Blood, Dirt, and Lies Read online

  “So somehow the river water got into her lungs and stayed there until you put a tube in, but it never got into the tissue?” I asked, completely confused.

  “Exactly.” He shook his head, agreeing with my perplexed look. “The tissue itself, the cells, are dehydrated, collapsed like she hadn’t had water for days. There’s a difference when you look at them under the microscope. It’s really odd.”

  The cellular dehydration in a drowning victim was so odd he hadn’t done any other diagnostic work. There wasn’t anything else he could tell us, so we left. I wanted to know more about the look in his eyes when he caught me, wanted to know if he felt what I had or had seen something, but I suspected whatever he was, whatever he could do, Dr. Mohahan wasn’t about to talk to me about it.

  As we left the building I turned to Danny but realized he didn’t want to talk either. Looking at him, and remembering how Mohahan had looked, I realized what I wanted might not be the most important thing. We drove back in silence.

  ****

  We made it back to the office in time for me to beat the lunch crowd in the cafeteria. Most government buildings endured lackluster meals from a catering company that knew it had a captive audience. Police Headquarters was better off. The story went that the Walinsky family had run the best Polish deli in town, until the day a junkie came in with a stolen gun and made the building as holey as the Swiss cheese.

  At least half the clientele that afternoon were cops, a fact that kept Mom and Pop Walinsky alive. They were so grateful they took the insurance check and moved the whole business into our basement much to my delight. I collected my pressed Rubén sandwich, adding the Dr. Pepper I always rewarded myself with when I did magic, and headed upstairs.

  The elevator wasn’t crowded, the hallway was practically bare, and the squad room was even reasonably quiet. All of that made the woman staring down at Danny seem even more menacing. He hadn’t noticed her yet and I had a sudden urge to protect my partner. He was still reeling from the coat; he didn’t need the hate in her eyes.

  “I’m Detective Mors, can I help you?”

  “No, and no again, Detective Mors.” She spoke with a heavy Irish accent. “This is a family matter.”

  Danny’s head snapped up when the first word left her mouth. He was standing by the last one. “Fe?”

  “Me standing here for a full on ten minutes and you don’t even notice, like you don’t know your own kin and kind.” With the last comment I got it. She had the same dark curls as Danny, the same pale white skin as Danny and his daughters; somehow she was related.

  “Why are you here, Fe?”

  “Like I told her, family business. Get your things, we can talk about it at your place.”

  “I have to work, Fe.” He pointed out the obvious. I sat down to eat my sandwich blatantly watching the show. She was almost as tall as Danny, but thin, her body willowy in a long green skirt and matching tunic. Her jewelry was bright pink-orange coral, the necklace matching the earrings which in turned matched her watch band. She was dressed like appearances mattered to her, but she was worn around the edges. I hadn’t been a detective long, but I guessed she’d come directly from a long international flight.

  “This is more important than work!” she practically screamed before dropping her voice low. “Or have you forgotten family comes first?”

  “I haven’t forgotten a damn thing. I have a murder case, an assault, and a theft on my desk. I have seven more hours on the clock. Go home. The girls will be delighted to see you. We’ll talk about whatever it is tonight.”

  “Whatever it is? It’s the one of them gone missing and you’ll wait another seven hours?”

  “Missing? Well, we certainly can handle that. Tell me who he is; my partner, Detective Mors, and I will get right on it.”

  I did my best to swallow before she looked over at me but it didn’t help the hate flashing in her brown eyes.

  “Pleasure.” I tried to shake her hand but she’d already gone back to fighting.

  “Outsiders,” she hissed. “I bring you a family emergency and you put me off then force me onto outsiders. No, thank you, Danny Gallagher. I’ll see to things on my own.”

  Danny’s hand shot out to grab her wrist, and even from my desk I could see the pressure he put on it wasn’t small. “You do anything illegal, Fe, anything, and I will have you arrested and deported. This is not Ireland. You are not special. Go to a hotel, go home, but don’t go off and play mistress of the island, because here you’re not.” I’d never heard his voice so low and bitter, the anger carrying through every syllable.

  She looked from his eyes to his hand and he dropped her wrist. Without another word she turned on her heel and walked out. I sat staring at her while Danny dialed the phone.

  “Fiona’s in town. I don’t know why. She might be headed to the house.” Danny didn’t sound any happier telling whoever was on the phone the news. There was a pause, and he finished conversation with “I love you too, see you tonight.” Which told me it was Katie, and the phone call was a warning, not a happy announcement.

  “Why don’t we grab an interview room?” I offered. Danny nodded, still too angry to talk.

  Inside he slumped in the chair, leaning back with the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. “I hate my sister.”

  “Really?” I didn’t have any siblings. The impression I got from TV was that families got along, the occasional fight being resolved with tearful hugs and professions of love. Even Danny’s girls, the only real-life siblings I knew, were like that. Fight bitterly one moment, then make up the next.

  “She’s older but I’m a boy. By rights I should be in charge at home, but I left so she is, but only because I left. That part really bothers her.”

  “I could tell. What’s the rest of it?”

  “I have no bloody idea,” he groaned. I couldn’t tell if being in charge at home meant over his family or over an entire community. He’d said something about an island. “You know what I am. The lieutenant does too. But I’m not ready to bring all of that into the squad room. If she’d been willing to follow the rules it would be one thing but Fe…she really thinks we shouldn’t have to follow any laws, because people don’t follow the laws with us. I never agreed with her but yesterday when I saw that coat…”

  “Now you think she might be justified?”

  “Maybe. No. Oh hell, I don’t know. I just know my sister is in town, which means my life is going to be hell.”

  “You want to take the afternoon off and go deal with it?”

  “I don’t want to give her the satisfaction but…” He hesitated.

  “Go. This morning gave me plenty of paperwork to fill out. Do we have any other cases waiting for us?”

  “We got two calls, theft and assault. We should handle them.”

  “I’ll pass them along to whoever is next. We’ve got a homicide, it trumps assault and theft. Go deal with your sister.” I tried to push him out the door gently.

  “Thanks, Mal.” His smile was half-hearted but I knew he meant the words.

  Chapter 6

  Comforting words aside, an open homicide didn’t mean we got to push every other case off on another team. I finished my sandwich reading the message about the theft, and then closed the call in a couple of hours. It was a memory theft, something that did happen, there were plenty of things out there that would steal your memories, but in this case, it turned out to be a drug slipped into a beer.

  Not supernatural, not an SIU case, and (most importantly) not my problem. I left the ER with a copy of the toxicology report proving the drug was still in the victim’s system and headed back to the office. I was examining the second message, trying to decide who to grab to come with me when my phone rang.

  “Mal! Save me!” There was only one witch I knew who would start a phone call like that.

  “Pheebs!” I shrilled into the phone, my voice echoing off the squad room windows. Beside me Lucas, with his sensitive werewolf hearing, practicall
y covered his ears. “Tell me what you need, Chica!”

  “I need to go dancing tonight,” she said, as if dancing were water and she’d spent the week in a desert.

  “We can do that.”

  “Seriously? Rhythm’s busy so I was worried…” Rhythm wasn’t just any Greek Muse, but the one who inspired people to dance. With Rhythm around a night of dancing turned into a transcendental experience.

  “Seriously,” I said. It would be good to get out with the girls, even if the whole gang couldn’t make it. “So…why are we dancing?”

  “I’m trying to decide about something.”

  “Something big?” I guessed. “Something maybe involving a guy?”

  “Maybe…” She wavered. Phoebe was famous for her very poor choice in men, like the guy who failed to mention his pregnant wife. The healthiest relationship she’d had was the few months she’d spent with Jakob’s best friend, Mark, and since he wasn’t the most well-adjusted person in the world that was saying something.

  “Come on Pheebs, ’fess up, is it a guy?” Phoebe hadn’t talked about a guy in a while; something about her night with Amadeus scared her sexless for a few months. I missed the old, crazy, sexy Phoebe a little bit.

  “It’s a guy. I don’t know what’s up with us. I mean he’s great and it could be great but I don’t know if there’s an it to even wonder about, you know?”

  “Uh, no you have me totally lost.”

  “That’s exactly how I feel, totally lost. I’m hoping if I dance hard enough it’ll make sense.”

  I told her it sounded good to me and hung up the phone more than satisfied. Phoebe was my best friend in the city. Even when she was bogged down in some crisis she was twice as much fun as the average person. The clock on the wall stared down refusing to speed up for me, so I went back to the last message. I had my finger on the phone, starting to dial the hospital listed on the message slip when Simon stopped me.

  “What have you got?”

  “Supernatural assault,” I said, holding up the pink message slip. “Why?”

  “I’ve got a supernatural homicide, and you’re a death witch…” Simon was a spirit witch, he was intuitive that way. I rolled my eyes a little.

  “Danny and I already have a homicide.”

  “Danny’s not here. Come out with me for a first look. If it turns out to be something big, Lucas and I will take it.”

  “Fair enough.” I pondered the bizarre level of bargaining that happened in the squad room. I should be able to get a favor for this, some favor, but what did I need? “Who takes my assault?”

  “I got it.” Lucas jumped in, snatching the slip from my fingers. “You two kids have fun. I’ll be at”—there was a pause while he read the form—“Riverview Hospital.”

  We waved goodbye and grabbed our own things: notepads, a stray charm or two for Simon, my Dr. Pepper, and then headed out. Leaving the squad room without Danny felt odd, and I realized this was the first time I’d gone out on a case without him. I mean sure, I’d stepped in, but this was the first full-on case. I tried to channel my partner, to remember what he would do.

  “So tell me the details.”

  Simon waited until we got into the relative privacy of our unmarked car. “There’s an antique shop downtown, the owner is…” He let his voice trail off.

  “What? Fairy? Vampire? Gremlin?”

  “An asshole.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah, I mean I know I should respect my elders but he’s an ass, no two ways about it. Lucas and I are out there like twice a month. He deals in supernatural jewelry, charms, gris-gris bags, whatever he can get cheap and mark up. Except he doesn’t always guess right, so whenever someone sells him the sword of Merlin and it turns out to be junk he wants us to arrest them. Or when he sells something for a dollar and finds out later it was worth a few thousand we should go get it back for him. He’s kind of a nightmare.”

  “An actual nightmare?” I asked, referencing the supernatural beings that brought frightening dreams to people. I’d wanted to meet one.

  “No, he’s not a horse or a psychic, just a bitter old man who only cares about money.”

  I did my best to hide my disappointment. “So how does this turn into a homicide?”

  “Two kids came in after school. They were looking around, well according to Taylor, they were ‘screwing around with his merchandise.’ Anyway, the second time he looked up the boy was screaming and the girl was on the floor. She’s dead and we have no idea what in the shop did it.”

  “How big is the store?”

  “Big enough,” Simon replied, his voice sour. We pulled up to a weathered brick building and I could see his sarcasm was in the right place. The shop was one of four in the building, tall with high ceilings. The windows were dirty, covered with a thick coating of dust on the inside and half a winter’s worth of crud on the outside. I could see a thousand things jumbled into the space even before we opened the door.

  Going inside didn’t make things better. The body lay where it had fallen, inside the front door, her shirt ripped open where they’d tried CPR. I looked up from the bright pink lacy bra only a teenager would wear to the deluge of items around me. Every flat surface was piled with…with…well, with things.

  Spoons, forks, and other tarnished silverware spread on dusty velvet, a hat rack so covered in hats and shawls I thought it would tip over, beside the body a table with shelves underneath it barely held the weight of at least fifteen wooden baskets, each overflowing with beads, plastic jewelry, pins, trinkets and just, in general, junk.

  The space was nothing more than a long rectangle, exposed brick on three sides and glass on the front. The two side walls held matching wood shelves, so stuffed with old clothes they looked like cubby holes in a kindergarten. The clutter barely stopped in the center of the room where a round glass display case held the only objects treated with reverence.

  In the center of that display case, perched on an old wooden stool, sat the most gnomish looking human I had ever seen. He wore a sour expression and clothes faded to the same uniform dull tan-gray color. He stood up when he noticed my gaze, and I could see he wore his pants low on his hips, his wide stomach pouring over his belt.

  Two pens and some other tools occupied his breast pocket, breaking the seemingly unending amount of fabric. He was short and squat, with a tuff of white hair on either side of his head and coming out of each ear.

  “Who’s this? Who is she, Edwards? I don’t want some new recruit touching my things. If she’s new, if she doesn’t know what she’s doing I want her out! There are too many people in here already!” He was shouting but not moving, not leaving the protective circle of the display case. I glanced at Simon hoping to let him take the lead.

  “Don’t you recognize her from TV?” Simon asked. I could have killed him. The few times the local news caught me working they always played up my abilities. They even had a little sickle graphic to put next to my name. I didn’t relish the attention.

  “What? Oh! Well of course I do, she’s the—”

  “Detective Mors,” I interrupted, stepping around the body and walking toward him. I was going to offer him my hand but the closer I got the farther back he stepped. I hated bigots. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Those two kids, they came in here, touching everything! Probably trying to shop lift. One of them was back here with the expensive stuff trying to distract me while the other one went through the dollar bins.”

  His gestured to the front of the store, and I picked out an old handwritten sign “Maybe Magical? $1” propped on top of the table filled with baskets.

  “The girl who died was going through those baskets?” I asked, going back to that side of the room. I had to step wide to avoid the guys taking samples and photos.

  “Yeah, but none of it is real.” He snorted. “It’s there to draw people in; the good stuff is behind the counter.”

  “How do you know?” Something tingled at me. It was prob
ably the dead body, the girl wanting to tell me something or her death teasing at my magic, but it could be some trinket too.

  “Know what?”

  “That they aren’t real?”

  “I have a witch check them out, that’s how. Got screwed a few times selling something for cheap when it was worth more, so I hired him. He hasn’t been wrong yet, and he better not be for what I pay him.”

  I stayed silent, not sure how to reply. Later I would ask Simon if this guy cared about money as much inside his head as he did out loud. The medical team and the forensics team were done with the body. I decided to read it first, so they could take her away. Somewhere a mother was going to be shattered. I wondered if she shared her daughter’s dark skin and hair.

  I took a deep breath and knelt beside the body. I focused my concentration and put my hand on her shoulder. My first impression was a tingle, a taste of something but the instant I caught it, it was gone.

  Christine Sweeny died bent over a strange angle, something poking into her back, staring up at a sea of light green. The girl beneath my hands, what had she felt? I didn’t know her name, but I searched for her story. I flexed my power and expected to hear an echo of death, to feel what she’d felt.

  There was nothing. No fear, no pain, only darkness. She died so quickly there was nothing for me to read. That first trace of magic had been so short I couldn’t be sure I actually felt it. There was nothing else.

  Every dead body whispered at me. I’d found dozens, all different, corpses so old they were a handful of bones, and still they talked. No matter what they all had something to say. The girl beneath me was silent.

  I nodded weakly to the medical team, my eyes locked on her softly closed ones. What kind of death came so fast it left nothing for me to find? I leaned back on the table, shaken. The table swayed beneath me, junk falling out of one basket and into another, the whole rickety mess threatening to go down. Somehow the gnomish little man was next to me, screaming about his things. He shouts were muted though, quiet, proving I hadn’t made it back to the world around me yet.