Murder and Mayhem in Muskego Page 3

  “Ummm…”

  “It’s like we discussed, Joel. Stick with the basics, what’s most likely. That will help.”

  He imagined he could hear her impatience and felt chastened. “Okay, hang on a sec.” He covered the phone. “You don’t know Diana, do you?

  “Who?”

  “My cousin, the woman who owns this apartment? And the bead store downstairs?”

  “No.” That seemed to worry her.

  Joel returned to the phone, feeling vindicated. “Never heard of Diana.”

  “Tell me again what the woman was doing.”

  He turned away, as if to conceal his words from the woman herself and described the scene. “It was, I don’t know,” he finished. “Like something from the History Channel? Ancient looking?”

  He felt stupid as soon as he said it and when his therapist didn’t say anything, he was sure her concern about him had cranked up a couple of notches. He could hear a keyboard clattering in the background and wondered if she was taking notes. On him. “Can I bring her to see you?”

  “Do you think she’ll come with you?”

  “Sure. She seems—” He turned around to check on the girl—woman, he corrected himself automatically.

  She was gone. The door leading to the back alley stairs was hanging open.

  He went over and looked down into the alley. No sign of her.

  “Hey, it looks like she took off.” His relief to be rid of this problem was tinged with regret. He couldn’t have said why.

  Both relief and regret were short-lived.

  “Find her, if you can,” Dr. Steuben said, surprising him. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  My sister Claudia insisted on driving, which was fine. She drives at least as fast as I do, if not as cautiously. She’s a vampire—with all the speed, agility and coordination that implies—and if she gets pulled over, she can always charm the cop.

  I can’t charm cops. They shouldn’t be allergic to me, but they are. There’s a serious mistrust of ex-cops who go to the dark side. Not ‘dark side’ because I’m a werewolf—most of the guys I know would think that was pretty cool, once they got done pissing themselves. Even cooler if they learned I’m Fangborn, born to a family of supernatural beings dedicated to the protection of humanity and the eradication of evil. No, I went to the dark side when I retired from the force and became a PI. That’s when the love got lost.

  So I let Claudia drive and tried not to flinch as she changed lanes, slipping into a nearly nonexistent space between cars.

  “My patient, Joel Weeks,” she said, “is working on issues with grief, depression and separation anxiety. No real breakthrough, no catharsis, yet—there’s a lot of denial there—but it’s nothing I can’t fix with talk therapy and a little vampire boost. It’s the woman he found in his apartment I’m interested in.”

  “Why? You said he’d never met her before.”

  “Her posture, the oil, the nudity—it’s a hunch, Gerry, that’s all.”

  Claudia’s hunches are pretty good—honed by her training as a shrink and vampire intuition—and while I didn’t say anything, I agreed with her. There was something about this whole situation that got my spidey sense tingling, too.

  “When we get there,” she said, “I’ll ask him what he saw and distract him while you track the girl. We need to find her.”

  We arrived at the shop and I didn’t need to hear Claudia’s gasp to tell me plans had changed.

  Outside the construction site for the local museum’s new wing, a hapless-looking guy—just a citizen, weedy, remarkably unimpressive—was frozen in his tracks, gawking at another man trying to drag a young woman away. The late winter snow had started again, muffling the sounds outside. The jerk dragging the girl outweighed her by at least seventy pounds and looked like he enjoyed his job. When she actually managed to wriggle out of one of his hands, he cocked his head. Then he stepped in, yanked her by the other hand and gave her a slap so hard it knocked her head into the concrete foundation.

  “Gerry!” Claudia warned.

  I stopped growling, unfastened my seat belt, then Changed halfway as Claudia stomped the accelerator. The rush came over me as it always does, adrenaline gearing me up for battle. A glance in the rear view showed we were alone. It also revealed my inhuman face: muzzle filled with teeth; furry, upright ears; a wolf’s predator eyes. Red Sox cap.

  “I’ll get Joel,” she said, as I unlocked my door. “You get the bad guy.”

  “Fastball special, coming up.” I’ve had a lot of practice, talking around fangs.

  My sister accelerated, then pulled the handbrake, sliding in alongside the sidewalk and blocking the struggling couple from Joel’s view with the BMW. I threw myself from the still-moving car, tucked and rolled. Because my reflexes are about a hundred times better than a human’s, I landed right at the jerk’s feet before he realized it.

  I stood up, driving my fist into his chin with all my 200 pounds behind it. When his head bashed into the same wall he’d just bounced the girl against, I thought it had a certain kind of poetry.

  Something freaky happened: an overwhelming urge to Change completely to wolfself hit me. It was all concentrated at the base of my skull though, like I’d never felt before, Pop Rocks and Alka-Seltzer buzzing my brain. I was losing control like I hadn’t since I was a kid, damn near drunk on the glory of fangs, fur and the pursuit of evil.

  Then, a loud, metallic crack, high overhead. I grabbed the girl and threw us both to one side.

  A tangle of rebar crashed down from the construction site to the sidewalk. If I hadn’t moved, the girl would have been dead for sure and I’d have looked like roadkill for a week, at the very least. The jerk was extremely dead, a mess of metal rods and hamburger.

  “Hey, you guys?” Claudia spoke calmly, as if she only wanted to get out of the wet snow. “Let’s get out of here. Joel, could you get us some coffee at your place?”

  I felt the tug of her vampiric suggestion and wondered why my sister was pushing so hard. Maybe she was afraid the girl was going to run again, but she still seemed pretty dazed, maybe concussed. Maybe she was worried Joel would freak out at what he’d just seen, but he only nodded.

  We followed him a few doors down to one of those old brick warehouses converted to apartments and shops. As we entered, something told me to look back down the block.

  If I’d been a Normal, I might have told myself it was a trick of the light. I knew better. The rebar on the sidewalk had been twisted into the shapes of perfectly formed snowflakes, as delicate as the ones falling around us.

  Joel found himself making coffee in the apartment over his cousin’s shop. He felt calmer now, probably because Dr. Steuben and her slab of a brother seemed to be taking charge. Fine with him; he’d never been a leader. He was still fuzzy about what had happened on the street.

  Dr. Steuben was talking softly with the woman, when he emerged from the tiny kitchen. They looked up.

  “Hey.” He set down the coffee, glanced nervously at Dr. Steuben. He always felt so…useless…around her. “Um…any luck?”

  “Nope.” Dr. Steuben smiled and his anxiety vanished. “She seems to have suffered some kind of massive trauma. The first thing she remembers is asking you where she was.”

  The woman shrugged. “Apparently, I put on quite a show when I’ve suffered a trauma.” She was trying for casual, but fell a mile short, her laugh nervous. She was shaking now.

  Joel wasn’t sure what to say. Fortunately, Gerry looked up from the smart phone he’d been studying. “There’s been an unusual number of missing persons cases lately. I’ve been keeping an eye on them, and so far, everyone has either stayed missing, or…”

  “Or?” the woman said.

  Gerry hesitated. “Was found deceased.”

  Joel stirred his coffee, frowning. “You mean the ones who were macheted to death? It’s been all over the papers. Some kind of gang war, I thought.”

  Gerry shook his head. “Maybe. I doubt it.”

  Joel felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up and swallowed hard.

  “Any luck on a name for our friend here?” Dr. Steuben said.

  Gerry tapped the keys on his phone. “I think so: Alexa Thompson, white, age twenty-seven, brown and brown. Sounds about right. Reported missing three days ago when she didn’t show up to her IT job at the college.”

  The girl—Alexa—swept her arm out and knocked her coffee cup to the floor. She took a deep breath, then began to cry.

  Joel booked it for the kitchen to find a towel; he had no problem leaving this kind of emotion to a trained professional. When he returned, Alexa was calmer, but Dr. Steuben was downright agitated.

  “Gerry, it doesn’t work like that,” she was saying to her brother. “She’s had a blackout—without any symptoms of post-traumatic confusional state—but with no sign of injury. Exhibiting both anterograde and retrograde amnesia, at the same time she now recognizes her name? It’s not medically…usual.”

  “If she’s telling the truth,” Gerry said.

  “Of course I’m telling the truth!” Alexa said, snuffling. “Who would make this up?”

  “She’s telling the truth.” Dr. Steuben gave her brother a glance. “But this is just not what happens with a concussion or even the stress of having been mugged.”

  “I don’t think I was mugged,” Alexa said. “I don’t have a bag, but I don’t have my coat either.” Her face brightened. “Something must have happened inside.”

  “Something you can’t recall.”

  Dr. Steuben ran down a list of questions, with no luck: Alexa didn’t drink to excess, never touched drugs, no history of mental or physical illness.

  Agreeing to meet back at the apartment in an hour, the Steubens left to che
ck Alexa’s apartment for clues. Joel reluctantly agreed to keep Alexa until the Steubens returned; the incident with the guy on the sidewalk had left everyone shaken. Locking the door behind them, Joel couldn’t stop thinking about what it must be like to be cut with a machete.

  “I notice you didn’t encourage them to call the cops,” I said. “I also notice they’re not even questioning our involvement.”

  Claudia pulled on her latex gloves as we returned to the site of the attack. She’d Changed halfway, the better to examine the corpse. We both hoped the street would stay empty; a bipedal, female herpet-American with fangs and purplish scales was no tourist attraction, even in Salem. “I didn’t want the cops near them,” Claudia said. “And yes, I gave them a little blast of suggestibility pheromone. This is our brand of weird, Gerry.”

  “Because it’s magic?” I stared at the iron snowflakes, ranging in size from three to five feet tall. The detail in them was astonishing, more than man-made. Definitely not natural, definitely not an accident.

  “No way. If Normal humans knew about the Fangborn, they’d think we’re magic. We’re not. Science just hasn’t caught up with us yet. And Alexa didn’t use magic, either.”

  I looked at the rebar, twisted into impossibly delicate, graceful shapes. “Science had better catch up quick. This is fucking weird. Almost, you know,” I made booga-booga hands, “magical.”

  Claudia hissed faintly, as she searched the body. “Gerry, it’s only our ultra-conservative cousins who live in caves and cast bones who believe in magic. There ain’t no such thing.”

  I crossed my arms. “And yet, a werewolf and a vampire stare at an instant modern art installation in the middle of the sidewalk. What’s the deal?” I nodded to the wallet and other pocket detritus Claudia had collected from the corpse. It had been a difficult job; the body had been impaled about a hundred different ways from Sunday. When the cops finally arrived, they’d have a bad time with this.

  “The name Ronnie Platt mean anything to you?”

  I took a deep breath. “He works for Diego Cesar, a guy the Normals don’t want to even think about.”

  Claudia showed me his cell phone: Hells. Ronnie had called in to his boss. But I was willing to bet he didn’t actually know Joel or where he was staying, if he was after Alexa. There was no connection between the two I could see.

  “Any reason Cesar or Platt would be slicing up people randomly?” she asked, as I pocketed the phone.

  “Usually profit involved.” I stared at the rebar. “I’ve heard Cesar has a strange kink about mystical stuff though. An unattractive habit of getting live goats and chickens from East Cambridge to…open up. To…examine. I can’t make a case for him killing the missing persons though.”

  “Haruspicy—divination by the examination of sacrifices? That’s an archaic kink.” Claudia thought about it. “Assuming Alexa has never done this”—she nodded to the transformed rebar—”before, what’s the time-line for the four other murders?”

  “Nothing before last week.”

  “Something must have happened then, to trigger…whatever this is.” She bit her lip. “Were any of the others in pairs?”

  I started to shake my head, then stopped. “Not really together. But two were found in one neighborhood and the other two in another.”

  “Pairs—maybe they were trying to find each other?” She stared, thinking.

  “What?”

  “You didn’t notice? When I was alone with Joel, he was the same as all our therapy sessions: passive, depressed affect. And when I was alone with Alexa—nothing. But when he was near Alexa and she was in danger…something happened. It felt like the call to Change, focused right in my brain stem. But like it was going to take over, not like I was in driving.” She stared. “The two of them fit together somehow. Linked.”

  I considered. “You don’t think they’re like Fangborn oracles? Like the Triplets?”

  “Oracles tell riddles about the future and sometimes they’re lucky. And none of them have the telekinetic power to move anything bigger than a coffee stirrer.” She nodded to the rebar. “You ever see an oracle do anything like that?”

  “No.”

  “Right. Something else is going on here.” She put the wallet back and pulled off the gloves. “Got a spare phone?”

  I nodded and pulled it out a prepaid phone and tossed it to her. She called 911 to report the body. She’d ditch the phone later. “You go ahead to Alexa’s apartment, it’s not too far. Make sure no one’s waiting for her. I’m going to do some research.”

  I nodded innocently and raised my eyebrows. “Maybe check in with the cousins who live in caves?”

  She gave me a look that said, bite me. “If you have time, you might see if there are any similar patterns occurring outside Salem.”

  “But…we shouldn’t go to the Family with this?”

  She paused before answering. “Let’s make sure we have something real before we involve the rest of the Family.”

  I left thinking—or trying to not think—about how the body of Ronnie Platt was pinned down like a bug on a board.

  An hour later, having done all the possible tidying up, Joel summoned his courage. “So. Any idea what you were trying to do? Up there on the chair?” With no clothes on?

  “Nope,” Alexa said. “This is freaking me out as much as you. Maybe not; I don’t actually remember what I was doing.” She glanced around the bare room. The only decoration was an ornate ceramic vessel on the mantel. “So how do you know Claudia?”

  He felt himself go red and she cut in. “I’m sorry—that’s personal.”

  “No, it’s okay; I’ve been having trouble getting past my wife…leaving. That’s why my cousin let me stay here while she was on vacation. A change of scenery—”

  There was a rattle, the sudden sound of many heavy feet, then a pounding at the back door and the alley stairs.

  Alexa froze. “What’s that?”

  “Someone’s trying to break in! Quick, downstairs.”

  Joel pulled out his phone, but with all the jostling down the front stairs, he got the wrong screen. He hit another button and, when she answered, he said, “Dr. Steuben, get back here quick!”

  They stumbled through the shop door, pulled it shut and locked it.

  A massive hand landed heavily on Joel’s shoulder. He staggered under it and briefly saw a shaved head and piratical eyebrows. The hand righted him and slid under his chin, holding him in a headlock. He felt powerful muscles in the arm tightening under his chin and didn’t dare swallow.

  “The entrails of my birds led me to the other magical pairs,” a deep voice behind Joel rumbled. Alexa froze in her tracks, staring at the giant of a man. “When they couldn’t show me what powers they had, their human entrails led me to you. I could smell their power; I can almost taste yours.”

  “What the hell?” Joel gasped, struggling to twist, but he would have needed a crowbar and three men to move the arm from his neck.

  “Whatever you want—the cash register?” Alexa stammered, backing away. “Just take it.”

  Cesar shoved Joel toward her, holding him like a kitten by the scruff of his neck. “You have power. Show me. When I understand yours, maybe I can access my own.”

  “Are you kidding me? I don’t—” She halted, having backed into one of the shelves of beads. She reached back, groping for a way to escape, but her hands brushed only against partitioned shelves of beads. A few fell to the floor, bouncing and rolling.

  “Either prove what you are or he’ll die.”

  Joel felt the hand tighten and thought he heard bones start to grind in his neck. “Alexa!”

  Her eyes went wide. “You’re crazy—!”

  “You crucified my man on the pavement,” Cesar said, “a study in elegance and brutality. Show me how.” He pulled an eight-inch knife—no machete, but big enough—and held it before Joel’s eyes. “I need to know where this power is coming from.”

  A tiny red crystal bead rolled across the floor, bumping Joel’s shoe.

  Alexa was crying now. “I didn’t do anything! I can’t—”

  Another bead, smaller than the first, flew across the room. It smacked into a window, making a tiny ping before it vanished.