Blood, Dirt, and Lies

by Rachel Graves

  Some of the other people in the world who might understand were filing out of the Squad room when I arrived. Ben nodded hello on his way into the elevator; I smiled back. But when I got to my desk the smile faded. Once again there was a dirty coffee mug sitting on the corner. With a sigh that expressed as much annoyance as I could muster, I dropped it into Amadeus’ side of the desk.

  I took a minute to get over it, then headed back to the break room where I could see Simon waiting for me. Actually, he was waiting for the pastry box I was carrying. Monday morning donuts were a bit of a tradition for me. Simon liked glazed best, and he helped himself as I set out napkins.

  “Anything with the guy from my run? Is he out of the hospital yet?”

  “Not out yet, and nothing new.” He paused to take a bite of donut lost for a second in its flavor. I poured my coffee and thought about my own donut selection. “One thing though, we got his date book. Does the name Sweeny mean anything to you? It’s eating at me but I can’t figure why…”

  “Christine Sweeny is my homicide victim from before the big storm. She’s got a connection to him?” It was a lead, when I least expected it, right there like the most natural thing in the world. I didn’t stop myself from smiling.

  “Yup, he had a meeting. The note says ‘re: C. Sweeny problem.’ I don’t suppose you have any idea what that means?”

  “None. But if you tell me where his office is, I’ll be more than delighted to find out.”

  Simon was willing; the incident that ruined my morning run was a tricky case for him, political victim, rich area, it could cause problems. Danny hadn’t gotten in yet but I didn’t want to wait. I got the details from Simon and set up a meeting, anxious to get started on something that might make a difference to the ghost who got in touch with me nearly a week ago.

  ****

  The man I’d found bleeding to death on the trail was Walter Lloyd, Representative to Concordia Parish. His office space occupied a spot that was neither amazing nor damning in the tall state building down the street from the squad room. A walk there might only take fifteen minutes but it took you to another world.

  Even in the dead of winter the lawns in front of the State building were manicured and the fountain bubbled. I swallowed my jealousy as I hit the elevator button, still putting my service piece back in its holster. You couldn’t get into the building without going through a metal detector. They’d made me hand over my officially issued weapon, walk through the detector to be declared safe, and then handed it back to me. Apparently, security was an issue.

  The office suite held a set of four cubicles in front of a receptionist’s desk. Behind them a door stood open, but the office inside was dark. Everything, from the fabric on the cubicle walls to the carpet beneath my feet, was gray. Worse, the faces of the employees were the same shade of gray.

  I introduced myself to a young man wearing a crisp purple shirt and a silver necktie. He sat at a receptionist’s desk, so maybe it was his, but with the outfit and the perfect brown hair, I wasn’t going to make assumptions.

  “Why don’t we all go into Walter’s office? If there’s anything we can do to help…” His voice trailed off, a little upset, as he opened the desk drawer and grabbed a pen and paper. It was his desk, he was the receptionist, and from the way the people in the cubes reacted, obviously the guy who was in charge when Representative Lloyd was out.

  He introduced himself as Garret, and told me the others’ names. I wrote names in my notebook, making little notes like “f, blonde, heavy makeup” and “m, skinny, 60+” so I could put them with a face later.

  “I’m Detective Mors from SIU, I’m investigating a homicide.” They all nodded and I realized they’d heard what I’d said to Garret earlier. “I’m not responsible for investigating the attack against Representative Lloyd, but the homicide may be related. What can you all tell me about a meeting he had a week before he was attacked? The subject was C. Sweeny.”

  “Oh. Her.” Michael, who I’d put down as over sixty years old and far too skinny, used a tone that told me he hadn’t attended the funeral.

  “Christine Sweeny was a lobbyist who caused some problems for the representative,” Garret supplied smoothly. The two women in the room nodded their agreement. “He wanted her firm to spend more money on waste water treatment; Representative Lloyd is a supporter of environmental causes.”

  “I know an environmentalist who thinks otherwise,” I said softly.

  “The Terra Prima people, right? They’re nuts, extremists. Everyone else from Greenpeace to the Arbor Society supports us.” Garrett shook his head at something he wasn’t going to say out loud. “Terra Prima would be better off going after people like Sweeny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a bitch,” the blonde in heavy makeup said.

  “Jane, don’t, she’s dead,” Michael pleaded.

  “So what? It doesn’t change what she was, and that’s bitch through and through.” She turned from him back to me. “Christine used people. She looked at you and thought ‘what can I get out of you?’ and then she took it. I’m not surprised someone killed her.”

  “Christine and Jane had a history,” Garrett stated without the least bit of emotion.

  “Would you be willing to tell me about it?” I asked her.

  “Sure, everyone knows. Christine started meeting with Representative Lloyd after I first got here. She invited me out to lunch and I thought we were friends. Then she starts asking me to send her things, little things she told me the representative had shown her in a meeting or that she’d left behind. Could I send over a copy of this memo? Then a week later, what about this report on waste water, could I photocopy it for her?

  “Except he hadn’t shown her and it was all privileged information. And when I called her on it she said I must have misunderstood. It could have cost me my job, except Walter…Walter…” She’d been angry in the beginning, tough and bitter but when she said the representative’s first name her voice caught. A second later she covered her face and sobbed while the other woman patted her back.

  “Representative Lloyd understood what kind of a person Christine Sweeny was. When everything came out and the other members of the environmental committee called for Jane’s resignation he fought them.” Garrett took over talking for the group.

  “Did anything else come out of it?”

  “Not really, the first report, the one Christine got her hands on, showed pollution, high alkalinity levels, but after that her company promised to clean things up and from the samples provided they did.”

  “Random samples?” I asked. Somewhere in the back of my head my brain was putting something together. I couldn’t figure out what yet. I asked the question hoping he’d crystallize the thought for me.

  “Random. Collected by MetroTech Chemicals, then sent from their lab to the state labs. They collected ten samples, we got five.”

  That hadn’t helped but I nodded and started to wrap things up. I walked back to the squad room in the cold January air wondering if Danny would have seen whatever I was missing.

  ****

  Danny made it into work by the time I got back. I apologized for heading out without him and offered to go over my notes. We ended up in an unused observation room, happy to shut the door on the growing chaos of the squad room. It was Monday morning at nearly ten, and the din involved at least three creatures I couldn’t name, one of which was shrieking and beating its wings. I gave Danny the details and he nodded in all the right places but ten minutes in I knew he wasn’t really listening.

  “So, you going to tell me about it?”

  “About what?” he asked, clearly confused.

  “About whatever is bugging you enough that you took an afternoon off, then showed up late this morning. In the entire time I’ve known you, you’ve never been late.”

  “It’s family business.” He clammed up, pressing his lips into a thin line as if he were afraid he’d say any more.

  “Uh-huh.
I know about your family now, remember? And God knows you’re hiding enough secrets of mine. I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going on.” I leveled him with my most mature and calm stare. He was still for a minute, then burst out laughing.

  “You look like Katie does when she knows the kids are lying. You want a cup of coffee? I want a cup of coffee.”

  Fifteen minutes later we were at Sunshine’s, the local supernatural coffee house, ordering up two of their biggest and finest coffees. Mel, the tough looking barista, coated in tattoos that buzzed with magic, nodded toward the couch and I would have taken it, grateful for its calming charms, but Danny wanted to walk along the river.

  Outside, the cold wet air on my face, and the river churning along beneath me in the weak gray sunlight, he finally relaxed.

  “There’s a game selkies play when they’re young. Hell, actually there are about a thousand of them. This one is something teenagers do; some kids were playing it and they got caught. Now one of them is stuck.”

  “Tell me about the game,” I said, curious. What did supernatural seal people consider fun?

  “Well, you go out, you find a herd of seals, normal seals that is, not ones like us. Anyway you swim in with them, and wait for a fishing boat to come along. When they do, you let them catch you, and then once you’re on board you trash the boat.”

  “You what?”

  “Slip your skin, reverse the bilge pumps, cut the anchor, tear into wiring, whatever you can do.” From his voice I knew he was speaking from experience.

  “And that’s a game?”

  He nodded.

  “Like soccer?”

  “Okay, not a game, something you do, like American kids go to the mall.”

  “Do people die on these boats?” I leaned over the cold iron railing wondering what it would be like to wake up on a boat with no anchor, the wiring gone.

  Danny joined me in looking at the river and shrugged. “Well, maybe, but then, they were out hunting for seals.”

  “Which means they’ve earned it?” The river didn’t notice the condemnation in my tone. I wondered if the ocean Danny grew up in was as apathetic.

  “Anyway, this game, they’ve been playing it for ages. The problem is, ships have changed. People have changed. They’re not hunting for seals anymore, now they’re…” He hesitated. “Collecting them.”

  “Like for that asshole hunter?” I asked, alarmed.

  “No, like for the Baton Rouge Zoo.”

  “Oh.” Realization dawned.

  “Exactly. Three of the young lads went scuttling. No one heard from them for a while, then two of them came back. The third one was lost until he called from the states. It was first thing in the morning, so around two a.m. here. He was in quarantine but snuck out for a phone. He’s at the zoo, now.”

  “No problem, we go in, we explain it, and we get him out.”

  “No, Fiona would have a fit. She’d lose it in every way a person can. We can’t share our secret with the number of people you’re talking about—maybe if it was one person, and not a zookeeper, someone who wouldn’t want to immediately write a book on selkie biology. But can you imagine how many it would be?”

  “Okay, we wait until no one is around, he changes and walks out.”

  “Perfect, except…”

  “Except?” I thought my plan was amazing.

  “There’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day SealCam. The feed is broadcast from the zoo website.”

  “Which means he can’t change and walk out,” I stated the obvious.

  “Fe…she…you can’t understand my sister. I can’t and I grew up with her. She has to be in charge, she’s the leader. If there’s a problem, she solves it and everything is a problem to be solved.”

  “What was her plan?”

  “Fly over here, get me, break into the zoo, destroy the camera, rescue the kid, fly back.”

  I gave a low whistle at the number of laws she’d be breaking in the process.

  “Exactly. As far as she’s concerned they hunted us, which means we get a free pass. Rules don’t apply. I spent the weekend stalling her. We went by the zoo twice, casing the place.”

  “Is he okay?”

  He looked at me confused so I added, “The boy, the one who was captured?”

  “He’s seventeen and stupid as the day is long. He’s doing nothing all day and eating for free. For him it’s like a summer vacation. For Fe, it’s damn near the apocalypse.”

  “And that’s without her finding out about the coat the hunter has.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Danny proclaimed. “I can’t imagine how crazy she’d go if she saw it.”

  “How long do we have before she breaks in on her own?”

  “A day? Two or three maybe?” He was looking down at the river now, his dark brown eyes locked on the rolling water.

  “One thing I don’t get…”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why haven’t I ever seen you eat fish?”

  He laughed at my bad joke long enough to be polite and then let me convince him to head to the zoo. I flashed my badge and got to talk to the person in charge of the seal exhibit. Danny looked nervous that I’d reveal his secret and I realized I didn’t have a way to reassure him without doing just that.

  “What did you say you were checking for?” the helpful zoo employee asked. She was maybe twenty-three, with a perky black pony-tail, high knife-sharp cheek bones, and rich black skin.

  “Not sure, but your new seal exhibit came up; we wanted to make sure it was secure.”

  “Oh it’s secure, I mean pretty secure anyway. The zoo is inside a city park, we’ve got high gates, cameras, all that stuff. Then there’s me.”

  “You?” Her name tag read Becky and she looked like she’d be about one hundred and twenty pounds dripping wet, not much of a security force.

  “Uh-huh, I’m a werehyena.” Her perky smile didn’t fade. “I sleep here at night. I mean, I don’t always, but the new seals, one of them has me worried. Until things settle down, I’ll be here. Anyone gets in my way and there’ll be problems.”

  “Werehyena?”

  “Pure Bouda, through and through.”

  “But if you sleep here, you must turn the cameras off,” Danny asked his first question of the day.

  “We don’t have any on the inside, but the seals tend to stay by the water, so they’re covered,” she answered.

  “The new seals have you worried?” I asked, trying to rescue my reputation with a good question.

  “We got five, three males and two females. We’re trying to increase the size of our pod. Most of them fit in fine. The females are already flirting with the two males we had, the males trying to make a place in the pod, no problems. But the one male…”

  “Not fitting in?” Danny sounded casual even to me, and I knew him.

  “It’s weird.” She shook her head, walking us from the back of the exhibit to the front. Seven seals were lounging on rocks. I couldn’t even tell the males from females let alone which one was really a person. “His behavior is totally normal, textbook seal behavior, but there’s something about him…see how he sits a little off from the group? I mean not far enough that it’s wrong but far enough that you can tell.”

  I shook my head. “I can’t tell.”

  “Me neither,” Danny chimed in.

  “Well everyone else agrees with you. But I can see it. And until it stops I’ll be spending my nights here, on a cot at the back of the enclosure.”

  Her voice sounded awfully lonely, but Danny was grinning from ear to ear. I bit my tongue through the zoo and the parking lot, doing my best not to say anything in public.

  “Care to tell me about it, partner?” I burst out when we were back in the car. To me it sounded like Fiona was in serious trouble if she tried to break the boy out of the zoo. She’d end up messing with a werehyena, which sounded pretty dangerous. I couldn’t imagine why he was smiling.

  “How much do you know about selkies?”
<
br />   “Uh, there was this movie, and uh…” I tried to sound knowledgeable when clearly I wasn’t.

  “Uh-huh. Well, if the only guard at night is a woman, he’ll be fine to get out on his own.”

  “Excuse me? She might be a woman but she turns into a snarling killer.”

  “Not for us, selkies charm people, especially young women, especially lonely young women. We’re kind of famous for it. Husband goes off to sea, the young wife is home alone, and well…it’s what we do.”

  “When you’re not scuttling ships,” I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

  “Yup. She’ll have a very pleasant night and wake up the next day short a seal.”

  “If that’s true why hasn’t he done it already?”

  Danny shrugged. “He’s a kid, he probably doesn’t want to yet. If she’s as lonely as she looks, he might want to stick around for a while.”

  “You really think a seventeen-year-old can charm a werehyena?” I tried not to sound too incredulous. Everything I’d heard about hyenas made that sound completely impossible.

  His only answer was a laugh.

  ****

  I didn’t hear about the seals again until Thursday. By then we had handled a vandalism by a girl who didn’t speak or move but could throw paint around with her mind like nobody’s business. We followed that up with an exorcism gone wrong.

  Christine Sweeny’s case didn’t get anywhere. It was a sad fact but cases that didn’t get solved in the first twenty-four hours tended not to get solved. Stretch twenty-four hours into a week and half and by Thursday afternoon it was looking like we should give up. No one had anything to say to us.

  Christine’s parents were sweet people but didn’t know much about their daughter’s life. Her boyfriend hadn’t returned our calls. That was enough to make him a suspect but he had an airtight alibi. It had been ten days since I’d watched them pull her out of the river and all our leads were dried up.

  Desperate for distraction when Danny suggested a trip to the zoo I practically raced to the car.

  “Are we going to investigate a missing seal?” I asked with a smile.