Mike shrugged and picked up a mug, peering into its depths. It had old coffee sludged on the bottom of the cup, but there were no paper-towels or napkins. Of course not, he thought. With an apathetic twitch of his shoulders, Mike poured lukewarm coffee into the dirty cup and heaped seven spoons of sugar into it for good measure. Oneka Falls no longer sprang for half-n-half, or even milk, so he sprinkled powdered creamer into the cup and stirred it with his finger.
“Going to make yourself sick, Chief,” said Jack King, the other policeman on days.
“That, my friend, would only be an improvement.”
“Rough night?”
“Yeah, aren’t they all?”
Jack grunted and stood looking at Mike with a critical expression. “Might be better if—”
Mike rounded on him, slopping coffee over his hand. “If what, Jack?” he asked in a cold voice.
King looked away. “If we had a night shift, boss.”
“Yeah,” said Mike. “That would help, but it’s not going to happen.”
“No, doesn’t seem like it will,” Jack murmured.
Mike returned to his desk, still fuming at Jack, but keeping it off his face. Always has to make a comment. Can’t leave it alone, always got to be in my business. Don’t see me doing that to him, do you?
The town manager stuck his head in the door. “Got a second, Chief?” he asked.
Mike shook his head. If the man had any skill, it was perfect timing. “What can I do for you, Chaz?”
“My office?” said Chaz with a look toward King. “We should let Officer King focus on his work.”
“Yeah,” grunted Mike, pushing himself to his feet. “Your office have fresh coffee?”
“Of course.”
Mike tipped his mug into the garbage can next to his desk. “Good. This sludge would kill me this morning.” Following the town manager, he couldn’t help but sneer at the bounce in his walk. If there was one thing Chaz Welsh had never done, it was work an honest day in his life.
The town manager’s office was vast and boasted hardwood-paneled walls. The carpet was plush, the chairs were leather, and the manager’s custom-made yew desk was wide. It made Mike sick. All of it.
Chaz held out his hand, and Mike handed him his cup. The town manager glanced inside and made a face. “Shannon, please bring Chief Richards a decent cup of coffee.” He held out Mike’s dirty cup. “And see to it that the cups in the P.D. office are washed.”
Shannon Bertram, the town manager’s personal assistant, bustled in with a steaming mug of coffee with the town seal on it. She took Mike’s cup with two fingers as if she feared she would get something from it. “Hi, Chief,” she murmured.
Mike nodded at her. He could remember being in high school with her though she was a few years behind him. Twenty-one years in the past, high school was already a blur of hazy memories. “What can I do for you, Chaz?”
Welsh closed the door to his office. He turned and walked to lean against the front of his desk. He steepled his fingers and then let his hands fall so that he ended up looking like a kid playing cops and robbers.
All supposed to make him seem accessible, Mike thought trying to keep the scorn from his face, though all it does is make him seem like an asshole. Chaz wanted him to ask again, but Mike didn’t give a shit. The coffee was good, the chair was comfortable, and the silence didn’t hurt his head as much as talking did.
Welsh snapped his tongue against his teeth. “Mike, you know what I want to talk to you about. It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about for months now.”
“Refresh my memory,” said Mike, hiding a sour frown behind his coffee cup.
“Your…activities…are interfering with your job, Mike.”
“That’s funny,” laughed Mike. “I thought my job was interfering with my…activities.”
“Not funny,” snapped Chaz. “You’re the goddamn chief of police, Mike. The constant tardiness and missed shifts are one thing, but this…this…insistence on rubbing your drinking in everyone’s face is—”
“Did that fat bitch out front complain again? I’ll smooth it over. I’ll—”
“No, Mike, Sally didn’t say a thing.”
Mike looked around for a moment, nonplused. “Then I don’t see how I’m rubbing anything in anyone’s face.”
“You don’t remember, then?”
Oh shit, thought Mike. “Remember what?”
Chaz sighed. “Maybe it’s time we should talk about sending you to a program.”
Mike grimaced. “I don’t need a program, Chaz. I like to drink, but I don’t need to drink.”
Chaz sat in the chair next to him. He held up his hand and ticked off points on his fingers. “Number one, Mike, you’re blacking out. Which brings me to number two: you’re causing trouble during your black outs. Last night, after downing who knows how many highballs over to Moe’s, you decided the jukebox didn’t have any good music. Any of this bringing back your memory?”
Mike grimaced and shook his head, avoiding Welsh’s gaze.
“Since the jukebox didn’t have any good music, you thought you should throw it out. When Brent Spanser tried to stop you, you broke his nose for him. Joe McGilly tried to intervene, you pulled a gun on him. A gun, Mike.”
Mike put his head in his hands and blew out a long breath. “I don’t remember any of this.”
Welsh’s laugh was sour and humorless. “That’s kind of the point, Mike.”
“What…what happened next?”
“McGilly was two sheets to the wind as well. The two of you ended up leaving together. You bought a case of beer at the Red Apple, and while you were there, McGilly pissed all over the front window. You thought it was funny.”
Mike shook his head. “Yeah, last night was…”
“It’s not just last night, Mike. You know that.”
“I’ll rein it in.” He gave Chaz an earnest look. “I’ll get it under control.”
Chaz shook his head and sighed. “Mike, I wish I could—”
“You’ll see, Chaz. I’ll cut back. I’ll quit all together if that’s what you want.”
Chaz stared at him for a moment, eyes hard, but then his face softened. “Look, Mike, I understand how hard it is for you. Small town and all, what with you being—”
“That has nothing to do with it,” Mike snapped.
Chaz shook his head. “If you say so. Mike, no matter what the local idiots might think, I’ll back you if you ever decide to—”
Mike stood up, hands shaking. “Whatever you think you know about me, Welsh, it has no bearing on this, and I’ll thank you for keeping your damn mouth shut about your theories.”
Chaz closed his eyes and puffed out a breath. “Okay, Mike. Okay.”
“I’ll keep it together. I’ll cut back on the drinking.”
Chaz nodded, the picture of weariness.
“I mean it,” said Mike, and he did…at least for a few hours.
3
“Myths, in general, are stories people tell themselves to explain the unexplainable. They exist in every culture, every place human beings band together and form any kind of society. In almost every case, a culture’s myths grow out of the mythology of an earlier culture or cultures.” Drew tried to keep his eyes off the two men at the back of the room, but try as he might, his eyes kept straying up the amphitheater steps to the shadows at their top.
Cops. They were cops.
Had to be. They weren’t dressed like academics—not even those of the administrative bent. Their eyes crawled over him like beetles. He suppressed a shiver. “Someone tell me: what is the most common thing that needs an explanation in any culture?”
Hands shot up around the lecture hall, but Drew wasn’t looking at them. The two cops drew his gaze like moths to a flame. One of them—the big one—leaned toward the other and whispered something.
The class fell silent, and the spell broke. He looked around and called on a person at random. “Tell me,” he said.
&nb
sp; “The weather,” said the student.
“That’s a good one, but not quite right.” More hands shot into the air. “Let’s do away with the don’t-talk-until-I-call-on-you-thing. Just call out your answers.”
“How the earth was created.”
“Excellent guess, but not right,” Drew said.
“The seasons.”
“Doesn’t that fall under weather?” Drew asked.
“The cosmos.”
“Where we come from, who created us.”
“Look, all of these answers are good ones, but we’re missing the basic event in every human’s life that everyone wonders about, that everyone questions. You are forensics students, and I’m a forensic pathologist and profiler. Can you think of something related to what we’re here to study?”
“Death,” said a baritone voice from the top of the amphitheater.
“Yes! Death. Every culture in history has had death myths.”
“What’s a death myth?” someone asked.
Drew smiled. “Ever hear of the Grim Reaper? The guy on the pale horse? Heaven. Hell. Nirvana. Valhalla.” His eyes tracked up to the top of the stairs yet again. The two cops stepped out of the shadows. One of them put his hand on the badge looped through his belt.
The other one was a demon.
Drew fought to keep his face expressionless. He nodded. “But, that’s enough for today, class. For next time, read chapters three through seven. Be prepared to discuss the techniques used in the cases presented in the chapter sidebars.” The class groaned. “And…” Drew held up his hand for quiet. “And write your own myth to explain death.”
The lecture hall erupted with the noise of seventy students packing notebooks away. Drew gathered his own notes and shoved them into his shoulder tote. A few female students started to come down the steps for the usual question and flirt session. Drew held up his hand. “I’m afraid I have to take care of something, so let’s save your questions for office hours.”
He trotted up the stairs, smiling his best “I’m so innocent” smile. At the top of the stairs, the demon cop stared at him with an uncomfortable intensity.
“We appreciate you knocking off early,” said the human cop with a smile and outstretched hand. “Name’s Scott Lewis. I’m an investigator with the New York State Police. This is my partner, Lee LaBouche.”
“Meetcha,” said the demon in a baritone voice, never taking his almond-shaped eyes off Drew’s.
Ah, Mr. Baritone-voice. “Dr. Andrew Reid. Nice to meet both of you,” said Drew, making his “worried” face. “No offense, but I hope you’ve got the wrong guy.”
Lewis chuckled. “Nothing to worry about. We need your help with something is all.” He waved his hand in a vague motion. “If you’ll pardon the armchair quarterbacking, mythology seems like a strange subject for a criminal justice class.”
Drew grinned. “They were all awake, weren’t they? And it’s a forensics class.”
Lewis grinned back. The demon didn’t.
“Anyway, I’m a forensic pathologist. Death myths are dead center. I use it as a bridge into the occult.”
“That’s why we are here, your expertise with the occult,” said Lewis. “We are working on a case, and we need a profiler with occult…sensibilities.”
“A serial case? I haven’t seen anything in the media?”
“Yeah, and we’d like to keep them out of the loop if you take my meaning.”
“Oh, sure,” said Drew. “Should we go back to my office?”
LaBouche’s chartreuse alligator eyes narrowed.
“It’s more private.” Drew put on his most charming smile.
“Lead the way,” said Lewis.
Drew and Lewis walked side-by-side, while LaBouche seemed content to walk behind them. It gave Drew the creeps having a demon so close.
“…nice campus,” said Lewis.
“Sorry. I got distracted,” murmured Drew.
“It’s nothing. I just said it must be good to work at such a nice campus.”
“Oh sure. It’s beautiful here.” The skin between his shoulder blades crawled like it was creeping up his neck. He shrugged his shoulders, but the sensation persisted.
“Something wrong with your back?” rasped LaBouche.
He glanced back at the demon, suppressing the desire to wrinkle his nose at the stench the thing put off in waves. “What? Oh. No, it’s nothing. Just a twinge,” he said, keeping his voice light.
Drew unlocked the door to his office and motioned the two troopers inside. “Take a seat,” he said and walked around desk to his chair after closing and locking the door. “Tell me about your case.”
Lewis glanced at his partner, who stared at Drew as if they were the only people in the room. Lewis shook his head with mild annoyance and sighed. “We’ve got what might be a string of serial crimes.”
Drew steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “I note you didn’t say ‘serial murders.’” The demon was large, almost too large for the chair. Shaped like a large silverback gorilla—wide, wide shoulders, too-long arms, thick torso, massive neck, but bright yellow scales instead of dark fur—he seemed to fill Drew’s smallish office.
“No. They may be—”
“There are no bodies,” snapped LaBouche.
With arched eyebrows, Drew turned his gaze on the demon. “No bodies?” The thing’s mouth was V-shaped, and his shark-like teeth poked through his glistening, rubbery lips.
LaBouche grimaced and looked away.
Doesn’t like me looking at him, thought Drew. Interesting. He turned his attention back to Lewis. “If you’ll pardon the armchair quarterbacking, it doesn’t seem like your case calls for either a profiler or a forensic pathologist, so I’m at a bit of a loss.”
LaBouche scoffed, but Lewis smiled. “Yeah, and LaBouche, here, agrees with you. But there’s something…” Lewis shrugged.
“Something seems off?” Drew said. “Gut feeling?”
“There’s more than just that, or we wouldn’t be here bothering you. This big lug wouldn’t go for it if that’s all it was.”
With a sour glance at his partner, LaBouche leaned back and folded his arms across his wide, scaled chest. He tipped his domed head back and looked down his nose at Drew as if he wanted to get as far away from Drew as possible.
“Okay. Tell me about it,” said Drew with a shrug.
“Where to begin?” Lewis mused. “About two years ago, a guy named Walter Flag disappeared. It’s no great loss, he was a strange guy by all accounts. Lone-wolf. Gruff, stand-offish. You know the type.” Drew inclined his head, watching LaBouche watch him in his peripheral vision. “Few friends and no family, so no one reported him missing. We—”
“Then how did you come across him?”
“Good police work,” snapped the demon.
Lewis smiled, embarrassed. “We found links—”
“Maybe,” interjected LaBouche.
“—between the victims.” Lewis spared his partner an irritated glance. “On the surface, there’s nothing. No friends in common, no history. But…” He held up his index finger. “But, all twenty-two of them traveled to the same small town in the Southern Tier.”
They’ve only found twenty-two, Drew mused. Drew cocked his head. “Traveled to the same town? That seems a bit thin, Trooper Lewis.”
“Thank you,” growled LaBouche.
Lewis was all smiles and bumbling, aw-shucks charm. “Yeah. It is thin. But this town in the Southern Tier?”
Drew nodded.
“Population of eleven hundred and forty-seven.”
Drew’s eyebrows shot up, and he whistled. “What’s the probability that all twenty-two people who don’t know each other not only go missing, but are all related to someone in that still lives in town?”
“No idea,” said Lewis. “But it’s got to be small.”
“Town that small, everyone knows everyone else, right?” asked Drew.
LaBouche grunted. “Used to have a bigger popu
lation. Late ‘70s, early ‘80s.”
Drew arched his eyebrow.
“Twenty-two people who all move away from that town to the same town? Tell me they aren’t acquainted, at least,” said Lewis, shaking his head to negate LaBouche’s argument.
Drew was nodding, lips pursed. “Yeah, that seems even more unlikely.”
“You bet,” said Lewis. “So, if they know each other, if they come from the same town, then why can’t we find any link between the twenty-two of them? Why don’t they have friends in common? Why don’t they have history?”
“Because their histories are counterfeit.”
“That’s my theory. LaBouche doesn’t see it.”
Drew looked at the demon, met his hostile gaze, and shrugged. “Still, he could be right.”
LaBouche nodded.
“Yeah, and I’m not saying I’m one hundred percent sure he’s wrong. He’s got a gut for stuff like this that borders on the uncanny.” Lewis slapped the demon on the shoulder. LaBouche’s gaze never faltered, never left Drew’s face.
“But it’s weird,” said Drew.
LaBouche scoffed.
“I take it one of the other victims was more social? Better liked?”
“Yeah,” said Lewis. “A co-worker reported Randall Fiegler missing about three months ago. We were tracking his movements in the month prior to his disappearance and came across a bus ticket to Oneka Falls. It’s a little town south—”
“Yeah, I know it,” said Drew. He felt hot and cold at the same time, excited and filled with dread, but he didn’t know why. Oneka Falls was just a dot on the map to him, a gas stop on a long Saturday drive.
“Well, yeah, so you understand that there’s not much there. I was curious why Fiegler would take a bus. The man had money.”
“No other way to get to Oneka Falls without driving yourself?”
“That’s it,” said Lewis.
LaBouche scoffed. He held up a big chartreuse hand and ticked points off on his fingers. “Car service. Train to a nearby town. Plane to a nearby town. Chartered plane. Chartered helicopter.”
Drew chuckled. “Points to LaBouche.”
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