The Vanity Case (Sondra Blake Book 1)

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘I do, actually. The post room collects all the letters together and files them, just in case. The emails are filtered before they get to my inbox. About half of them are proposals of marriage. You get on better with your mother, I take it?’

  ‘More easy-going. She doesn’t really want me doing this either, but it’s more to do with worry.’

  ‘And you have a sister, right?’

  ‘Yeah, Emily. Emily Charters. She’s married. We get on okay, but I get to see much of her since she got married. Her husband doesn’t like me much. Never figured out why. Uh, you don’t have any family, do you?’

  Sondra shook her head. ‘Poppa died a while back. Momma died in nineteen ninety. They never had another kid, so it’s just me. Your burger is going to get cold.’

  Giving up on trying to get the huge thing into his mouth, Clarke picked up his knife to cut it in half. ‘There is no shame in admitting defeat to a superior foe,’ he said, rather eruditely.

  ‘Sure,’ Sondra said, ‘so long as the foe isn’t going to shoot you in the head.’

  ~~~

  The club was loud and hot. Lucy loved it. Decked out in her shortest, reddest dress and her highest heels, she was as much using the bodies pressed against her to stay upright as for the physical sensation of being touched. She was a fit, attractive woman, and she was being touched. And she loved it because it was so not her on the other six days of any given week.

  As the music shifted from one throbbing dance track to another, she slid out of the scrum on the dance floor and headed for the restrooms to freshen up. Yes, all this was crazy fun, but the place was almost boiling her in her skin. The restroom was, of course, teeming and it took her ten minutes just to get to a mirror to check her makeup. She retouched her lip gloss and used a damp paper towel to take the sheen of sweat out of her cleavage and off her brow. She tightened her blonde plait. Then she left the sinks and headed out into the clamour.

  That was when she saw him. He was watching her, or watching for her. His eyes slid over her body without the slightest hint of embarrassment, and Lucy felt like the room’s temperature spiked. God, he was gorgeous! His eyes rose to meet hers and her heart skipped a beat. He was really gorgeous and, as his eyes drew her toward him, she thought she recognised him, but there was no way that he could be here and interested in someone like Lucy Carpenter.

  ‘Hi,’ he said as she got close enough to hear him.

  ‘Hi,’ she said back. ‘Uh, I’m Lucy.’

  ‘Call me Dillan,’ he said. ‘Can I buy you a drink, Lucy? I feel like a little company.’

  Lucy’s heart leapt into her throat, but she managed to force it down to say, ‘Of course, Mister– Uh, Dillan. I’d love a glass of wine.’

  He held out an arm, and she slipped hers into it. ‘Let’s go find somewhere to chat and drink,’ he suggested.

  ‘Sure.’ Frankly, Lucy would have followed him into Hell if he’d asked. Her brain was still struggling to catch up with what was happening. This was turning out to be a really amazing night.

  11th February.

  Mary Jane pressed the buzzer for apartment three again, holding the button down this time. After several seconds of listening to the hum, she let go and waited, but still there was no response from Lucy. She began to dig in her purse for her keys.

  ‘If you’re lying there in an unconscious stupor, I am going to stuff you in the shower on cold,’ she muttered as she located the key Lucy had given her ‘for emergencies.’ Well, not turning up for their Saturday morning shopping trip was an emergency. Opening the outer door, she slipped inside and headed for the stairs. Up three floors and then along the corridor to the apartment door.

  She banged on it a couple of times. ‘Lucy? Lucy! I swear if you’re in there with a man and didn’t tell me, I’ll… I’ll…’ Unsure what she would do, but sure it would be dramatic, Mary Jane put the key in the door and turned it.

  Something was wrong. She had no idea what made her think that, but she did, and she edged into the apartment slowly, silent now. It was not a huge place, but it was comfortable. She had always liked Lucy’s apartment, so why did it make her feel uneasy now? The lounge was tidy, but two glasses sat on the coffee table beside the sofa. One of them was half full: red wine, which Lucy only drank when she was with a man. Mary Jane had never understood it, but Lucy said red wine was more sensual.

  There was a scent. No, there was a smell. Thick, not entirely pleasant, but maybe the smell of sex on the air. But… But maybe not. ‘Lucy?’ Mary Jane called out as she edged toward the corridor at the back of the lounge which led to the bathroom and the bedroom.

  Something lay in the doorway of the bedroom. It looked like a pair of legs, but maybe not. Legs did not have the lumps that whatever it was had. As she got closer, she could see that those lumps decorated what was definitely a pair of legs. The desire to turn and run was strong, but what if Lucy was in trouble. She edged closer and managed to get a good look around the corner at the body attached to the legs – a small part of her mind was briefly thankful for that. The first thing she made out was a translucent, red wrap that she had given to Lucy for Christmas. Then she saw the face and Mary Jane began to scream.

  ~~~

  The sun was shining brightly, even if it was a little low in the sky and thus left the street in shadow. There was a crisp bite of cold to the air outside the apartment block and Sondra was glad of her warming amulet, but it was a very pleasant February day. Not the sort of day you really wanted to be looking at dead bodies.

  Looking up West 11th Street toward Greenwich Avenue, Sondra spotted Clarke doing a run-walk-jog shuffle as he hurried toward her. She could not really fault him on time: she had made the call not to use a car and he had further to come. Technically, it was a free day for them, but Sondra had got a call to attend a suspected magical homicide and they were on call.

  ‘Sorry,’ Clarke said as he rushed up to her. ‘Getting through Times Square was a pain.’

  Sondra shrugged. ‘Body’s not going anywhere and the forensics people will have been through the place by now. You ever attended a homicide before?’

  ‘Uh, no.’

  ‘Got any evidence bags on you?’

  ‘Uh, no.’

  ‘Pick one up when we get inside. If you’re going to throw up, use the bag.’

  A patrol officer opened and held the door for them and Sondra gave the woman a nod; not one she had met before, but then she did not get out to this part of town that often. Clearly, the police woman knew who Sondra was. A lot of cops knew who she was for one reason or another. Another officer, this one male, asked for their identification at the door of the apartment, but it was pretty clear that he knew who she was too.

  And then they were walking into the contained chaos of the crime scene. Crime Scene Unit technicians were busy packing equipment away. There was a coffee table in a pleasantly decorated lounge which had been coated with fingerprint dust. A tall, brown-haired man with sharp eyes looked up from his examination of a clipboard as the two Arcane cops walked in, and Sondra nodded to him: Detective Andrew Potter, 9th Precinct. She had worked with him before.

  ‘Sondra,’ Potter said, nodding in turn. ‘New partner?’

  ‘Detective Andy Potter, this is Detective Clarke Delacroix. He just started with Arcane yesterday, Andy, so cut him some slack. What do you have?’

  Potter gave Clarke an evaluating look and then nodded. Potter was a little older than Clarke was and had been a cop longer, and here was the new guy popped into the elite unit. Potter had never met Clarke before, so he was guessing that Clarke had been fast-tracked. That kind of thing could cause resentment. ‘Body was reported at eleven hundred and sixteen, after the witness calmed down enough to call nine-one-one. She, uh… She had to be sedated and taken to hospital.’

  ‘Bellevue?’ Sondra asked.

  ‘Yeah. There’s an officer with her. She tentatively identified the deceased as Lucille Carpenter of this address. Mostly from the negligee the body’s
dressed in. A Christmas present, apparently.’

  ‘What was the witness to Miss Carpenter?’ Clarke asked, a wary edge in his voice.

  ‘Friend. Mary Jane Morrisey. They were supposed to be going shopping today and Carpenter didn’t show up, so she came in and…’

  ‘And her best means of identifying her friend was the clothes?’

  ‘Yeah, well, you haven’t seen the body yet. CSU got two wine glasses from the coffee table. One still had wine in it, neither had fingerprints. The table hasn’t given us anything either. Considering the mode of dress of the victim, I’m assuming she was aiming to take the killer to bed, but the sheets are undisturbed. We’ve got next to nothing.’

  ‘Aside from a body,’ Sondra said. ‘Bad one?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ Carpenter said, frowning. ‘The ME’s instruments say there’s some form of magical residue on the body and… Like I said, I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘So you called us. Fine. Let’s see it.’

  All three of them walked down the hallway to the bedroom, Potter leading. He stepped over something Clarke could not quite see, Sondra followed him, and Clarke got a look at the misshapen limbs, but it was not until he got to the doorway and looked around the frame that he went stark white, his eyes bulging as he took in what had happened to Lucille Carpenter.

  The swollen, cankerous lumps which marred her legs covered her body and her head. She lay on the dark-red carpet in a twisted posture, as though her bones had been distorted. Her mouth was open in a silent scream of pain, and she lay on her right cheek, which gave you a good view of her swollen nose which seemed to have been eaten away from the inside. Her skin was grey and slack, her hair thin and grey, and the red wrap she was wearing seemed somehow obscene for being on what looked like a corpse long in the ground.

  ‘Got an evidence bag?’ Sondra asked Potter.

  Clarke shook himself and reached up to wipe a trickle of sweat from his brow. ‘No. I’m okay. I mean, I won’t need the bag. It’s just…’

  ‘Yeah, it certainly is just. I’m going to assume she didn’t usually look like that.’

  Potter shook his head. ‘I got an ID photo. Pretty girl. Twenty-one years old.’

  ‘Shit!’ Clarke said. ‘Uh, there’s blood on the carpet.’

  ‘ME found a wound he thinks was from a knife of some kind, but he’s not ruling on cause of death until after the autopsy.’

  ‘I can understand why,’ Sondra replied. She lifted her eyes from the body. ‘You up to doing a magical analysis, Detective Delacroix?’

  The use of his title snapped Clarke to something like parade-ground attention. ‘Yes, of course.’ When Sondra backed further into the room, Clarke stepped over the corpse’s legs, reaching into his jacket for a small, blue notebook. Leafing through the pages, he found what he was looking for – a fairly simple collection of glyphs on one page – and began staring at it.

  Potter leaned toward Sondra. ‘He needs a book to do that?’ His voice was low, but Sondra figured that Clarke had heard.

  ‘Detective Delacroix is following the letter of the lore,’ Sondra said, not bothering to lower her voice. ‘This is the first time I’ve seen him work magic, so he’s making sure he doesn’t fluff it by using a pre-drawn set of Sarnic glyphs to impress the required patterns into his mind. It’s not necessary, but it’s safer and more sure if you’re not in a hurry. We aren’t.’

  ‘Oh,’ Potter said, his eyebrows lifting. ‘So, those weird things magicians draw out sometimes–’

  ‘Are physical representations of the effect they wish to work. You can’t always do them ahead of time. Sometimes the spell calls for them to encircle the subject, or you need to adapt them to the specific casting.’

  Clarke raised his hand over Lucille Carpenter’s mangled body, closed his eyes, and concentrated. His lips moved as he worked through the spell in his mind, and then he lowered his arm, turning toward Sondra. ‘There’s something there, but it’s weird. It’s like nothing I’ve ever read before.’

  Raising an eyebrow, Sondra looked down at the body lying at their feet, focusing her will and collecting the pattern of the spell in her head. She filled it with energy from her core and released it. Symbols filled her mind and she scanned over them, interpreting. ‘I’m glad you’ve never seen anything like that before, Clarke,’ Sondra said, anger on the edge of her voice. ‘It’s demonic. It looks like we could have a demon running around.’

  ~~~

  Clarke looked uncomfortable as he stood in the antiseptic atmosphere of the morgue. Antiseptic, yes, but there was always the underlying scent of human destruction. The coppery hint of blood, the sickly-sweet scent of decay, and the combined odours of urine and faeces warred for attention. Sondra watched the young detective as he battled to keep his lunch down, but he had been through the worst of it and survived.

  ‘It would be easier to tell you what did not kill her.’

  Sondra returned her attention to Doctor Maureen Tavish. The woman had Scottish descent to go with the Scottish-sounding name: her hair was a vibrant red, cut into a tight bob, and her eyes were bright and green. She was edging very gracefully into her late forties. In the last decade, she had taken to wearing shorter skirts and blouses with lower necklines in an attempt to look younger. Thankfully, she could pull the look off, but Sondra did not see the point; Maureen was an attractive woman and Sondra did not see that changing any time soon.

  ‘So what didn’t kill her?’ Sondra asked.

  ‘She was stabbed in the back,’ Maureen replied, reaching a gloved hand toward the corpse’s side. The remains of Lucille Carpenter lay on a metal autopsy table, brightly illuminated and now with a sewn-up Y-section wound. ‘The blade nicked her right kidney, but there was insufficient damage to result in death.’ Maureen looked up. ‘Not immediately anyway. The wound was survivable with medical attention.’

  ‘Okay.’ There was an unspoken question in the word.

  Maureen drew in a long breath through her nose. ‘So, these growths you see on her body are chronic gummas. She has them on skin and bone, and on her liver. They’re characteristic of tertiary syphilis which typically takes from three to fifteen years to develop after infection. I also found evidence of the disease affecting her heart which takes at least ten years. I’m waiting for the analysis to come back, but she shows symptoms of chlamydia, herpes, gonorrhoea, and hepatitis B and C. Her liver, even ignoring the gummas, looks like that of an aging drunk. Her kidneys are almost entirely degraded. The decay in her nasal cavity suggests long-term cocaine use.’

  ‘She was only twenty-one,’ Clarke said, joining the conversation.

  ‘Precisely, detective. Unless she was an extremely promiscuous ten-year-old, these symptoms are not possible. Then we add in the marked aging of the skin and the greying of her hair. Other organs are showing signs of unusual aging, but it’s her hair and skin which are worst.’ Maureen shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. I agree with your analysis. Demonic magic of some kind. Again, nothing I’ve ever seen before.’

  ‘Can you give us anything on the knife?’ Sondra asked.

  ‘Strange,’ Maureen replied, and then she flashed a grin. ‘Ritual and not especially useful in combat. Approximately three inches in length and three across at the base. Triangular. It’s quite sharp, but also quite thick. Bruising around the wound suggests no crosspiece.’

  ‘Distinctive. It’s something. Let us know when the chemical analysis comes back.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Sondra turned on her heel and started for the double doors. ‘Come on, Clarke. We have a witness to interview.’

  ~~~

  Another antiseptic room, but this time everyone in it was alive. The scent of flowers permeated, but Sondra suspected that was simply down to the air fresheners. In some ways, the hospital room was worse than the morgue: blander, more institutionalised. But the occupant was sitting up in bed with a box of tissues clutched in her hands like a life
line. The cardboard was split in a couple of places where her fingers had torn through as she gripped it. Mary Jane Morrisey was a pretty woman – blonde and blue-eyed, with a curvaceous figure – but her tear-streaked face was not exactly selling her looks right now.

  ‘I c-can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe it was L-Lucy. I mean, it was her wrap, but that wasn’t her.’

  ‘We’re still waiting on confirmation, Miss Morrisey,’ Sondra said, her voice calm and calming, ‘but the initial indications suggest that it is her.’

  ‘But all those growths…. Wait, you said you were with Arcane? Magic did that? Lucy was always f-fit. She ran, when she could. She kept herself fit.’

  Sondra nodded. ‘I’m sorry to ask this, but did she have any history of STDs? Or any other medical condition?’

  ‘No! Why would you–’ Mary Jane cut herself off. ‘You wouldn’t ask without a reason. I’ve seen you. On the news.’ Sondra gave a slight smile. ‘But no. She was always very careful. She liked… men. She was beautiful and she could get them easily when she wanted to, but she was always very careful. She always had a box of condoms in her bedside cabinet. A-and she’s never mentioned any other problems.’

  ‘Do you think she could have been entertaining last night?’ Clarke asked.

  ‘Friday night? Yes. About one week in three she takes someone home with her, or goes to their place.’

  ‘Anyone steady?’

  ‘Not recently. Not since the summer. She liked going out to a club in Hell’s Kitchen. In Sense. Two words. It’s too loud for me, but she liked it. It’s kind of an underground thing.’

  Clarke was making notes as she talked. ‘And she would have been there last night?’

  ‘If she wasn’t, I don’t know where she would have been. God, she picked someone up and he killed her, didn’t he?’

  ‘That’s one line of enquiry we’ll be looking into,’ Sondra replied, smiling. ‘I promise we’ll do everything in our power to find the person responsible, Miss Morrisey.’