by Lou Paduano
Leaving the request to settle in the air, wondering what comments his rat statement would stir among his former colleagues, Loren moved deeper into the office, mindful of the floor before him and the crime scene. All of the furniture was tucked away into a single corner. Markings littered the floor leading to the large desk and bookcases that had been shifted to the side. They were brightly notched into the wood flooring. Freshly put there. He started for a closer look when a lanky, middle-aged uniform entered the room carrying two more spotlights. Even in the shadows of the room, Loren recognized the six-foot-four figure of Officer John Pratchett.
“Detective,” Pratchett said, surprised at first at Loren’s presence on the scene. His eyes brightened in recognition of his former colleague. Positioning the first spotlight along the outskirts of the room, Pratchett flipped it on, its battery-powered beam shining over the deceased like an angel’s light. He shifted to the other side but Loren waved him off. Pratchett nodded. “This good then?”
Loren nodded, extending his hand. Pratchett accepted it with the same goofy grin he carried for everyone. “Pratchett. Still suffering under our lord and master out there?”
Pratchett chuckled, turning his head to verify Ruiz’s absence from the room. John Pratchett may not have been the most ambitious man on the force, more than happy with his beat and his paycheck, but he knew who not to piss off if it was within his power. It was a lesson Loren struggled with more often than not. No, Pratchett was a career beat cop, content as long as he was holding the steering wheel of his patrol car. Satisfied at their solitude from prying ears, he leaned close to Loren. “He’s gotten softer since you left. Like a teddy bear.”
“I’m sure,” Loren replied.
Pratchett’s laughter faded, his eyes once more on the body before them. “It’s definitely good to have you back, Detective.”
“I’m not back,” Loren shot back quickly—too quickly—and the words cut harsher than intended, drawing concern from the officer. Loren shook his head. “Never mind. Give me the room for a few.”
Pratchett nodded, stepping for the door with the unused second spotlight tight in his grip. He shuffled past another uniform in the doorway. Loren caught the mixed cry of respect and fear that stuttered out of the officer’s mouth. Ruiz had rejoined him.
“Not the whole room, I hope,” the captain said. Small against the wide doorframe, his voice seemed far away, cut by the loud clamor of footsteps from the team on the first floor and those waiting at the base of the steps. The shadows of the room hid Ruiz’s face from Loren, the deep bags swallowing the eyes they hung from like a black hole.
Loren crouched low over the body. He stopped looking at the man he called friend and returned to the job he wanted nothing to do with, but now wanted complete so he could put it in the rearview mirror of the bus back to Chicago.
“Tell me this is already over and make me a happy man,” he said, half-jokingly. In Ruiz’s hands were a number of files. Knowing the department as well as he did, Loren identified what each held. Witness statements were nil but preliminary reports needed reviewing immediately. Ruiz was in for a long night and he was looking for company.
Ruiz smiled at the statement. “The impossible task. Sorry. Out of wishes to grant.”
“Run it down for me then,” Loren said, still looking over the victim. There was a silver bracelet around his left wrist. The spotlight beamed off its surface. Definitely not a robbery.
“Squatter found him this morning. Got freaked and ran into a patrol,” Ruiz started, looking down at the notes he had compiled over the course of the last few hours. “Lucky break for us, considering. Something like this usually stays buried for days until the smell hits the streets. This area of Portents? The way it’s been? Probably a week.”
The former Portents detective continued to look over the body. He stopped for a long moment at his face, turning away and then back again, remembering something.
“I know this guy,” said Loren, finally breaking his silence. “Vlad. Vladimir something. I busted him once or twice. Small-time thug type. B & E. Possession. Nothing to warrant losing his guts, for sure.”
“Maybe he took a shot at the big time,” Ruiz replied. It had been a common theme in gang-related activity. Everyone wanted their piece of the pie but with only so many slices to dish out, eventually someone had to take one from someone else. Always turned bloody. Always meant more paperwork.
“Doesn’t look like it worked out for him then,” Loren muttered. He took out a pen from his pocket. He lifted up shirt fragments carefully. Most of the blood had dried and had become a permanent adhesive between the shredded shirt and Vladimir’s torso. Loren managed to clear a small piece away from the gaping wound for a closer look. “These wounds—”
Ruiz interrupted quickly. “I’m going to have Hady take a closer look once she gets here but I’ll be damned if I can figure the weapon that made them.”
Loren’s eyes shot up at the shadowed man, curiously. Ruiz used his paperwork as a shield. Loren smirked, an audible scoff escaping his lips.
“No weapon, Ruiz. This was done by hand.”
Ruiz stopped cold. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me,” Loren said.
“A hand? Someone’s hand did this.”
Loren pointed to the wounds. Ruiz inched closer. Loren watched his friend’s face flicker between spotlights, his words never matching his blank stare. “Look at the spacing. The depth changes with each swipe. This was an attack, not a delicate series of precision strokes with a penknife or any other kind of knife. This was by someone’s bare hand.”
“APB on Freddie Kruger?” Ruiz asked.
Loren stood and looked to the series of shattered windows along the far wall of the office. His hands rested on his hips, watching the rising darkness of the city. Always darkness. He closed his eyes. “As good a place to start as any.”
“Hady can tell us more.” Ruiz’s voice was distant.
“She certainly can, Ruiz,” Loren said, biting his lip. “And she already has told you more. You. You already knew about the wounds. I can smell that damn sanitizer that Hady uses to bathe herself in her tank every night. Judging by Pratchett’s face, it was recently because it seems chewed out by the insomniac coroner.”
“All right. Enough,” Ruiz snapped.
Loren pointed to the body. “This isn’t why you asked me here.”
Ruiz hesitated for a long moment before responding. “No.”
Behind them, Pratchett shuffled his feet into the doorway to make his presence known to the two men. They fell silent, both wanting to say more but glad for the respite.
“Are we good?” Pratchett asked, ironically.
Loren nodded, waving him into the room. He reached into his pocket and retrieved his pack of gum. Peach mango. He missed smoking. “Scene’s yours, Pratchett. I have boxes to pack.”
Loren stepped around the body, eyes on Ruiz the entire time. It was well past time to leave. After everything the two of them had seen over the years, he was the one person who should never be played. Ruiz never needed Loren. He needed the one person they never talked about in a crowded room. He needed the one person who never blinked when they were being told someone sliced someone else open with nothing but the whites of their fingernails. Wendigos, Sasquatches, Bigfoots. Myths and legends that people could grasp only when in the middle of a “three beasts walk into a bar” joke. However, she was the one person who knew they were real without a doubt. When things happened in Portents that could not be explained or understood, she was the one who handled it.
Ruiz knew it better than anyone else, even better than Loren, who at one time believed he was an essential part in solving crimes that landed on his desk with what was then referred to as “special circumstances.” The last three months told him a different story. Still he played the game. Still he fought the need. Still he refused to reach out. Loren hated being the go-between. It had been his job for years until the time arose for him to le
ave the city behind. Yet he returned and was put back in the same situation all over again. Detective’s badge be damned. Insights be damned. He was the mediator. Damn him for knowing it and for knowing how absolutely necessary it was to the job. They needed her.
They needed Soriya Greystone.
“She’s not police, Greg,” Ruiz called, stopping Loren at the door. The shaggy face of the blond-haired detective turned back. Ruiz stepped close, lowering his voice. “Simple fact.”
“She can help. She chooses to help. Not for a paycheck or a pension. By choice.”
“Captain,” Pratchett called out from behind them.
“We can debate her motivations later,” Ruiz continued. “I need this solved. Someone takes a chunk out of this guy with his fingernails as knives means I’m not playing in the sandbox with the rest of the department. I’m playing in yours. And, damn me for even saying it, hers.”
“Detective,” Pratchett called once more.
Ruiz’s eyes looked behind Loren at the waiting forensics team, still gathering evidence along the stream of blood from the entry point into the warehouse. Other officers milled about, waiting for the shift to change or to keep the press at bay near the front doors. Loren watched his friend’s eyes snap from person to person, checking to see if any were looking back his way.
“What aren’t you telling me? What else happened to this kid?” Loren asked in little more than a whisper.
“Christ, Loren. The kid’s heart,” Ruiz managed to get out before covering his lips with his hand. His eyes remained low. “This sick bastard took the kid’s heart. With nothing but his damn hands.”
“What?” Loren hadn’t seen the extent of the damage beyond the five slices across his abdomen. To manage something like that—the removal of the heart without eviscerating the entire torso—it was planned down to the moment it occurred. Methodical. Tempered. No rage at all behind it. Loren leaned close to Ruiz. “This is the last time you’re not straight with me, Ruiz. Or I walk.”
“Understood,” Ruiz answered.
“HEY!” Pratchett yelled. The two men spun their attention over to the cringing officer. “Um…you might want to see this.”
Ruiz nodded to Loren, who took the lead back to the body and the case they had before them. “What is it, Pratchett?”
“I don’t know exactly,” he replied, eyes following the contour of Vladimir’s body. “Something under the body. The blood.”
“The victim’s blood. It’s everywhere. We know,” Ruiz slung back, annoyed.
“Wait, Ruiz,” Loren said, waving him off. He took a step back to see the whole room. There was something under the body. Something he had not seen before. He nodded to Pratchett, a smirk on his face. “I see it. The spatter doesn’t match. Victim was bleeding out long before making it to this room. But there’s a pattern to it under him. Some of this is someone else’s blood?”
Ruiz sidled up to Loren to see. Loren pointed out the long arcs that seemed to stem from the body. “It’s an old factory. Could be from decades ago.”
“This looks more like an office than a killing room floor. And I could have sworn somebody mentioned textiles as we were walking in.” He smacked Pratchett lightly on the shoulder and pointed at the body. “Give me a hand.”
“Loren.”
“Hady had her chance to take the body. Get her up here in a minute so she doesn’t breathe too much fire out of those nostrils of hers, all right?” Pratchett laughed at the joke. Loren took care to grab Vladimir’s ankles gently to prevent any additional bruising. Pratchett did the same under the young man’s shoulders and they lifted him aside.
“What are you two seeing?”
In the center of the room in dried blood was a marking none of them had ever seen. It arched up and cut back like two crossing scythes.
“Like a tattoo or something,” Pratchett stammered out, confused.
“Any ideas?” Ruiz asked.
“None.”
“Some kind of message?”
“No clue, Captain,” Loren answered plainly. “Some kind of sign.”
Ruiz turned to Pratchett. “Get Hady up here for the body. And get forensics too. I need pictures and samples. I want to know if this guy bled just to send us a message.”
Pratchett nodded reluctantly. Loren smiled to him, knowing that Hady Ronne had no problem killing messengers with her glares. Dead people were the important ones in her eyes. Loren crouched down over the sign. Dried blood older than the victim’s. The murder was planned for this spot. Was it about Vladimir or something else? Loren cursed his own questions. He wanted out but the more he stared at the sign before him, the more he was being pulled into it all again. Just as Ruiz planned. Still, he hated the feeling, the one that gnawed at him that this was more than he could handle. More than anyone with a badge and a uniform could handle. Ruiz hated it too, standing over him, staring blankly at the sign sprawled along the floor for them.
“I have fifty-two open cases I can’t solve using standard methods. I have a sign that makes me think this is bigger than all of them put together. I haven’t made heads or tails of any of it since you left.”
“Apology accepted.” Loren extended his hand and Ruiz took it. They shook once hard. Some said it was easy for them to let the little things slide because they were men, but it was more than that. They were soldiers on the front lines of Portents. Fighting back the darkness, piece by piece, yet never truly accomplishing their goal. They were brothers in arms, stronger than any gender bound them. Stronger than blood in most cases as well.
“She can help?” Ruiz’s question was cold.
Without looking to his friend, Loren nodded. “I hope so. I have a feeling we’ll need it.”
Chapter Six
As the bar roared around her, Eileen Mayfield felt alive for the first time in years. Cassie and Steph had asked her dozens of times to join them out at Night Owls and Eileen never took the opportunity. They were friends for years, been through the best and worst of times. Eileen’s wedding. Steph’s divorce. Kids. Deaths in the family. Everything. Still, with the growing concerns of the home, two kids and a husband who seemed to need more attention than the little ones, Eileen found free time to exist only in the form of six hours of sleep every night. It was not a complaint, not on her end. It never was, only a simple state of fact, she told Cassie and Steph time and time again. Life in the dim lights of a club, surrounded by strangers, not caring where the night went was a thing of the past for Eileen.
Until tonight.
She needed it. She needed it bad. Chuck was working double shifts, the first at work and the second on the couch never lifting a finger. Eileen never complained but as her three-year-old wrote gibberish on the living room walls in his favorite blue crayon under his father’s watchful eye, she knew it was time to escape. Luckily for her, this was a regular event for Cassie, whose need for companionship was only outweighed by her need to drink her face off as often as possible. Why was a mystery to Eileen but she was glad to have her friends that night.
Music blared from speakers mounted to the ceiling in every corner. Steph put dollar bill after dollar bill into the jukebox to control the blend of 80s hair band rock screaming through the air around them. Eileen sipped her beer—nothing fancy, and only two or the whole night would turn into a blur. That was her rule. It didn’t matter, though, and she let her hips sway under the spell of Poison. Cassie sang along with a group of frat boys that had been wooed over with the promise of a free round from the young red-haired woman.
Eileen watched in wonder at her friend’s gift with the opposite sex. Chuck had been her one and only. A smart, charming boy she met in college that grew into a respectable man then stopped growing at some point. Never a complaint, she said, never an issue. She always thought there was more though and, as one of the fraternity hunks ripped off his shirt at the height of the chorus with the other four boys cheering him on, she was happy to see that there wasn’t.
Laughter poured out of her.
It had been a long time and it startled all three of the women. Cassie smiled, lifting her drink before Eileen, and the two toasted as more dollar bills jammed their way into the jukebox from Steph. The smile refused to fade from Eileen’s face. Her drink dripped along her lips and down her chin. She immediately put the glass down on the table beside her, reaching for the roll of paper towels that had accompanied their food. The towel tore free of the roll and she cleaned her face.
That was when she saw him.
The sea of people that separated them parted, allowing Eileen to see a man watching her from across the club. He wore a loose fitting V-neck but she could see his biceps hugging the fabric. His jeans aided in her focusing on his lean physique. A defined face and thin scruff made him appear ruggedly handsome. There was more but none of it compared to his eyes. Beyond deep, beyond wide, there was something in them as if light beamed from them and poured into her. As if his very look filled her with something she had not felt in her lifetime. She wanted more of that feeling and his look said the same.
Cassie bumped her accidentally, holding tight to her shoulder to keep from drunkenly falling to the floor. Eileen’s eyes broke from the man across the room for a brief moment. The heat from their connection was palpable. She felt sweat rising on her skin. She was dizzy from it all, reaching for her glass. She downed the remainder of her beer in an instant, hoping it would cool her down but as her eyes wandered back to the man the heat rose considerably.
He was closer. Slowly, he stepped toward her, his eyes never falling and hers never leaving for an instant. She never felt this way about Chuck—hell, even for her children there was love…but if that was love, what was this?
Eileen no longer remembered Chuck’s middle name. Remembering what she made the kids for dinner the previous night disappeared from her memory as well. Even why she loved a lazy man like Chuck faded from her thoughts. Her hand slipped into her pocket and worked the wedding band from her finger. It fell silently to the base of her pocket among the lint and random loose change.
