Obsidian Butterfly ab-9

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  The kitchen was small and narrow and white. But all the appliances were black, and the starkness of the contrast was almost too much first thing in the morning. There was another bouquet of wild flowers in the middle of a small white wooden table. Donna had struck again, but truthfully I agreed with her. The kitchen needed something to soften it.

  The two men sitting at the table did nothing to humanize the room. Olaf had shaved so that the only hair left were the black lines of his eyebrows. He wore a black tank top, black dress slacks. Couldn't see the shoes, but I was betting on a monochrome look. He was also wearing a black shoulder rig with a big automatic of some kind. I didn't recognize the brand. A black-hilted knife was in a holster under his left arm.

  Shoulder holsters chaff when you wear them with tank tops, but hey, it wasn't my problem.

  Bernardo wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt and black jeans. He'd pulled the top layer of his hair back on either side with a large multi-colored barrette, There was still plenty of hair to fall down past his shoulders, stark and black against the pure whiteness of his shirt. He was wearing a ten mil Beretta just in back of his right hip. I couldn't see a knife on him, but I was betting it was there.

  Edward was at the stove, emptying a pan of scrambled eggs onto two plates, He was also wearing black jeans with matching cowboy boots, and a white shirt that was a twin of the one he'd worn yesterday.

  "Gee, guys, do I have to go back to my room and change?"

  They all looked at me, even Olaf. "What you're wearing is fine," Edward said. He carried the plates to the table and put one in front of each of the empty chairs. There was a plate of bacon in the center of the table beside the flowers.

  "But I don't match," I said.

  Edward and Bernardo smiled. Olaf didn't. Big surprise. "You guys look like you're in uniform," I said.

  "I guess we do," Edward said. He sat down in one of the empty chairs.

  I sat in the other one. "You should have told me there was a dress code."

  "We didn't do it on purpose," Bernardo said.

  I nodded. "Which is what makes it funny."

  "I am not changing clothes," Olaf said.

  "No one's asking you to," I said. "I was making an observation." My eggs had bits of green and red things in them. "What's in the eggs?"

  "Green peppers, red chilies, and diced ham," Edward said.

  "Gee, Edward, you shouldn't have." I liked my scrambled eggs the way God intended them, plain. I pushed the eggs around with my fork, and reached for the bacon. Half the plate was barely cooked, the other half done to a crisp. I went for the crisp.

  The bacon on Olaf's plate was the crispy kind, too. Oh, well.

  I said grace over the food. Edward kept eating, but the others hesitated, uncomfortable with their mouths full. It's always fun to say grace at a table with people who don't. That uncomfortable silence. The panic while they wonder whether to keep chewing or to stop. I finished praying and took a bite of bacon. Yum. "What's the game plan for today?" I asked.

  "You haven't finished looking at the files," Edward said.

  Bernardo groaned.

  "I think it is a waste of time," Olaf said. "We have gone over the files. I do not believe that she will find anything new."

  "She's already done that," Edward said.

  Olaf looked at him, a piece of bacon half way to his mouth. "What do you mean?"

  Edward told them.

  "That is nothing," Olaf said.

  "It's more than you came up with," Edward said, quietly.

  "If I am such a burden on this job, maybe I should leave," Olaf said.

  "If you can't work with Anita, maybe you should."

  Olaf stared at him. "You would rather have her as backup instead of me?" He sounded astonished.

  "Yes," Edward said.

  "I could break her in half over my knee," Olaf said. The astonishment was turning to anger. I suspected that most emotions turned into anger for Olaf.

  "Maybe," Edward said, "but I doubt she'd give you the chance."

  I held up my hand. "Don't make this a competition, Edward."

  Olaf turned to me, slowly. He spoke very slowly, very clearly. "I do not compete with women."

  "Afraid you can't measure up?" I asked. The moment I said it, I wished I hadn't. The momentary satisfaction wasn't worth the look on his face as he rose from his chair. I leaned into the table and drew the Firestar, pointing it in his general direction under the table.

  Olaf stood, looming over me, like a muscular tree. "Edward has spent the morning talking to me about you. Trying to convince me that you are worth listening to." He shook his head. "You are a witch and I am not. The thing we hunt may be magical and we need your expertise. Maybe this is all true, but I will not be insulted by you."

  "You're right," I said, "I'm sorry. It was a cheap shot."

  He blinked at me. "You are apologizing?"

  "Yes, on the rare, rare occasions when I'm wrong, I can apologize."

  Edward was staring at me across the table.

  "What?" I asked.

  He just shook his head. "Nothing."

  "Olaf's hatred of women is sort of a handicap, and I try not to make fun of people with handicaps."

  Edward closed his eyes and shook his head. "You just couldn't leave it alone, could you?"

  "I am not a cripple."

  "If you hate anyone or anything with an unreasoning, uncompromising hatred, then you are blind where that hatred is concerned. The police kicked me out of a crime scene yesterday because the cop in charge is a right-winger squeaky-clean Christian, and he considers me devil spawn. So he'd rather more people get killed and mutilated than have me help him solve the case. He hates me more than he wants to catch this monster."

  Olaf was still standing, but some of the tension had drained way. He seemed to actually be listening to me.

  "Do you hate women more than you want to catch this monster?"

  He looked at me, and for once his eyes weren't angry. They were thoughtful. "Edward called me because I am the best. I have never walked away from a job until the quarry was dead.

  "And if it takes my preternatural expertise to help kill the monster, can you deal with that?"

  "I don't like it," he said.

  "I know that, but that's not what I asked. Can you handle my expertise helping you kill the monster? Can you take my help if it is the best thing for the job?"

  "I don't know," he said. At least he was being honest, even reasonable. It was a start.

  "The question, Olaf, is which do you love more: the kill or your hatred of women?"

  I could feel Edward's and Bernardo's stillness. The room held its collective breath waiting for the answer.

  "I would rather kill than do anything else," Olaf said.

  I nodded. "Great, and thank you."

  He shook his head. "If I take your help, it does not mean that I consider you my equal."

  "Me either," I said.

  Someone kicked me under the table. I think it was Edward. But Olaf and I nodded at each other, not exactly smiling, but I think we had a truce. If he could control his hatred, and I could control my smart-ass impulses, the truce might last long enough for us to solve the case. I managed to reholster the Firestar without him noticing, which made me think less of him. Edward had noticed, and I think, so had Bernardo. What was Olaf's specialty? What good was he if he didn't know where the guns were?

  29

  AFTER BREAKFAST WE HEADED back into the dining room. Bernardo had volunteered to do the dishes. I think he was looking for any excuse to get out of the paperwork. Though I was beginning to wonder if Bernardo had been as badly spooked by the mutilations as Edward had been. Even the monsters were afraid of this one.

  Last night I'd been ready to look at the forensic reports next, but in the clear light of day I could admit that it was cowardice. Reading about it was not as bad as seeing it. I so did not want to look at the photos. I was afraid to see them, and the moment I admitted that to myself, I
moved them to the top of the list.

  Edward suggested we stick all the pictures on the walls of the dining room.

  "And put pin holes in your nice clean walls," I said.

  "Don't be barbaric," Edward said. "We'll use sticky putty." He held up a small packet of the pliable yellow rectangles. He peeled off some and handed it to Olaf and me.

  I squeezed the stuff between my fingers, rolling it into a ball. It made me smile. "I haven't seen this stuff since elementary school."

  The three of us spent the next hour putting the pictures up on the wall. Just handling the sticky putty made me remember fourth grade and helping Miss Cooper hang Christmas decorations on the walls.

  We'd hung cheerful Santas, fat candy canes, and bright balls. Now I was hanging vivisected bodies, close-ups of skinless faces, shots of rooms full of body parts. By the time we had one wall covered I was mildly depressed. Finally, the pictures took up almost all the empty white wall space.

  I stood in the center of the room and looked at it all. "Sweet Jesus."

  "Too harsh for you?" Olaf asked.

  "Back off, Olaf," I said.

  He started to say something else but Edward said, "Olaf." It was amazing how much menace he could put into one ordinary word.

  Olaf thought about it for a second or two, but in the end he let it go. Either Olaf was getting smarter or he was afraid of Edward, too. Guess which way I was voting.

  We'd grouped the photos by crime scene in large clusters. This was my first glimpse of the bodies that had been torn apart.

  Doctor Evans had described the bodies being cut by a blade of unknown origin, then disjointed by hand. But that had been a very clean description of what had actually been done.

  At first, all my eyes could see was blood and pieces. Even knowing what I was looking at, my mind refused to see it at first. It was like looking at one of those 3-D pictures where at first it's just colors and dots, then suddenly you see it. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. My mind was trying to protect me from what I was looking at by just simply not allowing me to make sense of it. My mind was protecting me, and it only does that when it's bad, really really bad.

  If I had just walked out now before my eyes made sense of it, I might escape the full horror of it all. I could turn on my heel and march out of here. I could just refuse to take one more terror into my brain. Probably a good idea for my own sanity, but it wouldn't help the next family that this thing got hold of. It wouldn't stop the mutilations, the deaths. So I stood there and made myself stare up at the first picture, waiting to see what was really there

  The blood was brighter than movie blood, a cherry red. They'd gotten to this scene before the blood had started to dry.

  I spoke without turning around. "How did the police find the bodies so quickly in this house? The blood is still fresh."

  Edward answered, "The husband's parents were supposed to meet them for an early breakfast, before work."

  I had to look away from the picture, at the floor. "You mean his parents found him like this?"

  "It gets worse," Edward said.

  "How could it possibly get worse?" I asked.

  "The wife told her best friend she was pregnant. The breakfast meeting was to tell the husband's parents they were about to be grandparents for the first time."

  The rug swam in my vision, like looking at it through water. I reached back for a chair and eased my way into it. I put my head between my knees and breathed very carefully.

  "You all right?" Edward asked.

  I nodded without raising up. I waited for Olaf to make a sarcastic remark, but he didn't. Either Edward had warned him off or he thought it was horrible, too.

  When I was sure I wasn't going to throw up or faint, I spoke with my head still between my knees. "When did the parents arrive at the house? What time?"

  I heard paper rustle. "Six-thirty."

  I rested my cheek against my knee. It felt good. "When did the sun come up?"

  "I don't know," Edward said.

  "Find out," I said. Gee, the rug on the floor was kind of pretty.

  I raised up slowly, still practicing nice even breaths. The room did not swim. Good. "The grandparents-to-be arrived at six-thirty. It takes what, ten minutes, less, for them to recover enough to call the cops. Then uniforms arrive on the scene first. It could take thirty minutes or an hour, more, for a crime scene photographer to arrive, and yet the blood is still fresh. It hasn't dulled yet, let alone started to brown."

  "The parents nearly walked in on it," Edward said.

  "Yeah," I said.

  "What difference does that make?" Olaf asked.

  "If dawn was close to six-thirty, then the critter can be out in daylight, or it went to hole close to the murder scene. If it wasn't close to dawn, then it may be limited to darkness."

  Edward was smiling down at me like a proud parent. "Even with your head between your knees, you're still thinking about the job."

  "But what does it gain us," Olaf said, "if the creature is limited to darkness or daylight?"

  I looked up at him. He was looming over me again, but I kept sitting down. Wouldn't look very macho if I stood up and fell down. "If it's limited to darkness, then it may help us figure out what kind of critter it is. There really aren't that many preternatural creatures that are limited exclusively to darkness. It would help narrow the list."

  "And if it holed up near the first murder scene," Edward said, "we might find some traces."

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  "The police tramped over that area within an inch of its life," Olaf said. "Are you saying you can find something that they can't?" His arrogance was showing.

  "With the first murder, especially, the police were looking for a human perpetrator. If you're looking for a human being, you look for different things than if it's a monster." I smiled. "Besides, if we didn't all think we could find things that the police couldn't, we wouldn't be here. Edward wouldn't have called us in, and the police wouldn't have shared the files with him."

  Olaf frowned. "I have never seen you smile like this, Edward, unless you are pretending to be Ted. You took like a proud teacher whose pupil is doing well."

  "More like Frankenstein with his monster," I said.

  Edward thought about it for a second, then nodded and grinned, pleased with himself. "I like that."

  Olaf frowned at both of us. "You did not create her, Edward."

  "No," I said, "but he helped make me the woman I am today."

  Edward and I looked at each other, and the smiles faded from both our faces, leaving us solemn. "Am I supposed to apologize for that?" he asked.

  I shook my head. "Do you feel like apologizing for it?"

  "No," he said.

  "Then don't. I'm alive, Edward, and I'm here." I stood and didn't sway at all. Life was good.

  "Let's find out if any of the killings took place after daylight. When I've looked at all this shit, let's go see some murder scenes." I looked at Edward. "If that's all right with you. You are the boss."

  He gave a small nod. "That's fine, but to keep Ted working with the Santa Fe PD, we'll need to include them at the murder sites."

  "Yeah," I said, "police don't like civvies mucking up their murder scenes, makes them testy."

  "Besides, you're already persona non grata in Albuquerque," Edward said. "We've got to keep some of the cops willing to talk to you."

  "And that's really bugging me," I said. "I'm barred from the freshest crime scenes, the newest evidence. I don't need another handicap on a case like this."

  "You don't know what it is either, do you?" Edward said.

  I shook my head, and sighed. "Not a damn clue." Bless his chauvinistic heart, but Olaf didn't say, I told you so.

  I went back to staring at the pictures, and suddenly I could see it. I let out a breath, and said, softly, "Wow." The room seemed hot. Dammit, I was not going to have to sit down again. I put my fingertips on either side of the wall steadying myself, but it must have looked like
I was trying for a closer look. Trust me, I was as close as I ever wanted to get. I finally had to close my eyes for just a few seconds. When I opened them, I was okay or as okay as I was likely to be.

  Body parts scattered like flower petals, stirred into a red mess. My eye flicked from one blood-covered lump to another. I was almost sure that was a forearm, and the ball of a knee joint showed whitely amid all the red. I'd never seen so many pieces before. I'd seen bodies torn apart before, but that had been for food or punishment. But there was a terrible completeness to this ... destruction. I moved on to a shot of the same image but from a slightly different angle. I tried to put the body together in my head, but kept coming up short on parts.

  I finally turned around. "There's no head and no hands." I pointed at small lumps in the blood. "Unless those are fingers. Was the body completely disjointed even down to the finger bones?"

  Edward nodded. "Every victim has been almost completely dismembered down to the joints."

  "Why?" I asked. I looked at Edward. "Where's the head?"

  "They found it down the hill behind the house. The brain was missing."

  "How about the heart?" I asked. "I mean there's the spine, almost intact, but I don't see any viscera. Where are all the internal organs?"

  "They didn't find them," Edward said.

  I leaned back, half-sitting on the table. "Why take the internal organs? Did they eat them? Is it part of some magical ritual? Or is it just part of the ritual of the killing itself, a souvenir?"

  "There are a lot of organs in the body," Olaf said. "You put them all in one container and they can be heavy, bulky. They also rot very quickly unless you put them in some form of preservative."

  I looked at him, but he wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the pictures. He hadn't given a lot of detail, but something in the way he said it made him sound like he knew what he was talking about.

  "And how do you know how heavy the internal organs of a human body can be?"