Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "Sunny, you're being childish," I told her.

  "I'm not the one keeping secrets about why you were even in Waterfront last night," she hissed.

  "I got suspended," I said calmly.

  Sunny's face went bright pink. "What!" she shrieked.

  I put the phone to my ear. "Mac?"

  "Luna?"

  "Hold on a second."

  Sunny gave me a glare that would have sent Sandovsky yelping for the hills. "What do you mean you got suspended?"

  "Bryson's minuscule manhood got bruised and he filed a complaint. Roenberg took it, and suspended me."

  "Luna?" McAllister shouted from the phone. "You there?"

  I rubbed the point between my eyes. "I went to Waterfront looking for a suspect."

  Sunny crossed her arms. "And by the looks of it you found him."

  "You can drop that prissy tone," I told her. "You know damn well my job isn't all paperwork and procedure."

  "No, apparently it's just a way for you to fight your own little war against people who have more common sense than you," Sunny returned. "Nice to see it's working out so well." She spun and flounced out of the room before I could think of a comeback. She was being a bitch. And she was right.

  I sat down on the bottom step and raised the phone. "Sorry, Mac. What is it?"

  "Get down to the precinct," he said roughly. "You've been reinstated."

  "What?" I gaped. "How?"

  "Don't ask me," he said. "Someone from City Hall requested you personally to work a missing person case."

  "I'm a homicide detective, Mac. Unless he's missing and dead—"

  "Do you want to come back on duty or not, Wilder?"

  "Yes, sir," I said. "I'll be there in half an hour."

  * * * *

  Sunny was in the kitchen chopping peppers for an omelet when I found her, shoulders hunched inside a green sweater.

  I went on the offensive and smiled. "Planning on making one for me?"

  The knife moved faster, and the cutting board rattled.

  "No."

  "Aw, why not?"

  She stopped chopping and faced me. "You are not going to sweep this under the rug, Luna."

  "Sweep what?" I asked with wide eyes.

  "Don't bullshit me," Sunny warned. I played innocent very badly, apparently.

  "You're suspended because you're a were," Sunny said. "No, I take that back. You're suspended because you can't control being a were, and you refuse to figure out how."

  I stopped trying to be nice. "That's not true, and that's a hell of a thing to say. You think I like having to constantly hold on for fear that if I have a bad day, I could kill somebody?"

  "Well, I don't know," said Sunny. "You ran from the one person who could have taught you about the bite."

  "Joshua seduced me, attacked me, and was well on his way to raping me, Sunny. Should I have stuck around?"

  She waved the knife at me and went back to chopping. "The point is, having magicks isn't a gods-given gift that you can run with as you please. It took me a long time to learn how to manipulate the circle and—"

  "Hex it, Sunny, I'm not some caster witch who can choose to ignore her powers when they get inconvenient. And I didn't have a wise old mentor to say, Hey, it's okay if you snap and tear somebody apart when the phase takes you. All part of the package, sweetheart."

  Sunny stiffened at wise old mentor. "She was there for you, too, Luna."

  "Don't even start," I spat. "Our grandmother couldn't even look at me when she found out what I was. I'm invisible to her."

  Sunny looked away first. Point, me. "She's the most powerful caster witch I know. If you ask her, she'll help you."

  "I will never ask Rhoda Swann for anything'''

  Sunny sighed. "Do you want an omelet?"

  "Forget it," I said. "I'm late for work."

  Six

  In the daylight, the Twenty-fourth looked worn-out and faded, the brick cracked and the windows filmed with grime.

  The same city Lexus was in the parking lot, only this time they had taken Bryson's space. I decided the thrill I got from that fact was totally appropriate.

  In the squad room McAllister was leaning on my desk. His first words were, "Hex, Wilder. Who gave you that shiner?"

  "I walked into some stairs."

  "Sure," said Mac. "Roenberg's waiting for us in his office."

  The captain opened his door before Mac had a chance to knock. "Troy. And Detective Wilder. Come in, please. We've been waiting." Roenberg's imperious tone had the instant effect of making me feel like I was being summoned to the principal's office for something I hadn't done, but would be blamed for anyway.

  Roenberg ushered us in with one limp hand and shut the door. In the clear light of day, the liver spots on his cheeks and the flesh puddling on his neck were even more obvious.

  A tall, balding man was talking in whispers with the same snaky jerk who had taken my parking space the night Lilia Desko was killed, seated in the two chairs opposite Roenberg's desk. They looked up in tandem when Mac and I came in.

  Mac motioned to me and said to Baldy, "This is the detective you asked for."

  "Ah," said Baldy, standing. "It's a pleasure."

  Seeing him full-on, I recognized the square jaw and hawk nose immediately. That cleared up the mystery of why I'd been reinstated, but it didn't do a thing to explain why Alistair Duncan, Nocturne City's district attorney, had requested me out of the two hundred detectives roaming the streets.

  "Mr. Duncan." I shook his hand. "This is … unexpected."

  "I've heard great things about you," he said with a smile that looked like it hurt. "This is Regan Lockhart, the chief investigator for my office."

  "Detective," Lockhart smirked, offering a hand. My nose twitched. Lockhart really needed to lay off the cologne, expensive or otherwise. When a long second went by without me touching him, he withdrew the hand and dropped the smile.

  "You said this was a missing person," I reminded Mac.

  "Yes," said Duncan. "I'm afraid it is." He glanced to Lockhart, then to Roenberg before settling back on me. "There's no easy way to say this." He rubbed bis knobby hands over his head. The ring of gray hair over his ears stuck up wildly. "My son, Stephen… he hasn't been home in two days."

  "Is that unusual?" I asked. Lockhart shot me a glare, like I'd just asked if Stephen Duncan liked to smoke crystal meth and urinate on small dogs. I rolled my eyes and turned my back on him.

  "Stephen is a good son, Detective," said Duncan. "He's not answering his phone or his pager. He's never been out of touch for so long."

  "Okay," I said, pulling out my notepad and stealing a pen off Roenberg's desk. They wanted a detective, I'd be one. "Any idea where he might have gone?"

  "He was going out to dinner with a young woman friend at Mikado's," Duncan said. I scribbled. Mikado's was the kind of trendy restaurant where tiny pieces of food came on white plates and you spent four hundred dollars on a bottle of wine if you wanted to get laid.

  "Who's the woman?"

  "Her name is Marina. That's all I know." Duncan's affect was flat, almost pleasant. I could have been asking him what he'd eaten for breakfast.

  "And did Stephen take a car or was he driven?"

  "Mr. Duncan, Junior took his personal Mercedes to the dinner date," Lockhart said. He and Duncan picked up each other's sentences smoothly, like long-term partners on the force did. "We'd like you to focus on this Marina woman, and also trace any credit charges that may have occurred since Stephen fell out of contact. That will be the fastest way to locate him."

  I fixed my eyes on his and held them silently until he fidgeted. They were eerie, no color around the pupils except darkness, but I pretended not to notice. "Mr. Lockhart, if you're so sure of how I should do my job, why aren't you heading this investigation?"

  "Detective Wilder!" Roenberg shouted.

  Lockhart held up a hand to silence him.

  "I would like nothing better, Detective," he bit back at me, "b
ut Mr. Duncan is convinced that my involvement could represent a conflict of interest if prosecution of Stephen's abductors is necessary."

  Duncan let out a choked sound. Lockhart grimaced. "Sorry, Al."

  I closed my pad. "Mr. Duncan," I said softly, "what make you think Stephen's been kidnapped?"

  "Captain, would you please instruct your officer to do as we've asked?" Lockhart broke in before Duncan could speak.

  "Everything will be handled to the very best of our abilities," said Roenberg smoothly. He touched the DA's shoulder. "Don't you worry, Al." I fought the urge to hand Duncan the card for my dry cleaner, to get rid of the slime.

  Roenberg snapped his fingers at Mac. "Troy, will you please show the DA and Mr. Lockhart out?"

  McAllister turned the color of a tomato. Nothing like a game of musical rank pulling to enliven the shift. "Yes, sir," he muttered tightly.

  As they walked out I heard Mac say to the DA, "Al, you and I both know your office is above reproach, but the next time one of your lapdogs tells my detectives how to do their job …" The glass door slammed shut. I started to follow when Roenberg caught me.

  "Detective Wilder, a moment." Goddess on a burning stick, not another one of his "moments."

  Roenberg sat back in his leather chair and steepled his fingers. His permanently bloodshot eyes gave me a tired stare. "I suppose you think this is some kind of victory."

  "I wouldn't go that far, Captain." When he'd suspended me, Roenberg had lost the privilege of me calling him sir.

  "Mr. Duncan and I go back a long way, Wilder. I tried to convince him that any other detective on Stephen's case would be more capable, but he would not be swayed. Don't ask me why." He leaned toward me, coming out of his chair, and I could smell his lunch on his breath. Steak and Caesar salad. "That being the way things are, I hope I can trust you to handle this matter discreetly."

  I sighed. Here it was, the veiled threat. I knew the moment Lockhart had let the word abductors slip this was going to get messy.

  "Do you understand me, Detective?" Roenberg demanded.

  "I'll handle the case in accordance with departmental media protocol." I smiled at Roenberg. That was the best he was getting out of me.

  "That's not what I mean and you know it!" he snapped, surprising me with his ferocity. "You breathe one word of this, Wilder, let one tiny detail slip to the press or your priest or your Hexed mother, and I will have your job and your ass." He stared at me, and the look was desperation writ large. His left hand clenched and unclenched, making the indistinct black tattoo on the palm fluctuate. "You'll be lucky to find work checking IDs in a Waterfront nightclub."

  I stood. "I can't tell you how much I enjoy our little chats, Captain. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a missing man to find. Discreetly, of course." I walked out and slammed the door behind me hard.

  Roenberg yelled, "I didn't dismiss you!" but I ignored him.

  * * * *

  The overweight second-shift detective who occupied the desk across the aisle gave me a startled glance as I sat down and slammed on my keyboard to bring up the police database. I gave him a rude look. "Help you with something, chubby?"

  "Bitch," he muttered, dropping his eyes back to the open file on his desk.

  I opened the database and searched for Marina, female, between twenty and thirty years old, last name unknown. No arrests, citations, or tickets. Next I accessed the DMV and tried for a driver's license or ID card. Nothing except the maddeningly blinking blue search box and the legend below it—NO RECORDS FOUND.

  No arrest record—not unusual. No traffic tickets, maybe, if you were an eighty-year-old white woman who only drove to church and back. But nothing, anywhere in our system, was well on impossible.

  I sat back and stared at the ceiling, trying to think of where else to search. There was one person who might be able to help me find Marina. I got my coat and headed for the morgue.

  * * * *

  Located on the third floor of the city crime labs, the Identification Division was sandwiched into a narrow room overflowing with file cabinets and computers. The tang of ink sat in the air, as well as a thin sheen of fingerprint powder. Three techs were bent over light tables, dusting away.

  I sneezed. The one closest to me looked up. "Help you?"

  "I'm looking for Pete Anderson," I told him.

  "Do you have an appointment?" the tech said deadpan, pushing his black wire-rimmed glasses up his sweaty nose.

  "No, but if it would help I could put my foot up your butt and produce one, Mr…." I glanced at bis name tag. "… Dellarocco."

  "Relax! Jesus!" Dellarocco held up his hands in surrender. "I was joking, Miss … uh, Detective, uh… ma'am." He pointed into the recesses of the file cabinets. "Pete's back there."

  I smiled and patted the lapels of his jacket straight. Dellarocco turned bright red. "Thanks, cutie," I told him with a wink. I'm pretty sure he stopped breathing.

  A lone figure bent over a scarred oak table at the back of the identification room, surrounded by musty cardboard boxes labeled with case numbers. Stacks of fingerprint ten-cards stood around him, elbow-high.

  "Pete Anderson?" I asked.

  He turned quickly. "Who wants to know?"

  I showed him my badge. "I'm Luna Wilder. We spoke on the phone a few nights ago about Lilia Desko."

  "Oh, right!" he exclaimed, a blinding white smile breaking out in his dark face. A handsome young black man, Pete could just as easily have been grinning at me from a TV screen or holding down a high-powered job in the Mainline district in thousand-dollar suits. Instead his white coat covered a Led Zeppelin T-shirt and a pair of khakis heavily stained around the cuffs. "I remember you," he went on. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

  "Well, it's actually a kidnapping case," I began.

  "Thought you were homicide?" He shrugged. "Never mind, who can keep track of that stuff? Mind if I work while we talk?" Without waiting for a reply, he turned back to the ten-cards and picked up a handheld magnifying lens.

  "What are you doing?" I asked. "Don't you have AFIS for this?"

  "Comparison," said Pete, pointing to a dried tan stick lying in an evidence baggie. "And not if your case is forty years old and was never high-profile to begin with. Most of this unsolved stuff before 1970 never got into AFIS."

  I thought at first the stick was some kind of dried plant stalk. After a few seconds I realized it was a finger, the flesh mummified to a brown cocoon.

  "Hex me. Where did that come from?"

  "A missing woman in 1962," said Pete. "Polish immigrant, did laundry in Waterfront. A nice young woman, by all accounts. She disappeared one night on her way home from work. City was tearing down one of those condemned buildings along the bay last year, found her behind a false wall in the bathroom."

  "Sad," I said.

  "Not as sad as the fact five other women went missing between the winter of '61 and the spring of '62, all from the same neighborhood, all of a similar age," said Pete.

  I raised an eyebrow. "Serial killer?"

  "Definitely," said Pete. "Dumb bastard detectives at the time didn't think some missing Polacks were anything to get excited over."

  "This happened before Zodiac, before Bundy," I said. "Most cops wouldn't recognize serial murder if it bit them in the behind. Cut them some slack."

  "Like this sicko cut her some slack?" Pete pointed at the finger. "He stripped her, cut off her finger with pliers, and posed her like a doll. She died in terror." He caught himself when his voice started to rise and sighed. "I'm just trying to find out who she is. Let the family know, if she had any." He set the ten-card aside and brushed the dust off his hands. "At any rate, as you can see, your kidnapping case is right up my current alley. What's up?"

  "White male, late twenties," I said. "Went to dinner at Mikado's with a woman named Marina. Hasn't been heard from since. I'm thinking if we find Marina, we find him. Unfortunately the name is all I have to go on."

  "Huh. He take his car?"

&n
bsp; "Yes. A Mercedes," I said.

  Pete started on a new stack of cards. "Trace the plate. See if it's been reported stolen or abandoned. See if you can access OnStar or LoJack—might work."

  "Um, it doesn't quite work like that," I muttered, feeling my face heat. Pete was absolutely right. If I hadn't been effectively gagged, I probably could have found Stephen Duncan already. Damn Roenberg, and damn McAllister for not sticking up for me.

  "Any hits on the driver's license?"

  "She doesn't appear to have one."

  "You try Immigration?" asked Pete. I felt like a fool.

  "No."

  Pete set down his glass and carefully tucked the finger back into its case file box. "No license and no criminal hits usually means foreigner, legal or illegal. Let's see if she was granted a visa." He led me over to one of the numerous computers, clicked on two icons, and popped up Homeland Security's ICE database of entries into the country via Nocturne City. "Marina," he muttered. "Not a common name. Eastern Europe, maybe."

  "Russian?" I said, feeling an uncomfortable sensation in the back of my mind. Lilia Desko, Dmitri Sandovsky, Marina…

  "Worth a try," Pete agreed. He narrowed the search to Russian nationals. "Nope, nothing in six months," he said. "If she has no other records, she's probably fairly new."

  "Or she's illegal and using a fake name," I said.

  "In that case, you're on your own," Pete agreed. "I just ID the crooks. I don't pound the mean streets." He chewed on his lower lip for a second. "Let's try a broad-based search."

  "What's that?"

  "A search including Russia and all countries that were members of the USSR. Sometimes you can't tell the names and dialects apart."

  "Do it," I said. Pete typed in the search box and then hit the blinking icon. The screen went blank, and then a single entry popped up. "Bingo!" he cried. "Marina Narinovich, applied for a temporary work visa two months ago from Ukraine."

  I could have kissed Pete Anderson. "Address?"

  "Just a minute," said Pete. His face fell. "I don't think this is going to be much help, Detective. It's in Ghosttown."