by K. F. Breene
“I don’t either, but it’s worth a look. Otherwise, we’ll be hanging around here waiting for another of these crimes to happen. I really don’t want to do that.”
Chapter Fourteen
The dump site was a seaport on the route from the airport to the city. Huge metal shipping containers of all colors were stacked high. A massive, empty barge rested beside the dock, waiting to be loaded. Two school buses topped with piles of strapped-down containers patiently awaited their dismissal.
As we got further in and wound through the cargo, I saw a few trucks waiting for a crane to load up their trailers. Work was slow this late at night, but some was still going on.
“As you saw, you have to go through the check-in,” Oscar said as we parked and got out of the car. “But since all the containers are inspected and locked up before they get here, security isn’t as tight as it should be. Tell them you’re delivering lunch to your spouse and you can get through without much hassle. Not to mention there are sneakier ways to get in that skirt the cameras. This isn’t exactly a closed-off location.”
I wandered around the containers, all orderly, and the area, mostly clean. Nothing magical pulsed through the air.
“The dumpster is back through here.” Oscar motioned to the right and started walking.
I followed with Darius by my side, his hand coming to rest on the small of my back.
“What’s up?” I asked quietly, identifying the various sounds, most of which were linked to water. We were on a huge dock, after all. In the distance, the rush of cars moving along the freeway provided background noise.
“I am merely being cautious. You are unpredictable. If something jumps out, I never know what you will do. Touch allows me to keep my eyes up while monitoring you at the same time.”
I nodded and swung my eyes to the right, peering into the deep shadows and looking for anything that might be amiss. Yellowed light showered the cement from poles lining the path. Up ahead was a squat building, lit with security lights.
“Behind here.” Oscar squinted up at one of the light poles. “I always forget to bring the big flashlight.” He extracted a small flashlight from his pocket and clicked it on. The weak white beam made a spotlight on the ground in front of him. “It’ll work. They keep this place pretty clean. There’s nothing to trip on. Just stay close so you can see.”
He clearly didn’t know that both of us could see in the dark. We didn’t enlighten him. Instead, we silently followed him around a stack of containers. Not much further along, we entered a passageway between two towering rows of containers. The light from the open space cut off, leaving us in the murky blackness that criminals and unscrupulous characters favored.
That wasn’t what was making my heart beat faster, though. I couldn’t get over the enormity of the man-made walls to either side of us. A shipping container was big enough to walk in. Hell, one of them would be roomy enough for a makeshift office. These were stacked four or five high, towering above us. Had they been buildings, I wouldn’t have worried. But something about them being movable, like building blocks in the hands of a giant, had me speeding up to get out of there.
“Giants don’t exist, right?” I asked Darius quietly. “I mean, there are huge rock people in the Realm, of course—you made sure that I met one—but they aren’t big enough to actually be giants. Also, are there earthquakes in Seattle?”
“What is causing these ramblings?” Darius asked, his hand now splayed more firmly across my back. He was worried I was about to crack up. Little did he know this was normal for me.
“If these things fell, we’d be crushed.” I pointed at the scarred and scuffed shipping containers. “Doesn’t that worry you?”
“We would be out of harm’s way before the first stack buckled.” He rubbed my back. “I am much faster than a wobbling mess of cargo containers, even when carrying a flailing creature such as yourself.”
“I’m a creature now, am I?”
“I confess, being that you are so much more than human, I am at a loss for what exactly to call you.”
“Here.” Oscar rounded a corner and disappeared into the darkness.
I slowed, listening to the distant hum of the freeway and water lapping. Turning, I looked down the row before sizing up the container closest to me.
“A makeshift office,” I said, digging through my earlier thoughts. Without a word, Darius followed me to the end of the aisle, where we met Oscar. He’d turned back to wave his beam of light in our direction.
“Stay close. It’s—”
“Shhh.” I held up my hand. “Give me a second.”
Now that we were at the end of the row, a sliver of light cut across the ground from a distant light pole. I eyed the front end of a container that served as a door. Four lines of metal ran from top to bottom, crowded toward the split of doors in the middle. At chest height, four latches—one on each strip of metal—secured it to the container. A padlock secured each latch.
“Open those please, Darius.” I motioned at the locks.
“Oh no, we shouldn’t break the locks,” the detective said. “Those have been—”
Ignoring Oscar, Darius waved his hand. They all popped open.
“What the hell?” Oscar leaned forward with wide eyes.
I moved forward to open the doors, but Darius stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “Please, let me.” He pulled the latches away. Metal squealed as he moved the strips down or up, depending on whether they were securing the top or bottom. A moment later he swung open the doors, revealing a mishmash of…household stuff. A black garbage bag sat on a recliner. Beyond that, a desk with plastic storage bins piled up. In the back, I saw the fronds of a plant that was hopefully (for its sake) fake. The container clearly belonged to someone moving overseas.
“That is someone’s private stuff,” the detective said. Clearly he was only used to breaking and entering after a crime was committed.
“Look at all the space in there.” I stepped up to the edge and spread out my hands. “What is that, eight feet wide?” I raised my hand above me. “Eight or nine feet tall?”
“Closer to nine.” Darius peered through the gloom. “Is it big enough for a circle to call a demon?”
I stuck out a hip, debating. “I can’t be sure—Callie and Dizzy would be better equipped to field that question—but I think a high level four would just fit. You wouldn’t have any room to work around it. But there’s definitely enough room to skin a man. Again, it would be tight, but doable if they needed a place.” I backed up and glanced at Oscar. “You said security wasn’t great around here?”
He looked off toward the building we’d passed before turning into the stacked containers. “As far as the patrols go, they are decent for their salary range, which is on the lower side. When we questioned them, I got the idea they don’t typically see a lot of action. And that’s largely due to these crates being inspected and given a seal of approval before they’re brought in here and shipped. That’s what I gathered, anyway. The security system used to vet the actual crates is much better.” He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be easy to use this place as an after-hours torture chamber if that’s what you’re thinking, though the possibility did occur to us. There just isn’t the evidence to support it. During the day people are coming and going out of here. Someone would’ve noticed blood. Screams.”
I scoffed. “I’ve gotten a dead body from one side of New Orleans to the other in the trunk of a Lyft driver’s car. Without the driver knowing. Mostly. If these mages have their own car, and we should assume they do, getting someone in one of these things—and skinning them in there—would be easy. There wouldn’t be blood seeping out of the container. The spell would have collected it all. Within the container, sure, you’d see blood spatter, but not as much as you’re probably envisioning.”
His flashlight came up and beamed me in the face. “You transported a dead body in a cab?”
“I would remove that light from her face if I were you,�
� Darius warned softly.
The vampire was right. I did not like being blasted with light. It made me more aggressive than I already was, and that was saying something.
Thankfully, the cone of light swung away. “What did you say your job title was?” Oscar asked.
“I get things done, Oscar,” I said. “That’s all you need to know.”
“You’d have to bring an empty container into the port,” Darius said. “Or empty one already here. It sounds like neither is a possibility without being detected.”
“There’s that,” I said, chewing on my lip.
“The security would also have to be deaf,” Darius said, closing up the container. “Because an empty metal box wouldn’t do much to muffle the sounds of agonized screaming.”
“Now who’s being dim?” I asked Darius. “Do you not have spells to deaden sound within your satchel right there?”
Darius tsked, probably at himself for asking that question.
“Let’s check out the dump site,” I said, motioning Oscar onward. “I assume you checked the cameras and cross-referenced the vehicles that came through?”
“We’re in the process of doing that,” Oscar said. “A lot of vehicles came and went that day. The dumpster where the body was found wasn’t covered by a camera at the time. It had been pushed out of range and no one noticed.”
“Convenient. Obviously you’re checking for suspicious characters employed here?” I asked.
“Obviously,” the detective said with a touch of humor. “All the security checks out, as well as any night-shift employees. Everyone has a rock-solid alibi, and no one has any priors. We’re still going through the daytime shifts and any ship personnel that might’ve been around.”
“Who discovered it?” I asked as the space opened up. A small building sat off to the side with a ramp leading up to the door. Light from a pole spotlit the closest entrance and the camera poised above it. The dumpster lurked a hundred or so feet away, a strip of police tape still hanging off the side.
“The smell was the first clue, but mostly people ignored it. It’s a dumpster, after all.” Oscar looked at the ground and walked off to the side. “One of the women in the office was suspicious, but instead of wading through trash, she waited for the garbage pick-up and watched it dump. The body was in a cream-colored sheet. You can imagine what the sheet looked like after being draped around a skinless person. The skin was in a trash bag. We found that after we checked it out.”
“And this was a week ago, you said?” I took a tour around the trash canister. I didn’t feel anything, as expected.
“Yes,” he said. “If not for the suspicious worker finding this body, we would’ve missed it. Which makes me wonder if there have been more than two crimes and we haven’t seen the evidence.”
That was certainly possible.
“Where was the first body dumped? It was in an office, right?” I asked, trying to recall the details from the file Sean had shown me before I’d left New Orleans.
“A loft-style office, yes. One of six in the building. Twenty employees work there, but they’d all gone home for the day. A few people from the office across the floor tend to work late, but they didn’t see or hear anything out of the ordinary.”
I remembered seeing the pictures from that one. The circle was the same as the one found at the crime scenes in New Orleans, only with a few minor embellishments, indicating the mages were getting better at their craft.
“Well, super. I’ve got bupkis.” I braced my hands on my hips. I hated dead ends.
“Did you want to speak to the local MLE office?” Oscar asked. “Maybe they’ll have more for you.”
“No, thank you. I might meet another Garret.” I waved a wisp of hair out of my face. “I hope you didn’t tell them I was coming. They won’t love that.”
“I didn’t, no. We know all about hostility across jurisdictions.” He checked his watch. Someone was probably holding dinner for him.
“Okay, well, let’s head back.” I started forward.
“Did you want to check in with the security people?” Darius asked, still near the trash.
I shrugged as Oscar hesitated and turned to me. “Did the local MLE office meet with them?”
“Yes,” Oscar said. “They didn’t find anything out of the ordinary.”
“No one was magical?”
Oscar frowned. “They said no one would be capable of this crime as it pertains to a circle.” He shifted. “The MLE office out here never comes out and says magical.”
“You wouldn’t think all this is so weird if they did.” I turned to Darius. “If they aren’t magical, there’s no point. I can only figure out magical stuff, not normal people stuff.”
“What are your thoughts?” Oscar asked as he drove us back to his station.
I shook my head and stared out the window. “I guess I’ll do what I always do: track down magical people within the local community and ask questions. The mage is powerful, and he’s skinning people. That’s crazy days, even for eccentric mages. Someone must have heard something.”
“In the criminal world, someone has always heard something. The problem is, no one wants to talk to cops.” Oscar chuckled. “Good luck getting anything relevant.”
“I think you and I have very different ways of collecting information.”
Chapter Fifteen
“So. Where do magical people hang out in this town?” I asked Darius after Oscar had dropped us off. He’d offered to talk to us again back at his office, but I’d politely declined. I had all I needed from him. Which was basically nothing. That wasn’t his fault, of course. This was real detective work. I was in over my head.
“They are spread out everywhere, hidden within the folds of Seattle.” Darius put his hands into the pockets of his stylish jeans as we slowly walked down the street to his borrowed Mercedes. It had been waiting for him in front of the hotel, and he’d led me to it earlier like he’d expected it to be there. I’d learned not to question those types of things.
I narrowed my eyes at his non-answer. “If you want to hang out with me, you have to help me. Otherwise, get gone.”
“Which type of magical people are you looking for?”
“Ideally, I need a hub where there’s a variety of supernatural people, not just mages. I want to size up what I’m dealing with, see who’s knowledgeable, and, of those people, pick out a few who can be leaned on for information. Any guy that skins people can’t be well liked. He’s probably ruthless. Or at least really grumpy.”
“Sociopaths are often liked by everyone.”
“Good tip. Liked by no one, or liked by everyone. Both are suspect.”
“Are you hungry?” he asked as he opened my car door for me.
“I can always eat.”
He nodded, like he knew that about me, and zipped over to his side of the car. My door was clicking shut as he was opening his.
A half-hour later, we parked on a street that looked similar to many of the streets I’d seen in Seattle: green, with leafy trees and clean sidewalks. I got out into the brisk night air and half missed the warm, sticky goodness of a New Orleans night. Then again, I did not miss the suffocating heat of a New Orleans summer.
“This place is so wholesome,” I said as I waited on the sidewalk for him. The car issued a soft beep as the alarm was turned on. He put the keys into his pocket. “It’s lovely, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so…sweet somehow, don’t you think? Like…heartfelt.”
“Those aren’t the words I’d use to describe it, no. But it is certainly more subdued. Not as wild, despite being more natural.”
“Natural, like…nature?”
“Yes. The trees you noticed.”
“Oh right, yeah.” I nodded in thought. “Kind of boring, though. But then, I haven’t met any of the magical people yet. I might still be surprised.”
“By surprised, you mean someone might try to kill you, or run from you, within the hour?”
“Exactly, yes. On
e can only hope.”
We walked past a few businesses before stopping in front of a blue establishment. Despite the fact that it was after nine o’clock at night, I opened the red door to a packed house. What was more, a bunch of people were eating breakfast.
“Oh, I like this place,” I said as Darius directed me toward a sign high over a counter that said Please wait to be seated.
A woman with rosy cheeks and frizzy hair stopped behind the counter, peering at us over her half-moon spectacles. Her eyes stuck to Darius for a moment before swinging to me. I felt the weight of her assessment, which meant she was magical in some way. She knew I was with a vampire, I could tell, and wondered if I was merely food.
I really hoped I didn’t end up as food.
“Table for two, please,” Darius said in a bored voice.
“Of course.” I got another eyeball before she came around the counter and grabbed two menus out of a holder. “Follow me. I’ll seat you in the back. It’s quieter there.”
“No, no,” I said, stopping her. “If you have something with more hubbub, that’d be great. We can wait.”
She glanced at Darius before turning to survey the restaurant. Sheets of paper crowded the walls, all sporting handmade drawings. A small counter ran down the right and booths were stationed on the left, all occupied. Someone emerged from around a bend in the counter, indicating there was more seating back there, not visible from where we were standing. That was probably where she’d hoped to stash us. Out of sight.
“You’re pretty popular, then,” I said as she checked things out.
“When people wake up, they like to come in here for breakfast. Sometimes that’s in the morning, sometimes halfway through the day, sometimes in the evening, like your friend there, assuming he ate food, and sometimes in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, he’s not my friend. He’s my possessive stalker who won’t take a hint.”