Stormwind (The Storm Chronicles Book 3)

by Skye Knizley

  “It’s annoying,” Raven replied, lowering her shades. “I have enough blood red in my life. The sun is supposed to be yellow and the moon is grey. I drew it enough times growing up to know the difference.”

  “Cheer up, Ray,” Levac said. “It’s a normal thing and will be gone in a few days.”

  Raven glowered behind her glasses and continued to guide her new Shelby through traffic toward one of the better sections of the city. Soon they were passing along the tree-lined streets of Logan Square; a low-key upper class neighborhood far enough from skyscrapers and industry to make it seem quietly quaint, but close enough to make commuting convenient. Levac pointed out Franks’ apartment building and Raven pulled into an empty spot between a Fiat 500 Abarth and a Toyota Prius.

  Franks’ apartment building was an odd combination of twenties revival mixed with Gothic elements such as a wrought iron security gate, gargoyles at the corners of the building and high, arched windows. It was a strange-looking building, even for the ritzy part of town. Rumor was that Igor Steinmann had designed the place before moving to New York. The man was a wacko.

  Raven led the way past the security gates and through the heavy wooden doors into the building. Ice cold air hit her in the face and she shivered. The air conditioner was turned up to second ice age. She huddled in her jacket and approached the attractive young receptionist who was wearing a leather jacket.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, her breath spilling from her mouth. “How can I help you?”

  Raven pulled out her badge and placed it on the wide desk. “I’m Detective Storm; this is Detective Levac. We have a search warrant for Mr. Wade Franks’ apartment and a request that the temperature be turned up to somewhere above ‘meat locker’.”

  “I don’t believe Mr. Franks is in,” the receptionist replied, tucking a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “And I’m sorry but the air conditioning seems to be broken.”

  Raven picked up her badge. “Franks’ is out because he’s lying on a slab in the morgue… which is a bit warmer than your lobby. Can we have the spare key to his apartment, please?”

  The receptionist put a perfectly manicured hand over her mouth. “Mr. Franks is dead? Oh my!”

  “I’m afraid so, ma’am,” Levac said. “We would really appreciate that key so we can get on with our investigation and be out of your hair as quick as possible.”

  “Certainly, Detective,” the receptionist said.

  She opened a section of her desk and rifled through a collection of antique keys, eventually pulling out one labeled “Franks, 404” in large black letters.

  “Here you are. He’s on the fourth floor at the end of the hall,” she said, handing the key to Levac.

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Levac said. “Just one more thing, could I have your name for the file?”

  The receptionist smiled and Raven stifled a grin. Levac’s Codumbo routine always charmed young women.

  “Melanie. Melanie Clark.”

  Levac smiled back and made a note in his rumpled notebook. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Thank you, Melanie,” Raven added. “Come on, Rupe.”

  The two crossed to the elevators and Raven looked up at the numbers as the elevator slowly came down from the higher floors. The elevators used an old-fashioned needle dial Levac no doubt thought was quaint.

  “She seemed like a nice girl,” Levac said.

  “Did your instincts tell you that, Codumbo?” Raven asked.

  Levac chuckled. “I think it was my eyes this time.”

  Raven stifled the pang of jealousy in her gut and turned back to the doors. The two had agreed not to let their feelings go beyond best friends. But she still felt them. In her heart he was more than a best friend.

  The elevator arrived and Raven stepped inside, keeping Levac from seeing the mixture of joy and jealousy on her face. Levac stepped in next to her and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors closed with a ‘ding’ and Levac leaned against the flower print upholstery while Raven glared at the control panel as if she’d never seen one before. The car started upwards with the whine of an antique electric motor and the faint squeak of old gears.

  The doors opened again on the fourth floor and the pair stepped out into a narrow, wood-paneled corridor with a pair of doors at each end. Raven’s sensitive nose picked up the scent of blood coming from the direction of Franks’ apartment, along with something else, an odd smoky scent she wasn’t familiar with. She looked meaningfully at Levac and drew her Automag. Levac drew his Colt and the pair moved down the hallway with Raven in front. She reached the door to the apartment and pressed one ear to the cool wood. There was no sound from within, which wasn’t unexpected. She tried the door and found that the lock had been broken by someone with great strength.

  She glanced meaningfully at Levac, knelt and pushed the door open. Levac popped through, his Colt held in front of him. Raven could see he was in a spacious apartment that had been divided into separate rooms by tasteful paper screens. The first room was a living room of sorts with a black leather sofa, big screen TV and all the latest video game consoles. Attached to this was a bar with black leather and chrome stools and a selection of top shelf booze. Some of the stools had been knocked over along with a Scotch glass; otherwise everything was quiet. He stepped further into the room and Raven followed, nudging the door shut with her heel.

  The pair spread out and began a systematic search of the apartment. Raven peeked into what looked like a spare bedroom with a flat-pack bed so neatly made it looked like a store display, a side table and lamp. The side table contained a small amount of men’s clothing in a small size, all of it new with labels still attached. Raven took a photo with her phone and turned to find that Levac had searched the bathroom. He held up a hand in the shape of a zero indicating he’d found nothing of interest and the pair turned toward the one remaining room, the master bedroom.

  Levac slid the rice-paper divider aside; beyond was a spacious bedroom with a king-sized bed with a frame made of dark wood, two matching side tables, an armoire and two plates of half-burned candles. The red satin bedclothes had been tossed aside and the bed itself was slightly askew, as if it had shifted under a great weight and the far wall was spattered with high-velocity blood spatter. Raven took half a dozen pictures of the room for easy reference while Levac called Pocock for a scene investigation. She then entered the chamber and followed her senses; the strange smoky scent was strongest in this room. She followed the smell to the candles on the far side of the bed. Pieces of paper were mixed in with the wax as of someone had hastily tried to burn something in the only available flame. She took a picture and made a note to ask Harvey to piece together what was left in the candles. She then picked up the matchbook lying next to the plate. She wasn’t at all surprised it was from The Night Shift. She slipped it in her jacket pocket and glanced toward her partner.

  Across the room, Levac had pulled open the armoire. Inside was a collection of tasteful and expensive looking men’s clothing. What was more interesting was the half dozen weapons holstered on the back of the door, including what Raven recognized was a Ruger Super Redhawk, a Colt Delta Elite and a sawed off shotgun of the sort used in low budget shoot-em up movies. Levac took a picture of the weapons and began rifling through the pile of dirty clothing at the bottom of the armoire, eventually pulling out a tailored white shirt stained with wine and lipstick. He held it up so Raven could get a better look, photographed it and left it on the bed for Pocock to process.

  Raven turned away from Levac and looked at the spatter on the wall behind her. Judging by the pattern it had been made by someone attacking with a weapon on their left hand with great force. It just didn’t match a weapon she was aware of. A shotgun at a range that would cause a similar spray would have left pellets in the wall and a blade would likely have killed Franks outright.

  Tentatively she reached toward one of the wetter-looking spots and raised the blood to her lips: B
positive with a hint of vitamin deficiency. She was certain it was Franks’. It didn’t look to have been a killing blow, but he should have bled all over the room. Why no blood anywhere else?

  When she turned around, Levac was picking something off the bed sheets with a pair of tweezers.

  “Whatcha got?” she asked.

  “Hair, long and black. It looks like Franks may have gotten a handful of his assailant before they took him down,” Levac replied. “Based on how fine it is I’d say it was a woman, but I’ll have Harvey run DNA on it for typing and a possible match. Maybe we will get lucky and the person who snatched Franks will be in the database.”

  “I don’t think we’re looking for a single perp,” Raven said, looking back at the blood spatter. “Franks was a big guy and obviously knew his way around weapons. I think we’re searching for evidence of multiple suspects.”

  Levac frowned and made some notes in his ever-present wadded up notepad. “Any thoughts on who else we’re looking for?”

  Raven shrugged. “Not a clue. Let’s keep poking. Why don’t you go ask the neighbors ‘just one more question’ and I’ll keep looking around here.”

  “Gotcha,” Levac replied. “Be right back.”

  He pocketed his notebook and left the apartment, closing the door behind him. Raven could hear him knocking on the door across the hall a moment later. Once he was gone she opened up her senses and closed her eyes. She could smell Franks; he’d worn very strong aftershave. She could also detect a hint of a more feminine scent. Franks had female company, the same female company on a fairly regular basis and she’d been present the night he was killed.

  She sniffed the sheets but could detect no signs of recent sexual activity, male or female. She tagged the covers for collection and processing anyway. You never knew and Harvey was pretty good when he wasn’t sweating in the summer sun.

  Finding nothing else of interest in the bedding, Raven turned her attention to the weapons Levac had discovered. All were loaded and ready to fire; the shotgun was loaded with wood and rock salt, an odd combination Raven noted for later investigation. She sighed and tapped her teeth, staring at the weapons. All the evidence suggested Franks had been in bed when he was attacked and the weapons were within arm’s reach…yet he hadn’t even gotten one out of its holster. Either the attack was amazingly swift and silent or he’d been too distracted by burning whatever was stuck to the candles to defend himself.

  Raven exited the bedroom and headed back into the living room. At first glance nothing seemed out of place. Whoever had broken in and taken Franks had come in when the victim was asleep and had gone straight to his bedroom; they hadn’t disturbed anything as far as she could tell.

  She frowned and turned toward the bathroom, again letting her nose guide her. It was somewhat atypical of other bachelors’ bathrooms she’d encountered. For one it was clean; the faint smell of cleaning products lingered in the air, hidden only by Franks’ cologne and amazingly expensive shampoo guaranteed to stop hair loss.

  She rifled through the medicine cabinet and vanity. Mixed in with shaving cream and nose hair clippers was a selection of very expensive cosmetics of the kind worn by women trying to look far younger than they were. Raven tagged each piece for trace. By the time she finished and returned to the living room, Levac had come back from asking questions, pad in hand and crime scene team in tow. Harvey Pocock was sweaty, as always, his black hair matted to his head as if he’d been in the rain. Four technicians flanked him like destroyers around a battleship.

  “’sup Detective Storm?” Pocock asked, extending a hand.

  “Hi, Harvey,” Raven said, ignoring the sweaty palm offered her. “I want the whole apartment processed with a focus on any latent prints that don’t belong to the victim. Otherwise, it looks like the action happened in the bedroom.”

  Harvey withdrew his hand and opened his mouth. Raven just knew he was about to make a sarcastic quip about ‘action’.

  Before she could stop him Levac said, “Don’t say it.”

  Pocock stopped and almost coughed on the sentence before stammering, “What?”

  “Your joke about action in the bedroom,” Levac said. “If you want to leave here with your dignity in one piece, just keep it to yourself.”

  Pocock glanced again at Raven and hurried away with his crew in tow.

  “Am I really that bad?” Raven asked, watching the team go to work.

  Levac smiled. “I just know you. Harvey is a good kid, I don’t want to see you snark him to death before he even gets started.”

  “He’s good, but he’s not Aspen. Our girl could run rings around that guy,” Raven replied. “Anyway, what did you find out?”

  Levac chewed on a piece of gum and flipped backwards through his notebook. “Going with a nighttime assault, the folks at the end of the hall near the elevator didn’t hear anything. One Mrs. Wynona Tucker says she fell asleep with her knitting sometime after watching an old Martha Stewart episode. She lives alone unless you count the eight cats. Across the hall from her are Mr. and Mrs. Jaden Wilburn. Mister Wilburn was at work and the missus was asleep. I double checked and confirmed Mr. Wilburn was at work at the hospital where he’s a night shift nurse. I also asked about anything strange during the day in case our victim is a late sleeper. Mrs. Tucker says she saw a tall blonde man in the hallway earlier in the day, but assumed he was visiting the young lady across the hall, Danika Ray.”

  Raven folded her arms. “So tell me about Miss Ray.”

  Levac laughed and flipped to another page. “Miss Ray reported hearing noises when she came home from work. She didn’t notice anything and just figured Wade had brought home another girl for the night. He apparently likes it rough.”

  “She didn’t see anyone? What about the blonde guy Mrs. Tucker saw?” Raven asked.

  “Danika said she didn’t know him and was asleep. She works evenings at Club Purgatory,” Levac replied. “She got home a little before midnight and heard the noise.”

  “What day was this?” Raven asked.

  “Last night,” Levac said. “And the patrolman found Franks outside Isle of Night at about six a.m.”

  Raven whistled between her teeth. “So he was snatched, killed, skinned and displayed in seven hours or less. It’s about forty minutes to the old bottling plant, another ten or twenty to Old Town bringing this whole thing to six hours. How long does it take to skin and salt a human being?”

  “I have no idea but it would think you would have to have some practice to do it in such a short time,” Levac replied.

  Raven’s next statement was cut off by the shrill ring of her telephone. “She pulled it out and answered, “Yes, Doctor Frankenstein?”

  “Very funny, Ms. Storm,” Ming Zhu, director of the city Forensic Lab replied in his thick Indian accent. “I’ve got information for you on your two corpses and it isn’t of the type I want to share over the phone. Can you and Rupert get down here right away?”

  Raven glanced at her watch and moved toward the door. “We can be there in about half an hour. What’s wrong?”

  “Just get down here, you have to see this!” Zhu said. The line then went dead.

  Raven slid her phone in her pocket and grabbed Levac. “Time to leave, Zhu’s in a tizzy to show us something. He probably found a pubic hair where it didn’t belong and thinks it’s the holy grail.”

  MING ZHU, NOW DIRECTOR OF the state forensic laboratory, still preferred to keep his office in the place where he’d started; the city morgue. It was a long-standing joke that Raven couldn’t keep her stomach during autopsies and had once been sick all over Lieutenant Frost’s brand new shoes. She had a hard time explaining it wasn’t the autopsies that bothered her, but the smell. The old building had once been a slaughterhouse and not even decades of cleaning could remove the smell of blood and offal that, to Raven’s sensitive nose, wafted from every crack, drain and tile in the building. Raven was convinced that part of the reason Zhu kept his office in the morgue was becau
se it annoyed her. She and Levac had the highest number of stiffs by far and were frequent visitors.

  Raven drove behind the Victorian building and parked in a spot marked ‘Police only’. Some clown had scratched the word ‘LeStorm’ across the sign as a joke. Raven didn’t find it funny.

  She slipped out of the car and swallowed a handful of nausea pills while she looked up at the building. It hadn’t changed over the years; orange bricks, mortar stained by old age, barred windows and an iron gutter Alfred Hitchcock would have loved. Above the building hung the blood red moon, now visible even in the day. Raven frowned at it.

  “What’s wrong? Feeling sick already?” Levac asked.

  “That damn moon,” Raven replied. “It’s giving me the creeps.”

  Levac offered an arm. “Come on, partner, let’s go see what we can see.”

  Raven linked her arm with Levac’s and followed him toward the doors. They signed in at the guard station, passed through the lobby and headed down the stairs to where Zhu kept his office. The pastel colored walls and plastic plants intended to make the morgue more appealing didn’t do much for Raven’s mood. It was a morgue and no amount of decoration or disinfecting spray was going to hide the fact. A morgue was a morgue.

  For once the fluorescent light outside Zhu’s office wasn’t flickering on and off like a bad special effect, a definite improvement. But his office was also empty which meant he was back in his lab deep in someone’s guts. Raven sighed and led the way down the green and white tiled hallway. At the end of the hall were four exam rooms, but the lights were on in only one. Through the glass she could see the bright chrome exam light, white ceiling tiles and safety lamps that lit the room. She knew the floor was green and white tile with a single brass floor drain she despised and the walls were white tile like an old bathroom. She had every inch of Ming’s lab memorized and still she hated it.

  Holding her breath she pushed through the doors and found the small Indian man, his face hidden by a surgical mask, leaning over Franks’ body. The salt had been cleaned from the corpse and he now looked like a display of musculature from a museum, complete with semi-gloss preservative. Ming looked up when they entered and lowered his mask. His black goatee and mustache were as shiny as ever and his perfect teeth showed beneath the black lip fur when he smiled.