SkinThief

by Sonnet O'Dell

  “What do you see?” he whispered into my ear. His breath felt very hot against my skin. I got a look from one of the officers across the room; it wasn’t a pleasant one. He thought that just because I was fairly attractive and his boss had the hots for me, that meant I was a slut. I’d seen that look before. Witches were supposed to be notoriously randy and promiscuous. I made him turn away when I stared back at him. I turned back to answer Hamilton’s query.

  “No blood here,” I said, swirling my hand in the air above his lower stomach. “I think whoever tortured him sat on him—you know, astride him while he was restrained.”

  I stood up suddenly, nearly taking Hamilton down, and stared at him.

  “There is nothing here to suggest this was anything other than some sick human being degrading another. Why did you call me?”

  Hamilton stood to look down on me and brushed off his pale trench coat and adjusted his tie; like I had really ruffled his outfit that badly. I continued to stare up into his eyes waiting for my answer. Hamilton was way over six feet tall, so I couldn’t help it.

  “I know what you’re working on right now,” he said. “The prison case. I know you had them put out an APB on a Merrick Stone who beat up that old guy, and when we got here, we found him. He was passed out in the corner there. His knuckles were all bruised and torn, so we think he was the one who went to town on the guy’s face.” I turned and looked back at the man’s face; it was worse than what I had seen Petrovich do to his own face. It must have been easier for him to hit this man than it had been to hit himself enough to put him out of commission, but nothing here explained why he had gone after this man. There was still a huge piece of the puzzle missing—that piece right in the middle that lets you see the whole picture. I tried to imagine a large man straddling this smaller one; fitting his legs between the legs of the small coffee table would have been very tight and uncomfortable.

  “Ro,” I said, turning to look at her as she retrieved her measuring tool, “the wounds don’t look very deep, but there are lots of them. Can you estimate how long he kept him alive while torturing him?”

  “Give me one minute.” She reached back to her kit and pulled out a large metal rod that had a gauge at one end, then inserted it into the clean flesh of his belly on the left side. It was the grossest thing I had ever seen. I dry heaved but managed to swallow it back down. “Liver temp suggests he’s been dead for a couple of hours. We’ve been here just an hour, so he was dead for an hour before that.” She pointed toward a clock on the floor that was smashed, freezing it at a certain time. “If that broke during the struggle here, I’d say he was tortured for at least an hour before his death.”

  Both Hamilton and I shuddered at the thought that anyone could endure torture for an hour. I shook my head and tried to concentrate on other things.

  “So where is my guy?” I asked Hamilton, drawing him away to the side so I could get his attention away from the body on the ground.

  “He was a little groggy; I had him taken down to the station while he was still placid enough to move. He’s got a nasty bump on his head.”

  “Who hit him? The wife?” Hamilton gave me a little shrug of his wide shoulders.

  “We’re guessing so, but we can’t find her and she hasn’t called the police. Neighbor called this in when he got home and saw the front door ajar.” I walked back into the corridor and pulled the photo of the couple off the wall. Hamilton appeared at my side.

  “That’s the wife,” he said, reaching over my shoulder and tapping the picture. “We’ve already taken one of the images to start circulating it, see if we can find her.”

  “She must have been scared,” I said, feeling deep sympathy for her. I scratched my head and stared at the young man. He had been very dapper, well dressed, neatly groomed, and he wore a lot of gold rings on his fingers. Something about him seemed a little wrong to me. Not that he didn’t belong in the picture—it was taken out back of the house with his wife, and it was very nice, but he looked dodgy. Like he lived a life that was one step away from bad every day.

  “Do we know who this guy is?” I asked.

  “Tony Dietrich. I’m having a background check run on him to try to find a reason he’d be targeted. Do you think your prison guard is going after dodgy characters?”

  “Dodgy characters?” Hamilton had picked up on the same feeling for this guy that I had, I realized as he tapped the man in the picture.

  “I’ve never seen a man who dresses like that, with that many trashy gold rings, who wasn’t up to something he shouldn’t be. Look at this place. Nice house, but look how it’s decorated—clashing trashy and big-ticket items.”

  “Which means he had money but not much sense.”

  “Do you have any clue why Stone would come here and beat him senseless?” Hamilton asked, taking the photograph from me and putting it back down on the table.

  “Well, there is something you need to understand about this...”

  Hamilton and I sat side by side on the stairs while I explained that Petrovich had swapped himself over with Merrick Stone in order to get out of prison. That the consciousness, spirit, soul, whatever of the other man was trapped in Petrovich’s aged and broken body, barely being kept alive by support machines.

  “How did he manage that?”

  “I’m not really sure. He isn’t a wizard as far as I’m aware; I’m tracking down more information on an amulet he received in the post before it happened. It came from an estate sale in Wizard world, and Wizards don’t tend to collect things that aren’t of some intrinsic magical value.”

  “How do you find out more about it?”

  “Well, it’s got a name, and I have a friend in the business. I’m gonna give them a call, see if they can track it down in some book or something.”

  “If we have Petrovich, why is that important?”

  “Because I can’t put them back the way they should be unless I know how it was done in the first place. I mean I’m good, but I don’t know the first thing about creating a spell of this magnitude from scratch. I’ll make the call, and then we should go down and talk to Petrovitch.”

  Chapter Seven

  I had no choice but to leave a message on the answering machine of my occultist friend and prayed that I would hear back soon. I hated to leave phone messages—you always sounded so stupid talking to a machine. I rode with Hamilton into the station and went up the stairs into Homicide for a change. I had to admit, the digs were nicer than PCU’s. It was bigger, more officers, and despite the contradiction of it being Homicide, the department was quite a lively place. I got several long glances as I came in the door, but they quickly went away when Hamilton laid his hand at the small of my back. He led me through the desks to two interview rooms and directed me toward a small space in between them.

  The room had a panel of one-way glass on either side. It was dark, and wooden blocks held microphones at either end of the glass.

  In the room on the left sat the guard, Merrick Stone, from the prison. He was a big man, large shoulders, a hulk of muscle with bulging biceps and hands twice the size of mine. He had closely shaved hair, and his face was buried in his hands. He looked distraught, not how I imagined someone would after being caught. From Petrovich, I expect one of three emotions: anger at being stopped, embarrassment for being caught, or defiance.

  Hamilton pulled open a drawer under the second microphone and plucked out a tiny beige earpiece. He held it up to me and let me look it over. It was a very intricate piece of technology.

  “I’ll put this in my ear; you flip the switch by the second mike if you want to talk to me. I can’t let you in there with him, Cassandra. He’s a big bloke. If he got rough and got a hold of you...” I pulled a face; with my magic, I could better subdue that man than Hamilton and a couple of his squad could and with less damage to myself, but I just sighed and ack
nowledged what he’d said. He wiggled the earpiece into his right ear and shut the door behind him. I turned to face the glass and watched D.I. Hamilton as he entered the room. He had a very strong, tough persona when dealing with the criminal element. Merrick peered out at him through his fingers, which struck me as a very odd gesture to see from anyone other than a child or a woman.

  “Please,” he said, “there’s been some sort of misunderstanding.”

  “Has there?” Hamilton said with a deeply doubtful tone in his voice. “See, I know all about you, Petrovich.”

  Big blue eyes blinked at Hamilton and looked like they were full of tears. Surely a big man like Petrovich wouldn’t cry under a little police pressure. Hamilton slapped his hands down on the table, and he jumped back. It was strange, a hulk of a man like Merrick Stone cowering against his seat. It didn’t fit.

  “Please, will someone tell me what’s going on? What happened to me? I don’t feel right. What happened to my husband?”

  Hamilton turned his eyes to the glass; he gave me a raised eyebrow, and I fumbled for the button next to the right mike. It clicked and I could hear it buzz.

  “I don’t know what’s going on. He’s not acting like I imagined Petrovich would. Ask what happened; get him to open up so I can see him better.”

  Hamilton gave me a surreptitious nod and pulled the chair out from the other side of the table. He took a deep breath and sat down, smiling. It was amazing to watch him switch from tough to charming like a car changing gears.

  “I’m sorry, why don’t we start again? Can I get you something to drink?”

  Merrick still looked nervous.

  “I—I’d like some water, please?”

  Hamilton nodded, walked out of the room and returned a minute later with a bottle of water; he tore off the cap and placed the bottle down before him. Merrick gripped the bottle and gulped the water like he was parched. As he put the bottle down, he stopped and stared at the back of his hands. He squealed.

  “My God. What’s happened to me? I just had my nails done. These aren’t my nails. These aren’t my hands.”

  How had she not looked in the mirror? I could only put it down to shock and being amazingly unobservant.

  I jammed the button down again.

  “Calm, calm him down. Get him to tell you what happened.”

  Hamilton reached across the table and pulled Merrick’s hand down. To his credit, when the fingers of that hand fastened around his, he didn’t flinch or pull away. Merrick’s hand squeezed Hamilton’s, but not to hurt him—it looked like he needed support.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  Merrick threw his arms up in the air and dramatically out to either side. I got a good look at his chest. There was no pendant there, but it looked like he had a bruise on the side of his neck where one might have rubbed.

  “This guy, big guy came by to see Tony. I was so stupid I let him in. He said he was a friend. Minute he saw Tony he punched him, punched him right in the face. I tried to stop him but he hit me hard, knocked the wind right out of me.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He kept hitting Tony till he went down. He grabbed my hair and made me find something to tie my husband up. He tied him to the coffee table and kept slapping him till he was conscious again.” Those big blues darted to look at Hamilton’s face, Merrick’s legs crossed and his hands rested on his knees, his chest jutting forward.

  “I know what you’re thinking—what is a girl like me doing with a guy like Tony? I don’t really know myself, but I love him and I wanted to help him, but I was just too scared. Once the man had him awake he grabbed hold of me, and I don’t know what happened after that.”

  “Did he hit you? Knock you out?” Hamilton probed, but Merrick just shrugged.

  “I don’t know. He started saying something, and then the next thing I know I’m being hauled out to a police car.”

  Bloody hell! My mind rolled over and things clicked into place. I jammed my finger forcefully down on the button, sending static squealing into Hamilton’s ear; he winced and placed his hand over the receiver.

  “Name? Ask her name,” I bellowed.

  “Your name is...” Hamilton enquired softly.

  Merrick looked at him with an expression that was purely feminine, matching the posture and placement of the hands.

  “Chloe, Chloe Dietrich.”

  The wife wasn’t missing; she had been switched. Hamilton turned to the glass, and I still had my finger on the button. I leaned down to the mike.

  “I’m coming in.”

  Hamilton shook his head, but I ignored him—as I had wanted to earlier—and was in the room before he could do anything to stop me. Chloe sized me up like any woman would, but it was Merrick’s eyes that looked me up and down, which gave the gesture a completely different vibe.

  “Chloe, my name is Cassandra Farbanks.”

  Her eyes blinked and she gasped, bouncing a little in the seat. Her reaction made me take a step back—I hadn’t ever had my name responded to like that. I didn’t know how to take it.

  “I read about you in the paper—you saved all those children last year right before Christmas. You’re a witch, right? I think that is so fantastic. I read all about it but can’t do any of it, regrettably. What are you doing here?”

  I blinked and found that she, Merrick, was leaning forward with interest.

  “I’m helping to track the man who attacked you and your husband, and I need to do a little spell on you, just to make sure you are Chloe.”

  She wrinkled Merrick’s nose and crossed her arms over her nonexistent breasts, looking a little huffy.

  “Of course I’m me—who else would I be?”

  “That’s the thing, Chloe—you’re not exactly yourself. But you’ve already noticed that, right?”

  Her huffy stance slowly loosened, and her gaze became confused.

  “Yes,” she said, slowly and unsure. “If I let you do this, you’ll explain what’s going on?” Hamilton darted me a look, but I ignored him again, I was getting pretty good at that.

  “Yes, I’ll explain, I promise.”

  Chloe agreed to the spell. I used the same salve as before and did the spell sitting across from her, opening up my senses by smearing the salve over my third eye. The person inside Merrick was indeed a woman. Short blonde hair, too much makeup, big hoop earrings and tight-fitting clothes—what she had last been wearing, no doubt. I pulled back and wiped the salve from my face, then looked at Hamilton.

  “It’s not Petrovich in there—it’s the woman from the photo at the house.” Hamilton smacked the desk and stormed out into the main room, yelling orders at people. I stood to get up when Merrick’s large hand clamped on my arm.

  “You promised, you’d explain.”

  I patted the hand, then reached into my bag and pulled out a compact mirror I carried with me. I opened it and showed her her reflection. She screamed and then started crying. I patted her back quietly, explaining that she was under a spell and I would do what I could to get her back to normal. In the end the wailing became too much for me, and I had to leave her alone in the room to just cry it out. I couldn’t stand to be around people who were crying, just like I couldn’t stand for people to be around me when I did.

  I looked around the room and grabbed the first officer who came within my reach.

  “Can we have someone sit with Ms. Dietrich, please? And can you tell me where Hamilton is?”

  The officer scratched his head, gave a little nod and pointed me over to an office on the other side of the room. The door was closed, so I knocked lightly before going in. Hamilton was on the phone.

  “Anything else you can tell me? No, okay, thank you.” He hung up the receiver and looked up at me, signaling me to take a seat. He scratched his temples and leane
d back in his chair.

  “So Merrick isn’t Merrick and he isn’t Petrovich, he’s the dead guy’s wife. I don’t understand it. If you’re in a big guy like Merrick, why switch?”

  I pulled my bag up into my lap as I sat down and crossed my legs. “Strangely enough, I think I understand. It’s been bothering me for a while that with him tied to the table like that, it would be difficult for a man the size of Merrick to straddle the guy. However, a woman would fit perfectly.”

  “Okay, I’m with you so far,” Hamilton said, testing a cup of old coffee on his desk with his tongue and recoiling from it.

  “He was trying to torture this guy—what better to up the torture than to take over his wife and have her be the one cutting him up.”

  The whole thing dawned on Hamilton in a wave. “And he gets himself a new disguise. We think we have him, and he has time to escape while we’re chasing our tails.” He pounded his hand on the desk like they do in the movies, and it made me smile a little that he would stoop to such a cliché.

  “You’ve got people looking for the wife, when you thought she might be another victim or run off scared.”

  “Yes, but not enough. I’ve put more people into finding her now, but there’s no telling how long it will be, and if he can jump like this, he could be someone else before we know it.”

  I nodded. I could tell from the sore line on Merrick’s neck that he’d been wearing the pendant at one point. Once Petrovich was in Chloe’s body, she’d most likely knocked Merrick out and snatched the necklace off him. But why had he gone to the Dietrichs’? I needed more information.

  “What do we know about Tony Dietrich?”

  Hamilton reached for a file on his desk, flipping it open on his lap. He flicked through a couple of sheets of paper.