by Rik Hunik
"How did you do that?" He kept looking at the document, then at the stack of unrelated papers it had been in the middle of.
I shrugged. "It's my special magic."
"Absolutely amazing." Although I had located the document within a few minutes of arriving at his home he didn't quibble about paying for a full hour, putting some more easy money into my pocket. As I was getting ready to leave he said, "I hear you find people now."
I nodded, wondering if the paper had been some kind of test before hiring me for a bigger job. "I just started and I've found a couple of people already, but there's a few more I'm still looking for. Are you missing someone?"
"No, no. A friend of a friend has a daughter that disappeared last month. I was thinking I should pass your name on to him so he could get in touch with you."
I could always use some more wealthy clients. "Do so, by all means. Here, give him one of my cards." I dug one out and handed it to him. He thanked me a few more times before I could get out of there.
I no sooner got to the street and started walking than a cab pulled up alongside me but I wasn't in a hurry so I waved it off. The driver gave me a long look before he snapped the reins and pulled away, driving like he had somewhere else to be. As the cab turned at the next intersection I thought I saw a face part the curtains in the back window, but why would a cabby try to pick me up if he had a fare already?
I had only covered a couple of blocks when I saw two thugs with clubs jump out of an alley about ten yards ahead and attack the man just walking past. I broke into a run, pulling out my cudgel, intending to help him, but I had taken only a few steps before I realized there was nobody there.
I stopped.
I'd just had another of my prescient visions, one that was actually useful for a change. I hadn't recognized the man at first because I never see myself from behind, but the identical clothing and the blonde hair clued me in. I smiled to myself, got out a flash packet, crushed it in my left hand, and resumed walking, swinging wide around the mouth of the alley, holding my cudgel out of sight up my sleeve.
As I passed the corner of the building I raised my hand and uttered the power word that activated the flash, releasing a burst of cold, blue-white light that shone red through my hand, catching two men frozen in wide-eyed surprise, clubs half raised. Dazzled by the flash, they were still blinking rapidly when I gave them each a tap on the head and laid them both out cold.
That was almost too easy, I thought as I rolled the face-down one over with my foot so I could take a look at them. Thin, dirty, clad in threadbare clothes, they were typical of the lowlifes that sifted to the bottom in cities everywhere. Curiously, each of them had a twenty-talent note in his pocket, which I did not take because I'm not a thief, but I had to wonder why they chose to attack me. I don't look rich and I'm too big to be an easy mark.
I couldn't have these guys arrested because I was the one who had attacked them, I didn't want to help them, and I didn't want to stick around and talk to them, so I just left them laying there and went home. If somebody else chose to rob them while they were unconscious it wasn't my problem. At the very least they would think twice before picking on me again.
Chapter 23
I woke to banging at my back door, so loud I was afraid it would break again, and it had only been fixed yesterday. "Settle down," I shouted, "unless you want to pay for the damned door." The banging stopped but I still considered getting a heavy bar installed, something heavy enough to keep out anything short of a battering ram. I took my time pulling on my pants, getting to the door and opening it. A pair of cops stood there but I was relieved to see that their swords were not drawn.
"What's going on here? Am I under arrest?"
"That depends," said the cop in front, the shorter one.
"On what?"
"On how you answer my question."
"So start asking."
"We're here to take you in so my only question is, are you going to cooperate or do we have to beat you into submission?"
"That sounds like two questions."
"It sounds like you're taking the second choice."
"Let me think about it while I get dressed." I turned my back on them, feeling the intensity of their stares on me while I finished dressing, but they didn't move from the doorway until I was ready to go. I made sure I locked the door as I left.
They escorted me through wet, foggy streets to the police station, where we were intercepted and directed to the desk of Inspector Marco. I sat without being invited, leaned back with my hands behind my head, slid my butt forward, crossed my ankles,and said, "Why can't you just leave me a message? I do know how to read."
Marco's composure never shifted as he shuffled through a few papers to find the one he wanted. "Of course I would have just sent you a message, but Sergeant Thaddeus listed you as a possible suspect in last night's murder, provided your address and suggested you be brought in for questioning. I didn't know until just a few minutes ago and you were already on your way here, but I managed to get you sent directly to me rather than being stuck in an interrogation room."
"Thaddeus again." The sergeant was becoming a real pain in my nether regions. What had I done to him? What could I do to him? I sighed, then sat up straight.
"Yes, Thaddeus again." A quick glance to left and right. "I admit the man can be a real pain, so just to bug him I'd like to enlist you as a police auxiliary."
"I don't want to be a cop."
"I know, I know, but you won't be. You'll be a special consultant. We'd be doing what you and I are doing right now, except you would be getting paid for it."
His level gaze stayed fixed on me while I tried to find an argument against the proposal. Finally I shrugged and said, "Okay."
"I'll get the paperwork started. You have a registered business so there should be no problem."
"So which murder were you talking about, and why was I implicated?"
"A woman was found in an alley about halfway between here and Old Wall Street. The victim hasn't yet been identified because she was found with no I.D., no personal effects, no clothing, and no skin left on her body."
"Oh, another one of those." Although I still hadn't eaten breakfast I wasn't hungry anymore, and I'm afraid my face didn't remain as impassive as Marco's. I was also glad I hadn't been the one to find the corpse this time. "I hope you don't think I had anything to do with it, Inspector." I had been asleep in bed, alone, so I didn't have an alibi.
Marco's smile was thin behind his beard. "Of course not. It's already been established that we're looking for a slim man with dark hair, and you fit neither of those criteria."
I leaned forward in my chair. "That description fits Belita's killer, and yesterday her mother hired me to find him."
His eyes bored into me. "Just find him?"
I held his gaze and nodded. "I don't intend to be a hero for what she's paying me, so I'll look for him and if I find him I'll leave the rest to the police. I've never heard of anybody being killed like that before, so it must be him that killed the woman last night too."
"That's what we think too." Marco's face went all tight. "But they're not the first. There have been half a dozen cases exactly like them in the past year, the first in Rome and the rest scattered over the Italian Peninsula."
"Only half a dozen? We've had two in a matter of days."
"That's just the ones we know about, which could be only a quarter or a tenth of the total for all we know, especially if any of the other bodies were hidden as well as Belita's. This seriously twisted serial killer is in my city now and I want to catch him, so right after you found the first body I sent to Rome for a specialist who's been following the case since the beginning. He should be here any day now."
"A specialist, huh? What good will that do? He obviously hasn't caught this killer yet."
Marco frowned at me. "No, but he knows more about this killer than anybody else, so he has a better chance of catching him than anybody else, and this time the trai
l is fresh."
I conceded the point with a casual wave. "So do you have any leads on the killer?" I hadn't bothered to ask before this because my involvement had ended when I found Belita, but her mother had made it my business when she hired me again.
Marco shook his head sadly. "All we have is a good description. The bartender and lots of other people remembered seeing him on the night Belita was killed, and a few claim they saw him the night before. He showed up at a few nightclubs, including the Coconut Club, but nobody knows where he came from, where he went, or where he is now." He rubbed his eyes, blinked a few times and leveled his gaze at me. "I understand you have a magic talent for finding people."
"Well, most of my life I've been good at finding things, but I've only recently begun trying to find people, and I'm nowhere near a hundred percent. I've had a few successes but it hasn't been as easy as I'd hoped, and in a case like this I don't have anything to focus on."
"Hmmmm. There was evidence of a squatter living in the Minotaur's Mansion, just one man, using only one room. Apparently everyone else is afraid of the ghosts and he lit out before the police got near the place."
"The bartender told me the man who left the club with Belita wore clothes that looked brand new. That doesn't sound like your typical squatter."
"Who says our squatter is typical?"
I shrugged.
"He might not be our man, but he could have seen something, and we still mean to find him. Maybe you can help us."
I nodded while I turned things over in my head. "I could poke around in the mansion, maybe take another look in the maze, see if I can pick up anything about his location. Do you mind?"
Marco shook his head. "Feel free. All the police teams are done with the crime scene. The rain washed most of the evidence away so all they found were a couple of long black hairs that could only belong to the victim, and some blond hairs that were identified as yours. If you think you can turn up anything useful, please, go ahead. Just be careful."
He was asking for my help but I don't think he expected anything from me. I guess he didn't expect anything from anybody. I didn't expect to find anything either, but I had to start somewhere.
My stomach growled loudly as I stood up.
Marco said, "You better go home and eat some breakfast."
"One more thing before I go. I'd like to check the corpse to see if it's one of the girls I've been hired to look for."
"Good idea. We can use help identifying her. I'll write you a note."
The note got me into the morgue, where I was faced with the distasteful task of touching the corpse. I discovered that she was not one of my girls so I wasn't much help. I barely recovered my appetite by the time I got home. On the bright side, I didn't have to tell one of my clients that her daughter was dead.
# # #
I had barely finished breakfast when Silvina, my new landlady, walked into my office. My heart jumped because for a split second I thought she was Zena, but Silvina has all these extra little moves when she walks, whereas Zena is smoother, more natural. Silvina looks like my type but something about her, despite her flirtations, disturbed me. Before I could get up she crossed the room and planted her shapely posterior on my desk, twisting around to look at me, the position accented her curves so it took my eyes a few seconds to travel to her face.
"Can I help you?"
She shrugged, which made interesting things happen at eye level. "I heard the police took you away again this morning and I came to see if any more doors had been broken down."
I laughed and she laughed with me to show she hadn't been serious. "Not this time. We managed to work it out without resorting to violence."
"So why did they want to talk to you? If it's not an official secret."
I saw no reason not to tell her. Everything I knew would soon be reported in the news bulletins anyhow. "An unidentified woman was murdered last night, in the same way as another woman less than a week ago, the woman whose body I found. Sergeant Thaddeus has a bone to pick with me so he tried to implicate me again, but all he managed to do this time was disturb my sleep and make me late for breakfast. And I didn't even mind because I've been hired to find the killer and this murder is my best lead yet."
"You think it was the same person?"
"Yes, and so do the police. The way the women were killed is so unique it isn't likely there can be two men doing the same thing. Besides, he's killed before, in other parts of the Republic."
She brought her hand up to cover her mouth. "That's horrible. Do they know who did it?"
I shook my head. "They're looking for a thin man with dark hair who was seen with the first victim on the night of her murder, but that's all they know about him. He came out of nowhere and vanished. Now he's killed again and nobody knows who he is or where he went."
"I hope they catch the sick bastard." She got off my desk and turned to face me, then shook her hips and shimmied her dress down into place. "I have to go now."
With an effort I looked up to her face.
"You should come on down and take a look at my store sometime soon. You might see something you like."
Her smile as she turned and sashayed to the door planted a few ideas in my head and I found myself smiling back. "Yes, I might at that." She had a knife store but, while I wasn't all that interested in knives, I thought a visit could prove interesting.
# # #
While I was writing up my report another woman showed up in my office. Her daughter had been missing for eight days now, she had given up on the police and she wanted me to help, but she didn't have much money. I took all the money she offered and went to her apartment, where I obtained a bent silver ring that the daughter had worn until recently, but I got no impression. I asked around her neighborhood, where she worked and where she was last seen, but after a couple of hours I still had nothing.
I thought about taking a trip out to the Minotaur's Mansion, but when I stopped in at my office for a while another woman came in complaining about a missing daughter, which gave me four missing young women to find. I would have been surprised if she had paid me more than twenty talents.
I spent the rest of the afternoon poking around, asking questions of friends, neighbors and acquaintances. Two of the women had been gone for more than a week, all had last been seen in Old City, within five or six blocks of the waterfront, which might or might not be a pattern. I bought a decent map of the city and marked their last known whereabouts, then stared at the map but it didn't add up to anything.
I called it a day and went for a shave and a bath. I could check the Minotaur's Mansion tomorrow.
Chapter 24
I slept in because I felt like it, and I thought I deserved it. I'd already put in all the time my clients had paid me for, without coming up with a single lead, and worrying about why my talent wasn't helping me find any of those women kept me awake late last night. Sleeping in didn't help, but at least I felt rested.
After breakfast I brought out the personal items from the four missing women and arranged them on my desk. I handled all of them, one at a time, but no matter how hard I concentrated I got no impression from any of them. I contemplated dusting off my stronger spells and going into a deep trance over them but I hadn't been paid enough to purchase all the ingredients, and I had a feeling it wouldn't help anyway. I put the objects back in the desk drawer.
Just as I closed the drawer my office door opened, admitting a flood of morning sunlight that swept in a tall, blonde woman with blue eyes and a wide smile. I smiled back, walking toward her without noticing I had risen to my feet. "Tiona." That's all I could say to this woman from my past, a woman who had attended many of the same classes as me at R.I.M..
She had matured, becoming a bit harder, but no less pretty. She wore a light brown tunic with short sleeves carrying the red band of a police officer, but I was looking right through that, remembering how she felt then, the silky smoothness of her tanned skin under my fingers, the soft touch of her hand
s on my chest. I smiled my biggest smile in months.
"Berk, it's been a long time." Her smooth voice was sweet music to my ears.
I nodded, my throat too dry to swallow. Our torrid love affair ended when we separated after school. We exchanged some letters over the years and knew about each other's careers, but we had been out of touch for several months and I had not actually seen her at all since I joined the army.
Her sparkling blue eyes, locked on mine, sparked old feelings, old flames, and the room got warmer. I felt like I had to sit down but we simultaneously moved into each others arms, into a tight, full-body hug.
We relaxed, and I caught my breath, but we didn't release each other. She fit in my arms like she belonged there, a familiar feeling too long absent from my life.
Before I knew what was happening her lips were on mine and once we tasted each other there was no turning back. It was like teen lust all over again, pawing each other like animals, and before I knew it she was trying to tug my shirt off. I pulled my mouth away from hers and said, "Wait."
"What's wrong," she asked, her voice muffled against my neck.
I pushed the door until it latched, then shot the bolt. "Nothing now."
"Good." She pushed at me and I backed up, then spun her around and trapped her against the desk. "One more thing," she said, reaching to her throat and pulling out a small stone pendant hanging from a leather thong around her neck. When she invoked it I recognized it as an anti-pregnancy charm.
I lifted her skirt and she undid my pants. Anybody looking through the windows would get an eyeful but, immersed in each other's bodies after years apart, we cared only about our mutual gratification. Her familiar body was harder, not as young and sweet as it had been, but still delicious and even more exciting. And she still knew how to make my body respond.