Smoke & Mirrors

by C. L. Schneider

  As my opponent jumped again, I anticipated his landing faster this time. Rolling clear, I came up beside an old worktable, grabbed the rusted pipe wrench on top, and hurled it. I smiled as the hefty weight whacked him in the shin.

  There were more tools. Keeping him back, I lobbed a question with each one—starting with the bolt cutters. “Who are you working for?” He slid sideways, avoiding the hit, and I moved onto the hammer. “The guy who ran? Is he your boss or another grunt like you?” A case of drill bits went next, striking him harmlessly in the chest. “Doesn’t seem like he cares much…or he wouldn’t have left you here to die.” Flinging a set of screwdrivers—one, two, three, four, five—at his spring-loaded form, I missed every time. Though, I liked the growl of frustration he released. It was the first emotion any of them had displayed.

  But the silent treatment was getting old.

  “Screw it. I don’t care what you are or what you know. I’m done.” I nabbed the last item on the table and concealed it at my side. “You want me? Come get me.”

  His body shot up in a gravity defying move, and he catapulted toward me. Both feet struck my chest, hurling me into the worktable. My weight was too much for the rotted wood. All four legs collapsed at once, dropping me with a splinter of boards and a puff of dust.

  Looming over me in a standing straddle, my attacker took a knee. As he drove a fist toward my face, I grabbed it with my flaming right hand. In my left was the rusty saw blade I’d stolen off the table. With a fast upswing, I ripped the serrated edge across his chest. Steel cut through fabric and meat. Orange consumed his trapped fist, as I pushed fire from my other hand. The tongues flared as they climbed swiftly up wrist, elbow, forearm, shoulder, and head.

  I scooted back from his thrashing limbs and muffled screams. It was only a moment before his fiery form fell quiet and dropped, landing on top of his unconscious companion. As the body I’d hoped to examine caught fire, I rushed forward to pull it free. I needed a look under the mask. But there was nothing to look at, only a bonfire of crispy, misshapen remains and a fiery trail on the floor, leading straight to the tip of my boots.

  Now they smell like something, I thought, frowning at the stench of roasting flesh and burning hair. The odor was too ordinary to be helpful. Their friends were in no condition to be useful, either. My wild shots at the acrobat had ignited the surplus of debris, setting the room—and the bodies—on fire. “Damnit.”

  There wasn’t even time for a DNA sample. The flames were spreading too fast. Once they reached the upper floors, any creatures still captive in the building would die.

  I ran upstairs. The main factory floor was massive, bordered by offices and small rooms. In the center, rusted machines, parts, pipes, barrels, debris, and busted furnishings, sat beneath enough dust and decay to make me gag. The maze of duct-work near the ceiling hung low, barely attached and ready to snap off at a moment’s notice. I couldn’t possibly check it all. I looked in a few rooms and called out. But there was no reply, no sound. No menacing or peculiar shadows in the corners. Just dirty mattresses and overturned shopping carts. Even my empathy came up empty. Unlike the basement, the ghosts on this floor were old and weak.

  Confident no one else was in the building, I headed back to the basement. As I rounded the stairs, I called Creed. I was surprised the phone worked, after my various falls. The signal was nonexistent, but it didn’t lessen the wariness in his voice as he answered.

  “Nite? Where the hell are you?”

  “I don’t have time to explain. Get everyone back from the west side. There’s a fire in the old steel factory.”

  “Did you say fire? I can barely hear you.”

  I raised my voice. “There’s a lot of old equipment in here and plenty of kindling. The structure is unstable. It’s not a good combination.”

  “Guess it’s a good thing you stumbled onto it.”

  He was calling me out. And he was pissed. Neither surprised me. “I’ll fill you in once I get out of here. Right now, you need to get the area cleared. This building is coming down.”

  I hung up before he could say more.

  Ensuring my warning came to pass, I started at the back of the room and blasted away at anything remotely combustible. I doubled my fire power with both hands and moved onto the structure itself. The load-bearing beams were thick, but they’d crack with the right force and heat.

  I wasn’t happy destroying one of the oldest buildings in the Sentinel. Even less, not salvaging a shred of physical evidence. But the exit in the middle of the room took priority. I couldn’t risk something coming out or going in, and I couldn’t wait for the Guild to close it off. Letting any human in the basement—Creed, the forensics team, the city maintenance crew, firefighters—and having one or more disappear into an exit, was a nightmare scenario I couldn’t let happen.

  Flame was climbing all four walls. More rolled, dark and angry, across the ceiling. The stairs were coming apart. The old machinery was popping and exploding. Breathing and visibility both were a problem. I lobbed off a few parting shots and left the basement.

  Retracing my steps, as I reached the long, narrow passage with the partitioned rooms, I spotted Evans coming toward me. He barely got out a worried, “Where have you been? Where’s all that smoke coming from?” before I spun him around.

  “We need to go.” Stifling a cough, I started forward. “Now.”

  “What are you running from?”

  I reached back and pulled him along. “I’m not running. I’m strategically retreating from the building about to fall on my head.”

  Evans stumbled out of my grip. “Wait—what? What happened back there?” He rushed to catch up. “What did you do?”

  “What I had to.”

  Five

  Elbows on his desk, hands clasped in support of his heavy chin, the captain’s scowl seemed to shrink the space between us. “A mass grave in my city? Dismembered bodies on the banks of my river? In my sewer?” Gattlin Barnes had a way of making everything “his” when it came to the safety and protection of the Sentinel. He took every affront, every crime, personally. It was an outlook we shared.

  Probably one of the few, I thought, watching the captain push the heels of his hands into his forehead. A transplanted Texan, Barnes was hard-nosed and colorful. He was fast to heap praise on his employees when it was due. When it wasn’t, he ripped them apart even faster.

  Barnes dropped his hands and leaned back. Plucking a pen off his desk, he tapped it on the surface as he swiveled his chair sideways, rocking back and forth. “How many people are we talking about?”

  They weren’t all people, I thought. But I kept that tidbit to myself and let Creed handle the inquisition. I was achy, singed, bruised, and smelling of smoke and sewer water. I’d ruined another jacket, and the sun was set on a day that started with it rising over a bank of mutilated remains. The less I stirred the pot with Barnes, the quicker I could go home, eat, and wash out whatever was gummed in the knots in my hair.

  My discovery of the fire had been taken for what it was: someone intentionally burning the evidence. The fact that I was the culprit was a fine point no one but Evans needed to know. Exactly how I found the factory was another detail I decided to leave out. Telling Creed about my rash decision to follow a mysterious man through the sewer wouldn’t solve the case faster. It wasn’t like I had a way to track him or his acrobatic murder squad.

  Instead, I kept my report as simple as possible.

  I arrived to find the basement on fire. Several men in hoods and masks were leaving through an upstairs door, with evidence of recent habitation of more. Human remains were on the floor, piled next to several working furnaces, but I had nothing with me to gather samples. There was no time to sweep the room, let alone the rest of the building. Girders and pipes were collapsing, earning me my various bumps. Forced to flee back through the sewer, I grabbed Evans and ran.

  No one questioned my story. Even Creed backed off. He was glad to have a clue, regardless
of how slim, and was quick to alter the course of our investigation to include multiple suspects. I could have left that part out, too. There were no active security cameras in the area, and whatever remains survived the fire, were buried under rubble that wouldn’t be cleared anytime soon. But lying about their number could easily backfire. Their crimes were too showy, too open and unpredictable and—

  “Careless,” I said aloud, my frustration too much to keep inside. “They’re acting carelessly, and I can’t figure out why.”

  Barnes swiveled to face me. “Could be that’s exactly what they are.”

  “Could be.”

  “Meaning, it isn’t.” He glanced at Creed. “Took me a while, but I’m starting to speak her language.”

  “Took me a while, too,” Creed replied. Pretending I wasn’t frowning at them both, he elaborated on my thought. “It comes down to good business sense. According to what Dahlia saw in the steel factory, our killers had a successful disposal system. Then, suddenly, they decide to deviate from destroying the evidence, to burying it somewhere with a high probability of being found. They altered their safe routine for a careless one.”

  “Something changed their approach,” I said, “or caused it to breakdown.”

  “Nothing lasts forever, Miss Nite,” Barnes cut in. “Not even secrets.”

  My skin chilled at his shrewd observation.

  “Well, if they wanted attention, they’ve got it,” he drawled. “I assume you swept the rest of the buildings on the block and got nothing?” Barnes paused, waiting for our nods. “What about an ID or time of death on our victims?”

  “Not yet,” Creed said. “We don’t have enough of the right parts to put a single body together, sir. Technically, other than the severed head and torsos, we can’t prove anyone else is dead.”

  Barnes started to speak, then opted for dropping his forehead in his hands.

  “It might be what they were burning in the furnace,” Creed said. “It’s also possible the missing pieces were kept as trophies, or for some spell or occult ritual.”

  The captain’s head snapped up. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

  I slid Creed a look. Even if we had discussed satanic ritual as a motive, I would never have mentioned it to Barnes. Still, it wasn’t bad for a cover. And having his back might earn me points I could redeem later. “Ritualistic spells often require specific organs,” I said. “But we’re looking at all angles.”

  “Angles,” Barnes grunted. “You’ve got no suspects, no motive, and no IDs. Sounds like a big old pile of bupkiss to me.” He looked back and forth between us, challenging us to argue.

  I never could resist a dare. “Harper’s team found a clean set of tread marks near the river. Looks like a box van or panel truck. We’re hoping to narrow down a make and model.”

  “Traffic cams in the area are being pulled for the last seventy-two hours,” Creed added. “Hopefully, we can place a vehicle on the access road or find one in the vicinity that matches the tread.”

  “How about what you find, Detective,” Barnes said with a forced, tight grin, “is a way to hold this together with more than your usual bubblegum and string? The UCU has been humming along the past two months on easy clues and quick-close cases. Now that you’ve snagged one with some teeth, don’t let it bite you in the ass.” Barnes jabbed a finger across the desk at him in emphasis. “Don’t let it bite this department in the ass.”

  Creed’s reply was a respectful, “Yes, sir.”

  “Go on then, get out of here,” Barnes ordered us. “You’ve been at this since dawn, and it’s damn near 7 o’clock. Get cleaned up and come back at it with fresh eyes in the morning.”

  “If it’s all right,” Creed said, “I’d like to stay a while longer.”

  “You mean stay and obsess over clues we don’t have?” I said. “Shocking.”

  The captain shot me a veiled grin. “You want to work yourself into an early grave, Detective, be my guest. I’m going home to my wife before she forgets what I look like and…” Barnes left off at a knock on the door. Permanent laugh lines drooping, he bellowed out a reluctant, “What is it?”

  Evans opened the door. “Sorry, Captain, for the interruption.” He’d changed into a clean, dry SCPD uniform and washed the sewer smell from his hair. He was one up on me.

  Barnes gestured at him. “Spit it out, son.”

  “We got a call about a possible abduction. It happened near one of the detective’s former crime scenes.” Evans swung his gaze to Creed. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  Creed stood with an interested tilt of his head. “Where?”

  “The old jogging trail by the underpass,” Evans said. “It’s where that woman was burned last summer, in connection to the Chandler case. Part of it runs behind the old industrial district where—”

  “The steel factory is,” I finished for him.

  “Was,” Evans corrected me. “We have someone claiming she witnessed two individuals involved in a physical altercation. One was knocked out and dragged off into the bushes.”

  Barnes dismissed us with a weary wave at the door. Creed closed it behind him as we stepped out. He turned to Evans. “This isn’t just about the location, is it?”

  Evans waited for the officers walking by to move out of earshot. His tense, brown gaze met mine a moment more before he replied. “The witness insists neither the kidnapper, nor the victim, were human.”

  Shit, I thought. There goes my shower.

  “Are you hard of hearing?” Scorn pinched the heavy-set woman’s features as she turned to me and repeated the question. “Is he hard of hearing?” Deciding my reply was unnecessary, she pivoted back to Creed and unleashed another round of nasally displeasure. “What do they think, I’m making it up? Is that why they sent a deaf cop to take my statement?”

  “I’m not deaf, Mrs.—” Creed glanced at the notebook in his hand, “Wyzackalowski.” he said, working hard not to trip over her name. “I can hear you fine.”

  “Then hear this, Detective,” she pushed out his title like it tasted sour. “The same questions get the same answers.” She paused to reposition the sweater-clad toy poodle in her arms. “You want something different, try a new one.”

  Chewing the smile off my lips, I backed up. “Excuse me…” Creed threw me a look. It was a hard, pleading expression that said I’d pay for abandoning ship.

  I left anyway.

  He had it under control. Mostly. The witness was grumpy and testing my partner’s limited patience, but at least she was eager to talk. With no coaxing whatsoever, the woman had explained in detail how a flat tire had forced her to pull over on the shoulder. When she opened the door to have a look, “naughty Mr. Sparkles jumped out and scooted right under the overpass guardrail like he was on a mission”. Yipping and barking, he ran down the embankment to the little-used trail. After a harrowing pursuit that included a tumble on the muddy slope, she finally caught the little fugitive perched at the edge of the path. Expecting a fox or racoon to have prompted the dog’s bad behavior, Mrs. Wyzackalowski ended her story with a dramatic, “imagine my surprise” when she spotted “two unhuman beasts” fighting in the grassy area alongside the trail.

  The bigger, more aggressive one had tufts of silver fur escaping the rips in his clothes. She couldn’t see his face, only the moonlight glinting off his claws as he attacked his opponent, who had long, spindly arms and red eyes.

  The alleged abduction took place in a weed-infested lot thirty feet from her position. The moon was bright. The street lights on the highway above were on, sharing their light with a good portion of the trail below. Yet, as I walked toward the area she indicated, it was predominantly in shadow. An overactive imagination could confuse wind-blown scrub and leafless saplings for something else, especially with Halloween approaching.

  That didn’t mean Mrs. Wyzackalowski was mistaken, but I wouldn’t have to work too hard to discredit her account.

  Nodding to the officer ropi
ng off the scene, I clicked on my flashlight and stepped off the path. Mud gripped the low heels of my boots. The aroma of damp vegetation and wet dog were sharp. Mr. Sparkles must have braved a few steps before the tall weeds enticed him to turn around. I didn’t blame the poor pooch. Whoever oversaw maintenance for the lot had clearly taken a year off. In places, the tangled brush was up to my thighs. Broken limbs and uprooted branches, swept in by the recent heavy rains, created thick mounds of scrub. Wind had bowed the grass in places, flattening the blades in a distinctive natural pattern of wind-swept swirls.

  Several areas were bent and broken unlike the others. Nature didn’t do this, I thought. Something large had fallen here. Multiple times.

  “And here,” I murmured, following the depressions away from the trail. Pausing, I stared across to the end of the lot. Farther in the distance, set against the city lights, loomed the black husk of the steel factory. It was only a few hours ago when the fire was extinguished. Smoke and other chemicals still fouled the air. I sorted them out and categorized the rest as I walked.

  Moist soil. Decaying leaves. Faint skunk spray. Some kind of—

  What is that? Spice?

  Keeping the woman’s description in mind, I tried to recall where I’d encountered the unique odor before. I closed my eyes and inhaled.

  “Baubas,” I said with a snap of my fingers.

  One of the creatures who gave rise to the myth of The Boogeyman, the baubas were known for having elongated limbs and demonic eyes. And if you, somehow, managed to wound one, their blood had a smoky, spicy aroma.

  As far as I knew, no exit in the city led to the world the baubas inhabited. But having a boogeyman in town wasn’t any crazier than a banshee defying a centuries-old ban. Having them here at the same time, along with a harpy and the multitude of creatures I saw in my vision at the factory, added up to exactly what Creed predicted: one hell of a shitstorm.