by Jaye Wells
“That,” Morales said, “is the honorable mayor of Babylon, Skip Owens.”
“What the fuck?” Mez exclaimed.
“Our thoughts exactly,” Eldritch said, joining Gardner.
“Apartment’s registered to a dummy corporation. Probably to make sure Mrs. Owens didn’t know about it.”
“Someone want to fill us in on what we know?” I asked, turning my back on the dead man. Even with the mask, it was hard to look at the body of someone I’d spoken to only a few days earlier. Not that I was Owens’s biggest fan, but you had to have some pity for the indignity of his final moments.
“Anonymous call came in reporting there’d be a murder at this address. Volos said he was home at the time, but didn’t hear anything unusual. There weren’t any signs of forced entry, either.”
“So it was probably someone he knew,” Morales said.
Duffy nodded. “You could say that.” He held up a Baggie containing a photograph. “We found this sticking out from under the bed.”
I took it from him. It took me a minute to realize what I was seeing because the shot had been taken at such an odd angle. Apparently the photographer was standing over the subject. The subject, of course, being Mayor Owens with his face buried in a crotch. One side of the torso in the image had a large breast and the other had a clearly defined pectoral. “Shit,” I said, “that’s Aphrodite Johnson.”
“How can you be sure? Aphrodite isn’t the only hermaphrodite in the Cauldron,” Duffy argued.
I pointed to the tattoo on the left wrist, which was visible on top of Owens’s head. “The red spiral and hexagram is Aphrodite’s sigil.”
“That image isn’t enough to implicate anyone in the murder,” Duffy said.
“Of course,” I said. “What do we know about the body, Franklin?”
He stepped forward with a clipboard. “Cause of death is TBD, but if I had to guess it’s poison.”
Morales’s brows shot up. “Another argument in favor of Aphrodite.”
“Explain,” Duffy snapped.
“Oh right, the Cauldron isn’t normally your beat,” I said pointedly.
“Detective Duffy was kind enough to come over from the First. I requested him specifically because of his decorated history in homicide.”
I nodded. “Okay, so Aphrodite has this revenge garden. It’s famous in the Cauldron.” I glanced at Franklin. “You’ll be testing for plant-based poisons, right?”
He nodded. “It would help if I knew which ones the Hierophant had access to.”
“I was just there a few days ago. Would it help if I wrote down all the ones I can remember?”
“Might.” He grimaced. “But there’s something else that’s off about this scene.”
“What is it?” Eldritch snapped. He was a little green around the gills now that he’d removed his mask. The man had been out of the field so long he’d lost his edge when it came to dealing with the day-to-day realities of solving crimes.
“The forensics team also said it appears the leather mask was put on postmortem,” said Franklin.
I frowned. “Seriously?”
He waved us over. Closer now, the proof of poison was even more apparent. There was blood mixed in with green vomit all over the bed. “See anything odd?” he asked.
Mez tipped his head. “You mean besides the dead mayor wearing a gimp mask in a puddle of his own sick?”
“Yeah, Einstein.” Franklin rolled his eyes. “The mask is clean.”
I looked again. The leather didn’t have one speck of vomit on the outside.
“And is it me or has the body been posed?” Morales asked.
We all stepped back for a wider look. Sure enough, the mayor’s body had been arranged to look like—
“Hold on,” Mez said, “that’s the hanged man!”
I squinted at the body and realized he was right. In tarot, the hanged man was the twelfth card of the major Arcana. In it a man was depicted as hung by one foot from a tree, which corresponded with the body being oriented with the head at the foot of the bed. Also like the card, his hands were bound behind his back and his left ankle was tied to the headboard. Meanwhile his right was bent and the foot tucked behind the left knee to form a number 4. Even the spray of green vomit under his head was reminiscent of the halo of light around the figure in the card.
“I don’t see it,” Duffy said. “You’re stretching.”
I shot him a look. “Really, Detective? Do you make a habit of dismissing possible clues without further investigation?”
His eyes narrowed. “No, I make a habit of not trying to complicate cases that are cut-and-dried.”
“Maybe that works in the Mundane precincts of this city, but you’re in the Cauldron now. When chances are good the perp was an Adept, you can’t discard magical evidence outright like that.”
“All right, Miss Wizard,” Eldritch said, “why don’t you tell us what it means.”
Duffy crossed his arms and shot me a challenging look. On the other side of the room Gardner and Mez looked at me expectantly. I cleared my throat, damning myself silently for walking into this. “All right,” I hedged. “It’s been years since I studied the tarot in depth, so I might be a little rusty. However, I remember that the hanged man represented sacrifice or martyrdom to the greater good.” I glanced at Mez for confirmation. He winked and nodded for me to continue. “It can also mean surrender, I think.”
“Don’t forget it can also mean to beware a traitor,” Gardner added quickly.
I cringed. “Oh right.”
“And its a card ruled by Neptune, so it’s associated with water,” Mez continued. “It tells us not to fight against the current, to let it take you wherever it’s flowing.”
Duffy clapped slowly. “Holy shit, that explains it all, then.”
I grimaced at him. “Don’t be a smart-ass. We’re just saying it’s not something to dismiss outright.”
“All I need to know is that we have proof the mayor was involved in illicit dealings with a known prostitute who is known to grow poisonous plants,” Duffy countered, “and he was found wearing accessories common in sex play, dead from apparent poisoning.”
It was hard to argue with that logic, but from what I knew of Aphrodite s/he was too smart to leave such obvious clues around if s/he was to kill someone. The Hierophant’s words from the other day came back to me: They’d have to find the body first.
“You don’t think Aphrodite is too obvious?” Morales said suddenly. During the tarot discussion, he’d been standing to the side with his arms crossed, looking over the entire scene. Now that he spoke, he had everyone’s attention. “I mean, we seem to be forgetting that the mayor received a threatening letter from Dionysus less than a week ago.”
Duffy’s brows rose. “What are you talking about?”
Eldritch made a dismissive sound. “Rogue wizard robbed Johnson last week and then sent a vaguely threatening letter to the mayor. From it we gathered he plans to attack the city on the Blue Moon.”
I held up a hand. “Hold on. Dionysus robbed Aphrodite.” I glanced at Morales. His eyes widened, as he came to the same conclusion. In stereo we both said, “He stole the poison from her/m.”
I looked at Gardner, who’d gone still. “He’s trying to frame her/m for this,” she said slowly. “Why?”
“Aphrodite’s been on his trail ever since he robbed her/m,” I said. “This might be about getting her/m off the streets so s/he can’t put heat on him while he carries out his plans.”
“Plus, didn’t the leprechaun say that Dionysus had several tattoos of tarot cards?” Morales asked.
Duffy’s clapping was slow and sarcastic. “That would all be very convincing if this were a cop show. But this is the real world where we need actual evidence to convict a person of a crime. And right now, all the evidence points to Aphrodite Johnson.”
“Not yet, it doesn’t,” Franklin said. “I still need to get the samples back to the lab to test for the poison.”
His jaw clenched tight, he started gathering his things together. “Call me,” I said under my breath. He paused in the process of putting a set of calipers in the bag and nodded slightly.
Once he was gone to let the boys in the meat wagon know it was okay to remove the body, Eldritch turned to Duffy. “I’ll have a detail stationed on Aphrodite. If that freak tries to leave town before we have those labs back, they’ll stop her/m.”
“We’ve been looking for Aphrodite for two days now,” Morales said. “There’s no evidence s/he left town, so we think s/he’s hiding out.”
“The BPD won’t have problems tracking down the city’s most famous hermaphrodite,” Eldritch said in an insulting tone.
Duffy nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll have the unis get statements and review the security footage in the building.”
“What can we do to help?” Gardner said.
Eldritch frowned at her. “You can stay out of our way. This is a BPD matter.”
“Then why did you ask us to come to the scene.”
Eldritch’s chin lifted. “I needed you to see what you cost this city by dragging your feet on the Johnson case.”
With that the captain stormed out of the room, shouting orders at the remaining unis on the premises.
Mez, Morales, and I stood quietly in the wake of the captain’s parting zinger to Gardner. She cleared her throat, straightened the jacket of her pantsuit, and turned to address us. “Well,” she said, glancing toward the bloated body of the dead mayor, “I don’t know about you guys, but I need a fucking drink.”
Chapter Twenty
Hours later, we had all gathered at a pub called the Irish Rover. It was a favorite watering hole of the BPD, but that evening there weren’t any cops in the place besides us since all the city’s officers were busy hunting down Aphrodite Johnson.
The place smelled like beer and wood polish and blue chalk from the pool cues. The dark-paneled walls and low light made it feel like a cave. In other words, it was the perfect sort of place for drowning our frustrations in dollar pitchers of beer.
We were on our third round when Morales challenged Shadi to a game of pool. Mez got up to go put some blues on the jukebox and then went to provide color commentary for the pool match.
I leaned my head back against the cracked vinyl of the booth and let the smooth Mississippi currents in Muddy Waters’s voice wash over me. Gardner nursed her beer across from me and seemed as content as I was sharing a companionable silence.
Eventually, though, I opened my eyes and leaned forward to take a sip. As I did, my gaze landed on the tiger-eye cabochon on her left hand. “Where’d you get that?” I asked, nodding toward her hand.
She held up her hand and looked at the large gold-and-brown-streaked stone. “Bought it from a street vendor in Mexico. I was on vacation after a tough case and it just kind of spoke to me. Helps me stay grounded.”
I nodded. “You were with the MEA then?”
She nodded and leaned back. I wasn’t sure if the move was deliberate or if the retreat was meant to distance herself from my questions.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” I said. I knew from Morales that there was some drama in Gardner’s past that risked her job with the MEA. According to him, this task force was her chance at redeeming herself.
“No, it’s fine,” she said on a shaky breath. “I’m surprised Morales or Shadi didn’t tell you already.”
I shook my head.
Her eyes widened, as if she’d expected me to admit the opposite. “It happened four years ago. We were working a long-term case to bring down a big-time wizard in Miami. The guy was smuggling weapons, young girls, and rare rain-forest flowers into the country. The weapons sales and the human trafficking funded his lab, where he was trying to develop a new super potion. We’d heard from an informant, he was trying to develop the elixir of life.”
I chuckled. Every wizard boasted about trying to find the elixir at some point.
“Anyway, we had a big task force going—ATF, FBI, Postmaster, you name it. But we were in charge of things. It was our guy undercover in the gang, see?”
I nodded. “Which gang?”
“A Morte.”
My eyes flared. “The Brazilians? Holy shit.” In Portuguese, the name meant “the Death.”
Back in the ’80s, when narcotics were the substances destroying the moral fabric of America, the Colombian cartels had dominated the drug trade. But once magic had usurped narcotics as both the bigger threat and the bigger moneymaker, the Colombians had been dethroned by the Brazilian shamans. These powerful wizards controlled access to certain rain-forest plants the United States now controlled due to their use in dirty potions. Uncle Sam preferred to sell those flowers, herbs, and plants to Big Magic companies. Not only did that net the government healthy tax incomes, but the FDPA also earned tons of money vetting all the legal potions for sale in government-run apothecaries and through med-wiz practices.
Anyway, when it came to potion cooking in the southeastern United States, especially, the Brazilian covens were to be feared because they controlled the substances wizards all over America wanted to get their hands on. They controlled the flow of controlled ingredients in and also had their hands in almost every arms deal and human trafficking outfit from Florida up to New York.
“So what happened?” I asked.
She leaned forward. “Our guy on the inside got word to us that he was getting a bad feeling. There had been rumblings among A Morte that the leader suspected a snitch.” She adjusted in her seat, as if the memory made her physically uncomfortable. “So I went to my ASAC and said we needed to call off the sting. He called a meeting of the heads of the other groups in the task force to discuss it. Naturally, they all agreed too much money and manpower had been invested to back out based on rumors.”
“Shit.”
“Right. In their defense, we were close to having what we needed to make the case. We had one of the A Morte guys willing to testify and a judge ready to issue a warrant under the RICO statutes.” She exhaled a shaky breath. “What we didn’t know was that one of the ATF guys was in the coven’s pocket. Somehow he found out the identity of the undercover and told the coven leader.”
I closed my eyes. “Fuck, Gardner.”
“No one becomes the head of a Brazilian coven without being pretty crafty, right?” Her tone was dripping with scorn. “So he came up with a sting of his own. Let it leak to our guy that a big buy was coming up. Naturally, our guy got word to me about it. I should have known better, but all I could think was that I wanted that case tied up quickly so I could get him out of there.”
The clocked ticked in the background as she gathered her courage to continue.
“See, the guy who was undercover? He and I…” She trailed off. “Anyway, I let my feelings cloud my judgment. So I sent my team in while I sat in a fucking van a mile away with the ATF fucks and my ASAC and the other high-ranking agents.” She swallowed hard. “The guns started firing almost immediately. By the time the rest of us made it across that unending mile, the entire team was dead and the cowards who killed them were gone.”
Silence settled over us like a black shroud. My chest felt tight out of sympathy. I knew a thing or two about carrying around the guilt of causing someone’s death. But I couldn’t imagine carrying around the karmic debt of leading an entire team to its slaughter.
“Sir, I know it wasn’t easy for you to share that story with me. But hindsight’s a bitch. Makes you think you should have seen things you couldn’t possibly have seen.”
She sighed. “I guess you’re right. Still, this stuff with the mayor? Got me wondering if we’ve missed something.”
“Probably,” I said, “but that’s Eldritch’s problem now, right?”
She shook her head. “Just because he says he’s taking point doesn’t mean we can’t pursue the potion aspects of the case. After all, this Dionysus prick’s v
iolated about twenty federal laws.”
A little dose of adrenaline had me shifting in my seat. “So what’s our play?”
“Way I see it BPD’s gonna have their hands full for a while with Aphrodite.”
I shook my head in disgust. “That’s bullshit, sir. I’d bet my left hand Dionysus killed Owens.”
She raised a brow. “I don’t disagree. The question is, how do we prove it?”
Morales’s voice rose over the music. “Yo, barkeep, turn up the tube, will ya?”
We both glanced over to see the bald guy behind the counter punch some buttons on the remote. The jukebox went silent and the TV over the pool tables got loud.
On the screen, Captain Eldritch stood at a podium addressing media. “As many of you know, our beloved mayor was murdered earlier today. His loss is a huge blow for this community and we extend our sincere condolences to Mrs. Owens and the mayor’s two sons, Chip and McKinley Owens.”
An inset picture on the screen showed the entire Owens family smiling together in front of a church. Nice touch, the church. I wondered if Skip Owens prayed to Jesus with the same mouth he used to suck Aphrodite’s cock.
“Obviously, bringing the perpetrator of this violent act to justice has become the sole focus of the BPD.”
“Yeah that’s just what Dionysus wanted, you idiot,” Morales yelled at the TV.
The captain adjusted his hat and looked directly in the camera. “I am pleased to report that less than an hour ago, we arrested Aphrodite Johnson, a notorious Hierophant of a sex magic coven with a long history of lewd behavior and violence.”
The picture-in-picture flared to life with footage of Eldritch himself escorting a bedraggled Aphrodite to a waiting squad car. I didn’t recognize the building they were in front of, which meant one of Aphrodite’s associates must have rolled over on the locations of the Hierophant’s safe houses. The female side of the hermaphrodite’s face had no makeup and the masculine right was covered in stubble, as if they’d dragged her out of bed.
Mez emitted a low whistle. “There’s going to be hell to pay once she’s cleared.”