Flesh Circus

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Sure thing.” But he just stood there, looking at me, for a long moment. “I’m glad I came out.”

  What do you want, a tickertape parade? But that was uncharitable of me. I could just chalk it up to nerves, couldn’t I? “Me too, catkin. Let’s see those bodies.”

  “Are you really?” It wasn’t like him to persist. “You sure?”

  I exaggerated rolling my eyes, just like a teenager. I’ll never see the sunny side of thirty again, but sometimes eyerolling is so satisfying I don’t care. “Of course I’m glad. Jesus, Saul, what’s up with you?” And can it wait? I’ve got a city about to blow sky-high here, and a pattern I don’t like the looks of underneath.

  “Nothing.” He turned gracefully and led me up the stairs. “There are bodies in the bedrooms, nothing in the kitchen but a pot on the stove. Smells like the other place, a little.”

  “But no blondes? Blond dreadlocks, waist-length?” Wide face, big nose, bad skin, rotting teeth rimmed with gold making a bright-starred smile, and those dreadlocks. Zamba was tall and almost breastless, and I’d sometimes thought she was in drag. Nowadays you can’t tell, and dealing with ’breed on a regular basis will wallop some of your assumptions about gender pretty hard.

  “Come and see.”

  Goddammit. But he was right not to tell me, I suppose. I might not have believed it, if he had.

  It was nine bodies, all told. I recognized an ebony-skinned trio, male and female, who had been Zamba’s longtime acolytes. There was a small, compact Hispanic male—Zamba was truly catholic in her choice of trainees—and a taller, Grecian redhead. A double-gemini of husky dark-haired males completed the sets. They were three to a room, her inner circle all naked and twisted together like the goats in the basement. The beds had been scattered with chrysanthemum petals, and their throats had been ripped out.

  They probably wouldn’t rise as zombies, though I would nail the palms and feet before Forensics got here. There wasn’t enough etheric residue in them to power that kind of motion, though. Zamba’s devotees had been eaten. And either someone had brushed aside Zamba’s protections and killed her followers and her, or…

  Jesus.

  In the kitchen, a pot on the stove was long cool. A stringy brew of something that smelled vaguely similar to Lorelei’s still-bubbling concoction rested under a thick scrim of clotted grease. The kitchen was otherwise spic-and-span, the attached dining room where Zamba fed her acolytes holding a long table, chairs ranked neatly, and an altar on the wall under the window that looked out on the side-yard and the wall of the abandoned house next door.

  “What do you make of this?” Saul asked quietly. He stood by the sink, arms folded, looking at the bottle of dishwashing liquid and scrubbies, neatly placed in a chrome rack.

  “I don’t like that we can’t find her body.” That’s just one of the things I don’t like about this.

  “Any chance she could be the one behind all this?”

  Trust him to say what I was thinking. “More than a chance, catkin. Still, I suppose there’s always room to hope she’s not. I’d like it better if the bitch was dead.”

  “Now there’s something I don’t hear you say often.” He peered out the window. “It’s almost dawn.”

  No shit. This has been a long night. I spotted the phone, hanging at the end of the counter. “If Zamba’s behind this, it’s bad news. If she’s just disappeared it’s bad news too; it means we might have another body site.” I let out a sigh. The smell was bad, the situation was worse, and I had the idea I wasn’t going to spend today sleeping, either. “I’ve got to call in and see who they can spare to come out and process this site too. No rest for the wicked.”

  “Amen to that.” His shoulders went down a little. Had he been bracing himself? For what? “What’s our next step?”

  I thought about it. “Calling someone to come out and take care of this site. Seeing if I overlooked Zamba’s body downstairs or in the back yard. Going over this place with a fine-tooth comb, then going through the files—” I tapped the counter with bitten-down nails, my fingers drumming. “This has all the earmarks of a serious fucking tangle.”

  As usual, Saul put the question in reasonable terms. “If Zamba is behind this, what does she have against the Cirque?”

  “I don’t—” I straightened, suddenly, and stared at the pot on the stove. “Huh.”

  Saul kept quiet, looking at the sink, and let me wander around inside my head. It was good to have him there—he served up the right questions, and knew when to keep his mouth shut so I could think. I found myself studying the lines of his fringed jacket, his jeans splattered with zombie, the edge of the stove, his boots, my own boot-toes. Eyes roving, snagging on the linoleum as I pursued the line of thought to its logical end, found it wanting—but not wanting enough.

  “If a better theory comes along, I’ll snag it,” I decided out loud. “Call this scene in, I’m going to check the back yard and the houses on either side.”

  “I’m coming with you.” His jaw jutted, stubbornly.

  Oh, for Chrissake. “Of course you are. After you call.”

  16

  Piper was still processing the last scene. This time Foster showed up, his own brown ponytail slick as ever. He surveyed the stinking goop starred with porous bones that had been zombies and sighed. “Busy night. Anything else?”

  I almost hated to tell him. Foster always reminds me of an otter—brown, sleek, with a cute little nose and quick clever fingers. “The bedrooms. Don’t take the iron nails out of the corpses. And there’s animals downstairs.”

  “Well, shit.” But he motioned his team past, Carolyn holding the door log in front of her like a holy grail, Max with his camera, Stephanie and Browder with their matching smiles and bags of gear. “Beaucoup overtime.”

  Behind them, Sullivan and the Badger showed up. The Badger negotiated the stairs with her mouth set tight and turned down, her gray hair pulled back into its usual bun, the white streak down one side glinting, since I’d flicked the porch lights on. Sullivan, scratching at his coppery stubble, gave me a weak grin. He looks like dishwater even on a good day, but that pale, nervous exterior hides a sharp, inductive mind.

  The Badger looks like a cookie-baking, kitten-sweatshirt-and-mom-jean-wearing soccer mom—a particularly cuddly and harmless one. She’d added a pair of steel-framed glasses to her round florid face, and moved carefully. I wasn’t fooled—for such a rotund woman, she was light on her feet when it counted. And they don’t call her the Badger for her hair.

  No, she gets that name by being tenacious as hell. She does it in such a nice, unassuming way that people forget her namesake has teeth and claws.

  Rumor has it she went a couple of rounds with a sex offender once, and busted him up bad by the time backup arrived. The perp thought one plump lady cop would be easy to bowl over. He spent three weeks in the hospital and another couple months in physical therapy, I was told.

  I’d lay odds it’s true.

  “How many fucking scenes you going to give us tonight?” Sullivan said, blinking. He patted his breast pocket, where a pack of Marlboro Lights peeped up at me. For someone who looks so washed-out, he certainly has a big strident voice.

  “As many as I’ve got. Hi, Badge.”

  She grunted, heaved herself up onto the porch, and eyed me. “Thought you didn’t want a team tonight.”

  I shrugged. Silver tinkled in my hair, falling over my shoulders. “With bodies mounting up like this, I need backup.” I’m glad it’s you two.

  “Huh. Should we check the other scenes?” It’s amazing, the way her soft, modulated voice can slice through a hubbub. One of the forensic techs was laughing—shrill laughter with that edge of disgust you hear so often at homicide scenes.

  It’s not disrespectful. It’s because sometimes you have to laugh to keep from screaming, crying, or throwing up. “Might as well. This turned out bigger than I thought it’d be. I thought I could save you guys some work.”

  Sulliva
n wheezed and the Badger chuckled. “You kidding?” she got out, between snickers. “If we wanted less work we wouldn’t have chosen this job.”

  “Very funny. Make sure the techs don’t take the nails out of the hands and feet. See if you can get any IDs on the messy bodies; the less-messy ones will be easier but I already know who they are. Find out where they were last seen, see if you can trace the animals—”

  “Animals?” Sullivan’s pale face twisted up. The short buzz of his coppery, receding hair glittered again as he hunched his shoulders. “Shit.”

  “Sorry.” And I was.

  “Well, you didn’t kill ’em.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Should we go over Piper’s scenes too?”

  I nodded. Saul moved briefly behind me, a restless movement utterly unlike him. “Please do. Oh, and see if you can dig up who this house actually belongs to. I’d like a legal name, DOB, everything.” I don’t know nearly enough about Zamba. That’s going to change.

  “That means you have a hunch.” The Badger nodded. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask—I know I don’t want to know. I’ll page you as soon as we have something.”

  And bless her thoroughgoing little heart, she would have the full report from chowder to cashews—or as close to it as it was humanly possible to get. “Good deal. Thanks.” I eased past both of them—the Badger stood stolidly and Sullivan flinched back. He covered it well, though, turning to look down at the garden.

  “Huh,” he said. “Go figure.”

  “What?” I glanced down at the belt of jungle greenery, uncomfortably reminded of Lorelei’s backyard.

  “Plants are dying. Looks like someone did a lot of work on the yard, though. You’d think, a place like this, they wouldn’t have stopped watering before they died. Or are the bodies old?”

  “Not too old.” Especially the ones that were trying to kill me about half an hour ago. But they didn’t need me to lay that little thought in their heads. “See you.”

  Sullivan sighed. “See you, Jill. Try not to trip over any more dead ’uns tonight.”

  “Shut up, Sully. It’s our job.” The Badger sounded long-suffering, as usual, and she herded him inside the house.

  What a pair.

  Saul drifted beside me as I made my way down the cracked, zigzagging walk. “Car’s this way.”

  I nodded, let him take the lead. Sullivan was right, the garden was just in the first stages of dying. Plants were drooping, but not browned and crispy yet.

  I stopped, turned, and looked back at the house, its windows blazing with golden light now. A hose was coiled up next to the porch’s listing sneer.

  Hellebore. Feverfew. Foxglove. Wormwood. Mugwort. Bindweed. American ginseng under a rigged-up canvas canopy. Some succulents, but not many, and the rest of the plants were useful, in one way or another, to a rogue herbalist or kitchen witch.

  Or a voodoo queen.

  The zombies were relatively fresh. So were the bodies. Rigor mortis doesn’t last that long. Bellies were distended on the goats downstairs, but that happens… I’d need an autopsy to be reasonably sure of time of death.

  But the garden, though. Things wilt fast out here in the desert, but if things were normal out here at Mama Zamba’s—if normal could be the word applied to the biggest wheel in the voodoo community in my town—the garden should be in tiptop shape for a little while after she was dead.

  So what had kept her so busy her garden didn’t get watered? She had people to do it for her.

  But those people were dead.

  The zombies were too juicy and the human bodies were too fresh. It just didn’t add up. Unless the reigning queen of the voodoo scene had had something more than gardens on her mind lately—and on the minds of her followers.

  Her newly dead followers.

  “What are you thinking?” Saul finally asked as I stood staring at Zamba’s garden like I was hypnotized.

  “I don’t quite know yet,” I admitted. “It’s more and more likely Zamba’s involved instead of a victim. I think we should get some breakfast, since dawn’s coming up.”

  “And then?”

  I tested the hypothesis in my head. I just didn’t know enough to see if it explained everything. “And then we’re going to visit Galina again. If she hasn’t gone through her diaries yet, I’ll wait while she does. I’ve got a theory, but I can’t figure one thing out.”

  “That one thing would be?”

  “Why a voodoo queen has it in for the Cirque. You’d think if she hated hellbreed she’d find some closer to home to murder.”

  17

  Micky’s on Mayfair was just the same as it always is around dawn—almost deserted, clean as a whistle, and staffed with Weres. Some of the waistaff are humans, true, but the greater percentage including the owner are from the Santa Luz prides, packs, and flights.

  Amalia, a lioness of the Norte Luz pride, greeted us at the door. “Jill, nice to see you. Dustcircle.” She nodded, and Saul nodded back. “A table? Or is it business?”

  I must have looked grim, and realized I was dirty and disheveled. They do usually see me in this state, but I’d been thinking so hard even my nose had shut off.

  “A table,” Saul said as I cast around vainly for something to wipe off with. “Does Theron have any towels lying around?”

  “I’ll check.” She grinned, her broad, high-cheekboned face lighting up. I suddenly felt even more dirty and mucky, snuck a peek at Saul. He was just the same as ever, his essential difference shining out from under weariness and zombie muck, and I felt myself deflate like a punctured balloon. It wasn’t fair. They’re so much better than we could ever be, the Weres.

  No wonder humans hunted them, during the bad old days of the Inquisition. The only thing humans hate more than ugliness is actual beauty.

  Theron, a lean dark Werepanther, actually came out from the bar to greet us, wiping his hands on a white cloth that had seen much, much better days in the bleach bucket. His long fingers danced with it, refolding it so the holes didn’t show. “Hey, Saul. Glad to see you back.”

  “Theron.” Saul gave him an answering grin. “How’s bartending?”

  “Good work if you can get it.” Theron’s dark gaze flicked past to me, and his forehead furrowed. “Jill.”

  “Hey. Sorry, I smell. Got a spare towel?” As usual, I sounded more truculent than I really was. They were just so pretty. Amalia’s face was flawless, not a pore in sight, and neither of the two males would ever lack for female attention.

  It made me wonder what the hell Saul was doing with me. Not for the first time, and a question I was mulling over more and more lately.

  “You bet.” But Theron stayed where he was, looking first at Saul, then curiously at me, the line deepening. “Um…”

  “She’s hungry.” Saul folded his arms, and a hint of gravel poured through the bottom of the words.

  It was so unlike him my jaw threatened to drop. But Theron just shrugged, Amalia tipped me a wink and a salute, and both of them disappeared, leaving us to seat ourselves.

  “What was that?” I poked him on the shoulder when he didn’t respond. “Saul?”

  He gave me a single dark glance, hitched one shoulder up, and dropped it. I sighed and considered folding my arms, but Saul set off for our regular booth along the back wall and Theron showed up again, carrying a stack of damp washcloths.

  “Here you go.” The Werepanther gave me a meaningful look. I raised my eyebrows, my hands full of warm, sopping wet cloth. “You guys want a beer?”

  “Might as well.” I wiggled my eyebrows and pointed my chin at Saul’s retreating back. What’s up with him? Help me out here.

  Theron just looked confused, a blush sliding along his high-arched cheekbones. His dark hair fell across his forehead, curls and waves damp with sweat. It looked like Micky’s had seen a heavy night; he was just cleaning up before dawn.

  The liquor laws in Santa Luz kind of don’t apply to the nonhumans. Hellbreed and Trader bars go the same way, only they rol
lick far harder than any place the Weres run.

  In both senses of the word. Harder, dirtier, and far, far fouler.

  “What’s wrong?” I mouthed, wishing my eyebrows would go up higher and that my face could communicate the complexity of the question I wanted to ask.

  Theron spread his hands helplessly, spun on the balls of his feet, and set off for the hall running alongside the kitchen. It actually looked like he was retreating.

  What the hell is going on here? The washcloths—they were bar towels, soaked and smelling of bleach and fresh laundry—dripped in my hands, rapidly cooling. Nobody was likely to give an answer. I heard one of the cooks in the depths of the kitchen off to my right swear, and the hiss of something hitting the grill.

  Yeah, sometimes when you go into Micky’s around dawn, you get what the cooks think you should eat instead of anything on the menu. It’s always good, and you should never look a Were’s gift in the mouth, so to speak.

  I shook my head, silver clicking in my hair, and headed for the girls’ room. I’d probably feel better about all this once I was a little cleaner.

  Then again, I thought, clutching the washrags, maybe I won’t.

  Saul slid the file across the table at me and tucked into his fried-eggs-and-ham. I took a long pull off a bottle of microbrew Theron had slung on the table and eyed the steak-and-eggs combo, hash browns cremated the way I like them, extra bacon, and toast slathered with butter. It probably had enough calories in it to keep me fueled through a long night of chasing evil. I wondered if it would fuel my brain enough for me to figure out the pattern behind the murders.

  Once I started eating, I realized how hungry I was. This led to a good quarter-hour spent in silence, just the clinking of forks on plates and an occasional slurp. I finished my beer and another arrived. So did more toast. Amalia simply plunked down a fresh plate of it and raised an eyebrow—about the closest she’d get to telling me I’d better eat it all.