to the fairgrounds, and she did it again for good measure. “I told him not to go back up there, but, you know, he does what he wants. Not that he’s a rebel, he … he’s an independent kid, yeah?”
“I understand, totally,” said Leon. “Wayne’s got a bit of a wild streak himself sometimes. After his mom died, he went through a rebellious phase, tried to run with a couple of bad kids back in Chicago. I had to tell him what’s what a couple of times.”
Amanda’s dad Warren hulked over the slim, spindly Leon. Blond curls tumbled out from under his do-rag like an extra from Sons of Anarchy. His neat beard was laced with white. “Really?” he asked, leaning against the wall with his fingertips in his jeans pockets. “That little guy?”
Leon chuckled. “Yeah, believe it or not. When his mom died, I didn’t take it so well. Got to drinking a lot. Wayne got a little rebellious—or maybe just lonely—tried to make friends, fell in with the wrong crowd. Little bastard named Lawrence, him and a couple of his hardhead buddies. They talked him into one too many things and he got picked up skipping school. Luckily it happened to be a cop who worked with my dad back in the day, so he knew us. Brought him to me at work because it was so late there wasn’t no point takin’ h
im to class.”
He glanced at Wayne, who sat in the porch swing behind him. “That was the day my sister Marcy talked me into moving down here. Neither one of us was handling it. We had to get out of there.”
“Welp,” said Amanda’s dad, checking his watch. “I got work at four in the morning, so I’m gonna pack it in for the night. Y’all take it easy, brother.” His heavy black biker boots clomped down the front steps. Pausing on the lawn, Warren chuckled. “I’d tell you to look after my little girl, but to be honest she’s the one takes care of us.” Leon saluted him as he sauntered off into the velvet purple twilight.
Linda stayed behind, finishing her cigarette. “Why aintcha in there watchin’ the movie with the other kids?” she asked Wayne.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see the sunset.” He didn’t want to admit he was still afraid to spend time in the house.
Royal colors made a masterpiece of the western sky. Linda took it all in. “Yeah, I see what you mean. They are nice down here in the south, ain’t they? The sunrises are even better.” She smiled at him. “I still remember the very first sunrise I ever saw when I got clean. My husband Tommy come and carried me home from the hospital. I sat in the parking lot of a gas station and cried my eyes out over it.”
“I did the same thing on Wayne’s birthday last month,” said Leon, yawning. “Well, I didn’t really sob, but … you know, I went through like half a box of Kleenex.”
“How long’s it been?”
“How long’s what been?”
“Since you quit drinking.”
Leon tilted his head. “How did you know I was drinking?”
“You said so a minute ago.”
His look of surprised confusion broke into a grin. “I guess I did. Man, it’s been a long day. I need some sleep.” He sighed. “Figure a couple of months.”
“You figure?”
