Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "Yeah. He's not from around here—real vanilla, from the 'burbs. Been here a couple of days." She twirled one brilliant red curl around her finger and frowned. "Come to think of it, I've been delivering to his room, and last night he didn't come to the door, so I left his order in the hall. Weird. Usually tips well, too, which is a rarity. I don't risk my job and feed them for kicks, ya know? Ten bucks here and there would be nice."

  I was already halfway up the lobby stairs.

  "Room Two-Twelve?"

  “Two-Twelve," Olya agreed. "So what'd he do?"

  "Apparently, nothing," I growled, shoving open the doors to the second floor. I was going to tear Stephen Duncan a new asshole when I found the little prick, sitting pretty in a skuzzy hotel room with his prostitute girlfriend. Wasting my time, letting Dmitri Sandovsky get his act together and skip out of town if he so desired, free to savage more women.

  Room 212 was midway down the hall on the left, an innocuous door covered with many coats of deep green paint and cheap brass numerals nailed up crookedly.

  "Stephen!" I said loudly, pounding. "Stephen Duncan! Message for you!"

  A long silence answered me. The scarred wood floor creaked under my Cochrans. I knocked again, harder.

  "Go away." The voice was faint, barely above a whisper. If not for were hearing, I probably would have missed it.

  "Nope, sorry," I replied. "I'm waiting until you open this door."

  "Just leave me alone."

  "Stephen, are you all right?"

  "I can't wash off the blood," he whispered. “The sink is broken."

  Crap.

  "Stand back!" I hollered, and gave the doorjamb the business end of my boot. It was so rotten it didn't even splinter, just caved in with a defeated groan. I came in with my Glock aimed, quickly swept the corners of the tiny single room, and then fixed on the blond figure hunched at the foot of the bed. On the floor below him, bare female legs stuck out, covered in a fine red mist.

  I kept the Glock trained. "Stephen?"

  He moaned. "Leave me alone, I said!"

  "Stephen, what happened?" I came closer and saw what I presumed had once been Marina, supine on her back, left fist extended, her index finger snapped nearly in half. I choked on the smell of old blood and decomposing tissue.

  Stephen rocked back and forth, muttering softly to himself.

  Marina's throat was gone. A ruin of torn flesh stretched from her larynx to her sternum. Her legs bore deep scratches on the outside of her thighs, and her face was swollen with bruises. The spilled blood had congealed into a sticky pool, and Marina's eyes were open. I took another step, praying that I wouldn't see what I knew to be there, but it was in vain. Marina's left index finger was gone from the knuckle down, neatly clipped.

  "Stephen." I turned my back on the body and centered my Glock on his head. "What did you do to her?"

  He pulled his hands away from his face and stared up at me, and I realized he was crying. Blood covered his front, but I was in no mood to check him for injuries.

  "It wasn't me," he managed to get out. "Wasn't me."

  Looking at the anguish playing on his face, I half believed him. "Then who?"

  "The were," he whispered. "The were did this to Marina."

  Eight

  The squad car officers that came to collect Stephen when I placed him under arrest stared with wide, disbelieving eyes as they took in the room, Marina, and the residents of Hotel Raven.

  I stayed and watched CSU paint the room with blacklight, lift dozens of bloody fingerprints—but not locate the missing finger—and finally zip Marina into a body bag and take her away. Dr. Kronen fiddled with his tie and said yes, the same man had very probably killed Lilia and Marina.

  I didn't need his confirmation. If Stephen was a were, the method of murder fit perfectly with both girls.

  But it was a hell of a big If. Stephen didn't smell like a were, didn't act like one. He didn't have any scars that I could see, and when you get the bite it's usually in a spot that spreads the were directly into your bloodstream.

  Finally, I went to the Twenty-fourth to file a preliminary report. An e-mail from Pete Anderson flashed in my inbox. So, did you find your Mystery Woman?

  I thought about Pete's finger and the stacks of ten-cards. Six women had gone missing in a four-month span in 1962, he said. All of poor, foreign background. All mutilated. He tortured her and clipped off her finger with pliers.

  The chill of an unwelcome connection cut me. I pulled up a database search and started typing. Mutilation Homicide Female 61-62 turned out almost thirty results. Busy season for the psychos, apparently. I narrowed the homicides by address, and the six Waterfront killings glowed from my screen. The case files had never been scanned into the database, so a few lines delineated each woman in the most basic way: torn throat, no sexual assault, supine positioning of body, left index finger severed at first joint…

  Lilia and Marina had both been arranged on their backs. Throats torn. Killings permeated with such rage, it was palpable.

  I searched again. Mutilation Homicide Female, supine, throat cut/torn, finger severed all dates.

  This time, the six murders were from 1907. And there was a photograph.

  I clicked and waited. When the grainy scan of a photograph that was never clear in the first place loaded, I nearly gagged. Trade in her bloomers for a thong and her low-slung dress for a halter, and the dead woman could have been Lilia Desko.

  No one had ever found out her name. She and six other Irish women working at a sewing shop had disappeared over nearly a year. Each of them found ravaged and dead. Two killers, fifty-seven years apart. Identical.

  And impossible.

  I pushed away from the computer and turned my back on the haunting photograph. Either I was paranoid and all was coincidence, or I was tracking the world's oldest serial killer.

  Stephen Duncan was in the lockup for the night. Tomorrow, I would call his father and interrogate him. I'd catch hell for not informing Duncan and McAllister immediately, but I needed time to process what I'd seen. I couldn't shake the image of Stephen, covered in blood, his terrified eyes begging me to see the horror that had befallen him. The were. The were did this to Marina. Either Dmitri Sandovsky had killed the girl, left Stephen alive, and vanished from a locked hotel room… or something else was at play.

  Either way, Stephen Duncan had answers for me.

  * * * *

  Well, there's no doubt about it," said Mac, dropping a stack of folders on my desk. "Stephen Duncan is absolutely batshit crazy."

  "We've had him in custody for twenty hours and you just figured that out?" I asked, paging through the first file. I was cross-referencing old prostitute murders and missing women in Nocturne City while we waited for Alistair Duncan and his son's lawyer to arrive. I separated them by the current year and everything before and started paging through the top folder.

  "Christ, Wilder, did you see what he did to that poor woman?" Mac asked, rubbing his eyes. "We're not dealing with an altar boy."

  "Mac, I'm not so sure Stephen Duncan killed Marina. Hell, we're not even sure that dead girl is Marina."

  "Don't start," he told me. "You find a man covered in blood with a dead hooker at his feet, and he tells you some anonymous were did the deed while he watched? And you buy that?"

  "What happened to Marina is consistent with the Lilia Desko murder," I said. "It fits that a were did her in. And Stephen Duncan is not a were."

  Mac curled his hands into fists. "How can you—oh, right. The smelling."

  "Mac, shh. People are staring."

  "Get back to work!" Mac bellowed to the squad room at large. "You think this is some sort of goddamn peep show?"

  He leaned over my desk. "Work the case, Luna. Don't run around like a chicken with no head chasing wild theories—theories based on, I might add, something that most people don't even want to believe exists anymore, never mind what might hold up in court."

  I rubbed my left knuckle, twist
ing the skin, trying to imagine how it felt. Strong enough to snip through bone and tissue with one squeeze…

  "What in the name of all things Hexed and holy are you doing?" Mac asked, raising one iron-colored eyebrow like I was crazy.

  "He's taking trophies," I said. "Fingers."

  "Not very practical," said Mac. "Fingers rot. Most serials take hair or teeth, something easy to preserve."

  I stopped rubbing my knuckle. "Or bones."

  Mac inclined his head. "Slinneanachd," he said thoughtfully.

  "Slim-what?"

  "Slinneanachd," said Mac again. "Bone divination. Cast the bones and call a working to see your future."

  Oh, gods. He was using magick. "Mac, that is too creepy. How do you know this crap?"

  "A Scottish grandmother with a knack for the theatrical," he said. "You look like you swallowed a marble, Wilder. You okay?"

  Al Duncan saved me from having to answer that one. He came rushing in, suit coat and gray hair flying, trailed by Regan Lockhart and a middle-aged guy with a briefcase I didn't recognize.

  "Al," said McAllister, hurrying over. "I'm afraid we have some bad news."

  "Where is my son?" Duncan demanded.

  "He's safe," Mac said.

  "And you got the bastards that did it?" Duncan twisted his hands together so tightly it was amazing bis fingers didn't snap.

  "Not exactly," said Mac. "As I told you on the phone, the situation is complicated."

  "Then uncomplicate it, Lieutenant," said Lockhart. "Mr. Duncan has waited long enough for his son's return." He and the DA were like a ice-dancing duet—one slipped and the other caught him.

  "His son is being charged with second-degree homicide," I told Lockhart. "So unless you're his lawyer—and because you brought this jerk with the shiny briefcase I'm guessing not—shut up and butt out of my investigation."

  Lockhart's lips compressed, and his eyes gleamed at me with a hate-filled light. He looked to Duncan.

  "Homicide?" Poor Duncan's face had gone beet red. "I don't understand… what did Stephen do?"

  "Al," said the lawyer, "let's talk to him. We'd like to see Mr. Duncan immediately," he told Mac.

  "Of course," said Mac, probably relieved that Lockhart and I hadn't started a deathmatch in his squad room. "Detective Wilder, take Mr. Duncan and his lawyer to the interview room."

  I told the DA and Briefcase, "This way." I deliberately ignored Lockhart, but I could feel him watching me until we turned the corner. He had one hell of a stare.

  As the two men followed me down the narrow, badly lit hallway to Interrogation, Duncan kept asking me, "Why is he charged with homicide? What happened? How can you have made such a terrible mistake?"

  "Sir, you know I can't discuss the details of Stephen's case with anyone but bis lawyer," I said. "I'm truly sorry."

  "Roenberg was right," he told me as I opened the door to Stephen. "You were a bad idea." The way he said it, I thought he was almost pissed at me for doing my job. Well, Hex him. It wasn't my fault he'd raised Ted Bundy, Junior.

  I slammed it after them a little harder than necessary, and watched through the mirror as Al Duncan's face lost all color when he got a look at his blood-covered son.

  "Good God, Stephen!" he cried. "What have you done now?"

  Stephen started bawling again. "I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry…"

  I went back to my desk and waited for the lawyer to finish telling Stephen to lie so I could interview him.

  The photos of all missing women between twenty and thirty-five for the past year were spread out before me when Bryson barreled in, knocking the back of my chair and sending the glossies flying.

  "Hear you blew the DA to let you back on the force, Wilder! Can't say I'm happy to see you."

  "My sentiments exactly," I replied, picking up the photos. "Glad to see you're still the biggest dickhead with the smallest dick in the Twenty-fourth, David."

  "Watch it or I'll sue you for sex harassment next." He grinned.

  "If I thought you knew the definition of the word ironic, I'd use it now," I said. My blood pressure was rising even being in the same room as Bryson. I commanded the were in me to be silent. I was not getting suspended again over a limp noodle like him.

  "So where's this mama's-boy hooker killer I'm supposed to interview?" he demanded.

  "Excuse me?" I said loudly. "I'm sure you don't mean Stephen Duncan."

  "Yeah, him. Stephen." Bryson made his voice high and lisping, and flipped his wrist.

  "That's my case," I told him, quiet and angry.

  "Nope. McAllister paged me special. Looks like he can't take any more of your feminist affirmative action shit, either."

  "We'll see about that," I said. I went to knock on Mac's door, but he opened it before I could and shrugged apologetically.

  "I know what you're going to say, Luna, and it isn't my call. The DA requested another investigator."

  "So you get Bryson?" I hissed. "That asshole couldn't find his balls with a compass and a Sherpa, never mind handle this murder case. And I know he may be Roenberg's favorite ass kisser, but he is far from discreet."

  "He's the only one who can do it," said Mac. He sighed and rubbed his face with one palm. His eyes were baggy, and he looked rumpled and exhausted. "Everyone else is working something."

  "And what exactly am I supposed to do while Bryson takes over my investigation?"

  "Damn it, Wilder, I don't know. Don't you have any other cases to work?"

  "Not since you suspended me! They all got reassigned." I let my tone soften. Maybe this could still be salvaged. "Mac, please. At least let me observe the interview."

  He sighed. "Fine. Go. Let me see if I can damage my career a little more before the shift ends."

  * * * *

  Bryson had thrown Alistair Duncan out of the interview room when I got there. The DA leaned his forehead against the one-way glass, eyes closed, as Bryson and Stephen's conversation filtered through the tinny wall speaker.

  "So who was this broad?" Bryson asked, rocking his chair back on its hind legs. I asked whatever charitable gods were listening to topple it and give him a concussion.

  "Her name was Marina," said Stephen softly. He hadn't been allowed to clean up, and the blood on his buttondown had dried to a deep purplish red.

  "Okay. So you met her, took her to Ghosttown, fucked her brains out, and then did her. I got the chronology right here?"

  "I told you," said Stephen. "It wasn't me."

  "Then why you got her blood all over you, Junior?" Bryson bellowed. "You're guilty as hell, and you're just lucky it was some stray tail that you got your yayas out with and not a society skirt, because then not even your daddy could save your sorry ass."

  "Detective!" the lawyer snapped. "Is there a question somewhere in all this vitriol?"

  I snuck a look at Duncan Senior. He stared blankly, head still resting on his hand. That same flat look was on his face as when I'd first met him and he'd told me with an offhand cheerfulness his son had mostly likely been kidnapped and might be dead.

  "Let's start over," Bryson said. "Where'd you meet her?"

  Stephen stared down at the tabletop and mumbled in a monotone, "This place… called Club Velvet. It's a… well… some of my friends dared me to go there and I… we just connected."

  A circuit clicked on in my memory and I saw the logo on Olya's gym bag.

  Sunny believes in fate and coincidence. I believe in instinct and intuition. I'll buy that things happen for a purpose. And as long as Bryson and McAllister were occupied with the Duncans, I was free to find out what that was.

  Nine

  Club Velvet was not hard to find. Hard to miss would be more like it. An art nouveau nude, covered only by her hair, was writ large in neon above pink script seven feet high that faded from pastel to neon and back again.

  For such an ostentatious establishment, just west of the Mainline district in a neighborhood filled with trendy restaurants and boutiques that sold fake designer bags
and real Rolex watches, the club had a pathetic amount of security. No one checked my ID at the door. There were no bouncers or red velvet ropes, just well-dressed, mostly middle-aged women coming and going. In pairs.

  I laughed. Stephen Duncan had picked up Marina in a high-end lesbian nightclub. That explained the my friends dared me line.

  The lobby was done in the same spectrum of light and dark pinks, nude pictures hanging on the silk-covered walls. I saw recent repairs to the covering as well as some ugly stains that hadn't quite washed out. "What happened there?" I asked the hostess.

  "A break-in a few months ago. Some of our neighbors don't approve of our… flaunting ourselves, is how the last letter put it. They think we make too big of a target." She smiled dazzlingly. "Name?"

  "I'm looking for Olya."

  "Olya is off tonight," she said icily. "If you're a friend of hers I must tell you waitstaff are not permitted to have guests during business hours."

  I showed my shield. "I'm no guest. She's a witness in a homicide."

  Her lips pursed. "In that case I will call our owner and manager, Ms. Carlisle. Please wait in the bar." She took my elbow and guided me to a brass-bound ebony monstrosity lining the back wall of the club. After I had been sat on a plush stool, she glided back to her stand and picked up the phone.

  "Something to wet your whistle?" asked the butch bartender, who had cornflower-blue eyes and didn't look old enough to drink, never mind dispense.

  "Just a sparkling water for now."

  "You a narc?" she asked. I raised one eyebrow.

  "Is it that obvious?"

  "I saw you flash the Icicle Queen when you came in. That's what we call Henriette. Icicle Queen."

  "And what's your name?"

  "Kyle," she said. "I know, I know—weird for a chick. Options are limited for unisex names—you'll never see more Alexes and Jamies than in this place."

  "Well, Kyle," I said, accepting the sparkling water with a twist, "I'm not with Narcotics. I'm Homicide, and I'm looking for Olya."

  "No shit. Olya Sandovsky? I thought that girl was straight. As in no record."

  I choked on the water. "What did you say her last name was?"