by Lou Paduano
“It’s bad, Mentor. She’s going to need you.”
Chapter Eleven
When birth rates dropped at the turn of the century in the city of Portents, the need for the Westmore Elementary School diminished greatly and the school was shut down. Seeing an opportunity to use the school rather than let it fall into disarray, a graffiti paradise for the local population, the mayor’s office recommended it put to a better use as the new coroner’s office and the largest morgue in the state. The large L-shape configuration of the building offered plenty of space for administration, equipment storage as well as areas to continue internship programs from city-based universities. It was a windfall for everyone involved, including those at the Central Precinct of the Portents Police Department who were happy to see Hady Ronne and her staff depart the Rath Building for greener pastures. Distance made the heart grow fonder and the elevator less odorous.
From the entrance, the building split with the majority of the training and lab work completed on one end, while offices and the viewing rooms were at the other. Former classrooms worked perfectly for viewings, as some were small and compact enough for privacy and others large enough to fit the occasional influx. On the opposite side of the floor were the administrative offices, including that of Head Coroner Hady Ronne, or the “Waddling Dead” as Loren called her, among other choice names that were also on point when it came to the rotund woman.
Two sweeping double doors led to the main room at the end of the hall. Three bodies lay on tables in its center. Charts containing scrawls of notes and drops of unmentionable fluid were clipped to the base of the tables. The summary of three lives. All were covered when Loren led Soriya and Mentor into the room. The clock hanging on the wall announced the new day, though the darkness of the midnight hour reminded them that it was simply a continuation of the old. The lights flickered on and off, a continual problem that creeped Loren out to no end. An electrical problem that stemmed from construction work on the school was always the official word but Loren knew Hady was involved somehow, though he never said it aloud for fear of reprisal. He had no doubt the ghoul of a coroner preferred the darkness for her work.
The car ride over offered nothing but silence. No one wanted to speak, though Pratchett attempted with his usual weather-related banter and other miscellaneous anecdotes that sounded rehearsed. When more silence answered him, he looked to Loren, who simply nodded. There was no more chatter after that though Loren took the moment to glance back at his two companions. Mentor was lost in thought, staring out at the city at the blur of light and traffic. Soriya remained fixed on Loren, her large brown eyes begging him to say something. They were still locked on him.
“Whoever this person is, they’ve been busy. Three victims in five days. At least if Hady’s estimation of time of death is correct on the previous victims,” Loren said. He stopped before the two bodies positioned side by side. Above them, a thin florescent light beamed off the white cloth. Loren’s eyes fell on the shrouds, never looking at the notes he held tight in his grip. He may have needed them earlier that evening but no longer. Everything was wrapped up in his mind. “Abigail Fortune was found in her home. Old-style ranch, as old as Portents from the looks of it. No signs of forced entry. Martin Decker was found at the end of a dark bar down near the docks. He was still propped on his stool. No one noticed.”
“The Town Hall?” Mentor asked from his position in the corner of the room. He remained in the shadows as much as he could, refusing to let the overhead lights reveal too much of his presence.
“Pardon?” Loren asked in return, taken off guard by the question.
“The name of the bar. Was it the Town Hall?”
“Yeah,” replied the curious cop. “How did you know?”
Mentor hesitated a moment. “I knew Decker a long time ago. Please. Continue.”
“Right,” Loren said slowly. There was something in Mentor’s voice. Something knowing. Something that frightened him even though his face remained in darkness. Loren turned to the third body in the center of the room. He pulled the sheet back so it covered the majority of his frame but his face was visible once Loren shifted to the side of the table. “Vladimir Luchik, here, came next.”
Soriya’s eyes widened. She reached into her pocket and Loren saw her thumb her cell phone for a brief moment before letting her hand fall away. The young woman moved near Loren to take a closer look at the man on the table. Loren ambled aside to give her room.
“This one was more brutal,” he continued. Soriya’s hands clasped the side of the cold table that was Vlad’s resting place. “Vlad fought. But this guy…. It looks like Vlad was led to the spot of his murder. We found a trail from the street to the warehouse office where it ended. It had to happen there for some reason. Ritual, maybe. At least that’s how it appears because of this.”
The photo slipped free of his notes and landed between his fingers. Loren held it out and waited for the hand of Mentor to reach out and grab it. He did not wait long. Soriya remained fixed on the body before her as her guardian peered over the photo of Vlad in the center of the office atop an image. The bottom half revealed the image in full. Even in the darkness, Loren saw the old man’s eyes flare.
“This is how it looked? Nothing was changed?” Mentor asked hastily. His need immediate.
“Nothing’s changed.” Loren’s brow furrowed. “Why? Does it mean anything to you?”
Mentor fell silent once again, stepping back into the corner of the room. Loren wanted to press the issue. There was something he knew, something that would break the case wide open or at the very least have the whole affair make a semblance of sense. He knew Mentor’s games. He played them, reluctantly, for years when the old man jumped into the middle of his investigations with Soriya. They had been hard lessons for Loren to learn but even after every false lead or untold clue from the man with only a title for a name, he continued to trust Mentor. It was a mistake, he knew, but one he counted on in the long haul to pay off for the better. Hope, Beth would say. It always came back to hope. And to Beth.
Loren, however, was unable to continue his questioning of Mentor. The doors to the room slammed open and a short, plump woman with long black tendrils for hair stepped into the large lab. She held a clipboard low. Her eyes never left it. Looking downward at the stack of notes clasped to it, the bags under her eyes were still quite visible. They bounded up like bowling balls above her cheeks. Loren moved away from the center of the room, giving a wide berth to Doctor Hady Ronne.
She stopped a few feet into the room, her eyes still glued to her notes. “Please tell me I can get back to my body before the sun comes up, Loren. And tell me that unauthorized personnel are not touching my bodies.”
Loren faked a smile. “Hady.”
“Doctor Ronne, former Detective.” Her words chilled the room. “Now let’s pretend for a minute that this isn’t the best place to bring a date for cheap and maybe let me help catch a killer.”
Loren stepped over to the stumpy woman, looking down at her. “Still charming the pants off dead people,” he said as calmly as possible. “Five minutes.”
“Loren.”
“Five minutes,” he insisted. Slipping his hand into his pocket, he slipped out a slice of peach mango gum. He held it out with the nod of his head. A peace offering.
She paused a moment then replied coldly, “Be gone by then.”
Hady slowly vacated the room, the double doors swinging back and forth from her movements. Loren could still hear her sighing before she slammed the door to her office just outside the room. He instinctively gripped his cell phone, waiting for a call from Ruiz then let it fall away. Old habits. Old politics. One of the nice things about only consulting on the case. None of them mattered to him anymore. When he felt the calm return to the room, his focus shifted back to his companions. He slipped the stick of gum into his mouth and felt his teeth crunch into its cool, hardened shell. Mentor studied the image still caught in his grip. Loren was more con
cerned about Soriya, whose gaze looked softly at the deceased Vlad and never flinched from him.
“You knew him,” Loren said.
She nodded slightly. In their time together, there were things Loren had seen that could never be explained to the layman on the street. Monsters in the dark that would force people to run for the hills or curl up next to mommy in bed and never again sleep with the lights off. He had seen Soriya handle them all without blinking. She was stalwart, exuberant, and brash. She loved what she did. Her joy never faded. Loren never, not in all of those years, saw her grief stricken. He never wanted to see it again.
“He was supposed to call me earlier,” said Soriya. Her eyes remained on the young man’s broken frame. She pulled back the sheet more until the wound became visible and she stopped. “We were working on something together. I waited. Figured he was blowing me off. Flaking out like he does. Never thought it could be this.”
Loren stepped closer then backed away. Mentor’s eyes were on him and he didn’t care for the looks heading in his direction. “There was no way you could have known. The victims of this guy are random from what we’ve been able to determine.”
Soriya and Mentor’s heads turned at the same moment before Loren finished his sentiment. Their eyes shifted to each other slowly then away, never toward Loren. The former detective ran his tongue across his top teeth, nodding at the knowledge they were keeping from him. He cleared his throat audibly. Mentor nodded to Soriya.
“Show him.”
“Show me what?” Loren asked, impatiently.
“The victims aren’t random, Loren,” Soriya said, pulling the cloth away from Vlad’s left arm. Around his wrist was the silver bracelet Loren had noted at the crime scene. Markings were etched along its surface. Markings Loren had never seen before. Slowly, with tender fingers running along Vladimir Luchik’s cold pale arm, Soriya unclasped the bracelet. Instantly, the young man’s body changed. Where once there was the tattooed, skinny white frame of a man on the metal table; instead, there was a hair-infested mongrel of a beast. Dark brown hair covered his body from head to toe.
Loren had read fiction his entire life. He loved movies and worlds unimagined. After four years knowing Soriya, he realized imagination couldn’t hold a candle to what was waiting in the darkness of Portents. When Loren saw his first werewolf, the descriptions of the beasts that he read about as a kid now made perfect sense. The sight caused him to fall back on his heels before moving in for a closer look.
“How the hell…?” he started.
Soriya held the bracelet before him. “It’s a glamour. It maintains his human image.”
“So he’s actually always like this.”
The corner of her lip rose. “Cute, right?”
Loren bit his tongue. Bizarre was more like it. “And what you’re both saying about contestants one and two over there is—”
“Someone knew about them. Yes.”
“Abigail and Martin had lives they hid from the rest of the city—just as this young man did,” Mentor reiterated, bringing the point home for Loren. There was a pattern. Beyond the sign that had been left at the scenes. Now there was a new pattern behind the victims.
“You’re going to want to tell us about the trophies taken now,” Mentor continued. Loren’s head shot over to him, feeling that fleeting moment where he had the upper hand slip from his pocket as easily as loose change at a strip club. The old man pointed to the exposed chest wound on Vlad. “The boy’s heart for starters. What did Abigail and Martin surrender to our killer?”
“Her eye. His hand,” Loren reluctantly replied. “What does it mean?”
Neither of them answered.
“Someone tell me.” He felt his anger rising.
Finally, Mentor stepped for the double doors. He held one open and motioned for Loren to follow. “A word, Detective.”
“Great,” Loren muttered under his breath. He turned to the woman beside him. Her eyes were still locked on Vlad. “Soriya?”
“I’ll be fine.” Her voice was small. “I just need a minute.”
Loren’s nod went unobserved. Taking a deep breath, he moved for the hall slowly like a kid heading to the principal’s office. At the double doors, he turned to see her lean close over her fallen friend’s body. Her lips tapped the young man’s forehead as she said goodbye to Vladimir Luchik.
Chapter Twelve
The hallway overhead lights flickered dimly, running the full length of the hall that led toward the entrance at the opposite end. A dull hum rang through Loren’s ears from the fluorescents. He imagined it was a perfect lullaby for the employees serving under Hady Ronne, anything to keep them from having to listen to the venom she spewed. Through the glass positioned on the top half of her office door he saw the hunched-over frame of the stumpy woman leaning over her desk. He heard mutterings, low and guttural, but Loren could only imagine what curses she was placing upon him at the moment. Not that he cared, but when Mentor stopped before her office, Loren pointed farther down. The two men walked side by side, Mentor’s staggered steps forcing Loren to slow his pace. The detective knew about the leg pain the older man suffered on his right side but never mentioned it. Neither of them did. Slowly the two walked down the hall, away from the eyes and ears of the few people that inhabited the building at such a late hour.
Loren didn’t give Mentor the chance to speak. “I don’t want to hear it.”
“What?” Mentor asked. Standing so close to each other, Loren was surprised at how small the old man seemed. How tired. No longer completely in shadow, Mentor’s presence shrank, the thin light of the overhead bulbs illuminating every crag and nook in his worn skin. He was no longer the imposing figure in the corner waiting to strike him down at a moment’s notice. The playing field leveled out between them.
“The line,” Loren continued. “The same one you always give when you’re about to cut me out of a case for my own protection. A case I came to you with despite all good reason.”
“Besides being ill-equipped for it,” Mentor interjected. Loren gritted his teeth. Mentor spun his finger in a circle for the man to continue.
“A case you know more about than you’re willing to share, or did you forget about the sign and what it means? And don’t pretend you were about to say anything different.”
“You’re right.” The old man’s eyes flared. “But I’m not the only one holding back details, am I?”
Loren remembered the missing tokens taken from each victim, the detail the police had been able to keep out of the hands of every member of the press corps and even out of the gossip that spread across the station. Loren stroked his prickly beard, wondering if he had meant to leave that out or if he was lost in the moment with the two people he had not seen in months.
“At least tell me about those then,” Loren said, whispering. “The eyes, the hands and the heart. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Mentor. Give me something,” Loren’s voice carried and he slowed down to keep from bringing everyone in the building over to listen. “Tell me Abigail Fortune had laser eyes or x-ray vision. Tell me Decker was the greatest massage therapist on the planet. Something to explain the trophies.”
“X-ray vision?”
“Heat vision. Microscopic vision. She came from Krypton. Something!”
“She saw the world clearer than anyone I knew and Decker’s hands could master any tool or weapon. As for the boy’s heart, I can only imagine living as a wolf his heart gave him a unique edge. The real question, the one you don’t want to ask, is what the killer is doing with these trophies.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to ask. But I have to, don’t I?”
“So do I,” replied Mentor, sharing his lack of knowledge. “There is more, isn’t there? Even still, you’re holding back.”
Loren remembered the feeling walking into the warehouse, the feeling of something more hidden beneath the surface. It began simply with the sign out front, the bloody smear r
unning along the stone changing the date of its construction. A simple change from a nine to a seven, as if it was meant to be there instead. It was probably just a fluke but it stuck out in Loren’s mind, unwilling to fade. Much like the symbols etched in Vlad’s bracelet, the city was covered in writings that Loren never thought twice about or even noticed. However, to be at that scene, the office that served as the final resting place of Vladimir Luchik and carry that feeling toward some conclusion was something else. It was something Loren was keeping from Mentor. Hell, he was even keeping it from Ruiz. Why, he couldn’t rightly say, but he felt it was too soon to share. There was more to it. He needed more information. He needed more time with it. Something so that the pieces would start to fit into place.
“I know” was all the detective said in response. He looked to the wide doors to the main room at the end of the hall and then to his watch. “Our five minutes are up.”
Mentor nodded. Loren turned to join Soriya, the old man calling him back. “You should walk away, Loren. Take the opportunity. Put this behind you. You wanted to leave this place. Leave this business. You wanted to leave her.”
“Soriya?” Loren asked, confused. “It had nothing to do with her.”
“You’re a distraction, Detective.” Mentor moved close to Loren, his glare piercing. “You are a connection you should have kept severed for yourself as well as for her.”
Loren refused to back down or look away. Then he saw it. “You’re worried about her. More than usual. This isn’t the standard overly protective father routine. This is different. Why?”
The door slammed behind them and a short, stocky student bounded into the hallway. His papers fell from his sweaty grip, a failed attempt to juggle them while fixing his glasses and reattach his access card onto his belt in one less-than-fluid motion. At the sight of the two arguing men he stopped, a dumbfounded stare spreading across his face. Mentor sneered at the boy. His eyes widened in fear, then dropped to the floor. He quickly gathered his materials and flew down the hall as if giant flames were giving chase. Once again, silence filled the hall. Mentor leaned close to Loren.
