by Faith Hunter
High in the corner, in the rafters, I spotted a small camera. I managed not to flinch or shout or do anything else, and went back to my business, thinking, wondering why I hadn’t noticed it before. I pulled up the schematics of the house and barn’s security system. There was no camera listed in the manager’s office. Had someone else put a camera here? A spy camera? If so, what was so interesting about this table and the manager’s desk?
I got up, stretched again as if I hadn’t noticed anything, and walked to the spot where I had sat when Occam and I talked to Credence Pacillo. The camera was placed behind a rafter and looked directly down over the desk and the one spot at the table. The angle seemed perfect to watch the laptop that sat there. Someone had been spying on the office. Pacillo? Or maybe Pam Gower? Stella herself?
Out of sight of the camera, I texted the information to HQ and pretty quickly got back a comment from Tandy. Interesting. Overall security feed is not kept in storage but is overwritten every week. Camera is not part of security grid. Will search more on this end. Does camera have memory card?
I texted back, Beats me. 12 ft overhead?
Careful to make sure the camera couldn’t view what I wrote now, but concerned that it might have already captured my password entry, I retook my seat, adjusted the laptop so the camera couldn’t capture the screen, and continued with my work. But working, or trying to work, under the eye of a camera was challenging, an exercise in thorny memories. It was like being under the watchful eye of the churchmen. There was no, absolutely no privacy.
I got up and moved away from the chair, out of sight of the camera. I was breathing too fast and anxiety skittered up my spine, which was stupid. Except it wasn’t stupid. It made total sense. I thought about the churchmen. I thought about the ones who tried the hardest to hurt me. I had fed them to the earth. I had won. I had defeated them and I had survived. I had survived.
I had PTSD of a sort, I knew that. But I had survived. I was still surviving.
My breathing steadied. Okay. So what do I do with the camera? I asked myself, thinking like a PsyLED officer, not a victim. I propped myself against the doorway, considering.
A red-brindle and white St. Bernard rammed inside the office, shoving me against the wall. I nearly fell and I whacked FireWind’s shoulder with the flat of my hand. “I ain’t never in my life smacked a dog, but you’uns know better,” I said, shaking my finger at him. “Shame on you,” I said, louder. Just like the mamas might. I clamped my mouth shut on the church words.
The St. Bernard went still, turned his head in a totally not-dog manner, and glared at me.
I could apologize. Or not. “Yeah, I know I slapped you. You knock me over and I’ll do it again. Pay attention. Oh. And jist so you’uns—you—know, death energies are more powerful in this office than anywhere else in the barn. You know who the death witch is yet?”
FireWind dropped the glare and shook his head no, then yes.
“Is that a maybe?”
FireWind chuffed a happy sound, let his tongue loll out one side of his mouth. He gave me a doggy yes and began to snuffle all around the office, up on the cabinet, under the table, shoving my chair around.
“There’s a camera.” I pointed up. “You agreeable with me climbing up there and getting it down?”
He chuffed again and whirled from the office, back into the barn.
I interpreted that as a yes, but to cover myself, I made photos of the camera and texted Tandy what I was planning to do. While I waited for a reply from HQ, I hunted for a ladder and found one leading up into the loft. I brought it into the office, propped it against the rafters, and braced the rubber-coated feet. If the ladder somehow slipped, I’d take a nasty fall, but that wasn’t likely. I climbed the ladder to get a good look at the metal frame holding the camera in place, and determined that I’d need a screwdriver. I climbed back down and rummaged through the tack room until I found a toolbox, which I brought back to the office. I stuck two sizes of Phillips head screwdrivers into a pocket, pulled off my work jacket, and unfolded a medium-sized evidence collection bag from my pocket. I checked my cell for permission to remove the camera.
Tandy’s response was, This is covered under current search warrants. If MC is present, call and I’ll walk you through downloading it.
“MC? Memory card. Excellent,” I said, setting the cell phone down, “because I’m way better with a screwdriver than I am with computer stuff.” I pulled on nitrile gloves, climbed the ladder, reached for the camera, and got a jolt of death and decay. I nearly did fall, and that woulda proved to Occam that I couldn’t do my job. “Dagnabbit,” I cursed.
I shook my death-cursed fingertips, which were hidden inside blue nitrile gloves. The magics on the camera were much stronger than the other ones in the barn, and even stronger than the ones in the coffeemaker. Had the death witch put this up? If so, why wasn’t it disintegrating? There were cobwebs all over one side of it, so it had been here a while. “Death energies are really strange,” I muttered. And then I realized that the clean side was cracked, just a bit. The death and decay was only on one side. And there were smudges on the clean side, like fingerprints.
Carefully, not touching anything I could avoid, I disconnected the camera from its supports, traced the electrical line to the lighting fixture, and yanked it loose. I carried my prize back down. All without proving Occam right, that I needed a minder. “Stupid cat,” I whispered.
I was talking to myself. I remembered my mama talking to herself, under her breath, when I was a young’un. Looking back, I recognized it as a stress reaction. I took a deep breath and forced my shoulders to relax.
Back in the office, I studied the matte brown camera boxing. It had been spray-painted to look just like the barn rafters. And wasn’t that all kinds a sneaky. Finding and removing the memory card was easier than I expected, and the death and decay was less powerful now for some reason. Maybe because I had unplugged it? Could it run on electricity? Had an old affected memory card been removed and replaced with a new one recently, like when the woman had been killed? Had she been killed because she had walked in on the practitioner working on the camera?
Will it ruin my tablet? I asked Tandy.
Probably. But if tablet dies as direct result of case, you can turn it in and requisition new one. Brand-new one. With more functionality.
I sighed. Thought about it. And typed, OK. You tell FireWind.
Deal.
With Tandy’s help, I figured out how to attach the memory card to my tablet, which came equipped with multiple ports. I began downloading and sending the contents of the camera to HQ. There were a lot of photos, all using unencrypted standard digital photo software, according to Tandy. The memory card hadn’t been replaced recently, and it was going to take a long time to transfer all the files. I sent a text with my thanks and a cute dancing-tree emoji to Tandy. Easy as pie, I informed the office.
On my laptop, I sent in my thoughts about the death of the woman found in the barn, and the timing with the reappearance of the death and decay in the basement and finding it here.
I closed the laptop, left my tablet working for me, and carried my paper and pen into the night. Once again, I wondered how law enforcement had ever managed to investigate anything without computers.
Beyond the barn lights, all around the barn, I touched the earth in dozens of places, paying careful attention to the locations I had read on the first night. Unexpectedly, things had changed and not in a way I might have thought. Within an hour, my arm was aching with the cold of death magics and I was longing for a stint in the null room. However, while I was moving ladders and breaking into cameras, T. Laine had moved Ingrid’s body into the portable null room and then pulled the trailer into the pasture. She and Occam were shoveling Adrian’s Hell and the ground under him inside it too. There wouldn’t be room for me anytime soon.
Back in the barn manager’s offic
e, I checked myself for ticks, which I hadn’t thought to do before now, and sat at the table to write up reports. The memory card was still delivering up its secrets, and the barn was quiet, peaceful. As I sat, three horses raced into the barn, tore through the main area, whirled around several times, and raced back out, leaving the whole place in a choking dust. Waving the dust away, I got up and discovered that someone had left one gate in an odd configuration, allowing the geldings into another pasture. “Stupid horses. You should be asleep.”
I looked up at the rafters and couldn’t spot any cats. Maybe because of the remaining stench. Back at the table, I drew out a rough sketch of the house and grounds and marked the places I had touched, giving them numbers between one and ten, with one being the least strong death and decay reading and ten being the strongest. It was clear that the magics had been somehow reinforced and were bleeding out from multiple places.
Not sure what I was seeing, I walked into the pasture, toward Occam and T. Laine, lighting my way with my flashlight, reading the earth here and there with a fingertip. I determined that the death and decay magics were not particularly strong this far away from the house and barn. I assumed at that point that Adrian’s Hell had spent time in the barn and been contaminated there. Or spent time with the death-magic user there. But then, horses are mobile. He could have come into contact with the energies most any time. That was the problem with death. The energies got out of control when they were used and spread to the ones the user loved, like my bloodlust could do if I wasn’t very, very careful. If the maker of the death and decay had hidden her power from the world, controlled her magics all her life, and then suddenly started using them, they might now be impossible to restrain. It was like letting the djinn out of the bottle—impossible to get the evil thing back in.
Back at the barn, all the photos had been downloaded to my tablet and sent to HQ. And my tablet had died deader than a doornail. I sat again, thinking. Calm settled in the air. A slow rain began to fall, whispering down, which was going to make moving the dead horse more difficult. Tree frogs began calling, a raucous concert of mating. A horse neighed in the distance. My chair creaked softly.
I might be in a griping mood, but the quiet night was bringing back calming, soothing memories of my youth: the wind moving over grasses, the stamp of hooves, the rare horsey snort, the smell of hay and feed, the bark of dogs and clucking of chickens, the sound and wet feel of rain. Happy memories of time in the Nicholson greenhouse, feeding the basils, making them grow. Not everything about the church was a bad memory and it was good when I could overlay the bad with something wonderful. I rebooted the laptop and amended reports.
By the time midnight approached, I desperately needed sleep. And I heard footsteps approaching. The cadence didn’t belong to Occam or FireWind. My breath hitched.
TWELVE
Moving slowly, I eased my weapon from its shoulder holster and slid it to my lap, pointing above my thighs and at the door.
“Hey! Who lef’ da ligh’sss on?” a voice slurred. “Who’s here?”
I knew that voice. Credence Pacillo had reentered the barn.
Silently, I got up and moved to where I could see him but he wasn’t likely to see me, my weapon hidden at my thigh. Pacillo stumbled slightly in the open central area, unsteady on his feet, as he walked through the barn. When I didn’t answer, he stopped and looked down at the ground, but not where Ingrid’s body had lain, which I thought was telling. Instead, he stared at the prints of horse and humans, overlaid with the deep ruts of a vehicle in the barn dust. “Wha’ da fu . . .”
“I’m here,” I said.
He whirled and nearly fell. I stepped into the light, gave a come here finger wave, and backed into the office. He followed. I took his former seat again. He stood in the doorway, wavering slowly, breathing the sour scent of old liquor into the office. I closed my laptop, reseated my weapon in its holster, and sat back in the chair, my arms out to the sides, my hands on the chair arms, making myself look bigger. Internet Spook School class, Interrogation 201—Body Mechanics. More importantly, the mamas had always said to start out as you intend to go forward. And I wanted to appear accusational. “You looking for Ingrid? You two were having an affair, right?”
“What? Ingrid? No. Why you askin’ ’bout Ing?”
I focused intently on his face. “She’s dead.”
Pacillo sat down hard, landing on the office floor with an ungainly thump. “Why would Ing be dead?”
Not “why would anyone be dead.” Of course, he was drunk, so I didn’t know what importance to assign to that. “Did you kill Ing?”
He didn’t answer right at first and when he did it was a peculiar, distraught whining sound. He raised his head and I was shocked to see he was crying. “No. Why would I kill Ing?”
“Did you kill Stella?”
He shook his head, his confusion growing. “No.”
I leaned forward. “Did you kill Monica?” Head shake. “Did you kill Connelly?”
“No,” he breathed.
“Did you kill Racine?”
“Who?” Head shake. “I didn’t kill them.”
Not “I didn’t kill anyone.” But “I didn’t kill them.”
“Were you having an affair with Ingrid?”
“No. Not with Ingrid. I’d never touch Ing.” He closed his eyes and slid to the floor. Out cold.
FireWind leaped out of the darkness and over Pacillo’s body. I nearly jumped out of my skin. My shriek echoed through the night. My boss’ dog form skidded under the table, ramming into my knees. He grabbed my hand in his massive teeth and pulled me out of my chair. My boss was no gentle service dog.
“Bite me and I’ll kick you,” I warned. He let go and raced into the barn. I followed.
At the bottom of the ladder, which I had replaced at the entrance to the loft, he turned, looked at me, and made one of those soft chuff-barks dogs do when they’re excited. At the bottom of the ladder, he bounced on all fours and looked up at the big square hole in the ceiling/flooring above, the kind built for access to hay and feed. I had spotted another such opening outside, at the back of the barn, with a lift for carrying up the hay and feed. FireWind bounded up the ladder and disappeared. It was a comical view from below, but I didn’t laugh. I had likely pushed my improving relationship with the big boss as far as I could. I retrieved my flashlight and followed him into the barn loft.
Hay in rectangular bales was stacked here and there. The light was dim, and what light there was shone up from small holes in the floor, situated over each feeding trough. Dust hung in the unmoving air, caught in my flashlight beam. Support beams ran from the foundation below to the rafters overhead, and hammocks were strung between them, all empty except for cats, which raised their heads and peered over the hammocks at us. “So that’s where you’ve been,” I said.
One gray-striped cat jumped down and sauntered closer, curious or thinking I might have food for it. Then it spotted FireWind and arched its back, hissing. FireWind growled and the cat leaped straight up to land on a joist. The mouser peered down, its tail tip twitching in annoyance.
“Be nice to the kitties,” I ordered my boss as I looked around. He snorted.
There were old saddles on supports, and a line of bridles hanging from hooks, all dust covered. There were rectangular bales of hay and fifty-five-gallon plastic barrels with heavy-duty lids. I peered into several to see different kinds of feed. There were buckets and scoops and brooms and shovels and openings into each stall for hay and feed to be dropped.
There were cardboard boxes and an old trunk along one wall. A cat was sleeping in a plastic laundry hamper that was full of folded clothing. Other than that, the loft was amazingly clean and free of the kind of old, rusted equipment I was used to seeing in church barns. The only surprise was a long, narrow bench holding a candlestick and several puddles of melted dark red wax. FireWind trotted to the b
ench and sniffed. His body went stiff and quivering, his hair standing on end. A snarl curled his muzzle into something fearsome. St. Bernards had seriously big fangs.
“FireWind?”
He whirled to me and growled. There was nothing human left in his eyes. It occurred to me that I should be angry, frightened, something. Instead I recalled Occam’s words describing the boss: nose-suck. Dogs’ brains were hardwired for tracking from back in the day of being wolves, and scents could take over that part of their brains, just latch on and not let go.
FireWind whirled back and buried his nose in the candle wax, huffing and puffing in the scent. Yeah. Nose-suck. I moved up beside him in the dark and touched the wax with a pinkie. I jerked away. Mega death magics. I looked closer and I realized that there was blood mixed into the wax, giving it the strange reddish color. Black magic? Death-magic practitioners didn’t usually practice blood magic. One was raw power, the other was ritualistic and required a blood sacrifice. And death and decay was actually neither, so why the focals? And then I remembered the intruder. We had been wondering how the energies had been restored and repowered. Someone had been up here.
FireWind breathed deep, his nose touching the wax.
I needed something to knock my boss free. Like a hosepipe attached to an icy water source, turned on full blast. A rolled-up newspaper to the snout. But both of those might just make him mad. I went back down the ladder and found the potted tree, which I carried up. I shook some of the tree’s surface soil out on the floor, in a trail back toward the ladder. Then I walked to my boss, who was still transfixed by the wax, and carefully dumped a bit of the soil onto his snout.
FireWind jumped as if I’d hit him with that rolled-up paper, spun, and snarled at me again. Firmly, I said, “No. You. Come with me.” I backed steadily to the ladder. FireWind looked back to the wax. “No!” I commanded. “Come!” The big dog dropped his head and padded to me. “There’s something wrong with your brain. Shift. Right now. As soon as you start, I’ll go find clothes. You need to be in human form.”
