by R. E. Vance
“And you think that a troll is behind this,” she says. “That’s why you are afraid. And that’s why you chose a personality who is sharp and persistent despite being afraid.”
Officer Steve nods, admiring this human’s perceptive nature. “There are two things that trolls love—stories and human flesh. And I’ve never met a troll that didn’t know exactly how to craft a bone flute.”
“I see.” Holly nods and puts a hand on Officer Steve’s shoulder. He doesn’t pull away. Not like Monk would. Then he remembers who he is and shrieks and backs away, but his heart isn’t in it.
↔
They walk up and down row after row of unclaimed graves.
“Did you know that we have the largest number of unmarked graves per capita in the world?” Holly says. “When the gods left, there was so much total destruction that we wound up burying body after unrecognizable body. I guess when you die from hellfire, there are no dental records left behind to identify you with.” She tries to speak in a matter-of-fact manner, but Officer Steve senses her sadness. So many humans died when the Others came tumbling down... So many died because of the gods’ reckless abandonment. And after seeing row after row of white tombstones, Officer Steve cannot help but feel remorse for the pain that the arrival of him and his kind caused.
Officer Steve examines the surrounding area. The ground is two square miles of undisturbed old grass. No one has been here for some time. “See,” Holly says, “we would have reported anyone digging up a grave. We do regular patrols. Especially Seòras—he covers the grounds nightly, and he’s got super hearing, not to mention his super-duper nose.”
“Seòras?” Steve mutters to himself, looking around.
He stoops low, careful to not actually let his knee touch the ground, and takes a closer look. No signs that anyone came near this particular grave for months—maybe even years. He takes in a deep breath and smells nothing. No hint that a troll or any other Other was here.
“There are other graveyards with other John Does,” Holly said.
Steve ignores this as he examines the next two rows of graves. They are the same. No disturbance. No scent of an Other’s presence. Nothing.
She wraps her arms around her body and hugs herself tightly. “It’s kind of creepy to think that someone is digging up graves in my own backyard.”
Officer Steve smells the fear on her and his heart beats with remorse over her feelings. So much has changed for Others—forced to live on Earth, as mortals. But just as much changed for humans.
“You’re probably right,” he says. “The bones were probably taken from another graveyard altogether.”
Holly nods and breathes a sigh of relief.
Officer Steve thanks Holly for her time and bids her farewell. She tells him that she’ll call in if she sees anything suspicious, and with that, the youngest of the Billy Goats Gruff leaves, not burdening her with the last clue he uncovered.
If Seòras did nightly rounds, then where were his footprints? They weren’t anywhere to be seen, and Officer Steve knows that he has solved one piece of this puzzle: the bones most certainly came from the Paradise Lot graveyard.
↔↔↔
Officer Steve goes in and reports what he discovered—which is to say, nothing. He sheepishly asks if Magnus or Hunter have uncovered anything. Negative. Both dead ends.
Still, there is one avenue worth exploring. He walks down to the evidence room and asks the pixie manning the locker if forensics has recorded the bone flute stories. The pixie buzzes to the back before returning with a file.
“Great,” Officer Steve says, signing out the transcripts. “I have a hunch that I’d like to confirm.”
↔
A human owns the Millennium Hotel. His name is... is... Officer Steve can’t quite remember. It’s one of those French names, but to the best of Officer Steve’s knowledge, the owner is not French. His mother, who died on the day of his birth, wasn’t French either. But, as legend has it, she did insist on his name before dying.
Not that this matters. Officer Steve is not here to meet him. It’s the drunk fallen angel who lives in the attic that is of interest.
Dressed as Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami, he dons dark glasses above a blue button-up shirt and a charcoal gray, single-breasted suit. He would put on matching pants, but his goat-like frame doesn’t allow him to wear them, so he’ll just have to hope that no one looks down. He does, however, part the tuft of goat hair on his head to the left—just like Detective Caine.
He pushes the Millennium Hotel’s turnstile door with the confidence and swagger of Caine. A tiny bell rings as each flap of the four-part door swings in and hits the tiny brass chime. He walks into the hotel’s giant foyer and over to a circular, giant oak reception desk that is currently being manned—or rather, ghosted—by a scowling spectre in a floral dress.
“Can I help you?” the spectre doesn’t so much ask as growl.
He looks down at her over the rims of his sunglasses. “I’m sure... you can.” He hits the word “sure” hard before slowing down the rest of the sentence.
“Jean-Luc isn’t here.”
Ahhh, that’s right, the owner’s name is Jean-Luc. And if memory serves him right, his last name is Matthias. Translate that into English and you get: John, Luke and Matthew. All that’s missing is Mark. If the gods were still here, that name would mean something. But the gods are gone and clever names are as meaningful as a double rainbow or finding a penny on the floor, which is to say, not meaningful at all.
“I’m not here... to see the man,” he says, trying to emphasize the words Horatio Caine would. Trouble is, Horatio Caine doesn’t have any discernible rhythm to his cadence. It is random and often surprising. Officer Steve knows. He’s studied the detective. So, taking a stab in the dark, Officer Steve hit the word “here” particularly hard.
“So we return to where we started—‘Can I help you?’ ” The spectre stares him down with harsh, judgmental eyes.
“And you are?” Officer Steve asks, removing his sunglasses with both hands.
“The ghost of Judith—a ghost, might I add, who’s going to have to ask you to leave if you don’t stop wasting my time.”
Her scowl darkens into a threatening grimace. Officer Steve gulps and says, “I’m looking for the angel.” He doesn’t emphasize a single word in the sentence.
↔↔↔
Officer Steve stands in the twice-fallen angel Penemue’s room. He’s here because he wants Penemue to do his thing.
And everyone has a thing.
Officer Steve’s thing is the donning of uniforms, becoming the personality he needs to be in order to get the job done.
As for the angel’s thing... He is the master of all that is written. That includes every deed, thought, sin and act marked on a human’s soul. Couple that with a perfect memory, and Penemue knows a human’s entire history dating all the way back to the hunter or gatherer that spawned that particular human’s lineage.
Not a bad thing. And ideal for the case at hand.
Penemue sits on a bale of hay in the middle of his room drinking Drambuie. The angel uses hay as a bed because humans have yet to manufacture furniture that can handle the average Other’s ample frame. Officer Steve has heard IKEA is about to release an Other furniture line, but that has yet to happen and, as a result, hay is a perfectly viable option.
The angel’s room, although an adequate size for the eight-foot tall, muscular being, is made small by stacks of books that sit shoulder high on every piece of available floor. Officer Steve finds himself relegated to a small patch of floor near the door. That, too, is fine. Horatio rarely commits himself to entering a room. Officer Steve does the typical Horatio thing—absent-mindedly picking up items within reach. In this case, his fanned-out hooves that act as fingers fiddle with books.
“Officer Steve,” Penemue slurs. He is drunk. This angel is always drunk. “How may I help you on this fine, fine Saturday?”
“It’s Monday,” Officer
Steve says, “and yes, you can help me. I need to confirm the history of three humans. Let us start with a certain Emily Rose.”
“Why?” Penemue asks.
“That’s for me to know and, well, for you not to know.”
“I am assuming that you want the Emily Rose of Paradise Lot and not the Emily Rose currently residing in Melbourne, Australia, or perhaps the Emily Rose of Mobile, Alabama. She died seventy years ago to the day. Or perhaps—”
Officer Steve lowers his sunglasses. “Yes ... the Paradise Lot resident.”
“Which one? There have been seven Emily Roses born in Paradise Lot in the last forty years.”
“She’s friends with a Sean Sumner, if that helps?”
Penemue’s eyes roll into the back of his head and Officer Steve wonders if he is doing his thing, or has passed out. A whole minute passes and Steve is fairly sure Penemue has passed out, when the angel’s eyes come back into focus and he smirks, “Yes... there is only one who knew a Sean Sumner. What would you like to know?”
The Gruff dramatically reaches into his inner breast pocket and pulls out seventeen folded sheets of paper. “I need to know if the Emily Rose as described in these papers is the same Emily Rose that died seven years ago.”
Penemue narrows his eyes in suspicion as he takes the papers. He shifts through them, reading them at an unnatural speed. “Huh, suicide,” he mutters.
“Excuse me?”
“My ability to read human souls ended with the GrandExodus, as did my connection to Emily Rose and all humans, for that matter. Last I knew of her, she was living on the South Side, happily married and eager to start her new job. Seems her last years were not kind to her ...” Penemue hands back the papers. “Therefore, I cannot confirm that the events described after the GrandExodus are, indeed, referring to the same Emily Rose, but I can say that the events before the gods left are reasonably accurate.”
“Reasonably?” Officer Steve removes his glasses as slowly as possible.
“Well ... this is her interpretation of what happened to her. Her justification for her actions. They are, for lack of a better term, her story as she would have wanted it told. But humans are revisionists, and the details told, as well as those conveniently omitted, paint her in a brighter light than deserved. I know what the soul knows and the soul is, sadly, incapable of lying, exaggerating or omitting.”
“But other than a bit of poetic license ... the same person?”
“Indeed,” Penemue nods. “Drambuie?”
Officer Steve looks at the bottle as if it were some insulting gesture, before putting his sunglasses back on. “And her relationship with Sean Sumner? What was it exactly?”
Penemue blinks twice before drawing hard on his bottle. “Friends.”
“Good friends?”
Penemue shrugs. “I guess.”
“Lovers?”
Penemue shakes his head.
“Unrequited love, perhaps?”
Again Penemue shakes his head. “Nope, just friends. Why?”
“Why would Emily Rose have Sean Sumner as next of kin if they weren’t in love? What about her parents? Siblings?”
“No siblings, and she hated her dad and hated her mom even more for sticking with him. Seems that Daddy was a bit of...” He makes a drinking gesture before remembering his own bottle and taking another swig. “Sean was her reliable friend. You know—through thick and thin, and all that. A ‘next of kin’ kind of guy.”
“I see,” says Officer Steve. “Thank you for your time, Angel Penemue. If I am in need of your services further, I will be in touch.” And with that, the Gruff takes his leave.
↔↔↔
The Gruff leaves the angel’s den even more disturbed than ever. He had hoped that the angel would reveal that the stories were fabricated—something that can be done with magic alone—or that they were not of Emily Rose at all, and therefore not from the Paradise Lot cemetery.
But the angel confirmed quite the opposite. The bone flutes are real, and one of them at least was crafted from the body of the late Emily Rose. So how did the someone—or rather, someOther—dig up a grave without leaving behind any evidence?
He goes home, unsure what to do next. Rarely do TV shows follow detectives home, so Officer Steve is unsure how he should behave when he is alone. So he does the only thing he can think, which is to be himself. He takes off his uniform and stands naked in his living room and thinks.
There’s little doubt that whoever is making the bone flutes uses magic to cover his tracks. But how do you uncover magic, without magic?
Maybe the question shouldn’t be “How?” but rather, “Why?” He mulls over the three known bone flutes. Each of the dead had died after the GrandExodus. In other words, they had died and their souls did not have the chance to ascend to Heaven or fall to Hell. They did not even have the option to linger on Earth as a lost soul or ghost or someOther form of wandering entity. For those who die after the gods left, death means oblivion. That, if nothing else, must mean something. This culprit is giving the dead one last chance to tell their stories.
But it’s more than that. Each bone flute was crafted from a Jane or John Doe, which means that whoever is doing this has to figure out the names of those whom the bones belong to.
Discovering the bone’s real name is not difficult with the right kind of magic. What magic cannot tell them is who their next of kin is or how to find them. And the stories the flutes told made no mention of next of kin—especially the Emily Rose flute. Steve knows. He read all the transcripts.
Discovering next of kin as were the wishes of the deceased requires more mundane investigation. Phone books and Internet directories will help, but they don’t give the immediate next of kin. So far, the bone flutes have been delivered once to parents, another time to a sibling and the last time to a friend who had been designated as an emergency contact on—
Of course... it’s so obvious, Officer Steve thinks as he pulls out his cell phone. The answer has been right in front of him the whole time.
↔
It takes some time, but eventually he finds exactly what he is looking for. It’s a long shot, and for all he knows, he is barking—or rather, braying—up the wrong tree, but it’s worth checking in to. He considers waiting until the next day—it is, after all, almost ten p.m., but Officer Steve knows he will not sleep unless he knows.
He puts on his yellow and red sports jacket before making the calls he needs to make. He calls around until he gets a sprite who has the address he’s looking for. She refuses to give him the information, so he threatens her with jail time. “On what charge?” the sprite asks.
“Obstruction of justice,” he yells back with an exaggerated tone. Of course, his threats are empty, and that is why he dressed like Axel Foley, a.k.a. Beverly Hills Cop. Axel makes empty, over-the-top threats all the time, and once the jacket is on he has no problem delivering the necessary lines with bravado.
Before leaving his apartment, he goes to his closet, knowing that tonight’s uniform will have to be carefully selected. He will need to be tough. And angry. He’s off to question a troll, his Achilles heel, his Kryptonite. He’s afraid—no sense in denying it—and anger is the least paralyzing way to deal with fear. And few detectives are tougher or angrier than Idris Elba’s Luther. So he puts on a charcoal gray suit with a faded red tie, breathing a sigh of relief as the great detective’s mannerisms enter his being.
He heads to the address that the sprite gave him. It is a door underneath a bridge. GoneGodDamn it ... it had to be a bridge. Officer Steve takes a deep breath and knocks on the door.
Nothing happens.
He knocks again. This time harder.
Nothing.
He knocks a third time. Harder still, and instead of the thudding of hoof on wood, the door unlatches and swings open. It seems that in his nervousness Officer Steve knocks a little too hard, his cornified cartilage hands inadvertently forcing the door open. From the darkness that greets him, he knows
that no one is home.
Oh great, he thinks, what now?
Then he remembers who he is: Luther. A man of action, a risk-taker and someone who doesn’t always follow the rules. OK, he thinks, a little peek then? and pushes the door open.
↔
He walks inside and immediately the smell of rotting meat mixed with fresh grass and an odd hint of lavender hits him. A troll’s potpourri.
What he enters is an old utility shed that once-upon-a-time served as a city storage facility. Its three walls are the same brick as the bridge above. But the far wall opposite the door no longer exists. The troll has knocked it down and dug into the hillside. He has built a grand hovel for himself. A gopher’s den of epic proportions.
He walks into the troll-made cave and takes in his surroundings. It is huge and Officer Steve’s horse-size frame fits easily inside. He notes that this troll not only dug a home for himself, but he was also careful not to disrupt any of the city’s underground pipes, electrical wires or cabling. Such modern constructs run through the cave. This troll is either very law-abiding or doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. Officer Steve believes it is the latter, which means that this troll is smart. Officer Steve has never met a smart troll and isn’t eager to do so now.
The youngest of the Gruffs is terrified. At any moment, the troll could return. But Luther would go on. Luther would find out if his hunch is right or wrong. Officer Steve takes a deep breath and trudges on.
He walks another thirty feet. The smell of rotting meat permeates his nostrils until he reaches a bend in the tunnel. There are two rooms carefully crafted to each side.
To the right is a large workshop, the size of a barn. In the middle is a heavy-duty work table with various stone masonry tools on it. On the walls hang more tools and slabs of granite. And on the floor? Tombstones—dozens of them, stacked eight or nine deep. Officer Steve scans the names on the stones: Andrew Watson, John MacKaken... and Emily Rose.