War Song (The Rift Chronicles Book 2)

by BR Kingsolver

“Aaron Carpenter, oldest son of the Family head. Possible magik, but also knifed and bludgeoned.”

  He led me to a room that appeared to be a combination office and library. Dark wooden wainscotting and silk wallpaper. To say there were signs of a struggle would be an understatement. A man I took to be Carpenter lay partly on an overstuffed chair and partly on the floor. There was blood everywhere, and several interesting burn marks on the walls and furniture, but none on him.

  “Any idea of his affinity?” I asked.

  “Electrokinetic,” a feminine voice said from behind me.

  I turned to see Dr. Ruth Harrison, a psychiatrist and the best magik detector I’d ever met. The Police Department had other detectors on its staff, but with a murder among the Hundred, it made sense that Whittaker would call in someone who was comfortable working with the Magi.

  “But not all of the scorch marks are from lightning,” Ruth continued, then pointed. “That one, and that one. The rest were caused by pure energy.”

  “A spirit mage?” I asked. Spirit mages were even more rare than magiteks, my own affinity.

  “Either that or a magitek device,” Ruth said.

  “Or possibly a Fae,” I said. “Some of their mages wield the same powers as a spirit mage.”

  “Possibly,” Ruth said.

  “Who found him?” I asked.

  “His wife,” Novak answered. “But I need to talk to you before you see her.”

  He drew me aside, and Ruth stayed close.

  “Doreen Benoit-Carpenter,” he said. “She’s a spirit mage. The servants heard the fight, although none of them were in this part of the house. It evidently didn’t last very long, and then they heard her scream. When they came in, they found her, covered in blood.”

  Wonderful. My great-grandmother was a Benoit, so Doreen was probably some distant cousin of mine.

  He led me around to the other side of the dead man. A bloody fireplace poker lay near the hearth ten feet away, and a bloody kitchen knife lay near the chair.

  I turned away. “Ruth? Have you seen her?”

  The psychiatrist nodded. “Yes. She’s in shock. I’m not sure you’re going to get much out of her right now.”

  “I don’t have to get much,” I said. “Where is she?”

  Mychal and Ruth led me to another room where a young woman with pale freckled skin and long red hair sat on a chair. She wore what looked like a long white nightgown that was drenched in blood. Her face was devoid of emotion, and she stared into space, gently rocking back and forth, her arms crossed over her stomach.

  I glanced back at the dead man. Salt and pepper hair. I judged him to be more than double the woman’s age, and at least double her body weight.

  Crouching down in front of her, I said, “Doreen? Mrs. Benoit-Carpenter? I’m Lieutenant Danica James with the Metropolitan Police. Did you see who did this?”

  She blinked a couple of times, then seemed to focus on my face. She gave kind of a jerking nod, then shook her head once. Her face scrunched up, and she burst into tears, burying her face in her hands.

  I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her to me, letting her cry against my chest.

  “Did you kill your husband, Doreen?” I asked gently, almost whispering into her ear.

  She shook her head violently.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to find who did, and you’re going to help me.” I pushed her away enough that she could see my face. “Do you understand?”

  She stared at me, tears streaking her face, and then she nodded. I pulled her back against me and held her while she cried.

  After about ten minutes, she wound down, the tension flowed out of her body, and she slumped.

  “Ruth,” I said, “take care of her, but don’t give her anything that will interfere with her memory. I think she saw something.”

  Harrison nodded, and I turned the new widow over to her care.

  After we went back into the library, Novak asked, “You don’t think she did it?”

  “No, I don’t. That doesn’t mean she didn’t make some of these scorch marks, though. Pass the word, I want everyone in the house interviewed, and ask them all if anything is missing.”

  Novak looked around at the chaos. “A burglary?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. How many spirit mages or demons break in to steal something? Who was in the house? What visitors or guests? Not necessarily Carpenters’ guests, but look at the staff as well. Delivery men. After that, we need to check his business connections and identify any enemies.”

  I looked at the body again. In spite of the evidence of a mage battle, he’d been killed by simple physical means. “And why is Mrs. Carpenter wearing a nightgown in the middle of the afternoon? Nothing about this makes any sense.”

  I chose a small parlor near the kitchen to interview members of the household, and called them in one at a time.

  “There were those letters,” the housekeeper said. Most of the servants were robots, but there was a human head housekeeper, a butler, a gardener, and three humans and a brownie in the kitchen. “I know they upset him, and the missus tried to get him to call the police.”

  “Do you know if he kept them?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “He might have, or he might have thrown them away. There’s a shredder in his study, and lately he’s had a fire in the fireplace on colder nights.”

  It was Indian Summer, with the leaves changing color and the temperatures swinging from almost-summer warm to chilly at night.

  I asked the butler about the letters, and he told me, “My impression was they were from some political group. You know, the kind that wants the rich to give all their money away and spend their days working in soup kitchens. But I never saw them.”

  “Not even the envelopes?”

  He seemed to hunch a little, a defensive reaction, like a turtle pulling its head into its shell. “The robots handle the mail. I only see something if it’s addressed to me.”

  One of the servants said something about the mistress “not being well,” but refused to elaborate.

  But I got the real scoop from the brownie, Cora. She was young, maybe eighty or ninety years old, cute as a button, and said she’d crossed the Rift when she was just a child. She had worked for Carpenter for thirty years, longer than any of the human help.

  Cora was absolutely delighted when I spoke to her in Elvish, and she told me everything I wanted to know.

  “The mistress is high-strung,” she said. “Very nervous, and easily upset.” Her face twisted into an expression of distaste. “His children bully her, and he refuses to chastise them.”

  “She’s his second wife?” I asked.

  “His third. He divorced the children’s mother, and his second wife died in an accident. He married the mistress five years ago. She’s actually younger than his children.”

  “Does she normally wear a nightdress in the middle of the day?”

  Cora had been around humans long enough to pick up some of our habits, but I always found it a little amusing when brownies shook their heads in negation. Since she didn’t have a neck, she twisted back and forth from the waist.

  “His oldest daughter was here yesterday.”

  “So, his children don’t live here?”

  Again the body twist. “Five children—two girls and three boys—ranging from twenty-seven to forty of your years. The youngest girl and boy still live here, the oldest boy and girl are married and have their own houses, and the middle one comes and goes. He has an apartment down by the harbor.”

  I made a note to see if any of the kids had a police record.

  After my interview with Cora, I got together with Novak to compare notes.

  “Do you know any of Carpenter’s kids?” I asked. “I sort of remember a Carpenter from when I was a teenager.”

  “I went to school with Kel Carpenter,” he said, “and I dated his younger sister Dorothy for a while.”

  “You and your brother seem to have go
tten around a lot,” I said. Mychal’s twin, Marco, had a reputation as a ladies’ man.

  He blushed. “I like women.”

  I knew he liked my roommate. Most men did. Mychal was shy, and a bit of a nerd, but intelligent and very good-looking. Kirsten had dated a lot of men, the majority of whom I respected less than Mychal. He was decent, and seemed interested in more than just getting laid.

  “The brownie says that Carpenter’s kids bullied his wife. Check and see if any of them have a record of any kind. Check their financials. This looks like a crime of passion to me. Maybe one of them has money problems and daddy refused to help.”

  On my way out of the house, I stopped to talk with Ruth Harrison.

  “You don’t think she did it, do you?” Ruth asked me.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Is that elven empathy making the call?”

  Ruth knew my mother, so she knew about my heritage.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Mom says that is among the gifts I inherited.”

  She winked at me. “I don’t think she killed him, either. I could see her killing him with magik but not with a kitchen knife.”

  Chapter 5

  It was late when I got home, and I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. I was rummaging around in the fridge when Kirsten came into the kitchen.

  “Bad day?”

  “Long day. I found out that Courtney is the relative trying to kill me.” I grabbed an apple, a bar of cheese, and a beer. “And then I got tagged for a murder. Do you know Aaron Carpenter?”

  I sat down at the kitchen table, and she took the chair across from me.

  “I know his wife, she’s a customer of mine.”

  “Oh? What’s she like? I met her today, but it wasn’t under the best of circumstances.”

  Kirsten thought for a moment, then said, “Nice. Sweet, you know, but shy. She’s a lot younger than he is, isn’t she?”

  “Than he was. Yeah, she’s twenty-five, and he was sixty-eight. Talked to a brownie that works in their kitchen, and she said Doreen wasn’t very happy.”

  My roommate shrugged. “We never really talked much, but what I sell her are potions used for calming and to help her sleep. I got the impression that she was a heavy cannabis user before I turned her on to some lighter herbs.”

  “Know anything about his kids? I guess they’re all older than her. Closer to our age.”

  “Oh, yeah. I dated Kel for a while. You remember him, don’t you? Tall, with sandy hair, blue eyes? It was about two years ago. He’s kind of a playboy, not ready to settle down.”

  I tried to remember. I had long ago stopped trying to keep track of Kirsten’s boyfriends. Some of them only lasted a date or two, and sometimes she had four or five on a string at the same time. Kirsten calling Kel Carpenter a playboy was the pot calling the kettle. But the only man she was currently seeing was Mychal Novak.

  “Mychal said he went to school with Kel,” I said.

  “Yeah, they’re the same age.”

  That would be two years younger than Kirsten and me.

  “I met his older sister once,” Kirsten said. “She came in with one of my regular customers. I didn’t really form an impression of her. How did he die?”

  “Bludgeoned, stabbed, hit with magik maybe. The place was a bloody mess. Doreen found him, and she was in a state of shock when I tried to talk to her.”

  The first place I went when I got to the police station the following morning was the morgue.

  “Figured I’d see you today,” Kelley Quinn, the medical examiner, said. Quinn was around my age, with short dark-blonde hair, and a perky, pretty, girl-next-door face. I realized that I didn’t know what the rest of her looked like, as I’d only seen her wearing a white shapeless coat over her clothes.

  “What do you have for me?”

  She led me over to an autopsy table and pulled back the sheet covering the corpse. Aaron Carpenter looked a little better naked with all the blood washed off him, but not much.

  “He was hit twice with the poker,” Kelly said, “here on the forehead, and here on the left side above the ear. But cause of death was one of the knife wounds. Several could have been fatal.”

  “How many times was he stabbed?”

  “Seven. Six in the front upper torso, and once in the back. At least two of the blows penetrated the heart, and three penetrated the lungs. The pattern, along with the poker blows, leads me to think the killer was right-handed, and the knife wounds indicate a frenzied attack.”

  “Crime of passion,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Not for me to say. Anger, fear, who knows? That’s your job.”

  “Any defensive wounds?”

  “No. But I think all the wounds except the one in the back came when he was standing. I think the last one was delivered after he fell across that chair.”

  “Magik?”

  “Oh, hell, the room was full of residuals. My guess is that at least three mages cut loose in there.”

  “Three? Carpenter, his killer, and?” I asked.

  “The wife, maybe? Were there any other magik users in the house?”

  “Possible. You can’t tell what kind of magik?”

  “Only from the evidence, and Dr. Harrison is better at that than I am. You saw the various scorch marks.”

  “But none on him.”

  She shook her head. “No evidence of magikal damage.”

  “How about the knife?”

  Kelly pointed to a bloody knife lying on a tray. “A chef’s knife, eight-inch blade, wide, sharp, and pointed. Forensics says all the blood on it is Carpenter’s. They also told me it’s a professional knife—expensive—what you’d find in a fine restaurant or a fancy mansion.”

  “Did it come from the house?”

  She shook her head. “Not that we can determine. The knives in the kitchen were a different brand, and the chef’s knife was accounted for.”

  “So, either the cook had her own special knife and she’s not admitting it, or the killer brought it with him,” I said.

  That got me another shrug.

  “Helluva knife to be carrying around,” I said. “Not easy to conceal.”

  I headed upstairs to find Mychal and to report to Whittaker. A couple of cops who got on the elevator at the ground floor were animatedly discussing the demon army camped south of Annapolis. Prior to Ashvial’s death, the demons had been fighting and looting their way north, but for the past couple of weeks they had been contained by a force of Magi mercenaries and guardians on a peninsula jutting into the Chesapeake Bay.

  The argument between the two men had to do with whether we should just let the demons sit there or go in and wipe them out. It didn’t sound to me as though either of them had actually fought demons before. I knew that if I got a vote, not fighting them was the way I would go. But considering they were feeding on their human captives, there was a good argument on the other side.

  “Anything new?” I asked Mychal when I reached his desk.

  “One of the witches in forensics was able to piece together some letters from the shredder,” he said.

  “You’re kidding. How did she do that?”

  He chuckled. “She said it had to do with the type of paper and the age of the ink on the paper. She just matched all the pieces.”

  He held out pictures of the letters she had put together.

  “There are three distinct types of letters that might match what we’re looking for,” he said. “One set contains threats, or maybe warnings, about what’s going to happen to the rich and retribution for Carpenter’s sins of exploitation. They’re signed with the logo of the HLA. No fingerprints or DNA except for Carpenter’s. The second set has warnings or threats from what sounds like a jilted lover. A couple of those letters contain threats against his wife. They aren’t signed. The third set are love letters to his wife from some unknown party. The oldest of those have his wife’s fingerprints on them, but the later ones don’t.”

  I looked the various letters ov
er.

  “Here’s the interesting thing,” Mychal continued. “DNA and fingerprints of the same unidentified woman are on those last two sets of letters. There’s no male DNA on them other than Carpenter’s, although the love letters are purportedly from a man named Nigel.”

  We stared at each other.

  “I hate the rich and entitled,” I finally said.

  “I’m sure the lower classes play the same kind of games,” Mychal replied. “What you hate are humans—it’s a typical cop thing. Look, do you think you could do whatever it is you do and find out what instructions the mail bot has for delivering Mrs. Carpenter’s mail?”

  “Sure, I can hack a bot. Let’s go talk to Whittaker, and then we can go over to the Carpenters’ house. I wonder if any of the other Carpenters, or any other Magi, are getting these kind of letters from the HLA.” As we walked down the hall, I asked, “Have you checked out the alibis for Carpenter’s kids?”

  “The two younger ones who live at home were both at work. They work in the Family business, and they have plenty of witnesses. Kel, the middle son, says he was doing research at the university library. I sent a detective over there but haven’t heard from him yet.”

  “Johns Hopkins?”

  Mychal pursed his lips. “No, University of Maryland, down in College Park.”

  “Is he a student there?”

  My partner shook his head. “He went to Hopkins with me. He was vague about the kind of research, and I don’t remember him being the studious type. The older daughter was at her home, or shopping, or having lunch with one of her friends. Maybe she went to the gym.” He shifted his voice an octave higher with a bitchy cant to it. “What time did you say he died again? My day was just so full, and you can’t possibly expect me to remember exactly what time things happened. I don’t keep track of every minute.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Like I said, I hate the rich and entitled.”

  He snorted. “Exactly. She didn’t seem too broken up about it. I have a detective trying to chase down all the places she said she was and who she was with and when. The oldest son is in Pittsburgh on business. Noah Carpenter, Aaron’s father, is upset about his son’s death. I spoke to him last night on my way home, and he was spitting mad.”