Marcus - Precinct 12

by Chloe Vincent

  She tended to agree.

  15

  The Text

  Nothing else came of the night.

  As though the whole investigation was a curse, Marcus and Adina were unsuccessful in finding any more clues beyond that Marcus apparently knew the smell and recognized it. Whoop-de-do. A lot of good that did. It was already something Adina was pretty sure about—it was someone that had been around during the start of the attack. Yes, it was interesting that he thought he recognized it from other places too, but the fact was he could just have been so freaked out from Ashley's demise that he was grasping at straws. Being pretty sure that he recognized it was about as handy as a doctor being "pretty sure" that he could wing the operation, no problem. She'd bear it in mind, but until she got some more evidence, she wasn't going to start naming off random people and hoping to get lucky.

  But there was that hunch.

  The murderer had still been there.

  Marcus hadn't smelled it right off the bat. He hadn't walked up to the body and declared anything. He'd been there a little while before he smelled it. In other words, the attacker must have gotten closer somewhat out of the blue, or a stray gust of wind had pulled the scent in. Regardless, the killer must have been somewhere nearby, so she spent the next two days scouring the footage of everyone who had been near the incident and checking out everyone, from the unfortunately-timed pizza delivery guy who was bringing a very early morning snack for some actor to the news crews that had shown up to boost their ratings.

  Everyone came up blank. Time and time again, nothing. No real connections. Nothing linking them to the potential hatred of someone. No past crimes, no reason for wanting to commit one. Sure, there was always the chance that someone was just a complete lunatic and had no connection or line of reasoning to follow, but her years in the field gave her a solid ability to suss out people who weren't realistic threats. Pizza guy, for instance. Cops, for instance. Random passersby (for the most part), for instance.

  But the news crews...

  That was another story. A few years back, she'd done a job where there had been a series of fires around town, and she'd been hired to track down whoever the serial fire-starter was, only to discover that it was one of the firemen who always called it in. Apparently, he'd gone into firefighting for a love of fires, and a crazy part of him figured out that if he started fires and called them in, he'd get to see more of them. For whatever reason, her mind kept going back to the news crews. Had this been a way to do something like the fireman did, except for ratings? Those sorts of companies were notoriously cutthroat, but it couldn't have been a company-wide plan. No, but a lone lunatic? A newscaster trying to get to the top of the ranks, always being the first one on scene and catching the big story before everyone else? She dove into the footage to find out who had been the first to arrive. Her mind, despite the general lack of sleep, raced as she went through background after background. Nothing felt quite right. Every face she saw, every name, seemed like a mere distraction. Normally, she had a kind of sixth sense about it, and her "gotcha" sense was starting to tingle. Maybe she was utterly wrong, but history showed her usually being right about it.

  Ding. Her phone, sitting on the dinner table next to her, startled her and took her out of her trance. She glanced back at her work, but paused. Nobody texted her normally, unless it was an emergency. Alex used to send her stupid memes all the time, but she'd finally broken him of that, so he'd try to sneak them in elsewhere, like during a lunch break. And Gregory, well, Gregory was the only other person who might try it, if he wasn't too busy checking himself out in the mirror. Marcus? Marcus wasn't much of a texter. A call, yeah, but a texter he was not.

  She snagged it and checked the message, which turned out to be from none other than Alex, the spunky Irishman himself. She groaned. Not another meme. For the love of God, she couldn't take another goddamn meme without any reference that he'd inevitably have to explain. When she opened it up, she saw something far more important.

  Alex had sent her a picture of a newspaper, and on the front was plastered a picture of her and Marcus, seductively close with passion in their eyes, right outside the Airstream, from so long ago—perfectly timed to come out right after the murder of a film member. Across the top was a title heralding her as the "mystery woman" in Marcus's solitary life. But as humiliating as it was to see herself like that for everyone to ogle, Adina honed in on the timing of all this. Someone had taken that picture a long time ago. Someone had been stalking them, and she'd checked at that time to see if anyone was around. They'd been alone. Someone had been lurking, watching, and trying to sneak a picture of Marcus and her together. But why release it now? It had been held until this moment. Was it a coincidence that it was so well timed with Ashley's death coming out to the news? Right now, they'd decided to print it?

  What really caught her attention was the name of the person who had written it: Helen Henderson. There she was, featured in the picture as a glitzy, dolled-up, fake-looking woman with dyed blond hair, a creepy smile that looked almost but not quite right, and sharp eyes that seemed to glare at Adina through the page.

  Why did she know the name Helen in the context of the news? Abruptly, it hit her: Marcus had said something about having to interview with a woman named Helen, someone he didn't like or something, but had to do anyway. She scoured through her mind for the memory, skipping over the parts that made her blush and get all tingly inside, and trying, rather unsuccessfully, to remember the woman's name. It had been something she'd thought was somewhat funny. She hadn't heard it in a while. It had been Helen, she was ninety percent sure, but at the time her mind had been focused on other things, so was she just putting the name in because it happened to fit so well?

  Everything fell into place. Helen turned out, after a background check, to be a prosperous enough Hollywood gossip girl that went around collecting wild stories, getting interviews, writing about her experiences with the actors, and sharing it all on her blog. Apparently, she also did some work with the newspaper. She could easily have shown up immediately at the scene of the murder if she had been the person to murder Ashley, using the excuse that she was just a journalist and was always fast to come to the scene of big gossip—clearing her of any suspicion. A quick investigation showed that she'd been there and arrived conveniently a few minutes after she and Marcus did. Yeah, right. She just happened to be close enough to get there that quickly, that early in the morning. News didn't travel that fast. She'd have to have known that something big would happen, and she wanted to be there for the big scoop for her blog. Was this woman a stalker? Marcus had said something about not liking her, if Adina remembered right, but were the weird vibes from her being overly infatuated with him? It would explain everything. If Helen was a werewolf, she could have bit Marcus to turn him into something like her. Why? Adina had no idea, but stalkers tended to have bizarre ideas pop into their heads that they somehow took as logical. She could have been following Marcus for her gossip central. Maybe she'd attacked Adina out of... jealousy? To silence her? Because she was afraid she'd find out something? And when the attack had failed, she'd tried to take her down via the public route, using the newspaper as a way to discredit her and make her into some fling, ignoring her actual expertise in the matter. Adina didn't know how close she was getting to the facts, but something just clicked in her mind: Helen was the werewolf. She'd attacked Marcus, tried to kill Adina, had actually killed Ashley, and now was going after Adina through slander. Sloppy.

  The only thing that remained, the biggest part that she needed to know, was how. Helen had a motive. She knew Marcus, she knew the set, she could be like any number of other fans thrilled with Marcus but with a dangerous dose of insanity tossed in for good measure, and she wouldn’t want Marcus to find out who she was—thus, going after Adina and murdering Ashley. She had the strength, the ability to monitor from afar. She could've stayed far enough way that she wouldn't be realistically considered to be the attacker, especially
since she'd probably eaten up any stories that Marcus might have said and put them all over her blog.

  But how?

  How had she gotten on set without an interview? Adina had checked everyone that had been officially on set that day, and one of the very first things that she'd checked was if Marcus had any interactions with anyone earlier that day. Nothing. He'd gone straight from filming to his trailer. No interview, no press conference, nothing. But could Helen have gotten onto the set without an interview?

  There was only one thing to do: find out. Since she didn't happen to be well versed in the policies of the set, she found the contact info for someone who would know: Marcus. She glanced at the sun just starting to rise in the background. It was early. Ah, fuck it. If his goofy ass came over to her house at three in the morning without telling her, she got to call him in the morning and not care if he was still sleepy. She dialed him and while she waited, she hustled to the window and looked out thoughtfully, her mind going a million miles an hour. It was her favorite kind of day: a thunderstorm, as powerful as it was impressive. Nature always held a special spot in her heart, mostly because of the fact that it couldn’t care less what she wanted. It was here to stay, and it did whatever the hell it wanted. Nothing could hold back a thunderstorm, no more than a diplomatic vote, any government, or anything related to humanity could stop a tsunami from hitting land. It was here before people, and it would be there after. The storm outside raged, pelting the ground with huge drops of water from the heavens, blocking out most of the sun except for the odd ray that snuck its way through the cloudy darkness. If she had to find a killer, at least she got to enjoy a beautiful view while waiting.

  Finally, about the time that she was starting to wonder if Marcus would answer the goddamn phone, he picked up. "Hello? Adina! What a wonderful surprise. Hope you're inside with the weather we're having—"

  "Marcus," she interrupted. "I need you to answer something for me. How do press get onto the set? Do they have a pass, or do they have to set up an interview?"

  He paused. "They, uh, I think they can get a day pass easily. I've seen reporters on set without an interview. Why? What's going on?" A sudden tightness formed in his voice as he probably figured out why she was asking. "Did you discover something?"

  She looked out at the morning storm. "Maybe. I need you to tell me everything you know about Helen Henderson."

  Another pause. "Helen is an ambulance chaser. She picks up sensational stories and makes them even more dramatic. She's interviewed me a couple times and her blog was one of the ones that had that article about the rumors of me faking my attack. Weird woman. Wears enough makeup that she looks like she's wearing a mask. Um... her personality is gossipy, as you'd imagine. Superficial. You think she's related?"

  "I don't know." She didn't recognize that car parked out near the front of her place. "She would have access to the set, right? And she showed up on the night of Ashley's death before she should have been able to. Did you see the paper?" She narrowed her eyes at the car. Not only was it parked in front of her like a jackass, it was parked out in front of her house, and everyone nearby knew damn well by this point not to park there. "There's something about us."

  "What about us?"

  She fumbled with the explanation. "Us outside the trailer. Hails me as some sort of—" The car door opened and someone stuck an umbrella out. "Some sort of mystery woman in your life. There's a strong allusion to me being your plaything. I think she may be connected here somehow." In the pouring rain, a woman's head of blond hair appeared out the driver's side. A sinking, uneasy feeling formed in Adina's chest. No way. Not here, not now. "Marcus. Do me a favor."

  Helen Henderson, suspected murderer and likely lunatic, appeared out of the car in front of Adina's house in the pouring rain. When she looked up at Adina standing in the window, a lightning bolt reflected off her clearly golden, wolf eyes. Adina curled her lip up in anger. This bitch? Really? After all she'd done to Marcus, after all the suffering and pain she'd caused, after giving Adina the runaround for so long, after taking someone's life, after trying to make Adina out to look like a common whore, she had the guts to show up here? On the morning of the newspaper coming out, she decided to show up at Adina's house to finish the job?

  "Yeah?" Marcus asked from the other side, utterly unaware of the developments on Adina's end. "You okay?"

  "Yeah." Adina walked to the door and grabbed her new, handy, metal baseball bat that she'd bought to replace the other one. "I'm gonna be justttt fine."

  "What's the favor?"

  "Call the cops." Adina opened the door, brandishing her weapon with a cold rage in her heart and looking at Helen, who was now standing on the pathway to Adina's apartment. "She's here."

  16

  Showdown

  Adina stayed on her dry porch, her hand locked hard around the steel baseball bat, glaring down at the werewolf who waited for her at the base of the tall stairs.

  "Why?" Adina demanded of her, speaking up to be heard over the din of the rain against the asphalt. "Why Marcus? Why go after Ashley? Why attack me?"

  It was about this time that Adina's eyes fell onto the golden necklace hanging around Helen's throat. She'd recognize the magical glow of it anywhere. She was looking at something all angels hated to see: an Amulet of Banishment, a fancy term for an amulet that kept angels from interceding. No more Gregory showing up last second to save her. The message was clear. Helen wasn't here to chat and explain and talk things out. She was here to kill Adina, this time without Adina having backup.

  Helen's voice was as prissy as Adina had expected with her appearance. It hinted at untold amounts of money that her daddy probably spent on her every wish and desire, the sound of a woman who probably never realistically worked a day in her life, the sound of a woman who got her way. She sounded more like an irritating sorority girl than a murderer. "Marcus loves me! And you, you tried to get in the way!"

  To anyone watching, they would've seen two insane women yelling at each other about random crap while one of them stood in the rain. To Adina, she felt her darkness bubble up inside her, listening to the reasoning. "You killed someone!"

  "He got in the way!" she yelled back, still holding the umbrella like that would do any good when things inevitably got messy. "Marcus loves me and I love him!"

  "Marcus thinks you're a delusional fuck!"

  "Marcus loves me!" she screamed back. Good. Get her monologuing. The longer she talked, the more time the cops had to arrive and take her down. "We fell for each other during that first interview, and I knew he had to be like me! So yes, I changed him, and I'd do it again! You can't stand in the way of our love! You couldn't stay away, and now, now I have to silence you, too!" As she spoke, she began to transform then and there. Her body shuddered and grew in epic, impossible ways, stretching from a small woman to a huge animal. Coarse hair sprouted from her form and grew like a wildfire across her as her face transformed into a wolf's snarling visage. Claws the size of steak knives, the claws that had taken Ashley's life from him, the claws that had already been inside of Adina while she'd tried to gut Adina for getting in the way, extended from her enormous paws. She loomed over Adina in a way that looked almost hilariously unfair. "I don't know how you survived," the irritating voice came from inside the hulking creature as she made her way up the stairs towards Adina with murderous intent, "but this time, I'm going to take your head off and see if you heal up from that, you cheap, tiny whore! You aren't going to take Marcus away from me! I don't care what it takes!" One of her massive feet landed on the third step and chipped a hunk of the concrete off when her claws made contact. "And when I'm done, I'll—"

  That was the point where Adina stopped hearing her, the exact point where the anger frothing inside her, the sheer rage that she struggled to contain her entire life, the dark side of her that she attempted to control, the full brunt of her strength and the vicious drive to be the killer that those disturbing old fucks had bred into her at such a young age
in an attempt to make a perfect demon, overtook the logical part of her brain. She didn't even try to stop it. She eagerly stepped back and let her rage take the reins. It wasn't hard. She tried to stay in control and not lose it, but for Helen here, she made an exception. Fuck it. Helen deserved every bit of what was coming after what she did and what she was clearly there to do.

  When Helen pounced, every bit of Adina that was in control vanished. She felt the same feelings of overwhelming hatred coming from Helen that she had when Helen had first attacked her, but this time, she didn't try to stay calm. She basked in it. Soaked it in. Let it fuel her. She ducked under the ill-advised jump, locked her fingers around Helen's hairy ankle as it went past, and hurtled the 2,000-pound creature into the street as easily as a child throwing a baseball. Helen's gigantic body slammed into her own car, which held bravely for a second before it collapsed and skidded across the street in a cacophony of sparks, sounding the alarm in case anyone wasn't aware that it had just been obliterated.

  To Helen's credit, she pulled herself out of the vehicle and attacked again with reckless abandon, this time fast enough to get a claw to connect with Adina's shoulder. Even as Adina ducked away, the claw dug deep, ripping out Adina's shoulder muscle with a spurting of fresh blood and agonizing pain exploding from the deep wound. Adina barely felt it. This wasn't her anymore, not really. This was her dark side, the part of her without her inhibitions, the part of her that relished this. She swung the bat and probably shattered a couple of Helen's ribs while Helen tried to repeat what had happened in the first fight unsuccessfully. Back then, Adina had been taken by surprise. Sucker-punched. She'd sustained way too many injuries way too fast. She hadn't known to expect a werewolf diving through her door, but this time?