by Debra Dunbar
There was a moment of silence, then a sharp intake of breath from the detective. “Ainsworth, sometimes you scare the holy fuck out of me. This guy is wearing a dead man’s skin? Like that Hannibal dude or something?”
“Well no, not exactly. He’s not a human trying to escape prison by slapping another guy’s face on top of his, this is a type of mage—a skinwalker. At least I think it is.”
“Wait. More evil mages? You’re shitting me, Ainsworth. The last ones kill and steal souls. These ones kill and steal skins?”
“I’m not a hundred percent, but that’s where I’m heading. One killed a vampire, Tremelay. Do you know what it takes to kill a vampire? She killed and skinned it. That’s not normal human stuff.”
The detective sighed. “Get in here. I want you with me when I interview this guy. The Lieutenant is gonna have my nuts in a vice for this, but if Huang’s not human, then I need you by my side.”
I hung up, thrilled. Well, not thrilled that people were being murdered and skinned, but thrilled that I was a resource to the Baltimore PD, that I was the person Tremelay needed by his side when interviewing a possible skinwalker. Yeah. Ego boost big-time.
Brian Huang was in the interview room when I arrived, curled up on a chair with his head in his hands. He was crying, and at that moment I didn’t see a forty-year-old father of two, but a child. I walked in and sat next to Tremelay, well aware of Norwicki on the other side of the two way mirror.
Our suspect looked up at me, his brows furrowing as his eyes traveled down my face and body, snagging on the red cross tattoo on my wrist. “You’re the Templar.”
Not, the Templar. Just a Templar. Still, I wondered how he knew to look for the tattoo, and wondered at the rising note of panic in his voice.
“We need to know about some recent murders,” Tremelay told him. “Not just the one at the museum, but the murder of Amanda Lewis. You’ve been seen in the company of Bradley Lewis who is a suspect in his sister’s murder.”
“You’ve also been seen in the company of a girl who killed a vampire in Hampton last night,” I added.
Huang had remained stoic in the face of Tremelay’s comments, but he’d blanched at mine. “There are no such things as vampires,” he said in a wavering voice.
“Your friend has a different opinion.” I pulled up my cell phone and showed him the picture of their embrace in the station parking lot. “She wanted a vampire. She got a vampire. And your other friend, Bradley, killed his sister.”
Tremelay scowled at me and I winced, realizing that I was co-opting his investigation. I better shut up and let him take the lead, whether Huang was a skinwalker or not.
“I didn’t kill anybody.” Huang’s voice was reaching the upper octaves. “I’ve never killed anybody. Never. Becca either. Yeah, she has a thing for vampires. She’s read too many of those romances with dark princes biting necks and all. Still, she’s not a killer. She’s just…confused.”
“Tell that to two women in Hampton,” Tremelay said, eyeing me with a scowl. “Tell me about your friendship with Bradley Lewis and this Becca.”
Huang’s breathing increased to the point where I thought we may need to call for a paper bag. “I don’t know any Bradley Lewis. Becca is…she’s someone I’ve known from when I was a kid.”
“Becca is all of sixteen,” Tremelay said. “What, did you baby sit her or something? Who are her parents? Do you know them?”
“No! She’s…we were raised by Grandmother.” His eyes darted back and forth between us, wet with tears. “I just want to go home. Can I go home? It was all a mistake. I thought I’d be happy, but I’m not. I just want to go home.”
“There’s no going home, Brian. Not until we catch the murderers.” Tremelay leaned back in his chair. “Bradley Lewis was seen fleeing from the scene of his sister’s house while she lay dead in the bedroom. There was the skin of a boy from South Carolina in his backpack—Lawton King. There was the skinned body of another man in a cooler in the garage.”
Huang began to sob. “He took it. He took the skin. I’m trapped. I can’t be anything but this unless I kill and I don’t want to kill. Please. I just want to go home.”
Tremelay’s eyes widened, looking to me with a mute appeal. Yeah, Huang sounded crazy, and I tried to figure out what was going on with the skin situation. Was he a victim too? Had a forty something year old man been taken in by a young man and a teenage girl?
“How do you know Bradley Lewis,” Tremelay insisted.
“He’ll kill me. You gotta understand, he’ll kill me. I just want to go home.”
“You’re not going home.” The detective leaned forward. “You’re going to jail. Cooperate, and we’ll think about a deal. Otherwise at the very least you’re an accomplice to three, if not five, murders.”
Huang buried his head in his hands. “I want a lawyer. You said I could have a lawyer, well I want one. And I want Grandmother.”
Who the heck was Grandmother? I thought of Huang’s elderly parents and wondered how old his grandmother could possibly be. Heck, she’d have to be almost Essie’s age. And was she in China?
That is, if he really was Huang. If I was right and the dead body in the closet was Huang, then this was somebody else wearing his skin—someone who was desperate to get back to South Carolina and his grandmother.
Wait. Hadn’t the skinned body of the boy been from South Carolina? I thought again of the snarky boy with Becca at the Inner Harbor. Had that been where they were from? Were they once four and they killed one and took his skin? With the ability to assume other’s identities, I had no idea who these skinwalkers really were.
Or even if they truly were skinwalkers.
The detective raised his hands and waved toward the door. A uniformed officer came in and escorted Huang out. The man was hunched over, sobbing the entire time. I felt for him. Either this was a family man, a loving husband and a father of two who’d somehow been embroiled in these murderers, or a monster who’d assumed the innocent man’s identity and was an amazing actor.
I just couldn’t believe the actor part. But I equally believed that this man who’d just left the interview room wasn’t the Brian Huang his parents had raised, that his wife had married. Still, he was oddly sympathetic and in spite of the evidence, part of me wanted to believe that he really didn’t kill anybody.
Which left Bradley Lewis. And this Becca.
I kept thinking of the man in Huang’s skin my whole shift at the coffee shop. Becca and the other boy had been young. From his actions, I was thinking whoever was impersonating Huang was young, too. And Bradley Lewis wasn’t much older. Had three of them journeyed up from South Carolina, met Bradley and sucked him into their schemes? I found it hard to believe that Lewis could have mastered the magic involved in skinwalking in such a short time, but the murder of his sister did fit with the theory. She’d be the close relative he’d needed to murder to gain the skill.
Had three teens managed to become adept at it? Who had trained them? And what about Huang’s insistence that he hadn’t killed anyone? I got the impression he was telling the truth, but all my research said he’d needed to kill a relative to gain the skinwalker ability. And someone killed Huang. I didn’t know the details of the magic, but I assumed only the murderer could wear the skin. That meant the teen impersonating Huang had to have at least killed twice.
Which made him a liar. And me terrible at scenting out the truth.
I was wrapping up my shift, eyeing the gray of dusk and the sudden burst of gold from the streetlights when Tremelay called.
“He’s gone.”
“Mmm,” I replied, giving the pastry counter another wipe. “His lawyer made you release him?”
“No. When the lawyer got here and we went to get him from the holding cell, he was gone. Well, most of him was gone.”
Most of him? He’d left behind a rope made of clothing or a lock of hair? “What do you mean?”
“Brian Huang’s skin is in the cell, but the rest
of him isn’t.”
I thought back to the horror movie the detective had referenced, where a prisoner escaped by slapping a dead guard’s facial skin on top of his own and riding out in the ambulance. This was reversed, though. The skin was still in the cell, and the body was gone. I doubted a skinned corpse walked unnoticed out of the prison. So where was the body that had once walked around in that skin?
Chapter 22
YOU SURE YOU want to go to Jessup today?” Tremelay’s voice was rapid-fire with excitement—more excitement than last night when Huang’s gruesome disappearance had rocked the entire police station. How in the world were they going to explain that one? Someone somehow gets into a holding cell, kills their person of interest and takes the corpse, leaving the skin behind?
I wasn’t even sure how to explain it, even with my skinwalker theory. Did Huang, or whoever he was, shed the human skin and turn himself into a bird or mouse to escape? Because that was pretty much the only way I saw him getting out of that holding cell and a station with armed officers all over the place.
My trip to visit Chuck at the prison wasn’t urgent. At this point I doubted we were dealing with an Aztec god. I just wanted to cross it off my list, and to try to pry out of the Fiore Noir member what it was they’d been performing death and soul magic to guard against. The killers that I’d begun to believe were skinwalkers were a more immediate problem than whatever unknown situation loomed on the horizon.
“I can push it to this afternoon or tomorrow. What’s up? Have you found Huang again, or whoever Huang was under the skin?”
It was going to be impossible to find him now. I had no idea who, teenager or not, had been impersonating Brian Huang. The only ones I’d seen in what I assumed was their regular form was Becca and that boy at the Harbor. Somehow I doubted Huang with his tears and his desperate pleas to go home was the same kid as that jerk with Becca.
“No, and I don’t think we’re going to find Huang. We’ve got his skin. We found what I assume was his body at the Walters in the broom closet. At this point we’re just looking for Bradley Lewis as our murder suspect.”
“So you found him? Or Becca?” Although I had a feeling Becca would be underground right now if she’d clung to her vampire fixation.
“Nope. I had a guy call me who said he heard about the murder at the museum and has information for me. He doesn’t want to come down to the station. Wants to meet me at a park in downtown. Thought you might be interested in tagging along given that we’re most likely dealing with a supernatural murderer and not the run-of-the-mill serial killer.”
I weighed the risks of delaying my meeting with Chuck and the potential information I’d miss if I didn’t attend this interview. The interview won. Chuck’s information could wait.
Tremelay met me as I locked my car, walking with me to the park bench where a thin man with a strawberry-blond flat-top and a day’s growth of golden whiskers on his chin and cheeks sat. He smiled nervously at me as I walked up, nodding politely when the detective made the introductions. We sat on the bench across from him. And waited.
“You had something you wanted to tell us?” Tremelay prompted. “About the murder at the Walters Art Museum?”
Stu Moorman rocked on the wrought iron seat, the squeak-squeak of metal loosely bolted to pavement driving me to the edge of insanity.
“This is gonna sound crazy,” Stu said. “I didn’t want to tell anyone, but when I read about the psycho-skinner in the paper, I knew I had to say something.”
What, what, what? Janice usually gave me a head’s up before she ran an article on something we’d discussed in private. I looked back and forth between the detective and Stu until Tremelay pulled a folded paper out of his pocket and handed it over to me.
It wasn’t The Sun, and it wasn’t Janice. Somebody had leaked information on the skinned body at the Walters to the City Paper, and they’d gone with it. I skimmed the article and grimaced. Janice would be pissed that she’d been scooped.
Tremelay ran a hand through his hair. “This is the second guy we’ve had today with supposedly firsthand information on the killer,” he told me. “Norwicki just came back from the last lead, which had turned out to be a man performing home-tanning with deer hides he’d gotten from butcher shops that catered to hunters.”
Ugh. I’ll bet his neighbors loved that.
As if reading my mind, Tremelay nodded. “Evidently his basement looked like a house of horrors with hides tacked to boards suspended from the ceiling. Whole place stank of decomposition and chemicals. But no, he is not our killer.”
“This isn’t about someone tanning leather in their basement,” Stu said, rocking the bench again. “It was something else. Something worse. I think I know the people who killed that man at the museum.”
“What did you see, Mr. Moorman?” Tremelay asked.
Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. “I was down in South Carolina, looking at a few things. I’m a picker, you know, like those guys on TV?”
I’d seen the show. Two guys who roamed the country visiting elderly collectors, and searching flea markets and estate sales for possible antiques.
“I sometimes do museum transfers or pick up donated items. Usually small stuff like a pair of forceps that the Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick wants. This time I was bringing up a set of knives for the Walters.”
I sat back in my chair, already feeling like this was a waste of time. Cursed knives that skinned victims on their own, that killed that guy I found in the closet of the museum? Whatever wild story this guy had, I might as well enjoy it.
“On the way back I saw these hitchhikers just outside of Spartanburg. It was raining, and they didn’t look much more than teenagers in age. Two boys and a girl. I figured they were runaways because they didn’t care where I was going as long as it was north.”
And now I was on the edge of my seat, envisioning the plot to a slasher horror movie. Cursed knives skin three teenage hitchhikers. Or three teenage hitchhikers steal cursed knives that turn them into psycho skinwalkers.
That actually fit. Becca and the two guys steal a knife that turns them into…something, then they hook up with Bradley Lewis and go on a killing spree. Made as much sense as skilled teenage mage skinwalkers.
Stu shifted nervously on his bench, the squeak in double-time. “I couldn’t just leave them in the rain like that, but I was a little worried with three of them and just me, so I made them ride in the bed of the truck. It’s got a cap on it, so it’s out of the rain. I didn’t have anything back there but a neon sign I’d gotten in Greenville and some lunchboxes from the 60’s I’d grabbed on my way down. Nothing three teenagers would think worth stealing or could use as a weapon or anything.”
The guy sounded pretty safety-conscious so far. Well, as safety conscious as a man picking up three hitchhikers could be. I waited for the gruesome part of the story, and wasn’t disappointed.
“We stopped for gas in Roanoke. They got out and stretched, said they wanted to keep going with me. I felt kinda bad for them back there in the bed of the truck for hours, wet as they were, so I bought them some coffee and snacks at the quick mart. We didn’t stop again until that rest stop on 70 between Hagerstown and Frederick. I had a few phone calls to make and the three of them went into the rest stop. It had been a while, so I went in to check on them, tell them I needed to get going. That’s when I saw it.”
Squeak, squeak, squeak. I held my breath, waiting for dead, skinned teenagers at the rest stop.
“They had some guy on the floor of the handicapped stall, naked with his clothes in the sink. I could see the blood on the floor, hear cutting noises, like they were slicing them up. I looked around the corner, just to see what was going on. The one boy had this long curved knife that looked like it came right out of his finger. He was using it to peel the skin from the man and was yelling at the others, telling them that they needed to get with the program, that they needed to grow up and start getting their own skins because he wasn’t goi
ng to do it for them like Grandmother did. The other boy was crying and gagging like he was going to puke. The girl kept saying she didn’t want this guy, arguing that the one boy didn’t have any reason to kill the man or need for his skin when he had a perfectly good one he was wearing right now. That’s when I ran.”
“You got in your car and drove off.” I added. It’s what I would have done.
Stu shook his head. “I ran into the bushes and threw up. Then I hid there for a while. My phone was in the car, and I was scared that they’d seen me, that they were after me. After half an hour or so, I got up my nerve and bolted to my car. They were in the bed like nothing happened, chatting with each other, sharing a soda. None of them had a spot of blood on them, and I wondered if I was crazy, if I’d imagined it all. I didn’t know what to do so I got in and kept going. Parked the car on Charles Street, took the knives to the museum. The kids weren’t in the truck when I got back, so I got the heck out of there and went home.”
“You drove an hour with three murderers in the back of your truck?” Tremelay’s voice was as squeaky as the bench, his eyes huge as he leaned closer toward Stu.
The man nodded. “I’d been driving for twelve hours, hadn’t slept in days. I’d been living on Slim Jims and Red Bull. There was other people at that rest stop. Nobody screamed. I was the only one who seemed to have seen anything. And when I got back to the truck, there them kids sat, chatting away like nothing happened, not a spot of blood anywhere… I thought maybe I imagined it. Then I read that there’s this crazy running around the city skinning people and I thought maybe I hadn’t imagined it.”
Tremelay sighed. “Can you come down to the station and describe them enough for a sketch artist?”
“I took pictures.” Stu pulled out his cell phone and handed it to Tremelay. I looked over his shoulder at the blurry photos, taken through the back glass of a pick-up window.
They might have been blurry, but between the five snapshots, I had enough to make out their faces. Becca with her thick eyeliner and colorfully accented hair. The Goth-looking boy that was with her at the Inner Harbor. And a third boy with dark brown skin and wide, terrified eyes.
