Desolate Mantle

by L. K. Hill

  Kyra went back to feeling along the group for possible weapons. Her fingers closed over a flat, donut-sized rock. Two inches too big for her hand, she barely kept hold of it as she was dragged.

  When she’d steadied her grip on it, she flung it at the back of her attacker’s head. It connected with the nape of his neck. The crack reverberated in the quiet of the Mire. She had no idea how far he’d dragged her. He froze now, shoulders hunched.

  He spun to look down at her, pointing a gun—her gun—at her chest.

  A shot rang out. Kyra yelped as the Prowler’s brain matter exploded from the right side of his head, spraying the alley wall with gore.

  He hovered there above her for moment, gyrating on his feet, before slowly falling toward her. It was like watching a slow motion replay. Kyra kicked backward, not wanting the corpse to land on her.

  Her movements were still sluggish, her feet tangled up in his. He was going to land directly on top of her. Their hips and torsos would line up. The morbidity of the thought made her shudder and she kicked back harder. She knew it wouldn’t be enough.

  With the corpse barely a foot above her and still falling, a hand lanced out from her right and stopped it. Kyra turned her head ever so slightly to lay eyes on the man who had saved her life.

  Her breath caught in her throat. It was him. The man with the pony tail and aquiline nose who’d been following her all around the Slip Mire. Chills rumbled down her spine.

  By the darkness, she must have been at least four levels deep again. The man leaned so close, his breath fell on her face, and she could make out his features.

  This man had followed her through the Mire on foot, then showed up at the stop sign by Josie’s house in a dark sedan. Now he just so happened to be in the right place and time to save her life?

  From inches away, his eyes blazed at her. “What are you doing?” His growl sounded feral, as though said through gritted teeth.

  Kyra kicked her way backward, not stopping until she made it far enough to push herself shakily to her feet. The man with the pony tail still squatted over where she’d lain seconds before. As she peered warily down at him, he merely straightened his legs, coming to his full height.

  He was tall. Taller than she’d realized when he’d been following her, but lean of waist with broad shoulders. When he turned his head to regard the Prowler’s corpse, she could see his dark pony tail. Gathered at the nape of his neck, it hung half-way down his back. It looked smooth, suave, as he was, with not a hair out of place.

  “Wh-who are you?” Her hands shook as badly as her voice did.

  “Get out of here,” he said roughly. “And do us both a favor. Don’t venture into the Prowlers’ territory again.” He turned away from her, toward the darkness.

  “Who are you?” Kyra reached a hand out toward him. “Why did you help me?”

  The man stopped. He turned his head to one side without moving his body. “I am called Nickel.”

  Kyra took a breath and stepped toward him. He’d saved her. He was the last thing she feared in the Mire’s darkness. If she was staying this deep in the Mire for a few more minutes she’d rather stand closer to him anyway.

  “And why did you save me?” She stepped up directly behind him and Nickel turned his head, surveying her over his left shoulder. Or at least she thought he was. She couldn’t actually see his eyes.

  “He broke the rules,” he said.

  Rules again, as Sadie said. “Technically so did I,” Kyra answered. “I didn’t mean to be there, but I was in his territory. Why help me, rather than him?”

  Nickel did turn to her, then, and she wanted to hunch her shoulders. The way he gazed down into her face, as though using his broad shoulders to corral her, felt too intimate.

  “You enter the Prowlers’ territory at your own risk,” he said. “But there is no rule against it. He has rules. He broke them.”

  Kyra kept her gaze locked on his for long seconds. She wanted to know more but couldn’t fathom what question to ask.

  Nickel didn’t look away either. “What were you looking for?”

  Kyra blinked. “What?”

  “You ran up and down these alleys like a mad woman. You’re obviously not high. You must have been searching for something?”

  Kyra sighed. She’d forgotten the prostitute and the bushy-haired john in her tussle with the Prowler. How to explain?

  “A…friend of mine. She’s a prostitute. I saw her with a john. He has long, bushy hair and I think he’s dangerous. They came this way. I was too far…. Have you seen them?”

  “No working girl would bring a customer this deep.”

  His voice held scorn and Kyra was glad of the darkness when her cheeks heated.

  Another five seconds passed in silence before Nickel broke it. “Go out closer to M Street to find your friend. By now she’s probably finished with her john and strutting on the street corner again.”

  Kyra highly doubted that, but she couldn’t explain the situation to this man, whether he’d saved her or not. When she didn’t move, his brows drew down.

  “Go now.”

  Kyra took several steps back from him, not sure she actually wanted to turn her back. When she’d moved ten paces away, Nickel squatted, too, hold of the Prowler’s ankle, and dragged him away from her and into the darkness, as the Prowler did to her.

  Kyra watched him, hands still shaking, until he’d become an indistinguishable part of the darkness. She picked up her gun and headed for the light.

  Chapter 7

  With a sigh of profound worry, Gabe regarded the body of the dark haired woman lying in the alley. Yet another prostitute, the third in so short a time. The M.E. had already released the body. He’d assessed that she’d died in the past two hours. Her body was hidden under a pile of loose garbage near a dumpster. A Mireling decided to dumpster dive and tripped on it. If not for the homeless man, the body might not have been discovered for days.

  Gabe couldn’t fathom how there could be so many murdered prostitutes so close together. Even in the Slip Mire it was…well, not unheard of. Not even uncommon. But strange. Back-to-back murders were the norm here, but they came from too many different areas to be connected. Gang violence, drug wars, robberies gone bad. All kinds of victims, all kinds of motivations. To have so many dead hookers, in so short a time…it could be a coincidence. Something about it felt too significant for that. Yet, the MOs were vastly different, so Gabe had nothing but a twist in his gut to tell him he needed to look closer.

  He squatted down again. The woman had voluminous, raven-black hair. It had probably been tied back neatly at one point, but the struggle she’d been through matted it, leaving it a mess around her head. Her skin-tight pants glimmered dully. They once had sequins on them. Most were missing now. The plain, dark-colored sleeveless top was largely intact. Blood marred the hem.

  Somehow, the victim’s killer eviscerated her without getting much blood on the shirt. It darkened her clothing down lower, where her abdomen had been sliced to ribbons and her insides peeked out from gaping openings. Dark ligature marks decorated her neck. So many different injuries, the actual cause of death was difficult to surmise. Just like the last victim.

  Gabe straightened his legs. He’d been going up and down beside the body for ten minutes, now. He didn’t want to stare at the gore anymore, but couldn’t tear himself away either.

  “You okay, Nichols?” Bailey asked. She squatted ten feet farther down the alley, collecting torn, blood-soaked pieces of clothing and putting them in specimen bags.

  “Yeah.” He sighed. “She’s the third prostitute murdered this week.

  Bailey nodded. “You thinking it’s a serial?”

  “Hard to say for sure, yet,” Gabe answered. “I’ll be scrutinizing these cases for similarities, but conventional knowledge says no.” He looked down at the woman again. “I don’t know what would be worse. Having a serial offender. Or not having one.”

  “How would not dealing with a serial
killer be bad?” Bailey asked.

  “If it’s not the same person, there’s some kind of crime spree going on, and nothing obvious to cause it. The weather’s turning cold. Crime generally spikes with heat waves. We’re in exactly the wrong season for that.” He rubbed his chin. “Maybe it’s a gang thing, or there’s a new group in town, targeting these girls. I don’t know. Not that I want it to be a serial, but if it’s not, figuring what’s going on presents a whole new set of complications.”

  “Or maybe the Slip Mire is just getting worse,” Bailey suggested. “You know, crime on the rise.”

  Gabe’s eyebrows rose and he shook his head wearily. On top of all the work he had to do, his throat felt scratchy. He thought he was coming down with something. Just what he needed. “Oh, please don’t say that, Bailey. I pray it’s not just new highs of crime for the Mire.”

  “Would it be so shocking if it was?”

  “We’d be talking about something like a one thousand percent increase. To have such a steep rise…we don’t have the manpower to keep these girls alive.” Saying it out loud made it lonelier than when it had simply been a thought.

  “Come on, Gabe. These girls choose to live very dangerous, high-risk lifestyles.”

  “That doesn’t mean they deserve,” he motioned toward the woman on the ground, “this.”

  Bailey put up her hands in surrender. “I’m not saying they do.” She walked over and put a hand on his arm. “But it’s not your job to save them from their bad choices. Don’t let it get to you, Gabe. It’ll make you crazy.”

  She moved past him to continue with her work, and Gabe didn’t offer any more arguments, though he didn’t entirely agree with her. Of course he couldn’t save everyone, but this was his city. If he and his fellow officers didn’t protect it, who would?

  He turned from the body, resolving to move forward with everything else he had to do—interview witnesses, make reports—then head back to the station to go over the details of each of the three cases with a fine-toothed comb.

  A hundred yards away, a small crowd of onlookers had formed. As usual, the uniformed officers managed them deftly. As Gabe turned toward them, something moved in his peripheral vision. At first, he thought it was something reflective—metallic perhaps—that shimmered in the squad car spotlights as his gaze moved over it. It moved again. Whatever it was rested in the shadow of a large box, situated near the dumpster not twelve feet from where the body lay. How could something shimmer if it sheltered in shadow?

  Gabe took a step toward it, wondering if an animal hid under there. Its eyes might have caught the light as it turned its head, and he didn’t want it messing up the crime scene before Bailey had a chance to collect everything. He narrowed his eyes, trying to make out a shape in the gloom. The flash of light came again, and this time Gabe was looking right at it when it did. There were a pair of eyes, but not animal. Pale, electric, ridiculously blue eyes. When the dark shape solidified in Gabe’s vision, he barely repressed a gasp. A person hid under there. And those blue eyes. He’d know them anywhere.

  He glanced around, making swift calculations. She always ran from him, and he wanted to catch her this time. Doug was here, over managing the crowd. Too far away. He glanced at the unies closer to him, and zeroed in on one he recognized. “Officer Morris.” Morris had been present on the night several weeks ago when Tyke was shot, and Supra killed the gang member Norse, saving Gabe’s life.

  “Yes, Detective?”

  “I need your help with something. Could you come here?”

  Morris stood only twenty feet from Gabe, and he frowned. “Of course. With what?”

  “Uh, I just need, ah, another pair of eyes. Over here, please.” He motioned with his hand. Unbidden, his eyes flicked toward where the blue eyes hid. The minute they did, Gabe knew glancing there again was a mistake.

  A small-statured figure, dressed in dark clothes with spikey black hair bolted from under the box and into an adjoining alley. Gabe cursed. Morris was already past him and after Supra. The moment he saw Supra’s figure, he’d probably put all the pieces together. In an instant, the darkness swallowed them both.

  Gabe rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d run side by side with Morris that night six weeks ago, for a long distance. He had full confidence in Morris’s sprinting abilities. And yet, Morris was farther from her than Doug had been when he’d chased her after she’d run through their crime scene several nights earlier. Doug hadn’t caught her.

  “What was that about?” Bailey asked, appearing at his elbow.

  “Someone was hiding under there.” He pointed. “Watching.”

  Bailey’s eyes widened. “Do you think it was the killer, returned to the crime scene? Should I sweep it for evidence?” She sounded excited.

  Gabe opened his mouth to say no, but thought better of it. “Maybe you should, for the sake of being thorough. But no, I don’t think it was the killer.”

  “Then who?”

  “Tanya Roberts.”

  It took three seconds before recognition dawned in Bailey’s eyes, and they opened to the size of handcuffs. “Her? Again?”

  Gabe shrugged. “It looked like her.”

  Bailey’s eyes slowly returned to their normal size, her brow furrowed in worry. “Gabe, I know you kind of have a thing for this woman, but—”

  “A thing for her? What does that mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You want to find her and get her help. You want to believe she’s a good person because of everything that happened in the Carlotta case. I get it. I hope so, too. But she keeps showing up at these crime scenes.”

  “Half the people in that crowd over there keep showing up at these crimes scenes,” he objected.

  “True, but she ran through the first one, and now she’s watching us from the shadows only ten feet away? That’s creepy, Gabe. ‘Conventional knowledge’ would suggest we treat her as a suspect, not a victim.”

  Gabe sighed. Bailey wasn’t wrong. Supra was stalking his crime scenes, and he wanted to know why. “All the more reason to catch and question her,” he said.

  It seemed to mollify Bailey and she bent to examine Tanya’s hiding space.

  Gabe peered into the blackness Tanya and Morris had disappeared into. Who was she really? What secrets did she keep?

  He was utterly unsurprised when Morris returned twenty minutes later. Alone.

  Chapter 8

  The next night when Gabe went into work, he only stayed for an hour. His head cold was in full swing and he couldn’t concentrate. He’d gone over all the details of his three murder cases the day before. Other than the prostitute victimology and the locations being close to one another, there weren’t any similarities he could see. Unfortunately, location and profession were not absolute connections in Abstreuse. Too many Slip Mire residents fit into those categories to call them distinctive.

  After an hour of sniffling and sneezing through his reports, Shaun ordered him home.

  “It’s only eleven o’clock,” Gabe protested. “What am I going to do for the rest of the night?”

  “Given how red your eyes are,” Shaun said, a smile playing around the corner of his mustache, “I’m sure you’ll sleep. If you want to work, take the reports with you and work on them there. I need these murders figured out, Gabe, which means I need you on your toes. Besides, the rest of us don’t want your cold. Now scram.”

  Gabe might have protested more if there any hands-on work to do, but the lab was backed up, which meant he wouldn’t get forensics reports for another few days at least, and he was in no condition to do interviews of any kind. Most people wouldn’t appreciate being sneezed on. He might as well put up his feet and try to get through some paperwork.

  By the time he pulled into his driveway, his sinuses throbbed, and he couldn’t help but think how pleasant a hot shower would be. A moving truck sat across the street, parked exactly opposite his driveway. The house across the way had been vacant for months, ever since the elderly couple livi
ng there moved in with one of their children. Obviously a new tenant had snapped the place up.

  Gabe got out and ducked into the back seat to heft the box of files he’d brought home with him. As he straightened and shut the door, a figure emerged to stand by the truck. Clouds obscured the moon tonight, so he couldn’t see much, and the garage lights on the man’s house were behind him, which only made him less distinctive. Still, Gabe could make out a round, balding head, a hint of a pot belly, and wiry—possibly gray—hair. The man turned toward Gabe and raised a hand in greeting. Gabe waved back as best he could around the heavy box, then started for the house.

  He ought to be a good neighbor and introduce himself, but he didn’t have the energy. Reaching around the box, he jammed his key into the lock and he shouldered his way into the house. After staggering awkwardly past the parlor and living area and into the kitchen, he set the box on the table and headed for his bedroom.

  Just as he reached the door, a dull thud from the back of the house reached his ears. Frowning, he stood still and listened. It could have been an animal in the back yard. Plenty of strays roamed his neighborhood.

  Gabe didn’t worry about burglars. Everyone for miles around on this side of the Slip Mire knew a cop lived here. No one was stupid enough to break into his house of all places.

  Deciding it wasn’t anything worth investigating, Gabe pushed his bedroom door open. A crash that sounded like a glass jar hitting cement ground his nerves, kicking his heart into marathon mode. His gun was in his hand before he thought about it, all vestiges of fatigue burning away with the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

  Moving with slow, silent steps, he made his way toward the back door, his arms straight out in front of him with the gun’s barrel toward the floor. The entryway running from the front door to the back suddenly seemed smaller than usual. Too small to fight an intruder in.

  As he reached the back door, he swung swiftly around the corner to surprise anyone hiding there. An empty space stared back at him. Just past it, the door to his laundry room/furnace room/half bath stood slightly ajar, but that wasn’t unusual. He rarely closed that door. The darkness beyond it felt foreboding. Shifting the gun from both hands to only his right, he thumbed the blinds open silently with his left.