by Rik Hunik
Afterwards, as I was bending over to pick up my clothes, Tiona started giggling. I turned around to see what she found so funny and saw her pointing a finger at me. "I didn't know you had a tattoo."
"Neither did I. What are you talking about?"
"It's right there on your butt cheek. Turn around." I did and she touched a spot high up on my left cheek, just a few inches from center. I twisted, stretching my neck, but still couldn't see it. When I reached back with my hand I encountered the itchy spot that had been bothering me the last few days, that I thought was some kind of insect bite. "You need a mirror," Tiona said when she managed to stop laughing at my contortions.
Still carrying my clothes I went to my washroom, unhooked the small mirror from the wall over the basin and held it behind myself, adjusting the angle until I saw a line drawing, about an inch and a half long, of a coiled snake rearing up its head. I wasn't fond of snakes, so if I ever got a tattoo I wouldn't choose a snake, and I most definitely wouldn't put it there.
"It's cute," Tiona said, coming up behind me and covering the tattoo with her hand, "but why did you put it there?"
"I didn't. I didn't even know it was there until you told me just now."
She moved her hand, stretching my skin, and bent down to take a close look. "It looks fresh, like it's barely healed." She straightened. "How drunk do you have to be to not know you're getting a tattoo?"
I chuckled and started dressing. "It wasn't like that. During a recent investigation somebody slipped me some drugged wine and it affected my memory. I managed to get the antidote but I guess I didn't recover every memory." Now that I knew it was there the tattoo itched constantly.
"You'll have to tell me about it, but not now. Believe it or not, I came on business."
"Oh, did you lose something?"
"No, but we are looking for something."
"We?"
"Me and Acastus."
"Hey, I remember Acastus from school. He's a Greek guy that wasn't a professor but he gave a series of guest lectures that everybody liked. I never spoke to him personally but he sounded like a smart man."
"That he is. He's dedicated to expanding the new field of magic applied to criminal investigation. His latest development is a spell to match any hair to the owner. Everybody loses hairs all the time without noticing. If a hair is found at a crime scene it can be linked to a specific person, thereby proving that person was at the crime scene. Eventually he wants to refine it so any Magician can locate a person from a single hair."
"Sometimes I can find a person with just a hair to work with."
"That's you. This is something that any magician can do, and it will stand up in court. Acastus taught the spell to several wizards and they've been traveling across the Republic teaching it to local police magicians. It will change the way police work."
"I don't see how it will change much."
She smiled and shook her head. "Then you still have a lot to learn."
"Yeah, I sure do. So what brings him personally to Agrippina?"
"He's a Master acting as a special investigator for the Federal branch of the police."
"Oh, he must be the specialist Inspector Marco mentioned."
"Over the course of the past year Acastus has been tracking a serial killer who left skinless corpses scattered across the Italian peninsula, corpses exactly like the one you found, only buried a lot longer."
"Didn't he use his hair linkage spell to track the killer?"
"He tried, but the spell requires a sample from the suspect, and the only hairs that were found belonged to the victims. The new corpse yesterday is our hottest lead yet. That's why Acastus wants to talk to you."
"I'll be glad to help as much as I can but there's not a lot to go on, unless the police have turned up something new since last night."
"No, they haven't, but Acastus has some background on the previous kills."
"Right. That might suggest a new direction." I didn't have much hope but there's always a chance. I made sure my clothing was all in place, then said, "Let's go and hear what he has to say."
Chapter 25
Tiona was leading me into the the back of the Police station when Marco intercepted us.
"Berk, I saw you come in and I just wanted to tell you I got that paperwork ready. It'll be waiting for you at the front when you're done." He didn't wait for a reply.
"What paperwork is that?" Tiona stood waiting for a reply.
"The paperwork that makes me a special consultant to the police, so I will be paid for talking to Acastus."
Her face softened and she punched my upper arm. "Hah. You're half way to being a cop already."
I winced because she had a point. "But I'm still my own boss."
At a desk that had been empty the last time I was through here sat a man with curly black hair on his head, his face and his arms. An arc of clutter spread from where he leaned on his desk with his head in one hand, busy reading a report, but he set it aside when we showed up.
"You must be Berk," he said as he stood up and shook my hand. He was several inches shorter than me but his arms were long and his grip was still firm and dry, though his neatly trimmed beard showed a lot more gray than I remembered. He gave me a friendly slap on the shoulder. "Have a seat."
I settled into a chair and stretched out my legs.
"Tiona says you're a strong magician and you were one slot away from being elevated to wizard. That's a tough break."
"It wasn't so hard for me to take. I'm glad Tiona made it because I know what I'm like, so I'm pretty sure you got the better wizard."
His smile spread far enough to display a gold filling in a molar. "You might be right about that. She's not quite as strong as some Wizards, but she makes up for it with intelligence, dedication and enthusiasm. She's earned a lot of points toward her second elevation and I'm certainly going to recommend her."
"She deserves it." I glanced at Tiona, saw her trying to pretend her face wasn't red.
"I'm glad you feel that way. So why didn't you go back to R.I.M.? Most unelevated magicians who go back for another year make the cut, so I'm sure you could have done it. I think you still can."
I shook my head. "I spent my inheritance going as far as I did, and by then I wasn't sure I wanted to go on."
Acastus's eyebrows went up, and then down as he studied me. "When I wasn't elevated my first time I was devastated, but becoming a wizard meant so much to me I couldn't give it up. The next year I went back with a vengeance and became the first pick."
"And look at you now. Congratulations." I sat up straight. "But I'm doing pretty good for myself. It's not like I'm selling love charms on the street, or livestock fertility spells to farmers."
"Yes, I've heard about some of your exploits, and I talked to Inspector Marco about the Belita case. It's because of your involvement in her case that I want to talk to you. Did Tiona tell you about the previous killings of a similar nature?"
"She mentioned them, and so did Marco, but we didn't discuss them in any detail."
He sat back in his chair and his voice assumed a lecturing tone. "The first one we know of occurred about a year ago in Rome and it caused quite a stir, but we got no leads. The second killing, also in Rome, occurred a month later, on the night of the new moon. Again the investigation came to a dead end so the Magic Branch was called in and that's when I became involved. Unfortunately I had no more success than anybody else.
"Over the course of the next year four more flayed corpses turned up in various cites on the Italian peninsula, the method of killing so distinctive that nobody had any doubt they were done by the same person. We did, in fact, determine that the same knife was used, but all we could find out about the person was a vague description of a thin man of medium height with dark hair, who nobody seemed to know.
"I was in Venice investigating the latest, which had been buried for weeks and wasn't much help, when I got the message about Belita. I thought I would have better luck following a fresh
trail so I immediately travelled here. It's our best break in months and it's thanks to you."
"I'm glad I could help," I said, feeling myself flush. I added up in my head. "So our mystery man has killed seven women now."
"That's all we know about so far, but I'm pretty sure there are more that were never found. A lot more. Your finding Belita's corpse the day after the murder was a stroke of luck. I only wish I'd been able to get here faster."
"Faster? It's been less than a week and you're here already. I'd say that's plenty fast."
He smiled and shook his head. "Apparently I wasn't fast enough."
I thought about the woman who was found yesterday and nodded.
"The local police didn't connect Belita's killing to the others until later that day, and there was a further delay getting ahold of a Master who could send the message to Rome. I would have been here sooner if I had been in Rome, or even if they had relayed the message to me the day it came in, but apparently they didn't think it was as urgent as I did."
"I'm still impressed. But what do you want from me? Doesn't the government have strong enough magic to solve any case?"
Acastus looked at me like I was the slow student in class. "Sure they do. Unfortunately there are only a few Grandmasters capable of such magic and there are thousands of cases every year throughout the Republic. They handle as many cases as they can, but they only look at those with the highest priority. The rest get handed down to Masters like me."
"Who decides which cases have the highest priority?"
He just looked at me with a bland, unchanging expression on his face.
After several seconds I laughed and shook my head. "Never mind. That's why I don't work for the government."
"Does that mean you're not going to help?"
"On the contrary. I'm already sort of on the case."
"Sort of?"
"Well, Belita's mother wants me to find her daughter's killer. We did some bartering but she hasn't exactly given me a retainer yet, and Inspector Marco has done up the paperwork to hire me as a special consultant." I grinned at him. "I am a nice guy but I do like to be paid for my work."
Acastus nodded. "Excellent. That saves us some time. But doesn't this mean you'll be working for the government?"
I caught the twinkle in his eye but I gave him a serious answer. "Not exactly. Like I told Tiona, I'm still my own boss. If I don't like what you expect me to do I can just turn down the contract and walk away."
"I hope you don't decide to do that, because I think you can really help us." He hitched himself forward in his chair and put his forearms on his desk. "The method of killing in these cases is a definite signature, unlike anything else anybody I know has ever encountered. I did, however, read about a string of similar murders in Rome fifty years ago, with four murders spread out over a few months, then three in a matter of days, but when the killer was caught his mind was gone and nothing was learned about his motivation."
"So how does that help us now?"
Tiona and Acastus exchanged a glance. He said, "Close examination determined that the same knife was probably used in both of these local cases. In all likelihood it's the very knife that was used in all the cases on the trail of flayed corpses across the Republic from Rome to here."
Tiona said, "If the same knife was used every time, it's reasonable to assume that all the murders were committed by the same person."
"But this last kill is different," I said. "First of all, it came much sooner after the previous kill, and the corpse wasn't concealed with the same care and cunning as Belita's. It doesn't show the same foresight and planning."
Acastus nodded. "That's my point exactly. The killer is no longer following his own pattern, which means he's losing his mind, breaking down. While that might make him easier to capture it also means he could kill again at any time." He leaned back in his chair and sighed.
"The local police don't have any idea where the killer disappeared to. After the first murder they found evidence of a squatter in the Minotaur's Mansion, but nothing to link him to the murders. Still, I think you two should go back there to check it out and collect some samples. A Magician and a Wizard might find something the mundane police missed."
Chapter 26
Despite a few lingering misgivings I did sign Marco's papers on my way out. Since Lucina hadn't paid me enough for even half a day I figured I might as well be on the police budget while I checked out the Minotaur's Mansion. My first job as a special consultant. Or was that "Special Consultant"?
Tiona carried a sword, which she assured me she could use, and a police night stick for less lethal defense. I made sure I was armed with my cudgel, my brass knocker, and my spell packets for smoke and flash.
We weren't in any particular hurry so I led her around by the road, rather than clambering up the overgrown slope. We talked about our days together as students, how happy we had been together, and how things had changed when we went our separate ways. "I still love you," she said. "Until we met in your office this morning I'd just forgotten how much."
I couldn't deny that I still had strong feelings for her, but I didn't know if I had a place for her in my life, so I just nodded, then walked in silence for a while.
"I missed you but I have no regrets about the choice I made." She reached out and took my hand. "I'll miss you again when I have to leave Agrippina, but I will leave."
And that was the reason I couldn't tell her how much I loved her. I squeezed her hand. "I understand. How long are you going to stay?" I was really asking how much time we had together.
She shrugged. "Depends how long it takes to get this guy." She sounded like she thought for sure we would, but however much I wanted to catch him, I lacked her certainty. "We should be staying at least a week, maybe two, because while we're here Acastus wants to track down a couple of other serial killers that are operating in Agrippina, and some of his new spells might shed light on other unsolved cases."
As we approached the gate the wind shifted, blowing the rank odor of the slaughterhouse next door into our faces. Even though I had warned Tiona, a smell like that has to be experienced and she turned her head away in disgust, but of course that didn't help.
The gate now hung open wide, sagging on its hinges. "The house looks creepy," she said, folding her arms and hugging herself. Sunlight poured down from a cheerful sky spotted with fluffy white clouds, but the sunlight didn't seem as bright near the mansion and the dense vegetation was an off color of green, too yellow to be healthy. The weathered walls seemed to be hiding secrets while the glassless windows dared us to come in and find them. "You're right, and if you find it easy to believe it's haunted now, you should try it at night in the rain."
"No thanks." She stepped through the gate but stopped a few paces inside. "Should we look in the labyrinth or the mansion first?"
"The night I found Belita I felt like I was being watched from the mansion, but I didn't go in because I didn't have a good reason to. No sense looking for trouble, you know."
"You got that right. Trouble finds us easily enough on her own. Let's check it out now."
There were no doors anymore and I could see right through the house to the wall of the maze in the back yard. We walked through the doorless entryway and down a dim passage to the main room in the center. A wider passage directly opposite us led out to the back yard, a staircase in the back corner led up to the second floor, and there were smaller rooms on every side. The earlier police search had left tracks in the dust on the floor, radiating from the door to every room, avoiding the holes in the floor, but it looked to me like there were more tracks than those left by the police.
The floor was a black and white stone mosaic, somewhat obscured by the dust and dirt, but I could make out enough to see that it was a scaled reproduction of the labyrinth in the back yard, embellished with mythological beasts and mystical symbols. I pointed it out to Tiona.
"So what does that mean?"
I turned my hands palms up in
an exaggerated shrug.
We poked around in the dust and decay and windblown debris on the ground floor without finding anything you wouldn't expect to find in a deserted house, but while we were looking in the fourth room Tiona whispered, "There's somebody in here."
"Up or down?" I whispered back. I hadn't seen or heard anything to indicate we weren't alone in the building but I took her word for it. She was sensitive to the auras of people up to a hundred feet away, a talent that was only useful when there weren't a lot of people around to interfere with each other. I had learned spells that enabled me to do it too, but for me the preparation usually wasn't worth the payoff.
Tiona pointed down. "How do we get into the basement?"
This was my first time in here too, and I didn't even know if the place had a basement. "Pick a hole." I edged up to a two foot wide hole and peered down. Three feet below me was another floor, covered with undisturbed dust. "Stay up here in case he comes up somewhere else and tries to get away."
She nodded and I dropped into the hole, landing in a crouch. The light was dim but there were enough holes in the floor that I could see all the way across the space. Stacks of tiles at intervals held up the floor and blocked most of my view. Hot air was supposed to flow through this crawl space from the furnace, which would be outside at the back.
I shuffled awkwardly to see down the next aisle, and then the next one. I caught a brief look at a silhouette of somebody about thirty feet away disappearing through an opening that led to the back yard and I knew I would never catch him by crawling down here. Overhead I heard the sound of Tiona's footsteps as she ran out the back to intercept him.
I climbed back up through the hole and hurried after Tiona but by the time I got halfway I met her coming back. She had a rather vacant look in her eyes, like she was seeing more than just what was in front of her. "He's gone," she said.
"Do you think he was our killer?"