The Vanity Case (Sondra Blake Book 1)

by Niall Teasdale

  KonTash was in the middle of an office which had had all the furniture pushed to the walls to clear a space for him to work in. He was an orc, big, somewhat brutish with skin a greener shade of his mother’s grey. He had no hair to speak of, but as the door burst open, he turned sharply, surprise on his face and a hint of fire in his brown eyes.

  Rickard called out ‘Go! Go!’ into his radio to signal the team downstairs.

  Sondra’s fisted hand opened, pointing toward KonTash as she let her spell fly and KonTash let out a roar of rage. ‘Hold him!’ Sondra yelled. ‘Hold him down.’

  Four men more or less leapt onto KonTash, grabbing arms and legs, and pushing him back as hard as they could toward an old desk pressed against the wall. KonTash thrashed and yelled something arcane-sounding, but there was no magic here; the demon was venting in its native language.

  ‘Got that wrong,’ Sondra told it, in English. ‘We can hold you here plenty long enough to stop you coming back. Give me half a minute.’ The last bit was said to Rickard and he gave a nod, waving two more men to hold the orc while the others guarded the corridor.

  Sondra focused her will on a spell she had used far too many times in the past and began to draw in the power to fuel it. She heard more insults in Sarnica from the demon, Clarke asked how it was going below them, and Rickard replied that the gym was under control. She ignored it all and drew in the power she needed for her spell. Standard practice for banishment was a year; the demon would be barred from possessing anyone for one year, which gave Arcane the time to discover and treat anyone it might have been able to control. Sondra had never believed in half-measures, and this demon had caused far more trouble, to far more people, than most. He was getting banished old school. With the spell ready and held in her mind, Sondra raised her head and her arms. The theatrics were unnecessary, but she felt it more appropriate when working this kind of magic. ‘Demon, hear me,’ she called out. ‘I hereby banish thee from this world for the space of ninety-nine years. Cause no more harm in this world.’ And she let her spell loose.

  KonTash thrashed under the six men holding him for another moment, and then he sagged, shaking his head as though coming out of a stupor. He said nothing, but when his eyes focused on the cops hanging onto his arms, there seemed to be no anger, or confusion, or anything.

  ‘You can let go now,’ Sondra said, a sad note in her voice. ‘You are just going to stay here until the officers want to take you away, aren’t you, KonTash?’

  ‘Yes,’ KonTash replied. He seemed to be remarkably happy just to be told what to do.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Rickard asked. ‘He was raving a second ago.’

  ‘That was the demon,’ Clarke said. ‘I’ve never actually seen someone who… Damn. It really is as pathetic as the books said. The demon corrupts– No, the demon corrodes their souls, their wills, to the point where they can barely function without the demon there to guide them.’

  Sondra nodded, sighing. ‘He hasn’t got the basic self-awareness to get a glass of water if he’s thirsty unless he really tries hard. I’ve seen them starve to death because they couldn’t get it together to eat. They’ll take orders from anyone. They need orders. He won’t give you any trouble, lieutenant.’

  ‘Well… shit,’ Rickard said. ‘They always said dealing with demons was stupid. Take a look, boys. This is why it’s stupid.’

  ‘Damn right it’s stupid,’ Sondra replied. ‘And this time it’s cost us half of Orctown and most of whatever goodwill we’ve built up here. Get the vans in to take him out.’ She pulled her phone from her pocket and moved over to one side of the room.

  ‘You’re calling Dickerson?’ Clarke asked.

  Sondra shook her head. ‘Press office. I want cameras in place to film this guy trotting meekly into police HQ. When the others see him, all this will fall apart really fast. It’ll be a couple of hours before everyone finds out they were being taken for a ride by a demon, but these riots will end tonight.’

  ‘I could use a good night’s sleep. What then?’

  ‘Paperwork,’ Sondra said on a sigh. ‘The paperwork on all this is going to be monumental.’

  Part Five: Vanity

  New York, NY, 25th February 2017.

  The NYPD’s 94th Precinct building was not especially large, but it did look pretty good from the outside. Carved stonework decorated the ground floor and the brickwork above that was clean. The ornate stone casing around the upper-floor windows was a little dirtier, but this was Brooklyn; air pollution was a factor.

  Inside it was, well, a police precinct. People generally arrived in the lobby for three reasons: they were a cop, they were being brought in by a cop, or they wanted to complain about something, usually about a cop. People who wanted real help generally dialled 911 – even when that involved opening a pickle jar – so when someone walked into the precinct, it was not because they wanted assistance from the police: it was because they wanted to complain about something. Complaining was always best done face-to-face.

  This was why Sergeant Alec Pride liked the night shift. Yes, you still got the odd person walking in to complain that their neighbour’s dog was crapping on their lawn, but the numbers were heavily reduced. You got to do real police paperwork instead of public relations. Booking drunks was not exactly fighting serious crime, but cops had been doing it since the first bobby had walked the streets of London. Plus, Alec’s idea of crisis management was having a mop and bucket behind the desk for the inevitable point when someone vomited on the lobby floor; crime in Brooklyn was down – no matter what the politicians said – and that made for a relatively easy time of it.

  That meant that, when a woman struggled in through the panelled doors, Alec was momentarily at a loss for what to do. The woman looked young and was dressed either for a party or for picking up clients on a street corner, but her clothes were soaked with blood. She might have been pretty, but it was difficult to tell, because she was bleeding from so many wounds that Alec was amazed that she had made it to the precinct.

  ‘Help me,’ she croaked, and then she collapsed onto the tiled floor.

  Alec grabbed his phone to call for an ambulance; this looked like something first aid was not going to help with. As he waited for the connection to go through, watching blood pool on the tiles around the fallen woman, he had the thought that his mop and bucket were going to see more than vomit tonight.

  ~~~

  It was six a.m. before the last of the die-hard rioters realised they had been conned by a demon, and the NYPD decided that Orctown was settling back into normality. There would be extra patrols for a few weeks, and there was going to be a lot of clean-up to do, but the Arcane Crimes Unit was not going to be involved in any of that.

  It was eight a.m. before Sondra got back to her apartment and flicked on the TV to relax before she went to bed. The bloody woman walking into the 94th Precinct building was low on the running order, pushed down by the events of the previous night. The arrest of KonTash was being heavily covered, which was what Sondra had wanted, and the reporters were finally getting to go out and cover the aftermath safely, so there were a lot of scenes of devastation on the screen.

  So the death of a woman who had, according to the fairly meagre reports, been violently attacked by a number of people in Brooklyn before managing to walk into a police station was not really major news, but it did have a suitable horror factor. She had been dead before the ambulance arrived and no amount of effort at the precinct building had been able to save her.

  There was no connection given to the recent string of murders, but Sondra watched the report with a sinking feeling. Maybe the real cause of death had been obscured and the autopsy would indicate that this was part of the pattern. Maybe she was just being paranoid. But she had a strong feeling that this was number six. That left one person to die and the killer would vanish again. Until he was killing more in seven years anyway.

  ~~~

  Maureen Tavish had decided that she did not like
Special Agent Issacs. Part of it, she admitted, might be that the FBI agent had stolen Sondra’s case. Sondra was good at what she did, and even if she did allow her personal life to get in the way sometimes, she was more likely to catch the killer. Maureen was not fond of political cops. Sondra was as apolitical as you could get, but Issacs and the commissioner… Shifting the case to the FBI had been pure politics.

  Which brought up the other reason Maureen did not like Issacs: the agent was arrogant and determined to make her name nailing a serial killer who had been operating for decades. Maureen did not really get Hall – the man followed Issacs around like a Rottweiler puppy – but Issacs was aiming for director someday, and this was the next step up. When she failed, the woman would scapegoat the NYPD – Sondra in particular – without a second thought.

  Still, Maureen had a job to do. ‘Cause of death was systemic organ failure, not exsanguination. The aging is less severe on the surface, but this woman has the organs of someone aged ninety or more. It’s a toss-up as to whether her heart gave out before her lungs stopped functioning. There is significant brain damage suggesting loss of oxygen, but heart or lungs would give the same result. It’s likely both failed at more or less the same time.’

  ‘And this wasn’t spotted immediately because?’

  Maureen supressed a sigh. ‘Because the exterior signs of aging were not as apparent. Her skin was decorated with between ninety and one hundred and twenty individual wounds. It’s not easy to give an exact figure since several of them overlap.’

  ‘I see,’ Issacs replied. Her tone suggested that she thought Maureen should be able to do better.

  ‘One other thing.’ Maureen indicated a liver bowl on one of the trolleys with an evidence bag sticking out of it. ‘When I removed her top, I found that wedged into her cleavage.’

  Frowning, Issacs nodded to the bowl and Hall retrieved the bag, peering at the bloodstained contents for a second before handing it to Issacs without a word, or a change of expression. Issacs began to smile as soon as she saw what she had. ‘Stuffed into her blouse, you say?’

  ‘I said top. It was a spandex tube, not a blouse.’

  Issacs shrugged the correction away. ‘I think we might have a break in this case. Don’t you, Special Agent Hall?’

  Hall, as seemed to be the way with him, gave no answer at all.

  ~~~

  Devon Brightman was just a little perplexed. Two FBI agents had turned up at the WNSN offices to take him to his apartment. They had had a warrant to search his apartment, and a lot of staff to handle the search, and the warrant had said that it was to do with the murders Special Agent Issacs was now investigating.

  Right now, Devon was sitting in an interview room in the FBI field office after Issacs had arrested him and had him transported there. A less confident, perhaps a more self-aware, man might have considered the possibility that running the story on Sondra which had handed the case to Issacs had turned out to be a bad idea. Devon was not that kind of man.

  Issacs and her bulldog, Hall, walked into the interview room after… Well, Devon was not sure exactly how long he had been sitting there. That was a standard tactic on cop shows: keep the suspect waiting. Devon decided to play it as though it had affected him, ignoring the fact that it had. ‘About time! I’ve been waiting for hours.’ There was the thump of a large file landing on the table. It had an evidence bag on top of it, but Devon could not see the contents yet. The big file thing was also a standard tactic; Devon ignored it, but the evidence bag was interesting. Maybe he could get something useful out of this.

  ‘I apologise, Mister Brightman,’ Issacs said, settling onto her seat with a smile. The smile was beneficent, calming, and it had shark’s teeth behind it. She recited the necessary formalities for the in-room recorder and then she asked the dumbest question anyone ever asked someone in an interview room. ‘Do you know why you’re here, Mister Brightman?’

  ‘I read the warrant. You’re looking for something about the murders. You think I’ve got evidence I haven’t given to the police?’

  ‘You must have seen the reports of the latest victim.’

  ‘The woman who crawled into the ninety-fourth? Yes, I saw them.’

  Issacs picked up the evidence bag, holding it up for Devon to see. Devon’s blood ran cold as he saw his own, bloodstained press pass. ‘Would you care to explain how your press identification was found caught in her clothes?’

  ‘I lost that,’ Devon said. ‘You can check with the station. I lost it sometime on Thursday and reported it missing the same day. I haven’t had a replacement through yet.’

  Issacs smiled. ‘We are going to check that, yes. Where were you between one and three a.m. this morning, Mister Brightman?’

  ‘In bed.’ Devon sagged a little. ‘Alone. If I’d known I was going to be accused of murder, I’d have hired a hooker.’

  The FBI agent’s smile was becoming far too smug. ‘We’ll go through a few more dates and times. Perhaps you’ll discover one where you did hire a sex worker.’

  ~~~

  Ortega poked his head through the door of Sondra’s office. She was behind her desk, working on paperwork. ‘Did you see the evening news?’

  Sondra indicated her computer. ‘I’ve been busy boring myself to the point of aneurism, so no.’

  ‘The feds’ve made an arrest. You’re going to love this one.’

  ‘See, Jorge, the fact that you say it like that means I’m not. Who did they arrest?’

  ‘Devon Brightman.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘Told you.’ Ortega said, smirking.

  ‘Okay, so setting aside that I’d love to see Brightman locked up for being an insufferable ass, how is Issacs getting around the dates? Brightman would have been… one at the most when the first murders in the sequence happened.’

  ‘Oh, I heard she’s got that worked out. She’s got Brightman in lock-up while she checks his records for indications they’ve been faked. She thinks he’s older and he took on a new ID to keep his not aging from being noticed. They searched his place and got nothing. No murder weapon. No evidence at all in his apartment, but he supposedly left something on the body.’

  ‘This guy has never left anything on a victim before.’

  Ortega gave a shrug. ‘They all make mistakes eventually.’

  ~~~

  Of course, ‘they all make mistakes eventually’ was true because the ones who got caught did. There were many more missing persons than convicted serial murderers, and there were plenty of unsolved murder cases on the books. Not every victim received the benefit of justice for their murder.

  Sondra’s thoughts were turning dark as she let herself into her apartment, and the probability that her killer would get away with it was high on the list. Again. He would get away with it again.

  Unless Brightman really had done it. No, that was the dumbest idea ever. The man was an ass who would do almost anything to get a good story, but it was the ‘almost’ that was important. He was vain, yes, but he was not vain enough for these crimes.

  Sondra nodded to herself as she headed for the kitchen. Vanity. This was about vanity. Someone wanted to keep their looks so much that they were willing to kill for it. The orc warlord who had first owned the chest, Gartrain, had used it to stay alive through wars and assassination attempts, but that was not its current owner’s reason for killing. They wanted a rock-and-roll, extravagant lifestyle which they did not have to pay for. They wanted to stay young forever. Just like the fictional Dorian Gray.

  Brightman did not fit that picture. Even assuming that Issacs’ idea that Brightman was using a fake ID was true, the man simply did not have the lifestyle. Clubbing was not his style and he had an abhorrence of drugs which was too severe to fake. No, Brightman was being framed. But why?

  As she made herself something to eat – pasta; it was easy – she went over the recent deaths. The first had been random. The killer had selected a target and acted. The discovery of the body so soon after deat
h had been, largely, a matter of luck. The second… The second had broken a pattern going back years. The killer had dumped the body where it would be found relatively quickly, and the site had been close to both Clarke’s apartment and Archer’s hotel, and the fifth corpse had been found right outside that hotel. Two of the bodies, including Grant’s, had been outside the lot Archer was filming on. It was assumed that the killer had been hoping to disrupt the film’s production, but maybe he or she had just been keeping the focus of the investigation on the film, or Archer in particular.

  Right up until that focus had been shifted by some evidence left on a body. Why frame Brightman? Sondra frowned. Was it because Brightman had got Sondra pushed off the case? The killer had been trying to keep Sondra focused on the film and its crew, and Brightman’s report had handed the case to the FBI.

  She shook her head and checked the pasta – another minute or two. No, that was a ridiculously egotistical view of the evidence. Why would the killer fixate on her? Then again, why not? She was a relatively famous detective, a relatively famous woman for that matter, and maybe the killer wanted a fitting adversary. Unless she had met the guy and he just had a crush on her. Sondra was self-aware enough to recognise her own vanity, but she was an attractive woman and people, men in particular, fell for her. Maybe, just maybe, the killer had turned his latest spree into a twisted love note to the lead investigator on the case. And now that that lead had changed…

  Sondra took her pan of pasta off the heat and dumped its contents into a colander to drain. Okay, so if the killer was trying to keep Sondra involved, why frame Brightman? The obvious answer was punishment. Brightman had shifted the investigation over to the FBI and was being punished for his part in that. But there was one more murder to commit, so Brightman was not going to stay behind bars. Who would be the last victim? If the killer wanted to attract Sondra’s attention, who would he go for next?