Blood, Dirt, and Lies

by Rachel Graves

  “How did he survive?” I couldn’t understand how Raya let him go. Why not burn him to death?

  “He had a house full of water; he was waiting for Her to come after him. Then the ER did the rest, stabilizing him, keeping him alive when we wanted him dead.”

  “You’re scaring me,” I said.

  She looked at me with red glowing eyes and I realized the conversation had changed. “I didn’t last night.” E’s voice but not her words.

  “Gillian didn’t want to die, you lied to me.” It was the truth, pretty meaningless in the face of a god, but the truth.

  “He will,” She said and her eyes faded back. The next time she spoke it was E. “Sorry, Mallory, Gillian really pissed Her off.”

  ****

  I got an extra box of donuts for the break room. Half were conciliatory, we-lost-the-game donuts and the other half were me reaching out for comfort. Terrible though it was, I wanted something that came from a part of my life with absolutely no magic. Donuts worked.

  When I was a kid my upstairs neighbor, a wonderful old woman, had made them for me as a treat. Biting into freshly fried dough brought me back to her apartment, the phantom smell of sugar and moth balls, and the feeling of complete safety rushed over me.

  I offered Danny a donut and he accepted while he offered his condolences on the game. We ate and talked for a bit before deciding we’d go to Christine’s favorite store first. I tried Anna first to see if I could get a line on the personal shopper.

  “Hello?” Anna sounded like she wasn’t sure about anything, but then eight o’clock was pretty early for a fashion model.

  “Hey Anna, it’s me, Mal.”

  “Oh, hey, sorry about missing your party. I didn’t get back until late and then Nancy and I had a fight.”

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly, not wanting her to recount the details. “Can I ask you a work question?”

  “Uh, yeah, go ahead.” She sounded so off I felt guilty for waking her.

  “Does the mall have personal shoppers?”

  “Sure, all the big box stores do, nationwide, it’s a service they offer.”

  “Right, but locally?”

  “Well, one does and they only have one shopper so sort of.”

  “That’s what I thought. Can I get her number?”

  “Not if you’re going to buy clothes from a mall,” she warned.

  “It’s for a case,” I said, amazed she could worry about fashion when she was so obviously half asleep. She gave me the number. I said thanks and let her go back to bed, shaking my head at how anyone could be sleepy at half past eight in the morning.

  ****

  Tina, the personal shopper, started her appointments at ten which meant she could only see us before her first client arrived. We drove slightly faster than was legal to meet her at the back door of the mall. She looked put together and efficient, which is how I guessed a personal shopper should look, but something about her navy pencil skirt and ruffled white blouse reminded me of an old movie. I had a fleeting thought to take a picture and ask Mark which movie; he had a thing for vintage cinema. I pushed it aside to concentrate on the case.

  Tina’s small desk was in the center of the ladies suiting section, and she surprised me by pulling out a folder exactly like the ones we used at the squad room.

  “Christine Sweeny, pants size eight, shirt size ten, liked solid colors, especially green, and always shopped alone.” The efficient Tina closed the folder and looked up at us eagerly. “What else do you need to know?”

  Danny blinked twice, his silence showing how stunned he was at her ability to rattle off details. I swallowed, a little surprised myself, and started asking questions.

  “How long had you been shopping for her?”

  “Five years?” The folder flipped back open. “Five years in May.”

  “And her habits stayed the same?”

  This time she didn’t bother to flip through pages. “Classic pattern, in the beginning she bought a few high quality classic pieces a month. She’d try stuff on, take it home, return it a month later unworn, like she was afraid she couldn’t afford it.

  “Then she got more money and started buying more pieces, no more returns, but it was still wardrobe building stuff, silk sweater sets, black pants, that sort of thing. In the last couple of years she branched out, accents and accessories, handbags, makeup, the works.”

  “So she had money to spend?” Danny asked.

  “These last few years she did, but not always. Then again…” She hesitated. “Look personal shoppers are free but the clothes we offer aren’t on sale and they aren’t cheap. I mean she was smart about it, but she was never frugal; she bought quality. Quality comes with a price tag.”

  I wasn’t sure that was always true, but instead of arguing I went back to the questions.

  “Tell me about her routine. She saw you on Saturdays, right?”

  “Every Saturday until about a month ago.” She shook her head. “It blows me away that she died. She was so alive, so young and healthy. You don’t expect people her age to die. I mean, she was like, five years older than me? Scary stuff.”

  I agreed with her, but before I could say it out loud in an effort to make her comfortable and get her to open up, Danny interrupted, stealing my trick.

  “Terrifying, that she could leave the mall and never make it home.” He shook his head, mirroring her actions. “What time did she leave?”

  “Around eleven, she took an eleven thirty Pilates class so she always got out of here right on time. It made her a good first appointment of the day.”

  Tina looked up at the clock pointedly and then back at us, making it clear Danny’s attempt at a rapport hadn’t worked so well.

  “I spent an hour with her every Saturday morning for the last five years, and I had to read in the paper that she was dead. Did you talk to her parents? Her boyfriend?”

  I nodded not sure what tactic to take.

  Her smile faded. “And none of them mentioned me?”

  I waited for Danny but when he didn’t say anything, I shook my head.

  “Yeah. I thought so. Look, the clothes in her closet are worth something. Tell them they should go to consignment.” Her game face, the one that said everything could be wonderful if you bought the right pair of shoes, fell completely. “Screw this, I need a cigarette. You don’t smoke, do you?”

  We followed her out the back door, weaving our way through a group of smokers where she bummed a cigarette, telling us she quit, really quit, it was only one. It seemed cruel to remind her she hadn’t mattered in Christine’s world and that she hadn’t really quit in the same morning, so neither of us did.

  ****

  When we got back to the squad room Simon cornered me about the construction site photos. I promised him I didn’t get a vibe off anyone in the photo. I grabbed Christine’s credit card bills and got the name of her Pilates studio. We were ready to head to out again when a call stopped us. It turned out to be a false alarm, but we didn’t know until it was after five.

  I pulled out the forms I needed to close the call disappointed I couldn’t stay late and follow up on more from Christine’s case. It occurred to me a phone call wouldn’t take that long, and a minute later I dialed my FBI liaison.

  “Zollern,” Mark said, sounding official.

  “Mors,” I responded, wondering when I’d get a chance to gossip with him about E’s party. Mark wasn’t usually the talkative type so I was curious about whatever conversation he’d had and how he’d gotten Puss to cuddle.

  “Glad you called. Is it after sunset yet?”

  “Just about.” I looked outside our long windows. The rain had stopped before my run this morning, leaving the day fair and clear, but it was still winter and the sun was fading fast despite the early hour.

  “Good I need to drop something off for you on the way. See you soon.” He hung up before I could ask him on the way to where. I stared at the phone for a good long minute before hanging up.
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  “Problem?” Danny asked.

  “That’s the first time Mark’s ever hustled me off the phone,” I replied, a bit perplexed.

  I was even more perplexed when he arrived looking better than he had for the party with his dark brown hair curling around his jaw line the way it did when he paid attention to it.

  “A gift for you.” He held out a folder.

  “What is it?” I asked, opening it up to find out.

  “Christine Sweeny’s movements on the morning she died, down to the minute. The cloak and dagger guys followed her until around one that day.”

  “What happened at one?” Danny asked, suddenly eager to join the conversation.

  “Sorry, they got called somewhere else. But up until one on the day she died will help.”

  “It’ll help a lot. I could kiss you.” Tomorrow I was going to try to track something down at the Pilates studio. Now I didn’t have to track anything; it was all laid out for me. God bless the FBI.

  “Don’t. I’d like to keep my head attached.”

  “Is the stiff that jealous?” Danny asked me, but Mark answered.

  “Worse.” He started explaining, but I had already tuned him out, devouring every line of carefully recorded movement in Christine’s last day. Danny came over to my side of the desk to read with me.

  “This abbreviation, UWF, what does it mean?” I asked but there wasn’t a reply. “Mark?” He didn’t respond and when I looked up he was watching his watch with an anxious expression on his face.

  “What are you thinking about over there?”

  “How warm the skin on her back was when I put my arm around her,” he said. “And how much I don’t want to be late.”

  “What?” He wasn’t making a damn bit of sense.

  “I’m sorry. I met someone. I’ve got a date. I don’t want to be late,” he said, his voice contrite. It melted my anger.

  “Then don’t be, I can ask you tomorrow. Go have fun.”

  “I’ll do my best.” He left without wasting another second. After nearly four hundred years of self-imposed celibacy Mark had a date. I wished I could be there to watch.

  ****

  I’d taken a copy of the FBI file with me but then a call from Phoebe distracted me. She needed someone to hear her out about a work thing. I did my best to make sympathetic noises in the right places when really, I was itching to get to the information Mark had given us. When I finally got off the phone it was too late, but I woke up ready to scratch that itch. I left Danny a voice mail saying I’d be in the office late and headed to Sunshine’s.

  A minute later I pushed open the glass door, grateful for all the bright yellow suns cheerfully adorning the walls. At seven-thirty the real sun still slept, but between the imposters and the smell of fresh coffee I tricked myself into waking up. Mel got me my coffee, smiling but not talking in the way all good baristas do in the morning.

  I passed a handful of imps and some people who would fall into the category “assorted supernatural, other” on the SIU forms on my way to a small table in the back. Tucked away from the chime of the cash register and the hiss of steam for espressos I opened the folder to indulge. I spent ten joyful minutes engrossed before someone interrupted me.

  “So you’re the one who doesn’t like girls.”

  “Excuse me?” I hastily closed the folder of Christine’s movements. The man standing in front of me was cute, with brown eyes, tan skin, and hair past his collar, but that didn’t explain the comment.

  “We’ve got a friend in common.” A small bit of fire danced between the fingers of his hand. “May I?”

  I nodded and he sat down across from me, balancing a wide cup of coffee on his knee.

  “We’re not actually friends,” I said, thinking of the way Raya tried to trick me into killing someone for Her.

  “But you could be. You could be friends and more; you could even belong to Her.”

  “I’m a death witch, not fire,” I corrected.

  “You could be both.” He smiled, a genuine smile, the kind a girl could trust. I half-smiled back before I realized what I was doing.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about fire witches. Why not find out?”

  “Well, because She lied to me and was going to use me to kill someone for Her. How’s that for a reason?”

  “Pretty good, but not great. Think about what you’re passing up. I’m sure people have lied to you before, maybe even people you love. You forgave them, right? Maybe Raya deserves a second chance.”

  “Maybe.” I wasn’t willing to let it go.

  “Well you ought to think about it,” he cajoled. “I’m not the smartest guy around, but even I know better than to turn down an offer like that without a second thought.”

  He finished with a big dopey grin before stopping to sip his coffee. I knew it was my turn to talk, that’s how a conversation worked, but what the hell could I say?

  “Okay tell me about it.”

  “Well, we have a great church. Not just the building, although that’s cool too with a gym and classrooms, but the people. We care about each other, we’re like family. Closer than family actually, it’s not a Sunday services kind of thing, you know?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No Sunday services, no family, so I really don’t have any clue what you mean.”

  “Wow. You don’t have any family?”

  “Nope. Mom and Dad are dead.”

  “Cousins?”

  “Nope. None. Is that what She’s offering? A ready-made family, just add water and mix?”

  “Not water.” He shook his head so violently, his long hair bounced. “Never water, fire. Just add fire and you’ve got a whole family waiting for you.”

  “It sounds like a really nice idea but I’m not sure I need a family.”

  “Really? Why not? Everyone needs a family.” He was so sweet and clueless, cute in a dopey puppy kind of way.

  “I’m not everyone. Thanks for the chat—”

  “Reilly,” he supplied. “I’m Reilly, and I’m sure She’ll give us a chance to talk again.”

  “Right,” was all I managed as I walked out, happy to head to work.

  ****

  I drove into work thinking about the deeply religious and how they differed from zealots. Anna was deeply religious, so was Jakob. I wouldn’t call either of them zealots. They believed strongly in their faith and trusted their god guided every step of their life. I could admire that faith but somehow taking it a step further, a step toward Reilly’s comment that “She” would give us a chance to talk again bothered me.

  I still wasn’t convinced Raya actually existed. I’d worked with plenty of schizophrenics in my last job as a social worker. The idea of a shared social delusion came to mind all too quickly. E could be suffering from a dissociative identity disorder with Anna and Reilly suffering to a lesser extent. My dream called that into question. Was the house fire real? I suspected it had been, and while I could explain that away with death magic, how could I have known about Gillian? It felt real but I could be getting sucked into the shared delusion.

  It wasn’t unlike the pro-anorexia community: a group of people who professed beliefs the rest of us didn’t agree with that changed (and often threatened) their lives. The church to the fire goddess had been accepted, while everyone agreed the pro-anorexia people were nuts. But wasn’t that just marketing?

  And what about me? I didn’t believe in Raya, not really, not enough to pray to Her. Supposedly, She’d shown up to save my life once, but again, that could have been Anna deluding herself. I could rationalize away every conversation that had come from E or Anna but the dream, I couldn’t categorize so neatly.

  I looked up the family from the farm house fire. It took all of three seconds to find them on my phone’s browser. The details of the fire were the same from my dream, even though it happened miles away in Iowa. I wasn’t psychic, and death witch magic didn’t let me gather details like the
look in the little girl’s eyes.

  I walked out of the elevator pondering the difference between a cult and a church, all the while chiding myself for feeling okay with accompanying Jakob to a Catholic mass but not being all right with the idea of a pagan god.

  I greeted my desk, and the stack of reports waiting to be completed, with more than my usual enthusiasm, delighted to get lost in a problem that had nothing to do with my personal life. I worked steadily until after nine, when Danny and I headed out to catch our window of opportunity at Balance Body and Mind studio.

  ****

  The charge on the credit card prepared me for someplace nice, but I hadn’t expected the glass and chrome interior to look so space age. A smiling young woman with high Latin cheekbones and a tight ponytail asked us to wait. A few minutes later the owner, a woman who looked about thirty, came out to greet us.

  “Ximena,” she introduced herself as we walked through a corridor made of white Japanese-style paper screens. We ended at a wide-open room where one glass wall faced a small Zen-style garden and the other wall held equipment that reminded me of medieval torture devices. “I’ve owned the studio for twenty years and we’ve never had a murder before. It’s terrible.”

  “Twenty years? Were you a child prodigy?” Danny said, and while I didn’t feel him use any magic, he was still charming her.

  “I’m sixty-two,” she said softly. She paused giving us a minute to think about how good she looked. “That’s what working out can do for someone. That’s why people like Christine come here, to invest in themselves.”

  Somehow we’d gotten a sales speech. Should I stop her? Interviews could go either way; memorized speeches helped you get people comfortable, but they didn’t tell you more than the person wanted you to hear. I decided to stop this one before it went any longer.

  “Christine took a class every Saturday?”

  Ximena nodded. “With the reformer.” She pointed to something like a padded bench with springs and hooks hanging from it. “It was a small group class. With Christine gone we’ve had to cancel.”