Hard Spell

by Justin Gustainis

  After a while, she said, "There's somebody new in town, killing vampires."

  I didn't bother to ask how she knew. "Yeah, two so far. That we know of. And maybe one in Wilkes-Barre. I'm checking that out tomorrow – later today, I mean."

  Her voice was bitter when she said, "Have you given him a medal yet?"

  "I do my fucking job!" I snapped. "I'm a professional. If somebody's committing murders, he's breaking the law. And when I find him, and I will find him, he's going down. Period."

  She nodded slowly. In a normal tone she said, "Yeah, that's what I told them."

  "Told who?"

  "Some people I know. There's been a lot of talk in the local community–"

  "You mean the vamp, uh, vampire community."

  "That's the only one I hang with, these days. Some of them are saying that you're giving this guy, the killer, a free pass because he's hunting vamps. Your feelings about us aren't exactly a secret."

  "Listen, I just told you–"

  "I know you did." She placed her hand on my wrist for a moment, and I made myself not pull away. But her touch was cold, so cold. "And I said the same thin, myself."

  "Thanks for the endorsement," I said. "And you're telling me about this because..."

  "Because some of them are saying they should deal with this themselves. Find the killer themselves. And dispense justice themselves."

  "That would be about the worst thing they could do, for a whole bunch of reasons. Vigilante is just another word for murderer, as far as the law's concerned."

  "I know." It must be hard to sigh when you don't need to breathe, but she managed it. "I said that, too."

  "And did they listen?"

  "I think so. For now. But if these murders continue, with no arrest, people are going to start paying attention to the hotheads."

  "I don't think Vollman would like that too much."

  She didn't react to the name the way the vamp in Susie B's had, but I'm pretty sure I saw her back straighten a little.

  "You know Mr Vollman?"

  "He's helping us with the case. And, far as I know, he doesn't think I'm slacking off."

  "I'll be sure to pass that along."

  I noticed her shoulders were shaking slightly. "What?"

  "You and Mr Vollman – working together. You must love that!" She sounded genuinely amused. I guess it was kind of funny, at that.

  "Well, since you know so much already, you might as well know this: I don't think the killer's a Van Helsing."

  "Really? What, then?"

  "Some kind of wizard, looks like. He's got his hands on a copy of something called the Opus Mago, which is supposed to be the Holy Grail of grimoires."

  "I think I sense an oxymoron in there someplace."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Yeah, I do. So this book is supposed to be highoctane evil."

  "Exactly. And it looks like the two dead vamps, uh, vampires are the first couple of ingredients for some kind of spell he's working."

  "Holy fuck."

  "I think I sense some kind of oxymoron in there."

  "Yeah, and fuck you, too," she said, but without any heat behind it. "Must be one hell of a conjuring he's got going – and that's not a fucking oxymoron."

  "No," I said, as a ball of ice formed in my stomach – the same one that showed up every time I thought about what this wizard might have in mind. "No, it's not."

  "Two dead, so far – and vampires, at that."

  "Two, maybe three. I'll know that later today, probably."

  "Maybe three." She nodded slowly. "What do you figure his magic number is, so to speak?"

  "That's something Vollman is trying to find out," I said. "I hope he does it pretty damn soon."

  I checked my watch. "Not to rush you, or anything, but the sun'll be up in–"

  "Seventeen minutes. Plenty of time."

  But she stood up anyway, stretching a little.

  "Where are you crashing these days? Someplace close by?"

  She turned to look at me. "I'll tell you that," she said, "the first time you invite me inside."

  I nodded, letting nothing of what I was feeling show on my face. Or so I hoped.

  I stood up, too. I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close, just for a couple of seconds. Instead, I just nodded and said, "'Night, Christine."

  "Goodnight, Daddy."

  And she was gone.

  Driving through downtown Wilkes-Barre, you'd never know the place had been practically underwater for several days, back in 1972. That's when Hurricane Agnes passed through the Wyoming Valley. Worst storm we've ever seen, and it sent the Susquehanna River over its banks and into the city. I was just a kid then, and Scranton wasn't affected by the flood, but I remember the TV and newspaper pictures of the huge mess it made.

  One of the grisliest forms of damage occurred when the flood reached the local cemeteries. It washed some of the dead out of their graves and then deposited them all over town, once the water receded. Corpses, some long dead and others more recent, were found on people's lawns, in the middle of streets, just everywhere.

  I understand the local ghoul community still talks about those days among themselves. They refer to it as the Great Smorgasbord.

  Thinking about stuff like that helped keep my mind off the fact that we might have a third murder in this spell cycle, or whatever it was, with no real leads and no way to know how many more deaths had to occur before the shit really hit the fan. We didn't even know what form the shit would take.

  But it was going to be some seriously bad shit, I was pretty sure of that.

  The taxpayers of Wilkes-Barre must be pretty generous, because their police department is located in a nice new building that always made me a little envious whenever I visited – not that I'd ever admit that to Lacey. Anyway, there's a downside to working there. It is in Wilkes-Barre.

  Even if I hadn't been in the building before, I wouldn't need to ask where to find Lacey. Along with the rest of her unit, she was in the basement. The Supe Squad is always in the basement.

  Their P.A. was a young black woman named Sandra Gaffney, who was getting her PhD in Criminal Justice from Penn State. She took this gig to support herself while writing her dissertation. You can tell right off she's not a typical civil servant – not only is she intelligent, she's actually pleasant most of the time.

  "Hey, Sandy," I said. "How's it going?"

  She looked up from her computer and gave me a smile. "Hey yourself, Sergeant. You drop by to see how some real police work is done?"

  "You got it," I said. "Detective Brennan said she'd give me some pointers. She's expecting me."

  "I'll give her a buzz."

  Sarah picked up her phone, punched in three numbers, and muttered something I couldn't hear into the receiver. I noticed that next to her computer she kept a small stuffed toy bear with a dirty face, who looked like he'd seen better days.

  Hanging up the phone, Sandra said to me, "She'll be right out."

  "Thanks. How's the research going?"

  "Pretty good. This place gives me more data every damn day."

  Detective Lacey Brennan came around the corner. A little taller than average. Blonde hair, worn short. Blue eyes. Killer body – not that I ever paid much attention.

  "Guy walks into a bar," she said. "Orders a cocktail, sips it for a while. But it turns out that he's a werewolf, and while he's sitting there drinking, the full moon comes out. So the guy transforms, right? Fur, fangs, the whole nine yards. Then he trots over to the window and sits there, on the floor, howling at the moon. Well, there's a couple of tourists from East Podunk sitting a few stools away. They take all this in, you know, then one of them turns to the bartender and says, 'Fuck – we'll have what he's having!'"

  Behind Lacey, Sandy just. "How'k her head. I looked at Lacey, kept my face impassive, and asked, "Yeah? Then what happened?"

  She gave me a knuckle punch on the arm. Being a real he-man, I didn't show how much it hurt.
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  "Come on," Lacey said. "The file's on my desk."

  I followed her into the squad room, which looked in most ways like every other detectives' bull pen I've ever seen, except with fresh paint and newer carpeting.

  Of course Supe Squads tend to have some features you don't find in, say, a Homicide unit. I passed a wall rack containing several sizes and varieties of wooden stakes, and next to that was a glass-fronted case full of magically charged amulets. A poster on the opposite wall listed the six known defenses against ogre attack. Then there was a big bulletin board full of wanted posters showing renegade vamps, bail-jumping werewolves, a child-killing troll, and one I recognized from our own squad room: an artist's rendering of a wimpy-looking dwarf with a severe widow's peak. His name was Keyser something-or-other, and he was supposed to be the kingpin of a shadowy gang of fairy-dust smugglers. Some crooked supes call him the devil incarnate, but others say he doesn't even exist.

  Lacey's area was at the back of the room. Sitting at a desk near hers, scowling at a computer printout, was her partner. Johnny Cedric lost an eye a few years back, during a raid on an illegal coven that had gone very wrong. Could've taken a disability pension and moved to Florida, but he chose to stay on the job. I kind of admired that, even if he was always bragging about how the sinister-looking eye patch got him laid a lot.

  "Hey, look what the bat dragged in," Cedric said.

  "How's it going, Cyclops?" Cops aren't known for their sensitivity.

  "Not bad," he said. "Still trackin' it down and tryin' it out. You over here about our dead guy?"

  I nodded. "The M.O. sounds like a couple of corpses we've had turn up in our neck of the woods."

  "Oh, yeah, Lace was telling me about those. How recent?"

  "Both in the last week, and we're pretty sure they're related to a torture-murder we had the week before."

  "Christ. I hope the bastard hasn't relocated here permanently. Not that I'd blame him, of course. Anyplace is better than Scranton, even if you're a serial killer." He squinted at me with his good eye. "You guys got anything?"

  "Not a lot," I told him. "One name that's come up is a wizard named Sligo. Supposed to be a big deal black magic practitioner. Ever hear of him?"

  Cedric thought a moment before shaking his head. "Uh-uh, doesn't jingle. He's not in the database?"

  "Not under that name, anyway. He's supposed to be from Ireland, so I sent a query to Interpol. Haven't heard back yet."

  "You wanna finish up the incident reports, Johnny?" Lacey said. "I'll entertain our visitor." Then she turned to me. "Come on, pull up a chair. I'll show you what I've got."

  I was sure the double entendre was unintentional. Well, pretty sure.

  I grabbed an empty chair and dragged it over next to Lacey's desk, as she pulled a file folder from one of the drawers, placed it on the blotter, and flipped it open. When she did, I noticed that the ring finger of her left hand was missing the wedding band she'd worn as long as I've known her.

  Trained detectives notice stuff like that. And sometimes, we're even smart enough to keep our mouths shut about it.

  The file contained the usual paperwork you find in any police report, and a set of crime scene photos. The pictures showed a young-looking guy lyng on a concrete floor, surrounded by a pool of blood. Something long and thin was wrapped around his neck, looked like a ligature of some kind. In the background, I could see metal bookshelves full of thick bound volumes.

  "Where'd you find him?" I asked.

  "Basement of the Osterhout Free Library," Lacey said.

  I looked at her. "The killer comes in, offs somebody in a library, and still gets away clean? I would've thought they'd get him for violating the noise policy, if nothing else."

  "The basement doesn't see a lot of use these days, apparently," she said. "What's down there is mostly bound collections of old magazines. With all the stuff that's available online these days, why bother? Although I've always had a warm spot for the place in my heart, or maybe lower."

  "Why's that?"

  "I gave my first blowjob down there – to my high school boyfriend, when I was fifteen."

  I decided that was someplace I didn't want to go. "So who's the vic?"

  She checked the paperwork. "Ronald Casimir, twenty-five. Graduate student at Wilkes University."

  "That might explain what he was doing in the library basement," I said. "Research of some kind, maybe." Or he could have been in the market for a good blowjob. I looked closer at a couple of the photos. "Is that a garrote?"

  "Bingo – you got it in one. Haven't seen one of those used around here before."

  "You sure this isn't some Mafia thing? They use wire sometimes, don't they?"

  "Not any more," Lacey said. "I talked to a guy I know, works the State Police Organized Crime Task Force. He said the wise guys mostly stopped using garrotes back in the Fifties, once reliable silencers were available. Tradition usually gives way before technology, except maybe in Scranton. And besides, there's this."

  She flipped through the photos and pulled one out of the pile. It was a close-up of a man's naked abdomen.

  Three esoteric symbols had been carved in the corpse's flesh.

  "That look like Guido's work to you?" Lacey asked.

  After a long moment, I replied, "No, but it looks a lot like the kind of stuff I've been seeing on corpses in Scranton, recently."

  I pulled out my notepad and began to copy down the symbols that were in the photograph.

  "What's it say?" Lacey asked. "Do you know?"

  "No, I don't," I told her. "But tomorrow night I've got a shot at talking to a guy who might just be able to tell me."

  "And you'll let me know anything you find out, of course," she said. "And send copies of the two case files of yours."

  "Sure, no problem. In the meantime, there's something you can do for me."

  Lacey gave me a wicked grin. "What, right here in the squad room? In front of all the guys?"

  "That's not what I meant," I said, and hoped that I wasn't blushing. "See if your lab guys can find out what material that garrote was made of."

  "Okay, I can do that," she said. "You think it matters?"

  "It might," I told her. "It might matter a hell of a lot."

  I thanked Lacey for the heads-up, and got out of there before she noticed the bulge that had developed in the front of my pants. God only knows what she'd have said about that.

  According to my buddy Ned, who taught something called Communications at the U, the guest lecture by esteemed Georgetown scholar Benjamin Prescott, PhD, was scheduled for 8 o'clock at the HoulihanMcLean Center. A reception would follow.

  It took some work, convincing McGuire to let Karl and me attend this thing on company time. But I told him that Prescott was our best chance for getting a translation of the runes, sigils, or whatever they were that were being left on the corpses. Hell, he might even know what ritual they were part of.

  As for what we were going to do with that information – well, I'd worry about that when we got it. Or, rather, if we got it.

  The program they gave us at the door said Prescott's talk was called "The Devil Made Me Do It: Demonic Possession as a Defense in European Witch Trials, 1530-1605."

  Ned once explained to me that academic papers usually have a colon in the title, because so many of them are written by assholes.

  Before things started, I spotted a couple of witches I knew in the audience. They looked just like anybody else – which is the trouble with a lot of supes, if you ask me.

  I wondered if the witches viewed this lecture kind of like "old home week."

  The university's president, a tall, skinny Jesuit named Monroe, made some introductory remarks. He surprised me by being both witty and brief.

  Then Prescott came to the podium.

  I saw right away where the wheezing in the guy's voice came from – and it wasn't asthma or smoking. Benjamin Prescott must have weighed over four hundred pounds. Put that much pressure on your l
ungs and ribcage, and breathing problems are almost guaranteed.

  That's not to say that Prescott was a slob. His brown hair was carefully cut and brushed straight back. The gray suit he was wearing didn't exactly make him look slim, but it fit his bulk well, and the material looked expensive. I can't afford pricey clothing, but I still torture myself with an issue of GQ every once in a while.

  A guy that size, you'd expect him to sound like James Earl Jones. But Prescott's voice, as I knew from the phone, was closer to a tenor. I listened to it for the next forty-seven minutes.