Depths: Southern Watch #2

by Crane, Robert J.

  “Unless he’s trying to bushwhack us,” Lerner suggested. It could happen. It had happened before to their people. No one really loved being policed, after all.

  “You’re thinking like he’s a fully-formed criminal mind,” Duncan said with a shake of the head. “He’s not. He’s evolving right now. Awakening.” He paused, closed his eyes again. “Something’s going on across town. Lots of agitation.”

  “Another … incident?” Lerner asked. He glanced over at the cowboy. Hendricks’s eyes were closed now.

  “Another dead body, yeah,” Duncan said.

  * * *

  “No, no,” Melina Cherry said as Arch stared at her. “Her name is Lucia.”

  Arch was desperately uncomfortable. The whole place smelled heavily of perfume and was decorated on the inside in high Southern style. He supposed it was all to make the johns feel better and more comfortable, but it was having the opposite effect on him. He had a sense of what this place was supposed to be like—the brothel had been here since he was a kid, after all, and his teammates had come here in high school—and this wasn’t quite it. He imagined it smokier, like a speakeasy, a place where illicit dealings happened in a glamorous setting.

  “Right,” Erin spoke up, nodding. “Lucia.” She turned to “Lucia” and pursed her lips. “We could use a word.”

  Arch stole a glimpse at Lucia again. She was Starling, there was no doubt in his mind about that. He’d seen enough of the woman, even in the dark places she usually appeared, to know what she looked like. This was surely her, though her eyes looked different.

  Plus, she had an actual expression on her face. Lips quivering, eyes darting a little tentatively from Arch and Erin to Ms. Cherry. Arch would have guessed she looked a little … intimidated. That was certainly new.

  “Anything you have to say to her you can say in front of me,” Melina Cherry said. She didn’t move, but Arch had a mental image of a mother thrusting herself in front of an attack on her baby.

  Or a criminal trying to keep an accomplice from getting rolled by the cops. That was probably more likely.

  Evidently Erin saw it that way, too. “We’re not here to investigate any unrelated crimes that may have taken place here,” she said, focusing in on Ms. Cherry. Arch could see she was trying to be reassuring. “We only want to talk about the murder.”

  Ms. Cherry seemed to relax at that. “Why don’t you go take a look at the body? We’ll wait for you here, and you can talk to us however you’d like afterward.”

  Arch caught Erin’s look back at him, and he could tell she was thinking the same thing. “Ma’am, we can’t leave the two of you alone right now.”

  Ms. Cherry rolled her eyes. “I am a pillar of this community. I’m not going anywhere and neither is Lucia.” She must have caught their hesitation, Arch thought, because she immediately backed down. “We’ll follow you up the stairs and wait outside the door.” Ms. Cherry held up her hands in a show of surrender. “We are willing to cooperate in any manner possible.” Her face hardened. “To make sure justice is done for Colleen.”

  Arch looked to Erin as she looked back at him. “Fair enough, ma’am,” Arch answered for both of them. This time he couldn’t tell what Erin was thinking.

  Arch took the lead, walking up the carpeted stairs and ignoring the white French insignias that were stenciled on the walls. What were they called? He couldn’t remember. Flower something. He kept his hand on his holster even though he knew he was heading up to see a body. It was unsecured scene, after all, so technically he could have been running into anything.

  “Just stay a couple paces behind me,” Erin said to the two women. Arch couldn’t bear to think of them as anything other than women. He didn’t want to consider their jobs, because it wasn’t the sort of thing he cared to dwell on. He knew plenty of others willing to cast more than a few stones their way, but he didn’t do that sort of thing. Mary Magdalene had walked their path once upon a time, after all.

  Every step Arch took up the stairs made him feel the nerves more and more. He took a quick breath and let it out slowly, blowing it out quietly between his lips. When he reached the top of the stairs he took careful steps, as though any squeak of the floorboard would wake the dead. If that happened, he’d have bigger problems than breaking the news to Hendricks that Starling was actually a woman of the night in some sort of disguise.

  He frowned. She’d always seemed stronger than a normal woman to him. He kept himself from glancing back at her, didn’t want to blow her cover with her employer. Something about this whole thing was awfully bizarre, though. Nothing about Starling had ever seemed coy or shy. She hadn’t ever blinked away from him like she did downstairs.

  But then again, he’d never had a conversation with her in the brothel where she apparently worked, either.

  Arch reached the door. It was open just a tad, and he reached out and pushed it further with his elbow. He could hear Erin just behind him, now, could almost feel her breathing down his neck. He inched inside one slow step at a time.

  As soon as he was clear of the frame he took a step to the left and just stood there. What was waiting on the bed was every bit the horror he was coming to expect since the demons had come to his town. He knew the girl on the bed; she’d been a freshman when he’d been graduating. Colleen something.

  “Damn,” Erin said from next to him, standing in the middle of the door. “Colleen Hudson. Her daddy works at the mill.”

  Arch nodded. She was all burnt up on the inside from what he could see, like she’d swallowed a cup of molten lava and it had all bled out of her. He wanted to cover her up, though there wasn’t much left of her that was improper to be shown, but he knew that’d interfere with the crime scene. “I ain’t never seen nothing like this,” he said.

  “It’s kind like she got blowtorched,” Erin said. “From the inside.” Her voice was hollow and she sounded to Arch like she was somewhere else.

  “What’s that on her mouth?” Arch asked. He started to take a step toward her, but Erin’s hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  “It’s a gag,” Erin said, and she only met his eyes for a second. “He gagged her so no one would hear her scream.”

  Arch stared back at the body for a moment before turning away. He’d seen about all he could stand of this. So many dead yesterday and now another one on the pile. This one wasn’t even close to human in its execution. More demons. Maybe the same one, the … Sygraath. They’d found that burning stuff on the pavement, after all.

  Arch wheeled around and looked again. She wasn’t Colleen anymore, that was certain. Her face was ashen and her eyes rolled back. If her mouth was gagged, and something burned her from the inside … His eyes roamed the corpse, and he cringed as he did it. Not because of the gruesome state of it—though it was—but because he was looking at a naked woman who wasn’t his wife.

  She was not burned at the neck, not really, but all the way through the chest and down to her pelvis. It seemed obvious to him, though he was hardly a coroner. There was a black, burnt strip on the bed next to her and he lowered himself to his hands and knees so he could see that it had carried under the bed.

  Another strip of burnt-out wood. Something glimmered in there, like oily liquid, and Arch knew. He knew.

  It was the same guy.

  * * *

  Gideon took the car onto the bumpy dirt road and braced himself with every shock. He needed to stay off the highways now, and he’d figured out the back roads, the ones between him and his ultimate goal. He’d found another route after that, one that would lead him out of town via some old, scenic highways. They’d carry him to Knoxville, and from there he’d be able to rent another car and head north. Maybe to New York. He had a good feeling about New York again.

  He turned the A/C down as he pulled up in front of the farmhouse again. He stepped out into the morning heat and looked up. The dark clouds were coming again, and that wasn’t bad. Storm coming to a head but still some sunshine making its escape bef
ore it got blocked. He could smell the rain in the air.

  He liked it.

  He turned the handle and didn’t experience the disorientation this time when he stepped inside Spellman’s storefront. He decided that it must have been some sort of conjuring that Spellman had done here, that he wasn’t actually in a farmhouse in Tennessee. He could feel the shift this time as he crossed the threshold. Most people wouldn’t notice that. Fewer would care. Spellman probably moved shop with the hotspots, but he didn’t really have to “move” anything. Not literally, anyway.

  The smells and sounds were still muted from the cage room to his left, but he could detect them this time. Gideon ignored them; now didn’t seem like the moment for him to take interest in the misery of others, not when he’d learned just how amazing causing said misery could feel.

  He walked down the hall, listening to the echo of his shoes against the floor. He came around the corner into the dining room to find Spellman sitting there, hands folded, as though he were expected. “I told you midday.”

  “I know,” Gideon said. “I’m not here to pick up yet. I just figured I’d wait here until it’s done.”

  Wren Spellman’s eyes watched him, a little smile perched upon the man’s thin lips. “You have nowhere else to go.”

  Gideon shrugged. “I could go shopping in town, but …”

  “No, you can’t, “Spellman said with a knowing look. “You’re lying low because of what you’ve done. Refuge will cost extra.”

  Gideon smiled. “Money I’ve got.”

  Spellman’s smile matched his own. “Indeed you do.”

  * * *

  Erin hadn’t seen anything like Colleen Hudson’s corpse before, not ever. Not in all the year’s she’d slaughtered animals, not in the time she’d spent on the internet looking at pictures that were designed to gross her out, not anywhere. It was disturbing in a way, all the more so because she could not figure out how the hell it had happened.

  She was hardly a forensic pathologist, but it looked like Colleen had had some molten liquid poured into her vagina or anus, and it had just dribbled down and opened her up. It was hard to tell without stepping up and getting closer, but that seemed like the sort of shit that would require something elaborate to carry.

  “This gentleman caller,” she said, making herself loud enough to be heard out the door. “Was he carrying anything with him when he came in?” She talked to direct her voice out into the hall, but her eyes never left the body.

  “No,” Melina Cherry called back. “He wore cargo shorts and a t-shirt, a pair of tennis shoes. I doubt he had anything with him, why?”

  “Just checking,” Erin said, lower this time. She was already back to thinking about the body. She looked sidelong at Arch. “What’s your friend doing here?”

  “I don’t know,” Arch said, voice low. “I didn’t know she worked here.”

  Erin paused, waited a second. “Does Hendricks know her from here?” She watched Arch freeze and started to ask him something else, but there was a noise out in the hallway.

  “Reeve, maybe?” Arch asked. He looked a little relieved, like he might have been spared the question he didn’t want to answer. She’d hit him with it again later, even though she was beginning to wonder if it even mattered at all anymore.

  “Hello?” A voice from the door caused Erin to turn. It wasn’t Melina Cherry, nor Lucia or Starling or whatever she called herself. It was a woman in middle age, blond hair that was too blond to be natural, dressed in a tweed skirt and suit jacket. She was smiling, look in the door as if there weren’t a burned-out corpse just over Erin’s shoulder. “How do you do?” she asked and took a step into the room. She was wearing black shoes, expensive ones, high heeled, and they clicked on the maple floor. “My name is Lex Deivrel. I’m Ms. Cherry’s attorney.” She proffered a business card, waving it in Erin’s face.

  “Well, that’s just fucking great,” Erin said, and she didn’t even care who heard it.

  * * *

  They’d done a bank transfer because it was easier, Spellman had said. Gideon didn’t care. He had plenty of money and if everything came out like he hoped it would, he’d be able to replenish the coffers and more after today. Not that he cared about that part; he just liked to be comfortable, even though he usually ended up in the lower rent neighborhoods.

  He went where the death was, after all.

  Now Gideon was just sitting in the chair and Spellman was across from him, staring at him blankly. Really blankly. Like there was no one steering the ship, actually. “Pardon,” Spellman said after a moment, the light coming back into his eyes. “You’re talking to a shell I use to conduct business. I’m presently working in the … back room, let’s call it.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” Gideon said. He wasn’t looking for someone to entertain him. He was just building anticipation for the big event anyway.

  * * *

  Lerner and Duncan had left Hendricks sleeping. Why bother the poor guy? It wasn’t like they needed him anyway. They headed toward the disturbance Duncan had mentioned, Lerner at the wheel, Duncan next to him with his eyes closed, directing him.

  “This whole thing has got me thinking,” Lerner said. Duncan grunted, a low noise that indicated he was listening, so Lerner went on. “If left to their own devices, without us to ride herd on them, would every Sygraath out there eventually start scrounging up their own meals?”

  Duncan made a hmm-ing noise. “The world is a little more peaceful in the last few decades than it has been before.”

  “And the murder rate in the U.S. is at a forty- or fifty-year low,” Lerner said, feeling himself warm to the subject. These were the kind of discussions he loved to have, but Duncan was all too reluctant to participate. “Fewer war deaths worldwide this decade than in decades past. Fewer plagues. Longer life expectancies.”

  “I’ve heard tales about Sygraaths gone bad as far back as the 1600s,” Duncan said. “Which means there were probably more before that. This isn’t something new.”

  “No, but the state of the world might be changing them,” Lerner said. “Less death means less for them to feed on. Just like scarcity of food makes wildlife migrate. A starving man will do desperate things, right?”

  “They’re hardly starving,” Duncan said, still with his eyes closed. “Chicago alone last year had some four hundred plus murders. Plus the normal mortality stuff couple with larger overall populations.”

  “But you know what I mean,” Lerner said. The A/C was blowing in his face.

  “Rarely.”

  “I’m wondering if this guy is pushed to the edge by societal change,” Lerner said.

  “Most human societies would view fewer murders and deaths as a good thing.”

  Lerner sighed. “But a Sygraath wouldn’t, and that’s the point. Now he’s sparked his own little habit and doing some seriously fucked up things to hit his high. I mean, really,” Lerner said, “who knows what he’s capable of?”

  * * *

  Erin was still trying to absorb what was going on with the lawyer when Reeve came in. They’d already moved back down the stairs into the foyer, and Deivrel had the madam and her hooker in the parlor. She was standing in front of the door holding court like she was guarding the passage. The place still stank of cheap perfume, and Erin was trying to decide whether she was more sick of the smell or the lawyer who’d been politely but firmly rebuffing and steering them for the last five minutes when the door opened and Reeve came breezing in.

  “Turns out it wasn’t just possession, but also a probation violation from one of my favorite repeat offenders,” Reeve said as he strolled in. He stopped when he realized there was someone standing before him that wasn’t expected. “Well, shit. There goes my day.”

  Lex Deivrel still wore the uncaring and cold smile of someone who was putting on a face for their audience. “Well, Nick, I hope it was that dead body upstairs and not me that did it.”

  “Lex,” Reeve said, making a clicking noise with
his mouth, “every time you come to my county, it seems like hell rides in behind you. I didn’t see you park your pale horse out front.”

  “Oh, Nick,” Lex said, and Erin could hear the slyness, “from what you say about me behind my back, you don’t think I ride a pale horse, you think I ride a broom.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” Reeve said, staring her down. “You giving my deputies problems with their duties?”

  “Just trying to make sure my clients are given the fairest treatment possible,” Deivrel said, her fake smile not so much as flagging. “There’s a lot of room for them to be wronged here, you see.”

  “Yes, well,” Reeve said, “I can see where they might be concerned with that, being hookers and all—”

  “Why, Sheriff Reeve,” Deivrel said in utter shock, “that’s an unsubstantiated allegation.”

  “Oh, it’s well substantiated,” Reeve said without amusement. “It just hasn’t been proven in court.”

  “Which is the guidepost you should use in your conversations with my clients,” Deivrel said coldly, “Lest you find yourself on the wrong end of a slander suit.”

  “Do you get a percentage of the recovery on something like that?” Reeve asked, and ran a head over his balding head.

  “Of course,” Deivrel said with that same faux smile.

  “I knew I should have been a lawyer,” Reeve said under his breath. “All right, well, the crime scene unit from Chattanooga ought to be here soon—seeing as they have to take the regular roads, they can’t fly straight here on a broom,” he gave a nod to Deivrel, who just smiled. “Why don’t we move this on down to the station house so we don’t have to do this on the front lawn while the mercury is heading toward ninety?”

  “I’d rather not,” Deivrel said, and Erin got the impression that she was a wall, standing between her clients and Reeve. “It’s going to rain again soon, anyway. Cool the whole town off.”