Spirit Dances

by C. E. Murphy

  “What else?” Monroe wasn’t pushy, but he wasn’t going to let her be distracted, either. I’d been in that position myself, finding ways to draw details out of a witness happier to dwell on something else.

  Rita folded her hands around her coffee cup again. “He was already cold. The blood was thick on the sidewalk. I tried not to step in it. I didn’t try to take his pulse or anything. I just ran for the pay phone. I left bloody footprints and that’s what made me think of the paw prints. That’s why I said it was a murder. And that’s why I asked for you, Detective Walker. I thought you’d believe me.”

  I was not about to screw up somebody else’s murder investigation by assuring Rita that I did believe her, even though I did. “I’m glad to be able to help, Rita. Look, I need to go talk to my partner, if that’s all right with you two.”

  “Not a problem.” Monroe stood up and gave Rita an acceptably genuine smile. “Thanks for your help, Ms. Wagner. If you want to stay here another few minutes I’ll get you another cup of coffee and send an artist to talk to you about the regular Saturday morning joggers.”

  Rita looked into her cup and shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  “All right. Sit tight, I’ll get the artist in here right away.” Monroe left. I, who’d instigated the little party’s breakup, went and got myself and Billy giant cups of coffee, and got Rita one and a pastry, too, despite her refusal.

  And, despite that refusal, she took both. I sat down again, curiosity prodding me to ask, “Is our relationship the only reason you asked for me?”

  She gave me a funny smile. “Relationship?”

  I made a face, feeling silly. “Cop talk. It’s one of those words that carries a lot of weight in civilian terms but is easier than finding more delicate ones on the force. Acquaintance, if you like.”

  “I thought you’d believe me,” she repeated, then made a long, silent observation of her pastry before finally adding, “and I think it’ll take a miracle to find Lynn’s murderer. You’re the miracle that saved me.”

  A sad soft place opened up in my heart. “Why do you think it’ll take a miracle?”

  “Because he’s nobody, Detective. He’s just like me. I’m sure that other detective will make some effort. But we’re just a bunch of vagrants. Someone with money or family will get killed soon and nobody will care very much that Lynn’s case goes cold. Except maybe you. You cared enough to save me.”

  This was not the right time to protest saving her had been a complete accident. It wasn’t the right time to protest much of everything, except a gentle, “This isn’t my jurisdiction, Rita. I’m not supposed to work cases downtown.”

  “Will that stop you?”

  The woman had my number. A sigh, resoundingly heartfelt, escaped me. “Probably not. Look, I’ll ask Detective Monroe to keep me in the loop on the case, okay? Because you’re right. If this doesn’t get cleared up really fast, it probably won’t at all. That’s how murders are anyway, but the circumstances here aren’t favorable. If it slips off Monroe’s radar, I promise I’ll pick it up. Okay?”

  She smiled and the soft place in my heart took an arrow through it. It was easy to look through people, especially street people, to pretend they didn’t exist at all. But confronted with Rita Wagner’s youthful smile, I couldn’t do that. I didn’t even want to. Somebody had granted me a phenomenal cosmic power set. In my good moments I thought I could save Seattle, maybe even the world. In the more realistic ones, what mattered, what really mattered, was that I could just maybe save one person. Nobody could save every one, but I could help individuals, and that, when I got right down to it, was a hell of a thing. “I can find you at the soup kitchen if I need you?”

  “If I’m not there someone can find me.”

  “All right.” I stood up again, collecting Billy’s coffee as Monroe escorted the sketch artist in. “Take care of yourself, Rita.”

  “You too, Detective.”

  I left the coffee shop feeling like I’d made the world a slightly better place.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The feeling lasted all the way back to the crime scene. Billy accepted his coffee with a grimace instead of a thanks, which didn’t bode well. I barely got a look at the body before he herded me across the street, where we had a semblance of privacy. “Not much to tell,” he informed me grimly. “The victim’s name is Lynn Schumacher, but that’s just about all he remembers. I don’t think the medical examiner has pinpointed a time of death yet, but it was more than two hours ago and its violence isn’t triggering enough need for retribution that his ghost is hanging on with any strength.”

  “That probably means his own perception is that it wasn’t murder, right?” Mostly the dead passed over to The Other Side, whatever other side you chose to believe in, without much fuss. Violent deaths tended to leave ghosts behind, sometimes because the spirits were simply so shocked they didn’t know they were dead. Other times they knew very well they were dead and were in search of some kind of vengeance. Experience indicated those were not nice ghosts to deal with. More often, though—from what Billy said— ghosts lay between those two extremes: they had some idea what had happened, and were hoping to impart a little information or be satisfied that someone sought justice on their behalf.

  Billy nodded and I sighed into my coffee cup, blowing amaretto-scented steam into the street. It was good for Lynn that he wasn’t traumatized by having his throat ripped out, but not terribly useful for us. “Does he have any information at all?”

  “Not much more than we can glean ourselves. Dog attack of some kind. He thought it had yellow eyes.”

  I crossed my eyes as if to see them, much like Morrison had done the night before and with about as much success. I wasn’t calling on the Sight right now anyway, so they wouldn’t be gold, but I wondered what color they’d been when I shapeshifted. Coyote’s were always gold in his coyote form, but then, coyote eyes were gold. I dug my cell phone out of my coat pocket and tapped in Billy’s home number. “Dogs, domesticated dogs, don’t have gold eyes very often, do they?”

  “Not the ones I see. Of course, the ones I see don’t rip people’s throats out very often, either.” We exchanged dirty looks, and Billy added, “Seattle’s got coyotes, though. I never heard of anybody seeing any downtown, but it was a rough winter.”

  “I don’t think coyotes rip people’s throats out very often, either, for that matter. I don’t think they usually att—hey, Melinda? This is Joanne. Don’t worry, everything’s fine, I just have a weird question. What color were my eyes when I shifted?”

  Melinda Holliday could take anything in stride. She barely missed a beat before saying, “Yellow, which I didn’t even think about until you asked. Snake eyes are black. Why?”

  “Just a data point. Maybe a totally useless one, but I wanted to know. Thanks.”

  She said, “Sure,” and hung up, leaving me to bump my phone against my lips until I remembered I had a much tastier coffee to sip. “I was saying, coyotes usually won’t attack adult humans, either, unless they’re cornered.”

  “Well,” Billy said dryly, and gestured to where Lynn Schumacher’s body had been found. “Technically that’s a corner.”

  I whacked his shoulder and he grinned. “Why’d you ask Mel about your eyes?”

  “Because I’m paranoid that everything I come in contact with anymore is supernatural.” I was only half kidding, and Billy gave me a sympathetic smirk. A little more seriously, I said, “Because Rita said there are no paw prints around the body, even though there’s blood everywhere. A dog could have gotten really lucky, maybe, but since I just shapeshifted for the first time last night I’m wondering if other people at the dance concert could’ve been similarly affected. Maybe it’s ‘I have a hammer so everything is a nail’ syndrome, but I did have Morrison there to pull me back. What if somebody else went through a metamorphosis and just panicked?”

  “You are getting paranoid,” Billy said, but somehow it sounded like a compliment. “You think tha
t’s a possibility?”

  “I think it’s as likely as a coyote or mad dog attacking somebody off Pioneer Square.” I had to be quiet for a minute after that, just to stand there and appreciate how topsy-turvy my world had gone in the past fifteen months. Then my phrasing caught up with me. “It’s an animal attack, so the M.E. will check for rabies, right? Maybe I really am paranoid and it’s just a mad dog.”

  “Maybe. Are you going to proceed as if it is?”

  “You mean am I going to proceed on this case which isn’t in my jurisdiction and may have nothing to do with the paranormal and so can’t possibly be justified to my ill-tempered boss who has already, and with good reason, suspended me from duty, much less some other precinct’s captain?” I finished my coffee, threw the cup away and shrugged. “Yes, I am, and no, I’m not going to assume it’s rabies, not until the M.E. says as much. I wonder if I can get Reynolds to nab a copy of the autopsy report.”

  “Paranoid and devious,” Billy said with admiration. “We’ll make a detective of you yet.”

  “Not if I get busted for treading in other peoples’ territory when I’m not supposed to be working at all.” I finally triggered the Sight as I spoke, looking for…

  Well, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. Signs of magic having been done, or some helpful flash in a pan that suggested some other poor sap had gotten hit with the same theater whammy I had. Coyote’d said changing without intent was dangerous. I’d gotten lucky, but if someone else hadn’t, I might be able to help them get back to normal.

  Except there wasn’t any lingering trace of magic in the square. The West Precinct’s squad was doing its job with focused efficiency, auras touching and blending so they became a single creature with many parts, all bent on the same ends. Lynn Schumacher was the quiet point at the center of their work, but I couldn’t see ghosts at all, and he had no residual marks of power left on him. “I’m starting to think most magic just doesn’t track well. Unless there’s some kind of significant ritual or major physical upset, it’s there and then it’s just gone, poof.”

  “Can’t be. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

  I was about to argue that magic by definition wasn’t physics, then remembered the backlash of my powers reawakening and silenced my own protests. “So I’m just a lousy tracker.”

  “Nobody’s perfect. The good news is that old-fashioned police work gets the job done, too, Walker. This could just be a wild dog.”

  “Yeah.” But Naomi Allison’s death hadn’t been, and I was the only person who had any chance at all of solving that. “All right. I’ll ask Doctor Reynolds to try to get a copy of the autopsy report and until then I’ll assume this is a perfectly ordinary wild dog killing in downtown Seattle. In the meantime—”

  “Detective Walker?” Rita Wagner, looking less haggard than she had earlier, appeared at my elbow. “Detective, I thought of something that might not be important….”

  “About Lynn?”

  “No. Just about the Underground.” She gave Billy a cautious look, but went on, apparently trusting that if neither Monroe nor I had busted her for camping out in the lost parts of Seattle, Billy wasn’t likely to, either. “Or about the people who stay there, I guess. Some of them have disappeared.”

  A mixture of sorrow and resignation filled my chest. “I hate to say it, Rita, but…”

  “I know. We’re vagrants. We disappear, we move on, we end up like Lynn. But the population down there is pretty steady. Like I said, we keep an eye out for each other.”

  I’d already promised the woman I wouldn’t dismiss her or her concerns, so I nodded, determined to at least hear her out. She smiled, but it faded fast. “Even when we do take off, it’s not usually in clumps. Maybe two or even three, but it’s five, Detective Walker.”

  “All from the Underground? How recently?”

  “I’ve been staying there lately, so I wouldn’t know about anywhere else. In the last ten days or so, though. One every couple days. It’s too many.”

  “But no murders? Nothing like what happened to Lynn?”

  Rita shook her head and I puffed my cheeks. “That’s something, I guess. All right. I’ll try to look into it, Rita. Missing persons aren’t my department.”

  “I know. I just thought maybe I should mention it.”

  “Mention it to Detective Monroe, too. Just to cover my ass, so he can’t say I’m hiding anything from him, okay?”

  She gave an unenthusiastic nod and went to shadow the crime scene’s edge, clearly waiting to be worthy of notice. Billy watched her, his mouth twisted with uncertainty. “Somebody like that could get more attention from this one incident than she’s had for years. I hope she’s not making things up to stay in the spotlight.”

  I didn’t want Rita to be lying, but my partner had a point. “I’ll come back down here tonight, on my own time, to ask around about missing people.”

  “And right now?”

  “Right now I’d really like to go home and put some pants on.”

  Unfortunately for me, I actually had tagged along with Billy instead of driving Petite downtown, in order to make my presence at the scene slightly more acceptable. Women in miniskirts climbing out of purple classic Mustangs were not likely to be taken seriously at a crime scene. So he brought me back to the precinct building, where I followed him upstairs to Homicide in hopes of bumming a ride back to the Hollidays’ house from somebody going off-shift.

  Jim Littlefoot was waiting for me when I got there. I had a brief vision of myself: cropped hair a mess from the hat I’d been wearing, winter-weight police jacket unzipped to show my sweater hanging over the silly knit skirt and my bare legs poking out until heavy boots enveloped my ankles. It wasn’t, overall, a particularly flattering picture.

  It was still a hell of a lot better than Littlefoot looked. I knew I hadn’t slept, but he obviously hadn’t, either, and his dancer’s stamina did nothing to alleviate the bags under his eyes. I almost yawned, looking at him, and did make my eyes water by fighting the yawn off. “Mr. Littlefoot. I didn’t expect to see you. This is my partner, Detective Billy Holliday.” I gestured to Billy and got out of the way so they could shake hands.

  They spent about five seconds trying not to do the obvious: Billy struggling not to look at Littlefoot’s feet, and Littlefoot fighting the urge to ask if this was live or Memorex. Nobody much cared that it had been Ella Fitzgerald on that recording. She and Billie Holiday were contemporaries, and that was close enough.

  When they’d both manned up, gotten past impulses and shaken hands, I offered Littlefoot a seat, took my own and said, “What can I do for you?”

  “You can come to tonight’s performance.” Littlefoot pushed a pair of theater tickets across the desk toward me. Billy’s eyebrows rose with interest, and he pulled a chair over from nearby, thumping down to listen in. Littlefoot glanced at him, then turned his attention back to me. “The troupe decided this morning that the only way to honor Naomi’s memory was to continue the show.”

  “You have someone who can…” I didn’t want to say take her place, because that sounded needlessly callous. “Who can dance the part? You said it had been hard to find the right people for the troupe.”

  “Two understudies. You can’t go on a tour this long with out a more-than-full complement. The understudies are as much a part of us as the primary dancers. And they under stand the risk they’re taking.”

  It took me a minute to catch up to the risk, and then I straightened in my chair. “This isn’t just about the show must go on, is it? You’re hoping to draw another attack.” It was exactly the kind of thing I would do. I had a disconcerting moment of heart-lifting admiration combined with gut clenching fear, and wondered if that’s what people around me felt when I charged off on some particularly stupid campaign against evil. I didn’t dare look at Billy for fear of finding just exactly that expression of accusation on his face.

  “Only if you’ll help us,” Littlefoot said, therefore
showing far more wisdom than I was ever inclined to. “You said last night you’d been unable to track the attack after the fact. What if you were prepared for it?”

  “I might be able to, then.” After today—after the wendigo, after a whole series of failures to track or recognize bad guys when I thought I should be able to—I wasn’t going to make any promises. “What I can almost certainly do is protect you all from the attack. It’s psychic, which means I should be able to shield you from it.”

  Relief shadowed Littlefoot’s dark eyes. “We all understand the concept of shielding, but the ghost dance—the entire program—is about sharing, not shielding. I’m not sure we could change our intent fast enough, even after last night, to protect Winona. Naomi’s replacement,” he said to my brief incomprehension, though he and I both winced at the choice of word. “Naomi’s understudy.”

  I nodded, then had to say it, just to be sure: “You realize this is a completely insane risk you’re taking here, right?”

  A smile flickered across his face. “Not if I’m right about trusting you. I have to get back to the theater, Detective.

  You’re welcome to join us as early as you like. The tickets are a formality, in case you want to be in the audience, but I don’t know what you’ll need to do.”

  “I’ll be there early enough to meet everyone. That’ll make shielding them easier.”

  “Good. Thank you.” Littlefoot stood and so did I, with Billy, who’d remained suspiciously silent, coming to his feet a moment later. We shook hands with Littlefoot and as he left, I reached for the tickets he’d put on my desk.

  Billy snatched them up. “Bet Mel and I can find a babysitter for tonight.”