by R. L. Naquin
Trusting my gut to interpret the wailing of a banshee—despite never having met one before—I renewed my efforts to search inside. If I was wrong, I might not be in time to save whoever was in trouble. If I was right, I still might not be in time. But I had to try.
We couldn’t hear each other over Wendy’s shrieks, so I waved at the others to split up and search. I headed to the front of the store near the three checkout counters by the door and worked my way around from there.
A pretty blonde whose Hidden under-shape was actually a dark-haired brownie was the only clerk manning a register. She squinted in pain, fingers plugging her ears. She grimaced at me, and I moved on.
I passed several aisles of ribbons and beads, each with an employee or customer or two. All were alive and well, if not in pain from the constant banshee cries. A human woman with thick prescription glasses and a bulbous bouffant of a hairdo stood in the floral department hunched over a container of fake yellow chrysanthemums, choosing a few and placing them in her shopping basket, oblivious of the chaos around her.
After completing my quarter of the store, I turned back to look again. The wails stopped, leaving my ears buzzing from the sudden silence.
Jackie the gargoyle stood in the aisle next to me, white-knuckling a package of green clay that had burst in her grip. She let out a long, shaky breath. “My gods. Was that Wendy?”
I nodded. “It was. And I have to assume she was here to warn us about something. We need to make sure everybody’s okay.”
“I’ll help.” She glanced down at her hand and stared at it. “When did that happen?” She pulled her fingers out of the clay. “I’ll get rid of this and come help you look.” She walked away in a daze, still staring at the clay in her hands.
As I searched for my colleagues and anyone who might be in trouble, I saw more of the same reaction Jackie had experienced. Dazed expressions and wandering feet were everywhere. One man in the woodcrafts section held a broken dowel rod in his hands. A woman behind the counter of the framing department stared at a ripped poster and cracked glass in front of her.
Ash flagged me down near the acrylic paints. “Anything?”
“No. You?”
“Nope. Just a lot of confused people and oddly oblivious humans.”
Tahm appeared beside us. “Brody found her.” He took off toward the back of the store.
“Damn.” I’d been hoping it was a warning or a false alarm. But judging by the grim look on Tahm’s face, and Brody’s once we got to him, we were too late.
Brody’s enormous bulk sat on the floor beside a thin, elegant woman with pointed ears. In death, it was far easier to see beneath her Hidden disguise to the elf she truly was.
Ash squatted beside them, her eyes wide. “Oh, Brody, I’m so sorry. What happened to her?”
Brody tried to speak, but his throat was choked with sorrow. He picked her up in his arms and carried her limp body into the back room.
I turned to Tahm, hoping he had answers.
“Her name was River. It looks like she may have been poisoned, but we’re not sure.”
I frowned. “Why? I thought no one was going to accept the cosplay Guest of Honor title this year. Wasn’t that what tied them all together?”
Tahm looked past me, staring at the swinging door to the back room where Brody had gone. “I interviewed her this morning.” His voice was flat and his eyes filled with sorrow. “I reaped her soul. It was stuck.” He showed the tiny silver light blinking softly in the stone of his ring.
I realized then how hard Tahm was taking this. I reached out and held his hand. It was warm, and his grip was gentle. I squelched the tiny quiver of excitement in my stomach at the contact and focused on the tragedy around me.
He squeezed my hand in response. “She wasn’t a Guest of Honor. She was last year’s Best of Show winner.”
The information knocked me back a step. This changed things. The killer was out of Guest of Honor folks to kill. Was she simply going after the most talented cosplayers in the area?
Or were all the cosplayers in the area a target?
Chapter Nine
Because the store also catered to humans, we couldn’t simply have them close up for the day, at least not until all the humans were gone. It was one thing for Hidden customers to find out someone had died a few minutes earlier. It was an entirely different thing for humans to find out. Humans expected things to be in newspapers and on television. Someone dying in a craft store—especially if it was a murder—would make it to the local news at the very least.
So, despite having a personal tragedy unfold in the middle of their workday, the Hidden employees of the Craft Shack pulled themselves together and did a fantastic job of covering it up until the humans were all gone. Covering up was, after all, a regular pastime for Hidden everywhere from the beginning of their creation.
In the back, Brody found a quiet place for River. Normally, we’d call the OGREs in to investigate and to take away the body. Unfortunately, we were the OGREs today, and we were ill-equipped to handle the situation.
Suddenly, it was no longer so much fun playing sheriff.
Help arrived unexpectedly through the front door. It even had an appointment to be there.
Tyrell Reese was huge. Brody was a big guy, sure, but he was no minotaur. The human disguise Tyrell wore seemed to pinch and bind him, though I knew that wasn’t true. But he was such a large creature, I had a difficult time believing wearing a human body wasn’t uncomfortable.
He arrived at two for his appointment with me, found everything locked up and a closed sign on the door and banged his fist against the glass until someone noticed and let him in. He strode through the swinging door much like one would expect a man with the head of a bull to stride—with purpose and authority.
His human nostrils flared as he glanced at my sheriff’s badge. “You must be Kam.”
I’d swapped out the boots, hat and fringed shirt for a regular button-up white shirt and black pants, but the badge was funny, so I’d kept it. I touched it self-consciously and wondered now why I hadn’t ditched the stupid badge, too. This guy was the real thing, and here I was messing around with a dead body in the room.
I held out my hand. “You must be Tyrell. Thanks for coming.”
His hand swallowed mine, and I wondered how he managed to get people like Mrs. Appleton to relax around him. I was rarely intimidated by anyone, but this guy was doing an excellent job. And all he’d done was walk into the room and shake my hand. Maybe it was because I hadn’t dealt with a minotaur before. Or maybe his self-confidence was so huge, it dwarfed everyone around him.
Brody stepped forward and also shook the bullheaded man’s hand. “Glad to see you again, Officer.”
Tyrell snorted. “I’m not an officer yet.” He shook Tahm’s and Ash’s hands, then returned his attention to me. “You have somewhere to talk?”
I nodded. “Follow me.” I led him to Brody’s office and closed the door. “Have a seat.” I sat in Brody’s chair and faced Tyrell across the desk.
He sat back in the small chair, and it squeaked in protest. “So. Headquarters finally figured out what Ziggy was up to and sent someone out.”
I shook my head. “No. Actually, we’re here for lost souls and stumbled on Ziggy’s ridiculous scam. But we want to fix it.”
He grunted. “What do you propose to do?”
I put my elbows on the desk and folded my hands. “Well, we’re interviewing some of the prior OGREs to begin with. Maybe not everybody is suitable for the job. I don’t want to make assumptions and put things back the way they were with a new person in charge. I want to know where things went wrong.”
“Good.” He scratched his ear. “I’m glad to know you’re taking it seriously.”
“Well, as seriously as I can with a serial killer on the loose. I could really use some help.”
He drew his thick brows together in a scowl. “Serial killer?”
I nodded. “That’s why I called you in here first. You were the investigating officer on two of the cases.”
He drew his head back, eyes wide. “I was?” He sat forward and the chair squealed. “How did I miss a serial killer? I don’t recall any related cases.” He paused and blinked, apparently thinking about it. “Not the hit-and-run and the anaphylactic shock kid?”
“What makes you think those two would be related?” I kept my voice soft and even. Yes, I was trying to get information out of him about the cases he’d investigated. But this was also a job interview. I needed someone who knew the job but was also smart enough to put things together.
“The hit-and-run seemed pretty random. There were no witnesses. The dog-hair kid, well, people die from allergic reactions all the time. Nobody would admit to having a dog in there, but it could have been as simple as one of his roomies petting a stray and forgetting about it. As severe as that allergy was, it could easily have been down to bad luck.”
“But you didn’t think so.” I could tell by his expression he was reliving the investigation, going over facts he’d probably been over a million times.
“They knew each other. Two accidents between colleagues within a matter of months smelled off to me. But Ziggy wouldn’t listen to me. I tried to look into it off the books, but Ziggy fired us all, and I had to find another job.”
“What reason could he possibly give for firing the whole department?”
“Budget constraints. He said the order came from HQ.”
“It definitely did not.”
“Ziggy’s an ass. I don’t even know why he was in charge in the first place.” He waved his hand in the air as if trying to erase the conversation. “Tell me who else is dead. You said serial killer. That means at least three. Was it someone else who worked here? Is that why you’re working back here as if it were your own office?”
“Well, I sure as hell wasn’t working in that abandoned warehouse Ziggy was in. I’m surprised it even had electricity.”
“What abandoned warehouse? Our office was in the basement of a sushi restaurant off South Aspen.”
I’d been right. Ziggy had moved into the warehouse without telling anybody and was keeping the rent money as well as the payroll that Headquarters sent him every month. “That guy is an even bigger dirt ball than I thought.”
“You have no idea.”
“Oh, I think I do.” I paused, looking at the notes I’d been taking. “Okay, so you asked about the other deaths.”
“There was more than one?” He shifted in his chair, and I was afraid it might break.
I passed the file on Wendy across to him. Ash had filled in some of the information that had been missing when we’d picked it up. “Another hit-and-run, this one outside a toy store.” I waited for him to pick it up and take a look. His eyes moved quickly as he read the report. “And we just had another death about an hour ago.”
He lowered the papers and stared at me. “You’re kidding.”
I shook my head. “This office under the sushi restaurant. Did it have a morgue? Forensics lab? Anything useful?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
I stared at him for a long moment. He was smart. He seemed to care about what was going on. He had experience. “Tyrell, will you come back to work for the OGRE squad?”
“What are you doing about Ziggy?” He folded his bulky arms and stuck out his chin.
I scowled. “I didn’t have the luxury of a jail cell to put him in or staff to keep an eye on him. I had to let him go. But HQ will send someone to find him and take him in. I promise you, he’ll be dealt with.”
“I don’t know how such a slimeball was put in charge in the first place. How do I know it won’t happen again?” He eyed me with a cautious look.
“Because you’ll be the one in charge. I’m pretty sure I can get you and your team back pay from when you were fired, too. But I really need you to get your team together and your office up and running as fast as you can. I kind of have a body back here.”
He drew in a sharp breath. “It happened here?” He held up a hand. “No. Of course it did. That’s why the place is locked up so tight.”
I ran my hand through my hair. Half of it had come loose from its ponytail without my realizing it. “I have no one to take the body away, and no place to drop it off without a very long drive to another district.” I reached for my purse and dumped it on the desk. “And I have a crapload of makeup and brushes that need to be sent by courier to a forensics lab in Kansas City because no one here has the equipment or the personnel to analyze it.”
He shook his head. “You are a mess.”
“I agree. But there’s nothing else I can do.” I spread my hands in surrender.
“Fine. I loved my job. And I can’t let you steer this investigation. No offense, but you’re in way over your head.”
“No offense taken. I know when I’m drowning.”
“I’ll sign the contract when it gets here. In the meantime, I need this office for a little while to get my team and my office back. Then you and your team can catch me up on what I missed.” He stood and waited for me to vacate the desk. “Give me about an hour. While I’m doing that, if you wouldn’t mind, I’ll need witness accounts from everyone who was here.”
“We’re already taking care of it.”
“Good.” He waited expectantly while I made my way to the door.
The weight of the world left my shoulders and floated around in the rafters. I wondered if Wendy would see it if she came back. “Thanks, Tyrell. I appreciate it.”
“No problem.” He sat in Brody’s chair, and it barely made a sound. “And Kam?”
“Yeah?”
“You did a good job.”
I smiled as I walked out the door. “Thanks.”
* * *
The rest of the day was a whirl of activity mixed with long periods of waiting. True to his word, Tyrell spent about an hour by himself in the office making calls and reading our notes. Before long, someone pounded on the loading dock door. Brody slid the door open and let in a pair of dwarfs—a sister and brother named Poppy and Goat.
They bustled up the ramp, carrying a stretcher between them. Tyrell met them on the dock and took them straight to where River’s body waited.
We’d tried to reach River’s boyfriend, but he didn’t answer his phone. I was secretly relieved by this. The whole thing was tragic as it was. I didn’t want to be there when her boyfriend found out. Whatever the procedure was, the new-old OGRE squad would take care of it.
That didn’t mean we were off the hook and could go home. I may not have been in charge of the murder investigation, but I was still in charge of the soul chasing and reaping, and we had two souls in the area on the loose. Under normal work circumstances, I’d have patted Tahm on the back and congratulated him for reaping his first soul. But he’d interviewed River. Usually, a reaper didn’t know the person they were reaping. Reaping River’s soul hardly felt like something we should celebrate.
Neither of the souls I had to catch were ready to cross. I could have tried to force the issue and used my soul stone to track them without mercy and drag them in, kicking and screaming. But I didn’t believe in that. Folks should be allowed to cross peacefully, knowing they’d left nothing important undone. Unfortunately, what these two had left to do was the ongoing murder investigation.
So, I wasn’t out of it, and neither was my team.
While the dwarfs bundled up River and placed her on the stretcher, Tyrell took me back into the office. “You dumped your whole purse.” He scratched his ear. “I wasn’t sure what was yours and what needed to go to the lab. Can you sort through it and put it in the bag for me, please?”
“Sure.” I sorted through the assorted mints,
candy wrappers, my own lipsticks, wallet, hairbrush and signed photo of Patrick Stewart I’d gotten when I’d run into him at a grocery store in St. Louis. “This is all mine. Sorry.” I grabbed the rolled-up brushes and dropped them in the bag, along with the sampling of products I’d swiped from Simon’s table.
“Clever of you to suspect the brushes,” Tyrell said. “I had some of the hairs from the makeup tested. That’s how we know for sure it’s dog hair. I never thought to compare them to the bristles in the brushes.”
I smiled. “I hope my hunch plays out.” I frowned. “Did you ever have a theory on why he didn’t get to his epinephrine in time? It wasn’t that far away.”
He shook his head. “There wasn’t any. We checked the whole room.”
“It was in the top drawer of his dresser.”
Tyrell raised an eyebrow. “Now that is interesting. I checked it myself. There was no injector anywhere in the room.”
I wrinkled my forehead, puzzled. Had he missed it? Had someone put it back later? None of this made sense. “The guys cleaned up his room when you didn’t come back. Maybe they put it away.”
He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to go back and talk to them again. I’ve got a hunch none of them did it, though.”
I nodded. “I bet you’re right.”
As the day progressed, we sent the shell-shocked employees home after they gave their statements, and two more new OGRE team members came in.
Around five, Tyrell patted me on the back. “Go. Take your team with you. We’ve got this now. Come see me at the real office tomorrow, and we’ll compare notes.”
I tried not to look too enthusiastic, but gods, I was tired. Ash had been running errands and making calls all day, and Tahm had taken most of the statements while I’d unloaded all our findings on the new OGRE chief. All three of us were used up.
Before I left, I took Brody aside. “I am so sorry all this is happening. You can have your store back tomorrow, but I want you to call me if you think of anything I can do to help, okay?”
He gave me a tired, sad smile. “You did a lot. I appreciate it. If something else happens, I’ll call the OGREs, but I’ll call you, too. Hell, we wouldn’t have OGREs to call if it weren’t for you. I know you’ll sort this out. If I can help, I will. These are my people.”