Art screamed.
Once.
“What should we do?” Emma asked me the next morning.
“I’m open to ideas. This one won’t be easy to explain.”
“We’ve got the shattered window,” Emma said, a flick of her head indicating the stirring curtains. “He did have a weapon. He was trying to kill you.”
“Just his bad luck he tried on a night when the moon was full, I guess.”
She smiled at me. “Never try and kill a woman’s husband. We get cranky.”
I nodded. “And mortal women think they have problems every twenty-eight days.”
“I suppose we could clean this up ourselves.”
I nodded as I lit yet another cigarette. Emma frowned as the tip burst into flame when I glanced at it, but, as I said before, it was a trick I liked doing. Okay, so I still liked showing off for her a little bit. “We’re going to have to, I think. A quiet and clean disappearance is best, I think.”
“Agreed. I’ll go get dressed, and we can get this done. Will the sun bother you while we clean this up, darling?”
I shook my head. “Between the tinted windows and heavy curtains, I’m fine as long as it doesn’t hit me directly.”
She went into the living room, heading for the bedroom, her clothing in the bedroom closet. “Jonathan, I’ve been thinking,” she called out. “We need a pet. A bird or something. Perhaps a dog. Maybe another cat.”
“Darling, the last time we tried that, you ate the cat.”
“Picky, picky, picky…”
The Case of the Headless Corpse
Josepha Sherman
Josepha Sherman is a fantasy novelist, freelance editor, and folklorist whose latest titles include Son of Darkness (Roc Books), The Captive Soul (Warner Aspect), Xena: All I Need to Know I Learned from the Warrior Princess, by Gabrielle, as Translated by Josepha Sherman (Pocket Books), the folklore title Merlin’s Kin (August House), and, together with Susan Shwartz, two Star Trek novels, Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart. She has also written for the educational market on everything from Bill Gates to the workings of the human ear. Recent titles include Mythology for Storytellers (M. E. Sharpe, 2003) and the Star Trek Vulcan’s Soul trilogy.
She is a fan of the New York Mets, horses, aviation, and space science. Visit her at www.sff.net/people/Josepha.Sherman.
The body was male, strongly built, clad in an elegant midnight-blue robe, and without a doubt, dead.
Murdered. Very few suicides manage to tear off their own heads. The crime had made a mess of the expensive-looking Oriental carpet. And, I thought irrelevantly, they were never going to get the stains out of that nice oak floor.
My partner, Raven, was looking about the extravagantly large living room. “Where’s the head?”
The cops gave us both a wary glance. “We haven’t found it yet.” I was doing my own scouting. With all this mess, you’d have expected bloody footprints, or at least a trail of—
Whoa. “Here it is,” I called. “Here, behind this sofa,” which was an expensive white leather affair. “Must have rolled.”
“Or been thrown,” Raven said, crouching to study the head.
My partner is a tall man, dark-haired, lean and good-looking in a rangy sort of way. I’m female, brown-haired, not exactly lean, and half his height. We’ve been partners long enough to be surprised by pretty much nothing.
The head was that of a man in perhaps his late fifties, blond hair fading to gray. The face was strong but with slightly sagging jowls, and looked vaguely annoyed by the whole affair. It was a face I recognized from the news: Randolph Dexter, head of Dexter Arcane Industries, a major supplier of magical goods to the trade, though not a magician himself. Divorced, if memory served, with offspring.
Yes. A quick glance at my handheld Wizard told me that there was indeed an ex-Mrs. Dexter, Eleanor, and that there were two of those offspring, a son and a daughter. None of them were magicians, either: in fact, there were no magic licenses on record for any of the family.
There was only one problem in getting accurate data and with us being here at all. Because of Dexter’s profession, the place was full of magical trophies: a silver chalice on the mantelpiece, a colorful, intricately woven mandala hanging on one wall, and so on. Handsome stuff. All of them together cast a psychic fog of magic, yet nothing had that unmistakable mental jolt that says, “I’ve been used.” There was neither sign nor feel of any grimoires or other magic manuals, which are the only methods by which a nonmagician can even hope to cast a spell.
In other words, magic fog or no magic fog—well, my partner was already explaining it to the cops.
“He wasn’t killed by magic. It’s not our jurisdiction.”
Raven and I are agents for the MBI, the Magical Bureau of Investigation. We take on those cases of murder, espionage, and matters of national security involving the arcane arts.
(And no, Raven isn’t his real name any more than mine is Coyote: the MBI has a perverted sense of humor when it comes to giving its agents handles.)
No murder by magic. No trace of spells. Just to be on the safe side, I softly recited the reveal-spell charm that’s supposed to be foolproof. Granted, the magic haze was a nuisance, but… Nope, assuming the readings were accurate, no spells.
But something else was bothering me. I murmured to Raven, “Why aren’t there any footprints?”
He shrugged. “Clever killer?”
“Oh, come on.”
“Maybe he stood on a chair. Maybe he ran across the sofa.”
“And the head? If it had rolled, there’d be a blood trail on the carpet. If it had been thrown, there’d be blood on that nice white sofa.”
“Good point.”
There was also the small problem of who or what would be strong enough to rip a man’s head off his body.
“Raven, there’s the magic. Some sort of strength-enhancement spell—no, never mind.” I corrected myself before he could comment. “That would have shown up on our scans, too.”
With no magical evidence, we were forced to turn the case over to the cops. But later, as we returned to the small office we share in the MBI Building—which looks, deliberately, like any other bland gray government building, were other governmental buildings warded—I couldn’t get the murder out of my mind. “Raven…”
“Yes. It’s nagging me, too. We’re missing something.”
“But what?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Yes. That’s exactly the problem. No clues.”
Just then a message sprite formed between us with the smallest pop of displaced air. Like all the sprites, it was a sexless, slight, green-skinned figure with wings that blurred as it hovered.
“Agents Raven, Coyote, boss man wishes seeing you now!”
With another small pop the message sprite was gone. Raven and I exchanged a resigned glance and headed off to Chief Wizard Merlin’s office.
Needless to say, Merlin isn’t our superior’s real name any more than Raven and Coyote are ours. He is a heavyset man of indeterminate age, the sort who looks like an ex-jock who was probably a fullback in college—but with eyes that hold a lot of cold, hard experience.
He acknowledged us with his usual curt nod. “New case. A woman claims that her poodle is being possessed by the ghost of her deceased husband.”
“You’re putting us on,” Raven said.
Merlin seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. He shook hishead, face absolutely without expression. “Seems that the poodle has started talking to her.”
“Uh… of course. Chief, I understand that talking poodles might be an MBI matter, but we’d really like to keep working on the Dexter case.”
Merlin raised a bushy eyebrow. “You already filed that one as a nonarcane murder.”
“Well, yes,” Raven began, “but—”
“Is it?”
“It seems to be, but—”
“Seems?”
I took pity on my floundering partner
. “We merely want to follow up on a few new leads. Be absolutely sure.”
Merlins quick wave of a hand brought a computer screen into view. Scrolling down the files, he commented, “Neither of you sensed any magic other than peripheral haze due to unused arcane objects. The reveal-spell charm revealed nothing. There is no evidence of any arcane talent in any member of the immediate Dexter family. What leads?”
“The family,” I said. “Dexter’s company. There might be something…” I stopped. That sounded lame, even to me.
At Merlin’s second wave, the screen and computer obediently vanished again, and he turned to fix us with a look as cold and hard as that of a basilisk. “I’m well aware that a murder investigation is more glamorous than a case of a dead husband giving stock tips to his widow through her poodle.”
“Stock tips?” I asked.
“Good ones?” Raven added.
“Excellent ones, to all accounts.”
“And she wants to get rid of that?”
“Apparently,” Merlin drawled, “the dog is big on insider trading.”
“But—”
“We can’t—”
Merlin silenced us by fixing us with a look that would have pierced a demon’s disguise. “Is this reluctance of yours due to magical intuition? Or are we merely playing hunches?”
There was an awkward pause. Then Raven said, “I really wish we could claim the former, but…”
“We just don’t know,” I finished.
Merlin sighed. “You two should have been named Bulldog and Terrier, you know that? Very well, you have”—he glanced at his watch—”exactly one minute to convince me why I should keep you on the Dexter case.”
Raven and I both knew that he meant it literally. Hastily, counting off the seconds in my mind, I summarized the lack of footprints, the lack of any blood trail. “Yes, I know it could have been the work of a really clever killer—”
“One with inhuman strength,” Raven cut in.
“Or, perhaps, a very efficient power tool,” Merlin said dryly. “The minute, agents, is up.” He held up a hand to stop us from interrupting. “As I say, you two should have been called Bulldog and Terrier for your sheer tenacity. Or is that simple stubbornness? Still, I have to agree that the case of the insider trading poodle can wait a day.”
“Thank you!”
“Onlya day.”
“Chief—”
“A day. You two have exactly twenty-four hours in which to prove the use of magic with intent to kill in the Dexter case. After that…”
“Poodle,” I said.
“Precisely.”
A second trip to the murder scene netted us nothing but impatient cops. Of course they had already questioned the Dexter family and employees, but not being MBI, they hadn’t gotten more than surface answers. We had an advantage, needless to say: magic. One of the reasons Raven and I work so well as a team is that our magics are perfectly compatible. This means that our powers don’t fight each other, a problem that has happened to other, failed partnerships.
Unfortunately, though, since the murder hadn’t been caused by a spell, we couldn’t use our joined talents to simply track the spell backward and conjure up the killer’s name. But at least we could whittle down the list of “possible” suspects to “more likely” suspects.
Sure enough, a scroll materialized between us even as we finished reciting the last spell-syllable.
“That’s it?” I asked. “That’s all?”
“Not the most promising of lists, is it? Let’s see… Dexter’s ex-with-kids… one business rival…” Raven shook his head. “That’s it, all right: two adults, two kids. Nary a friend or even an acquaintance on the list.”
“Either everyone loved him except for his wife and/or rival, or he had no friends at all.”
“Want to bet me it was the latter?”
“No bet,” I said. “I feel that, too. Unfriendly fellow, the late Mr. Dexter. Ah, you know, the killer could have been some random lunatic. ‘Random’ wouldn’t show up on the list.”
“Oh, thank you so much.”
“Just a possibility.”
There is an annoying rule in the MBI that no agent may interrogate a witness or suspect alone. As it happens, there’s a perfectly good reason for it: a solo agent was once slain by a suspect who, much to his surprise, turned out to be mostly demon. But the rule was going to cut down on our precious time, since we couldn’t split up to make separate investigations.
“Mrs. Ex-Wife first,” I decided, and Raven agreed.
Dexter had apparently believed in doing right by his ex, or else she had a very good lawyer. Ex-Mrs. Dexter lived in a penthouse apartment that could just as well have been called a penthouse mansion, on top of the sort of building usually described first as “luxury.”
Then we met the ex-wife, who opened the door herself with the air of someone who’d just been interviewed by cops and was prepared for a return bout. Her appearance pretty much screamed top designer, and her beige suit probably cost the same as my whole year’s salary. I couldn’t completely envy her, though. She desperately wanted to be young, at least as much so as cosmetics could manage (no cosmetic magics, though, which surprised me, since a lot of folks use them these days), and was fiercely svelte and blond, hair caught up on the latest artfully tousled style. I stopped myself just in time from selfconsciously touching my own less elegant hair.
What Mrs. Ex-Wife didn’t look was grieving. Angry and weary, yes,and thoroughly sick of answering questions, but not grieving. “Your people were already here, ah…”
“Call us Raven and Coyote, ma’am. We’re not with the police, but with the MBI.”
I’ve seen many reactions to that announcement, ranging from anger to wary alarm. This one surprised me: the woman recoiled from our IDs in genuine horror, and I felt fear blaze up in her like a psychic wildfire. She was clearly only barely keeping from slamming the door in our faces. Raven and I exchanged quick glances: Mrs. Ex-Wife would never have had anything to do with the arcane.
Odd fear for someone who was married to the head of Dexter Arcane Industries. But then, money could overcome a lot of things. Including any scruples she might have had against taking her ex’s life? “Ma’am,” I prodded gently, “could we come in? We’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”
She would probably rather have told us, Go to the devil, and meant it. Instead, Mrs. Ex reluctantly invited us into a vast living room that was all either beige fabric or white marble and, like its owner, fairly screamed top designer.
Raven and I sat on matching chairs that had been designed more for style than for comfort. Mrs. Ex perched uneasily on a third. We asked her the usual opening questions, trivial stuff about maiden name, number and age of children, none of which were intended to do anything but relax her a little.
No go. So I went straight for the proverbial jugular. “Ma’am, please do accept our sincere condolences. But I have to notice that you’re not exactly in mourning.”
“Should I be?” she snapped.
“Well, uh, surely—”
“Raymond brought it on himself! Dealing in, well, in that!”
“Dexter Arcane Industries, you mean?” Raven asked.
“I warned him, but he wouldn’t listen tome. Raymond was so good, so kind in every other way.” She stopped, staring fiercely from Raven to me and back again. “I already told the police all this! Even after the divorce—it’s true, we didn’t have anything to do with each other after that, but Raymond never complained about the settlement, never stinted on child support.”
“Did he visit the children?”
“No! I wouldn’t risk it!”
“I… beg your pardon?”
“Oh—oh, I don’t mean he would have abused them. He never even showed much interest in them. Raymond was—you’ve heard that old line about being married to a job? It wasn’t quite that bad, not at first. But Raymond just would not listen to my warnings! He could have sold the company, gone i
nto something safer, something more wholesome. But he never listened to me, not even when his love for that sinful business was costing us our marriage.”
“Ma’am, we know he was the owner and CEO of Dexter Arcane, but are you saying that he was also a practitioner?”
“God knows what he was into!”
That wasn’t exactly hard data. Carefully, Raven and I continued to question her. No, she’d never caught her husband attempting any spells. The only time he’d brought home any objects from the company, she’d tossed them out and had their home purified by a priest.
Clear enough. What we had here was a true antimagic bigot. If it weren’t for our MBI IDs, we’d probably already be out on the street. If Dexter had tried anything arcane, he would have had to work it on the sly, and so far there just wasn’t any evidence of that.
However, we weren’t quite finished. “Ma’am,” Raven said, “do you mind if we question your children?”
“They know nothing about this! They haven’t even seen their father for years.”
“I understand,” I said in my gentlest woman-to-woman voice. “But this must still be very difficult for them.”
“I haven’t told them how he died. But those cops, those stupid, stupid cops, let them know that he was murdered. At least I stopped them before they could throw in how he’d been—how he—how he died.”
She’d just gone up a notch in my opinion: concern for her kids.
“I’m sorry,” Raven said, and I knew he meant it. “We’ll try our best not to upset them. But we really do need to ask them a few questions.”
The kids turned out to be named Tiffany and Blaine. Tiffany was a slim little blond doll, maybe five or six, very pretty and just a touch too cute in her pink ruffled blouse and neat jeans. Blaine was a lanky young blond teen, maybe fourteen at the most, wearing the inevitable band-advertising T-shirt and artfully worn designer jeans. They sat side by side on the sofa, Tiffany’s feet, encased in pink sneakers, dangling, both kids looking as if they’d rather be anywhere else. Not that I blamed them.
They didn’t look particularly grief-stricken, just bewildered. Then again, judging from what their mother had told us, they hadn’t even seen their father for years. Maybe Tiffany didn’t even remember him.
Murder by magic: twenty tales of crime and the supernatural Page 7