by Laura Bickle
“Wait a second. Back up.” Anya leaned forward. ALANN backed through the images for one that snagged her attention: Hope’s car parked just outside of her headquarters, with a woman climbing out of the car. She was carrying something. “Can you zoom in?”
ALANN obliged. The shot grew grainier as it got larger, but Anya could see the object she held more clearly: a silver flacon, decorated in a pattern of vines and leaves muddied by the resolution.
“Hold that shot.”
Anya scrambled through her files of photos of Bernie’s house, flipping through the shots. That flacon was familiar… there. The flacon appeared on Bernie’s mantel, beside the swords and bottles of unidentifiable contents. She ran her finger over her handwritten notes detailing what had been missing: “one silver-plated flacon, origin unknown.”
She stared back at the screen. “Gotcha.”
“This is opening a can of worms.”
Marsh leaned back in his chair. His office was one step above Anya’s… well, maybe more like a dozen steps. On the first floor, he was afforded light from a window, covered by bent blinds. It didn’t matter that the window faced an alley; it was still coveted daylight, and Anya blinked in it. Sparky ambled behind her, head cocked, listening to the sound of Marsh’s fire- and police-band radios chattering from the top of a file cabinet.
Anya pointed to the photo. “DPD sent me a copy of the photo.” And they had: Once Anya was specific about the time, date, and intersection, they faxed over a copy of what was visible from the red-light camera mount outside of Hope’s office. “It’s all public information.”
Marsh laced his hands behind his head. “And do I want to ask about how you knew to ask for this, how you knew that Hope would be holding stolen property at this specific date and time?”
“No, sir. You probably don’t want to ask.”
“The public is jumpy enough about Big Brother. There was enough of an uproar about red-light cameras generating tickets in the first place. If the public thought that this could be used for surveillance…” He shook his head. “This would result in a furor. The city would be sued outright, and by people with deeper pockets than Hope.”
“Captain, I’m sure I can tie her to Bernie’s death. And several others. I just can’t prove it yet.”
Marsh stared at the photo with contempt. “You and I both know that Hope’s a shady character. Bilked the gullible, and destroyed a lot of lives. But I don’t know that we can get a judge to approve a warrant based on this.” He flipped through the pages of items that Anya had listed that she wanted to search for: all the items that had come up missing in the break-in at Bernie’s house. “This is broad. A fishing expedition.”
“Will you at least try?” Anya held her breath.
Marsh looked at her, weighing the options. Finally, he said, “Okay. I’ll ask. Whether the judge approves it or not, the shitstorm that follows is gonna rest squarely on your shoulders, kid.”
“Back for more?”
Charon stood outside the morgue, smoking a cigarette that smelled like incense. His cold blue eyes watched as Anya walked across the parking lot, Sparky loping along at her heels. Anya clutched the newt transporter tight against her body. It seemed that they were generating more heat of their own. She took this as a good sign, but the newt transporter was giving her a serious case of sunburn along her ribs.
“I did what you told me to. We cast a magick circle around Pandora’s Jar.”
Charon nodded. He threw his cigarette down to the pavement, ground it out with his boot heel. Afternoon sunlight gleamed through his image, which seemed thin as smoke in the daylight. “That’ll hold her for the time being. But she’s got to be stopped before she figures out a way through.”
“I’m hoping to get a warrant, to catch her with some stolen property from arson scenes. If I can get her away from her reliquaries for long enough, maybe we can muster up some charges.”
Charon frowned. “I don’t think you’ll be able to stop her that way. You’d have to separate her from all her bottles, and she’ll fight that to the death.”
“Your way is to fight her on the astral plane.”
“Yes.”
Anya looked at him skeptically. “How do I get there?”
Charon opened his pocket and flipped a coin to her. Anya caught it reflexively, and was surprised to find that it was real. Her fingers curled around a solid bronze coin with irregular edges and the crude image of an emperor stamped in it.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“Toll for the ferryman.” Charon shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, but it works. Put that under your tongue and say my name.”
She fingered the coin. “How do I protect the eggs and Sparky while I’m gone?”
“You can leave them behind. But I would suggest that you take them with you.”
Anya nodded, put the coin in her pocket. “Thanks.” She reached for the door handle to go inside.
Charon cocked his head. “You got more stiffs in there?”
“I’m not sure,” Anya admitted. “I’m trying to track down a body that might have been… misplaced.”
Charon squinted up at the noonday sun, and the gesture rendered his eyes nearly translucent. “That can happen. Who is it?”
Anya paused, caught between the warm outside sunshine and the cold, stale air-conditioning in the breezeway. “A computer scientist. I don’t know his name. His brain’s being used for research, and I… I want to know who he was.”
“This is personal, then?”
Anya bit her lip. She hated admitting to herself that she didn’t take Brian’s word at face value, but something about the situation with ALANN bothered her. For someone who had signed his body over to science, his virtual avatar was sure keen on searching for a way out. “Yeah.”
Charon nodded, following her inside. “I’ll help you look.”
Anya, Sparky, and Charon wound down through the hallways of the morgue, though only Anya’s feet made a sound on the tiled floor. She stuck her head in the autopsy room, seeing Gina on her step stool. The diminutive coroner was up to her elbows in gore.
“Hey, Gina,” Anya said. “Mind if I take a look at your death certs?”
“Knock yourself out,” Gina said. “Anything special you’re looking for?”
“I’m looking for a death within the last couple of months. All I know is that he was a computer scientist, and probably died of natural causes. Maybe released his body to the university for research purposes.”
“We haven’t had any donors within the last couple of months. But you’re welcome to paw through the certs. We haven’t scanned them all into the system yet. Fucking interns are never around. Just wash your hands before and after—never know what germies are on them.”
“Noted,” Anya said, making a face. Obediently, she washed her hands with pink dish soap at the coroner’s sink and retreated to Gina’s office around the corner. The place looked like Bernie’s living room: papers piled in stacks knee-high and held together with rubber bands.
“How the hell does she ever find anything in here?” Anya muttered.
“Actually, Gina knows where everything is,” Charon answered. “She’s the only one. And she likes it that way. Try here.” Charon pointed to a green file cabinet labeled punched death tickets in Gina’s spidery scrawl on masking tape.
Anya pulled out the drawer and started flipping through the death certificates. They were filed with the most recent first, going back six months. The certs were numbered in the upper right-hand corner, included the filing date and the decedent’s death date at the top. Anya zeroed in on a line on the form halfway down the page, a blank for the deceased’s occupation. She flipped through several dozen “none” answers, a few “unknowns,” and lots of “retired” answers. Several factory workers, a couple of housewives, and a tragically young student, dead of alcohol poisoning.
Her fingers stopped halfway through the drawer. She’d found a “computer systems engineer,” Calvin Dres
ser. His level of education was indicated as “Ph.D.” She stuck a pen in the file to hold her place, pulled it.
Principal cause of death was listed as acute cardiorespiratory failure. Seemed ordinary enough. Calvin was sixty-three, lived in Detroit. She scanned to the bottom of the page, for information on who had taken possession of the body. Her heart sank when she saw an illegible scrawl that she recognized as Brian’s handwriting, and his address at the university computer lab. The blanks for place and date of burial or cremation were left blank.
“Did you find it?” Charon asked. He was sitting among the piles on Gina’s desk, still as a paperweight. Sparky sat beside him, watching the second hand on the wall clock tick in fascination.
“I think so. Do you remember a Calvin Dresser?” She waved the death cert in front of him.
Charon nodded. “Yeah. Old guy. There wasn’t anything for me to do. His spirit was gone when I got there.”
“Good thing Gina can’t hear you call a sixty-three-year-old man ‘old.’”
Anya dug around on Gina’s desk for a phone and a phone book. She looked up the main number for the university switchboard and dialed it.
“Could you transfer me to the Division of Anatomy at the medical school?”
“Please hold.” Muzak began to play.
Anya continued to rifle through Gina’s files.
“What are you looking for?” Charon asked.
“I want to know what he looked like.”
Anya dug through the manila file folders until she found one with a matching death cert number. She splayed the folder open on Gina’s desk, cradling the phone receiver between her cheek and shoulder. She found a picture of a man in his early sixties, lying on the coroner’s slab before he’d been undressed and washed. He was a balding man dressed in a sport coat that was easily twenty years out of date, a dress shirt, and creased pants. His expression in repose was one of bemusement. There were two red dents on the bridge of his nose, where Anya imagined a pair of glasses pinched. The file was thin; this had been a relatively straightforward case of the man passing away at home without any witnesses. It was a small wonder the medical examiner had gotten involved at all, but there had apparently been some question about the prescription drugs paramedics found in his home and proper dosages.
The Muzak cut off, and a voice came on the line:
“Division of Anatomy, Carla speaking.”
“Hi, Carla. My name is Anya Kalinczyk. I’m an investigator with the Detroit Fire Department. I need to get a copy of Calvin Dresser’s Anatomical Bequeathal Form.”
“Please hold while I look that up for you, ma’am.”
More of the dreadful Muzak. Anya stretched the phone cord to the far side of the room and slapped the death certificate into the copier. The old copier chugged to life and spat green light on the certificate, reluctantly spewed out a copy before coughing.
“Ms. Kalincyzk?”
“Yes?” Anya cradled the phone on her shoulder.
“Ma’am, we don’t have a bequeathal form or a cremation authorization for anyone under that name.”
Anya swallowed. “Thank you very much. I appreciate your help.” She placed the phone down on the receiver and stared at it.
Brian had lied to her.
Calvin Dresser hadn’t given permission to do jack shit to his remains. Brian had taken the body—who knew where it was now?—and conducted his own research on it. Anya felt her hands ball into fists. After all they had seen as members of DAGR, didn’t he have any more respect for the dead than this?
Charon swung his feet. “Did you find your missing body?”
“I think so. But I’m not liking where it’s turning up.”
Anya’s cell phone buzzed.
“Kalincyzk.”
“It’s Marsh. I finally found a judge with a big enough beef with Hope Solomon to sign a warrant. We got permission to search her office and car only, since that’s where the photograph shows the evidence was taken.”
Anya smiled, exhilarated. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Don’t thank me, Kalincyzk. Something tells me you’re gonna have your work cut out for you when you go knocking on that woman’s door.”
Anya strode through Hope Solomon’s beautifully appointed pastel lobby with a wall of DPD uniforms at her back. The well-manicured receptionist stood in alarm at the invasion.
“Is Hope in?”
“She is, but she’s not available—”
Anya slid a copy of the search warrant across her desk. “Please stay here, and don’t touch anything.” A uniform stood beside her as she began to sputter and reach for her phone.
Anya strode down the pastel hallway, with uniforms at her heels. Sparky snaked beside her, teeth bared. He wanted to get the bitch every bit as much as Anya did.
Anya straight-armed the door to Hope’s office. Hope was on her feet behind her massive glass desk, her heels sinking into the carpet as she stalked around it to confront Anya. The uniforms fanned out into the room, swarming over the plush white inner sanctum like ants on sugar.
“You’ve no right to be here.” Hope trembled with rage. “Get out.”
Sparky stalked toward her, crouched, and growled. His tail lashed, and Hope took a step back.
“We have a warrant to search for certain artifacts missing from a crime scene.” Anya held a copy of the warrant in front of her like a shield and tucked the newt transporter behind her. “You are restrained from interfering with the search.”
“You can’t do that. My lawyer—”
“Sit down and shut up, lady,” Anya told her. “We’ll at least give you the courtesy of telling you what we take.” Which is more than I can say for Bernie’s artifacts. Or his life. Or Leslie’s. And Chris’s.
Anya circled behind Hope to the bookcases behind her desk. With fingers covered by latex gloves, she pulled books off the shelves, compared the knickknacks to items on the list. She pawed through drawers and Hope’s credenza, eyes straying to her papers. She couldn’t seize anything she found as evidence unless it directly pointed to a crime. Hope’s papers, like the financial records she’d sent, were well-sanitized. There wasn’t a single item there over three weeks old.
“Nothing here, Lieutenant,” one of the cops said.
Hope smirked.
“We’ve got the rest of the building to search,” Anya told him calmly, though her heart thumped. She stepped out into the hallway, opening doors from east to west: a conference room, a kitchenette, a bathroom, a mop closet. She smelled the faint residue of magick, but it wasn’t on this floor.
At the back of the hall was a fire door, but it was locked. The door handle was so cold that her sweaty fingers nearly stuck to the metal. She thought back to what Charon had said about spiritual energy conservation, about how energy had to be pulled away from a source to manifest.
“This is in violation of city fire code,” Anya snapped.
Hope and her assistant stood in the hall. “I don’t know what happened to the key.”
“Open this door, or I’ll break it.”
Hope shrugged. “My lawyer will have a field day with destruction-of-property claims.”
“You can’t deny us access to parts of the structure named in the warrant.”
“You want for us to break it down?” one of the DPD officers asked.
“Give me a minute.”
Anya looked around the hallway for a fire extinguisher, located one in a glass case. The red housing contrasted sorely with Hope’s peaches-and-cream color scheme, like an angry zit on a bride’s face.
Anya peered at the inspection tag. “Darn, Hope. This thing hasn’t been inspected for at least six months. And this is a commercial building. One more fire code violation for you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
Anya smirked. The fire extinguisher was a CO2 canister. Perfect. Anya aimed the hose at the door lock and pulled the trigger. Frigid foam spewed from the nozzle and crackled on the lock. Anya lifted the canister. Wieldin
g it like a hammer, she struck the lockset. It shattered open with a sound like a car door slamming, rattling pieces of metal against the walls. Sparky sniffed a piece of frigid metal and wrinkled his nose at the cold, chemical smell of it.
Anya pushed the door open and clicked on her flashlight. The stink of magick crawled up the stairs, pooling around her ankles like oil. Her breath steamed in the frigid air. As she descended the steps into the basement, she felt as if she were descending underwater. The air was thick with the ozone smell of it, sharp and metallic. Sparky scuttled ahead of her on the rusty steps, which creaked under her weight. Hope’s renovation of the building didn’t extend to this place: Industrial-green paint peeled from the walls. Jack Frost patterns glistened on the old paint. An overhead light, once located, cast a flickering glow on the basement’s contents. Dusty wooden pallets were stacked haphazardly to the ceiling, interspersed with broken pieces of office furniture and paper litter.
It was cold here. Too cold. Anya could see her breath before her as she stepped out onto the concrete floor. The temperature was easily fifty degrees colder down here than upstairs, like walking into a restaurant freezer. Pipes banged overhead, wrapped with insulation to keep them from freezing, but an occasional icicle still poked through.
But she could feel the magick here.
Anya swept the beam of her light to the far corner of the basement, and her heart leaped into her throat. Industrial shelves had been neatly arranged against the walls, heavy with bottles and jars of every description. Her gaze snagged on some items she recognized from Bernie’s: a wooden skull, the filigree silver bottle, crystal shards, a sword. Interspersed among them were dozens, hundreds of containers, from old Coca-Cola bottles to mason jars and perfume bottles.
Hope’s stash of reliquaries.
Before she touched anything, Anya snapped photos with her camera. She reached out for the nearest bottle, a wine bottle with a cork. The surface was so cold it burned her hand. With a thumb, she popped the cork and held her breath.