by J. R. Rain
“Ugh.” I lean my head back and sigh. “Depending on where they’re putting those signs, it might be trespassing. If they’re keeping to a public sidewalk, that’s not an option… but they might be disturbing the peace or gathering without a permit. Honestly, the best thing you can do would be to file police reports or consider a civil lawsuit.”
She stares down at her feet, lifts her toes, and puts them down twice. “So you can’t really do anything?”
“There isn’t much I can do unless they’ve committed a crime. Being a bigot in and of itself isn’t a crime.” I wrap her in a hug. “I’m always willing to head over and stand with you. Idiots like that usually fizzle out and go away if you ignore them. They’re not really spiritual. They’re more interested in controlling people than building any sort of relationship with their god; that’s why it freaks them out when they run into people who don’t follow the same path.”
Tamika squeezes me back and half-smiles. “Yeah, I know all that, but it doesn’t make it any less irritating. I’d ask my grandpa to talk to him, but that would end in a fistfight.”
We both laugh. Her grandfather’s a Baptist minister, and surprisingly enough, he’s at peace with her beliefs. The man’s also as protective of his family as Tamika is, so it’s clear where she gets it from.
Caius enters from the main hall, carrying a stack of disposable plastic containers filled with food. Alas, none of his French silk pie survived, so we don’t get to take it home. “About ready?” he asks.
“Yeah. You’re driving,” I say. “I’m ready to sleep.”
“I figured. What would you do without me, Maddy?”
“Sleep less, drive more.”
“Is that all I’m good for? Chauffeur?”
“You have other uses,” I say, a coy smile on my lips.
“Maddy?” asks Abigail, emerging from a shadow by a black-and-silver tapestry of the Moon Goddess at the end of the hallway back to the parlor.
I pivot to face her, smiling, but the look of worry on her face makes me nervous. My smile drops. “What’s wrong?”
Abigail smooths her hands down the front of her dress, edges closer, and speaks in a near-whisper. “Elise came close to opening up about her parents, but withdrew again.”
“Is she all right?” asks Caius, his eyebrows up.
“She’s upstairs.” Abigail glances at the ceiling. “She ran off to bed. I’m sure something terrible must’ve happened. Maybe even sinister. I was hoping Maddy might be able to look into it?”
I purse my lips. “I can try… has she told you anything yet? Are you sure she’d even want me poking around? She might not be ready to open that door yet. Maybe the parents are the ones who hurt her.”
“It’s looking more and more like that,” says Abigail, with a sad smile. “It pains me to see her so trapped behind her fears. I want her to be happy.”
“So do I.” I squeeze her hand. “It’s not exactly in the regulations to use department resources to investigate a personal issue, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Hope shows in Abigail’s chocolate-brown eyes. “Thank you, dear. I appreciate it more than you know.”
There are few people on this planet that I would bend the rules for. Abigail is one of them. Maybe Caius. Okay, definitely Caius. Anyway, I could always try some divination spells.
Colleen next hugs her way among us on the way to the front door. Smart one she is, she has her leftovers in a shopping bag.
“Night, Mum.” Caius kisses his mother on the cheek.
“Drive safe, sweetie.” Abigail hugs him, hugs me, then waves farewell to us.
We head across the large parking circle in front of the house, and I’m already well on my way to sleep by the time I mash my knuckles into the side of my truck’s door. Ouch. I peel one eye open, move my hand a few inches to the right, and grab the handle.
Oh, tomorrow’s going to suck.
But tonight was worth it.
Chapter Seven
On Deck
By Tuesday morning (mostly with the help of going to bed early last night), I’ve recovered from the mere five hours of sleep I had after we returned home from Abigail’s on Sunday. Thankfully, my Monday was relatively quiet and consumed by paperwork about the drifter case, plus a meeting with Paula from the DA’s office. Something tells me that one’s not likely to see the inside of a courtroom, assuming the advocate agrees to involuntary commitment.
I’m tired on the way in, so when our squad room’s trick door spring-slams behind me, I yelp, which in turn startles everyone else. “Grr. When are they going to fix the hydraulics on that thing?” I ask anyone who’s listening.
Most everyone shrugs. They don’t care. Bigger fish to fry and all that.
At 7:00 a.m., I file into the briefing room with the rest of the squad for our usual morning meeting. Captain Greer takes her spot at the front of the table. For a short woman, she’s got a powerful presence. Even the higher brass tends to back down when she sets her heels on an issue. Her hair is somewhat like mine in terms of being frizzy and curly, though it’s black and less than half the length. Also, hers doesn’t have a personality.
As if on cue, my hair decides it’s had enough of being contained and bursts free, launching the clip across the table, squarely into Linda’s coffee. This, of course, silences the room for a few seconds before the laughter starts―except for Linda, who’s glaring at me like I did that on purpose.
“Even her hair’s tired of you picking on her,” says Rick to Linda, adding a wink.
I give him a light shove.
“You meant to do that,” says Linda.
“Did I?” I blink. “So you admit to believing in magic? I mean, I don’t see how else I could pop a hair clip on command and plunk it perfectly into a Styrofoam cup six feet away without using magic. Besides, that’s still cruelty to coffee.”
She shakes her head and actually smirks while pulling the clip out of her java and holding it out in two fingers. I grab it and wrap it in a napkin.
Captain Greer regains control of the room by clearing her throat, then spends a few minutes discussing the upcoming charity event at the children’s hospital, again ‘asking’ which of us will be attending. Of course, it’s understood she’s not really asking. She can’t legally obligate us to go, but for one thing, how can anyone say no to sick kids, and another, none of us want to disappoint her. After that, we go around the room giving updates on our respective cases.
Mike and Linda are still trying to narrow down their suspect list for who killed the lawyer. Linda had been leaning toward the wife as the prime suspect, but half a dozen women and a video camera confirmed her alibi at a salon. Mike’s sniffing around another lawyer at the same firm who had been competing with the dead guy to make partner, while Linda thinks the killer is a former client the man failed to keep out of jail.
Ed and Andrew’s clown case is still a hot mess. Ed mentions that the explosive device responsible for killing the manager contained hundreds of nails, each of which had ‘die perv’ scratched into them. However, all the clown actors working for that agency have squeaky-clean background checks.
“I think the bomber was abused by a clown at some point in the past, and has a pathological hatred of clowns in general,” says Andrew.
“Who doesn’t?” I mutter, to a few chuckles.
“Well,” says Captain Greer. “Most of us don’t try to blow them up.”
“No witnesses and no cameras on the property,” says Ed, tossing a pen on the table with contempt. “We’ve been working our way decade by decade back through the sexual assault files, looking for clown molestation cases, but haven’t hit anything yet.”
“Are there many reports of people molesting clowns?” asks Rick.
Ed picks his pen back up and throws it at Rick, who laughs. “Semantic prick.”
“Maybe you aren’t squeezing the right red nose,” asks Linda, to some chuckles.
“How about you two?” asks Greer, staring at us.
“We won the lottery,” I say, and explain the drifter case already with the DA’s office, heading toward a guilty-but-crazy plea.
“Excellent.” Greer smiles. “Then you’re on deck.”
As we start to get up, Rick points at me. “Oh, everyone. Maddy lost a bet and will be providing donuts for everyone at some point soon.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I hold my hands up. “Let me know what kinds to get.” When everyone all starts trying to talk over each other, I shout, “By email!”
The meeting over, we head back to our desks. I’m looking forward to another nice, calm Tuesday. It’s probably too much to ask that we go three weeks without a murder happening, but it’s not exactly like we’re in New York City or Chicago. It’s not unheard of for a nice stretch of calm here, but with me having plans to go camping, I’m not holding my breath.
My pessimism is justified a little after eight when Greer walks toward us wearing that expression.
“Here we go again,” mumbles Rick to me.
“Captain,” I say, when she’s close enough. “You look like someone died.”
“That’s because someone did.” She hands us a slip of paper. “A body turned up in the woods west of Ken Lake. There’s evidence to suggest some manner of Satanic ritual was performed.”
“Whoa. Human sacrifice?” asks Andrew, looking up from a few desks down.
Linda, next to him, mutters something to herself in Spanish, then adds plain as day in English, “Sounds like Wimsey’s people.”
“Gonzalez,” I snap. “You can’t use ‘Satanic’ to explain everything you choose not to understand.”
“Says the girl wearing pentagrams.”
“They’re pentacles, not pentagrams. There’s a difference.”
“Jesus, I didn’t sign up for this,” says Greer, shaking her head.
“Speaking of which,” I add. “Satanists borrowed the pentacle the same way your people borrowed Easter from a German pagan goddess, Ēostre.”
Linda glowers at me, though there is a hint of playfulness in her expression.
Captain Greer holds her hands up. “Either you two zip it, or I’m going to lose my shit. We’ve got a murder to solve. Get to it. Stat.”
Rick grins and says, “No problem, Captain. Wimsey’ll cast a spell and we’ll have it done in a day… like the last one.”
Captain Greer stares at him. “Don’t tell me you’re believing in magic now, too?”
He stands, grabs his blazer, and takes the paper from Greer. “I’ll believe in anything that protects the sanctity of my weekend.”
Chapter Eight
Too Many Movies
Rick drives our unmarked silver Crown Vic, still chuckling from the scene earlier. I’m still a little pissed. Life goes on.
Ken Lake sits west and a little south from the Olympia city center. It’s maybe a thousand feet across at the longest point, and ringed by a wonderfully woodsy area of homes that leads us on a meandering ride until we wind up on Lakemoor Drive, which runs north-south at the farthest west point of the development. It’s a split-lane with individual roads for each direction separated by a wall of trees.
A pair of Olympia PD cars sit in the uphill driveway of a nice dark brown house, with one officer standing between them, probably waiting for us. Rick tucks our car up on the dirt between the two lanes, enough out of the way not to block traffic. The cop, E. Morrison, according to his nametag, steps out from between the patrol cars as we walk up the driveway.
“Detectives,” he says by way of greeting.
I reach him first. “Officer. What’s the situation?”
He gestures back past the house while eyeing the pentacle amulet hiding behind my badge. “We don’t think the homeowner here has anything to do with the case. This is just the best place to get into the woods from. It’s a bit of a walk back to the scene. A hiker found the guy, came to this house, and the homeowner called it in.”
“Where’s the hiker now?” I ask.
“We got his statement and information then sent him home. He was a wreck. You’ll see why soon. Anyway, it’s about a twenty-minute hike to get to the site.”
“Lead the way,” I say.
Morrison walks up the driveway, which is pretty steep, and heads around the house.
“Should’ve worn my Timberlands,” mutters Rick behind me.
I keep my smile to myself. Unless we’re going to some kind of official function, or investigating a case among uptight corporate types in the city center, I tend to wear my Carhartt boots, jeans, and a flannel while on duty. Killers around here love to ditch bodies in the woods, so I actually dress for tromping in the brush. My badge sways from its lanyard around my neck as I navigate the hill at the end of the homeowner’s property, following a barely-visible footpath further uphill into the forest. The walk is arduous, but the scent of the natural world surrounds me with calm.
The ground levels off somewhat after about thirty yards. With each step farther away from the lake, the flatter the terrain becomes. Rick grumbles whenever he trips on a root or nearly loses one of his loafers to a clingy vine.
“Brace yourselves, detectives,” says Morrison. “It’s kind of a mess.”
I cringe mentally. Ugh. This is the part of this job I like the least. “Any idea who the victim is?”
“Uhh… white male, probably thirties. The whole thing looks ritualistic. Pentagram on the ground, guy’s cut wide open. Kyle thinks a hunter might’ve done it; the vic’s almost cleaned like a deer.”
“Ouch,” says Rick.
Deep breaths. It can’t be worse than what I’ve seen at car accidents. The worst was an eighteen-year-old kid who had his head bashed in half by the steering wheel. Most of his brain wound up on the hood.
We walk among the trees for a while, and I use that time to draw energy from nature while asking Cernunnos to shield my mind from dark powers. If anything serious, magic-wise, happened here, the area could be tainted. The last thing I need is to pick up an attachment or something worse.
Soon, the voices of other police officers emanate from up ahead. Morrison leads us between a pair of trees, one of which has a small plastic bag tied around it as a marker. Beyond that, a roughly twenty-five-foot clearing contains the remnants of an old fire pit as well as the stomach-twisting smell of death.
The body lays sprawled out on his back, arms behind him and legs spread, on top of a warped pentagram gouged into the dirt. Whoever dug out the lines didn’t put a lot of effort into measuring, leaving it lopsided. Faint scratches in the dirt within each triangle resemble elemental runes. Already, I highly doubt Satanists had anything to do with this. Grapefruit-sized stones sit at each of the points, all of them bearing a lump of human tissue―an organ that’s been removed from the body. The victim’s head is oriented toward a crude altar of more piled rocks. The relationship between the altar and the pentagram suggests the practitioner would’ve been facing the top point of the star, rather than the intersection of the bottom two, which suggests they meant it as a ‘right side up’ pentacle, but forgot the circle around it.
When I get close enough to get a better look at the dead man, I close my eyes for a second to deal emotionally with the scene before me. Deep breaths, good. Good.
Eyes open, I note that all the damage is focused on his torso. He’s been cut open from the base of his neck to his crotch, and precious little of what belongs inside him is still in there. The torso’s interior is mostly empty; the shiny, purplish-red gleam of the mesothelium lining the inner thoracic cavity, with a hint of spine showing, is an extremely disturbing sight.
Even Rick gags.
“Yeah,” says an older cop, who’s a good fifteen feet away with his back to the corpse, watching the woods. “This poor bastard had a rough night.”
I compartmentalize my disgust and step around chunks of human flesh to reach the body. After putting on the blue gloves, I poke around a little. The victim’s hands are tied behind his back with white cord that looks like
a clothesline. No evidence of bruising shows on his face, and the neck is undamaged.
“Help me turn him over,” I say.
Rick nods, squats next to me, and carefully takes hold of the man’s hips while I’ve got the shoulder. We roll him over and I scan the man’s back. Rick does too.
“No bullet holes,” he reports.
“Nope,” I say, and we ease the body back down.
“We still thinking hunter?” asks Rick, squatting next to me.
“Doubtful. Unless he took a small caliber round to the heart that didn’t go all the way through him, or he was stabbed.”
Rick tries to chuckle, but winds up choking. “Oh, he was stabbed alright. Gutted like a deer.”
“That could’ve happened after he was dead.”
“Yeah.” Rick sighs, shaking his head. “For his sake, I hope so. Any weirdness?”
“Oh plenty, but nothing magical.” I stand, mostly to get my mouth and nose into clearer air. The dead man’s heart sits atop the altar at my left. Thin trails of blood down the side still appear wet. I’m not getting any feeling of energy from the area with any paranormal essence. If anyone did try to actually perform a ritual of some kind here, they had no idea what they were doing. Though, desire has more weight than mechanics. So a serious attempt to work black magic would likely have left something in the air. Its absence tells me the killer set this up as theatrics or misdirection.
The sad pentagram, however, is fairly deep, at least four inches, but narrow like a gardening trowel. Heck of a project for a killer to do at random. I crouch and examine the ruts in the ground forming the star. A little moss and a few weeds poking up from the base makes me think it’s been here for a while.
“Any significance to this?” asks Rick, pointing out the body parts sitting on the stones.
I shake my head. “Not with any tradition I’ve ever studied. I’m not convinced this is real anything, and the victim is definitely not part of any Wiccan ritual. The setup here doesn’t look right for Satanists either―and the human sacrifice thing is, as far as I know, only in movies and the minds of people who hate them. Whoever made this site is trying to throw us off, or is painfully clueless. They’re not a serious practitioner of anything but homicide. The organs all over the place”―I gesture at the blobs and fragments scattered haphazardly―“make no sense. Even among societies known to have conducted ritualistic human sacrifice, they had a certain degree of respect for the victim. This is pure savage.”