“No,” she said. “I have a set of free-standing legs attached to a pelvis, detached cleanly above the fifth lumbar vertebra. The wound is covered with a layer of table salt that appears to have caused the flesh to scorch. Try explaining that one to my captain.”
“No thanks,” he said. “That’s your job. I’m just the criminal reprobate.”
“So you’ve never seen anything like this.”
“Hell, no.”
“Have you ever heard of anything like this?” She’d set the photos flat on the table. He was still studying them.
“No. You have any leads at all?”
“No. We’ve ID’d the body. She was Filipina, a recent immigrant. We’re still trying to find the other half of the body. There has to be another half somewhere, right?”
He sat back, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
“You’re sure you don’t know anything? You’re not just yanking my chain out of spite?”
“I get nothing out of yanking your chain. Not here.”
Scowling, she put the photos back in her case. “Well, this was worth a try. Sorry for wasting your time.”
“I’ve got nothing but time.”
He was yanking her chain, she was sure of it. “If you think of anything, if you get any bright ideas, call me.” As the guard arrived to escort him back to his cell, she said, “And get some sleep. You look awful.”
Hardin was at her desk, looking over the latest reports from the crime lab. Nothing. They hadn’t had rain, the ground was hard, so no footprints. No blood. No fibers. No prints on the shed. Someone wearing gloves had cut off the lock in order to stuff half the body inside — then didn’t bother to lock the shed again. The murderer had simply closed the door and vanished.
The phone rang, and she answered, frustrated and surly. “Detective Hardin.”
“Will you accept the charges from Cormac Bennett at the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility?”
It took her a moment to realize what that meant. She was shocked. “Yes, I will. Hello? Bennett?”
“Manananggal,” he said. “Don’t ask me how to spell it.”
She wrote down the word, sounding it out as best she could. The Internet would help her find the correct spelling. “Okay, but what is it?”
“Filipino version of the vampire.”
That made no sense. But really, did that matter? It made as much sense as anything else. It was a trail to follow. “Hot damn,” she said, suddenly almost happy. “The victim was from the Philippines. It fits. So the suspect was Filipino, too? Do Filipino vampires eat entire torsos or what?”
“No,” he said. “That body is the vampire, the manananggal. You’re looking for a vampire hunter.”
Her brain stopped at that one. “Excuse me?”
“These creatures, these vampires — they detach the top halves of their bodies to hunt. They’re killed when someone sprinkles salt on the bottom half. They can’t return to reattach to their legs, and they die at sunrise. If they’re anything like European vampires, the top half disintegrates. You’re never going to find the rest of the body.”
Well. She still wouldn’t admit that any of this made sense, but the pieces fit. The bottom half, the salt burns. Never mind — she was still looking for a murderer here, right?
“Detective?” Cormac said.
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said. “This fits all the pieces we have. Looks like I have some reading to do to figure out what really happened.”
He managed to sound grim. “Detective, you might check to see if there’s been a higher than usual number of miscarriages in the neighborhood.”
“Why?”
“I used the term vampire kind of loosely. This thing eats the hearts of fetuses. Sucks them through the mother’s navel while she sleeps.”
She almost hung up on him because it was too much. What was it Kitty sometimes said? Just when you thought you were getting a handle on the supernatural, just when you thought you’d seen it all, something even more unbelievable came along.
“You’re kidding.” She sighed. “So, what — this may have been a revenge killing? Who’s the victim here?”
“You’ll have to figure that one out yourself.”
“Isn’t that always the way?” she muttered. “Hey — now that we know you really were holding out on me, what made you decide to remember?”
“Look, I got my own shit going on and I’m not going to try to explain it to you.”
She was pretty sure she didn’t really want to know. “Fine. Okay. But thanks for the tip, anyway.”
“Maybe you could put in a good word for me,” he said.
She supposed she owed him the favor. Maybe she would after she got the whole story of how he ended up in prison in the first place. Then again, she pretty much thought he belonged there. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She hung up, found a phone book, and started calling hospitals.
Hardin called every hospital in downtown Denver. Every emergency room, every OB/Gyn, free clinic and even Planned Parenthood. She had to do a lot of arguing.
“I’m not looking for names, I’m just looking for numbers. Rates. I want to know if there’s been an increase in the number of miscarriages in the downtown Denver area over the last three years. No, I’m not from the EPA. Or from Sixty Minutes. This isn’t an exposé, I’m Detective Hardin with Denver PD and I’m investigating a case. Thank you.”
It took some of them a couple of days to get back to her. When they did, they seemed just as astonished as she was: Yes, miscarriage rates had tripled over the last three years. There had actually been a small decline in the local area’s birth rate.
“Do I need to worry?” one doctor asked her. “Is there something in the water? What is this related to?”
She hesitated about what to tell him. She could tell the truth — and he would never believe her. It would take too long to explain, to try to persuade him. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t talk about it until the case is wrapped up. But there’s nothing to worry about. Whatever was causing this has passed, I think.”
He didn’t sound particularly comforted, and neither was she. Because what else was out there? What other unbelievable crisis would strike next?
Hardin knocked on the Martinal’s front door. Julia Martinal, the mother, answered again. On seeing the detective, her expression turned confused. “Yes?”
“I just have one more question for you, Mrs. Martinal. Are you pregnant?”
“No.” She sounded offended, looking Hardin up and down, like how dare she.
Hardin took a deep breath and carried on. “I’m sorry for prying into your personal business, but I have some new information. About Dora Manuel.”
Julia Martinal’s eyes grew wide, and her hand gripped the edge of the door. Hardin thought she was going to slam it closed.
Hardin said, “Have you had any miscarriages in the last couple of years?”
At that, the woman’s lips pursed. She took a step back. “I know what you’re talking about, and that’s crazy. It’s crazy! It’s just old stories. Sure, nobody liked Dora Manuel, but that doesn’t make her a — a—”
So Hardin didn’t have to explain it.
The daughter, Teresa Martinal, appeared where she had before, lingering at the edge of the foyer, staring out with suspicion. Her hand rested on her stomach. That gesture was the answer.
Hardin bowed her head to hide a wry smile. “Teresa? Can you come out and answer a few questions?”
Julia moved to stand protectively in front of her daughter. “You don’t have to say anything, Teresa. This woman’s crazy.”
“Teresa, are you pregnant?” Hardin asked, around Julia’s defense.
Teresa didn’t answer. The pause drew on, and on. Her mother stepped aside, astonished, studying her daughter. “Teresa? Are you? Teresa!”
The young woman’s expression became hard, determined. “I’m not sorry.”
“You spied on her,” Hardin said to Teresa,
ignoring her mother. “You knew what she was, you knew what that meant, and you spied to find out where she left her legs. You waited for the opportunity, then you broke into the shed. You knew the stories. You knew what to do.”
“Teresa?” Mrs. Martinal said, her disbelief growing.
The girl still wouldn’t say anything.
Hardin continued. “We’ve only been at this a few days, but we’ll find something. We’ll find the bolt cutters you used and match them to the cut marks on the padlock. We’ll match the salt in your cupboard with the salt on the body. We’ll make a case for murder. But if you cooperate, I can help you. I can make a pretty good argument that this was self-defense. What do you say?”
Hardin was making wild claims — the girl had been careful and the physical evidence was scant. They might not find the bolt cutters, and the salt thing was pure television. And while Hardin might scrounge together the evidence and some witness testimony, she might never convince the DA’s office that this had really happened.
Teresa looked stricken, like she was trying to decide if Hardin was right, and if they had the evidence. If a jury would believe that a meek, pregnant teenager like her could even murder another person. It would be a hard sell — but Hardin was hoping this would never make it to court. She wasn’t stretching the truth about the self-defense plea. By some accounts, Teresa probably deserved a medal. But Hardin wouldn’t go that far.
In a perfect world, Hardin would be slapping cuffs on Dora Manuel, not Teresa. But until the legal world caught up with the shadow world, this would have to do.
Teresa finally spoke in a rush. “I had to do it. You know I had to do it. My mother’s been pregnant twice since Ms. Manuel moved in. They all died. I heard her talking. She knew what it was. She knew what was happening. I had to stop it.” She had both hands laced in a protective barrier over her stomach now. She wasn’t showing much yet. Just a swell she could hold in her hands.
Julia Martinal covered her mouth. Hardin couldn’t imagine which part of this shocked her more — that her daughter was pregnant, or a murderer.
Hardin imagined trying to explain this to the captain. She managed to get the werewolves pushed through and on record, but this was so much weirder. At least, not having grown up with the stories, it was. But the case was solved. On the other hand, she could just walk away. Without Teresa’s confession, they’d never be able to close the case. Hardin had a hard time thinking of Teresa as a murderer — she wasn’t like Cormac Bennett. Hardin could just walk away. But not really.
In the end, Hardin called it in and arrested Teresa. But her next call was to the DA about what kind of deal they could work out. There had to be a way to work this out within the system. Get Teresa off on probation on a minor charge. There had to be a way to drag the shadow world, kicking and screaming, into the light.
Somehow, Hardin would figure it out.
Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of a series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio advice show. The seventh installment, Kitty’s House of Horrors, was released January 2010. Her young adult novel, Voices of Dragons, and fantasy novel, Discord’s Apple, will also be released in 2010. Carrie lives in Boulder, Colorado and is always working on something new. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com
Jessi Hardin is a homicide detective with the Denver Police Department. She heads the department’s new Paranatural Unit and has (rather inadvertently) become an expert on emerging issues of law enforcement and the supernatural.
Deal Breaker: A Quincey Morris Story
by Justin Gustainis
“You’re not an easy man to find, Mister Morris,” Trevor Stone said. “I’ve been looking for you for some time.”
“It’s true that I don’t advertise, in the usual sense,” Quincey Morris told him. “But people who want my services usually manage to get in touch, sooner or later — as you have, your own self.” Although there was a Southwestern twang to Morris’s speech, it was muted — the inflection of a native Texan who has spent much of his time outside the Lone Star State.
“I would really have preferred sooner,” Stone said tightly. “As it is, I’m almost … almost out of time.”
Morris looked at the man sitting on his sofa more closely. Trevor Stone appeared to be in his mid-thirties. He was blond, clean-shaven, and wearing a suit that looked custom made. There was a sheen of perspiration on the man’s thin face, although the air conditioning in Morris’s living room kept the place comfortably cool — anyone spending a summer in Austin, Texas without air conditioning is either desperately poor or incurably insane.
Morris thought the man’s sweat might be due to either illness or fear. Time to find out which. “Pardon me for asking, but are you unwell?”
Stone gave a bark of unpleasant laughter. “Oh, no, I’m fine. The picture of health, and likely to remain so for another” — he glanced at the gold Patek Philippe on his wrist — “two hours and twenty-eight minutes.”
Fear, then.
Morris kept his face expressionless as he said, “That would bring us to midnight. What happens then?”
Stone was silent for a few seconds. “You ever play Monopoly, Mister Morris?”
“When I was a kid, sure.”
“So, imagine a nightmare where you land on Community Chest, and draw the worst Monopoly card of all time — Go to Hell. Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.”
It was Morris’s turn for silence. He finally broke it by saying, “Tell me. All of it.”
The first part of Trevor Stone’s story was unexceptional. A software engineer by training, he had gone to work in Silicon Valley after graduation from Cal Tech. Soon, he had made enough money out of the Internet boom to start up his own dot-com company with a couple of college buddies. They all made out like bandits — until the bottom fell out in the late nineties, taking most of the dot-commers with it.
That was how, Trevor Stone said, he had found himself sitting alone in one of his company’s deserted offices that afternoon — bankrupt and broke, under threat of lawsuits from his former partners and of divorce from his wife. He was just wondering if his life insurance had a suicide clause when a strange man appeared, and changed everything.
“I never heard him come in,” Stone said to Morris. “Which was kind of weird, because the place was so quiet, I swear you could have heard a mouse fart. But suddenly, there he is, standing in my office door.
“I look at him and I say, ‘Buddy, if you’re selling something, have you ever come to the wrong fucking place.’ And he gives me this funny little smile and says something like, ‘I suppose you might consider me a salesman of a sort, Mister Stone. As to whether I am in the wrong place, why don’t we determine that later?’”
“What did he look like?” Morris asked.
“Little guy, couldn’t have been more than five foot five. Had a goatee on him, jet black. Can’t vouch for the rest of his hair, because he kept his hat on the whole time, one of those Homburg things, which I didn’t think anybody wore anymore. Nice suit, three-piece, with a bow tie — not a clip-on, but one of those that you tie yourself.”
“Did he give you a name?”
“He said it was Dunjee. What’s that — Scottish?”
“Maybe.” Morris’s voice held no inflection at all. “Could be any number of things.” After a moment he said, “So, what did this little man want with you?”
“Well, this is one of those guys who take forever to get to the point, but what it finally came down to is that he wants me to play ‘Let’s Make a Deal.’”
Morris nodded. “And what was he offering?”
“A way out. A change in my luck. An end to my problems, and a return to the kind of life I’d had before.”
“I see. And your part of the bargain involved…”
“Nothing much.” Another bitter laugh. “Just my soul.”
“Doesn’t sound like a very good deal to me,” Morris said gently.
“I thought it was
just a joke, man!” Stone stood up and started pacing the room nervously. “I was only listening to the guy because I had nothing else to do, and it gave me something to think about besides slitting my wrists.”
Morris nodded again. “I assume there were … terms.”
“Yeah, sure. Ten years of success. Ten years, back on top of the world, right where I liked it. Then, at the end of that time, Dunjee says, he’ll be back. To collect.”
“And your ten years is up tonight, I gather.”
“At midnight, right. That’s actually a few hours over ten years, since it’s the middle of the afternoon when I talk to him, that day. But he says he wants to ‘preserve the traditions.’ So, midnight it is.”
“Did he have you sign a contract?”
“Yeah.”
“Something on old parchment, maybe, smelling of brimstone?”
“No, nothing like that. He says he’s got the template on a disk in his pocket. We were all still using disks, back then. He asks to use my PC to fill in the specifics, so I let him. Then he prints out a copy, and I sign it.”
“In blood?”
“Nah, he says I can use my pen. But then, once I’ve signed, he comes up with one of those little syrettes they use in labs, still in the sterile wrapper, and everything. Dunjee says he needs three drops of blood from one of my fingers. What the fuck, I’ve played along this far, so I say okay, and he sticks my left index finger, and lets three drops fall onto the contract, right over my signature.”
“Then what happened?”
“He says he’ll see me in ten years plus a few hours, and walks out. I tell myself the whole thing’s gonna make a great story to tell my friends, assuming I have any friends left.”
“You felt it was all just an elaborate charade.”
“Of course I did. I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of my former partners had sent the little bastard, just to mess with my head. I mean, deals with the devil — come on!”
Morris leaned forward in his chair. “But now you feel differently.”
“Well … yeah. Yeah, I do.”
Those Who Fight Monsters: Tales of Occult Detectives Page 12