Easy Money

by Rik Hunik

"It's possible, but I doubt it. I sensed too much animal fear, like he's a bum and we spooked him out of his private hideaway, but I sense something else here too, very faint and it's still here." She quit talking and concentrated for half a minute. A smile played around her lips.

  "What is it?" I prompted.

  "This place really is haunted, by the ghost of a man murdered hundreds of years ago. The ghost is inactive now, barely discernible, though he must have been a lot stronger in the past to give this place its reputation."

  "Very interesting, but not relevant. We know for sure there was someone in here today, so let's keep looking.”

  All we found on the ground floor was a contoured nest of filthy blankets in the back of what had been the pantry, now the most weatherproof room in the house. I squatted and reached for the revolting mess, hoping to get a good impression of what he looked like.

  Tiona made a face and turned away. "Oh, I always hate putting my hands in disgusting stuff like that, and I never get very much out of it."

  "That's because you think it's so disgusting that you can't open yourself like you need to. I still don't like doing it either but it's part of my job and I'm starting to get used to it."

  "Just make sure you wash your hands before you eat." I nodded and she managed a weak smile.

  I composed myself, opened up and thrust my hands into the squalid mess, getting a vague impression of a man with pale skin, who might have been thin, and his hair could have been dark. I felt him cowering from everyone and everything, but he thought he was brave and clever to hide in the haunted mansion, where no one dared to follow. I stood and told Tiona. "You were right, that doesn't feel like a killer, but if he was here to watch me the night I found Belita, he could have seen her and her killer the night before."

  "So now he's a lost witness. Can you locate him?"

  "Maybe. I'll give it a try."

  I squatted by the funky bedroll and forced myself to touch it again, getting more intimate than I wanted to while I opened myself, trying to get a good impression of his location. I got only a hint of his direction, an image of paving stones, and a sense of haste. I pulled my hand back and shook my head. "Nothing definite, but I think he's still running, and there seems seems to be some kind of interference. I could get set up better and try again later, but he's gone for now."

  Tiona squatted beside me. "I'll leave that decision up to Acastus, but I will make sure the locals send a cop here to stake out the house and wait for him to come back. And they can ask everybody in the area if they've seen anybody coming and going from here, but I doubt if they'll turn up much because this place is about as secluded as you can get inside the city."

  "You're right about that, especially at night."

  Tiona poked around a bit and found a couple of hairs which she put into a tiny envelope. "What do you hope to accomplish with those?"

  She stood up and so did I. She said, "I hope to prove that the man who slept here killed Belita, and then I hope to use them to find him and bring him to justice, but even though that probably won't happen it might be a link in the chain. Back in Rome they've refined the spells to the point where any Wizard can get a positive ID with a single hair."

  "How about skin cells, or nail clippings, or blood. I can trace a person with any of those."

  "Sure you can, since they all contain a person's code, but those spells aren't as sensitive yet, so they require too large a sample to be useful in most cases. Maybe in ten or twenty years we can do a trace and ID from a single drop of blood or a tiny flake of skin, but we're not there yet. Remember, there is only one Wizard on the police staff in this entire city, and the Certified Magicians can't do half as much as you do without even trying. Come on, let's finish up and get out of here."

  We climbed the creaky flight of stairs and searched the second floor. It was badly damaged by water coming through the leaky roof and as far as I could tell the only footprints disturbing the dust belonged to the police.

  We went back downstairs and searched the crawl space, finding dust, debris, and some animal nests. At the back, just inside the opening that led out to where the furnace used to be, I found a cache revealed by the removal of a chunk of the foundation that had cracked and could be pulled out.

  Tiona squatted beside me.

  "There's nothing in here," I said, reaching in and searching with my hand, "but whatever he took out was important enough for him to risk coming back for, rather than fleeing immediately when we showed up. It wasn't kept there for very long so I can't tell what it might have been."

  Tiona reached into the space and held her hand there for a minute before she said, "It was an artifact charged with black magic. Feel how cold it is. That isn't natural."

  I didn't feel the cold like she did but I sniffed my hand and detected the faint odor of putrescence that I always perceive in the presence of black magic. "So maybe the bum is a suspect. He finds an artifact, it makes him feel strong, he decides to get even."

  "Could be. I'll be sure to mention that in my report."

  "Maybe we should have chased him."

  She shrugged. "Too late now. Show me the labyrinth."

  We climbed out into the back yard facing the entrance to the labyrinth.

  Tiona started right in. I wasn't too keen on the idea but I walked the entire path in with her. At the center we saw the hole where the body of Belita had been removed. Tiona could tell how uncomfortable it made me, and there wasn't much to see, so she didn't stay long. Walking the same route out had a calming effect, as labyrinths are reputed to do.

  Before we split up we made a date for the evening.

  Chapter 27

  Tiona came knocking on the back door of my apartment so early the next morning the sky behind her was still dark when I answered the door. She wasn't nearly as loud as the police had been, but she was persistent enough to wake me up, and I had to admit she was a far more pleasant sight to open my sleepy eyes to.

  "Acastus sent me to fetch you," she told me as she entered. "The Skinner killed again,"

  "The Skinner?"

  She kept talking while I finished dressing. "That's what all the news bulletins started calling him after the second skinless body showed up. Less than an hour ago a third one was found in an alley a couple of blocks from the police station, but this time it's different. Starting about half a block away from the flayed victim we found pieces of human skin, looking old, like rotten leather, scattered along an erratic trail heading in a roughly western direction. A spell confirmed that the skin was from the victim."

  "Sounds like his spell went wrong, or maybe it's just wearing out. Let me grab some breakfast." Army life had taught me not to let talk like this affect my appetite because I might not get another chance to eat for hours. There wasn't time to prepare anything so I grabbed what was left of a loaf of bread and the last of my salami.

  The eastern sky glowed but the sun was still below the horizon and mist lingered in the streets. I prefer to reserve my morning twilight experiences to the winter months, when they were later, and the lack of traffic showed that the majority of the citizens of Agrippina shared my opinion.

  A couple of blocks from my office we caught up with Acastus. Without referring to his notes he filled us in on the results of canvassing the neighborhood. "We haven't yet talked to anybody that saw anything helpful, but there were some unusual happenings. Anything unusual around a murder might be relevant. A few thin men with dark hair were observed in the area but nobody paid any particular attention to them. One woman, a low-class streetwalker, claims she was approached by a derelict who fit the description. She says she's seen him around the area before and thought he was harmless, but last night he had a wild look in his eyes and she didn't stick around to talk to him."

  "That may have saved her life," I said, "but he hardly sounds like the same person who took Belita out of that nightclub."

  "Maybe not, but if his mind came unhinged he would quit caring about his appearance or health and behave mo
re and more erratically."

  Tiona said, "And messing around with magic when you don't know what you're doing has unhinged many a mind when it backfires."

  Acastus and I both nodded. He said, "I was afraid he was going crazy and would kill again soon. He has, very soon."

  I said, "I thought the guy had to be crazy in the first place, and getting worse could explain his erratic behavior, but with Belita he was so careful that he wouldn't be interrupted, and he hid her body so it would never be found."

  Acastus scratched his head. "You do have a point there, and to my knowledge he has never killed so soon again either, but that lends weight to the theory that he is losing his mind. We'll have to wait and see what shape he's in when we catch him. Which brings us to you, Berk. I have a spreading net of police searching the entire area but we don't even know exactly what we're looking for. We want to catch him fast. Can you help us?"

  "I'll certainly try. Take me to the end of the trail and let me have a piece of that skin."

  Acastus handed me an envelope and delegated the task of guiding us to a beat cop. I was quite familiar with this area so I didn't pay that much attention to him or our surroundings, concentrating instead on the piece of skin I took out of the envelope. The skin was desiccated, like something that you'd expect to get from an ancient Egyptian mummy.

  Tiona, walking beside me, glanced at it, then did a double take. "Wow, it looks even older than it did barely an hour ago. It's a good thing Acastus sent a piece back to the station to be put in a stasis field."

  "Yeah. I hope this piece lasts long enough." No matter how carefully I handled it the piece of skin crumbled to dust around the edges, but I had no trouble getting a strong impression, because while holding it in my hands I became sensitive to anything else tainted with the same spell. Minute particles of the skin, as small as dust motes, had fallen and mingled with the dirt of the city. Although too small to see individually, when spread along the street their accumulated mass made the killer's trail seem to glow.

  The trail wandered back and forth across streets, mostly to the west, dipping into alleys and doubling back on itself. I barely noticed that Tiona and the cop had dropped back a couple of steps and were now just following me. The trail turned to the north, and then northeast, sticking to the least used streets and alleys. A block from Old Wall Street the last bit of the piece of skin I held crumbled into dust and blew away. I stopped.

  "What's wrong?" Tiona asked. "Did you lose the connection?"

  "Not quite. Even without that piece of skin I know where this trail is going." I pointed. "Right up that hill over there."

  Tiona looked where I was pointing, at an old building that poked it's faded roof through a lingering pocket of mist, then turned to the cop. "Tell Acastus to surround The Minotaur's Mansion. We think the killer is in there, but he's liable to bolt if he sees anybody coming. We'll move in a little closer to keep an eye on the place."

  The cop nodded and hurried away to deliver the message.

  I remembered how fast the tenant had vacated the mansion when Tiona and I showed up yesterday. She caught my eye, then quickly looked away. I said, "That probably was the killer we spooked when we were in there yesterday, and it was probably his magic knife he went back for."

  Tiona nodded without looking at me. "We were that close to the killer and we didn't even see him. If we had gotten serious about tracking him down yesterday we could have prevented this last murder."

  We walked on in silence for a few paces. I said, "Even if you're right we can't change what's already done. And I'm guiltier than you."

  She reached over and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back and released her. It wouldn't do for a cop to be seen holding hands with a special consultant.

  We stopped under a tree where we could keep an eye on the old house without being too obvious about it, and stay far enough away from the slaughterhouse to avoid the worst of the smell.

  Acastus arrived a quarter of an hour later with more cops than I thought necessary, ordering them to surround the place without being seen, then wait for his signal before moving in. "I want him to stay in that house while I cast a sleep spell on the whole building."

  It looked like Acastus just pulled a ring from his pocket, placed it on his right forefinger and pointed it at the house, but I knew his mind was directing a spell. Nothing visible happened for a minute or two but the man inside must have felt the spell start to take effect because he came bursting out of the front door with a makeshift spear in one hand and a long knife in the other.

  Two cops with crossbows stood up and shot their bolts into him but he continued running at top speed straight for the gate. He threw his spear, nailing a cop, and pulled another knife out of his belt while cops converged on him. He slashed to the left and right and the two cops between him and the gate fell back, with their forearms bleeding.

  Barely slowed down, he charged directly at me. I had my short knife in one hand and my weighted cudgel in the other, which gave me the advantage of reach, but I didn't feel adequately armed against a madman. I was more interested in staying out of his way and not getting stabbed or cut than I was in trying to stop him, but when I moved aside he changed course.

  I swung my cudgel up and out, striking the underside of his wrist, knocking his arm aside and sending the knife flying from his senseless fingers. I reversed my swing and rapped him on the temple, but it was a short, weak blow that only staggered him. He slashed with the other knife, cutting through my shirt as I jumped back.

  I kept him at bay with my cudgel in front of me for the few seconds it took a pair of cops to tackle him from behind. He fought furiously but more cops piled on until they pinned him to the ground and disarmed him.

  Acastus hurried over. "Nice moves there. Are you alright?"

  I pulled the edges of my cut shirt apart and checked my ribs, seeing only a thin red line a couple of inches long. It stung a bit when I touched it and but it had barely cut through the skin at the deepest point. "Yeah, I'm a bit shaky but it's just a scratch."

  Acastus kicked at one of the knives laying there in the tall grass. "This isn't the murder weapon is it."

  I shook my head. "Nothing like it."

  "Let's go find it." I followed him into the old mansion. After the bright sunlight outside, the interior seemed dark and gloomy, but I didn't need my eyes for this search. I stood in the middle of the entrance hall, closed my eyes and visualized the knife as well as I could. It was a tenuous connection but there was a powerful spell on the knife so I also searched for any magical artifact in the building, like I should have done yesterday.

  I put myself into a light trance. Nothing definite came to me but I sensed that it was somewhere below me in the dark. I opened my eyes and saw Acastus watching me. I wondered how well he, as a wizard, could locate a magical artifact, but he didn't seem all that interested in trying. Maybe he already knew where it was. I said, "Let's look in the crawl space."

  He nodded. We found a big hole in the floor, Acastus produced a bright light from his finger, and we jumped down into a space still full of cobwebs and dust.

  I went to the cache I found yesterday, stopped and concentrated. I felt a slight pull to my right and moved that way, the pull got stronger and I followed it to a similar cache. I jammed the point of my knife into a narrow, barely visible crack but I pried too hard and the tip snapped off. I sighed once at the loss, then jammed the blade in further, twisting and prying. This time the piece moved, and once it started it came out easily.

  The knife in the alcove gleamed so whitely I knew it couldn't be steel, and silver wouldn't hold a spell the way this knife had, so it had to be platinum, which was unusual for a knife, but would explain why I hadn't been able to tune in on it before. In my vision it had looked bronze, but that had been a trick of the light, and I could see now that the blade curved back almost into a half circle. I knew this was the knife. I didn't want to touch it because it had been used to kill many times, most recently only hours a
go, and I didn't want to open myself to anything like that.

  Acastus leaned close over me. "That's it, isn't it." He didn't want to touch it any more than I did.

  "It sure is." I turned away. I was finished here, I'd done what I was hired to do.

  "Thanks for your help." Acastus shook my hand heartily. I'll file the report as soon as I can and you can collect your fee next week."

  "Next week?"

  He shrugged. "The wheels turn slowly in any bureaucracy, but don't worry, you'll get all that you have coming."

  Chapter 28

  The front window of Silvina's store displayed a spectacular array of unusual items, from a two-handed broadsword and oriental swords in ornate scabbards, to jeweled daggers meant for women to hide in their bosoms. In this neighborhood a display that rich was a strong temptation to thieves but it didn't look like she'd been hit yet.

  In the bottom corner of the window by the door I noticed a small sign, in bold black letters beneath a stylized set of bat wings, "Premises protected by Dark Wing Security." Another career for failed wizards which I had managed to avoid. Well, maybe it wasn't so different from what I was doing now but at least I was my own boss.

  A bell rang overhead as I pushed the door open.

  One side of the store held rows of shelves containing a full range of ordinary, utilitarian cutlery items but the other side was far more interesting. The long counter had a glass front and the wall behind it was covered with more dazzling hardware.

  "May I help you?" A dusky woman, barely out of her teens, stood beside me, looking up at me.

  "Yes, I need to replace my knife." I patted the sheath at my hip.

  "We have a good selection of high-quality knives over here." She steered me toward a shelf on the mundane side of the store.

  I looked over the selection on the shelf and said, "Yes, one of these will do." The knives all had six-inch blades, the legal limit in cities throughout the Republic, but the quality ranged from plain, utilitarian knives with cheap steel blades, to fancy, ornate hilts with engraved blades of highest-quality, tempered and hardened steel. I picked up one in the middle and checked the edge, but I wasn't satisfied and the hilt didn't feel right in my hand.