Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

Less than a year after it first hit the streets, experts were lining up to call ink “the new crack.” It exploded into an epidemic overnight, from New York to LA, scouring the country east to west like a barbed-wire scourge. The usual suspects had clean hands, and they were bending over backward to prove it. Rackets from the Cali Cartel to the Five Families had issued bounties on ink dealers, as desperate to find the elusive pipeline as the law was.

  Nobody liked having their profits stolen.

  The warehouse in Dallas, baking in the springtime heat on the outskirts of the city, was run like a prison camp. Sentinels were on duty twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Snipers on the sheet-metal roof, and a dozen men with military-grade firepower on call and ready to kill to protect their secret. There was constant surveillance within and without, electronic countermeasures in play, and half the local cops were either on the take or blackmailed into silence. They’d built an impregnable fortress, a crucial hub of the ink pipeline.

  Hence Bruno’s surprise when he came back from a food run, carrying fat plastic sacks of wrapped sandwiches from the Subway a quarter mile away, and found the outer gate wide open.

  Then he found the dead men lying in the dust, their unfired guns still clutched in their pale hands. Playing cards jutted from their throats like darts.

  The sacks dropped from Bruno’s arms. They burst, spilling sandwiches across the hot asphalt as he drew his snub-nosed pistol. He gripped it in both hands, trying to keep them from shaking. Bruno was a middleman, a nobody. He’d been recruited from a cushy management job in pharmaceutical sales, chosen for his easy access to base chemicals and his industry contacts. Despite the guns and the perpetually looming threat of violence, he’d managed to convince himself that this was just another white-collar job.

  His mind raced, trying to remember his briefings. There was a number to call in case of a security breach. He was supposed to memorize it. Instead, he’d written it in a binder and forgotten about it. After all, his recruiters had told him the job was perfectly safe, hadn’t they?

  The binder was in his office. Inside the warehouse.

  The barn door, for loading and unloading delivery trucks, hung wide open. He inched through, swinging the gun wildly, jumping at shadows. More dead men littered the floor, scattered among the maze of shipping crates. All his coworkers, the entire security force—everyone was dead, their blood spattering the concrete like a Jackson Pollock.

  Not everyone.

  A woman stood amid the carnage, draped in a scarlet gown. An iron key dangled at the hollow of her throat, suspended on a delicate chain. She looked Bruno’s way and smiled softly, tilting her head.

  “Take heart,” the Lady in Red told him. “Your death is for a good cause.”

  She held up a playing card, twirling it in her fingertips, and flicked it effortlessly through the air.

  It was the last thing he ever saw.

  * * *

  Two hours later, a strike team hit the warehouse gates like the fist of an angry god. Six black SUVs, sharks with tinted windows and armor plating, blasted into the parking lot and squealed to a dead stop. The SUVs looked like FBI standard issue. So did the men and women who boiled out, badges on their belts and their Glock pistols braced for an all-out gunfight. Instead, they found a fresh graveyard.

  Jessie Temple took the lead. She wore glasses a few shades darker than her skin, her frizzy black hair pulled back in a tight bun. She tapped her earpiece as she strode through the sweltering warehouse, glancing left and right, taking in the scene.

  “Kevin,” she said, “we’ve got a goddamn massacre here. Talk to me.”

  A teenager’s voice crackled in her ear, carried on a burst of static. “Pulling feeds from my back door into the Helix spy sat, boss. This is…yeah, something. Couple of hours ago, logs show a massive burst of electrical interference. Something disrupted comms a mile in every direction for about fifteen minutes.”

  “What would cause that, an EMP?”

  “I don’t think so. Signatures aren’t quite right. Harmony, you got any idea—”

  “Magic,” said the woman at Jessie’s shoulder.

  Jessie turned and tugged down her dark glasses. Her irises were pure turquoise, inhumanly bright and blue. She stared at her partner with an unspoken question in her eyes.

  Harmony Black wore a three-piece suit the color of midnight, an ivory blouse, and a man’s salmon necktie. She crouched over a corpse and touched her fingertips to his pale forehead. She closed her eyes for a moment, as if communing with the victim. Drinking in the scene.

  Jessie raised her open hand as a pair of the tactical-team agents approached. “Hold up. Give us some room, our witch is doing her thing. You guys start searching those crates. I want to know what’s here and what’s not here, you get me?”

  Harmony’s palm followed the contours of the dead man’s chest, hovering an inch above his blood-soaked shirt. Tiny, almost imperceptible sparks danced along her fingertips. Then she snapped her hand away. She curled it into a fist and unclenched it again. She wriggled her fingers as she rose to her full height, as if flicking away something foul.

  “This place is drenched in raw magic,” she told Jessie. “Not any normal practitioner, either. Whoever did this was way out of my league. Feels like a nuke went off in here. These men never had a chance; the fight must have been over in minutes, if not seconds.”

  Jessie nodded, poking her toe at a fallen submachine gun. “None of these have been fired. No stray shells, no collateral damage. It was a blitz attack fueled by occult power. High speed, high precision, no mercy. What does that remind you of?”

  “The Network,” Harmony said.

  “Exactly.” Jessie put a hand on her hip and sighed. “This has all the signatures of a Network hit. Which is kind of a big damn problem, since as far as we know, they’re the assholes making ink.”

  The Network was a myth. A tale told by underworld scum looking to boost their reputation: everybody knew somebody whose brother’s best friend’s roommate did a job for the Network. A criminal organization, the story went, buried so far underground that the world’s foremost law enforcement agencies couldn’t prove they existed. They didn’t even have a name; “Network” was just shorthand, a title of convenience. Ask nine out of ten FBI agents, they’d swear it was nothing but an urban legend.

  Jessie and Harmony knew better. Then again, they weren’t ordinary FBI agents. The government organization they really reported to, concealed five layers deep behind Washington cutouts and walls of red tape, had firsthand experience in this fight.

  “Second-floor office,” Jessie said, pointing up toward the back of the warehouse. “I’m gonna take a look.”

  Jessie made a running jump, grappled a wall of wooden crates, and effortlessly scaled them hand-over-hand. She raced along the row of boxes with her coattails flying out behind her, launched into an acrobatic flip, and sailed through an open office window to land in a graceful roll on the other side.

  “Showing off much?” Harmony called up. “Perfectly good flight of stairs, you know.”

  Jessie poked her head out the office window. “My way is more fun.”

  Harmony prowled among the dead. Outstretched hands, wide and glassy eyes, a chorus of silent pleas for help that came too late. She had no sympathy for the fallen. All the same, they belonged behind bars, not in a grave. This wasn’t justice; it was a blood-soaked ambush. Criminals murdering criminals.

  And as she crouched beside a second corpse, studying his wounds, she knew exactly who was responsible.

  A playing card had buried itself halfway into the dead man’s skull, right between his eyes. She gripped it with her fingertips and slid it out slowly, wriggling it, feeling it give. It came out half-painted scarlet with a rivulet of blood dripping down the ace of hearts. She turned it in her fingers. On the back, a red dragon rampant.

  She didn’t see the Lady in Red standing silently behind her, a faint smile on her lips. Nobody did.

  “
Son of a bitch,” Harmony breathed. She tapped her earpiece. “I know who did this.”

  From the office window, Jessie’s head perked up. Harmony saw her lips move as her voice echoed over the earpiece. “Usually you’re happy when you figure out who the bad guy is. You don’t sound happy. What gives?”

  Say it, whispered the Lady in Red.

  Harmony held up the bloody playing card. “Daniel Faust.”

  “Faust?” Jessie tilted her head, looking down from the window. “He died in a prison riot.”

  “We thought he died in prison. I always thought it was a little too convenient. He probably arranged the entire thing as a cover for his escape.”

  “Are you sure? Harmony, let’s get real, you’ve always been a little Captain Ahab when it comes to that guy. Are you sure you don’t want him to be alive, so you can go after him again? Besides, weren’t you saying this took massive occult power? Daniel Faust was just a gangster with a few card tricks.”

  The Lady in Red leaned close to Harmony, murmuring in her ear. Only one man kills like this.

  “Only one man kills like this.” Harmony flicked the playing card with her finger. “There are at least fifty human sorcerers in our target database, and one of them uses cards as weapons. Daniel Faust.”

  “Well, you’re the one who crossed swords with him. If you say it’s him, it’s him. What’s the motive?”

  April Cassidy’s voice broke in on the line. “We know a considerable number of the criminal underworld’s more notable denizens are eager to find the source of ink. If our resurrected Mr. Faust is back to working freelance, or carving out an empire of his own, perhaps he’s on the same trail that we are.”

  “Then we keep hunting,” Harmony said. “We find the pipeline, we find him.”

  “Well, I’ve got some ledgers here that might point us in the right direction,” Jessie said.

  Harmony joined her in the office. Unlike Jessie, she took the stairs.

  The ledgers were dense, half the details coded or in cryptic shorthand. They started with the computer database and shipping labels. With the aid of Kevin’s expertise, and some highly illegal cracking programs, a picture started to take shape. The Dallas connection was receiving chemical components from Juárez to Winnipeg, but made outbound deliveries in one direction only: northeast, to New York City.

  “Let’s saddle up,” Jessie said. “Looks like we’re on the right track. Our best chance yet to shut this circus down and give the Network one hell of a black eye.”

  “We may be able to call upon some local assistance if we need it,” April’s voice said over their earpieces. “Do you remember Detective Reinhart? You met her at that bank robbery in Manhattan last year.”

  “Sure,” Harmony said. She had found something of a kindred spirit in Marie Reinhart.

  “I’ve been doing a bit of consulting on the side, helping her with a serial-murder investigation. No relation to our current case, but I suspect we could rely upon her if it proves necessary.”

  “Sounds good,” Jessie said. “The more help, the merrier. I think we’re due for a win.”

  “Two wins,” Harmony said.

  Her partner looked Harmony’s way, curious. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Harmony offered up a thin, hungry smile. “I’ve got a white whale to catch.”

  Seventeen

  Marie was on the hunt for her own white whale. Her ship was foundering, taking on water fast. Beau Kates had sold Baby Blue for a shoebox full of chemicals, so stoned he couldn’t remember what her kidnappers looked like. A revelation and a dead end, all in one. She still thought Richard Roth was dirty, but without her badge, she couldn’t do anything about it. She couldn’t show her face in the precinct without Captain Traynor jumping down her throat, so department resources were out of reach until she was cleared for duty again. And while she could always reach out to Gorski and Jefferson…

  Don’t encourage her, she heard Helena mutter, as vivid as when it happened. Everybody knows she’s fucked in the head.

  Her frustrations reduced her to pacing her tiny living room, recounting facts and dates like some dime-store Sherlock Holmes and getting nowhere fast, when her phone buzzed.

  “Reinhart.”

  “Detective,” said an unfamiliar raspy voice. “We haven’t met. This is Jake Moretti. I work Homicide out in Jersey City. This a bad time?”

  Marie’s brow furrowed, curiosity getting the better of her. “Not at all. What can I do for you?”

  “A little birdie tells me you’ve been working a string of dead hookers out in your burg. The kinda string that says ‘serial killer,’ but you’ve got no support from the brass to back that up.”

  “You’ve got some birds with keen hearing out in Jersey.”

  “What can I tell ya? We’ve got everything here. Paradise on Earth. Anyway, point of the matter is, I’m in the same kinda boat. Maybe the exact same boat.”

  Marie stopped pacing.

  “More victims?” she said. “Jersey side?”

  “And a fresh one just showed up this morning. Same MO. You ask me, your unsub and mine? Same guy.”

  Marie’s heart skipped a beat. If there were more victims out there—if the killer, or killers, were dumping bodies on either side of the state line to throw off the scent…

  “How many have you found so far?” she asked him.

  “Nothing official, because my captain refuses to make it official, but off the record? I’ve linked four vics to this creep. I say ‘off the record’ because I’ve been told not to make this phone call. I’d just be opening a can of worms, they tell me.”

  “Can’t go fishing without opening a can of worms,” Marie said.

  Jake barked out a laugh. “Yeah, see? We’ve got the same idea. I’m not a big fan of sitting on my ass while innocent kids are getting carved up, my future career prospects notwithstanding. I hear you’ve got the same sorta attitude problem.”

  “I’ve been accused of being a poor team player. Got to tell you before this goes any further, though, they pulled my badge and my gun. Officer-involved shooting. It was a good shoot, but until I’m cleared, I’m technically not a cop.”

  “And I’m technically a shitty pitcher, but they haven’t tossed me off the department softball team yet. This is strictly on the down low. See, we got a guy in custody.”

  Marie held the phone tight against her ear. “Who?”

  “Caught him dumping the body red-handed. He told the uniforms he’s not the killer, he just got paid to drop the corpse in a junkyard and walk. I think he’s telling the truth. The guy’s gutter trash, a junkie who can barely tie his own shoelaces. Still, might know more than he’s letting on. I want to team up, both of us take a run at him at the same time. See, I don’t know the details of any of your vics. Jersey can’t pull New York’s case files—”

  “And I don’t know yours,” Marie said. “But together we might get more out of him than either of us would get alone.”

  “That’s a bingo. He ain’t lawyered up yet and I want to have a go before he gets smart enough to invoke legal aid. What do you say? Wanna be a ghost in the room?”

  Marie’s hopes soared. She had a lead. She had an ally. She had a shot.

  “On my way,” she said.

  She took a cab to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, then hopped the 119 to Jersey City.

  * * *

  Jake Moretti looked like his voice sounded: bedraggled, rough around the edges, burned by cigarettes and cheap beer. He was a thirty-year veteran of the homicide squad who had seen every horrible thing one human being could do to another. When they shook hands, Marie felt the sandpaper calluses on his palm.

  “Anybody asks,” he said in a low voice as he hustled her through the crowded precinct house, “you’re the psych consultant I called in to assess the perp’s state of mind. Barring that, just forget how to speak English and we’ll figure something out.”

  Their suspect waited in Interview Room C, his wrists shackled to a ring in
the stainless-steel desk. They paused outside the one-way window to study him before they headed in. He was a young guy, twenties, with long black hair like a wannabe rocker. He had a wannabe rocker’s drug habit, too: that giveaway twitch, bouncing in his chair, too itchy to sit still.

  “Sylvester Rimes,” Jake said, taking a cursory glance at the coffee-stained file folder in his hands. “Born a loser, gonna die a loser. Got a string of petty convictions as long as my arm. Possession, burglary. So far, his greatest claim to fame was an attempt to commit armed robbery with a water gun.”

  “Looks like he just graduated to the major leagues,” Marie said.

  They didn’t bother with good cop, bad cop. It was bad cop, bad cop from the second they hit the room.

  “You fucked up, Sylvester,” Jake told him, circling the table like a shark smelling blood. “You. Fucked. Up.”

  His shackles rattled. “I told you, I didn’t kill her! I was just paid to dump the body, that’s all.”

  “Sure, in two jurisdictions,” Marie said. “Bad idea. See, we’ve got you tied to seven homicides—”

  “Seven?” His eyes bugged out. “No, no, hey, that wasn’t me—”

  “Know how this works? You’re a party to all seven, split across state lines,” Marie said.

  “Which means when we’re done with you,” Jake said, “we put you on a prison bus, send you across the GW Bridge, and you stand trial all over again.”

  Sylvester folded in on himself. His gaze darted between them, a drowning man searching for a life preserver.

  “I wanna…I wanna make a deal!”

  “With who?” Jake shrugged at him. “Any deal you make with our DA doesn’t hold water on the other side of the Hudson. Same on their end.”

  Marie slapped her palm on the steel table to get his attention.

  “You’re going down for a long, long time, Mr. Rimes. Your best chance of survival, your only chance, is to come clean right here and now. Tell us everything, from the first contact with the men who hired you to the second the cuffs went around your wrists this morning. You do that, and if the details check out, maybe we can talk about some kind of leniency.”