by Debra Dunbar
There was something in those eyes that reminded me of Huang.
“I’ll bet that’s Lawton King,” Tremelay told me, pointing to the picture of the frightened boy. “I’m not positive. The only picture we’ve got was from when he was six. That and…you, know. The backpack.”
The skin in the backpack. But where was Lawton King’s body? Or maybe Lawton King hadn’t always been Lawton King.
“The girl and possibly King, but that’s it. None of these three are Bradley Lewis,” Tremelay said, disappointed. Still, he forwarded the pictures to both his and my cell phones.
“I think Bradley might be a victim,” I told him. “This boy took his identity, and this other boy, maybe-Lawton, took Huang’s.”
“They called him Gary,” Stu pointed to the Goth-looking boy. “He was clearly in charge. I think maybe he was older or something. He was the one doing the skinning in the bathroom.”
Gary. Becca. Maybe-Lawton. “Did this boy have a name?” I pointed to the one with the haunted eyes.
“Landon or Lawson or something. Felt bad for that kid. Seemed like they’d dragged him along and he was in over his head.”
I squirmed with excitement. Although we had a long way to go to catch these guys, at least we had a clue where they’d come from and who they were. Gary, the jerk from the Harbor, the one who’d said he needed to “change” and get some money from his bitch of a sister. He had become Bradley Lewis. Lawton, the one who’d missed the meeting because of his kid’s soccer game—the one his wife had forced him to go to, he’d become Brian Huang. And Becca, the vampire obsessed girl. Well, she’d gotten her vampire. Whether she was still alive or had caught a ray of sunlight and burned to death was still unknown.
“So, where do you think they put the skin from the rest stop?” I asked Stu.
“Probably a backpack. They each had one. They were dark green, so I couldn’t tell if there was blood on the packs or not. I didn’t see any blood in the back of my truck when I was unloading. That’s why I thought maybe I’d imagined the whole thing.”
“Was this guy working at the museum the night you dropped off the knives?” Tremelay asked, sliding a picture of Brian Huang in front of Stu.
“Yeah, he was there. There was the woman who signed for them. She’s in charge of the armory and weapons exhibits. Elsa Cartwright. There was another guy who was a security guard. I think this guy in the picture was cataloging something. I remember as Ms. Cartwright and I were leaving, he called out that he’d probably be another hour before he could go home. She reminded him that he needed to be in early the next morning for some special function. Calligraphy or something.”
“And the kids weren’t in the truck when you came out of the museum?” the detective asked.
Stu shook his head. Tremelay thanked the man, handing him his card as he stood and motioned for me to follow him.
“I don’t know what to think,” the detective grumbled. “Three kids. Do you think they hooked up with Brian Huang and later with Bradley Lewis? Are we looking for five instead of two killers?”
“No, we’re looking for three.” I told him about my suspicions.
“Huang was pathetic.” Tremelay leaned against my car as we spoke, flicking through his notebook. “Think that Gary guy killed him and made Lawton wear his skin?”
“I don’t know. I want to believe Lawton/Huang when he said he hadn’t killed anybody, but skinwalkers need to kill in order to gain the power. Plus I don’t think that one can wear a skin they haven’t taken themselves.”
The detective shook his head. “Either way, he’s killed someone. And this Gary kid killed Bradley and Amanda Lewis. Although where Bradley Lewis’s body went to is anybody’s guess. We’ve got Huang’s body and skin accounted for. Lawton’s skin but no body. And an as-yet unidentified body from the cooler.”
“That could be Bradley Lewis,” I told him.
“Maybe. It takes forever for the damned DNA lab. Wish we had a quicker way of doing this.”
Another thing I’d need to research. If Chuck could identify the owner of an object by killing a few chickens, I should be able to figure out a non-death magic spell to do the same with skins and bodies. Kind of a magical DNA test.
“Walk with me,” Tremelay pushed away from the car. “Let’s get coffee and go over all this.”
I followed him. “It’s looking like skinwalkers, even though that leaves a few loose ends. It’s the most logical conclusion to all this.”
“Then what’s the girl doing?” The detective asked. “No one saw or mentioned her since she was hugging Huang in the station parking lot, then she’s suddenly in Hampton killing vampires?”
“She’s got a fixation with them and Gary wouldn’t help her,” I told Tremelay. “He was making fun of her. I saw the pair of them at the Inner Harbor the morning after the Walters murder and eavesdropped because she was talking about vampires and he was being such a jerk. I recognized her when she was with Huang at the station and started connecting the dots. But I think they’ve split for good. At least, Becca and the two boys have. Lawton is obviously trying to get back to South Carolina, and who knows what’s on Gary’s mind.”
“Lawton will probably go back to Gary. He’s scared and he doesn’t have any money or way to get home. Gary is all he knows. Wait. There really are vampires?” Tremelay stopped so quickly I almost ran into the back of him. “And that black guy who was in your apartment when we arrested the mages last month, he’s a vampire?”
“Yeah. But these skinwalkers are more important right now.” I’d purposely kept this from Tremelay, not wanting to overwhelm him. Demons, angels, and mages who sacrificed other humans was enough to digest in the course of a month. I’d hoped to wait a bit more before revealing all this to him.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to deal with questions about the vampires either. Tremelay had to have watched the movies, read the books, heard the legends. He’d want to know how they fed, how humans played into their lives.
“This is all starting to come together,” I told him. “If these three kids that Stu picked up in South Carolina are skinwalkers, then in addition to their regular teenage identities, they’ve got Bradley Lewis, and a vampire north of the city. I don’t know if they’ve taken any other skins, so we’ll need to act fast.”
“If they keep changing their identities, we’ll never catch them,” the detective mused, stopping at a food truck and ordering two coffees.
“Exactly. Luckily the vampire one will probably be the easiest to catch. She can only go out at night, and she’ll be easily picked up if she comes close to any of the other vampires.”
“If they catch her, then she might be able to lead us to the other two,” Tremelay said.
I nodded. “The catch is I’m not one hundred percent positive what sort of monster these three are. Most likely, they’re skinwalkers, but they might be shapeshifters. Also, it’s a long shot, but I don’t want to rule out the Aztec god thing too soon.”
“A god?” Tremelay handed me a coffee. “Seriously? And I thought demons were bad. Why couldn’t we just have a crazy serial killer? Why an Aztec god?”
“Probably not the Aztec god,” I tried to reassure him. “I’m leaning toward skinwalker, but I need more information to narrow it down. That’s why I wanted to go up to Jessup.”
“Charles Kennedy Jones.” Tremelay nodded. “You’ve got it, Ainsworth. Be at Jessup at two this afternoon, and I’ll make sure he’s ready and waiting.”
Chapter 23
THERE WAS NO note from Raven when I got home, either on my laptop or on the dry erase board. I tried hard to hide my disappointment and worry, chatting cheerfully with her about the Stu interview and my pending visit to Jessup as I got ready to go. The little fox figurine hadn’t moved from the table, its eyes still dull. Had breaking the coffee cup taken that much out of her? Raven never was able to manage her temper, and she was a bit of a control freak. Her current state had to have been driving her nuts.
Setting her closer to the laptop, I set my wards and headed out. My phone rang just as I was pulling out of my parking lot. I grimaced when I saw it was Janice and reluctantly answered her call.
“Did you see that article? Did you see it?”
I imagined her wild-eyed, froth flying from her mouth like a rabid animal. What surprised me wasn’t her anger, but the fact that the article had been out for twenty-four hours before she’d seen it.
“I never read that rag. Never, “she ranted. “Someone at work handed it to me, wondering why I wasn’t up to speed on this, why we’d been scooped by the damned City Paper.”
I winced. “Is he still alive? The guy who handed you the paper, I mean. Will your next article be about how a reporter snapped and killed one of her coworkers?”
“It’s not funny, Aria. This is my job. I held back on it and now I look incompetent. Do you know how that makes me feel? He even stole the name I came up with for the killer.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to tease you when you’re upset.” Although, to be honest, I was the one who came up with the name Psychotic Skinner, not Janice.
“Did he get his information from you?” Janice accused.
“No! I don’t even know the guy. The only reason I know about the article is Tremelay showed me a copy this morning.” Janice had to have been really upset to even think such a thing of me.
“Sorry.” She seemed to be calming down. “I just hate to get scooped, then to have Tony rub my nose in it like that…”
Teasing aside, I was honestly surprised Tony was still among the living. “Besides, if the reporter had gotten his information from me, then he would have known that there are three serial killers, not just one. He also would have known that they’re not human.”
“Woohoo!” And now Janice was excited. “Demons? Please say it’s demons so I can work in the exorcism in Canton. Lay it on me girl. I’ve got to get something in to redeem myself, here.”
“I’m not positive what it is yet, but it seems that three something-or-others posing as two teenage boys and one teenage girl hitchhiked their way to Baltimore from South Carolina. They kill their victims, take their skin and assume the victim’s identity. One of them seems to have a vampire fetish because she attacked several north of the city and managed to kill and skin at least one of them.”
Silence met my words. I heard Janice suck in a huge breath and let it out. “That’s probably the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard. More frightening than occult mages sacrificing humans.”
“Makes it hard to catch them when they could be anybody,” I complained. “Unless we find the skinned body and can quickly identify it, we’ve got no idea who they’re impersonating.”
I heard Janice scribbling in the background. “Can’t they speed up DNA testing? Make it a priority?”
“No. There are only so many labs that do that sort of thing and with murder, everything’s a priority. Plus DNA testing doesn’t do us any good if the victim didn’t have theirs on file. If the monster is walking around in their skin impersonating the victim, we might not even have a missing person’s report. Nobody reported Brian Huang missing. Or Bradley Lewis.”
“I can dig around and see if there are any other reports of demonic possession. Most of them are probably bogus, but could be another Bradley Lewis out there,” Janice offered.
It would help. “Thanks, I’m on my way to check out one of the theories on these guys, then I’ll call you back. The vampires might be able to help, too. They got a good read on the one dead vampire, and should be able to recognize if someone’s walking around in her skin.”
“Mmmm.” Now there was rapid typing in the background, along with a beep. “Call me this afternoon?” Janice asked, her voice distracted. “I gotta get on this, and Sean keeps texting me to call him. I hope he’s not cancelling tonight.”
I promised to call her and hung up, musing over the fact that she’d seen the developer every night since they’d met. Personally that would drive me nuts to see someone every single night, to have them texting and calling me when we weren’t really a couple.
Oh. Dario. Okay, maybe with the right person, that amount of contact wouldn’t be irritating. I might be suspicious of Sean, but deep in my heart I was hoping that he was that right person for Janice. She deserved someone who was crazy about her, someone she was crazy about. And unlike in my doomed situation, Sean wasn’t a vampire.
***
JESSUP CORRECTIONAL CENTER had a dark past. It had been designed over a hundred years ago and the tight corners and narrow staircases weren’t suitable for a maximum security prison. With a reputation for riots, fights, and escapes as well as attacks on officers, the final straw came when two guards were stabbed in 2007.
The main building was demolished, over eight hundred inmates moved to another high-security facility. The remaining buildings housed medium security offenders and a separate women’s prison. Still, security was tight, and it took me quite a while to go through checks, sign-ins, and metal-detectors. Turns out there was a visitor dress code that thankfully I had unknowingly complied with. Several people were turned away for short skirts, leggings, or tank tops.
I felt sorry for them. Visiting days were based on a prisoner’s ID number, and thus were once per month. Those with inappropriate clothing would need to run home and change, or risk not seeing their friend or family member for another month.
Luckily Tremelay had pulled his police strings and gotten me in outside of the normal visiting day. Still, after making my way through all the security checks, I sat in a room that reminded me a lot of a bus station and waited.
Finally they called my name and I walked into a large room, divided with plexiglass, half-height cubicle dividers separating the individual booths. I sat and waited yet again. A few moments later a guard escorted a jumpsuited Chuck in. He sat and picked up the phone receiver like he’d done this a million times.
I did likewise. “Did you get the Fisher’s caramel popcorn?”
It had been our deal. He gave me the info on Dark Iron, I sent him a gigantic bucket of the Eastern Shore staple four times per year. It was a deal well worth making.
He nodded. “I’d expect this isn’t a social visit. You here for magical information? Need to pick my brains about a ritual or something?”
His voice was full of longing, as though he’d hoped every day for a practitioner to talk shop with. I doubted many in prison were mages, and I’m sure he kept his extracurricular practice to himself.
“I’m here about skinwalkers. At least I think they’re skinwalkers. They might be an Aztec god or or shapeshifters, or possibly demons.”
He blinked, his head jerking to the side in surprise. “Skin whats? And did you say Aztec god?”
Either Chuck was ready for an Academy award, or these monsters killing and skinning humans weren’t the Big-Bad that Fiore Noir had been using sacrificial magic to protect the city against.
I was here. I was in the company of a skilled ceremonial magician. Might as well use my time wisely.
“We’ve got three killers going around Baltimore killing people and skinning them. At first we suspected a human serial killer, but we’re now thinking all three are some sort of paranormal creature. They take the skins of their victims and assume their identity.”
Chuck looked horrified, which was odd given that he’d participated in sacrificial magic. “They wear the skins of dead people? Do they tan them first or something?”
It was gross either way. “The M.E. says they’ve been preserved somehow, but it’s not a tanning method he’s familiar with.”
He shook his head slowly from side to side. “Are their victims important, powerful people? I assume they’d have to be to warrant going to all that trouble.”
“Not exactly. A college-age slacker. A museum employee. A renegade vampire. And we found another skin that belonged to a teenage boy.”
“That’s four.” Chuck wrinkled his brow.
“There’s only t
hree of them, but it seems they’re collecting these skins and can swap around who they’re impersonating.”
Chuck swallowed, looking rather ill. “Ugh. I don’t know of any mages who do that sort of thing. I’ve never even heard of it before. What did you say these things were again?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe they were related to skinwalkers although I’ve never heard of them using human skins, just animals.”
His eyes narrowed. “Aren’t skinwalkers just human mages who specialize in a kind of shape-shifting?”
“Yeah, but these taste like a rotted corpse so I’m not convinced they’re human. Would a mage who participated in that kind of magic change at a molecular level?”
“How do you know what they taste like?” Chuck again looked horrified.
“One killed a vampire, but before that a renegade north of the city said she’d picked the girl up and when she bit her, the girl tasted like a rotted corpse.”
“I don’t think the magic user in his original form would be changed in any way that would make him taste like that to a vampire.” Now Chuck was beginning to look intrigued. “Perhaps something in the transformation process gives him or her the flavor of the dead body that used to wear the skin. Or a mage that skilled might have a life-extension spell. Some of them involve becoming like the living dead. Of course, a decent illusion spell is necessary because rotted corpses walking around isn’t socially acceptable.”
If so, it was probably the first theory. I just couldn’t see the man who’d cried in the interrogation room as an ancient. “I’m pretty convinced we’re dealing with skinwalkers then. Unless you tell me that there’s an Aztec god somewhere around Baltimore.”
Chuck recoiled. “God, I hope not! So besides the bodies and preserved skins, what have you got? Any witnesses?”
“Just one. A buyer for the museum. He said he saw three teens skinning a man at a rest-stop off I-95 and when he read in the paper that we found the dead guy in the closet, he called in to tell the police.”
