Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4)

by JC Andrijeski

  Weirdly, I could feel Hawking listening for the answer, too.

  Maybe they really were a tag team.

  Mozar as distraction, while Hawking played invisible.

  “Psychologist,” I said. “Clinical and research, mostly.”

  “And what’s your connection to this case, exactly?” Mozar said. I could feel the interest on him, even without reading him, even as I tried to sidestep it. “Are you a profiler, Ms. Fox? Or should I call you Miriam?”

  “Either is fine,” I said, keeping my voice indifferent. I gave him a bare glance. “And yes. I generally help Nick out with profiling. Especially in cases where motive is unclear, or has more of a psychological rather than a material basis.”

  Mozar continued to watch me for a few seconds.

  “We had a profile worked up on the Templar killer in Los Angeles,” he said then. “Maybe you’d like to see it? I have a copy with me.”

  I gave him another brief look, only to find those blue eyes fixed on my hands. I didn’t read him that time either, but I definitely got the impression he’d been looking for a wedding ring.

  “I thought you wanted to wait on that,” I said, my voice still more clipped than usual. I was doc-speaking him, but I still felt weirdly trapped between the two men. I hated that I did it, but I squirmed slightly in my seat. “...Didn’t you say you wanted to wait until we’d verified some kind of connection before we dug into the details of your case?”

  “Professional interest,” he said. He smiled when I glanced up, and I got the impression he’d noticed my squirming. Instead of reading it as me feeling uncomfortable, he seemed to choose to take it a different way. “I thought you might want to see it purely out of interest in the case study, Miriam.”

  Nick glanced back at that, raising an eyebrow at me.

  I ignored him too.

  When I glanced over at Mozar, the blue eyes were focused on my lips that time, but they flickered down to my chest as I watched. When he seemed to feel me staring at him, he looked up hastily and blushed.

  “Okay,” I said, my voice blunt. I held out a hand. “You got it on you?”

  Next to me, I felt a faint whisper of amusement on Hawking.

  Maybe the guy wasn’t a complete zombie after all.

  Mozar smiled too, the embarrassment no longer noticeable in his expression. Still studying my face, he leaned back in the seat, pulling his stack of papers and folders onto his lap. I watched him open up the leather-bound portfolio and legal pad combination he’d brought into the Northern Precinct conference room, his movements businesslike. Rifling through what were probably case file papers, he pulled out a set of paper-clipped sheets and handed them to me.

  “Most of what I have is electronic too,” he explained. “So if it turns out this is our boy, I’ll make sure you get your own copies of everything. In the meantime, this is a printout of the summary we got from the FBI profiler we brought in, plus my notes...”

  “Then FBI is on this?” I said.

  Again, I felt Nick listening from the front seat.

  “Not officially. Not yet. But they’re keeping an eye on it. I have a few friends there, so I called in a favor to get access to one of their top profilers.”

  He said it like maybe it was supposed to impress me, but I only nodded, skimming through the printed text along with what was written there in what must have been Mozar’s hand in blue ink. He was left-handed, I guessed, just from the direction of the strokes in the blocky, upper-case letters covering the page.

  The profile itself went from high level to more detail.

  The high level stuff was pretty textbook.

  White male. Thirties to mid-forties. Unlikely to be younger than thirty-two or thirty-three due to the high level of organization and meticulousness behind the crimes. Loner. Likely grew up in a house with abuse and/or alcoholism, but where those issues were hidden and tightly controlled in public. Likely from a religious family, possibly even the son of a religious leader or preacher or some other person of high standing in the community. Likely Christian, although possibly a later-life convert since adult converts were often more fanatical. Could also be someone who lost religion and found it again.

  The normal anti-social personality disorder markers.

  History of animal abuse, domestic violence, few relationships, active fantasy life, violent and disturbing fantasies. Violent pornography. A big reader. Probably someone who fancied themselves a scholar of some type, particularly of esoteric theology.

  So they’d definitely found something akin to Black’s alchemy thing.

  Then there were the skill sets displayed.

  Evidence of significant training in martial arts, particularly Brazilian ju-jitsu or possibly Judo due to grappling marks on several of the victims. Highly trained in at least one of the kicking and/or Shaolin arts, either a form of Kung Fu, or possibly Tae Kwan Do or Muy Thai. Skilled in upper-body boxing, but that could also be from training in Shaolin-based systems.

  Then there were the swords. Most of that wasn’t Asian though, but seemed connected to the medieval thing.

  I suspected Black would know a lot more specifics about those skill sets than what was listed in the summary. Even I could read between the lines on some of it. Obviously, the guy wasn’t just a fighter. He was also a tracker.

  A hunter, and not only of animals.

  Like Black, the profiler suggested scouring library and bookselling flags for cross-sections including more esoteric versions of the gospels and other gnostic texts, including anything involving the Crusaders, the Knights Templar, Freemasons, conspiracies around the One World Order, as well as vengeance, angels, archangels, purification rituals, scourging and other forms of self-punishment associated with redemption or the purification of evil.

  I knew the cops in L.A. would have followed up on that already, and knowing Nick, he had people poring over those symbols and cross-checking those with the Federal databases too, along with anything he could access via Homeland Security.

  He’d also be looking for weapons’ sales, and based on what the Medical Examiner said, anyone with blacksmithing training and skills. After Black’s input around Archangel, I knew Nick would probably put in a few calls to people he knew at the Pentagon too, to see if he could get lists of ex-military in California with special forces training. I knew he wouldn’t only ask about Archangel. He’d probably want anyone in the area who’d done a tour in the Army’s Special Forces, the Green Berets, SEALs, Rangers, Force Recon, and whoever else might get picked up by a private sec company following an official tour.

  I knew some of those people’s records would be scrubbed, like Black’s had been.

  I also knew Nick had connections. He’d somehow gotten a copy of Black’s sealed records and I still had no idea how he’d managed that.

  Either way, the immediate work of finding this guy would be about narrowing down lists of variables to see if they could find a match. I knew from Nick that lot of police work was winnowing. At least for this kind of crime, where there didn’t seem to be a personal connection between the victims and no DNA or fingerprint evidence had been found.

  “Any witnesses on the pier?” Mozar asked Nick, as I continued to read through the profile pages. “CCTV?”

  Nick glanced back. I looked up to hear his answer only to find his eyes on me. Catching my returning stare, he looked at Mozar. “No.”

  Mozar frowned. “I thought that area was wired.”

  “It is,” Nick grunted. He craned his head back again, his expression grim. “Cameras were off.”

  “Off?” Mozar said.

  “All of them?” I said, looking up.

  Nick glanced at me again. A strange expression touched his eyes as he did. I saw him glance down my body as well, right before he swallowed, and I had to fight not to snap at him.

  It wasn’t like Nick to do that, either.

  Truthfully, I can’t remember the last time I caught Nick looking at me like that, much less so blatantly.
He hadn’t even done that when we first met in Afghanistan, even though both of us were single and everyone out there was on the make. I was pretty sure if he had looked at me like that recently––if at all––he’d been drunk, not in an unmarked police car on the way to a murder scene.

  I have to say, at that point, I was pretty fed up. I almost preferred Korhonen’s more blatant, hostile approach, to the creepy weirdness I was fielding from my so-called friends.

  Honestly, I was beginning to feel like someone had sprayed my body with pheromones while I wasn’t looking.

  I cleared my throat pointedly and Nick’s eyes flickered up from my cleavage through the dark blue dress shirt. I saw him color noticeably, right before he faced forward again.

  I spent the rest of the drive to the crime scene with my nose buried in the perp profile notes Mozar had given me. Even after I’d finished reading it, I didn’t look up.

  I sure as hell didn’t read any of them.

  Only when we pulled into the parking lot off Van Ness Avenue into Fort Mason did I look up, surprised.

  “This happened in Fort Mason?” I said.

  Nick glanced at me, then at Glen. “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you that? Out at the end of Festival Pavilion.”

  “And you’ve got no witnesses at all?”

  “None that have come forward yet. I’ve still got a few uniforms on it.”

  I looked out the window as we approached the three warehouse-like buildings that filled most of the main piers in the port area of Fort Mason. The location really did surprise me. I knew the vic had to have been left down here somewhere, meaning in the Marina and Aquatic Park areas, given that they formed the edges of the Northern District, which was Nick’s jurisdiction. This would have been my last guess, though, not my first one.

  There were so many nice restaurants and shops down here now.

  I guess I’d been expecting a place that was dirtier and a bit more run-down.

  I’d definitely been expecting a place with a lot less people.

  Even so, the first big pier, the one Nick had referenced and was now cordoned off by a line of black and whites with flashing lights on top and bright orange cones, probably had the least amount of traffic. The issue with camera surveillance and a lack of witnesses now struck me as a lot stranger too.

  “What time did this happen?” I tried to remember what Korhonen had said, but came up blank. It occurred to me that maybe I’d never asked.

  “Early,” Nick said, glancing at me again. That time, his eyes didn’t linger and his voice was studiously businesslike. “They timed it around ten-thirty.”

  “P.M.?” Mozar said.

  Nick nodded, giving him a sliding glance.

  Thinking about this, I sighed a bit, leaning back on the vinyl seat. I knew by now that it was Saturday, which meant it had been Friday night.

  “That’s early, Nick.”

  “Yeah,” he said. He didn’t comment apart from that.

  When I glanced at Mozar, I saw him looking between me and Nick. I didn’t read him that time, either, but I could feel his curiosity.

  He’d definitely picked up that me and Nick knew one another well.

  All five of us got out of the car a few minutes later and walked up to the land-side of the pier. Nick badged one of the uniformed cops standing guard out front, a young guy with a blond crew cut he must not have known, so might have been from a different precinct. The uniform cop and his partner immediately opened the gate to let us through.

  When we got to the end of the pier, Black was already there.

  Two plainclothes cops, one of them female, along with another uniform, watched as Black hung over the edge of the wooden pier from a wooden ladder, staring down at what must have been the dock pile where the killer tied Norberg.

  Nick walked up to him with a scowl. “Is this area clean?” he snapped.

  Black looked up at him, frowning back. “Of course,” he said.

  “What the fuck are you doing down there?”

  Black gave him a hard look. “Detecting. Private detective. Remember?”

  “How the hell did you get down here without us?”

  Black just gave him a look. After a few seconds of silence, I saw understanding reach Nick’s eyes, and after that, a vein pulsed on Nick’s forehead.

  “What the fuck are you even looking for?” he snapped. “You know CSI was all over this?”

  Again, Black gave him an annoyed look. “Can you give us a few minutes?”

  “Us? Who’s us?”

  Without answering, Black looked past him to me. “Come over here, Miri.”

  I felt Mozar flinch from next to me, and jumped a little when I realized how close to me he stood. I didn’t spare him more than a glance. Hawking stood on his other side, watching Black with no expression on his face at all. Even so, I got the sense he was curious. Whether it was about Black himself and who he was, or what the hell he was doing hanging out over the water like that, I had no idea.

  I walked up to Black, my jaw clenched. Wrapping my arms around my chest, I found myself wishing I had a coat when the wind began whipping the long shirt I wore against my chest. It felt about ten degrees colder once I’d left the protection of the buildings.

  I stood over the ladder and I bent my legs, squatting down so I’d be closer to Black. He only met my gaze briefly, then focused back on the soaked wood sticking partway out of the water and supporting the wooden pier.

  Can you feel anything down there, doc? he sent, his thoughts neutral.

  He pointed at the heavy, wooden piles, dark with brine and seawater where it wasn’t thick with white barnacles.

  Feel anything? I gave him a blank look. You mean in the wood?

  Use your sight, doc. Try to follow me... what I’m doing.

  At my continued blank look, impatience rolled off him. You wanted to be trained. You asked to be trained, Miriam.

  I felt my jaw tighten a little. Yeah. Okay.

  I adjusted the position of my feet, glancing behind me at the others. Angel and Estevez were there now too, watching the two of us with puzzled looks on their faces. All of them stood in a line now, arms folded, and a few yards back, so Nick must have relayed Black’s message to give us space for a few minutes.

  I looked back at Black, meeting his gold eyes.

  Now? I sent. With all of them standing here?

  It’s better to learn in the field. He pointed again, more insistently. Just try, all right? Look for imprints, doc. Anything that might help you ID the guy... I can mostly feel Norberg, but there are some imprints left from the killer too. See if you can find them. Start with Norberg, since he’s easier and work your way back. Process of elimination...

  Puzzled, I tried to concentrate on the wood where Black pointed.

  Once I’d started to focus for real, I could feel Black there, helping me, wrapping into me in some way that brought an unexpected flare of heat to my light. Ignoring that other reaction as best I could, I fought to pay attention to what he was doing instead––following the course of his prodding as he indicated to me where he wanted me to look, but more than that, how he wanted me to look. When I still wasn’t noticing the right things a few seconds later, he started pushing me for real, showing me with more directive pulses of his mind.

  Eventually I saw the spots he was talking about.

  Once I knew what I was looking for, they seemed to appear everywhere around me.

  Little glowing pockets of vibration, hidden as living remnants in the wood, popped up everywhere I focused my psychic vision. I saw them as bare glows, like fingerprints showing up in blacklight. Most of it was on the wood itself. Bigger concentrations with more violent, pulsing vibrations lived where I now noticed blood-splatters and what looked like splintering from deep cuts. Even apart from those concentrations, I saw those vibrating, glowing marks spotting and smudging the wood in several different places––even on the metal crossbeams holding the piles in place just above the waterline.

  I fl
inched, feeling a sudden dose of Norberg’s terror.

  Feel that? You got that, right, doc?

  “He was alive when he tied him down here,” I said aloud. “And conscious.”

  Black nodded, giving me an approving look. Keep looking, Miri. What else?

  I concentrated again, trying to feel more from the soaked wood where Black pointed.

  I’d felt that sharp dose of terror around the biggest concentration of blood spatters, which made sense, but now I moved my attention away from those, knowing those imprints had to be primarily if not solely Norberg’s.

  I could feel Black wanting me to find the actual perp in all this.

  Now that I had some idea of what I was looking for, I found myself scanning the wood where my feet rested too, and the ladder where Black now stood.

  But nothing vibrated with that same intensity––nothing that didn’t belong to Norberg.

  Look for different flavors, doc. Equally complex... different resonance.

  I nodded, looking for more subtle lights among the profusion. I saw things that felt simple, that I realize must be birds and possibly fish. I even felt what might have been insects.

  Complex, doc, Black repeated, his mind a touch sharper. Human minds are complex. Even the crazy ones. He paused. Especially the crazy ones...

  I targeted one that definitely felt highly complex, but Black pushed me gently away.

  That’s me, doc.

  Flushing a little, I moved on. I found another imprint that had a more complicated structure, but Black nudged me again, more gently that time.

  That’s human, you’re right... but I tracked that one back to CSI. What you want right now is more subtle. Log that flavor and eliminate it when you feel it next. Same with the cops... starting with the ones you know.

  I nodded, squinting down at the wood again.

  Again I paused on a more complex-feeling vibration.

  CSI again, doc. Same guy.

  Exhaling in some frustration, I fought to concentrate on finer gradations of those glowing prints. Then I felt something else. Something that still felt recent, but nothing like what I’d felt from Norberg, or the CSI guy, or the cop remnants I could feel around me on the pier.