Tarnished and Torn

by Juliet Blackwell

  “A woman was killed yesterday.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  I volunteered nothing further. I had intended to call Carlos today to tell him what little I knew about Griselda’s death, but the fact that he’d brought me down to the station was a sign that something big was afoot, and I should be careful what I said.

  One of Carlos’s interrogation techniques was to make a statement, then fall silent, waiting for the other person to fill the void with whatever information he or she had. Even when you knew it was happening it was a surprisingly hard technique to resist. But resist I did.

  And so we sat in silence. After several minutes, Carlos apparently realized I was not falling for his trick.

  “It’s not even my case,” he said. “But I felt like I should talk to you about it.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “The way the woman died is unusual.”

  He was trying again to get me talking, but I still wasn’t falling for it. I would answer his questions—as fully and honestly as I could—but I would not take the lead.

  “I remembered reading something about the method used to kill her. So I looked it up.” He leaned across his desk, pulled a library book from beneath a stack of papers, opened it to a marked page, and read:

  “Throughout the witch hunts various methods were used with particular success by the church-led inquisitors: there was the strapatto, in which the accused’s hands were tied behind her back and then lifted into the air, resulting in the dislocation of the shoulders; and the indicium aquae, or ordeal of swimming, in which drowning constituted innocence; as well as pressing, in which the accused was sandwiched between two boards and slowly crushed by the weight of stone upon stone.”

  Again with the staring. I was sure I looked white as a sheet. Even hearing the descriptions of those torments made me sick to my stomach. I caressed my medicine bag. Some things chill me to the core, which I can only assume are primordial memories or fears passed down from my witch ancestors, across the generations and through time.

  “The woman who was killed yesterday,” Carlos continued, “appears to have been murdered by what’s called pressing, a traditional way of killing a witch.”

  “Actually, pressing was a method of torturing a witch in hope of forcing a confession. Death was a bonus, I guess.”

  “You want to tell me what you know about this case?”

  There weren’t a lot of police officers who understood, much less believed in, my powers. Carlos and I had gotten off to a somewhat rocky start, but now we were friends. Of a sort. Now that he was no longer playing games with me, I was ready to tell him what little I knew.

  “I assume we’re talking about the woman at the Gem Faire?”

  “You were there?”

  “Yes. I met the uh . . . victim, Griselda, at her stand there. We had a brief discussion about opals, and. . . .” I trailed off, deciding not to tell him about the jewelry. He would come to the store and confiscate it for evidence, and I wasn’t ready to let it go; if there was anything there, I had to find it. If I turned it over to the police they would just pack it up in whatever warehouse was used to house such evidence, where it would languish alongside evidence bags containing murder weapons and bloody clothing.

  “And . . . ?”

  “And nothing. That was about it, as far as our interaction went.”

  Carlos stared at me. He knew I was lying.

  I could sense his disappointment, and it pained me. I could feel our relationship shift, from wary but friendly mutual respect, back to police versus possible suspect.

  “Whatever you say,” he said with a shake of his head, making a note in his ever-present notebook. “You don’t seem all that surprised to hear she was killed.”

  “I saw her body.”

  “You saw her? When was this?”

  “Yesterday, when fires started in the main exhibit hall, the sprinklers were on, everyone was running . . . I saw her there. Under the board . . . the security guards were waiting for the emergency vehicles, so I . . . left.”

  “You just turned and left. You didn’t think maybe someone might want to talk with you?”

  “I didn’t see anything, Carlos. I don’t know what happened. I happened upon her body after she’d already been discovered, and had nothing to add. It seemed . . . ghoulish to hang around and gawk. Disrespectful, especially given how she suffered. I was going to call you today to tell you I was there, just in case, but you beat me to it.”

  He let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. How well did you know Griselda?”

  “I told you, I’d never met her before yesterday. I didn’t know her at all.”

  “Did you see anything suspicious, anything at all? Did she say anything odd? Give any sort of warning or indication that she was worried about something?”

  “Not really. But we didn’t talk long.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Opals, mostly.”

  “How did that subject come up?”

  “She was selling jewelry with opals. There were two young women at the booth looking at some pieces, and one said opals are bad luck.”

  “And are they?”

  “It depends on who’s wearing the gem and how they treat it. Opals are made up partly of water, so they can shatter easily if not cared for properly. And because water is elemental, it can carry part of our warmth. Our energy. A bit of our soul, if you like.”

  “They’re not particularly valuable, are they?”

  “Not especially, no. Not like diamonds or rubies. But if they’re passed down, they often hold sentimental value. It’s hard to imagine someone would commit murder to retrieve something with purely sentimental value, though.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Carlos said. “People kill for all kinds of reasons. Usually those reasons don’t make much sense.”

  I thought of how much craziness and cruelty Carlos must have seen in his long career as an urban cop, and marveled at his ability to still care about each case.

  “You meet anyone else at the victim’s stand?” he asked.

  “There was a young man working with Griselda—maybe her son? She called him Johannes.”

  “Last name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You say he’s her son?”

  “She didn’t say he was; I just assumed . . .” It dawned on me that Lloyd, the owner of the Morning House, had told me Johannes was Griselda’s son. I didn’t want to mention that little excursion to Carlos, at least not at this moment. I thought he might take it the wrong way. “He could have been her assistant. All I really know is he’s young, blond, and German. Blue eyes. He was moving some boxes for her.”

  “Heavy boxes? Full of jewelry?”

  I nodded. When I saw him running from the Cow Palace he had seemed so frightened, so intent on escaping . . . what, exactly? He mentioned Hexen, but had he been running away from a witch, or simply referring to Griselda being killed like one? I just couldn’t imagine him somehow taking part in such a heinous crime. As if I knew what lurked in the hearts of men.

  “He say anything?”

  “Something in German. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

  “Who else?”

  “Just the pair of teenagers looking at the jewelry, but they wandered off before I did and didn’t seem to know Griselda. If you need to get a hold of them, I’ve got their number—they came by Aunt Cora’s Closet afterward, looking for quinceañera stuff.”

  “Oh yeah? My niece’s fifteenth is coming up this year. Costs a fortune.”

  I was glad to get our discussion back on friendlier ground. “Tell her parents to bring her by the store. I’ve got plenty of beautiful, pastel-colored flounces, and for much less than bridal or dress shops charge.”

  “I might just do that.” H
e sucked on his front teeth, not meeting my eyes, and made another note on his pad. “Anyone else hanging around, seeming like they didn’t fit in?”

  I shook my head again. And then I thought about the man at the refreshment counter. The man in the suit, Gene, who had looked so out of place. There was something about him that seemed a little odd, but surely it wasn’t worth mentioning. After all, wearing different clothes and hairstyle didn’t make someone guilty of murder. The man hadn’t done anything particularly suspicious. . . .

  “Lily?” I looked up to find the inspector’s dark eyes on me. “You sure?”

  “It was probably nothing.”

  “What do I always say? ‘Tell me everything, no matter how insignificant.’ Let me be the judge of whether it’s nothing or something.”

  Despite myself, I smiled. “Okay, but you asked for it. There was a man at the refreshment counter who seemed . . . out of place.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, for one thing, he was wearing a suit. And he sort of stood out—a man in the Cow Palace full of mostly women.”

  “Man in a suit. Wool or gabardine?”

  “Sharkskin, actually.”

  “Yikes. No wonder he stood out. Did you speak with him?”

  “A little.”

  “About what?”

  “He offered me some candy, asked how I liked the show.”

  “Candy. What kind?”

  “Jelly beans.”

  “So let me sum up: a well-dressed man strikes up a conversation and offers you some of his jelly beans. Sounds to me like he was trying to pick you up.”

  “You said you wanted to know everything. So now you know.”

  “He threaten you in any way?”

  “No. He really didn’t do anything untoward. I think he just struck me as odd because he was dressed so differently. Like he just flew in from Jersey for a business meeting, but wound up at the Cow Palace refreshment stand by accident. Oh, and he said his name was Gene.”

  “Jersey Gene with the Jelly Beans, huh?”

  “I’m getting the feeling you’re not taking this seriously.”

  “On the contrary, I take you very seriously.”

  As Carlos scribbled some more, I glanced around the large room full of detectives. A trio of men stood by the water cooler, talking about a contestant on American Idol. It struck me that while my coming here to the police station was a big deal, to these folks it was just another day at the office. Police officers were just people, like any others. Important to keep in mind.

  “Tell me more about this witch-killing method.”

  “There’s not that much to tell beyond what I’m sure you read in that book. Pressing wasn’t meant to kill but to extract information. It was a kind of slow torture.”

  “Not all that slow in this case.”

  My heart lurched, my mind returning, unbidden, to the vision of Griselda dead beneath that board. . . .

  “Take a look at this,” he said, showing me a photograph on his iPhone. “Recognize it?”

  “It’s an athame. I saw it earlier at Griselda’s stand. It’s a ceremonial knife.”

  “Witches use it?”

  “Along with many others. It’s used for rituals, but not all worshippers are witches.”

  “The lab’s testing it for fingerprints and DNA. I know you don’t have fingerprints. Is that common among your kind?”

  “Not that I know of. I told you before, I have a recognized medical condition, dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis. It’s a quirk of genetics, unrelated to my other quirks.”

  He nodded as a man came up and dropped off a file. Carlos looked casual, sitting back in the chair, one arm hanging over the back while his other hand played with a paper clip on the desk. But, as always, when he fixed me with a look it was challenging, intense, demanding.

  I continued. “I find it hard to believe a witch would kill another witch with such a precious knife, much less by pressing her. Most of us are cognizant of the historical meaning of such things. It would be a major faux pas in the witchcraft community, to say the least.”

  Carlos gave an impatient twitch of his head. “Seems to me we both know witches are as capable of murder, as well as a lot of other things, as others. Just because I respect your talents doesn’t mean I give you—or any other practitioner—a pass.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said, stung.

  “According to the security personnel, there was a miniature pig running around at one point.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Gotta say, Lily, there aren’t that many pet pigs in the city.” He consulted his notepad. “Even fewer pigs belonging to, and I quote, ‘A woman with dark hair and eyes, wearing an old-fashioned dress and orange tennis shoes.’ Ring any bells?”

  “I’d say the shoes were more saffron than orange.”

  His mouth turned up, just barely, on one side. “How did your pig happen to be running around the gem show? You brought him in?”

  “He was supposed to stay in the van.”

  “Then how’d he get out?”

  “I’m not sure about the details of his escape myself. But pigs are awfully smart.”

  He nodded thoughtfully and resumed tap-tap-tapping the paper clip on the desk blotter crowded with papers.

  “The timing strikes me as interesting,” he said.

  “How so?”

  “All the security personnel were focused on you and your pig, while back behind the curtains our victim was being pressed, as you say.”

  I hadn’t thought about the timing. It finally dawned on me—he was implying that the ruckus stirred up by Oscar on the floor of the gem show might have served as a distraction.

  “Inspector, I assure you I had nothing to do with any of this. Oscar had nothing to do with any of this. Think about it: Why would I want to draw attention away from the murder? I had met the victim only a few minutes before.”

  “I’m not suggesting you have any connection to the victim.”

  “Surely you’re not suggesting I have a connection to the murd—”

  As the words left my mouth, a handcuffed man in custody walked past the Inspector’s desk, guided by a cop. He had a full head of snowy white hair, and wore a nice but rumpled suit. But what caught my eye were the numerous scars covering his face, his neck, his hands—every visible inch of his flesh bore the distinctive, shiny scars common to severe burn victims. He and the cop disappeared down a hall.

  It had been a long time. Almost fifteen years since I’d last seen him; almost thirty since he’d abandoned me and my mother.

  Declan Theodore Ivory.

  My father.

  Chapter 7

  I tried to remain expressionless. But Carlos was no rookie. He recognized shock when he saw it.

  “When I looked into your history a while back, I learned that your father left the family when you were a baby.”

  I nodded.

  “And you were raised by your grandmother?”

  “I lived with my mother until I was eight, then went to live with Graciela.”

  “Any idea why your father left?”

  I shrugged. “I was a baby, Inspector. Remember?”

  “What did your mother tell you?”

  “My mother’s explanation doesn’t bear repeating.”

  “When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “Many years ago. After I left Jarod, when I was seventeen, I searched for him.” A strange note crept into my voice, as it did anytime I spoke about my father. Even to my own ears it sounded flat, distant, as though someone else were speaking. “It took me a year to track him down to a small village in Germany.”

  “And how was that family reunion?”

  I pulled at my lip, looked around the station. I was hoping to catch another glimpse of him.

/>   “Lily?”

  “Unpleasant.” He had raged at me, demanded I leave. It had ended in an altercation, the details of which I couldn’t remember.

  And that was the most troubling part of the encounter. I usually remember everything—for instance, I remembered the fight between my father and Graciela the night he left us. Only a tot, I had watched it all from my playpen.

  But I couldn’t remember what took place between me and my father that night in Bavaria.

  Graciela had warned me before I left in search of him that it was too late, that my father was already . . . lost. But I refused to believe it. I was sure I could track him down, that I could somehow save him from whatever trouble he had gotten himself into. Graciela had always told me that I was innately stronger than my father. And my powers, even at seventeen, were considerable. What I didn’t know then, hadn’t yet learned, was that temptation was stronger than either of us.

  Power yields to corruption. So easily.

  “He claims he’s not your father.”

  “Ha!” I said, the humorless laugh wrested from me before I could stop it. “Seriously? That’s a good one. But . . . how did you connect him to me?”

  “Your last name is unusual. When I asked, before he could catch himself, he seemed surprised to hear your name. Though he denied it, it seemed a bit too curious. So, you’re saying it’s him?”

  I wondered why my father would have denied our relationship. Gee, thanks, Dad, I thought. As if I don’t have enough abandonment issues.

  “Is he somehow connected to this crime?”

  “He’s a person of interest.”

  “Why?”

  “We got a tip, and a couple of witnesses placed him at the scene. We’re waiting on DNA results, so we’ll see.”

  I thought about the cuff link I had found. If it belonged to my father that would explain why I had felt something from it, despite my typical lack of sensitivity to jewelry. Was it evidence? If it was, should I hand it over?

  I was pretty sure Carlos’s answer would be an emphatic yes.