The Good, The Bad, And The Undead th-2

by Ким Харрисон

"I only asked one question." Legs crossed, I swiveled, smiling.

  Glenn glanced behind him into the open offices. "You are a guest here," he said roughly. "If you can't play by my rules—" He stopped. "Why are you still smiling?"

  "Mr. and Mrs. Graylin had dinner with Trent a month before she was attacked."

  The man straightened to his full height and drew back a step. His eyes narrowed.

  "Mind if I call the next?" I asked.

  He looked at the phone beside my hand, then back to the open floor. With a forced casualness, he shut his door halfway. "Keep it down."

  Pleased with myself, I pulled the stack of papers closer. Glenn went back behind his computer, typing with an annoying slowness.

  My mood quickly sobered as I scanned the coroner's report, skipping the picture portion this time. Apparently the man had been eaten alive from the extremities inward. They knew he had been alive at the time by the tearing pattern of the wounds. And they were fairly confident he had been eaten by the lack of body parts.

  Trying to ignore the mental picture my imagination provided, I called the contact number. There was no answer, not even a machine. I called his former place of work next, my intuition settling into a nice groove at the name of the place: Seary Security.

  The woman there was very nice, but she didn't know anything, telling me that Mr. Seary's wife was away at a "health resort" trying to relearn how to sleep. She did look in her files, though, telling me that they had been contracted to install a safe on the Kalamack estate.

  "Security…" I murmured, pinning Mr. Seary's packet to the bulletin board atop Glenn's sticky notes to get it out of my way. "Hey, Glenn. You have any more of those sticky notes?"

  He rummaged in his desk drawer, tossing me a pack, shortly followed by a pen. I scrawled the name of Mr. Seary's workplace and stuck it to his report. After a moment's thought, I did the same to the woman's, writing "safe designer" on it. I added a second sticky note with "Talked to T" circled in black ink.

  A scuffing in the hallway brought my eyes up from the third report. I made a noncommittal smile recognizing the overweight cop, minibag of chips in hand. He acknowledged me and Glenn's nod, coming to a rest in the doorway. "Glenn's got you doing his secretary work?" he asked, his good-old-boy tone almost thick enough to cut.

  "No," I said, smiling sweetly. "Trent Kalamack is the witch hunter, and I'm just taking a moment to tie the links together."

  He grunted, eyeing Glenn. Glenn wearily returned his look, adding a shrug. "Rachel," he said, "this is Officer Dunlop. Dunlop, this is Ms. Morgan."

  "Charmed," I said, not offering my hand lest I get it back covered in potato-chip grease.

  Not getting the hint, the man walked in, crumbs falling to the tile floor. "Whatcha got?" he said, coming to peer at my thick reports stuck to the board atop Glenn's faded sticky notes.

  "Too soon to say." I pushed him out of my space with a finger in his gut. "Excuse me."

  He backed up but didn't leave, going instead to see what Glenn was doing. Heaven save me from cops on break. The two talked over Glenn's suspicions concerning Dr. Anders, their rising and falling voices soothing.

  I blew chip crumbs off my papers, my pulse quickening as I saw that the third victim had worked at the city racetrack in weather control. It was a very difficult field of work, heavy in ley line magic. The man had been pressed to death while working late, stirring up a fall shower to dampen down the track for the next day's race. The actual implement of death was unknown. There had been nothing in the stables heavy enough. I didn't look at that picture, either.

  It had been at this point that the media realized the three deaths were connected despite the varying methods of death and named the sadistic freak the "witch hunter."

  A quick phone call got me his sister, who said of course he knew Trent Kalamack. That the councilman often called her brother to ask about the state of the track, but that she hadn't heard if he had talked to Mr. Kalamack before his death or not, and that she was just sick about her brother's death, and did I know how long it took for insurance checks to come in?

  I finally got my condolences wedged in between her chattering and hung up on her. Everyone handled death differently, but that was offensive.

  "Did he know Mr. Kalamack?" Glenn asked.

  "Yup." I pinned the packet to the board and stuck a note to it with the words "weather maintenance" on it.

  "And his job is important because…"

  "It takes a heckuva lot of ley line skill to manipulate the weather. Trent raises racehorses. He could have easily been out there and talked to him and no one would have given it a second thought." I added another note with "Knew T" on it.

  Old Dunlop-the-cop made an interested noise and ambled over. He hung a respectful three feet behind me this time. "Done with this one?" he asked, fingering the first.

  "For now," I said, and he pulled it from the board. Some of Glenn's notes fluttered down to fall behind the table. Glenn's jaw tightened.

  Feeling like someone was starting to take me seriously, I sat straighter. The overweight man ambled back to Glenn, making noises as he found the pictures. He dropped the report onto Glenn's desk, and I heard the patter of chip crumbs. Another officer came in, and an impromptu meeting seemed to be taking shape as they clustered around Glenn's computer screen. I turned my back on them and looked at the next report.

  The fourth victim had been found in early August. The papers had said the cause of death was severe blood loss. What they hadn't said was that the man had been disemboweled, torn apart as if ravaged by animals. His boss had found him in the basement of his workplace, still alive and trying to push his insides back into him where they belonged. It was more difficult than usual since he only had one arm, the other hanging by his underarm skin.

  "Here you go, ma'am," a voice said at my elbow, and I jerked. Heart pounding, I stared at a young FIB officer. "Sorry," he said as he extended a sheaf of papers. "Detective Glenn asked me to bring these up when they finished. Didn't mean to startle you." His eyes dropped to the report in my hand. "Nasty, isn't it?"

  "Thank you," I said, accepting the reports. My fingers were trembling as I dialed the number for the victim's boss when there was no next of kin.

  "Jim's," a tired voice said after the third ring.

  My greeting froze in my throat. I recognized his voice. It was the announcer at Cincinnati's illegal rat fights. Heart pounding, I hung up, missing the button the first time. I stared at the wall. The room had gone silent.

  "Glenn?" I said, my throat tight. I turned to see him surrounded by three officers, all looking at me.

  "Yeah?"

  My hands shook as I extended the report across the small space. "Will you look at the crime scene photos for me?"

  His face blank, he took it. I turned to his wall of sticky notes, listening to the pages turn. Feet shuffled. "What am I looking for?" he asked.

  I swallowed hard. "Rat cages?" I asked.

  "Oh my God," someone whispered. "How did she know?"

  I swallowed again. I couldn't seem to stop. "Thanks."

  With motions slow and deliberate, I took the report and stuck it to the bulletin board. My handwriting was shaky as I wrote "T availability" and stuck it on the pages. The report said he had been a bouncer at a dance club, but if he was one of Dr. Anders's students, he had been skilled with ley lines and was more likely the head of security at Jim's rat fights.

  I reached for the fifth packet with a grim feeling. It was Trent—I knew it was Trent—but the horror of what he had done was killing any joy I might find in it.

  I felt the men behind me watching as I leafed through the report, recalling that the fifth victim, found three weeks ago, had died the same way as the first. A call to her tearful mother told me she had met Trent in a specialty bookstore last month. She remembered because her daughter had been surprised that such a young, important man was interested in collectable, pre-Turn fairy-tale anthologies. After confirming that her daughter had be
en employed in a security subscription firm, I gave her my condolences and hung up.

  The background murmurs of the excited men added to my numb state. I carefully wrote my big T, making sure the lines were clear and straight. I stuck it beside the copy of the woman's work ID picture. She had been young, with straight blond hair to her shoulders and a pretty, oval face. Just out of college. The memory of the picture I had seen of the first woman on the gurney flashed into my mind. I felt the blood drain from me. Cold and light-headed, I stood.

  The men's conversations stopped as if I had rung a bell. "Where's the ladies' room?" I whispered, my mouth dry.

  "Turn left. Go to the back of the room."

  I didn't have time to say thanks. Low heels clacking, I strode out of the room. I looked neither left nor right, moving faster as I saw the door at the end of the room. I hit the door at a run, reaching the toilet just in time.

  Retching violently, I lost my breakfast. Tears streamed down my face, the salt mixing with the bitter taste of vomit. How could anyone do that to another person? I wasn't prepared for this. I was a witch, damn it. Not a coroner. The I.S. didn't teach its runners how to deal with this. Runners were runners, not murder investigators. They brought their tags in alive, even the dead ones.

  My stomach was empty, and when the dry heaves finally stopped, I stayed where I was, sitting on the floor of the FIB bathroom with my forehead against the cold porcelain, trying not to cry. I suddenly realized someone was holding my hair out of the way, and had been for a while.

  "It will go away," Rose whispered, almost to herself. "Promise. Tomorrow or the next day, you'll close your eyes and it will be gone."

  I looked up. Rose dropped her hand and took a step back. Beyond the propped-open door was the row of sinks and mirrors. "Really?" I said miserably.

  She smiled weakly. "That's what they say. I'm still waiting. I think they all are."

  Feeling foolish, I awkwardly got to my feet and flushed the toilet. I brushed myself off, glad the FIB kept their bathroom cleaner than I kept mine. Rose had gone to a sink, giving me a moment to gather myself. I left the stall feeling embarrassed and stupid. Glenn would never let me live this down.

  "Better?" Rose asked as she dried her hands, and I gave her a loose-necked nod, ready to burst into tears again because she wasn't calling me a newbie or making me feel inadequate or that I wasn't strong. "Here," she said, taking my purse from a sink and handing it to me. "I thought you might want your makeup."

  I nodded again. "Thanks, Rose."

  She smiled, the age lines in her face making her look even more comforting. "Don't worry about it. This is a bad one."

  She turned to go, and I blurted, "How do you deal with it? How do you keep from falling apart? That—What happened to them is horrible. How can a person do that to another?"

  Rose took a slow breath. "You cry, you get angry, then you do something about it."

  I watched her leave, the clack of her quick heels sounding sharp before the door closed.

  Yeah. I can do that.

  Eleven

  It took more courage than I wanted to admit to walk out of the ladies' bathroom. I wondered if everybody knew I had lost it. Rose had been unexpectedly kind and understanding, but I was sure the FIB officers would use it against me. Pretty little witch too soft to play with the big boys? Glenn would never look past it.

  I darted a nervous glance over the open-air offices, my steps faltering as I didn't find mocking, knowing faces but empty desks. No, everyone was standing outside of Glenn's office, peering in. Loud voices were coming from inside.

  "Excuse me," I murmured, holding my bag close to myself as I pushed past the uniformed FIB officers. I halted just over the threshold, finding the room full of arguing people with weapons and handcuffs.

  "Morgan." The cop who had been eating chips grabbed my arm and pulled me farther in. "You all right now?"

  I caught myself, stumbling at my abrupt entrance. "Yes," I said hesitantly.

  "Good. I called the last one for you." Dunlop met my eyes. They were brown—and it seemed I could see right to his soul, they were so frank. "Hope you don't mind. I was dying of curiosity." He ran a hand across his mustache, wiping the grease from it as his gaze went to the six reports tacked over Glenn's notes.

  My gaze swept the room. Every man and woman glanced at me as the weight of my eyes fell on them, recognizing me before going back to his or her conversation. They all knew I had spewed my guts, but by their lack of comment, it seemed I had broken the ice in some twisted fashion. Perhaps falling apart proved to them that I was just as human as they were—sort of.

  Glenn was sitting at his desk with his arms crossed, saying nothing as he watched the separate arguments. He gave me a wry, eyebrow-raised look. By the sound of it, most of the room wanted to arrest Trent, but a few were too cowed by his political muscle and wanted more. There was less tension in the room than I would have expected, seeing as they were all shouting at each other. Humans appeared to enjoy doing things by loud committee.

  I put my purse on the floor beside the table and sat down to look at the last report. The paper had said the latest victim had been a former Olympic swimmer. He'd died in his bathtub. Drowning. He worked for a local TV station as the celebrity weatherman but had gone to school for ley line manipulation. The note stuck to it said in a stilted print that his brother didn't know if he talked to Trent or not. I pulled the report from the board and made myself look it over, paying more attention to the conversations around me than the print.

  "He's laughing at us," a street-hardened, swarthy woman said as she argued with a thin, nervous-looking officer. Everyone but Glenn and I were standing, and I felt like I was at the bottom of a well.

  "Mr. Kalamack isn't the witch hunter," the man protested in a nasally voice. "He gives more to Cincinnati than Santa Claus."

  "That fits the profile," Dunlop butted in. "You've seen the reports. Whoever is doing this is certifiable. Twin lives, probably a schizophrenic."

  There was a soft murmur from the surrounding officers as the arguments swirled down to just this one. For what it was worth, I agreed with Dunlop. Whoever was doing this was an itsy-bitsy-skitzy. Trent filled that description nicely.

  The nervous man straightened, gaze darting about the room for support. "Okay, the murderer is mental, yes," he admitted in an irritating whine. "But I've met Mr. Kalamack. The man is no more a murderer than my mother is."

  I flipped to the coroner's report, learning that our Olympic swimmer had indeed died in his bathtub, but that it had been full of witch blood. A bad feeling started to push out the horror. It takes a lot of blood to fill a bathtub. A lot more than one person has; more like two dozen. Where had it all come from? A vampire wouldn't have wasted it like that.

  The discussion concerning the thin cop's mother became loud, and I wondered if I should tell them about benevolent Mr. Kalamack killing his lead geneticist and blaming it on a bee sting. Nice, neat, and tidy. Murder without hardly lifting a hand. Trent had given the widowed wife and orphaned fifteen-year-old-girl the upgraded benefits package and an anonymous, full university scholarship.

  "Stop thinking with your wallet, Lewis," Dunlop said, swinging his ample middle around aggressively. "Just because the man gives to the FIB charity auction, that doesn't make him a saint. I say that makes him more suspicious. We don't even know if he's human."

  Glenn flicked a glance at me. "What does that have to do with anything?"

  Dunlop started, clearly remembering I was here. "Absolutely nothing!" he said loudly, as if the volume of his voice could erase the hidden, underlying racial slur. "But the man has something to hide."

  I silently agreed, starting to like the overweight cop despite his lack of tact.

  The officers clustered at the door looked over their shoulders into the open offices. They exchanged looks and backed up. One of them said, "Afternoon, Captain," as he ducked out of the way, and I wasn't surprised when Edden's squat bulk replaced theirs in the
doorframe.

  "What is going on?" he said, pushing his round-framed glasses back up his nose.

  Another FIB officer made a silent farewell to me and slipped out.

  "Hi, Edden," I said, not getting up from my swivel chair.

  "Ms. Morgan," the short man said, a hint of anger on him as he shook my offered hand and raised his eyebrows at my leather pants. "Rose said you were here. I'm not surprised to find you in the middle of an argument." He looked at Glenn, and the tall FIB officer shrugged, not a bit apologetic as he got to his feet.

  "Captain," Glenn said, taking a deep breath. "We were conducting a free-flow exercise concerning the possible alternate suspects for the witch hunter murders."

  "No you weren't," Edden said, and my eyes went to his at the anger in his voice. "You were gossiping about Councilman Kalamack. He's not a suspect."

  "Yes sir," Glenn agreed as Dunlop gave me an unreadable look and edged quietly out of the room, surprisingly agile for his size. "But I believe Ms. Morgan is entertaining a valid thought path."

  Surprised at the support, I blinked at Glenn.

  Edden didn't even look at me. "Stop the college psychobabble, Glenn. Dr. Anders is our prime suspect. You'd better have a good reason for pulling your energies from there."

  "Yes sir," Glenn said, not at all upset. "Ms. Morgan has found a direct link from four of the six victims to Mr. Kalamack, and a probable window of opportunity for contact with Mr. Kalamack in the other two."

  Instead of being excited as I would have expected, Edden slumped. I stood up as he came close to look at the records tacked to the wall. His tired eyes went from one to the next. The last of the FIB officers left, and I went to stand beside Glenn. With a united front, maybe he might stop wasting our time and let us go after Trent.

  Feet spread wide, Edden put his hands on his hips and stared at the sticky notes tacked to the reports. I found I was holding my breath, and let it out. Unable to resist, I said, "All but the last victim used ley lines heavily in their daily work. And there's a slow progression from those highly skilled down to those just out of school and not yet using their degrees."