The Alchemical Detective (Riga Hayworth)

by Kirsten Weiss

  “Hi, guys,” Riga called. “I’ve got an appointment with Reverend Carver. Know where I can find him?”

  One of them pointed up. “Take the stairs on the left. His office is above the choir loft.”

  She jogged upstairs, through a choir loft with a massive pipe organ and plastic folding chairs in prim rows: the sacred and profane, she thought wryly. Riga climbed a second set of stairs, to a door with a thin metallic strip at eye level that said: OFFICE. She rapped on it with the back of her knuckles and was met with a deafening silence. She knocked again, more forcefully. Nothing. Riga checked her watch. She wasn’t early. Riga knocked and turned the knob, eased the door open, slipped inside.

  The room glowed, its burnished wood golden even in the weak light. A plain wooden cross hung high on the wall behind the desk. The windows were high and narrow, illuminating the octagonal room with shimmering rectangular blocks of light. The reverend lay curled upon the floor in the center of the room. Blood pooled beneath his left ear.

  Riga felt her legs go weak. “Oh, hell,” she said.

  A deep crevasse split the skull beneath his fair hair, but Riga knelt beside him, pulled one of her gloves off with her teeth, and pressed two fingers to the pulse point in his neck. No pulse. His flesh was as frigid as the room. She lightly touched his forearm, putting gentle pressure on it at first, then pressing harder. The body was stiff with rigor mortis and she felt a sudden flush of rage. If she’d been more aggressive investigating the case, hadn’t chalked the Reverend up as a caricature of intolerance, had taken him more seriously, she might have prevented this.

  Riga tugged her leather gloves on and made a swift tour of the room, verifying the killer wasn’t hiding under the desk or behind a filing cabinet. She was alone. The room was messy with boxes piled in corners and a desk overflowing with books and papers, but didn’t appear ransacked. A metallic seventies-era ceiling lamp hung from the low ceiling and Riga noticed a trap door set in the roof beside it.

  She pulled her phone from the pocket of her pea coat and dialed 911, gave a skeptical dispatcher the bad news. Repeated it twice.

  The door swung inward.

  One of the men from below stood framed in the open door, his mouth agape. “You killed him,” he said.

  “No. I found him. I’m on the phone with the police now.” She held the phone up, showing him.

  Shock and anger flitted across his thickset features. “You killed him!” His face turned ugly. He took a step toward her. “The Reverend told me about you, told me you were coming. I should never have let you go up.”

  Riga took a quick step back. “I found him like this. I’m on the phone now with the police.”

  “Witch!” He lunged forward, knocking the phone from her hand.

  She front-kicked him low in the gut, sending him staggering backward through the doorway. He landed on his ass on the hardwood floor. Riga slammed and locked the door before he could recover. The man pounded on the door and shouted for the others below. She heard him throw himself against the door.

  The door shuddered beneath the man’s blows, but it was solid and withstood the attack. There was a trick to breaking down doors and her assailant didn’t seem to know it.

  Riga sagged against the desk, blood pounding in her ears. She took a deep breath, trying to clear the adrenaline racing through her after the swift fight.

  Tinny squawks emanated from beneath the desk and she knelt down. Her phone. The dispatcher was still on the line. Riga bent and grabbed it, hung up. The police station wasn’t far; they’d be here soon enough. She needed to record the crime scene before they arrived.

  Riga found a calendar on the Reverend’s desk and took pictures of the final pages with her phone, then shots of the body. She heard other voices, more pounding on the door. The man had been joined by his fellow musicians. Riga tried to ignore them and checked the desk drawers. She found pencils, church bulletins, blank paper.

  She hurried to the bookshelf. Its top shelves were lined with religious texts and the bottom with an occult collection that rivaled her own. Riga knelt and ran one gloved finger across the latter, pausing briefly before a copy of the witch hunter’s bible, the Malleus Maleficarum. Rapidly, she drew her finger onward until she felt a book by Agrippa that was out of alignment with the others. She removed it from the shelf. It fell open to a page titled: Of Goetia and Necromancy. Riga examined the book more closely, found a dog-eared page and flipped to it: Of the Orders of Evil Spirits, and of their Fall and Divers Natures.

  The Reverend had read up on summoning demons. She hadn’t told him about the sigil yesterday and the police hadn’t made that information public. How had he known? If he had been responsible for the deaths, then who killed him?

  Feeling ill, Riga hung her head in her hands. The Reverend had spoken some truths to her. He’d identified an evil in their midst, had understood that people involved with magic had become its focus. She laughed bitterly. Riga hadn’t liked the Reverend, still thought he’d been bigoted and small-minded, but he’d been right in a way. And she’d played the fool.

  The killer was winning, still a step ahead.

  The men on the other side of the door had gone quiet and she raised her head, listening. She walked to one of the high windows and stood on tiptoe, peering out, but the angle was wrong. Riga couldn’t see the parking lot, or if the police had arrived yet.

  She continued her examination of the murder scene. One of the walls was covered in multi-colored flyers from past church events: Fourth of July picnics, potlucks, Bible classes, Christmas chorals. Partially hidden in the mix was a small bulletin board with grainy photos thumb-tacked to it. Riga moved in for a closer look, her eyes drawn to a photo of herself on the beach, talking to a policeman with his back to the camera.

  So someone had been watching her that day. The Reverend? That would explain how he’d gotten to the station so quickly after Lynn Chen’s body was found. How long had he been following her?

  There were photos of the other women in the Tea and Tarot group too: a shot through Audrey’s window of her gesticulating to someone. She could only see the other person’s arm in the shot; it looked like a man’s, wearing a shiny black jacket. Then another photo of Audrey bundled up against the cold, outside, arguing with one of the Reverend’s protestors. Deputy Night had interposed himself between them, as if to cool the parties down. There was Riga again, exiting the police station, alone. It must have been taken when she’d gone to sign her statement. A picture of Lily’s tiny shack: the door was open and Riga could just make out the heel of a black shoe, entering. Riga coughed, clearing her throat. Tara hadn’t been neglected. There was a picture of her through the tea shop window, taken from some distance. Cars were between the window and the photographer, but she could clearly be seen in the window, chin tucked, hugging herself tightly.

  Creepy. And interesting. Riga rubbed her eyes. Maybe it would all make sense to her after she got some sleep. She took a photo of the board, then close up photos of each picture, e-mailing all the pictures she’d taken to her own account and then deleting them from her phone. She coughed.

  And then her brain understood what her senses had been trying to deny. Fire. She looked about. Smoke curled from beneath the door. As if in a dream, she walked to it, placed the back of her hand upon the wood. It was hot. Her hand dropped to her side and she stared, disbelieving. Tensing, she placed it on the door again and ran her hand down toward the bottom. She could still feel the heat, which meant there was a lot more heat on the other side. That exit was blocked by fire.

  She swallowed and turned, looked hopelessly at the windows, too high and too narrow. A purple banner hung in the corner: He Is Risen! She unhooked the banner, jammed it beneath the door. It should be wet, she thought uselessly. But it would give her time, perhaps enough for rescue.

  And then she remembered. There was another door. She crawled atop the desk, stretched upwards, her fingers scraping the ceiling, catching the metal latch. She tugged upon it.
The metal was cold and unyielding. She pulled again, hanging her full weight from the latch, her knees curling beneath her, and the door swung open. A ladder slid downward with a rattling sound, and with it, a blast of cold air. Riga felt lightheaded with relief.

  She scrambled up the ladder, pulling it up and the door shut behind her. Riga straightened, and her skull struck something solid. Eyes stinging with tears, she fumbled above her and touched cold metal. A bell. She was in the bell tower. It was open to the air on all sides and Riga walked to the waist-high railing and leaned over. There was a ledge about eighteen inches in width on the outside of the rail, circumnavigating the octagonal tower. Beneath her was the peaked roof of the church, its shingles slick with patches of snow and ice. Four stories below, in the parking lot, a small group of people stared up at her, silent and unmoving. A chill rippled through her.

  She’d called 911; the dispatcher would automatically send police, fire, and ambulance services. Most ladder trucks could reach between the third and fifth floors. Soon the cavalry would be here and she’d be off the roof, she told herself.

  A drift of white smoke obscured her vision and she looked down. Smoke poured through the cracks between the floorboards.

  Riga pulled her scarf up over her nose and mouth, her heart slamming in her ribs. Maybe waiting for rescue wasn’t the best idea.

  She unhooked the ropes that hung from the bells but they barely reached the floorboards – too short for salvation. Riga thrust them aside and strode to the opposite side of the bell tower, praying for a ladder or some sort of fire escape. She peered over the railing, saw the roof was steep and deadly. No escape.

  A gust of wind blew the smoke away from the tower, bending the tree tops and scattering a flurry of snow. She closed her eyes. Someone would come, she told herself.

  You need to get off the roof. Riga flinched; the words sounded like another voice in her mind, and had come to her, unbidden.

  A vision came to her of a woman, struggling in bonds, surrounded by swords, bound to a stake, flames licking close. Riga opened her eyes, tried to shake the image from her mind, but it had left the taste of fear behind. She had to get off the roof.

  Below her, a small wooden house stood in a clearing of pines, smoke curling from its chimney. The rectory? A black line of cable stretched from the house to the turret-like roof above her.

  She dropped her bag and clambered onto the wooden railing, holding tight to one of the beams that braced the roof above her and craned her body for a better look. One foot slipped and she grabbed the post, steadying herself. Beads of sweat popped out upon her forehead. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. In, out. She was breathing. She was alive.

  Riga opened her eyes, and leaned out more carefully. The cable was attached to the topside of the roof, but from her angle she couldn’t see how. She slithered off the railing and returned to the bell tower, then tugged her leather belt off. Riga tossed her bag over the ledge. It bumped and slid down the snow-covered roof, dropped out of sight.

  First a knee, then a foot, she climbed upon the railing and wrapped one arm firmly around the post.

  She tossed one end of her belt over the cable.

  It slipped off before she could get the nerve up to reach for it. She’d have to let go of her grip on the post to grab the other end of the belt and the thought left her cold.

  Riga tossed the belt over again and this time she forced herself to grab the end, wrapped it around her wrist.

  Her foot abruptly shot out from under her. With a terrified yelp, Riga pitched forward and zipped downward. The friction of the belt against the cable hummed; she could feel the vibration from it through her gloves. The cold air bit at her through her clothing but she was flying! She was a genius!

  She was moving too fast. Riga sped towards the house below, her legs bicycling in the air. Her right hand slipped on the leather belt. She was going to die. She was going to pancake against the house like a cartoon coyote. No, she could make it. She’d have to let go before she hit and take her chances with the ground.

  From the corner of her eye she saw something blue streak toward her: Cesar, sprinting on an intercept course. He shouted something and then he was in front of her.

  Riga let go.

  She hit Cesar hard, knocking the wind from them both and driving him to the damp soil. For a long moment, they lay there, stunned.

  Then Cesar wheezed. “Good thing you don’t weigh much, Miss Hayworth.”

  Riga rolled off of him, gasping. “You can call me Riga.”

  “No, Ma’am. Really, I can’t.”

  He helped her to her feet and she brushed at the dirt on her khakis.

  Flames licked the bell tower.

  Wolfe, Ash and Pen ran across the damp ground. On Wolfe’s shoulder was a camera, which he managed to keep aimed toward Riga. Sam and Angus followed close behind, the latter hefting a boom mic.

  “Wow! Riga!” Wolfe laughed. “That was amazing!”

  “Did you get it all, Wolfe?” Sam asked. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to Riga. “What happened up there? How did the fire start?”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Riga asked him angrily. “Again, Pen? How many times do we have to go through this?”

  “You’re on a reality TV show and you’re investigating two brutal killings,” Sam said. “Of course we followed you. What did you learn at the church? How is the fire connected?”

  Riga didn’t answer. Other people walked across the parking lot towards them, the silent watchers from below. Their numbers had grown and they moved quickly, determined.

  “What now?” Riga said under her breath. Her nerves hummed with adrenaline.

  The little group stopped ten feet away, their voices an angry buzz. Riga recognized the man who’d rushed her in the church.

  The Reverend’s wife pushed through the group. “My husband. What have you done to my husband?” She shrieked, and flew at Riga, her thin hands curved like claws.

  Cesar stepped between them, one hand extended at forehead level, palm out. The Reverend’s wife smacked into it, falling on her butt. She sobbed.

  There were angry cries from the crowd.

  Riga cringed. She’d rather Cesar had let her take the hit.

  Ash pushed Pen behind him.

  A man built like a linebacker exploded out of the crowd, charging Cesar. “You bastard!”

  Cesar dodged left and sent the man flying past him to land face down on the earth.

  The wail of a police siren froze the action. Everyone but Riga turned toward the cruiser rolling down the rectory drive. Riga kept her eyes on the Reverend’s wife, keening upon the ground.

  Sheriff King emerged from the cruiser and approached the crowd, eyes narrowed, hand on the butt of his gun. Deputy Night paced behind him, muttering something into the radio clipped to his jacket collar. He went to the sobbing woman, placed a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at his touch, her eyes filled with longing.

  “Is anyone in the church?” King said.

  Riga tore her gaze from the Reverend’s wife. “I found the Reverend’s body in his office before the fire started.” She balled her hands into fists. “It’s still there.”

  “You killed him,” someone shouted.

  “Is anyone alive in there?” the Sheriff insisted.

  One of the men from the band said, “Everyone but the Reverend got out.”

  With a roar, the bell tower collapsed in a shower of sparks and flaming timbers.

  Two more police cars and a fire truck roared into the church parking lot.

  Pen touched Riga’s sleeve. “Riga—”

  “Don’t talk to me.”

  Pen’s eyes flashed and she stepped away.

  “Sorry.” Riga shook her head. “I meant don’t talk to anyone. The police aren’t going to want us to speak to each other until they get a chance to interview us. That way we won’t be able to taint each other’s stories.”

  “No talking!” King snapped
at them.

  Riga stuck her hands in her pockets and shivered.

  Chapter 22: Fermentation

  “I have pictures,” Riga said, interrupting Sheriff King’s bellows. They had returned to the police station’s cinderblock interview room. The Sheriff and Deputy Night had a good cop/bad cop thing going. Riga knew the game, but it worried her that she warranted the Sheriff’s personal attention, while lower ranking officers questioned the other crew members.

  The Sheriff stopped shouting. “Pictures?”

  “While I was locked inside the Reverend’s office—”

  “Locked yourself inside,” the Sheriff said.

  Riga leaned back in the chair and folded her hands across her stomach. “While I was inside the office I used my cell phone to photograph the scene.”

  King extended his hand. “Give it to me.”

  “I then e-mailed the photos to myself and deleted them from my cell phone.”

  “Why?”

  Riga colored. “Sometimes the police don’t like me taking photos.” She’d had her phone confiscated by the cops once, and had learned her lesson.

  “Yeah, well the crime scene’s been burned. I need those pictures.” He waggled his thick fingers. “The phone.”

  She dug the phone out of her pocket, slapped it into his open palm.

  He fumbled with the phone then thrust it towards the Deputy. “You figure this out.”

  Night scanned through her photo album. “There’s nothing here.”

  “I told you,” she said. “I e-mailed them to my own account.”

  “What’s your password?” Night asked.

  “For my personal e-mail account? Don’t you need a warrant for that? Give me the phone, I’ll open my e-mail for you and get you the photos.”