by Joyce Lavene
Abe’s large head swiveled in my direction as his assistant turned on a spotlight that illuminated the area in the alley. “I don’t want the police involved. This was not a normal murder. There was magic, dark magic, responsible for Harold’s death.”
Knowing that Harold was really Harold the Great, a stage magician that I’d once hired for my daughter’s birthday party, I was less inclined to agree about the magic part. I’d been surprised when he’d gone to work for Abe and wondered how long he could pretend to be a powerful magic user.
“What makes you think there was magic involved?” I asked in a snarky tone. “I’ve seen a lot of murders that seemed to have no rational explanation, but good police investigation always found the truth.”
“Skye—” Debbie whispered as she clutched my arm.
“You want to see the truth?” Abe grinned. “Morris—lift the tarp.”
Morris grinned too. That made me more certain that I should have kept my mouth closed.
The blue tarp was flipped over, and the strong light played on the victim. Harold was dressed in ordinary street clothes, not his performance robe with stars on it and a pointy hat. Otherwise there was nothing ordinary about his death.
Snakes were crawling over him—a few had lodged themselves in his mouth and throat, clogging his nostrils, and coming out of his eyes and ears. They hissed at us but didn’t move away from Harold’s body. Dozens of them were twined around his legs and arms. One seemed to be in a death embrace around his chest, probably crushing his ribs.
“Oh my God!” Debbie’s hands became talons on my arm. “Oh my God—who could do such a thing?”
Abe had Morris replace the tarp as he turned to us. “I’m hoping you two can come up with answers. Skye has ten years of experience dealing with solving crime, although perhaps this one is a little…closer to home.”
I knew right away what he meant. “Lucas didn’t kill him. He only killed Jasper because that idiot came to our house to kill him. What was he supposed to do—stand there and let him cut off his head?”
It had been an unfortunate situation. Abe’s magic user claimed to know Lucas, a sorcerer with amnesia who I’d met by chance in Nashville. He’d followed me home, and I let him stay, not realizing that there was bad blood between them—or that Jasper would come to my home.
“Lucas killed my necromancer,” Abe said. “Why should I be surprised if he killed my new magic user?”
“Lucas doesn’t just go around killing necromancers, magicians, or other sorcerers. He hasn’t killed anyone in a year. There’s no reason to suspect that he had some part in this.”
Abe chuckled in a way that made my skin crawl. “Perhaps he’s changed his mind about working for me after a long year of cleaning your house and doing landscaping. He may miss his former life.”
“We have no proof that Jasper was right about who Lucas is. He doesn’t even do magic, and if he wasn’t happy working around the inn, I’m sure he’d find something else to do.”
“That is exactly why I believe you’re perfect for this assignment, Skye. I suggest you question Lucas first as a suspect. Don’t worry. I won’t harm him. Quite the contrary. If he killed Harold, I have a place for him.”
“But no police?” I asked.
He shrugged. “No police. Better for you and Lucas, I think. And better for me. Brandon will do the autopsy. Show Debbie how to do what you do. Report back to me as soon as you learn anything. That’s all.”
He told Morris to have Harold’s body moved to the mortuary when Debbie and I were finished examining the scene.
“What are we supposed to do?” Debbie whispered with a quick backward glance at Morris who stood there smiling.
“Let’s take a look around the area and see what we can find.” An audience didn’t bother me. I’d been working hard at becoming a homicide detective before my untimely demise. I was used to people staring at me from a crowd.
The alley seemed barren of anything that could tell us what had happened. There were no cameras on either building beside us. Debbie and I combed carefully through the debris along the edges of the cracked and dirty pavement. A few trashcans had been knocked over, but they weren’t close enough to Harold’s body to think they were significant.
“If this was done by dark magic,” Debbie reminded me. “How can anything we find out here make a difference? We’re wasting our time. You should go home and talk to Lucas. Even if he didn’t kill Harold, he might have some ideas.”
Even if? “He didn’t kill Harold. He hasn’t even been around the mortuary or Deadly Ink for months.”
“But since it was done with magic—would he have to be right here to do it?”
“We’re not going down that road. Lucas didn’t kill Harold. He made it very clear last year that he didn’t want to work for Abe. He thinks he’s evil and would like me to stop working for him too.”
“Really? He knows you’re dead, right? What does he think would happen if you stopped working for Abe?”
“I don’t know. He says he wants to remember who he is so he can save me from Abe.”
As we spoke, I caught a hint of gold glitter on the ground. When I reached down for it, it was a partially smoked cigarette. There were several others close to it, as though the smoker had stood here for a while. Maybe waiting for Harold.
“See if you can find a plastic bag in the shop, will you?” I asked Debbie.
“What did you find?” She glanced into my hand. “Eww. Old cigarette butts? That’s nasty.”
“Just get a bag, will you?”
While she went for the plastic bag, I shuffled through other debris—a few drink cups from the local coffee house, and a wrapper from a bagel. Probably from the same place, though there wasn’t a bag.
“I found some napkins too.” Debbie handed them to me without touching my hand. “You’d better put those away and go inside for some hand sanitizer. Why do you think the cigarette butts are important?”
I used some of the napkins to separate the butts from the cup and wrapper. It wouldn’t work for police procedure, but my evidence didn’t have to be admissible in court. It was enough to give us a place to start that had nothing to do with magic snakes.
“Find anything?” Brandon asked from the other side of the crime scene tape. “I thought I’d have the body to work on by now.”
In the pale light, he looked more like a movie-style zombie than any of the rest of us. His skin was so pale as to be almost transparent. He was as light as Abe was dark. When I’d first met him, I thought he was a teenager—short, thin, with the narrow build of a much younger man.
He didn’t look his forty-two years, sixty-one if you counted the time he was dead as well. He was another LEP like me. Abe had taken him from being a murdered stockbroker and made him his morgue attendant.
“You know there are snakes all over, inside and outside this man, right?” Debbie asked with a toss of her dark brown hair.
Brandon rubbed his hands together and smiled. “I know. I can’t wait to get started.”
“But how are you going to—?” Debbie shuddered. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“So he’s ready to go?” Morris asked.
“Yeah.” I put the plastic bag in my pocket. “I’m not looking any closer at Harold the Great until the snakes are gone. See you later, Brandon.”
Chapter Five
We picked up an older green Ford Festiva from one of Abe’s workers to use until the van was repaired. It ran like a thirty-year-old car and had bald tires. But it would have to do. I hoped we wouldn’t have any pickups before the van was back.
I dropped Debbie off at her house. It was dark, but a welcoming porch light was shining. Her cabin was pretty, like one of those they use in the travel brochures. Debbie and Terry had kept it well-maintained. There were colorful flowers on the front overhanging porch, and the grass was green and manicured.
Debbie’s kids, Raina and Bowman, always had some sports equipment outside that just
seemed to add the right touch. It said a family lived here.
“Are you sure you won’t come in for a minute?” Debbie asked as she got her umbrella and handbag.
I knew she wanted me to talk to Terry and figure out what was wrong with him. Sometimes I tried to help her out when he went through another change. Tonight, I was just too tired. We both knew there was something really wrong with him, but it wasn’t something a doctor could fix. I didn’t want to see it any more than I wanted to look at Harold’s dead body.
“You know, it’s late, and I’m really beat. Kate and Addie will be waiting for me.”
“Are you going to ask Lucas about killing Harold?”
“Not if you mean ask him if he killed Harold. I might ask him what he thinks about someone being killed with magic snakes. He’s been getting some of his memory back. It’s slow, and when he does magic, it’s in random spurts, like the way he killed Jasper. He didn’t kill Harold.”
She smiled at me, the dash light picking out glints from the diamond chip earrings she got for Christmas from Terry. “Don’t be stubborn about this, Skye. I know you care about Lucas, but you owe Abe your life.”
“I know.” I smiled half-heartedly. “It’s hard to forget that. See you tomorrow, Debbie.”
I kept my foot on the gas to keep the engine running so the headlights would illuminate the path between the driveway and the porch. Bowman waved to me when he opened the front door for his mother. I waved back and then left the house.
It was getting harder for Debbie to go home each day. I knew it was because she never knew what she was going to find. One night, Terry was completely naked, running through the front yard. One night, the kids were scared of him because he’d killed a rabbit on the kitchen table. I knew she was holding on to the mess her life had become since her perfect world had ended when Terry was killed.
The back roads outside Nashville between my house and Debbie’s were dark, narrow, curving country roads. The best thing I could say about them was that they were usually empty. Over the summer there was more traffic from tourists, but it also stayed light later.
Despite the lateness of the hour, I took a turn I usually avoided going home. It took me past the spot where Jacob and I had died. It had been three years, but that night would always be like yesterday in my mind.
We were coming home after a late dinner. It was dark, and the roads were empty. Jacob and I were full of plans for the future. We were happy and hopeful.
A truck was coming from the opposite direction on the narrow, winding road. The bright lights flashed into our eyes, alerting us to the danger—too late—it was in our lane.
Jacob took evasive action and swerved off the road. Our SUV bumped and bounced over rocks and small trees into the thick woods surrounding us.
I know I passed out for a few minutes. When I woke up, Jacob was getting ready to walk back to the road and find help. Our cell phones had no service, and the truck driver hadn’t stopped.
He was slightly injured but nothing serious, at least to my admittedly dazed eyes. He promised he’d come back for me as soon as he could. I think I lost consciousness again. When I woke, he still wasn’t back.
The police finally found me, and I was rushed to the hospital, fighting for my life.
Addie, Jacob’s mother, and the doctor tried to persuade me not to look at his body, but I couldn’t stay away. I didn’t care if that was the shock that killed me. I had to see him to believe it was real.
He was mangled almost beyond recognition, torn to pieces, his handsome face shredded. There was no way his injuries had happened in the wreck. But though I protested and demanded an investigation, nothing happened. At that point, I’d died, and I had my own realities to deal with. I’d put Jacob’s death behind me—as Abe had insisted I should.
But I never forgot.
I mostly avoided the spot where we’d both died that night. It was a shortcut we’d liked to take going home. The sharp curve always re-played our last conversation in my mind. I could still see his smiling face the instant before he said he was going for help.
But it was different tonight. There were several highway patrol cars, an ambulance, and a few firefighters at the same spot where we’d had our wreck.
Addie was going to pitch a fit that I was home so late, but I couldn’t stop myself from slowing down and parking on the side of the road with the emergency vehicles.
Someone was directing traffic. Flares had been set on the road to make sure no one came down the right hand side. I could see from the temporary lighting that another vehicle had gone off the road here. Small trees had been smashed to the ground and underbrush flattened.
Curious, I followed the tracks of men and machines until I came to the spot that could have been where our wreck took place. A body was being taken from a bright red pickup truck. It was already covered with a white sheet. Emergency workers were taking out a body bag.
“Can I help you?” A tall, husky highway patrolman stopped me. His badge said Rusk. He’d removed his flat brimmed hat. There was a spot of blood on his uniform.
“I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be here. It’s just that—”
His forehead wrinkled. “Wait. I know you.”
I could see he was groping for my name. I remembered his. Tim Rusk. “Skye Mertz. I used to be a Nashville police officer. My husband and I—”
“You were involved in another accident here a few years back.” His eyes widened. “I remember you and your husband. You were both NPD, right? That was a terrible shame. I’m so sorry.”
Looking at his open, broad face, I realized that we had worked together before that awful night. “We worked on a project before that...to reduce wrecks in the city, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right! It was a few years before.” He smiled kindly and held out his hand. “I’m glad we’re meeting again even if this is a bad place for it. I’ve thought about you and your husband many times since then. I think you were unconscious when we pulled you from the wreck. You probably don’t even recall me being here. Why did you stop tonight, Skye?”
“We’ve got another one out here,” a voice called from out of the closely wooded area that surrounded us. “Jesus! What a mess. How could he have been thrown this far from the vehicle?”
Tim zeroed in on the voice in the darkness. “I gotta go. You shouldn’t be here.”
I looked toward the voice as other emergency workers ran into the woods. Was it the same story?
Too far to be thrown from the wreck. Never seen anything like it. Horribly mauled.
“I know.” I kept the tears at bay by biting my lip. “I’m leaving. Thanks for talking with me.”
He shook my hand and then joined the rest of the workers.
I walked back to my car feeling cold and numb in a way that had nothing to do with being a zombie. Something was happening out here in the dark woods. How common was it? Was the story always the same?
I waited in the car until I saw Tim leaving an hour after the rest of the emergency services people. It was close to two a.m. when I approached him. I think I startled him when I called his name.
“You still here?” He shone a flashlight in my face. “This won’t help you, Skye. You know that.”
I put my hands in my pockets. “I know. How long until you’re off duty? I’d like to buy you a beer.”
He frowned. “And pick my brain?”
“Yeah. I know an all-night place right down the hill. I’m buying.”
“Okay. I’ve already been off duty a few hours. You know how it is.”
“I do. See you there.”
I got the car started after a few tries. It chugged to life and finally went down the hill to the tiny tavern where Jacob and I had met sometimes. There were two pickup trucks in front. I parked near them, and Tim parked beside me.
We went inside the dark drinking hole together. The two men at the bar glanced our way for a moment and then turned back to their beer.
“Always glad to h
ave a lawman come in for a drink.” The slight bartender who owned the place—Matt—put two coasters on the table in front of us. “Whatcha havin’?”
“I’ll have a Bud and whatever the lady is having.” He nodded to me.
“I’ll have the same and the check. I’m buying, remember?” I smiled at the bartender. “Hi, Matt. How are you?”
“I know you,” he said. “You used to come in with that other fella. Where’s he tonight?” He meant Jacob. I’d never come here with anyone else.
“He couldn’t be here,” I said, not going into it.
“I’ll get those beers.”
“What do you want, Skye?” Tim put his coaster over a wet spot on the wood table. “I know when someone is looking for information.”
“I’m not with Nashville PD anymore. Not since my husband died. I’m sure you can imagine what I want to know after seeing the wreck in the same spot as ours.”
“That’s what I thought.” He gazed directly into my face. “I don’t know what to tell you. There are frequent wrecks in the area. There’s a blind spot coming around that curve. Sometimes people drift into the other lane. It happens.”
“But does it always happen that one of the passengers in the vehicle is thrown from it, found impossibly far away from the vehicle, and mangled like Jacob was?”
The bartender put our beers on the table and left us.
Tim took a large gulp of his. “There’s a pattern of it happening here, yes, Skye. I’m sure you know it already, right?”
Chapter Six
My heart beat a little faster—yes—my heart still beats.
I took a big swallow of beer to cover my excitement at the possibility that I’d found someone who could help me figure out what had really happened to Jacob. I wasn’t supposed to do this, but Abe didn’t own all of me. I wanted to know what happened that night.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I know there have been other accidents. It happened tonight too, didn’t it?”
