Sanguine Vengeance

by Dias, Jason

  “Databases?”

  “Put her on missing persons right away. CPS.” Short for Child Protective Services. “I’ll hit the SO registry.”

  I killed the line, picturing Burt in her office pacing and grinding her teeth.

  One more sweep of the place. Nothing else seemed unusual or dubious. Everything just where it belonged.

  Jolene waited on a green chair from the 1980s in the little kitchen area. “Are you done yet? Can I-”

  “Take him,” I said. I headed for the front door, pointing back inside with my thumb. The uniforms took over and the EMT’s outside rolled in a gurney. “Techs will be along. Leave them something to find. Who interviewed the witness? Notes on my desk in two hours. Better yet, email them. And I want to talk to the witness. Eads, wipe that guilty look off your face and make sure she’s on site tomorrow morning. OK?”

  The cops mumbled and grumbled. I texted the lab we’d need some support and the address. Then back to the station for paperwork. Requisitions, reports, filing photos and narratives and diagrams. But a pedestrian along the way delayed that plan.

  Chaos

  An overpass loomed against the night sky. I drove under it, cranked the wheel left, on track towards the station. The rearview mirror thermometer read 28o. My breath glowed in the greenish light from the instrument panel and the computer inset in the dash.

  On the left, a convenience store and gas station drifted by. Then apartments to either side, desultory lights in red, blue and green strung along some of the balconies. One block had been repaired in wood that didn’t match the siding; boards occluded two windows. No streetlamps, not in this part of town. A pedestrian ambled along the craggy sidewalk. A woman, attired for a cocktail party in 1870. Her dress, maybe brocade or something, looked heavy and fancy. She was little, not even five feet tall, with black hair that fell straight down her back, untroubled by any wind.

  Because I approached her from behind, I didn’t see her face until I pulled over in front of her. The unmarked Crown Vic had a bubble-light on the dash. The passenger window whined down at the touch of a switch. The red and blue strobe illuminated her face as she leaned down fractionally, looked inside.

  “Ride?” I said.

  “I am nearly where I am going,” she replied in a vague accent. Maybe French.

  I wanted to ask about the getup. None of my business, though, and I’ve learned to just don’t ask. That nagging feeling again, though: a compulsion to walk a room one more time, like at the priest’s house. Without room to walk, the compulsion, lamed, instead tightened my fingers on the wheel, my toes in my shoes. Something wrong here. Beyond the obvious. Something… missing.

  “Cold night,” I said.

  “You too, Officer,” she said, ducking out of the window and resuming her walk.

  Weird response. Maybe she misheard me. I pulled away, merged onto the bypass headed east. Glanced in my rearview, expecting to see her on the shoulder, but she must have gone another way or else I lost her in the dark.

  I parked in back. Punched in a five digit code to access the station through the back door. Inside, antiseptic fluorescent lights made the night garish. I felt more alert but no less fatigued: it had been a long day already and plenty more work awaited.

  Watanabe occupied the visitor’s chair in my office. Straight black hair, collar-length. Not too skinny. Thin lips and hard eyes. I skirted around her to the business side of my desk, already pounding virtual keys on my tablet. Databases are life. Sidney Carrington: the victim. State sex-offender registry first.

  “Don’t know what you want me to look for, Detective. Lot of missing kids. How can we cross-reference them?”

  “Good question. You up to stay up late, Watanabe?”

  “I can use the overtime.”

  No more commentary needed. Gossip put her halfway into a messy divorce. Of course that meant lawyers, but it also meant security deposits on a new place, two rents instead of one, bills, cable, a lot of take-out meals because who can be bothered to cook for one? Yeah, she could use the overtime.

  “Church,” I said.

  “Vic affiliated?”

  “Retired priest, only he kept his collar. Had on the whole getup when he died. Or just before.”

  “That’s shady. It’s an in, though.”

  “Shit.” Nothing in the state database. I did a quick upside/downside in my head. Maybe that means it’s nothing; maybe that means he’s just never been caught before; could be just a sock fetish, dirty and intrusive but not rising to the level of criminality.

  “What?”

  I ran it down for her.

  She thought for a second. “Remember that peeper we caught last summer?”

  “Yeah. In that alley off Seventeenth. Looking in bedroom windows. Happened to peep on a thirteen-year-old girl. That fucker’s in the registry.”

  “He wasn’t into underaged girls. He liked peeping. But he was into other stuff, too.”

  “Where you going with this?”

  She looked up from her own tablet. “He wasn’t in the state registry, either. We almost let him go. First offense, here’s your ticket.”

  “Shit, that’s right. But Burt made us do a national search. State by state. Picked up for frotteurism in NYC and flashing in Kansas.”

  “The paraphilias are almost always comorbid.”

  I didn’t know what that meant. Watanabe would explain it all day if I let her. But I could access other registries. State by state would take a while. I called Eads. “You got his wallet?”

  “Yes, Detective.”

  “DL. Address match his residence?”

  “One second.” I imagined her pulling over. Turning on the interior light. Opening an evidence bag. “Yep.”

  “Been there at least a couple years then, probably. Social security number?” Hoping he was old-fashioned enough to keep the card in his wallet. Luck shined on me.

  She read it off. I scratched it on a Post-It note. “Thanks. Carry on.”

  With his SSN, I could access a birth certificate, property records, all sorts of goodies. No criminal history. Employment records put him in New York City until four years back. Worked for the Diocese. I did some math. Age sixty-seven, meaning he retired at sixty-three. Two years early for most purposes. Not damning, but a tickle.

  New York SO registry came back empty. “He’s clean,” I said.

  “Maybe not. I’m doing backgrounds on missing kids. Here’s a twelve year old boy, missing since October. Parents are Catholics.”

  I grunted. “Thin.”

  “Preliminary.”

  “Too late to ask them any questions right now. We’ll head over to their place in the morning. Text me-”

  “The address. Yes, Detective.”

  My tablet rattled at me. I had a stack of messages, the last from Watanabe. “Good job. Keep pushing on that. I’m going to grind out paperwork.”

  We worked for about forty minutes. The phone on my desk rang. That meant the Lieutenant. Everyone else would have texted. “Go,” I said.

  “I hope you’re rested up, Sanchez.”

  No, but that wouldn’t make any difference. “Hit me.”

  “Another body. 425 West Nineteenth. Vic is a retired secretary, Maria Burton, seventy-two years old, Hispanic.”

  “I’m rolling. Taking Watanabe with me. She’s sharp. When’s Dennis returning from vacation? Two murders in one night…” Be impossible to keep that away from the press.

  “When his psych eval comes back clean is when. He thought his number was up. Knife between the ribs, remember? If you’d been a worse shot, he’d be dead. Until he’s cleared, call me if you get out of your depth, all right? I’ll jump off the desk for a day or two.”

  Watanabe had her ears on. Ready to go with no instructions needed from me. Back out the rear door, same aging pool car. The dash clock read 23:41, and the temperature 19of. The address took us to the same neighborhood. Two blocks away. The same three officers lurked outside, properly respecting the space
this time. And they’d kept the witness. I’d speak to her later. The front door, ajar, let in some of the spiteful little ice crystals falling from the listless sky. The house looked practically identical to Carrington’s, part of the same development in the nineteen-fifties.

  Watanabe followed me in.

  Inside, a much different scene. The front room looked like someone had picked it up and shaken it. Moreover, it looked like it always looked that way. Piles of books and newspapers thick with dust. Every flat surface covered in the incidentals of living – magazines, old food containers, underwear, the TV remote. A tiny kitchen full of Styrofoam containers. The overhead light illuminated a moth caught in its aura, a little survivor of winter. The place smelled like cabbage and the heat, atrociously high, made me loosen my collar. There were crucifixes on the walls, big ones. Like Sidney, the vic had not decorated for the season.

  I found Maria in the same place as the priest had been. The killer hadn’t stripped her, but otherwise had left Maria’s body in the same condition as Sidney’s: piled on the floor in disarray, head twisted around at a shudder-inducing angle.

  Pale skin. Sidney had been pale, too. The Midwest in winter? A couple of shut-ins? Maybe, but it tickled at me and I didn’t know why. No veins in her wrists. That accounted for some of the feeling.

  “We can’t keep meeting like this. People will talk.” Jolene.

  “Busy night,” I said.

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” Watanabe piped. Jo and I looked at her, expectant. “Where she retired from. Catholic Diocese.” She hadn’t let up on the background work on the ride over.

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  Jolene raised her eyebrows. “That mean something?”

  “Makes this non-random,” I said. “Retired priest, retired Diocese staff. That makes this…”

  “A vendetta,” Watanabe said.

  My stomach lurched. I called Burt. “Lieutenant. You didn’t say she worked for the Church. I need to know if she knew our first victim. Yes, Lieutenant. Well, you know how to reach me.” She said something about using my radio but I ignored her.

  Photos. Lots of photos. Jo tried again with the Christmas invitation and I ignored her, too. Nothing else to do but turn the scene over to the lab guys.

  Outside. “Tape it off. Eads, thanks for keeping the witness. Let me have her.”

  “Cindy,” Eads said. “Meals on Wheels.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Detective.” She led me to where Cindy sat in the back of a patrol car with the heater on. I slid in next to her. Watanabe waited out in the cold, racing around the internet with her own tablet.

  “Cindy?” I said. “I’m Detective Sanchez.”

  “Hi. Nice to… Well, maybe not nice. But…” A little past middle-age, she wore a chunky sweater, and a nice wool skirt over leggings. Her neck wobbled when she talked.

  “I understand. You call in the murder?”

  “Yes. My partner found Sidney earlier, and it made me worry. I started driving around, checking on everyone, and Maria didn’t come to the door. There’s no way it makes any sense, is there? I mean, I thought I was being paranoid, but…”

  A rambler. Great. “Did you enter the premises?”

  “She keeps a key under the mat. Well, I really keep it there. Maria is a little senile. I guess we don’t say senile anymore. She has some dementia.”

  That explained the state of the household. I brought up a picture of Sidney. Did you know him?”

  “Yes. I saw him two or three days a week. He looks…”

  “I’m sorry to be indelicate, Cindy. That’s the only picture I have of him. Next question. Did Maria know him?”

  “Well, I can’t say. She hardly went out, and only with help. She had a CNA in from time to time to help pick the place up and go for sundries.”

  “I guess she was due.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Thanks for your help, Cindy. Here’s my card. You’ll call if you think of anything.” I noted her number, too. I would have questions.

  Time to go. A million administrative details needed to be handled. I would have to call in the boss to keep up with them. In the meantime, the databases weren’t searching themselves. I hustled Watanabe back into the cruiser. 0217 and the temperature no higher than before. Red and blue lights strobed in the rearview as we pulled away. On impulse, maybe just not wanting to return to the office too soon, I circled the block. “There’s a Seven-Eleven around here someplace. You want some coffee?”

  “Does the Pope shit in the woods?”

  I gave her some side-eye. I’d never heard her say anything remotely casual before. I almost laughed. My laughter died in my chest.

  I pointed. “Hey. I’ve seen that lady before.” Long dark hair, crazy dress from the vintage store. I put the bubble back on the dash.

  “No coffee?”

  “We’ll see what happens.”

  I pulled up next to the suspect. She stopped and waited. We climbed out. We both had on uniforms and probably looked like beat cops; we also had pistols at our belts. Watanabe kept a hand on hers.

  “Miss? Are you lost?”

  The woman looked from Watanabe to me. “No, officer.”

  “I spoke to you a few hours ago and you said you were near a destination.”

  “I arrived there safely. Thanks for your concern.” That French accent again.

  “I need you to tell me where you’ve been tonight.”

  “I stayed with a friend for a few hours.”

  “Tell me their name and address.”

  She smiled, a wistful expression. “I do not remember his name.”

  Hackles. “Miss, I think you should come with us.”

  Watanabe had handcuffs out like a magic trick.

  “I will come quietly,” the woman said. “No need for those.”

  “Put those up, Watanabe. This isn’t an arrest yet. Here we are, Miss. Nice and warm in the back.”

  “Thank you, officer.”

  Something wrong and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. She sat in the back, docile as a rabbit. My breath plumed in front of me. My partner shivered a little, not dressed for below-freezing temperatures. And something off-key.

  Maybe just the fact of two murders in one night in a town where murder still made front-page news. Maybe five homicides since the church shooting ten years back? Could be just the odd coincidences and circumstances. I shut the door on my new passenger. Watanabe and I loaded back in.

  Quiet drive back. “What’s your name?” I said, mostly to break up growing tension.

  “Ysabeau. My parents were old fashioned. Thank you, it is much warmer in the car.”

  “I have to ask you. What’s with the dress?”

  “Do you like it? I work at the Renaissance Faire in the summer. I ran onto hard times and this was the only thing I had to wear when I had to leave my home.”

  That sounded like bullshit. I glanced in the rearview to check her eyes. Liars… if you’re experienced, you can spot it in their eyes. But I couldn’t see her in the mirror. Must’ve been too dark or the wrong angle. I didn’t want to move the mirror around and make it obvious so I let it go.

  “Hey, Watanabe.”

  “Yes, Detective?”

  “You got a first name? I can’t just keep calling you Watanabe.”

  “Ayame. Call me Ay.”

  Back at the station. I parked out front this time. Guests used the front door. “Ay, you want to book her in? Interview two. I’ll put the car up.”

  “Yes, Detective.”

  “I’ll bring coffee.”

  The night didn’t look to be getting any shorter.

  Disorder

  “Remind me what your name is.”

  The interview room whispered comfort. Designed to set minds at ease. A couch, two upholstered chairs, a little table against one wall. The white walls had been patched and painted recently where an unruly guest had made trouble.

  “Ysabeau.”

&n
bsp; “Your parents were old-fashioned. I remember. Your full name, if you don’t mind.”

  Ysabeau had the couch. She perched there, the furthest thing from relaxed, but not apparently troubled. Just stiff, formal. “Ysabeau Jean-Baptiste.”

  “Thank you. And I have to ask you, Ms. Jean-Baptiste…”

  “It is Miss, and please call me Ysabeau.”

  I forced a smile. “Thank you. Ysabeau.” The name felt awkward in my mouth, though it rolled off her tongue like a song. “I have to ask, what were you doing in that neighborhood last night, walking around in the cold?”

  “Nothing illegal.” She matched my forced smile. “I do not mean to be very rude, Officer… Sanchez? You do not look like a Sanchez. With blue eyes and hair that could be blonde with a little sun. I do not mean to be very rude. It is only that I came here to be free and, in a free country, you do not have to tell police officers everything they ask.”

  “Well, it would make things simpler.” I leaned back in the armchair. Crossed my legs, then uncrossed them again, conscious of body language. Ysabeau had her legs crossed at the knee, a real lady. “Actually, I’m not a police officer at all. I’m a detective. The reason I need to talk to you, Ysabeau, is that you were in the vicinity of two murders tonight. Close in place and close together in time, too. In such a case, we look for unusual behavior – such as being out late at night, dressed oddly, in extreme cold.”

  “I can see why you would be suspicious, Detective.” A little pause there before the honorific. “But look: my hands are clean. No murders. No blood on my shoes.” She held up her hands for inspection. Her shoes peeked out from under a petticoat, brown leather with one-inch block heels.

  “Ah, the victims were not killed in a messy fashion. Had their necks broken.”

  Her hands were still raised. “A little thing like me, petite, I could break the necks of people?”

  “I suppose in the light of day it does seem a little absurd. Just, as a favor, maybe you could explain what you were doing out in the night.”

  “It is still night, Detective. No light of day to inspire any rationality. I went to an assignation. You see? And when the assignation was over, I was not invited to stay the night.”