Night Life

by Caitlin Kittredge

  "I'm fine!" I shouted thickly, fighting against my underslung jaw. I breathed in once, twice, and grabbed my pentacle necklace, forcing the burn of silver to haul me back to the daytime world.

  The door rattled again, harder. Dmitri had joined the party. "Hey, Luna. Listen, if I did something…"

  Oh, he knew damn well what he'd done. And didn't he sound contrite, too? Maybe I should give him a few more bite scars…

  My hands reverted to normal, bitten and with a scar across my left knuckles from a knife-wielding gang punk. Long canines withdrew with a sting and when I closed my eyes and opened them again, my vision was in color.

  I breathed again, still holding the silver in my palm, and opened the door. "I said I'm fine."

  "Okay," said Sunny, holding out my cell phone. "McAllister's calling."

  "Boyfriend?" Dmitri smirked as I took it.

  "My lieutenant. What is it, Mac?"

  "We've got another one. Strip club off Magnolia," he said without bothering to give a hello. "A dancer mutilated in the dressing room after the last shift."

  My throat tightened and I had to swallow before I could talk. "The same as Marina and Lilia?"

  Dmitri's head snapped up.

  "Worse," said McAllister. "Roenberg is on his way to the scene. I suggest you get there before he does."

  "Roenberg won't let me touch it, Mac." He'd probably give Bryson the case with a big bow, Hex it.

  And then I felt the niggling wrong that had dogged me throughout the case come painfully clear. "Mac, Stephen Duncan is still in jail."

  "Not since this morning, eight AM," said Mac icily. "As you can imagine, another, identical killing sort of crosses his name off the shortlist for psychosexual murdering perverts. His lawyer was very eloquent."

  "How did they get him a hearing so quickly?"

  "Luna, he's Alistair's son. How do you think?"

  "Wonderful."

  Mac hung up, and I kicked the side of the shed so hard a piece fell off. "Gods damn it!" I might as well have still been standing over Lilia's body. Everything that I had built up was shot to hell.

  I turned on Dmitri. "You have something I need."

  He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? I can think of a few things, what's yours?"

  I pointed out the window at his bike. "How fast can you get me to Magnolia Boulevard?"

  * * * *

  Double Trouble—LIVE XXX DANCERS EVERY NIGHT!—defined hole-in-the-wall. It was built into a storefront longer than it was narrow; the plate-glass windows had been blacked over and the door replaced with a high-security gate and a bouncer. Currently, said bouncer was giving a statement to two uniforms. All three stared when Dmitri stopped his bike at the curb with a roar that could shake fillings loose.

  I hopped off and he followed me. "You'll have to wait out here," I said. "I can't have you running around a crime scene."

  "I'm not all that interested," he said, although I could see by the way he craned his neck and flared his nostrils that he was. "I don't particularly enjoy bloodshed unless I'm involved in it."

  "Good to know you have a hobby." I flashed my shield at the uniforms, who were eyeing me circumspectly. One raised an eyebrow. I didn't blame him. Right now, bandaged and bedraggled as I was, I didn't look much like a cop. Maybe a really sleazy undercover narcotics officer. Definitely not a homicide detective.

  "Hey!" said the other. "Detective Wilder! I remember you! The dead streetwalker from a few days ago."

  "The same," I agreed. Officer Thorpe's eyes were still tired, but I smiled again and he smiled back. At my shoulder Dmitri stiffened.

  "Sorry I can't let you in," said Thorpe. "Strict orders to wait for Captain Roenberg."

  "He's not days, either," I reminded the pair.

  "No, ma'am, but he is a captain." Thorpe chuckled.

  I rolled my eyes. "Has the ME shown up at least?"

  "No ME until the captain surveys the scene," said Thorpe. His partner jabbed him and he turned red. Obviously I wasn't supposed to have that tidbit.

  "Really," I said, smiling still. "And why would that be, exactly?"

  "We are not at liberty to reveal that information," said the partner, who seemed immune to my feminine wiles.

  "In other words, you don't know shit," I told him. "You're just being a good little choirboy and doing what you're told."

  He walked off in a huff, but Thorpe started to respond when the bouncer stepped up. "Excuse me, but are y'all going to be finished with this statement soon? I could really stand to get home and take a shower."

  I shifted my attention to him, took his elbow, and led him away from Thorpe and Dmitri. "I'm Detective Wilder, and I'll be handling the investigation," I said. "Why don't you tell me what you know?"

  "Ernest Copperfield, ma'am. I'd shake hands, but…" He extended them, and I saw that the palms were stained with blood. I had an unpleasant flash of my trauma-induced dream, stickiness coating my palm when I reached for my neck and touched the jagged bite.

  "You found her," I said. Copperfield averted his eyes and nodded once.

  "Yes, ma'am. I was a trauma nurse for five years but I never saw anything like this."

  "Trauma nurse? Pardon my asking, but what the hell are you doing bouncing drunks in a crappy strip bar?"

  "I had a little problem with the pharmacy," Copperfield said. "Lost my license."

  "Clean now?"

  He nodded his blond-thatched head. "Yes, ma'am. My parole officer piss-tests me once a month, so I got to be."

  Great. An ex-druggie ex-con finds the body. By all plain human standards, I'd be an idiot if I didn't shoot him straight to the top of the suspect list.

  "Okay, Ernest," I said. "I'm going to take you inside and we're going to walk through exactly what happened up until the time you found the victim."

  "Katya," he said. I turned back to him.

  "What did you say?"

  "That's her name. Katya something. One of those ski names, like Polanski. But not Polanski."

  I snapped my fingers at Thorpe, standing worriedly just out of earshot. "Call Immigration and find out if the dead girl was here legally."

  She wouldn't be, of course. Why else would she work in a place like this and become the perfect target for murder?

  I turned back to Ernest. "Do you happen to know where she was from?"

  He shrugged. "Sorry, ma'am … I just make sure the customers don't get frisky and the girls aren't skimming tips or stealing the booze. Not supposed to have personal conversations."

  "And you, of course, are a model employee," I said. "All right. Let's go in."

  He shuffled his feet. "Do I have to, ma'am? Don't really care to see that sight again."

  I studied his complacent brown cow eyes and the country-boy handsome face. "Ernest," I said. "I would really appreciate it if you could do this for me. And I'm sure Katya would, too."

  He flinched, and I confirmed what I suspected about the no personal conversations line being bullshit.

  "Lead the way, Detective," he whispered.

  The interior of Double Trouble was spare, with clunky wooden booths that looked like they belonged in a bowling alley arranged around a skinny stage with a pole at the lip. Pink strings of lights had been nailed along the base of the stage and they blinked gaily, oblivious to the uniformed officer who guarded the door to the dressing room. Otherwise, the club was empty. CSU should have been swarming, paramedics should have been called. Instead, Double Trouble had the air of nothing so much as a gaudy funeral parlor.

  "I started in here," said Ernest. "I'm on lockup duty, so I'm the last one to leave. Close up the bar, check the back door and the kitchen, and lock up the front. Turn off lights. Ya know."

  "What time was this?" I asked.

  "About six AM," he said. I checked my watch. It was almost eleven.

  "Ernest," I said. "How long did you wait to report this?"

  He couldn't look at me. "I saw that the light was still on in the dressing room and I went in to check. That's
when I saw Katya, all sprawled out on the floor."

  "Mr. Copperfield," I said icily. "Answer my question."

  "I saw the blood and I knew right away she was dead. I still tried to feel for a pulse and stop the bleeding. I know that sounds real stupid but I was a nurse, ma'am. It's still instinct."

  I unhooked my handcuffs and slapped them on the nearest table. "These are going on you unless you tell me the truth," I warned. "Do it now and you might not be charged as an accessory."

  He sniffled. I sighed. Another dead girl and another man left behind with scars. I glanced outside. Dmitri was leaning on the motorcycle with his arms crossed, trading black looks with the uniforms.

  "When I saw her lying there I panicked," said Ernest. "May I sit down, ma'am?"

  I indicated a booth and stood in front of it, poised to perform a flying tackle if Ernest bolted. "You tried to revive her. Sure you weren't already in the room when whatever happened went down?"

  "No!" he almost shouted. "I did not do this thing!"

  "Okay, okay," I said. Thorpe was at the door giving us a look. I wished there were somewhere we could talk without open ears listening in, but it wasn't like I could whisk him away to my convenient Fortress of Solitude. "Calm down, Ernest. You saw the body, you checked her. See anything else?"

  He leaned forward and put his head in his hands, bent almost double. Barely audible, he said, "I saw… things … on her changing table."

  "What sort of things?"

  He sighed. "Katya had been entertaining."

  There it was, the grain of truth that everyone will hold like a diamond until you pry it out. A lot of strippers did after-hours hooking to subsidize what they made dancing. In a place this scummy, it also made sense that she'd be coked to the gills while doing it.

  "I get it," I told Ernest. "This place closes at four—it has to by city ordnance, right?"

  A nod and another searching look from the big cow eyes.

  "So you all go away for a few discreet hours to let Katya and whoever else is tricking do their business, and then come back to lock up."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said. "That's correct."

  "And when you do, Katya is dead and you notice some unsavory items on her dressing table, which you, being a complete gentleman, clean up before calling the police."

  "Yes," he said, leaving off the ma'am and sounding miserable.

  "You stupid son of a bitch," I told him. "You destroyed probably the only evidence we'll ever have of who Katya was last with. Way to go. Really." Damn it, he'd slipped by me again. I could not wait to latch my metaphorical teeth around this bastard's jugular.

  "I had to!" Copperfield shouted. "Y'all would have found out my history and looked at me! And I never did it!"

  I hauled him up by the shoulder of his jacket and breathed in his nervous, blood-tinged body odor deeply. The tangy scent hit me immediately. Before Ernest could get out a peep I reached into his inside pocket and pulled out the bag of off-white power.

  "You may be clean, but I'm betting the meth is a nice bonus to your paycheck each month, isn't it?" I said.

  He was already shaking his head. "It ain't mine."

  "You're under arrest, moron," I said. "Turn around, hands on the table." I rattled off his Miranda warning while I handcuffed him.

  "You're makin' a mistake!" he hollered at me. "I didn't give my stuff to Katya! This was different! Vials and needles!"

  I closed the cuffs around his wrists and turned him around. "Needles?"

  "Yeah!" he said, perhaps seeing a ray of light in a crappy day that had just gotten much worse. "Not the reusable shooting needles, either. Surgical ones, disposable. Had a stamp."

  I closed my eyes and breathed. When Dr. Kronen or whoever did the autopsy tested Katya's blood, they would find diazepam, the animal tranquilizer that my killer used to keep his victims quiet and compliant as he tore them to shreds.

  "Did you see her John, Earnest?"

  His chin was on his chest and he looked utterly defeated. "No. I stay far, far away from that side of the business, ma'am."

  "Katya have anyone bothering her over the last few days? Maybe a younger guy, blond like you?" Worth a shot. Stephen might not be the doer, but he knew things. Maybe watching got him off.

  "No, ma'am."

  Wasn't Earnest just a font of usefulness. "The officer will take you to booking," I told him. "You're being charged with possession with intent, and you're damn lucky it's just that."

  "Yes, ma'am," he said as I handed him off to Thorpe.

  "Oh, cut it out," I told him. "You're not fooling anyone."

  Thorpe hustled Copperfield out, and that left me alone with the body. I felt around for the rolled-up pair of rubber gloves I carry on duty and slipped them over my hands before pushing open the dressing room door.

  * * * *

  A riot of cheap glamour greeted me, spangled and lacy and PVC costumes made in a variety of stripper clichés like schoolgirl, maid, and naughty cop. Personal effects were strewn everywhere, and a cot in one corner was made up with cheap nylon sheets that imitated satin. An illicit brothel with taste. How touching.

  Katya lay on her back like the other girls, throat slit and legs folded under. Unlike Lilia, no defensive wounds marked her arms and hands, just the neatly sectioned missing finger. He was getting better at drugging the victims.

  The air around the body felt electric, like a malevolence had stood where I did not long ago. I sniffed, trying to find anything unusual beneath blood, death, and perfume. The air itself was slightly burned, like after a lightning strike. Not like the alley, not like the stinking room at Hotel Raven. This time, the killer had come into his own. The rage was gone, and a coldness far more terrifying had replaced it.

  I touched Katya's corpse, the naked torso and the small rough hands that belied a former life not spent wrapped around a pole. The cuts on her neck and chest were fewer this time, with less blood, smooth. I frowned at them. They looked almost surgical, nothing like the frenzied gashes of the other girls. Less blood, too. If it weren't for the missing finger, I would doubt that this murder had the same perpetrator. But it did. I could smell him here, feel him just over my shoulder.

  My fingers grazed Katya's belly, and I saw a small pink gash that hadn't immediately been apparent in the light cast by the bare bulbs of the makeup mirrors. It was the start of a cut to mimic what had happened to Marina and Lilia, ripped from neck to stomach. Unfinished.

  He had been interrupted.

  For just a moment, the temperature in the room dropped to absolute zero as my latex-clad fingers rested on the dead girl's skin and I realized I was crouched exactly where the killer had been a few hours before. And I had to make a run for it. Copperfield had come back to lock up, and I had to flee. Where?

  I saw it from my stolen viewpoint next to Katya, the edge of a metal door hidden behind a rack of fluffy lingerie. I was up and over the body and into a cement alley before I had time to think, leaping outside like I could grab him by the back of the coat.

  Nothing rattled in the alley except scraps of newspaper and a few stray garbage bags. I let out my air and leaned against the back wall of the strip club, heart thudding like a subwoofer.

  "Detective?" said Officer Thorpe.

  I stripped off my gloves and tossed them in the nearest Dumpster before turning to him. My hands shook. I was becoming one of them, the cops who turn inward and suck on the barrel of their nine-millimeter. Did you hear about Wilder? Yeah, went postal. Couldn't handle the pressure.

  "Detective?" he said again.

  "What is it?"

  "We kinda got lucky," he admitted. "This place has a camera they installed a few years ago."

  "Security?"

  "Um, not exactly," he admitted, blushing. "They were taping the dancers to sell the footage on their Web site. It's pointed at the stage but it might catch who was in the club right before closing. Assuming the perp was in here. Ma'am."

  "What is it with the ma'am business?" I asked no o
ne in particular.

  "Sorry, ma'am," said Thorpe, and then bit his lip in the cutest way.

  "You can send a copy of the footage to the Twenty-fourth Precinct, Officer. And thank you."

  He held the door open for me but I shook my head. "I need some air." And to walk the rest of the alley, hoping against hope that he had left some trace of himself for me.

  Thorpe muttered something into his radio and let the door slam shut. And I saw it. The sidewalk sigil and Stephen's invisible tattoo, gouged now into metal. It glowed silver in the morning sun.

  Looking directly at it was like taking a power drill to my forehead. The hisses and whispers rushed to my ears, and I wondered if this was what Stephen's world sounded like. My head panicked, and my gut felt the cold clench of knowing I was wrong, yet again.

  I shut my eyes against the glare of the sigil and pulled out my phone, aiming the camera at the door. The phone chirped with a new photo and I slapped it shut before I had to look at the sigil again.

  Time to go around the corner and tell Dmitri what I knew, and then call McAllister to do the same. Before I could spread the news, Roenberg's scraggly little shadow loomed up behind me. As a greeting he demanded, "Detective Wilder, what on the Hexed black earth are you doing in my crime scene?"

  I tried to stop myself, I swear I did. "I'm sorry, sir, this crime scene? The body right inside the door here? If this crime scene is yours, I do apologize because when I didn't see any uniforms or a medical examiner or CSU processing, I just sort of assumed it was free and clear for me to stroll right in."

  Roenberg went from pasty to bright red in the space of maybe half a second. I saw a vein at his temple. "Get out," he grated. "Get the hell out of here."

  I dropped a curtsy. "My pleasure, Captain."

  "And if you think you can stroll back to work think again!" he shouted. "You're fired and you can take your mick lieutenant with you!"

  I froze, shoulders hunched. It was one thing to threaten me—with my pathological inability to take people's shit I had always half-expected a scene like this—but it was another entirely to go after Mac.

  "Did you hear me, Detective?" Roenberg bleated. "Both of you, out on your rear ends!"

  I turned around. "Screw you, sir. Go ahead and fire me. I'll scream so loud to the chief of detectives, her ears will bleed. And you can try as hard as you like, but you can't protect Stephen Duncan anymore. I know he's working with a partner, a magick user who just tortured that girl in there to give him a gods damn alibi." I jabbed a finger at his flushed pug-dog face. "If you do anything to Troy McAllister, I will be forced to make all of this very public. I'm sure the many taxpaying citizens of Nocturne City will be just thrilled to find out they have a police captain consorting with weres and blood witches and Hex knows what else. And I'm sure Alistair Duncan will be especially thrilled."