by A. J. Aalto
Batten's dark blue eyes were veiled. “Chapel's managing the scene. Hood went with the bus and his man.”
“Detective Munchie?”
“Deputy Dunnachie.”
“Right.” I shoved my hands in my jeans pockets. “He does look a lot like Richard Belzer… dunked in mint jelly. He gonna be okay?”
“Hood said he's been green since early this morning, fighting flu. Add the shock of a vampire and beetles hollowing out a kid's skull and I'm not sure any of us wouldn't be green.”
Hollowing out. Eeeeuuuuww. Zombie beetles: all about efficiency. “Did you spray the rest of the bugs? Spray won't kill them, but it'll daze them enough so we can flick them aside and burn them.”
He gave a single nod. “Already taken care of.”
I took the long gaze down the hall. The front door had been left open, the door mat crumpled to one side kicked under the draft guard. I could hear their radios crackling back and forth, competing in volume across the yard through the storm—codes bantered, orders given, requests made—very coordinated. Everything well in hand, not a single one of them seeming shocked at the sight peeking out of the mailbox. They sure as hell didn't look like they needed my help.
Batten's face was carefully blank. “Got in touch with the mail carrier. The head wasn't there when he dropped off the mail.”
“Just the kind of thing an unbalanced head-toting mailman would say.”
“Means in the minutes between the truck leaving and Dunnachie going to the mailbox, the head was placed there.”
“Wonder how long someone hunkered in the forest with a severed head, waiting for the mail truck to come and go,” I mused. Then I thought: if the beetles were close, they probably found the head before Sherlock could get it in the mailbox, and may have swarmed her. “Check the ERs for anyone else admitted with beetle bites in or around her orifices, or the early symptoms of crypt plague caused by yersinia sanguinaria: massive headache, plummeting body temp, black blooms under her skin, especially in and around the lymph nodes, as well as incoherence. Then again, if it's Danika, her coherence isn't great to begin with.”
I saw Harry out of the corner of my eye, lingering in the bedroom doorway.
“K9's ten minutes out,” Batten said.
“K9's are useless,” I sighed, feeling the frustration tightening my shoulders until they matched his. “The dog's going to hone in on Harry's scent, and once it does it won't be interested in anything else. You know they haven't been able to train K9 dogs to ignore the undead yet.”
“Then I guess we could use your Talents here,” he said.
“Well, as fascinating as body parts in a mailbox might sound to you, Harry's right: I retired for a reason. I am a spaz, and when I stick my neck out, I get clobbered.” I turned away from him to the kitchen sink to draw water into the old-fashioned whistle kettle for tea; then I put the tea pot in the sink with some hot water inside to warm the china. “The Marnie Baranuik Blue Sense vending machine is officially unplugged.”
“Quitting is Harry's idea, then?”
“No, but I'm grateful for the reminder. This is your case, not mine.”
“So you said. But then you went bumbling off to chase down clues on your own.” Batten continued, his voice raising through the octaves. “Without calling me for backup.”
“We've been over this. I was trying to do the right thing, but it was a mistake, I admit that. Working this case at all would be a mistake. It would be a disaster. Like last time. Like Buffalo.” Except in Buffalo we fucked like two sex addicts after an unsuccessful support group meeting.
“If you're talking about Prost,” he growled, “we were only on that case a couple weeks. We barely gave it a shot.”
“I gave it a shot, all right. Two .38s, shoulder and spine, and it was about as much fun as a club up the ass.”
His perceptive eyes narrowed to slits. “Thought you said quitting had nothing to do with the shooting.”
He had me there. I wasn't about to confess I retired so I didn't have to see him again. I stuttered around in my brain for a clever retort and gave up, chucking tea bags into the pot—two, four, seven, not even counting anymore.
“Talk to me, Baranuik, stop running.” Batten jabbed a finger at me. “You're not this cowardly, deep down. I know you.”
“You don't know shit,” I snapped, pointing back. “You're all job. When it comes to me, you're fuckin’ clueless.”
“You talk awful big for such a tiny woman.” Batten scowled at me, advancing, his square-shouldered form looming over me.
“Go ahead, remind me of my size. See what good that macho bullshit does you.”
“You need to do more than this, to get rid of me.”
Harry came to lean against the counter, enjoying the show; loud and clear I got the impression that part of him agreed with Batten, which only served to irritate me further.
“I'm not trained for FBI shit. I'm just an ex-pro psychic. I should set up a quaint little magic shop, flip tarot cards and self-publish erotic poetry like old Ruby Valli.”
That drew Harry stiffly upright. “Poetry?”
“Hey, I know Ruby Valli.” Batten took a step toward me, drawing himself up to his full six feet. “I've worked with Ruby Valli. She's ninety-three-years-old, half lame and still plays paintball with people half her age. Unlike you, she's earned her retirement, but she'd be all-in if I asked for her. The fact that she's arthritic, half-deaf, and mostly blind wouldn't stop her for a second.”
“Fine, so put her in the PCU!” I sputtered. “She's precognitive, she probably already knows the outcome!”
“Out-gamed by a little old blind lady with a bum knee, how's that feeling in your gut, Baranuik?”
“You mean the guts that are held together with titanium staples? It hurts too much in there to separate shame from agony. Maybe when it heals, I'll be able to tell the difference.” I stared him down, crossing my arms over my injuries when the whistle on the tea kettle summoned. I whisked it off the element and poured boiling water into the teapot. “I'm not the Great White Shark of psychic investigations, no matter how many papers print it. I'm not a kickass crime fighting superhero.” Except in my daydreams, when I aim the blow dryer at the bathroom mirror. “I'm just an ex-Groper with bad hair and a sweet tooth. What do you want from me?”
Batten yanked on his earlobe. I'd seen him do it before. I didn't think he was aware that he did it. He gave it another long tug and lowered his voice to an almost reluctant tone. If I didn't know better, I'd have thought something gentle and kind was about to come out of his mouth. Except his face hardened instead of softened, and I tensed in response.
“I have your permission, then, after Sherlock stakes Harry, to remind you that you decided not to help me?”
I jabbed a finger at his face. “You have absolutely no idea how much I hate you for saying that.”
“We started off hating each other. Might as well end on the same note.”
“I got no problem with that,” I snarled.
“For fuck's sake, Baranuik, go out there and Grope that head.”
I practically heard Harry's flinch; he came to stand behind me, backing me up.
“You want me to put my bare hands on it?” In all honesty I didn't know if I could go out there and actually do that; he'd never asked me to touch a body before. My psychic consulting had been limited to getting emotional impressions from the scene, and touching evidence but not remains; clothing scraps and shoe prints in mud, and broken glass stuck in tires. If I touched it, not only would I have to see the killing, not only would I be swallowed up by empathic vibrations of the victim's scrambling feelings, her desperate panic and the horrible knowledge that she was about to die. But in Groping it, I'd also be assaulted by the physical memory of what happened: the pain, the touch of death. It was bad enough to have waking nightmares of what Danika did to me. I didn't really want to grapple with the sights, sounds and feelings of a young girl's flayed, glistening spine exposed at the neck.
Then again, I also didn't want to wait around for another victim to get dumped, or another body part on my property. I hunched my shoulders up around my collar. “You insensitive prick. You have no idea what you're asking me to do, what it would feel like…”
“Harry's a Groper,” Batten suggested to me. “Right? Your psychic shit comes from him? Maybe Harry should do it.”
“Well, lad,” Harry exclaimed. “Aren't you full of pithy insights and vapid ideas this afternoon.”
I pounced, “You're not using my companion in broad daylight, douchebag. Every time he actively uses psychometry, he draws on…” I clenched my leather-clad fists, not wanting to give Batten the satisfaction of the whole story. Harry avoided using his Talents purposefully, because he believed they tainted what little good there was left in his soul. Harry was an immortal who believed in redemption.
“Marnie, we've got no leads. No trace. Chapel said prints so far have been a bust. We even fumed the body. DNA on the blood at the scene's a long shot at best. No witnesses saw the dump. No one's come forward to say they saw or heard the abduction. If Danika Sherlock decapitated that young girl, you can tell me right this minute,” he said. “Then Chapel and I can take the steps necessary to prove it.”
“Why don't you get out there and do your goddamned job, without falling back on a psychic to make it easier for you?”
“Because I don't want her to fuckin’ kill you, Marnie!” he exploded. He uncrossed his arms and motioned at the door. “Beat work takes time, time you might not have. Even Harry can see the sense in that!”
“Oh yes, even I,” Harry murmured, but without fight. Again, I sensed he agreed with Batten.
“She's already stabbed you once, Marnie,” Batten said. “She's not fucking around here, she wants you dead.”
He hated me, but he didn't want me dead. How terribly romantic; probably the closest I was ever gonna get with Jerkface. I prodded my temple with a gloved finger. “You just don't stop, do you?”
Batten pointed in the direction of the noise and draft from the front porch. “I'll stop. When you get out there and Grope that head. Won't ask you for another thing.”
I hesitated; that sounded awfully final. Did I never want to see him again? I thought that's why I quit working with the FBI in the first place. But I knew now that the engagement had been a lie, a delusion in Sherlock's sick little mind. Did it change anything, make our tryst any less casual? Not really.
He was still using me, with no regard to how it might put me at risk or how damaged I already was. I studied his piercing, angry eyes. Demanding. God, he was such an asshole. So why did I want to throw him on the kitchen floor and wrestle him out of his pants? I plucked Harry's cell phone off the kitchen counter, and texted Chapel's Blackberry: Groping evidence in ten.
“Groping won't work well,” I warned Batten, taking one last shot at saving my sanity. “Too many people out there. K9 is coming. Dogs barking, cops shouting…impossible.”
Chapel texted back, Stay inside please. Too bright. Unsafe. It took me a frowning moment to realize, he thought it was Harry texting. I tried again: MB Groping evidence in ten.
“I'll get rid of the distractions,” Batten said resolutely.
“The body part belongs to the coroner. I can't go near it without his nod.”
“Let me deal with the details, Baranuik. You do whatever it is you do.”
“I'd step it up a notch if I thought you had my back,” I admitted quietly. “We're not all as brave as you, you know. Some of us have stuff left to lose.”
Batten recoiled, but his cop face compensated by going blank, deflecting whatever shot I'd gotten in. “You're not going out there alone,” he assured me. “Whatever you need, you got. You coming?”
I glanced down at Chapel's reply: Good to have you back. Whenever you're ready.
“You win, but don't get all cocky about it or I'll give you a fat lip.” I looked up into Harry's gloomy eyes as he scanned my face unhappily. “Looks like I'm going back to work, Harry. When I'm done, I'm going to need soap, lots of it, in a nice hot bath.”
“Shower,” Harry reminded gently, his hand landing on my shoulder. “And you'll go nowhere until you've had your vitamins.”
“Whatever.” I vaguely registered the pill bottle that appeared like magic in Harry's hand. “I want pizza, and Dr. Pepper, and I want to watch old Dr. Who with my companion, my big furry blanket and a hot water bottle.”
Distress shadowed Harry's stare. “We can just start the DVD now and call for delivery. Green olives and extra pineapple?” He attempted a smile but its curve didn't quite make the dimple. “You don't have to do this.”
“It looks like my only option, if I want Kill-Notch to go away.” I planted my hands on my hips and turned to crane up a whole foot at Batten's scruffy chin. “Can I have your big fancy gun?”
His head did a slow crawl. “Not on your life.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “But you're not my best friend anymore.”
FIFTEEN
Getting rid of the crowd was not possible. I figured it had been a stretch, the first of many promises Batten couldn't keep. The cops did retreat to the warmth of their vehicles, and the firemen decided they weren't needed after all. Their truck rumbled away after some difficulty turning around on the narrow dead-end street. A sheriff's deputy had to move his Explorer into the mouth of a snowmobile trail and it was briefly stuck in a snow drift.
I could still hear radios squawking across the yard, even from my office, muffled through the window. The coroner's van was running, and two attendants were leaning against it having a smoke and talking, their heads slightly together, oblivious to the exhaust around them. I saw a face I recognized and squinted, putting my nose up to the window pane; Robert-not-Robin Hood was back, sitting half-in half-out of a Range Rover, one lean leg stretched way out. Shouldn't he be with Dunnachie at the hospital? Maybe he couldn't resist the show. I sure as hell didn't want Hood watching me out there.
I waited in my office by the window, peering through the blinds with my nose in the slats, watching Batten stride across the front lawn to talk to the different groups, managing the scene, his pointing and gesturing authoritative. I could tell he was pissing people off and wondered if he cared. Chapel was much better at this sort of thing, but he was nowhere to be seen. I could sense, stronger than usual, Chapel's unique energy, that calm, resolute vigor, unbendable, as though we had a different connection, lately: full signal, five bars. I sensed Chapel's expectation close enough to be palpable but not so close as to pinpoint his location.
Batten knew he'd be able to wear me down with words, the dick. I'd known it too. Fighting it was wholly necessary, but the truth was Mark Batten could sell me snake oil, aluminum siding, oceanfront property in Idaho and a five year subscription to a Rice Cake of the Week club. If he took his shirt off, he could sell me my own ass.
But now that he was getting what he wanted, his way, was he happy? No. Jerkface looked even more pissed than usual, his dark brows pulled down, his body vibrating with tension. Was there no pleasing him? And why, I wondered for the first time, was he such a hardass in the first place? Watching him tromp across the yard, I understood it wasn't just me, saw it wasn't so: he was a jerk to everyone in equal measure. That should have made me feel better. It didn't. There was damage there, that I hadn't seen before, and the realization came as a one-two punch. On its heels was the certainty that no matter what happened between us, Kill-Notch Batten would never in a million years confide in me the source of his pain. The cologne bottles meant something. His grandfather's, perhaps. It was his grandfather's kit. Clues, but no answers. I'd never get answers. And with Batten being a psychic null to me, I'd never sneak the answers, either.
Behind me in the dim, I heard the swish of the rug as Harry tossed it aside. “Almost ready?”
I came around the desk to stare down at the white pentagram painted on the floor of my office, six feet in diameter, the five points adorned with hand-drawn
symbols: spirit, water, fire, earth, air. In the center, my artistic sister Carrie had painted for me a spreading tree and three snowy white owls.
“Brilliant.” Harry said with a clap of his hands. “Strip.”
“Right. I'm getting skyclad with a double-clutch of cops on my lawn.”
Harry's lips tightened. “I suppose the nudity isn't strictly compulsory.”
“None of this is necessary,” I pointed out. “I don't need witchcraft to do a little Groping. All I need is you.”
Harry knelt and placed a gold votive at each point of the pentacle. “I'm afraid I insist today, love.”
“But…” There was little sun through the snow-clouds, but I turned the blinds to the complete room-darkening option, blocking all view. My voice dropped an octave without me meaning to do it. “He doesn't like me.”
Harry chuckled. “He likes you just fine.”
“I'm still thrumming from Aradia's necromimesis. I pulled too much and haven't thanked Her. Neither will be too thrilled with me.” I wrung my hands and felt the leather gloves bunch in my palms. “I've got it all wrong, lately. I'm too wound up. I'll infect the whole spell and things will turn out degraded and wonky.”
Harry's head shook. “This is your chance to set things right with both of them.”
“Lock the office door behind you, then,” I sighed, whipping off my gloves and tossing them behind me on the swivel chair. “At least if I flash some tit, He might listen.” I held out my hand and he slapped the athame into it like a nurse gives a surgeon a scalpel. “Good bye, Harry.”
“I thought I should assist.”
“Out.” I unbuttoned my jeans.
He had taken his apron down from his neck and the strap hung low on his waist. He moved it now to its proper place, tightened the cord at the back. It looked out of place atop his tux. “Fancy a post-spell boost?”
“Please. Double espresso.”
Harry bowed and closed the door behind him. I waited for his essence to join him, for the air in the office to stop its cool eddy and flow. Icy currents purled around me. When it stopped, I slid my shirt over my head, suppressing a shiver. I unlocked the gun safe under my desk to retrieve my book of shadows, and my eyes fell on the jar of newt eyes. I'd thought there were only thirteen, but a quick count showed fifteen, two of them damaged. They lurked in the bottom like filmy angel fish fins, whitish-orange with a trace of vein. Screwing off the lid, I fished one out to examine it closer, and the Blue Sense flared so strongly that, for a second, my vision blurred. The eye flew out of my hand to the desk top with a small wet plip and I let it go gladly, shaking my hands clean. I didn't have time to wonder about it. There was a soft tap at the door and I whisked the eye up, shoved it in my jeans pocket, covered my bare B-cups with one arm and tiptoed behind the door.