To Catch a Stolen Soul

by R. L. Naquin

  I crushed a cracker into my bowl. “I’m sure when you took off, you were probably looking for something a little more luxurious than this.”

  Ash shrugged and took a sip of her cola. “I was expecting to sleep in a field tonight, to be honest.” She took a bite, chewed, then swallowed. “And now I get to go into business with you and solve a missing person case.”

  “The room doesn’t smell as bad as the truck, at least.”

  “True story.” She snagged a few saltines, then drew her arm back in a quick movement, tugging her sleeve.

  I hadn’t missed the flash of gauze wrapped around her wrist. In fact, I was fairly certain she saw me see it. Might as well get it out of the way, then. “Look, I don’t pry. You need to know that. But if we’re going to be business partners for a while, we need to be honest, okay?”

  She swallowed. “Sure.”

  “If someone’s been hurting you, know that I won’t ever let them touch you again. But if...if you’re feeling like you need to hurt yourself, I hope you’ll talk to me instead. I’m a good listener. And whatever was wrong before, you’re out of it, you know? So, you shouldn’t have to feel that way anymore.” I knew self-harm wasn’t so easily solved as all that, but it was a start. The conversation was open. I hoped she’d take me seriously and let me help.

  A long silence lay between us, and I wondered how badly I’d screwed up. The kid was still a flight risk, and if I pushed too hard, she might make a run for it. And really, I enjoyed having her around. It didn’t take me long to get attached to people sometimes. Probably a result of being forced to be alone so much in the past.

  Ash set her spoon in her bowl and tugged at her sleeve again. She stared at the cuff of her shirt, running a finger over the pattern. After a moment, she picked her spoon up and looked me square in the eye. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, then.” I went back to eating my canned chili. It needed cheese. “I call dibs on the bed by the window.”

  “Fine. But I get the shower first.” She slurped her drink.

  I smiled and crumbled another cracker into my chili. “It’s a deal.”

  * * *

  After a decent night’s sleep, showers and a breakfast of granola bars and fruit cups, we took the truck up the street to a DIY car wash. I sent Ash around the corner to a grocery store to get a few cleaning supplies. While she was gone, I got started spraying the inside of the truck to get rid of the dirt and leaves that had accumulated while it had been parked for the last few weeks.

  I knew I’d have to go deeper than surface clean to locate the source of the smell, but until Ash got back, I wasn’t going to attempt to find it. I preferred to have backup when I finally found the dead animal that was possibly covered in crawly things. Sure. I could handle it, but I’d rather have the emotional support on hand in case it was covered in face-eating rats or venomous maggots the size of Pomeranians.

  The truck had a small fridge, a grill, a sink with running water and plenty of storage. With so little seed money available, I wasn’t sure what we could cook in there. In fact, there was the small matter that I didn’t really know how to cook—a fact I probably should have considered before deciding to do this. What was I supposed to make in here? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

  I’d come up with something. Having never run a food truck before was the biggest reason I wanted to do it. This was going to be so much fun. I only had to figure it out and get started.

  After a few minutes of spraying inside, my eyes watered and my stomach churned, so I switched to washing the outside. The cutout of a teapot perched on top of the truck was faded and a little flimsy, but it was a great shape. It reminded me almost of an old-fashioned oil lamp from a fairy tale.

  Like from Aladdin.

  It would be so easy to make such a simple transformation. Based on that one image of the magic lamp, my entire design came together in my mind, and excitement bubbled inside me.

  When Ash got back from the store, she found me standing next to the truck, hands on my hips, head tilted, staring up at the rotating teapot on the roof of our new vehicle.

  “You okay?” She held out one of the plastic bags she’d acquired. “Here.”

  I reached in and pulled out a jar of menthol rub, the kind grandmas used on their chests when they had a cold. “Perfect.” I unscrewed the lid and dipped a finger into it to rub the goop on my upper lip, then held it out for Ash.

  She made a face. “That’s gross.”

  I nudged her with the jar. “You’ll thank me later. I learned this from...” I trailed off. I couldn’t tell this kid I’d learned the technique from a vampire who’d been visiting our world from his. The smell had masked the scent of tasty humans, so he could interact with people without being driven into a feeding frenzy. “I learned it from crime procedurals on television.” True, but the vampire had shown it to me first.

  Armed with the overwhelming scent of eucalyptus and menthol directly under our nostrils, Ash and I put on the big yellow gloves she’d bought for us and charged into the stinky truck. The smell of death was mostly covered up. It gave us a fighting chance to look for whatever creature had crawled inside and breathed its last.

  We scrubbed every surface with disinfectant. We opened every cupboard and cleaned inside. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, the space beneath the front seats, the glove compartment—we scrubbed out everything we could find. The animal in question was nowhere.

  Neil had told us he’d already put the truck up on the rack and taken a look underneath. He assured me there was nothing curled up in the engine, in the exhaust system or under the wheel wells. Whatever it was had to be inside. I started again, working from the first storage cupboard at the back of the truck and moving forward. It had to be here.

  As we worked, Ash told me about her situation. She’d been living in her fourteenth foster home since the age of six. The family had been fostering eight kids, and she doubted anybody would notice she was gone. As she talked, she tugged at her left sleeve, almost as if it were a nervous tic.

  “Eight foster siblings is a lot,” I said, trying my best to sound casual. “I imagine they wouldn’t all get along.” I scrubbed the inside of the cupboard door, then closed it and moved to the next one. “Probably a lot of squabbles. My older brothers used to get pretty rough sometimes.” That was only partially true. Any time I’d been hurt with my brothers was when they’d been trying to teach me to fight. Sometimes they’d flip me too hard or I’d run into a block and get a black eye. I’d been a clumsy kid. I still wasn’t the lethal weapon they’d tried to make me into. I was enthusiastic in a fight and tended to forget most of the moves they’d taught me. I dived in and flailed until I hit something. It helped that djinn were strong.

  Ash tugged at her sleeve. “Not really. I was the oldest one there, and nobody paid much attention. They all had places to be and things to do.” She shrugged and climbed onto the counter to get better leverage on a stain near the ceiling.

  “Were your foster parents nice?”

  “Sure. They were busy, but their hearts were in the right places. They weren’t in it for the money or anything. Not like some of the places I’d been.” Her voice was distant, as if she weren’t quite connected to the words.

  “Seems like a nice enough family. So, you left because you were...what? Lonely? Bored?” I fought to keep my voice casual. I wanted to help. Then again, maybe she’d had a dumb accident where she’d caught her arm behind the sofa cushion to retrieve the remote and a stray nail had scraped her arm open.

  Of course, if that were the case, she probably wouldn’t be trying so hard to cover up the damage and would have told me about it last night at dinner.

  She shrugged. “I would’ve been kicked out soon anyway, since my birthday was coming up. And I graduated from high school
last week. I just wanted to get my life started, you know?”

  “Yeah. I can understand that.” I moved toward a cushioned bench I’d already cleaned twice. The red vinyl fabric had a lot of nooks and crannies where it had been fastened to the bench with fake buttons. Dirt had collected in those spaces, so I checked again in the folds for crumbs or bits of dead bugs.

  As I scrubbed, the wood popped and shifted, as if it had been stuck and I’d shook it loose. “Ash?”

  She popped her head up. “Yeah?”

  “I think I may have found something. Can you come help me?”

  “Sure.” She moved in next to me. “Does this open?”

  “I think so. I seem to have unstuck it.”

  We gave each other a worried look, then took hold of the top of the bench and lifted.

  The smell was so bad, no amount of menthol was going to help.

  “Oh my God.” Ash covered her face and ran out the back of the truck. The sound of her retching carried clear across the parking lot from where she’d stopped.

  I’d always had a strong stomach, but this was rough even for me. The dead animal was actually a dead guy. The body was curled on its side and stuffed into the storage compartment inside the bench. I was no expert, but by the state of him, he’d been there for a couple of months. And I doubted he’d crawled in there by himself.

  For one thing, he wouldn’t have taken out his wallet and left it on top of himself. Whoever had done this appeared to have placed the body inside, then tossed the guy’s wallet in after him before closing the lid.

  I poked at the wallet with one finger to open it and gasped at the photo and name on the driver’s license.

  After less than twenty-four hours in town, I’d already found my missing reaper.

  Chapter Five

  Peter Dunn didn’t look much like his driver’s license picture anymore, but I didn’t doubt it was him. The remaining hair was the right color, he appeared to be roughly the right height and he had the wallet with him. He could have been someone else, I supposed, if Peter had decided to fake his own death.

  Curled up like he was, I couldn’t see his hands to get at his ring. Normally I wasn’t squeamish, but the body was...gooey. His face was sunken in and dried up, but the largest part, the center of him, hadn’t made it to that stage yet. The Midwest had been hit with a long winter that year, so the body had probably spent some time frozen before it had finally thawed and started to smell sometime after Neil had picked up the truck.

  I wasn’t prepared to reach in and jostle him around to get what I needed. There were people for that. It was their job. They had special gloves and stuff.

  “Holy shit.” Ash stood behind me, staring with wide eyes at the body, one hand covering her mouth. “I guess we found the smell.”

  I was impressed as hell. Once she’d gotten over the initial shock, the kid had come right back, totally composed. “Looks like he’s been here for a while.”

  Her brow crinkled in worry. “I guess we’d better call the cops.” She glanced around as if the police were already here, preparing to grab her and haul her back to foster care.

  I shook my head and closed the lid over Pete. “No. That’s not actually who we need.” I tipped my head for her to follow me, and we climbed out of the back of the truck. “I have people I need to call.” I stuck my thumb in the direction of the truck. “He was the one I was sent to find.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “That’s ridiculously lucky.”

  I waved off her surprise. “You’d think so, but I wasn’t expecting to find him dead. Not really, anyway. He was last seen in this area, though, so it’s not entirely coincidental. And the previous people they sent to look followed the clues to a food truck site before losing the trail. I guess now we know why. The truck wasn’t there anymore.”

  “So, you really are a detective?”

  I tilted my head to the side and stared at the stoplight on the street behind her. What did detectives wear? I supposed it depended on whether the detective was a cop or a private eye. I could wear my leather pants and patrol the streets for the killer. Maybe I should take up smoking. Or pick a cool new name, like Priss Malone or Angel Shepherd.

  This turn of events might not be so bad. For me, anyway. Pete probably didn’t think it was so great.

  Fingers snapped in front of my face, and I refocused. “What?”

  Ash groaned in frustration. “Are you a cop?”

  “No, of course not.” I put my hand on her shoulder and focused on meeting her gaze. “I’m...like...a bounty hunter. Sort of. It’s hard to explain. But this guy was due back a while ago and he didn’t show up. My boss sent me to find him because nobody else had made progress.”

  Her expression softened, but not by much. “So, who are we calling if not the cops? Isn’t that illegal?”

  “The circumstances are special.” I gave her shoulder a pat. “So, we’re calling in a special team. They’ll take care of the body and keep it out of the news.”

  “Like a cleanup crew.”

  I smiled. “Yes. Like that.”

  She took a step back. “This is a drug thing, isn’t it.”

  “What? No!” I held my hands up. “It’s nothing like that. Nothing illegal is going on here. I promise.” I dropped my hands. “Well, except that somebody killed poor Pete.”

  I watched her pace and run her hands through her short hair. She looked like she was trying to decide whether this whole adventure was worth sticking around for or if she should head out and take her chances elsewhere. I hoped she’d decide to stick with me, for her own safety and because I liked having her around. But I wouldn’t press her. She’d have to make the decision for herself.

  Convincing her everything was legitimate in this situation was going to be tough. She was a human, and circumstances were going to force me to take this investigation into Hidden territory. If Ash decided to stick around, I’d probably have to have a talk with her at some point about the things in the world she couldn’t see.

  She stopped pacing and stood with her arms folded, watching the cars go by. I wasn’t sure if she’d made a decision or not, but I didn’t have time to soothe her. I needed to call for help.

  Pete was a human, but he was also a reaper. That put him under Hidden jurisdiction, and that meant the local OGRE squad—Oversight and General Rule Enforcement—would take care of things. I took out my phone and punched in the number Art had given me.

  The person who answered grunted more than spoke. “Yeah?”

  I kept my voice low, partly to keep Ash from hearing too much and partly because I felt like a spy. “Truman Marx?”

  “Yep. Whatcha got?”

  “My name’s Kam. Art sent me down from HQ to find the missing reaper.”

  “Yeah? You find him? Need some help?” His voice was gravelly. I imagined he was probably an actual ogre or maybe a giant. Something big. OGRE squads were usually a decent mix of Hidden creatures.

  “I found the body. Can you send a cleanup crew?”

  He grunted again. “Well, that’s a damn shame. Sure thing. I’ll come down myself. Been looking for that guy for a few months.”

  I gave him the address and hung up. Ash stood watching me, a short distance away. She had her ankles crossed and her back against a light pole. She appeared to have made peace with the situation.

  “You decide to stay?” I joined her by the pole, glancing up to see how high it was. They took their parking lot illumination seriously in this part of Kansas. The light was huge.

  “For now.” She stared at the laces of her boots. “As long as you’re not working for the mob or something.”

  “I’ve dealt with those guys. What a bunch of greedy, slimy little...” I stopped. She probably hadn’t been talking about leprechauns. I changed the subject. “On the brigh
t side, we’ve located the source of the smell, and someone’s coming to clean it out for us.”

  “That’s a relief. I was scared to death I’d be the one to find whatever was in there.” She shuddered.

  As much as I hated finding Pete, I was glad it had been me. She was probably going to be traumatized as it was being there. “I’m thinking we’ll just let them take the entire booth with them. I don’t know what your plans were, but I don’t really want to clean that thing.”

  “Health inspector probably wouldn’t be too crazy about the idea, either.” Her expression was grim.

  I reached in my pocket, pulled out a small package and offered it to her. “Gum?”

  We each took a piece, and the minty taste helped to clear out the smell of dead Pete from my nostrils.

  “So.” She crumpled the wrapper and stuffed it in the pocket of her jeans. “What are we going to sell from our food truck?” Her face was pale, and her voice was a little shaky.

  I suspected her question was more a need for distraction than about the food truck business. “Can you cook?” I pulled my hair from its red scrunchy, smoothed my ponytail and tied it back up. I hadn’t touched the body, but I was still grossed out, like the stench had stuck to me somehow, even if I couldn’t smell it.

  “Not really.” She bent and picked up a bottle cap to examine it. “Boxed mac and cheese. I can heat soup.” She stuck it in her pocket with the gum wrapper. “Make toast.”

  “Toast?” The idea intrigued me. “I like toast.” I supposed we could make it on the grill, but toasters were pretty cheap.

  She laughed. “I doubt we can make much money with toast.”

  “I bet you’d be surprised.” I smiled. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Once they get what I need off the body, I’m done here. I should be able to get my boss to wire us some money to get the truck fixed, and we can leave.”

  “We?” She gave me an odd, almost hopeful look.

  “Sure. You’re welcome to hang with me as long as you like. I can’t let you be alone for your birthday.”