SkinThief

by Sonnet O'Dell

  I blew out air and swung my legs back and forth, growing slowly bored when a single one of those double doors opened and a woman stepped out. She was blonde and tanned. She started to walk toward me, and I looked her over with some apprehension. She wore a black skirt suit; a deep red scarf doubled over so that it spilled over her breasts, and red tights ran out from underneath the skirt. Her shoes shined, red at the front fading to black at the back. She looked like the devil’s personal assistant. I was suddenly hoping his schedule was overbooked and she was going to send me home. She smiled at me, a row of perfectly white straight teeth that gleamed in the overhead light. Her hips swayed as she walked; she was a confident woman assured of her own presence and sexual appeal. Compared to me right now, she was a damn catwalk model. The only similar thing about us was the color of our scarves. She stopped at her desk to run her finger down her copy of the mayor’s appointment book. She turned to me, flicking her hair over her shoulder lazily.

  “Miss Farbanks, the mayor will see you now. Would you like something to drink? I can bring it through to you.” She gave me a look that clearly said she would not be happy if I made her risk her perfectly manicured nails to make me a cup of coffee. Just because she gave me that look... I stood up, brushing myself down, and made my spine straight.

  “Coffee, three sugars and cream, please. It’s this way, right?”

  “Yes,” she said through clenched teeth, trying to keep a professional smile on her face. She wasn’t the sort of woman who would ever get her own way with me, simply because she was far too used to getting her own way. I thoroughly believed in doing things my own special little way. I wondered if the cold was making me bitchier than usual as I strolled down the corridor toward the door. I opened it and went straight in.

  Theodore Mayla sat behind his desk, looking over some papers like they were an intensely complex thesis. He rolled his eyes up as I walked in, shutting the door behind me, and he righted his tie and suit lapels. Mayla had skin like chocolate, very deep eyes and a rich, smooth voice that went with it. When he smiled at me, I registered (not for the first time) that he had very pink gums around his white teeth.

  “You don’t knock?”

  “I would have if I had asked to see you, but I didn’t—you called me here.” I walked to one of the chairs across from him, pulled it away from the wood of his desk and threw myself into it. There was a large window to either side of his desk. The wall directly behind held pictures that he had obviously put up himself—family, certificates, and pictures of him shaking hands with some celebrities in both the entertainment and political worlds. The wall to my right was lined with filing cabinets, the left with bookcases filled to the brim and a pallid bust of some former mayor that looked stark against the burgundy walls. If they ever made a bust of this particular male, I hoped they made it out of something dark—the white marble would not do justice to this man and his ethnicity. He was the city’s first black mayor and, depending on how well he governed, maybe the last.

  I crossed my legs over each other, waiting while he adjusted himself. I felt a buzzing around my head that I had felt in the presence of this man before, like a gnat trying to find its way inside but denied.

  “So I did,” he finally responded. “I wanted to see how your new occupation was working out for you, and I hear you are on a case already. How marvelous.” He placed his hands together and looked genuinely pleased that I was in work at the moment.

  There was a knock on the door that made Mayla look up. He composed his face and barked a polite permission to enter. The secretary tottered in carrying a small tray. I rolled my head back to watch her approach more carefully as she placed the cup down in front of me with as little malice as she could manage. One of her nails looked chipped. I smiled.

  “Your coffee, Miss Farbanks.” She looked up at the mayor, and her smile became a genuine one. “Can I get anything for you, sir, before I call it a night and head home?”

  “No, thank you, Susan. Have a good evening.”

  She backed away out of the still open doorway and closed it behind her with an echoing thud. I looked at the coffee but didn’t reach for it.

  “You’re not thirsty?” he asked as I kept just looking at the cup.

  “Not really. I took the offer because she really didn’t want to get it, and I’m afraid she might have done something to it.”

  “How do you know she didn’t want to? Did she say something to you?”

  “Not a peep, but her body language said loads.”

  I’d also gathered that she had a fierce competiveness with other women and that she would do just about anything for the mayor—and I mean anything. He leaned back in his chair, resting his elbows on the arms as he clasped his hands together, studying me as I studied the coffee cup. I could see his gaze reflected in the surface of the coffee.

  “And what did that say to you?”

  “Vicious predator, beware!”

  Mayla let out a booming laugh that rocked him in his chair, and when he settled down the buzzing came again. I pushed it away gently and raised my eyes to his.

  “So you want to know how it’s going?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you take such interest in all your constituents?”

  “My voters are very important to me.”

  Caving to the gnawing cold I had been fighting all day and the fact that the cup of tea at Silverman’s had been so awful I hadn’t drunk past the first sip, I picked up the cup of coffee. I pressed it to my lips, inhaled and then thoughtfully took a sip. Cream and three sugars, just as I had asked, and I didn’t taste anything untoward, like salt or spit.

  “I didn’t vote for you,” I said, glancing up from my coffee to gauge his reaction. He was a little taken aback. “I didn’t vote. I forgot.”

  I uncrossed and re-crossed my legs the other way, shifting in my seat and placing my coffee back down on the edge of his desk. He was chuckling to himself when I looked at him again.

  “Regardless. After the last time we spoke, I wanted to meet you again and perhaps mend bridges.”

  “Yes, you tried to make me a hero and use that to boost your public image. I don’t care for political maneuvering like that. If you want something, ask for it, and if I say no, accept no as the answer.”

  “You are a very tenacious woman, Miss Farbanks.”

  I gave him a weak smile; the way he said “tenacious” was not meant as a compliment, I was sure of it. I bit my tongue. My mom always said if you can’t think of something nice to say, then you shouldn’t bother. Of course, she might not have realized that could be interpreted two ways.

  “And your tongue is very pink for one who talks so silvery.”

  His face went very solemn, and all trace of his laughter was lost. I returned to my coffee, taking another deep sip from the cup.

  “Touché. Let’s talk about your case. I had Detective Rourke send it your way. Governor Bird is a friend of mine, and I thought it might be within your skill set to find out what was going on.” I slammed the cup down on his desk, but to his credit he didn’t jump.

  “I don’t need your help to get work.”

  “No, but it could run to the other side of the tracks and make it harder for you rather than easier.”

  The buzzing started again, and this time I got angry. I whacked it down like I had a large cartoon flyswatter of power. Mayla shot back in his chair and rubbed at his head like he was in pain. I revved it down and waited; he reached for his desk drawer and I stood, prepared for him to draw a weapon on me. He pulled out a bottle of aspirin.

  “Calm down, Miss Farbanks.” He twisted the cap, dropping two of the pills onto the desk, and threw the resealed bottle back in the drawer. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  He took the two little white pills dry mouthed. I pushed the remainder of my cof
fee toward him; he took it with a little nod and washed it down his throat, wincing at the sweetness. Not everyone could stand how I liked my coffee. He shook his head and settled himself back into his chair.

  “What is it you keep trying to do to me? Every time I meet you, it’s like a fluttering against my head.” He looked at me with wide eyes.

  “You really can feel me when I touch you.” I looked at his hands on the desk and illustrated with my eyes the distance between me and them. Nobody was touching anybody, and that was the way I liked my business meetings. He looked a little abashed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Then how did you mean?” He didn’t reply, so I took that as permission to ask the question I’d been dying to since I’d first felt that flutter. “What are you?”

  He blinked at me.

  “I can read people’s minds, have been able to since I was about thirteen.”

  “You’re a telepath.” Hmph. No wonder he was such a good politician. He could literally give people what they wanted to hear because he could read it right out of their brains in the first place.

  “I have never met a human mind I couldn’t read—until I met you.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and stared him down with a coldness that rivaled the snowy streets outside.

  “What exactly are you trying to say to me?”

  “That you, Miss Farbanks, are a puzzle to me. If you are human, as you say you are, then I should be able to delve into your brain with my talent like my fingers could into a pot of pudding.”

  “What do you mean, if?” I was getting just a little offended.

  “As I said, I have never come up against a human I couldn’t read; however, I have met plenty of non-humans I can’t read. Vampires, elves, and even werewolves give me some difficulty, though technically I consider them still human. But every time I try to read you, you brush it away from you like waving off a fly.”

  “Well, that’s what it feels like, and it’s irritating. I would appreciate it if you would stop trying.”

  “I would appreciate it, Miss Farbanks, if what I have said to you goes no further than this room.”

  I gave a small smile. It was nice to have something that powerful over a politician—if it came out, it could put all his policies into question. I had my own secrets, though, secrets that I hold close to my chest and that I would not have liked shared with the world at large. I understood the value of a kept secret all too well.

  “I won’t say anything. It would damage my reputation just as badly as it would yours.”

  He cocked a trim black eyebrow at me.

  “How so?”

  “People trust me, Mr. Mayla. Communities trust me. If I revealed your secret, turned on someone who had trusted me, then it would spread doubt among all those who now depend on that trust and my silence.”

  Mayla nodded like he understood the situation, and we traded farewells with a silent gesture as I left his office. Knowing his secret didn’t make me feel better about the man personally, but the knowledge that despite his talent, he couldn’t use it on me—it was the most comforting thing to come out of the entire meeting.

  Chapter Six

  I wasn’t halfway down the steps of City Hall when my phone started ringing. I pulled it out of my pocket, quickly checking the caller ID before I flipped it open. “D.I. Hamilton. What can I do for you?”

  Detective Inspector Paris Hamilton was the lead honcho in Worcester’s Homicide division of the police force. I’d met him last year, first in September, then again in November, both times while I had been pulled into investigations for PCU—the Preternatural Crimes Unit, which was run by one of my least favorite people, Samantha Rourke. Rourke and Hamilton had history, a pretty intense romantic one. Now, however, put them in a room together and they fought like cats and dogs, which was not something I wanted to get in the middle of.

  “I need you at a crime scene. I’ve got a dead body and a witness or suspect who isn’t making much sense. How soon can you be here?”

  “Depends on where here is?”

  I took out my notepad as he read out the address, making a careful copy of it in capital letters so that I could read it again when I got off the phone.

  “That’s not far from where I am. I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “See you then.” He hung up without a goodbye, as cops often did, and I scanned the address again.

  * * * *

  Thirty-Eight Arboretum Road was an average-looking red brick and limestone mock-Edwardian two-story house—except it was surrounded by police cars and draped in that nasty yellow tape. A uniform stood at the gate nursing a coffee, his legs crossed over each other at the ankle and his feet resting on the opposite stone post. From what I could see, the yard was made up of gravel and neat low maintenance plants. I was betting it was the home of a young-ish couple with no children. It was too well kept, too ordered—it screamed yuppie couple with their first home. I liked it, but large gardens with lots of living plants and flowers were just too much work after you’d already spent your day doing just that. It made me glad I lived in an apartment. I had a ficus in the spare bedroom, a spider plant in the bedroom atop the wardrobe, and a rubber plant in the living room—that one, of course, required no attention whatsoever.

  “Hi there,” I said, startling the officer, who splashed his coffee on his chin. I reached into my bag and pulled out a tissue for him to wipe it off. He took it gratefully. Once he had cleaned himself, he put his coffee down on the post and turned to look at me.

  “Thank you. Can I help you, miss?”

  I pulled my ID out and flipped it down in front of him. He scanned it, looked at my face, and examined it more carefully. It was a photographic ID, so he must have been comparing me to the small laminated passport photo in the top left corner. I didn’t take a bad photo if it wasn’t a candid.

  “I’m looking for D.I. Hamilton—he called me.”

  “Give me a minute,” he said, stepping away from me and using the radio on the shoulder of his uniform. It squawked with the sound of static, and then Hamilton’s voice came through. He checked my statement with his boss thoroughly before he waved me through and pointed me toward the living room.

  Hamilton stood just outside the door as I walked through the hall, taking note of the small table on the side that held one set of house keys but a photo that suggested two people lived there. Hamilton was a classically handsome man: hair swept back and immaculate, prefect bone structure, pearly white teeth and designer stubble. He also knew it and fancied himself as God’s gift to womankind. A gift we should all be subserviently grateful for. He smiled at me, and if life were a movie, there would have been a sparkle effect and a ding when he did.

  “Hey, Cassandra, how you doing?” he asked, starting off with a pleasantry as always.

  “I’m fine, thanks, D.I. Hamilton.”

  “Paris,” he said slowly, reminding me that he wanted me to call him by his first name. I’d only ever done it before when I’d needed something from him, and now he thought we’d set some kind of precedence. I guess I had to play nice.

  “Paris. What is it you want me to help you with?”

  “Well, it’s a little gruesome; I just wanted to warn you before you go in.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, placing my hand on my hip; he looked at my hips as I did and then slowly pushed the door open into the room.

  Two uniformed officers stood under an arch that led from the living room into a small dining room with French windows, which in turned opened onto an immaculate garden that was mostly rockeries and easy-to-water plants. Yup, I thought, young couple. Families tended to favor grassy areas, as it was less likely to lead to a trip to the hospital if the kid fell down—and kids always fall down. The couch was pushed back against the window that looked out to the street and the c
urtains were drawn over it, splattered with blood spray. I swallowed hard. Great, just great—blood. The coffee table had been turned over so that the legs were pointing up, and to those points a man had been tied. He looked to be in his late twenties, Caucasian, dark brown hair—and he was dead. Duct tape bound his wrists to two of the coffee table legs; his legs were in odd position, suggesting that he had kicked and flayed but couldn’t get free. His shirt had been ripped open, and his chest was morbidly decorated with tiny slices into his flesh that had been made by some sort of sharp instrument. I was guessing a knife from the kitchen. His face looked like tenderized meat; he’d been punched repeatedly by large fists until he went down, I deduced, and then the tying up and torture had begun. Sometime later, the killing blow had been delivered to the heart. Ro was leaning over the body, camera in hand, taking pictures and measurements of the wounds.

  Ro—Ororo Soltaire—was a forensic scientist on the Worcester Police Force. She worked the night shift mostly, as she could leave her four-year-old daughter at home with her mother and not really lose time with her, as she would invariably be asleep. I crouched down next to her and patted her on the shoulder. She lowered the camera to look at me, giving me a bright smile.

  “We meet again, Cassandra.” She was one of the few people who seemed happy to see me. Paris didn’t mind me—in fact, I knew he pretty much wanted to sleep with me—but a lot of the uniforms resented me as an outsider.

  “Shame it always has to be over a dead body by torchlight.” I gave her a brief smile and watched as she continued to take photographs of the wounds. She crab-walked around to the side of the body, and I followed her. There was a small patch of stomach that was completely unharmed; it was even free of blood spray. Hamilton saw me looking at it. He squatted down next to me and placed his hand on my shoulder. I would have shrugged it off, but my balance was precarious, and I didn’t want to fall over. If I got blood on my clothes it would be a bitch to get out.