Between Shifts

by W. R. Gingell

  “Coffee, Pet,” said Zero.

  “The killer is what?” demanded Detective Tuatu. “Come back here!”

  “Can’t!” I called. “Boss says I gotta make coffee.”

  I heard him ask behind me, “What does she mean? What is it I should know about the killer?”

  Zero hesitated, then said, “The killer is someone from our side of reality.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they are no longer human,” explained Athelas, into the burbling of the boiling kettle. “You saw the blood test results, did you not?”

  “If they’re not human, what are they?”

  “Something else,” said Zero. “Do you know why he visited?”

  “Yes,” Detective Tuatu said, his voice tight. “From what a friend told me, he was signed in as a potential witness, to examine some CCTV feed from the night of the latest murder.”

  “A witness?” I called. “That’s flamin’ rich! Who brought him in?”

  “I don’t think anyone brought him in,” said the detective. “That’s the issue. Well, it’s one issue. He’s also not listed in any of the investigations as a P.O.I. in any way, though given the slapdash way they were put together, I’m not surprised. The biggest problem is that he came straight to Upper Management and requested to see the video footage, and they let him in without question.”

  I popped my head into the living room as Zero, frowning, asked, “The recording?”

  “Destroyed,” said Tuatu grimly. “What did you expect?”

  “Athelas,” said Zero. “How is it that you didn’t find a security camera feed during your time in Upper Management?”

  “There were one or two things I was busy with,” Athelas said smoothly. There was nothing in his face or his voice, but I was pretty sure he was saying something for Zero’s ears only.

  “I see,” Zero said. “Is there no chance of recovering the feed?”

  “It’s not just the recording; the entire room was destroyed,” said Tuatu. “I saw the mess he made. And the only copy they had was hard copy. The original was on the store’s servers.”

  JinYeong spoke; a short sentence, and I went back to my tea and coffee tray.

  “It wasn’t there by the time we checked the store’s camera feed,” said Zero. “We assumed it had been destroyed before it got to the police; that camera was completely out of commission.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the boy?” asked the Detective, in annoyance. “I’ve only had contact with Erica Knopke since you went in, and she’s not even a suspect! If you’ve got a suspect, I want to question him.”

  “We’ve got two, but I don’t reckon you can talk to either one of ’em,” I said, carrying out the tray. I knew the look on Zero’s face; I also knew the amused glance that had passed between Athelas and JinYeong.

  “Oh can’t I? If they’re suspects, I’ve got every right to question them!”

  “Yeah? How’s that gunna work out for you?” I asked him. I put down the tray and gave Tuatu his cup of tea; I’d given him Athelas’ really good tea, by way of a sort-of apology that we hadn’t included him more. “I hear you’ve been chowing down on humans after you turn into a giant wolf. What have you got to say for yourself? That’ll do wonders for your reputation at the station.”

  “You—” the detective stopped, then glared at me. “That’s not how I’d start out!”

  “Yeah?” I said again. “Well, there’s suspects, and if you think Shanae’s gunna put up with you calling her a wolf, either, you’ve got another think coming.”

  “You can’t question them,” Zero said. “That’s not your part of this investigation.”

  “You don’t control my part in this investigation,” retorted Tuatu. “I’m an officer of the law, and I’ll investigate where I see fit!”

  Zero just looked at him, almost as if he was JinYeong spoiling for a fight. “If this was only a question of human murder, I would agree. But you have no jurisdiction here apart from the human victims, and no knowledge of how to interrogate Behindkind.”

  “Where humans are dying, I’m taking jurisdiction,” Detective Tuatu said, stubbornly. “There’s only so much you can find out by being undercover, and if you’ve planted him in the station, the least you can do is use that to leverage an official investigation!”

  Athelas, amused, passed the biscuits to the detective. Tuatu looked distrustfully at him but took a biscuit.

  “I am not in your station to effect reform; I’m there to work undercover,” he said. “Moreover, an official investigation wouldn’t help you at all. Forms would be filed, and witnesses would be questioned, and if you were to scratch below the surface, you would see that each of them said exactly nothing.”

  “That’s what the first investigations were like,” Tuatu said. “These days, they don’t even bother with the veneer; they just close the case as an animal killing.”

  “Exactly so,” said Athelas.

  “If that’s so, I’m not sure exactly what you’re doing there,” the detective said bluntly.

  Athelas’ smile carried just a little coldness to it. “Amongst other things, I’m there to make sure you’re kept alive long enough to close the case satisfactorily from your side,” he said. “You may find you owe me something for that.”

  “I’m happy to pay whatever you think it costs!” snapped Tuatu.

  I threw a biscuit at him, and it bounced off his temple, scattering crumbs through the tiny, tight curls there. “Don’t say stuff like that!” I told him.

  Athelas smiled, more of a cat-with-cream smile, this time. “I’ll remember that,” he said. “Don’t try to wriggle out of it later.”

  The detective, looking uneasy, opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Zero asked, “Where are you with Erica? You both met her yesterday. What do you think?”

  “She’s still not telling,” I said. “I thought she might talk more to the detective, but she didn’t.”

  Back to business again, Tuatu nodded. “She’s definitely holding out on us, but I don’t think it’ll take much for her to talk. She looked like she would have talked at any minute, but she kept pulling back at the last second. There’s still something stopping her.”

  “Hang on,” I said, frowning. “If you saw something weird—like a person turning into a wolf and killing a bloke—would you tell the police about it?”

  “Nope,” Tuatu said. “People already think I’m weird. That’d just give them the opportunity to kick me out of the force.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “You said I could tell her I’m with the detective, and maybe she feels safer, but she won’t feel really safe until she knows she can talk about the weird stuff, too. There’s no way she doesn’t know it was a wolf, with how much perfume she’s been spraying around the place.”

  Athelas’ eyes crinkled. “Yes. JinYeong may have mentioned the inconvenience once or twice. It makes it difficult for him to differentiate scents.”

  “Tell her about us if you must, but tell her as little as you can,” Zero said. “What’s her schedule tomorrow?”

  “She’s got the day off. Daniel’s working, and so is Shanae.”

  “You?”

  “I’m meant to be working.”

  “Forget work—”

  “Heck yeah!”

  “—and go visit Erica. Take her out somewhere with you, if you can; somewhere with a lot of people and a normal look. Detective, you’ll keep an eye on them, won’t you?”

  Detective Tuatu sighed. “All right. But call me if you discover anything that’s pertinent to the case!”

  I knew Daniel was at work. I knew he was at work, and that Zero and JinYeong were both there, too. I knew the detective was somewhere around even if I couldn’t see him.

  But I still had that crawling feeling like someone was watching me.

  And okay, yeah; the detective was watching me. He was meant to be watching me. It still felt like someone else was watching me, though. Maybe the bloke in gre
en trousers was out there as well, less visible this time.

  Still, no one tried to attack me, and I didn’t see the Moth Man again, either. Before long, I was outside Erica’s house, and a flutter in the window drew my attention. Erica was there, gazing out on the street, and she saw me just as I saw her.

  She looked so happy to see me that I forgot about the discomfort of being watched.

  “Pet! Isn’t it your day off?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “But I figured you might be stuck inside here, so I’ve come to drag you out to coffee or something. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Today has been lovely; it’s just that I don’t…I don’t go out much by myself these days.”

  “Figured. C’mmon, let’s go for a walk down to the waterfront and throw some fish at the seal.”

  “We’ve got a seal?”

  “Yeah, he pops in to be fed every now and then. We can get ice cream down there, too. It’s nice and sunny, so we might as well.”

  “All right.” She disappeared from the window, and a couple of minutes later turned up at the door. She locked it behind her, pulling both doors firmly until they clicked.

  I didn’t blame her.

  We wandered down toward the waterfront, and for a while we just talked about her dress (it was new) and her neighbour across the road (he was new, too) because I knew I was going to have to bring up the night of the murder again, and I wasn’t much looking forward to it.

  She looked so uncomfortable and scared when I tried to get her to talk about it, and I didn’t like making people look like that.

  I was going to have to steel myself to it, I thought determinedly. Because Erica wasn’t safe, and she would keep being unsafe as long as she didn’t tell me everything. My psychos could only fix the problem if they knew what it was.

  So I waited until we’d had a nice walk and a coffee; and I waited until we were dangling our legs off part of the pier with an ice cream each.

  I didn’t eat mine—just sort of watched it dribble and drip into the water as I said, “You know, you wouldn’t have to be scared to come out on a nice day like this if you told the detective what really happened that night.”

  Erica jumped and nearly dropped her ice cream. Maybe her stomach was as queasy as mine, because she hadn’t eaten much of it, either. She recovered herself, and said in a small voice, “I don’t want to talk about it, Pet. I’ve already told you I don’t know anything.”

  “Look,” I said, “I know you saw something weird that night. I know it probably makes you feel like an idiot to say it aloud, but since I’ve been walking you home, something has started following me. I want to know if I’m going to be murdered. I’ve got some friends who deal with weird stuff—”

  “More friends,” said Erica, and there was a wan smile on her face. “Oh, Pet! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to drag you into this, but I was so scared!”

  “I know you’re scared, but they can really help.”

  “I don’t think they can help with this,” she said. “It doesn’t even sound real to me.”

  “They helped with something involving face swapping and a house that vanished,” I said. I felt a bit exasperated, which wasn’t fair on Erica; she was just a human who hadn’t been around big scary stuff before.

  Her eyes got huge. “With—with face swapping?”

  “Well, sort of. Anyway, there’s something following me around after work, and they don’t like it. I don’t like it either. They want to do something about it, but they can’t do something about it until they know what they’re looking at.”

  “If it can keep you safe—” she began hesitantly.

  “And they’re not gunna be too happy to help you out if you don’t help them out, either,” I added, a bit more sternly. There was no way I was going to leave her to Daniel’s stalkerish little ways, of course, but she didn’t need to know that now.

  We needed to know whether it was Shanae or Daniel responsible for the murders, and soon. I hadn’t been able to eat breakfast this morning, again, and there was a cold pit of hunger in my stomach that felt a lot like fear. If Erica didn’t talk soon, there was a good chance that I really was going to end up as the latest victim, Zero or no Zero.

  I asked again, “What happened that night?”

  Erica drew in a deep breath. Let it out.

  “You saw Daniel?” I prompted. “Or was it Shanae?”

  “I can’t say it was him for certain,” she said urgently. “Or her. You have to remember that. I saw the hoodie, but there has to be more than one of them around Hobart. And the—the thing that took Chris wasn’t wearing a hoodie by the time it came after him. It wasn’t—it wasn’t even human, Pet! I thought it was a dog at first, but it was so, so much bigger!”

  I looked at those wide, unfocused eyes, and the fingers that were white around her bag’s strap, and said, “Not there. Don’t start there. Start at the start; you were at work and it got to the end of the day.”

  “Night,” she said. “It was night time. Shanae and I were on the late shift to put up the displays again after the floor was polished, so we didn’t finish until midnight. We went out with the nightfill team, but I forgot to get my lunchbox, so I went back. Everyone was gone by the time I came out again, except for Chris.”

  “He stayed to walk you home?”

  She nodded. “Yes. We talked for a while, and then he tried to kiss me. I liked him, so I let him. Only then, something collided with Chris and knocked me into the wall. At first, it looked like a person, but it…it changed into a wolf. A really big wolf. I suppose I fainted, because the last thing I remember before I woke up on the tarmac in the alley is the screaming as Chris was dragged away.”

  She stopped, shuddering. “I know it sounds crazy, Pet, but I swear that’s what happened! When I woke up the light in the alley was out and all I could see was the moon at the end of it. I got up, but it took a long time. And it felt like—it felt like I was being watched.”

  Almost definitely Daniel, I thought. I asked her, “Was there anything in the alley beside you?”

  She shivered. “You mean Chris? There was something dark near the skip bin, but I didn’t want to look at it, so I ran for the parking lot. I saw the person when I looked back over my shoulder—I mean, I saw the hoodie. The moonlight caught on the metal spikes, so it was easy to see. I ran all the way home, and when I got inside I looked both my doors and checked all the windows.”

  “Good job,” I said. “You did good.”

  “I couldn’t say anything,” she said, sniffing. “No one would believe me that a giant wolf came and murdered a man. And I thought—I thought if I said anything about it, he would come back and kill me, too.”

  I nodded. “I understand. The perfume was a clever idea.”

  “And then there was Daniel, and I couldn’t help feeling they were connected, even though that’s impossible, too. But I can’t say it wasn’t a woman, either.”

  “All right,” I said. “I understand.”

  We were getting somewhere at last. It was time for Erica to properly meet the psychos.

  Chapter Eleven

  I brought Erica to Detective Tuatu’s house after work the next day. I would have brought her back to our house, but Zero had said “No” in his most expressionless, implacable way; and even the detective, who looked like challenging him as much as JinYeong sometimes, had taken one look at that face and agreed to have Erica at his place.

  “She’s familiar with me, Pet,” he said. “We don’t want to frighten her more than we need to. Bring her to my house.”

  I was tired and weary after a night of tearing out throats in my dreams (which gave me a new dislike for JinYeong that only seemed to amuse him) and I didn’t try to argue. That must have surprised Athelas, because I saw his brows go up.

  I also saw the way he and Zero looked at each other, but I didn’t have the energy to complain about that, either. I just went to work like a good pet and took Erica to Detective Tuatu’s house when we fini
shed.

  I was pretty sure it was Athelas following us there at a safe distance, and when we got to the door I knew Zero and JinYeong were already there, too. I could smell them there with Detective Tuatu; Zero like icy rain in the offing, JinYeong all salty and almost but not quite human.

  Maybe Erica had something of the same sense, even if she couldn’t scent it like I could; she hesitated on the doorstep and said, “I don’t know, Pet! It seems ridiculous now; I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding.”

  “Don’t give up now,” I told her “My friends are gunna make sure no one hurts you again.”

  She didn’t seem too sure about that, but she let me shoo her into the house and the living room, where Zero and JinYeong stood behind one of the couches like a pair of bodyguards while the detective tried—and failed—to wipe off something that had set on the coffee table before we got there.

  And behind us, Athelas slipped through the door and padded silently into the living room.

  Erica stared at them; from Detective Tuatu, to Zero and JinYeong, to Athelas, and back again. “All five of you—you’re all working together?”

  She looked terrified.

  I didn’t blame her; with his height and extreme whiteness Zero was intimidating, and JinYeong’s eyes were liquid and dangerous tonight; something I thought Erica would recognise, if only from Daniel. Not to mention the fact that this newly alien duo had until yesterday been just a couple of other staff members where she worked, and that she was probably wondering how long they’d been spying on her. If I didn’t know my psychos, I’d probably be freaked out, too.

  Actually, I did know them, and I was still creeped out by them at least half the time.

  “It’s okay,” I said to her. “They’re the friends I was telling you about. They’re trying to help catch the person who murdered Chris and the others.”

  “I thought the detective—”

  “He’s my friend, too,” I said. “These guys are…kinda detectives. They help with this sort of thing, anyway.”

  Erica almost smiled. “Weird, impossible things?”

  “Exactly.”