by R. L. King
Chapter Two
Stone forced himself to focus on his work over the next few days, hoping it would help him to stop thinking about Madison McClain’s case. It worked for a while—he had classes to teach, assignments to grade, meetings to attend. He even tried going out with his usual pub-crawling group to see if getting good and drunk would work to dispel the image of the miserable little girl. All he got for that was a wicked hangover and a series of uncomfortable dreams featuring a red-eyed, demonic little girl poking a pencil into a zebra’s eye until it screamed and woke him up.
He almost wished he hadn’t even agreed to talk to the girl. It would have made things a lot easier. He’d been so good, too, up until now: concentrating on his work and his magical studies, publishing papers both in prestigious academic journals and in repositories of magical scholarship—in short, aside from a couple of brief side trips into the Land of Weird, he’d managed to avoid involving himself in any sort of real-world supernatural situations.
Four years. That was how long it had been since the whole mess down in Los Gatos. Sometimes it didn’t seem like that long, and sometimes it seemed like the whole thing had happened to someone else, a lifetime ago. He’d tried to put it out of his mind as best he could: most of the principals were gone now, or out of communication: Adelaide Bonham was still alive, but at ninety-three even her sharp mind had faded; Iona Li had left for another job after Adelaide entered the elegant care home in Saratoga two years ago; Tommy, of course, was dead, as was Ethan…and Megan Whitney had long since taken another position at a small university in the Midwest. She’d left less than a month after they returned from the visit to his home in England; as was the case with all of his former relationships, they’d parted on good terms, but he’d gotten the strong impression she’d prefer that he didn’t call her. He heard later that she’d married a lawyer. There had been several other women since then, but none of them had lasted longer than six months. The most recent had ended earlier this year. Despite Stone’s best efforts to the contrary, it was just a fact of life that mages tended to attract oddness, and oddness tended to repel mundanes. At this point, he wasn’t in any hurry to start the process again with someone new.
At least the nightmares had mostly stopped—until he’d met Madison McClain, anyway. He thought he might have managed eight hours’ sleep over the last three days.
After a week passed with no success in his attempts to put the matter out of his mind, he reluctantly bowed to the inevitable: he went to the Stanford library during a midday break, gathered some back issues of several of the local newspapers, and settled down in an out-of-the-way corner of the faculty area to see if any new information had come to light about the case. He decided that perhaps if he could find some closure, his restless mind might stop insisting on chewing the whole business over like a tough steak.
Normally, the fact that his brain refused to stop processing any sort of puzzling or intriguing information in the background worked to his advantage, as it often presented him with solutions to problems he’d long given up on. Sure, it sometimes did so at inopportune times, but on the whole he considered it a positive trait.
The only time it wasn’t was when he genuinely wanted to put something aside. His brain didn’t have an off switch, and it was a perverse bastard, too: the things he wanted most to forget about were usually the ones that it spent the bulk of its spare cycles grinding on.
He found nothing else about Madison’s case, past the initial articles that had appeared after the killing had occurred. Even those were quite light on facts: they included no concrete details beyond the fact that a little girl had killed her mother in north San Jose, and that she was now under psychiatric observation. After that, nothing. It was as if the press had been forbidden to print anything else. Stone figured it was probably because once Dr. Barnett got involved, he’d put the whole case on lockdown to protect Madison’s privacy.
He sighed and prepared to close the paper. That was that, then. There was no chance Dr. Barnett would let him talk to Madison again, he was sure of that. It hadn’t been hard to read the expression on the man’s face: as Stone had suspected, he’d only allowed the conversation to humor Nancy McClain, and now that it had taken place, that was the end of any occult connections, respected professor or not.
As he turned the page over, another headline caught his eye:
Man held in train murder of local woman
Intrigued, he stopped and focused on the article. As he skimmed it, he felt a chill: a 53-year-old man had inexplicably pushed a 61-year-old woman in front of an oncoming commuter train only a week after Madison had killed her mother. The man had made no attempt to run afterward; other people on the platform grabbed him, and he’d waited docilely for the police to arrive. He had no history of mental illness; when questioned, he became distraught and told them that he hadn’t meant to do it, and that he’d felt as if someone else had “taken over his body.”
“Hmm…” Stone said, tapping his pen on the table. “Interesting…” He pulled out his notebook and jotted down the details of the case, then put the paper aside to photocopy the article before he left.
I wonder if there are other cases like this. He had been specifically scanning the paper for anything about Madison’s case, paying no particular attention to anything else. Now, he started at the top of the stack and paged through them again, this time looking for any unusual or violent murders in the past few weeks.
He found two others, both intriguing in different ways: the first was a young man found murdered in an alley behind an East San Jose bar. The paper didn’t go into details about the killing, but Stone got the impression that the body had been found in a particularly horrific state. Now that he saw the article, he had a vague memory of hearing something about the murder on the news when it had happened.
The second murder—or murders—were even more interesting, partially for where Stone found them described. The other three—Madison, the man in the alley, and the train murder—had all been on or near the front page. This case was on the back page of the front section, reported in only a few sketchy paragraphs. The details were scarce, but the article described a case where six men at a homeless camp in San Jose had been murdered and “arranged around their campfire.” The only other thing mentioned was that police were investigating, had no leads as yet, and requested the help of the public to call in if they’d seen anything suspicious. In other words, the standard boilerplate “mysterious murder” text.
Stone frowned at the article, jotting more notes in his notebook. “Arranged”? What did that even mean? He thought it odd that the paper included so little detail, given that it was a multiple murder. Did the homeless get so little regard around here that even killing a half-dozen of them didn’t rate front-page news? He knew the police were busy—crime, particularly violent crime, had increased dramatically in the area in the last few years—but even so, murder should still be a top priority, regardless of who the victims were.
He sighed, tossed the paper onto his pile to photocopy, and grabbed the next one. It took him another half-hour to get through the rest, and by the time he finished he had found numerous other murders and violent assaults, but the rest of them were gang-related, common muggings, domestic violence, and other “explainable” crimes. He made his copies, stuffed them into his old leather briefcase, and headed back to his next class.
So, he thought as he walked, you’ve got this information. What are you going to do with it? It was a good question, and a perfectly legitimate answer would be “Nothing.” It certainly wasn’t his job to investigate mysterious murders. Even with his magical ability, it could be dangerous to poke his nose into things he didn’t understand. And besides, he had courses to teach. He didn’t have time to play junior detective, fascinating as the cases could potentially be. Especially if they had an occult connection. He’d had quite enough of that, between the nasty business in Los Gatos and the who
le affair just after he’d arrived in the USA. Best to leave it to the proper authorities.
That was the thing, of course. If any of these crimes had some sort of magical component—Madison’s, perhaps, or the man who’d pushed the woman in front of the train—then leaving them to the police to deal with probably meant they would never be solved. They might be good at their jobs. He was sure they were. But he’d dealt with mundane police before, and they were hopeless when it came to supernatural crime.
He reached his classroom and paused outside the door, nodding to a couple students as they passed him on their way inside. Still…I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to just poke around a bit at the murder sites, he decided. By now it had been long enough that it probably wouldn’t look suspicious for him to be there. It wouldn’t take long, he could do it whenever he had free time, and with any luck it would convince him that there was nothing spooky associated with the murders. That way he could let the police handle them with a clear conscience.
That decided, he pushed the door open and forced himself to put the matter out of his mind and concentrate on the day’s lesson on the Salem Witch Trials.
Chapter Three
Stone felt out of place in the small, hole-in-the-wall bar. To be fair, he often felt out of place, but in this case he was keenly aware of the clientele’s eyes on him as he sat at one end of the long bar under a buzzing TV tuned to a soccer game in Spanish.
The bar was in east San Jose, anchoring one end of a decaying strip mall that was mostly defunct except for a taqueria and a combination liquor store/check-cashing place at the other end. The other customers were almost all male and Hispanic, working-class men stopping by to unwind with a few brews after their shift. It was obvious this was the sort of neighborhood bar where everybody knew everybody else, and newcomers were noticed immediately. Many of the men watched Stone now with varying expressions: curiosity, suspicion, wariness. A few had surreptitiously slipped out the back door. Stone wondered what they thought about why some skinny white guy had shown up at their watering hole alone.
He also wondered if any of them knew the man who had been eviscerated in an alley behind the place a few weeks back.
So far, the bartender, a beefy man with a salt-and-pepper brush cut, an impressive mustache, and a SJSU Spartans T-shirt, had ignored Stone except to ask him what he wanted to drink. They didn’t have Guinness, so he settled for trying a local microbrew. He was halfway through it now, perusing a folded copy of the Mercury News. There didn’t seem to be any new reports of odd murders. When he looked up, the bartender was standing in front of him. “I’m fine,” he said, indicating his half-full beer glass with a head tilt. “Thank you.”
The bartender didn’t move. “Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?” His accent was thick, but his English was flawless.
“Do I need a reason?” Stone asked. “Perhaps I was in the area, and wanted to stop in for a drink.”
The bartender shook his head. “Dudes like you don’t stop in places like this without a reason. You INS? ’Cause I know these guys. They’re all nice and legal.”
Ah, so that’s it. Stone chuckled, shaking his head. “No, no. I’m not from Immigration. Nor am I a policeman. Actually, if you have a moment, I had a couple of questions I’d like to ask you. Why don’t you give me another of these?” He slid a twenty-dollar bill next to his beer glass. “Keep the change. Excellent service.”
The bartender eyed him like he didn’t know what to make of him, but took the twenty and returned with another beer, which he put in front of Stone. “What kind of questions?”
Stone didn’t miss the fact that several of the other men were watching him over their own beers. He shifted for a moment to magical sight to read the room’s aura: so far it was still wary and suspicious, but not overly hostile. In fact, he thought it might have calmed a bit since he revealed he wasn’t here hunting for illegals. “A man was murdered near here a few weeks ago. I assume you heard about it.”
The bartender’s eyes narrowed. “What about it? Why do you want to know?”
Stone shrugged. “Curiosity, mostly.”
“You a reporter?”
“No. Actually, I’m a university professor, doing a bit of research.” He hoped the man didn’t ask him to prove it: he did have his Stanford ID on him, but he didn’t want to reveal either his name or his departmental affiliation.
“Research on a dead guy? What are you, Criminal Justice or somethin’?”
“Not exactly. Did you know the man who was killed? Was he perhaps a regular here? If so, you have my condolences. Terrible thing.”
The bartender paused, clearly considering whether to just tell Stone to take a hike. Finally he shrugged. “Nah, he wasn’t a regular. I seen him ’round here a few times, tryin’ to beg drinks. Sometimes one o’ the guys would take pity on him, y’know? I think maybe he was homeless.”
“I see.” Stone, playing his part, pulled out a small notebook and jotted that down. “I understand this might be uncomfortable for you, and I apologize for that, but—could you tell me a bit about what happened? I got the impression from the paper that it was rather horrific, but—”
“Yeah. I didn’t see it, just heard about it after.” He hooked a thumb off to his right. “Ben over there saw it. I dunno if he wants to talk about it. It messed him up pretty bad. But maybe if you buy him a beer or two…”
“Of course.” Stone glanced over in the direction he was pointing to see three men in paint-spattered T-shirts around a large table. One of them, a stocky young man in his mid-twenties, glanced up when the bartender called his name, then came over when he beckoned.
“Hey Ben, this guy wants to know about the dead guy in the alley. He’s some kinda professor. You wanna help him out?”
Ben looked dubious, looking Stone over. “I dunno, man. That whole thing was bad news. I kinda just wanna forget about it.”
“I’d appreciate any help you could give me,” Stone said. And to the bartender: “Please get him one of whatever he’s drinking.”
Still reluctant but a bit less so, Ben took his free beer and led Stone over to an unoccupied table. “What do you wanna know? I ain’t kidding. It was bad. It happened like a month ago, and I still have nightmares about it.”
“I promise, I won’t ask for much of your time. If you could just tell me what you saw—”
“Yeah, okay.” Ben rubbed the back of his neck and took a long pull from his beer. “I pick up a little extra cash cleanin’ up the bar,” he said. “I come early in the morning, before my regular construction shift starts. Park in the alley in the back.” He gestured toward the back door. “Anyways, I showed up that day and…” Hesitating, he looked away.
Stone waited.
Ben swallowed. “And—and I saw this guy in the alley. Like…all over the alley.”
“You mean the body was in pieces?” Stone asked, leaning forward.
“Not exactly in pieces.” He took another drink. “Sorry, man. It was hard. He was—it was like somebody had ripped his stomach open and pulled his guts out, you know? Real Jack the Ripper stuff. There was blood everywhere. Scared the shit out of me.”
“What did you do then?” Stone asked.
“What do you think I did? First I puked up my breakfast in a dumpster, then I went inside and called the cops. I didn’t touch nothin’—I was afraid they’d think I did it, y’know?”
Stone nodded. “Would it be possible for you to show me where you saw the man? Was it directly in back of the bar?”
“Nah, it was down a little ways. Only reason I saw it was ’cause I come in that way.” He tilted his head at Stone. “What kinda professor are you, anyway, wantin’ to know about freaky murders?”
“It’s just something for a paper I’m writing.” Stone stood. “How about it? Will you show me?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said reluctantly. “But o
nly for a minute. I’m watchin’ the game. C’mon.”
Ben led him out through the back door. A couple other men were out there, leaning against an overflowing dumpster and smoking cigarettes. They glanced up as Ben and Stone went by, but didn’t comment. Ben led him down past a couple of doors until they stood in front of one that was locked, next to a boarded-up rear window. “It was here,” he said, pointing. “The guy was over there, in the middle of the alley.”
Stone was already examining the area, crouching down to get a better look. “And you say the body was eviscerated?”
“Evisci—what?”
“It was cut open and the intestines were pulled out?”
Ben looked a little pale. “Uh…yeah. They were sorta spread out around the body. You know, like whoever did it was really gettin’ into what they were doin’. I didn’t exactly look for a long time, though, you know?” He shifted back and forth, stuffing his hands in his pockets and then removing them. “Anything else?”
“What? Oh—no. Thank you, you were very helpful.” He handed Ben another twenty. “Please buy a round for your friends to help make up for the inconvenience.”
“Hey, thanks, man. Good luck with your paper.” Ben quickly made himself scarce, trotting back toward the door. It was obvious he didn’t want to be in that alley any longer than he had to.
Alone now except for the two smokers by the dumpster, Stone began to examine the area. There was enough light back here that he didn’t need a flashlight; he rose and paced around, then stopped and shifted over to magical sight.
It had been long enough since the murder had occurred that he didn’t expect to see much in the way of unusual auras, and he was right. The killing had been grotesque enough that vestiges still lingered: traces of terror and pain hung in the alley and would probably do so for some time. However the man had died, it had been neither quick nor painless.
