Bound for Magic (The Tortie Kitten Mystery Trilogy Series Book 1)

by Constance Barker

  “Hey, Burl. How’s it hanging?” To my ear, my own voice sounded seductive. Damn it!

  “Mary?” He hesitated. “Should I even be talking to you?”

  Remember, he collects superhero dolls, I told myself. He probably watches Robot Wars and lots of PBS. “I was just thinking about the crime scene. When you said trajectory, we were both looking up at the court building.”

  “Well, that is the tallest building around.”

  “Did anyone search the roof?”

  “We don’t have any reason to. There’s nothing, logically, that connects the scene to the courthouse. No evidence. We’re strained on manpower as it is.”

  “The courthouse was the last place Jane Smith was seen alive,” I said.

  “Tenuous. At least three hours passed between Smith’s court date and the incident.”

  “For the sake of argument, though, the point of impact, the broken tree limbs, does that point the trajectory toward the courts building?”

  More hesitation. I knew the answer was yes. Instead, I got, “Don’t do it, Mary. You’re on suspension. If there’s evidence to collect, it won’t be admissible.”

  “Then send someone.”

  “I have no justification. We may need a warrant, or the rooftop might be a public space. Either way, the forecast calls for thunderstorms. The last place you want to be is at the highest point in the city during a lightening storm. Don't make me go up there!”

  “Rrru-hhh! Aaayy!” Ugly interrupted.

  “Gotta go, Burl, thanks.”

  “Mary—”

  I hung up, grabbed my jacket and put my off-duty carry in the pocket. There wasn’t time to change out of jammy pants. Fighting traffic, I made it to the courthouse just before closing. A security guard braced me in the lobby.

  “We’re closing up for the day, ma’am.”

  Luckily, Lieutenant Dan hadn’t taken my badge. “Police business,” I said, and ran for the elevators. In my short time on Delta-V Metro, I had testified a few times in the building. I’d never been to the top floor. Like the top floor of most government buildings, carpeted hallways gave the place a hushed feeling. No office lights were on, all doors closed. Court was over for the day.

  I found a sign on the door. The roof was open to the public, but only during business hours. No one had locked it yet. I hoped no one would while I was up there. Stairs were dusty, disused, and I could see footprints. The camera app was the only one on my phone. It wasn’t a luxury, but a necessity in police work. I took a few shots with my slippered feet for scale.

  Gray light spilled as I accessed the roof. There was a seating area. Picnic tables had holes for umbrellas, but they were not in evidence. The storm coming in from the Pacific darkened the sunset, the sun a fiery red eye. Wind whipped at me, moist with the coming rain. I didn’t take time to admire the view.

  At the far end of the rooftop, I saw an overturned picnic table. Closer inspection showed that one of the attached benches had been broken off. To the right was a story-tall, stainless steel structure. From the ductwork atop it, it housed an air conditioning unit. The metal boasted a huge dent, four feet tall by two feet wide. I took a picture and moved closer.

  Rivets had been popped by whatever impacted the wall. I saw the seam had buckled. The steel was half an inch thick. Along a sharp edge was a rusty stain. But stainless steel didn’t oxidize. Another couple pictures.

  I searched the pockets of my windbreaker. In addition to the gun, I found a pair of gloves, a small packet of tissues, a box of Tic Tacs. After pouring the candies in my mouth, I pried off the lid. I used the plastic to scrape a sample of the stain into the container. After closing it, I stuck it inside one of the gloves.

  A fight had occurred up here—a titanic fight, by the evidence. I found another dent in the leg of a radio antenna. It was the size and shape of a human fist. Hair rose on the back of my neck. Who could punch a dent in a steel pole?

  Light flashed. I turned west to see a streak of lightning. At the same time, small drops of rain patted my face. Time to get off the roof.

  But as I hurried toward the door, a woman stood in my way. She wore a white tunic that whipped in the wind, along with her raven black hair. Nysa Galatas.

  Chapter 15

  “Some crimes cannot be tried by the courts of men,” she hollered into the wind.

  Lightning flashed again. I saw spots. And Nysa held a long stick in her hand. It was topped by a big pine cone and wrapped in ivy. A thyrsus, Shen called it. The symbol of Dionysus, I knew from my brief reading.

  Sometimes, there’s a spear point hidden in the leaves, I recalled him saying.

  “Put down the thyrsus, Nysa.” I pulled my gun.

  She rested the butt of the leafy staff on the roof. With her other hand, she removed the necklace with the crescent shaped pendant.

  I took aim. “Did you murder your sister?”

  Nysa tossed the necklace to the concrete.

  My eyes followed it, remembering. “Did you hex me?”

  “You feel the call of the god,” she said.

  “I feel really impulsive. Out of control. Right now, I feel a strong impulse to shoot you.”

  “Then you understand my motive.”

  “Your motive for fratricide?”

  “I have no time for this. You really think you can hold me? I’m the handmaiden of a god.” With that, she whipped the thyrsus through the air. We were standing yards apart, far out of the range of her stick.

  I was struck by what felt like a hurricane. My windbreaker flew in my face. The force of it knocked me off my feet. Something slammed into my back. I heard the creaking scootch of wooden feet on concrete. I had collided with a picnic table. Hard. It toppled, with me on top. Before I could let out a yelp, the thing rolled over me. If there hadn’t been another table right behind, it would have squashed me.

  When I crawled out, she stood over me. I had managed to keep hold of my gun. Again, I leveled it at her. What was I going to do? She was waving a silly-looking wand of ivy at me. I could hardly explain how my life was threatened; why I fired in self-defense. Yet if she wanted to, she could blast me off the roof. Is this what she’d done to Jane Smith?

  “Drop the thyrsus!”

  Three people ran through the roof access door: Chuck Shen, Josephine Gustafson and Burl Jefferson. All of them followed their guns toward the Maenad.

  “You okay, Garcia?” Sgt. Gustafson called out.

  “My back hurts.”

  They spread out, surrounding Nysa Galatas.

  “You’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer,” Shen said. “Drop your weapon and get on your knees.”

  Nysa smiled. “I kneel for no man.”

  Rain fell, light drops at first, but becoming a downpour quickly. I stood up, hurt and wobbly, but upright. Nysa looked at us in turn. We were spread out to avoid a crossfire. The Maenad saw she had nowhere to run.

  She gave the ivy-covered wand a gentle turn. It vanished with a pop of air. Everyone raised guns, getting a tighter bead. Nysa turned her face to the sky. Rain ran over her skin, making it seem more like marble than flesh. Sighing, she raised her arms.

  Brilliant white light filled my vision. A freight train sound swallowed me. I felt every hair on my body stand up. Then, I was lying in a pool of rain water. Grunting, I rolled a little each way, finally getting enough momentum to sit up.

  The three others also sat on the roof. Shen was holding his head. Burl staggered to his feet. Nysa was nowhere to be seen.

  “Lightning,” Burl said. My ears seemed to be stuffed with cotton. He pointed behind me. “Struck the areal.”

  I turned to see the radio tower, the one dented by a fist, steaming, smoking and listing a little to the right. The butt of my jammy pants were soaked. I got to my feet. Nysa’s necklace lay on the concrete. Still feeling impulsive, I picked it up and pocketed it.

  The sergeant holstered her gun. Josephine’s hair had gone from tied up Shirley Temple curls to straight-up Albe
rt Einstein. “This isn’t going to be the usual werewolf-gone-wild takedown,” she said. “No silver bullet solutions here.”

  Between her dead-serious expression and electrocution hair-do, I had to laugh.

  “What’s so funny, Garcia?”

  I pointed, laughing too hard to speak. She ran a hand through her hair. It remained standing. Shen looked over and chuckled himself. His short hair always stood straight up.

  The Animal Control commander smirked. “You don’t see me laughing at your one eyebrow.”

  My fingers jerked to my face. One side of my brow was still furry, but the other was perfectly smooth. “Oh, crap.”

  Shen looked over at me. He cracked up. “Oh, that’s pretty. Talk about home-grown birth control.”

  I figured, even if I did want to jump on the bones of any available male, I’d probably get turned down. There was a positive in there somewhere.

  “It makes sense, the supernatural angle. We couldn’t come up with any MO for the Jane Smith case.” Burl looked at me. He suppressed a smile and turned to Gustafson. He put a hand over his mouth and turned to Shen. “How do we deal with this? It’s beyond our means.”

  “We’ll have to back-door it.” Josephine unsuccessfully tried to pat her hair down.

  “The feds.” Jefferson still couldn’t look at either me or the sergeant.

  “FBI?” I said. “But this is a local suspicious death.”

  “No, not the bureau,” Shen said. He made finger quotes in the air. “Fish and Wildlife.”

  Gustafson had found a Scünci in her pocket and was wrestling with her hair. “This seems to be the kind of thing they’re after. You have the in, Garcia.”

  “Why do I feel like I walked in at the middle of the movie,” I said.

  “Walleye wants to talk to you about some weird thing. Cattle mutilations or something,” the sergeant said.

  “Walleye?” Burl asked.

  “Special Agent Kade Wallace, US Fish and Wildlife,” she spelled it out. “His eyes are different colors.”

  “Heterochromia iridium,” Burl mused. “Fascinating genetic mystery, but sometimes caused by injuries.”

  I remembered the cowboy guy with mismatched eyes. Despite the hetero-whatever, what girl doesn’t want to ride a cowboy? Strangely, for the first time in a while, I found I didn’t. I looked over Burl, his sodden shirt revealing a muscular physique. I had no urge to knock him down and ride him, either. Admittedly, I had a bit of a girl-crush on the sergeant. No unseemly urge there either. Was I unhexed?

  “Should I go talk to Walleye?” I asked.

  Josephine got her hair under some control. “I’m surprised he hasn’t come to you already. But no, don’t spook him. Find out what he’s doing here, and we’ll find a way to interest him in this lightning-tossing, stick-wielding murderer.”

  “If he’s not interested?”

  Gustafson gave me a sergeant’s scowl. “You’ve got time on your hands, Garcia. If the feds don’t want her, we’d better find some way to contain her ourselves.”

  I HIT ZELEDON FARMACIA y Market on my way home for an eyebrow pencil. With one hand over my face, I searched the meager cosmetics offerings for something in auburn. I thought I would have to go brown, which meant doing both eyebrows if I ever wanted to show my face in public for the next month or so.

  “What are you doing to my brother, cop?”

  Leonardo Zelidon snuck up beside me. His face was grim, save his eyes, which looked worried.

  “Sorry. I’m just trying to help him. My own life’s kind of a cluster-F, and I think it’s spilling over a little.” I turned toward him, hand still over my missing eyebrow. “I’m not out to hurt him. Actually, I like him. A lot.”

  His face softened. “He’s always liked you. Since back in the day, in the old hood. What happened, you get beat up?”

  I took my hand away. Leo took a step back. “Let me go look in the stockroom. See if we have a pencil in dark red.”

  “Auburn,” I replaced the hand.

  He squinted at me. “What’s the difference?”

  Back in the car with my luxury purchase of an eyebrow pencil and a four-pack of ice coffee, I sketched a brow in place. I didn’t want to scare the cat. At home, I tossed my sodden clothes in the dryer. It required going down into the creepy, half-finished cellar. The dryer was full of clean clothes I had neglected to fold and put away. I grabbed more sweat pants, socks and a T-shirt.

  I nearly forgot about the evidence I’d snatched from the scene. Rescuing the Tic Tac box from the windbreaker, I also found the necklace. For a while, I fingered the crescent-shaped pendant. It meant something. I didn’t know what. I needed to find out.

  Armed with four bottles of mocha ice coffee, I hit the dissertation again. This time, the reading was easier. It no longer seemed a dry history of the Maenads and treatise on feminism. Now it seemed like a tell-all confessional, told by an actual Maenad.

  If you wanted to pick a religion, then the Cult of Dionysus sounded pretty good. It involved a bunch of outsiders and misfits at a lot of drinking parties in the woods. Getting drunk was akin to being possessed by their god. There was a lot of dancing and loud music. The cult sounded more like an on-going keg party than anything else.

  Of course, the Maenads were a girls-only group, so some of their parties were probably not as much fun. But who hasn’t gone off with the girls to drink jug wine, gossip, and just whatever? The patriarchy, however, doesn’t like it when the ladies get up to their own doings.

  That led to a darker side of the Maenads. Several men who opposed the cult were dealt with in a particularly gruesome manner. The party sisters would tear the men apart with their bare hands. Sometimes, they dispatched animals in a similar manner. All part of the drunken fun, I guess.

  What the dissertation didn’t tell me was what I really needed to know. What were their weaknesses? How did one get rid of a rampaging Maenad? I put the necklace on, once again studying the pendant, a crescent bisected by a wedge. Despite the fact that it was evidence (of something), the feel of it against my skin made me feel relaxed.

  My back ached, from both my tumble with Nysa Galatas, and sitting in the folding chair reading for hours. I stood up and stretched. Ugly wandered in and rubbed against my ankles.

  “Oh, so we’re buddies again?”

  The cat continued winding between my legs. She made a couple grunting sounds. From our contact, I understood her. Not hexed. Why I welcomed the animal’s approval, I don’t know. Maybe because it validated the way I now felt. Which was exactly that: not hexed.

  Chapter 16

  I got an early start, returning the dissertation to the university as an excuse. If anyone knew more about the Maenad, it would be a Classics professor. The University of the Valley spanned the Calaveras River in the central part of Delta Vista. Rain had washed the sky to a clear blue above the campus. It was the start of the spring semester, and parking was hard to find for a car as big as most dorm rooms.

  While I had spent a lot of time on the campus, since my father worked here, I had no idea what department a Classics professor would work from. Instead, I made the obligatory stop in the Biological Sciences Building. Dad was an early bird, and he taught early classes. Thus, I knew he’d be unavailable at this hour. The department secretary didn’t look up from her computer.

  “Is Professor Garcia available?” I asked.

  “He’s lecturing. Office hours are on his door.”

  “Oh. Could you leave a note? Mary stopped by?”

  The woman had gray hair up in a bun, with glasses hanging from a chain. She squinted at me. “Mary Garcia? I haven’t seen you since you were a teenager.”

  “Yeah, I moved away for a while.” I fished her name from my memory. “Mrs. Scott, Carol Scott, right?”

  “That’s me. Oh, the professor will be so sorry he missed you.” Her face was kindly, more wrinkled than I recalled. She maintained her penchant for bright, print blouses.

  “We’ll catch up, I�
�m sure.” I dreaded it. “I’m actually here on a case. Could you tell me which department Professor Alice Descartes works in?”

  “Psychology, I think. Let me look.” Mrs. Scott turned to her computer and brought up a directory. “Yep. Communications Center. It’s on the other side of the river.”

  With the weather fair and warm, I headed across campus. I walked between the fitness center and Banner Hall, taking the footpath that led to the pedestrian bridge. Below, the Calaveras roared from the overnight rain. On the opposite shore stood a lot of student housing buildings and two halls, Davidson and the communications building. Unlike the old, brick structures on the campus proper, these were mid-70s concrete ugly.

  Descartes’ office was on the second floor. She was in. I expressed my surprise.

  “I like to keep office hours when the students are in class,” she said. “Keeps them out of my hair.” She dressed in an outfit I associated with my father: tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, plain blouse, no jewelry. Her gray hair was pulled back severely.

  I handed over the dissertation. “Thanks for letting us have that.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  “No,” I said. “I found something missing.” I glanced around the office. There was a framed print of The Shriek by Munch, an artsy depiction of the human brain, and lots of books on shelves, none of them about mythology. “Are you a Classics professor?”

  “I’m a Professor of Psychology. Classics is a student-derived major. In Jane’s case, that meant psych, history, feminist studies, comparative religion, art history, literature, and several foreign languages. I was her advisor.”

  “Why psychology?”

  “I teach several classes on pre-Freudian psychology. Myths were the standard before cognitive therapy became a thing. I told all this to your partner, Inspector Shen.”

  I nodded. Shen hadn’t related much of their meeting, and I’d been suspended before I could read his report. “It seems that Jane Smith’s interest in the Maenads might have contributed to her death more than we first assumed.”