by Anton Strout
Davidson reached out and shook the officer’s hand. “What’s got your men so spooked, Sergeant?” he asked.
The head officer hesitated, a look of frustration crossing his face. None of his men made a move to offer up anything.
“You know what, Mr. Davidson?” he said. “Why don’t you just take your Monster Squad inside and see for yourself?”
“Nice,” I said. “Why don’t you clear out some of your boys, then? Or is the NYPD afraid of a little rain outside?”
The officer’s eyes widened. He looked like he might be on the verge of pulling his gun on me.
Davidson raised one hand to the officer and the other to me. “Gentlemen, please,” he said. “Let’s just do our jobs.”
The officer nodded, and then started ordering his men off the floor of the apartment building. Once they cleared the area, Davidson threw open the door to the apartment in front of us.
The space itself wasn’t the first thing my eyes landed on. A magnificent view of the East River and the Queens skyline filled up an entire wall of sliding glass doors at the far end of the room. The shadows of gargoyles stood out along a patio beyond the windows, lit up occasionally by a reflection of city lights coming off of a full-sized pool. Already I had a bit of apartment envy and I hadn’t even stepped in yet.
“Welcome to the home of Mason Redfield,” Davidson said. “Deceased.”
The four of us entered the apartment and the first thing I noticed was that the main room was several times larger than my entire apartment and almost as tastefully decorated. The owner of the apartment was lying dead and faceup in the middle of the living room.
“Nice place,” Jane said, nervously looking around the space and avoiding looking at the guy. “Bet there’s a lot of drawer space.”
I tensed as a surprise twinge of the tattooist’s raw emotional anger flared up for just a second, and I shot Jane a look as I pushed it down as best I could. “Not now, Jane. Not here.”
Connor circled around the dead man in the center of the room, barely paying attention to the body. “You know, for a crime scene, it looks remarkably tidy,” he said.
I walked over to where the body lay. He was an older gentleman in his late fifties with gray hair pulled back in a widow’s peak like an aging Eddie Munster.
“His eyes are open,” Jane said from where she stood farther away. His cold blue eyes were staring up at the ceiling, blank. “Creepy.”
Connor knelt down and closed them.
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem,” Connor said, and then began looking over the body without disturbing it. “It’s the least I could do for an old acquaintance of the Inspectre.” He studied the corpse for a few moments more before speaking. “I don’t see a mark on him.”
Connor looked around the room, and then pulled out one of the vials of ghost bait he always had on him. He uncorked it and the smell of patchouli hit my nostrils. After several moments of nothing happening, he corked it and slid it back inside his coat.
“If his ghost is around here somewhere,” Connor continued, “I’m not picking it up.”
Jane moved a little closer. She cocked her head down to look at the corpse more closely. “Look at his mouth,” she said. “His lips are parted and there’s some kind of sheen just behind them.”
“Let me,” I said, kneeling down on the other side of the body. “I’ve already got my gloves on.”
I grabbed the side of his jaw and eased the corpse’s mouth open. “What the hell… ?”
I turned his head to the side. A clear liquid poured out of the man’s mouth onto the fancy wood floors.
“Water,” I said. “Or at least it looks like it.”
By now, Connor had slipped on a pair of gloves as well. He moved the man’s head back to the way we had found him. He pulled out a Maglite, twisted it on, and held it up to the man’s mouth. “There’s more.” He compressed the man’s chest and water poured out of his mouth again, this time to both sides of his face. “His lungs are full of it.”
Davidson stepped back. “Are you telling me he drowned?”
“From the inside,” Connor said. “Yes.”
“But his clothes and hair are dry,” Jane said.
Davidson jerked his thumb at her. “What she said. Maybe someone forced a hose down his throat?”
“I don’t think so,” Jane said. “Look at the floor. Until Simon tilted his head, there wasn’t a drop of water anywhere. If there had been a struggle or something like that, you’d think there would be water all over the place.”
I stood up. “She’s right. No wonder the regular cops are spooked. No signs of struggle… nothing that makes sense.”
Davidson crossed his arms and stood in silence for a minute. When he looked up again, he was staring at me. “You want to do your little magic-fingers thing you do?”
“Magic fingers,” I said, standing. I stripped off my gloves. “You make me feel like a coin-op bed in a sleazy motel.”
“Hey, if that’s what works for you …”
“Quiet,” I said, and then set to work passing my hands over all the objects, antiques, and decorations around the room.
“Well?” Davidson said, sounding rather annoyed.
“Nothing,” I said and shrugged.
“Did you forget to charge your psychometry or something?” he asked.
I stared at him, shaking my head. “Do you have the first clue how this works with me? The building is new, and I think a lot of the stuff this guy has here is new, too. All of these quality-looking antiques? Fakes.”
“So?”
“I can read a lot of objects—old, new—but it helps if they have some significance for there to be a psychometric charge. Either everything is too new to have a lick of a charge or something is blocking it somehow. Not everything in this world carries a charge to it.”
Davidson looked more confused than ever. He turned to Connor. “Is there a chart of some kind that I could use to follow all this?”
“This isn’t science,” I said. “It’s parascience. The research, even in our records down in the Gauntlet, is a bit sketchy on the how and why of it all. I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit your investigative needs.”
Davidson unfolded his arms and pointed at the corpse in the center of the room. “What about reading the body?”
“Thanks, but no, thanks,” I said. “I don’t do the dead.”
“Eww,” Jane said, flailing her hands like she was trying to shake the mental image off of her.
I scrunched my face up. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I just meant Connor’s the guy who deals with the dead.”
Connor stood up from the body. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Like I mentioned a minute ago, this guy’s soul ain’t around here.”
Davidson’s lips were pursed in agitation. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his usual mask of composure was back in place. He walked over to Jane and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Listen, Jane,” Davidson said. “I need you to go around to the rest of the apartments on this floor and ask some questions. See if anyone heard anything.”
“That’s why you brought me along?” she said, looking a little miffed. “Couldn’t your cops have done that for you?”
David Davidson shook his head. “Did you see them in the hallway before?” he asked. “They were freaked-out enough that they didn’t even want to come back into the apartment. You want me to send those guys knocking on all the doors? I think you’d be a far more welcome sight to the residents. The people who can afford to live in a building like this are either cultured or rich beyond the beyond. Probably both. They’re going to be more receptive—more forthcoming—to a pretty young woman than to creepedout cops.”
“Oh,” Jane said, crossing her arms. “How sexist of you. And here I thought you might actually need me for my technomancy.” She made no effort to move.
Davidson looked over at me. “Are all ex-cultists this stubborn?”
Jane’s eyes flared with anger, so I spoke up quickly.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Be lucky she’s an ex-cultist. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to be standing that close to her if I were you.”
Jane gave him an evil grin. “A girl can learn a lot from cultists. Like how to fillet a man using a kukri …”
Davidson smiled back at her, not missing a beat. “Maybe we can save that as our second option… you know, after asking questions of the nice people who live here.”
Jane looked over to me. Her eyes smoldered. I nodded. “Go,” I said. “There’s nothing to be done in here yet. Talk to the neighbors. Then check their security system records.”
“Security systems don’t ever want to cooperate with my technomancy,” she said, “locks or otherwise. It’s like they’ve purposely been trained to not talk to me.”
“Still, there’s nothing for you to do in here. I think this crime scene is technically going to get classified as Other Division anyway, so that means Connor and I will get stuck with all the paperwork on this one.”
“I’ll go talk to all the neighbors, then,” Jane said, still somewhat cheesed off, “but if anything Arcana related comes up, call me.”
Connor let out a single laugh. “You mean other than Professor Redfield drowning from the inside without any signs of struggle, forced entry, or water spilled?”
Jane shivered and her face lost its look of anger. “Yeah, other than that.”
She turned around, shaking off the darkness that had crossed her face, and headed back to the front door of the apartment.
“All right,” Connor said. “Let’s see what we can see.”
I set to work once again trying to run the psychometric histories in the room, but whether they were devoid of them or I was simply thrown by Jane’s comment about drawer space earlier and afraid to use them since the incident with the tattooist and its weird aftereffects, I wasn’t sure.
All I knew was that my emotions were still stuck on high and it was hard enough to fight off that woman’s urges without having them mess around with my own emotions. My mind kept superimposing Jane meeting a sexy stranger while knocking on doors for the investigation.
I tried to focus on the crime scene but it was little use. The tattooist’s jealous rage kept me haunted by thoughts of gouging my own eyes out, but without the needle of a tattoo gun at my disposal, the best I could hope for was getting a black eye from trying to use my bat instead. I fought the urge, but only barely.
5
Without a lingering spirit to be found, Connor was more than willing to call it a night fairly early, which meant that the two of us headed back to the Lovecraft Café. Following up on the case could wait until we broke a lead on it, but given the budget cuts, the preliminary paperwork could not.
We headed back through the coffeehouse and behind the dark curtain that led into the theater hidden behind it. The eighties version of Clash of the Titans played on the movie screen. Laurence Olivier was chewing up the scenery as Zeus as we made our way down the right-hand aisle past the crowd of thirty or so watchers. At the back corner of the theater, I swiped a plastic keycard against a metal plate next to a door marked H.P. The door swung into the open bull pen of the Department of Extraordinary Affairs with its carved in runes ringing the tops of the walls. We headed back past the cubicle farms and doors heading off in every direction until we hit the long red curtains that sectioned off Other Division from the rest. Connor and I settled in at our partners desk, which sat in a space that was larger than the cubicles and partially walled higher. Each of us worked in silence drafting our own accounts of what we both found and didn’t find. I was almost falling asleep in one of my case folders when Connor spoke up.
“What was that crack Jane made earlier?” Connor asked. “The one about Professor Redfield having a lot of drawer space… Seemed to rile you.”
“It was nothing,” I said, feeling the tattooist’s residual anger rising up once again at the mention of it. “Let it go.” I fell back into work and silence for a few more minutes, forcing the emotions down again, but when I looked up at Connor for a second, he was watching me.
“Yes?” I asked.
“Any wedding bells in the future?”
“Whoa,” I said, throwing my pen at him. I tried to hide the unbidden anger as it rose again, tried to play it off. “Are you proposing?”
“Funny,” Connor said. “You know who I mean. You and Jane.”
“Slow down,” I said, sharp. “Right now we’re just fine as is, thanks.” I fished another pen out of the D.E.A. mug on my desk and went back to my file.
“Really?” Connor asked, skepticism thick in the single word.
“Really,” I assured him, hoping to end the discussion.
“Well, maybe you could try not sounding so pissed off when you say it, then,” he said.
I looked up from my desk, sighing. I pushed the anger down. “I thought I was doing a fairly good job at hiding it. I’m that transparent, am I?”
“Not to most people,” Connor said. “No. Probably not. But to your partner in slime? Yeah, it’s pretty obvious.”
I swore under my breath. “Remind me to sign up for No, You Can’t Read My Poker Face when they offer it up next time.”
Connor settled back into his chair. “Will do,” he said. “Am I detecting trouble in young hipster paradise?”
“Something like that,” I said, attempting to dodge the question by delving back into my paperwork.
Connor shifted a stack of case files from his in-box to right in front of him. “I’m all ears, at least for the next few hours,” he said, then looked at the rest of the stack still sitting there. “Maybe even a few more than that.”
“Fine,” I said, rubbing my eyes. I put down my pen. “I had a little psychometric episode earlier unlike any I’ve ever had before. The two of us were helping your brother with that ghost problem they’ve been having over at the Gibson-Case Center.”
“The tattooist?” Connor asked. I nodded. “Aidan told me about her before. Seems like he was a bit frustrated to be dealing with something he couldn’t punch, kick, or bite.”
“Yeah, that’s about right,” I said. “Anyway, I psychometried my way into the woman’s past and… I don’t know. It felt different. She was all Fatal Attraction over this guy who was cheating on her and I just got caught up in her whirlwind of emotions. She was passionate, angry, outraged, all at once… and when I pulled out of it, I couldn’t shake her severe emotional state. I still can’t. It flared up at Professor Redfield’s apartment when Jane teased me about the drawer space.”
“And this hasn’t happened before?” Connor asked. “The emotion of someone’s past lingering like that?”
I shook my head. “I’ve always had trouble with using my powers,” I said. “You know that, but nothing quite like this, not since before I joined the Department and started working with you on controlling them. The emotion was so… raw that I couldn’t ignore it. When I first came out of the vision, I was so caught up in it still I ended up snapping at Jane.”
“About… ?”
“Something stupid,” I said, avoiding looking over at him. “A piece of furniture.”
“All great fights are over stupid things when it comes to building a relationship,” he said.
“Thanks, Master Yoda, but I don’t think a chest of drawers is something to get all worked up about.”
Connor shrugged and started in on his paperwork. “Depends on the chest of drawers, I suppose.”
“That’s just it,” I said. “One second we’re fighting ghosts; the next I’m snapping at her about the dresser she liked there.”
Connor looked up at me. “And that’s an issue … why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Because right now she only has a single drawer in my apartment and wants something more, I suppose.”
“And you think this was all due to your interaction with the tattooist, kid? You sure you just don’t have commit
ment issues?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I know I have my issues when it comes to women. I’ve never gotten as close to someone as I have with Jane. I’m in untested waters there. Plus, you know how particular I am when it comes to antique furniture and all that. I spent years making money off of pieces here and there. Let’s face it, Connor… there’s an importance to assigning a piece of furniture to someone, a charge of emotional attachment that comes from taking a big step like that. Don’t you think?”
Connor rolled his eyes at me. “Yeah, I can see how her wanting more than your old underwear drawer to keep her stuff in is totally unreasonable,” he said. “Oh, wait. No, I can’t. It’s not like she asked to move in.”
“You think she wants to move in?” I asked, a strange panic rising in my chest.
“Did she say that?”
“Well… no.”
Connor rolled his eyes at me. “Relax.”
“Forget it,” I said, trying to calm myself. “If you had been through all that raw pain like I had, you might stand a chance of seeing where I’m coming from.”
I grabbed my pen and started up with my paperwork again. Compared to getting advice from Connor, it was almost enjoyable, and the panic fell away.
“Tell me this, kid,” he said. “How many nights does she stay over?”
“In a week?”
“Yeah,” Connor said. “How many?”
I calculated it in my head. “Five or six, I guess.”
Connor threw up his arms. “Jesus, kid. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are living together already. If that’s the way it is, give the girl some more storage space.”
Doubt crept into my mind. If Connor was this exasperated with me, maybe I was overreacting. “You think?”
Connor leaned forward over his desk, lowering his voice. “Listen, I know you’re still new at relationships and all, let alone having one that works, and it hasn’t been that long. But trust me on this. As much as I frown on office romances, I like Jane, and though it pains me to say it, I think you two kind of work well together. You push her away on something as trivial as this and it’s going to build, fester. You’ll ask her to pass the creamer one morning and next thing you know, it will be smashing on the wall next to your head from her throwing it at you. Give the girl more space and man up.”