Rick Wayne's Blog, page 82

You wanna talk about it?

16Oct

I had lunch at the bistro, out in the hip part of Brooklyn. That set me back a nice chunk of cash. Craziest menu I’ve ever seen, too. Shit like smoked quail eggs in cubes of maple gelatin speckled in elk bacon. Or fondue of pig’s blood reduction—whatever that is—served with maize fritters. Or a test tube set of chilled teas, arranged from light green to dark brown and filled with tapioca balls, each injected with a different essence: cinnamon, bergamot, chiles, lemongrass, etc. Bite down and the flavor erupts and mixes with the tea. But my favorite was the charcuterie plate—had to look that word up—with sausage “caramels” and this sweet, taffy-like cheese you have to cut with scissors and chew really slow. If you bit hard, it damn-near cracked your teeth.

The place was packed. And there were a ton of reviews on all the restaurant apps, everything from “Best meal I’ve ever had” to “A complete travesty of cuisine.” The Department of Health apparently shut him down over the summer. He had to go to court and everything, and for awhile, there was some question of whether he’d reopen. But he did and was all the busier for it.

I’d hoped to get a look at him while I was there, but he never showed. Everything’s made by his assistants, the ones in the dark bandannas and matching smocks. From what I read online, that’s usually how it is. Anson was right. The man was a recluse. No fancy black-and-white head shot on his website, no press releases, no interview in Gourmand magazine. Reams have been printed on his cooking, but everything there is to know about the man behind it could fit typed and double-spaced on a single sheet of paper.

Etude Emile Saint-Antoine Étranger. Real name unknown. Born fifty-some years ago in a remote village in the Amazon. He was taken from his parents as an infant—he never knew them—and raised by the village shaman to be his replacement. On his thirteenth birthday, young Etude had to prove his manhood or whatever, so he was sent out to live on his own in the jungle. He survived, obviously, although rumor is he bears a serious wound on his chest.

When he came back, his village was gone. Erased. Loggers had moved in. Cleared the whole area. Nothing but stumps and ash. Kid probably thought the end times had come. Supposedly he lived on his own for a while. Then he was found by some French anthropologists, husband and wife. Doctor and Doctor Étranger-sur-something-or-other. They take the kid back to France, write a bunch of papers on him and his people—in French. It was fun tracking those down, let me tell you. Had to call in a favor with a guy at Interpol. Anyway, they give him a Western education, only he’s a genius or whatever, so he just absorbs it all. And then some. Somehow he ends up at a fancy cooking school of all places. But he never finishes. He leaves France in a hurry, in fact, and is still wanted for questioning, which is why my contact in Paris was only too happy to help. Not that he would give me any details. The French are like that. I’m told so are we.

Then, for most of the next decade or so, he travels all over the world doing these crazy dinners, his Gastronomic Circus or whatever. I don’t even know how to describe it. He did this one in the Australian outback where he trapped poisonous snakes and deep fried their skins like pork rinds. After they puffed up crispy, he tossed them with chili seasoning and served them on top of the barbecued meat, next to which was the poison gland. Guests were encouraged to squeeze the gland over the meat for extra flavor. Snake poison dissolves in stomach acid or whatever. It has to get into the blood to be deadly, so as long as no one had a cut in their mouth, it would’ve been fine. There’s no word on how many tried it.

Fucker totally made a name for himself, too. But after several years, out of the blue, he shut it all down. He built his bistro and retreated to his sanctum and that was it.

“Do you have to do that?” Hammond asked from the driver’s seat.

“Huh? Oh.” I looked down at the bottle of pills in my hand. I had been banging them on my thigh like a maraca.

Once, twice, thrice.

Once, twice, thrice.

“Sorry.” I put them away.

“Look at this,” Hammond nodded down the road from where we were parked.

A vintage black Jaguar purred as it rolled to a stop in front of the bistro down the street. From our vantage, we could see the back of it clearly. It looked awfully familiar.

“Is it just me,” he said, “or does that look like the car from the video?”

The chef didn’t have any cars registered in his name. We’d checked. So I snapped a picture of the license plate, which hadn’t been visible in the footage. We watched in silence as the man himself walked out of the plain, unmarked door just down from the restaurant, bald head and everything. He was even wearing the same coat.

Hammond started the car as I took a few more pictures.

“Who’s driving?” he asked.

I shook my head. A man, it looked like, but I couldn’t see.

The Jag pulled away and we followed. It was a sweet car, too—an MK10, four-door, all black. Late 60s I’d say. We tailed it north to the office of a commercial moving company, strictly nonresidential, specializing in large items, like art for offices and expensive factory equipment. He met with them while Hammond and I waited down the road and across the street.

“Think he’s going somewhere?” I asked.

Hammond nodded. “Tell me again how you found this guy.”

“I never told you a first time,” I teased.

“Come on,” he chided. “Nine million people in this city. We got a random picture of one. You go away and come back a couple days later with a name. How’s that work? And don’t say facial recognition because that’s bullshit. We didn’t have a face.” He turned to look at me. “This guy’s a ghost. Here he’s implicated in at least three murders and God knows what else, and we got no way to find him. And yet, you pull his name out of thin air.”

“Like magic,” I said.

He scoffed.

It was nice being back with Craig. There was a definite illicit feel to the whole thing. For reasons he didn’t want to elaborate, he got away from his partner, Detective Rigdon, for the afternoon. It felt like cheating.

“Look. I took a gamble and it paid off.” That wasn’t exactly true, but it was close enough that I didn’t mind leaving it there.

Hammond turned back to watch the door down the road. The Jag was nowhere in sight.

“You don’t wanna tell me,” he said, “that’s your prerogative. Just don’t insult my intelligence, all right? That a fucking deal?”

I scowled. “Whatever. You don’t get to pick and choose what you wanna know and what you don’t.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I mention anything to do with the occult, anything at all, and you cover your ears and start making baby noises. La-la-la-la-la.”

“No, no. I do not.”

I’d try to talk to him a couple times. I tried to talk to him after the Sacchi case. We had a row. He thought I was going over, as in losing it. Got hard for him to trust me with his life after that, which I understood. Eventually, I put in for a transfer. More for his sake than mine.

“Target’s on the move,” I said flatly.

Étranger stepped from the office door as the black Jag pulled up with perfect timing. They drove a few miles down the road to a florist, where the chef spent all of five minutes before coming out with a tasteful bouquet.

“Maybe he’s got a girlfriend?” I asked as we pulled into traffic.

Hammond laughed. Genuinely. He just looked at me and shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“For all the women you’ve dated, you’d think you’d be able to tell the difference.”

“The difference between what?”

He put the car in drive and pulled out. “That’s a funeral arrangement, you dope.”

“Really? How could you tell?”

“You didn’t see the white lilies? And the fern branches? In a short round pot? Give a gal something like that and she’s liable to think you’re planning to kill her.”

We passed a gourmet grocer and watch and shoe repair shop, on the roof of which stood a gray wolf as big as a horse. It watched us as we passed. Pretty sure I was the only one who saw it. I didn’t say anything.

“How do you not know that?” he asked.

“Whatever, man. Flowers are flowers. I get whatever looks nice. Or whatever she says she wants.”

“By ‘she’ do you mean the one with the colorful hair and the yoga legs?”

“Yoga legs?” I turned to him. “That’s what you remember?”

He shrugged. “What was her name again? Kinsey?”

“Kinney,” I said after a moment.

“Ah,” he said in understanding. He got from my tone that we weren’t together anymore. “She liked you,” he said. “She liked you a lot.”

I didn’t reply, and he waited a few minutes before asking. “You wanna talk about it?”

I made a face. “What do you think?”

“I’m just asking,” he said holding up a hand.

I watched the Jag, which was several cars ahead of us in traffic, as we inched toward the freeway. It took us another twenty minutes to get there, after which we wound through Queens and crossed the river before turning north up the FDR. Hammond followed at a safe distance. That we were following a vintage car and not just another silver SUV made it easy enough to spot, even if we lost sight for a minute.

“You think I don’t listen to you?” Hammond asked out of the blue.

I squinted at him. “What?”

“You said I don’t get to pick and choose what I wanna know and what I don’t,” he explained very deliberately, like he wanted to be sure I understood his meaning. “Does that mean you think I don’t listen to you?”

I kept squinting at him as he changed lanes on the expressway. “What’s with you? You got ball cancer or something?”

“Close, actually.”

He pulled a stick of gum from his pocket. He handed it to me, but I refused and he unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. I could smell the mint.

“Dinah and I got this gal we talk to,” he said. “You know, a complete stranger you tell all your secrets to. But I like her, believe it or not. She doesn’t let me get away with the bullshit. Not that I’d ever let her know that. Anyway, the consensus seems to be that I can open up all right but I’m not a very good listener.”

I shook my head with a smile, choking back the easy jibe.

“Laugh all you want, Chase. Some of us take our relationships seriously.”

“That’s not why I’m laughing, ass. I’m laughing because it took you almost 50 years to figure that shit out.”

He nodded solemnly—like it was my words, versus what everyone else in his life had been telling him, that clinched the truth of it.

“You’re not a bad listener,” I explained. “You’re just selective. When you wanna be, you’re Fred Fucking Rogers.”

He shook his head. “In the session the other day, I was distracted. Dinah thought I was mad, but I couldn’t stop thinking about a case I had recently. My Alexa Sacchi, I guess.”

“Who’s that?”

“The triple I mentioned. This Chinese girl. Wasn’t much older than my Hadlee. I sent her to you. Did I tell you that?”

I shook my head.

“She started talking about . . . you know, all that kinda stuff.” He waved a hand. “She had a tarot deck and was talking curses and shit and I thought ‘Oh Christ. Here we go.’ And I told her to talk to you. I thought you could sort it all out. I didn’t wanna deal with it. I already had a caseload up to my sack and I didn’t want to waste time wading through all the—” He stopped.

We watched as the Jag exited the expressway. Hammond hit the blinker and we followed into Spanish Harlem.

He sighed, like he was sorry he mentioned anything and wanted to wrap it up. “So now I’m wondering if I treat all the women in my life that way.”

He was asking me because I didn’t count. In Craig Hammond’s mind, I wasn’t a woman. At least, not in any way that counted.

“You really worried?” I asked.

“I’m just wondering how many times I’ve sent the girls to their mother like that, when they were going on about school or some boy or something, because I was too busy trying to put some asshole away.”

“Naw,” I said. “I don’t see it. No offense to Dinah, but you’ve always been a better dad than a husband.”

He nodded again, wistfully.

I turned to him. “You wanna talk about it?” I asked with a wry smile.

He snorted. “Fuck you.”

The Jag pulled into a three-story public parking garage.

“Shit,” he said.

If we followed them right behind, there’s a good chance we’d be spotted. If we rolled around the block, we’d probably lose them on foot.

“There,” I pointed.

Just inside the alley between the garage and a hair salon there were three open spots, reserved specifically for police. Hammond pulled in as I pulled the car’s department registration from the glove compartment and tossed it on the dash.

We jumped out at the same time.

“You go east,” he said, and took off the other way.

I moved down the alley, eyes scanning the parking garage for any signs of the Jag or the man in the fantastic coat. But there was nothing. I ran out to the main road at the far side of the alley which was lined with single-story shops on both sides of the street, the kind with narrow facings crammed full of wares where the signs displayed the brands for sale rather than the name of the store. Men’s clothes, a couple ladies boutiques, a Farmacia Latina proudly displaying the Puerto Rican flag, a combo wig shop and hair salon, a convenience store, a falafel shop, a taqueria, an animal clinic, a liquor store, and more, all the way down to the train tracks that ran over the street two blocks from me.

Cars were parked at meters along the street, and there was the usual forest of telephone poles and street signs. With the crowd, I didn’t have any trouble keeping cover. And the chef wasn’t hard to spot, not with that bald head and that pot of bright flowers cradled in his arm. He’d crossed the street and stopped two blocks down in front of a large mural painted on a brick wall facing the main road. It was a swirling, floral, blue-and-white tribute to a goatee’d man, whose likeness took up most of the image. He was looking up and away to the horizon warmly but resolutely. Smaller depictions, presumably scenes from his life, fell away on both sides of his head in turning band of flowers and curls. Most of it was done in white paint. The shading and contrast was all the same tone of gray-blue. The sidewalk underneath was filled with flowers and votive candles of all kinds.

The chef added his contribution, which looked horribly formal and out of place, before stepping back to admire the image. I took the opportunity to snap a photo of the mural from my perch behind a parked car on the other side of the street. A quick image search told me this was a memorial to a local man named Alonso White, who had apparently died the year before. I read as much as I could. He seemed like quite the saint—community organizer, ordained priest, some political ambitions but nothing to get anyone worried.

I glanced up from my phone every few seconds to check my quarry, who seemed to be paying his respects. That was when I caught the date of his death. We were coming up on the anniversary. He blew himself up in some Wall Street office the very same night Kent Cormack was shot—the night I had my first seizure in decades.

I looked up in shock and noticed that the chef was gone.

“Fuck!”

I turned my head right, then left, and spotted him walking down the road under the train tracks. I just had time to see him disappear around the corner on the other side.

I ran after, drawing a screech and a couple honks when I crossed the road, but as soon as I took the same turn, I ran right into a dead end. I slapped my hand against the wall of brick, just to make sure it was real. I spun and scanned the street in every direction. But he was gone.

“Shit.”

That’s when I saw someone on the roof of the building across from me—a big guy in a leather coat. He turned and walked away before I got a good look at him, but I’m positive it was the driver of the Jag.

We’d been made.

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

cover image by Kristina Collantes

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Science fiction: Better clever than wise

I’m giving myself a little course in science fiction. I’ve read plenty of sci-fi. I even took a class on genre fiction in college called “Monsters, Aliens & Cyborgs: Encounters with the Other,” but I wanted to come back to a thoughtful study of the genre now that I have some age and experience.

The first book is War with the Newts by Czech author Karl Capek, probably most famous for inventing the word robot in his 1920 play R.U.R. War with the Newts is excellent. It’s acerbic. It’s incisive. It rakes absolutely everyone over the coals. While there is a definite flow to the narrative and some of the characters do occasionally reappear, there is not a protagonist in the classic sense. Each chapter is a slice or vignette that illustrates in one episode some part of the larger story of man’s encounter with the newts. Each chapter also has a different format; some are straightforwardly narrative; others read like transcripts; one of the chapters has copious footnotes; newspaper articles are quoted at length; and the last chapter is the author talking to himself. As such, it’s very much a book that would have bored me as a younger man, and I’m glad I came to it later.

It is recognizably science fiction, but as is usually the case with early works in any genre, it reads more like the literature of the period than anything we’re used to calling sci-fi. It lacks the hallmarks and tropes that came to define the genre in the post-war era, which to a modern reader makes it seem like a refreshing departure. In fact, it’s more satire than science fiction. It just happens to use the fantastic Other as a foil: We’re never given the point of view of the newts. This is a book about man — not individual people, but us as a species — and Capek does a deft job of making his characters just silly enough that we can recognize them as such without delving into outright comedy. It’s so artful that I have to despair a little!

I got the impression that’s what del Toro was going for with the characters in The Shape of Water. Both are ostensibly stories about mankind’s first encounter with a lost species of intelligent, bipedal amphibian. Both are critical. Unlike Capek, del Toro approaches from the direction of the monster film and tries to elevate it — The Creature From the Black Lagoon as light erotica, which is popular now. I so wanted to rattle off Chuck Tingle-style titles as I watched it last night — Alien Sex Slaves of Area 51, Pounded in the Snatch by a Fishman God — but the other people in the room wouldn’t have got the joke.

Such imagery has a long history in art. It’s used effectively in works like Hokusai’s “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife,” for example. The problem for me with the film, and the probable reason for its popularity, is that it’s basically erotic fan fiction and not much more. Rather than being a mechanism of insight, all of the characters remain in a state of perpetual adolescent ambivalence, where on the one hand they want to be fully human, to be welcomed by the human community, but on the other, they also want to stay in their room and be the monster. Neither Giles nor Zelda come to terms with their situations. Indeed, the very final scene is Elisa in a rapturous orgasm of ambivalence in the canal.

Contrast that to Naked Lunch or Dead Poet’s Society, movies that tackle similar themes but whose characters are ultimately forced to step out of adolescent ambivalence and face the terror of adulthood, with its promise of tragedy or redemption.

I suspect The Shape of Water will feel very dated in 80 years, whereas War with the Newts, at 82 years old, still has something important to say. It’s a good jumping off point for my little self-directed course because it functions as literature first. I hesitate to call it a “bridge” because that makes it seem like the author had some insight into what was going to happen over the 20 years after the book’s publication (1936), which of course he didn’t. War with the Newts is not “proto-Asimov.” It stands entirely on its own.

In fact, despite being similar in form and structure to Foundation, in many ways, War with the Newts is a lot sharper than Asimov. In Foundation, the nature of humanity is a kind of mathematical given. It’s not something to be lived. It’s something to be held at arm’s length, studied and dissected and ultimately manipulated away. Foundation is 1950s-era Behavioralism’s wet dream.

That shift in focus between the two books is important. Science fiction ultimately has more concern for ideas than the human condition. It doesn’t preclude it. Science fiction can have heart, but there’s definitely a sense that when writing science fiction, it’s better to be clever than wise.

 

cover image by Kristina Collantes

A man who could make magic

13Oct

“I want everyone to behave themselves,” Anson Verhoeven warned from behind the counter.

His white Amish beard quivered when he spoke. He looked to be pushing 90. He breathed through his mouth and stared worriedly over the rim of his glasses at the three of us in his shop.

There were two men at the register. Verhoeven had wrapped something for them in gray paper, like blank newsprint—a book or a box of some kind. The one on the left took it without taking his eyes from me.

“Is this a real Mexican standoff or are we just measuring dicks?” I let the door close behind me and stood in the center of the room, between the neat bookshelves.

The Barrows was always so tidy. And there was always a slight floral scent hanging over the must and vanilla of old books.

I didn’t know the two men glaring at me, but I knew the look: hollow behind the eyes. They were zombies. In the old sense, that is. Men whose souls had been taken and sealed in urns. Living slaves.

Granny’s boys.

They walked toward the door, one passing on either side of me. I got my weekly quota of menacing glances. But that was it. The door closed behind them with a jingle and Anson and I were alone.

“Is it Tuesday again?” he asked. “Already?”

“You know, you’re in an odd business for a man who hates people.”

“Not at all. Running this shop is an act of mercy for all mankind,” he declared proudly.

“Bookselling?”

“Indeed. It’s the only thing that will cure them. Without people like me, they’re all doomed. Now, what utter calamity brought you to my door?”

There was fountain pen, inkwell, and old pad of paper on the counter, and he started putting them away underneath. I couldn’t tell if he was just being tidy or if he didn’t want me to see any hint of what he’d just sold Granny.

“Does it have anything to do with the capture of a certain ghoul?” he asked.

“How’d you know about that?”

“I have a store full of books. I know lots of things. So how did you manage it? From what I heard, it was speaking Aramaic. Couldn’t have been easy.”

I held up the talisman.

He leaned his head back to see it through his glasses, which had slipped to the end of his nose. “Where did you get that?”

“From a dead man. Those carvings mean anything to you?”

He leaned in. “Arabic, most likely. Difficult to tell. They’re quite worn.”

“Then why say Arabic?”

I wrapped the chain around my wrist.

“Once upon a time,” he began in a mocking tone, as if I were a small child and this was story time, “the Arab world was overrun with evil spirits from Central Asia. Jinn they called them. Out of necessity, their alchemists became experts at crafting wards and prisons. Where do you think the tale of Aladdin and the lamp comes from?” He looked around the shop. “There’s a book around here somewhere with the original story. Quite a bit darker. I believe Aladdin gets trapped in the lamp at the end and spends eternity as a kind of homosexual toy.”

“Homosexual?” I asked, as if wondering if that were a relevant detail.

“Yes. The Arab world then had a kind of lustful fascination. It was outlawed by Islam but had been widely practiced before.”

“You’re right,” I said, flattering him, “you do know things.”

He looked at the pendulum clock behind him. “Indeed. For example, I know that now is my lunchtime. The shop is closed. Thank you. Good day.”

“Since you know so many things,” I went on, “maybe you could identify someone for me.”

“Identify? I don’t know anyone who could possibly need identifying. And if I did, I still don’t.”

I had the printout from the Massey case, the still image from the security footage, folded in my jacket pocket. I took it out an laid it flat on the counter.

“I told you—” He stopped.

He fixed his glasses higher up his nose and tilted his head to look down longways at the paper. His expression dropped like a rock.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

He stared blankly. He pulled off his glasses and let his hands fall to his side.

“What is it?”

“I’d heard the rumors but . . .” He raised his bushy eyebrows like he’d just learned the stock market had crashed and he’d lost all his savings.

“You know him then?”

“No,” he said, pushing the paper back toward me.

“Jesus, Anson, I’m not asking you to introduce me. All I need is a name.”

“It wouldn’t mean anything to you and I wouldn’t be doing you any favors by speaking it.”

“Fuck. Cut the crap, old man.” I motioned to the door. “You just—”

“Or what?” he asked indignantly. “You’ll lock me in a totem? Who made you Lord Protector?”

“No,” I said nonchalantly. “As it happens, I’m out of totems. But I might mention to a few folks that you sold me this talisman.”

He studied me. “You wouldn’t.”

“If you’re gonna be a dick, I got no problems being a dick back. Whaddya think Granny will say when she finds out? Think she’ll make a personal trip out here?”

He smacked his shriveled lips loosely like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “Joke all you like. You don’t know nearly enough to appreciate the gravity of your question, Detective.”

“I came to the right place, then. Word on the street is you know things.”

He put his hands on the antique oak counter. “This is book shop. Not a help desk.”

He pointed to the sign high on the wall behind him:

THIS IS NOT A LIBRARY

“I’d recommend Massius Crane’s seven-volume history,” he said. “At the end, you might begin to have some faint appreciation for just how immense—”

“Fine,” I said, turning to leave. “Say hi to Granny for me.”

I made it halfway to the door.

“Wait.”

I turned.

He had a very slight sneer of of disgust. “You’re a devil whose name escapes me.”

I waited.

He moved his lips again like he had the same bad taste in his mouth. Then he walked around the counter and to the front, where he locked the door and hung the CLOSED sign. He stepped to the glass-encased bookshelf against the left wall, lifted the keys from his belt, and unlocked it. I watched him remove a large text from a set, the second in a series of seven oversized volumes with old-style cloth binding. The spines all had the title, “The Reign of The Masters,” printed in metallic gold letters over the name of the author, Massius Crane. The final volume was quite a bit smaller than the others.

“When they showed up, in secret,” he said, “on a small island in the Adriatic, they would have been wearing heavy robes and John Knox caps. The local workers who lit their path with torches had been told to tell no one of their arrival, upon pain of death.”

Anson brought the tall book to the counter and flipped through the pages slowly. “Mr. Crane suspects their aims were modest—at first. Just as Jesus did not set out to establish the Roman Catholic Church, neither did the five old men who wandered up the shore that day seek to change the world. They were merely answering the call of the most powerful monarch in Europe at the time, Philip IV of France. The so-called Iron King.

“Philip had just executed the last members of what had once been the preeminent military force in the Mediterranean, and a threat to him: the Knights Templar. The king’s men immediately descended on the Templar’s keep, hidden on that small island, and emptied the treasury, but they were Christian men with Christian spirits and what they found in the lower crypts both perplexed and terrified them, and none dared enter.

“So The Iron King sent for nine of the wisest men from across Europe, Russia, and the Middle East. One refused due to ill health, two perished en route, and one turned back when he heard news of their deaths. So it was, five men stepped from the rowboat that took them ashore, where the illiterate Italian peasants who greeted them felt obliged to show respect to their superiors, as was the custom of the day. But since they hadn’t been given a proper title, they referred to the men with the simple honorific, i maestri.”

He spun the book and pointed to a black-and-white illustration, like something from the Victorian era. It was a grand stone chamber. Great columns ran along the sides and held up the heavy roof, all but a shadow overhead. At the end was an impressive stone edifice, like a tall judge’s bench, behind which sat seven robed elders, the one at the center a little higher than the others. High above them on the back wall, an eye-shaped cavity had been cut into the otherwise smooth stone. Inside it, just a bit off center, a giant crystal radiated spearlike shards in all directions.

“What’s that?” I pointed to the top of the image.

“The source of their power. The Great Eye, forged at the dawn of civilization, two-and-a-half millennia before Christ, by the high priests of Sumer. For their lord, Annemundu, the first god-emperor in history.”

I looked closer. “What are these rays coming out?” I traced a finger along one.

“The Eye is—or was, rather, a seeing stone, a great crystal whose gaze pierced minds and mountains. Annemundu, who is said to have reigned for 90 years, used it to discover and destroy all who plotted against him—or even maligned his name in secret. He despised deliberation and enforced a uniform order, a perfect orthodoxy without argument or dissent, where everyone agreed on everything. He called it peace, for there were none left to oppose him.

“Stone carvings from the era suggest that Annemundu’s rule was lengthy, brutal, and absolute, but that in the end, he died, as all men do. Mr. Crane believes that the Eye was smuggled out of Mesopotamia by wealthy families close to the emperor who feared another absolute despot. But all we know is it disappeared from history—completely—for the better part of three thousand years, until, in the thirteenth century, it was discovered in the Templars’ crypts. They seem to have stumbled upon its hidden resting place while on holy crusade and taken it as plunder without realizing its purpose or power. It was the five maestri who, diligently cataloging all the treasures—and terrors—the knights had accumulated over two centuries of conquest in the Holy Land, who finally saw the truth. Whether they feared what The Iron King would do with it, or whether they succumbed to its lure themselves—or perhaps both—‘The Masters’ soon betrayed their lord. They sent false reports and provided him trinkets and stale relics in place of the mystic hoard they alone now possessed.

“The five forged a brotherhood pledged to protect that hoard from all who would abuse it. And so they did. But as time passed, their successors grew restless with mere custodianship. At some point, they began modestly referring to themselves as the High Arcane and took to using the Eye. At first it as simply to help those in need. But eventually, every magical artifact that fell into their gaze was taken and imprisoned—locked away in a place that erased all memory of it. By the sixteenth century, during the so-called age of exploration, The Masters sent agents to follow the ley lines that circled the globe, to mark their intersections, and to seal the portals that lay within, cutting us off from friend and foe alike. Ancient treatises were confiscated and buried. New ones were forbidden—or else had to be written in approved codes and cyphers.

“By the seventeenth century, five elders had swelled to seven and included representatives from all the major civilizations from the Far East to the New World. Any man who sought power on any continent—not political office, mind you, but real power—had first to earn their favor. The politicians of this world are princes only. The kings have no name. It’s no accident that the ones who built the modern world were all members of secret societies steeped in the occult. Many of the Founding Fathers of this very country were inducted into the secret order of the Masons, pledged vassals of i maestri. Those who resisted, or even simply opted out—the remaining woodfolk and the free practitioners of wildcraft—were labeled witches and burned alive.” He looked to me for a reaction.

“Why?” I scowled. “Power?”

“We all want what we don’t have,” he said. “The Masters had power. What they wanted was order.”

He closed the book and retrieved another from the shelf, a later volume in the same series. He flipped to another page. “Here.”

It was like a scene from an old epic, the Iliad or the Ramayana or something. I saw an army of men carrying round shields and snub swords, a line of archers, flying monsters, an army of skeletons erupting from the earth, a giant bull raging through the clouds, a mounted king, a lighting bolt from the sky striking a giant three-tailed scorpion, a magic hammer, a blind priestess, a bearded wizard and his seven acolytes, and on and on, all locked in a great conflagration that filled a long swooping valley from mountain to mountain, while at the peaks, rings of fire—one white, and one black.

“The world as it was in the beginning,” he said as I studied the page. “You think it’s an accident that every ancient civilization, from the Greeks to the Japanese, told stories of ghosts and monsters and great heroes with magic spears? How do you think Alexander conquered the world? Or Genghis Khan? With the stirrup and a handful of barbarians?

“The Masters’ great enterprise, their solution to the terror of existence, was to buy the very same peace as Annemundu. And slowly but surely, bit by bit, over six long centuries, magic all but went out of the world. These days there are few left who remember it. In its place came the machines. A machine is predictable, you see. It can be controlled—measured and changed—but magicks defy periodicity. They’re immeasurable, uncontrollable. And accessible. Remember, Merlin was a peasant boy, and he anointed a king.

“There were battles and skirmishes, of course, some of them quite deadly. But it wasn’t until the seekers of the dark found their holy book that there was outright war.”

He shut the volume in front of me.

“Holy book?”

“Written in blood on its pages were spells to cast darkness, not just over the human heart but the world itself. Suddenly, artifacts and people could be hidden from the Great Eye. Agents of the dark walked unhindered and unseen. Armed with the mad whispers of their gods, the warlocks pursued a hundred-year war to destroy the High Arcane and all who followed them. It wasn’t until the second half of the last century that they were finally defeated. And only at great cost.”

He shook his head.

“I was a mere boy at the time. I only heard the stories. How The Masters’ spies had tracked the Necronomicon to Siberia, where Rasputin had hidden it. How, in an act of incredible daring, they smuggled it to the Caucuses, where it was destroyed by a bastard magician from a tribe whose name is not spoken. It was the Final Battle, we were told. The End of History. And so it seemed, for a time.” He nodded to himself. “So it seemed.”

“Until?”

“Until . . . in the aftermath of the war, driven by greed, men penetrated the last soft places of the world, and out of the clear-cut jungle—out of nowhere—a young man appeared, half naked in ocher skin, eyes painted in blue dye, born of a people spared the ravages of history. A man who could make magic. Not the repetition of some crusty old spell, mind you. Real magic. New magic.”

He slid the creased computer printout over the book.

“It was around then that a new book appeared. And another ‘Final Battle’—if you believe the rumors—where the Great Eye cracked. Without the source of their power, the remaining High Arcane fell to argument, their agents disbanded, and, well . . .” He motioned out the door. “The world is as you found it, stumbling back toward chaos.”

“So . . . this guy’s a wizard?”

“NO!” Anson slapped the counter. “Have you been listening? He’s not a wizard! He doesn’t build flying contraptions and anoint fools with magic swords. He’s a shamanic sorcerer! A world-walker. A true agent of chaos. The very last, in fact. Which is why everyone has been happy to leave him locked away in his sanctum all these years.”

I squinted at the photo. “Then why make an appearance now?”

Anson simply shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to know.”

“But surely someone does. Everybody’s got friends,” I said, repeating my brother. “Or at least enemies.”

He made a face like he was going to object. Then he stopped himself. He thought for a moment. He seemed confused. Then he looked at me gravely.

“It would have to be someone older than me,” he said, “old enough to remember the war. And skilled enough to survive it. As it happens, there is someone who fits that description right here in the city. You’ve already met her, in fact.” He nodded toward the front door. “And I happen to know she’s a big fan.”

I scowled. “Fuck . . .”

“Yes.” He nodded solemnly. “See? Tuesday.”

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

cover image by Matt Taylor

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Dogs barking and the stupidity of literary fashion

My editor, who gets to poke at my manuscripts, flagged a sentence in the first course of my occult mystery, “A dog barked in the distance.” This is a cliche according to Rosecrans Baldwin, a novelist who wrote an article for Slate back in 2010. He says it’s tired writing. If so, I’m in good company. He quotes James Joyce, Stephen King, Jodi Picoult, Chuck Palahniuk, William Faulkner, Jackie Collins, William Burroughs, Kurt Vonnegut, and Virginia Woolf in his article, all of whom had a barking dog in at least one of their books.

That’s the problem, he says. Every 20th century novel (and since) uses that phrase, whereas prior to the 20th century, it was almost nonexistent. The conclusion we’re supposed to draw is that it’s a clearly a literary fashion rather than something tangible or useful and therefore needs to die.

This is startlingly stupid. For one, it suggests that the greatest novelists of the 20th century were somehow more prone to cliche than their forebears. I doubt it, especially since there is a perfectly simple historical explanation: prior to the 20th century, most people did not live in cities, and of those that did, the fenced yard was generally an exception.

I’ll skip the long digression on canine behavior, but suffice it to say, barking serves a particular purpose that dogs who’ve roamed free their entire life tend only to use in times of actual threat. When Orine and I went to Thailand last year, for example, there were feral dogs everywhere but I can’t recall a single bark.

In fact, prior to the war, there was a real problem with wild dogs and rabies. Consider how many cartoons and movies of that era featured a dog catcher. Responsible owners would of course have chained the dog if they didn’t have a fence, but in a world where people didn’t pamper their pets as they do now, it was normal to let them roam free. It’s not like there were a lot of cars prior to the 20th century either.

But that’s not Mr. Baldwin’s only criticism. “Trains whistle, breezes blow, dogs bark. You’re thinking, ‘So what if novels are full of barking dogs? The world is full of them, too.’ But I don’t find it curious when actual dogs turn up in novels. Dogs that authors bother to describe, or turn into characters, don’t pull me out of my reading trance. The thing is, these so-called dogs are nameless and faceless, and frankly I doubt them; it’s the curious incident when one actually does come into view. Really, are there so many out-of-sight, noisy dogs in the world? Listen: My bet is you’ll hear a highway, an A/C unit, or another human before a dog starts yelping.” (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2010/06/somewhere_a_dog_barked.html)

That might be true… in New York City. When I first read that sentence here in rural Kansas, I stopped immediately and listened. I could hear two things: birds chirping on the power lines that run by our house and a pair of dogs barking in the distance. In fact, on the 90-second walk from here to my sister’s house just down the road in the same housing development, you will absolutely get barked at three times at least, depending on the time of day.

I have to wonder why it is we’re picking on dogs. For example, why not birds chirping? I would guess that’s also quite common in books. But then, birds chirping carries a different connotation, one of mirth and happiness, whereas a dog barking is neutral if not vaguely menacing (see below). I would guess that children’s books have lots of birds chirping and adult books have dogs barking, especially since birds don’t fucking chirp at night, when adults do.

I propose a corollary to Checkov’s Gun called Baldwin’s Dog. The rule is: No dog can bark nor bird chirp unless the POV character actually witnesses said animal and/or it plays a role in the plot.

Fucking ridiculous.

That’s not to say there aren’t more and less artful uses of the barking dog, or that my own was the former and not the latter. In my case, the narrator is recounting events from when he was a kid. His family had just been the victim of a drive-by shooting. He describes the sound of the shots and of the stunning silence immediately after. That silence is, after a moment, broken by the distant barking dog. That’s because it’s the middle of the night in a low-income neighborhood in the American South and a group of teenagers just fired a gun five times. It would be odd to me if a dog didn’t bark after that.

What’s funny is how these kinds of fashions spring up, where if you include the barking dog in your book, you reveal some kind of occult weakness because all the good writers know we don’t do that kind of thing anymore. Whatever. Fiction is fake — not just because it’s made up, but because it’s made to conform to a system of rules (‘No Distant Barking Dogs’) that have everything to do with the opinion of the literati and nothing to do with the real world.

I’m not the only person who objects to the objection, apparently. I liked this comment by one John Emerson on a blog post quoting the article:

Yeats: “In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark”

Somewhere in the “Secret History of the Mongols” a qatun (queen) says “The dog’s barking is getting ugly”. She’s treating barking as an omen or as an indicator of the mood of the moment. Effectively, she is saying that the khan’s rule is in deep trouble or perhaps doomed. “In the silence of the dark” + Bark gets 100,000+ Google hits. I got them looking for the Yeats poem.

I definitely have a feeling about dogs barking in the distance, a little like fire engines or emergency sirens. Dogs barking in the distance indicate silence and context the event being described in a larger space which is mostly unknown. Dogs’ barking indicates some kind of trouble or unexpected event somewhere — most dogs don’t bark when things are normal. In noisy places probably distant barking dogs are unnoticed.

All this doesn’t mean that the meme isn’t often a cliche in fiction. But it’s a cliche developed from something powerful.

(http://languagehat.com/somewhere-a-dog-barked/)

Let’s be clear that I am picking on Rosecrans Baldwin, not Karen. One is an asshat. The other is my editor. As my editor, it’s her job to let me know of the literary fashions, such as this, and for that, I thank her. (Really.) But I think I will follow Mr. Emerson’s advice and keep the dog, a tiny yipping terror named Rosecrans.

You wouldn’t’ve asked the right questions

09Oct

I had another vision that night. After my meeting with Bea. I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t in bed. I’d been asleep, but not in bed. I was sitting on a stool at my kitchen counter. I had my notes out. It was evening. I don’t even remember nodding off—like, I don’t remember feeling so tired that I wanted to lie down. My head wasn’t bobbing or anything like that. I had been totally awake, working.

The next thing I remember, I’m waking up in shock with that sense that someone was watching me. I was still sitting, but I had my head resting on one hand, and it had been that way long enough for my hand to fall asleep. And I realized I’d had a dream. Or nightmare. Or something. In it, I was sitting right there at my kitchen counter, and I wasn’t alone. But it wasn’t a person with me. It was a wolf. And not the cuddly kind you see romping through the snow on TV. This was a wild animal, a natural hunter. Huge. Like, the size of a horse. Mottled coat. Dark grays. I couldn’t see it. Or hear it. But I knew it was there, studying me.

The wolf’s two eyes stared at me intently. Motionless.

Then a third opened. Sideways. Right in its forehead. A vertical fold of fur just opened to midnight. Speckled in tiny stars.

I sat there at the counter for a moment. Like, what just happened? I held my breath and listened. I was certain someone else was in the apartment with me. Just beyond the half-closed bedroom door. Or maybe in the closet. But the little voice in my head wasn’t saying to run. Not at all. It was saying I missed something.

On the tape.

 

 

 

 

10Oct

God knows how long I looked at it. Backward. Forward. Play. Stop. Rewind. Play. Rewind more. Play. Stop. I took breaks for coffee and breakfast. I went to the bathroom a few times. But I was certain there was something there. Something I’d missed.

The mail came around 11:30, including a fat official communication from the department. The date of my review had been set for the following week. The letter made it clear the outcome wasn’t necessarily permanent, that the point of the preliminary proceeding was only to determine if the immediate facts warranted “a temporary suspension of active duty pending a final determination by the promotions and disciplinary committee.” And since it was just an internal Department action and not a formal legal proceeding, they advised me I didn’t need an attorney—but I could bring one if I wanted. Most of the session would be private, but I was to appear at the appointed time to state my case and answer questions.

I shoved the letter in my pencil drawer and turned back to the screen.

Some hours later, I was bent over a grainy, blown up still image I’d printed when Craig came storming through the doors at the other end of the office. He had a coat and matching brown tie. He wasn’t happy, but he was doing his best to hide it. I watched him walk right toward me and sit down in the chair next to my desk.

It had taken him a full 36 hours to figure out I’d already talked to Bea Bostwick.

He was slipping.

I set the photo printout down and sat back. There was no point in antagonizing him.

“What’s going on, Har?” he asked.

I didn’t say anything.

“My partner was reaching out to all the people who might have been in contact with Palmer Bell or her family. Guess what Bea Bostwick told him on the phone this morning?” He looked at me and waited for an answer. “I thought we were on the same page.”

“We are.”

He looked away. “You know, Rigdon’s all right. He can get on cruise control sometimes, but he’s got good instincts. And he understands the shit that flies around this place. So he was cool when I asked him to let me handle it and to please forget what he’d heard.”

I nodded like that was the most reasonable thing I’d heard all day.

“You have a disciplinary review coming up,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“How do you know about that? I just got the letter this—”

He’d gotten a letter, too. As the only detective who’d worked with me for any length of time, they’d probably asked for his testimony.

“You wouldn’t have asked the right questions,” I said.

His face flushed in anger. But he kept his voice down. “And what questions are those? Something about voodoo dolls?”

“It’s not voodoo.”

“What?”

“They’re not voodoo dolls,” I repeated. “The practice didn’t originate with vodun animism. It’s actually Roman, if you can believe. It got mixed up later when the Catholics brought the slaves from Africa. The Louvre has a figurine dated from the—”

“For fuck’s sake, Har.”

I was quiet for a minute. “You wouldn’t have asked the right questions. She wouldn’t have said—”

“That’s enough!” he yelled. Then he collected himself. He stood and leaned closer, face red. “I stuck my neck out for you. And I was happy to do it. So don’t fuckin’ turn around and stab me in the back. I am trying to help. Do you understand that?”

“I do.”

“If you were gonna talk to her, at least you could’ve—”

“What? Told you first? For Chrissakes, Craig, then you’re party to it. If I go on my own, then when someone asks—which it looks like they’re going to—you can look them in the eye and honestly say you had no idea what I was up to.”

“So that’s how it is?”

He meant that I was rogue, that we weren’t actually working the case together.

“I’m not off on my own,” I said. “I haven’t done anything else.”

“Bullshit!” He grabbed the still photo from my desk, the printout from the security footage of the man in the reflection, and waved it. “What the fuck is this?”

I was indignant. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on! Cut the bullshit, Har! I have eyes.”

“That’s my case.” I snatched the picture from his hand. “A doctor at a free clinic was found butchered in a ditch. As far as I know, that’s footage from the last time anyone saw her alive.”

Hammond was fuming. He studied my face, unsure what to believe.

“It’s on the network. Check for yourself if you don’t believe me.” I motioned to my computer screen. I was going to do it for him, just to make the point, when it hit me. “Wait. Why did you think this was yours?”

We stared at each other for a long, cool moment. He turned the paper around and looked at it again.

“Hammond?” I urged.

He took it and sat.

“This guy,” he said looking at the picture. “Rigdon and I have a triple homicide. From last summer.”

“A triple?”

“Maybe. There were three confirmed vics. They seem to have been involved in some kind of scam. Over an artifact. One of them was this kid. Didn’t really have anything to do with it, as far as we can tell. Wrong place, wrong time kinda thing.”

He kept looking at the still image.

“Yeah?”

“Assailants broke into his apartment building. He was stabbed repeatedly. And . . . this guy’s on the security tape. In the courtyard. Moments before.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, we can’t see his face there either, but it’s gotta be the same guy, right? Same bald head. Same heavy coat. Jesus, he’s even got his face hidden by a tree just like this. Is the foliage of this city conspiring to hide this guy or something?” he joked.

I made a face. I hadn’t thought of that.

“Is your footage on the network?” I asked.

“Loaded yesterday.”

I grabbed the mouse and accessed the central evidence system. With a few clicks, I brought up the digital security footage from the front door of an apartment block in Sunnyside.

Hammond walked around the desk and leaned close to the screen. “There.” He pointed.

I saw a round courtyard between a cluster of medium-height residential towers. It had a short retaining wall, the kind you can sit on, and there was a tree at the center. I could make out a young woman at the back—Asian, it looked like—siting next to a man in an unusual coat. His face was obscured by the trunk of the tree.

I zoomed in and printed a still capture. Hammond walked to the printer several steps away and waited. I could tell something was bothering him. The sheer coincidence, probably. His instincts were good and they were telling him something wasn’t right here, but he couldn’t make sense of it And he wouldn’t—not where he was coming from.

He brought the image and tossed it on my desk. We sat and looked at them side by side. It sure looked like the same guy. Same bald head. Same awkward posture. Same kinda coat.

“I know I just got the riot act,” I said, “but how about giving me a coupla days?”

“Do I have a choice?” he asked far calmer than he had reason to.

“You could turn me in.”

He made a sour face.

“Divide and conquer?” I suggested. “You talk to the employees at my vic’s place of work, see if any of them recognize this guy.” That was straight-up detective work, good for him.

“And what are you gonna do?”

“Just give me a couple days. 36 hours at least. If I let you down, we go to Miller and lay everything on the table and I’m outta your hair. What’s left of it anyway.”

He snorted.

“Deal?”

He thought for a moment. He looked at the pictures.

“Deal.”

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

cover image by Dan Chase

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How I stopped being disgusted by social media

The art of Mike Campau helped me make peace with Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. I still don’t particularly enjoy being active on those places, but I can finally let go of my disgust for what they’ve largely become. This might seem paradoxical since we’re now in a time of high anti-social media sentiment. It was revealed just recently, for example, that Facebook may have given sensitive profile data of 50 million users to a conservative political organization and then lied about it afterward.

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Each social media platform operates in a kind of genre. People participate in the genre of Twitter when they want to experience moral outrage just as they participate in the genre of horror when they want to feel terror or the genre of trashy romance when they want to feel sexy and dirty. (Facebook is probably closer to soap opera or sitcom.) Logging on to Twitter to shake your fist at the evils of the world is cathartic, which is really only a problem if, in doing that, you expect to change anything, which I’m not sure most people do.

In fact, everyone participating in the moral outrage of Twitter has to pretend like it matters, even when they know it doesn’t, because to do otherwise is to break the fourth wall, to reveal the fiction, which destroys the catharsis. (Breaking the fourth wall really only works well in comedy, where it enhances the emotion the audience is there to experience — namely, absurdity.)

All instances of self are “socially constructed,” but that doesn’t mean they are complete fictions because the human mind experiences more than two categories, the fully objective and the fully subjective. When people laugh at a joke, for example, or turn away from a scary movie or cry over the death of a character or mourn the cancellation of a TV show, they are responding to a known fiction as if it were real because the emotion is real. People half-believe social media in the same way they half-believe Star Wars or their favorite book.

That’s not to say social media has no negative consequences for society or democracy. At a minimum, any new medium will change the landscape of our socially constructed reality in unexpected ways. People used to worry about television, for example, especially after the first televised presidential debate in 1960 between Kennedy and Nixon. We’ve since wrung our hands over the potential ill effects of comic books, Dungeons & Dragons, pornography, and violent video games, to name just a few.

Social media is no different. Just as we’re capable of leaving the violence in the console when we exit the genre of the game, so too we leave the the fantasy of Facebook, the moral outrage of Twitter, when we exit the genre of social media. But of course, like nervous backseat drivers, we’re all convinced that no one else is as capable of experiencing the genre naively (and responsibly) as we do, just as we never see ourselves as part of the traffic we’re stuck in.

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You wanna know the truth?

09Oct

The dust from the road trailed my car like a long plume of smoke. The tires jiggled over gravel as my phone announced my arrival at my destination with a soft chime. I slowed and turned into a wide lot of patchy grass fenced by irregular trees and shrubs. At the center was a silver-sided trailer home surrounded by a wooden-slat fence. All manner of wards hung from it: dreamcatchers, old Dutch barn hexes, ankhs, crystals, horseshoes, bunches of dried wildflowers, rabbit’s feet, and crosses made from alderwood twigs bundled with twine, along with the odd wind chime or spinning windmill.

The fence leaned in spots as it traced a rough oval shape around the trailer home at the center, leaving a small yard on all sides. The slats looked like remaindered pallet wood and were bound by wraps of wire. Only a few were large enough to be driven into the ground. All-in-all, it wouldn’t have stopped a child from pushing in, let alone a thief. But then, that’s what the dogs were for—a dozen or so I guessed, judging from the noise. They had gathered at the fence gate and barked and brayed over each other as I got out of the car. There was a whole mess of them, all slobber and wags.

“Alright, alright!” A middle-aged woman, skinny and tired, appeared in the open door to yell at the pack. The trailer home opened onto a tiny deck, barely big enough for the old round-topped grill that sat there, but it was a good four feet off the ground, meaning the woman could see me over the fence clear as day. Hanging from the sides of the trailer were the same menagerie of wards as on the fence, including a few dusty mirrors.

I raised a hand in greeting. It was all I could do over the noise. The woman eyed me from the porch as the dogs quieted down.

“You the woman from New York?” she called.

I nodded. I recognized her. She hadn’t aged particularly well. She was skinnier than I remember, and her sandy hair needed a good wash, as did the gray sweat pants she wore. But then, with that many dogs, I’m sure laundry was a never-ending chore.

“It’s not locked.” She nodded to the metal gate that held the pack at bay. “But you might wanna be careful of Vera.” She nodded again toward the back of the yard.

Standing there was without a doubt one of the largest dogs I’ve ever seen—long-haired and furry with a full white-and-gray coat and very alert eyes. Her tail was up and not wagging, but her posture wasn’t threatening as much as simply curious, like she wasn’t sure what to make of me yet.

I slipped through the gate sideways so as to not let any of the occupants out and greeted as many of them as I could. They pushed against me as they moved about, tails wagging. My boots were covered in dirty paw prints and I got hair all over my slacks. But Vera didn’t move. She kept her alert, watchful pose.

The thing about big dogs is that you can’t be afraid, and you can’t inspire fear either. After walking a few steps toward her, I knelt to her height and let her come the rest of the way. If she wanted. I held up my hand for her to sniff. Most people forget that vision isn’t a dog’s primary sense like it is for us.

Vera sniffed me.

And that was it. She walked back, turned three times, and plopped back down on the dirt with a grunt and yawned.

I stood.

“I’ve never seen that before,” her owner said from the door.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“She’s cautious. Some asshole up north thought it would be cool to cross a captive wolf with a giant Alaskan malamute. Then he was surprised when she turned out to be a predator and not a 180-pound lapdog.”

“180 pounds?” I asked. I looked down at my silent friend. If she went up on her hind legs, she would’ve been a head taller than me. “Well, I’ve always been good with animals.”

“Why don’t you come on up?”

I walked up the stairs and through the squeaky screen door. The interior reeked of stale cigarette smoke. There was a small TV on the counter near the sink. It was turned on but the sound was low. There was a shallow fridge next to me and a closet-sized bathroom just past the pantry. There were a few articles of clothing on the floor, and more than a couple mirrors hanging about. But other than that, it was tidy. I saw several ash trays but no alcohol. Whatever else she was, Bea Bostwick didn’t seem to be much of a drinker. Which was too bad. I could’ve used one. Technically, I wasn’t on duty. Not so technically, I wasn’t even supposed to be there.

“Any trouble finding the place?” she asked. “Phone apps have been known to send people to the other side of the county.”

“Nope,” I said, standing on front of the door. “Took me right here.”

She looked me over.

“That’s a lot of dogs,” I said.

“Yeah.” She let out a single laugh.

“Strays?”

“Sort of. I volunteer at a shelter.”

“Ah. Rescues then.”

She nodded. “Most of them. You know how it goes. It was either come here or be put down.”

“Must be a lot of work, that many animals. Expensive, too.”

“It’s worth it. They keep an eye on things. Keep me safe. Nothing gets by that many ears and noses.”

“I can see that. I bet they could wake the dead when they all get going at once.”

“Don’t have to wake them. They just have to scare them away. What can I do for you, Detective?”

“I don’t know if you remember me. I was—”

“I remember.”

She sat down on the cushioned bench that ran around the kitchen table attached by a post to the floor. She slid to the back and picked up her lit cigarette from the aluminum ash tray.

I stood by the door. I could hear the dogs tussling in the dirt. “I received a package recently. Ostensibly mailed from your old address at Floral Park.”

“Is that so? From my unit?”

“From the Sacchi’s.”

I watched Bea closely as I spoke. Her reaction was about what I expected—a little bit surprised but not so much as to suggest she ever believed the girl was actually dead.

“I see. Have you found her? Or is that classified or whatever?”

She tapped the ash off the end of her cigarette.

“The NYPD doesn’t handle state secrets.”

“Yeah, but you guys have rules and stuff. Legal things you have to worry about.”

“We haven’t found her, No. But I’d like to.”

“Oh?” She snuffed her cig in the ash tray and reached for the packet but it was empty. She crumpled it. “Why’s that? She’d have to be, what now? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? If she made it this long, then she’s able to take care of herself, don’t you think?”

I nodded. “She still has a mental handicap.”

“Not where I could tell,” Bea objected.

“You really think she’s been looking after herself this whole time?”

She shrugged. “I dunno. Can’t say I care, to be very honest.”

That surprised me. “Why’s that?”

She shrugged. That was it.

“Does the name Amber Massey mean anything to you?”

She shook her head.

“What about Palmer Bell?” I asked. “Keep in touch with her?”

She sat back and studied me, like she wasn’t sure what I was after and how she fit into it. She shook her head. She was silent in a way that made it clear nothing else was forthcoming.

“You’re not worried about her either?” I asked.

“Not anymore.”

“Why do you say that?”

She took a deep breath and sighed. “Because she’s probably dead.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Who said I was sure? I said probably. I said back then you guys had it wrong. You and that other guy. What was his name?”

“Detective Hammond.”

“Yeah. It was clear you both had made up your mind from the start.” She shook her head at the table. She was jittery. Her fingers moved up and down rapidly. “Dom loved her. He called her Pixie. She kinda looked like one, all of five-foot-two and those ears sticking out.”

“When I talked to you before,” I said, “you’d mentioned she’d warned you to mind your own business. To stay away from her family.”

“She warned me to stay away from Alexa. But I told you then, she wasn’t threatening me. I knew you didn’t believe me. I knew it then. I told her as much before the trial.”

“If it wasn’t a threat, then why warn you away?”

“To protect me.”

“Protect you? From who?”

“Look. It was a long time ago. And it was never any of my business to begin with.” She held up the crumpled pack. “So, unless you wanna go with me to the store . . .”

“You were there, Ms. Bostwick. You’re a witness.”

“Bea.”

“You’re a witness,” I repeated, “whether you want to be or not. You. Not me. A young woman is missing. Your friend was tried for it.”

“Who’s fault is that?”

“You don’t wanna talk to me, that’s fine. You don’t have to. But then don’t turn around and blame us for getting things wrong. We weren’t there.”

“Something wasn’t right with Alexa!” she yelled out of the blue. It was a horrible overreaction, like it had been building for a long time. “Alright? Is that what you want me to say? That girl was just wrong. And Pixie knew it.”

“What do you mean wrong?”

“It’s like—” She struggled for the words. “It’s like there was someone inside her. Like, the faces she’d have—when you’d walk in or glance over to her when she thought no one was paying attention—they weren’t faces a child would make.”

“What kind of faces? Rage? Flirtation? Jealousy?”

She was shaking her head as I spoke. “No, no, nothing like that. I can’t describe it. Faces you’d expect someone older to have, not a fifteen-year-old girl with a disability. Serious faces. And if she caught you looking, she’d just go blank, like . . .”

“Like?”

She shook her head. “Like there was someone in there with her, in her body. In her mind, maybe. I know how it sounds,” she added quickly. “And I know how my house looks. I know what people think of me.”

“If that’s true, wouldn’t that make Alexa the real victim?”

Bea got very quiet. “Look. You wanna know the truth? Fine. It doesn’t matter anymore and I don’t care what you think. Alexa Sacchi is the reason I moved out here. Okay? She’s the reason I quit the city and don’t stay out late at night. Does wonders for your social life, lemme tell you. You think many men hang around when they see this place? I know how it looks. Like I’m a crazy person. I go to work. I go to the shelter. I lock up and I come home. I toss salt over my shoulder and look at everyone’s reflection in—” She stopped.

I looked up at a little mirror hanging on an angle above the door frame. I hadn’t noticed it before. I was pleased to see I looked exactly as I expected. Nothing hitching a ride.

Bea was half a world away now and dying for a smoke. Her gaze passed through the wall in front of her as her leg shook under the table. “There was one time, before everything got really bad, when I went over there.”

“To the Sacchis’?” I asked.

She nodded. “Alexa was looking at me. In the mirror. She was just staring. Her eyes weren’t blinking—at all. And her mouth was closed. She just looked at me. But the thing is . . . I could hear her voice. Do you understand? I could hear her talking to Dom. I could see him talking back. In the reflection, he was having a normal conversation. But . . .” Bea turned her eyes to me finally, wet and wide. She was trembling. “I know what I saw. I didn’t imagine it. Whatever her body was doing, Alexa’s reflection was staring right at me. Just, staring. Like she wanted to burn a hole in me with her eyes.”

She shook her head and crumpled her empty pack again. She squeezed it repeatedly.

“I had a lab. You remember that?”

I nodded.

“Smartest dog ever,” she said. She sniffed. “My best friend. I got her after I got out of the army. They use dogs. Did you know that?”

“That your job?” I asked.

She nodded. “I love animals. I loved Betsy. I trained her. We went out off leash in the city. Got fined for it a couple times, but I don’t care. She was a good dog. She didn’t jump on people. She didn’t chase. Squirrels would run right past her and she’d want to, but she’d look to me first to see if it was okay.”

She coughed once and sniffed again and rubbed her nose. I waited.

“She ran out that day . . . You should’ve seen her face. Dogs have expressions, did you know that? And they can read our faces. They’re one of the few animals that can. She bolted that day and it wasn’t fear. She was chasing something. She was doing her job. She was protecting me. And whatever it was took her right in front of that car. She didn’t even see it.”

Her eyes were teary now.

“That night, I heard a voice. Lying in bed. I couldn’t make out the words. It was like someone was in the wall. I couldn’t hear the words, except for two. Get out, they said.

“Get out.”

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

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It’s like magic

08Oct

“Chase!” Lt. Miller called from the door of her office.

I sighed. I looked down at the open drawer. I was trying to surreptitiously pack its complete contents into a box under my desk. I moved the giant salamander claw out of the way and pushed the drawer closed with my shoe.

I wasn’t even all the way into her office before she asked in full earshot of everyone. “Did you pay the Cormacks a visit?”

I stopped and leaned against the door frame. I didn’t want to sit down for that shit.

Miller saw my face and her head dropped.

“You’re just trying to make all of this as difficult as possible, aren’t you?”

“Don’t worry. Mrs. Cormack made it clear I wasn’t welcome.”

“Nevertheless, she called Legal. They called me. I’m to advise you that you are not to speak to the Cormacks, for any reason, without counsel present.”

She didn’t say ‘or else.’ She didn’t have to.

“Do you understand?” she asked, as if she knew how stupid a question it was and was angry at me that I was making her ask it. “Not if they threaten you. Not if they invite you for tea. Not if their house is on fire. Got it?”

I nodded. “I don’t suppose it matters why I went.”

“No. It doesn’t.” She looked at me sternly. She was serious, too. She’d just about used up all the patience she had left. “I have something else for you. Just came in.”

She moved to sit, which was my clue to follow her inside.

“Forensics finally got out to the derelict house,” she said. “You were right. Looks like the crime scene. Large amounts of the victim’s blood were found on the floor inside, along with a sleeping bag and a bunch of her clothes and personal effects.”

“You mean like she was living there?”

Shawna nodded. “Abusive ex maybe? He finds out she’s run away, tracks her down, things get violent?”

“Could be. I’ll take a look. But if it’s all right to ask, why is it all my evidence seems to be going to you first?”

She tossed an evidence bag to me from her desk. There was a flash drive inside.

“The security footage from the gym,” she explained.

The bag was still sealed. She hadn’t watched it yet.

“What about the victim’s place of business?” she asked. “What was it? Outreach clinic or something?”

I nodded. “On my list. After a walk-through at the crime scene. I’d like to look at the video first, though.”

Apparently I was being micromanaged.

“That’s fine. Just keep me in the loop. And I still need that report on the apartment thing. You know, with your leg and all that.”

“Is that really a priority right now? I got eight bodies on the board.”

“It’s a liability thing. You were injured.”

“And it’s more important to the guys upstairs that I don’t sue than that I find Amber’s killer.”

She turned her head sideways. “Just write the damed report.”

“Right.”

She shook her head. “You’re lucky, Chase. Or so damned good that we can’t even tell. Sometimes I really don’t know how you do it.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“A dozen officers donated an afternoon to canvas that stretch of drainage from the overflow to the other side of the freeway. A dozen men and women came away with nothing. You go for a job and snag the victim’s car and the crime scene, like magic.”

I turned my head as if to say “ain’t it though?”

She waited a polite moment to see if I’d add anything. I didn’t.

“Let me know if you turn up anything at the clinic.”

“Will do.”

I went back to my desk and loaded the video, which I was still watching when Lt. Miller left for the evening. It wasn’t until I heard her turn off the light and lock her office door that I realized she and I were the only ones left on the floor. I think she’d been waiting for me.

“Tell me you’re working on that report,” she said from across the room.

“Almost done,” I lied.

She fixed her purse on her shoulder and lifted her briefcase and walked out. I heard her keys jingle in the hall. I was alone. It was when I was alone, and only then, that I could very occasionally hear the muffled shouts, as if through a heavy gag.

I kicked the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet. “Shut up.”

I put my chin on my palm and clicked through the footage again.

The problem wasn’t that there was no color or sound so much as the angle was off. But then, the camera was intended to capture traffic in front of the gym and not what was going on across the street. As such, only the steps below the side door of Dr. Massey’s building were in frame, not the door itself. The good doctor was a little younger than I expected. She trotted down the steps and disappeared down the sidewalk toward the main road. Sure enough, a few minutes later, an American four-door sedan identical to the one I found pulled in front of the curb and stopped. She got out and started loading boxes.

At some point, a bearded man in fashionable, thick-rimmed glasses waited by the open trunk of the blue car. Doctor Massey came out and seemed surprised to see him. They had words. First it seemed like she was threatening him. Then it seemed like he was threatening her. She got spooked. She ran to the steps, like she was going to flee back to her condo, but something out of frame stopped her. And that’s when I saw the man with the coat. He wandered into frame on the sidewalk, apposite the man in glasses, and just stands there. Unfortunately, one of the trees that dot the sides of the street blocked his face in profile. And it blocked only his face. The rest of his head and torso were visible over a parked car, but his face was obscured by the trunk of the tree, as if he knew right where to stand.

Just then a big vintage car stopped in the street and blocked most of the shot. I could see some movement, but that’s all, and by the time it pulls away, everyone is gone, including Dr. Massey’s blue sedan.

All of this took place across the street from the camera, of course, meaning it was all crammed into one tiny corner of the video footage. Blowing it up made it blurry—too blurry to make out any retail detail. The department has some video forensics guys of course, but they’re usually backed up, which is why detectives and support staff also have access to an off-the-shelf video editing program—so we can do some of the easy work ourselves. Nothing fancy. Whatever we find has to stand up in court, of course, which means a proper run. But enough to keep us on the trail.

I can’t say I’m an expert at it, but I’ve gotten handy with some of the algorithmic presets. After you load your video, you can select enhancement and the app gives you a choice of nine algorithms. If you run all nine, it tiles them on your screen in a grid so you can compare them as the video loops. As you might expect, some of the algorithms are better with some parts of the footage than others. I was at the office until after midnight getting a clean still shot of the two men—the man with the beard and the man with the coat—to show to the staff at Dr. Massey’s work, and to her family and friends, if we found any.

At some point, the lights over my head shut off, leaving my computer screen and a handful of others the only light in the long room. And of course the exit sign.

I heard muffled shouting and kicked the drawer again.

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

[image error]

Just don’t let your mom find it

05Oct

I sat in the car on the side of the road for a good fifteen or twenty minutes. The Cormack’s teenage daughter was flirting loudly with a neighborhood boy on the front lawn, two houses down on the other side, that was covered in leaves. She was around sixteen or so, I guessed, and not much over five feet with blonde hair, a baby face, and growing hips. It was chilly out, and both her and the boy had their sweatshirts zipped and hoods up. They were smiling and talking softly. Every now and again, she would say something in a teasing voice and he would reach forward and try to tickle her. She would dance out of the way and let out an exaggerated yelp, regardless of whether he had connected or not.

Mrs. Cormack opened the front door. “Brooke,” she called to her daughter, “that’s enough. Come in the house, please.”

I got out of my car. I was easy enough to spot sitting behind the wheel, so there was no sense in waiting anymore.

“But you said we could say goodbye!” the girl objected.

“Brooke,” her mother urged sternly. That’s when she saw me walking up the sidewalk. She stiffened.

“Mom! We might not ever see each other again!”

“It’s okay,” the boy said under his breath.

Mrs. Cormack watched me. I stopped at the end of the driveway. I didn’t want to intrude.

“Brooke. Now,” she said in a stern monotone.

The girl saw me and turned back to her mother. “Just a few—”

“NOW!” the woman yelled.

The girl threw her arms. “But we have all day to pack.” She pointed to the open garage.

It was three-quarters full with lawn care equipment, bikes, shelving, storage—even a table saw. Both the Cormack’s cars had to be kept on the drive. There was a pallet of flat moving boxes resting next a freezer.

“I said . . .” Caroline Cormack stepped forward and took her daughter’s arm. “Get inside right now.”

“I’ll see you later,” the boy said, stepping back.

Brooke pulled free. “God, you’re being such a bitch.” The girl stormed into the house and slammed the door.

I watched the boy trot down the street without looking back.

Mrs. Cormack crossed her arms and looked at me angrily. I think she was deciding whether or not it was worth it to speak her mind—to finally tell me what I’m sure she’d been thinking for months—or to just ask me to leave so she could deal with her child.

From where I was standing at the end of the driveway, I could see young Brooke walking diagonally across the back yard toward a sloping ditch at the back of the property. She must have gone right through the house and out the back. She had her hood up and her hands stuck in her pockets.

“What do you want?” Mrs. Cormack asked.

It was more civil that I expected, and I hesitated.

“There’s nothing for you to say,” she told me. “You’re not welcome here.”

I nodded in understanding. “Of course,” I said. “Please tell him I stopped by.” I turned to leave.

“It should’ve been you who was shot.” She glowered for a long moment. “You had a responsibility.”

She wrapped the folds of her cardigan around her and walked inside. I heard the door shut and lock. She even pulled curtains across the narrow windows that ran down either side of the frame. A few moments later, the garage door started rumbling down.

I looked at the cars in the drive. A luxury sedan and a full-size SUV. They weren’t exorbitant. The SUV was at least three years old and the sedan a little older. Neither were top of the line. Neither were outside the reach of a frugal detective. But both were definitely nicer than my car.

I walked along the neighbor’s yard to the ditch that ran along the back of the houses. There was a row of young trees, the kind that survived by growing at the thin margin between public and private property where workers on both sides were sure it was someone else’s job to clear them. Past that was a grassy slope that ended at a concrete-lined ditch, long overgrown—a holdover from some earlier use of the land. At the other side was a fence and then more housing. The girl, Brooke, was sitting on the embankment, out of sight of the house. She had a lit cigarette. There was an old pile of butts at her feet and quite a few others scattered around. The area around her had been mostly cleaned of overgrowth, I suspected so the neighborhood kids could gather there and do some skating.

Brooke had a lighter in her hand and was flicking it over and over like she wanted to do something with it.

“Looks like we had the same idea,” I said.

I surprised her. She glanced to me and then quickly turned away. Her legs moved like she was going to get up. But she didn’t. I suspected that was because she didn’t want to risk being seen by her mother, who would no doubt soon discover she was gone.

“Can I bum a light?” I asked.

She extended the lighter without looking at me. I took it and pulled a cigar from the inside pocket of my sport coat. I rolled the end in the flame to char it.

She either got curious what was taking so long or smelled the smoke, because she turned her hood enough to catch a glimpse.

“You smoke cigars?” she asked.

I took a puff with the end in the flame and it flared. “Bother you?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know girls smoked cigars.”

“Girls can do whatever they want.”

I handed the lighter back.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

She watched as I took a couple puffs to make sure it was lit.

“What’s it taste like?” she asked.

I looked at the cig in her hand. “How old are you?”

“How old were you when you started?” she asked, turning away from me a little.

I made a face. “Good point.” I handed her the lit cigar.

She took it and held it awkwardly. She barely touched it with her lips. The stream of smoke rising from the lit end sputtered as she drew, but it was weak and she barely exhaled enough for me to see. She made a sour face and handed it back.

I took the cigar and sat down—not close to her but not far either. We sat there smoking for a few minutes in silence. She finished her cig and lit another.

“Why did you come here?” she asked.

“Same reason you did. Needed a break after your mom—”

“No. I mean why did you come?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. Seemed like I should at least stop by. Pay my respects. Say I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

I turned to her. “What do you think?”

She shrugged. “People say my dad was . . . You know, that he was going to be arrested. And stuff.”

“Who told you that?”

She shrugged again. “No one.”

“Well, even if he was, he’s still your dad.”

“Yeah.”

“You got anyone you can talk to?”

She shrugged a third time, as teenagers do.

“You know, not to go all old person on you, but I had a hard time with my folks when I was around your age.” I waited a moment to see if she got it. I don’t think she did. “When they found out I was gay.”

Her face got a little pink. “I’m not gay,” she said meekly.

I snorted in humor. Smoke blew from my mouth.

“Yeah. I wasn’t saying you were. Just that I know how important it is to have someone you can talk to. Just because you’re not the one in the wheelchair doesn’t mean you’re not having a hard time with all of this as well.”

“Yeah.”

I waited to see if more came. It didn’t.

“That was all.” I stood. “Thanks for the break.”

“What do you do?” she asked. “Like, what department are you in or whatever?”

“Homicide.”

“So you find killers.”

I nodded. “I try.”

“Who do you talk to? About the bad stuff?”

She was a sharp kid. “I had a doctor. For awhile.” I took a long puff on the cigar. “That helped,” I lied.

“What happened?”

“He said I was crazy.”

She smiled and exhaled just short of a laugh. It was genuine.

“Really?” Her posture relaxed.

I nodded.

We were quiet for a minute. I was still standing. She was still sitting.

“Mom says we’re gonna hafta sell the house and move someplace. I’ll have to change schools. And she was looking for jobs. On the internet. I saw it in the browser history when I went to look for this video my friend sent me the other day so I could show Jordan.” She stopped, but I could tell there was something else. “She was looking at divorce lawyers,” she said. “I don’t think she contacted any of them. But. She was looking.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into that,” I said. “People, ya know, sometimes they just need to think about those kinds of things so they can deal. Or so they can work through things and see what’s a good idea and what isn’t.”

“I know. Trust me.” She rolled her eyes. “I know my mom. If she was gonna leave, she’d find another guy first. She can’t stand to be alone for five seconds. But it’s just, like, she was looking, ya know? I know how she feels about my dad. But she was thinking about leaving him. He’s in a wheelchair. He can’t breathe without that machine and everything. And she was sitting downstairs looking.”

I waited again.

“I think she thinks he’s guilty.” She looked to me for confirmation. “You know, of all that stuff. So she was mad because now she has to take care of him and we’re gonna lose the house and everything and we don’t have any money and we have to get a lawyer because the Department won’t pay for anything.” She shook her head. “And I don’t think she knows what to do.”

I think Brooke wanted me to confirm her suspicions. That was why I’d been allowed to stay.

Word around the precinct was that at the time of the shooting, Kent Cormack was days away from facing formal charges: conspiracy, money laundering, obstruction of justice. After the shooting, the Department was facing a large payout—not just medical bills but disability pension and all the rest. Some of that gets paid through insurance, of course, but just like with regular folks, large claims affect premiums, and Cormack’s bill was going to be measured in millions across the rest of his life.

Thing is, he hadn’t been formally charged, let alone convicted. And there was some question now of whether he ever would be. The department lawyers said, even given the evidence, it would be hard for a jury to convict a permanently disabled police officer who’d been shot in the line of duty, especially once they saw him. Kent Cormack couldn’t go anywhere without a cluster of machines to keep him alive. And of course the PR people gave their two cents. How it would look to the public, they asked, if the Department started prosecution now? It would’ve been one thing if he’d already been under indictment, but to charge him after he was shot, when he could barely speak, would seem not just callous but cruel. They pointed out that the union reps would play to that. Legally, they had to. Cormack was a member, and just like anyone, he was innocent until proven otherwise. If the association didn’t represent him to the fullest, he could sue them as well.

So the Department found a bureaucratic solution. They neither filed charges nor paid his claim. Part of that was probably greed. But part of it was that the brass genuinely didn’t want to take support from good cops to cover a dirty one for the rest of his life.

The Cormacks got a lawyer, of course. But that left the suit a civil rather than a criminal matter, and it made the Department the defendant, both of which made for much softer headlines in the papers. I imagine the idea was that a settlement would quietly be reached, charges would be forgotten, and the city would have a much, much smaller payout.

Of course, what happened to Kent after the money ran out was the Cormacks’ problem.

“What’s your dad say about all this?” I asked.

She shrugged. “He doesn’t say much. He can’t really talk. I know he’s mad. He spends all his time time writing angry letters. To the department. To his old lawyers, the one we had before that he thinks screwed up the case. To anyone who pissed him off. He’s always got stacks of envelopes in his room. When I go in there, it’s like he wants to see me, but then he gets embarrassed or whatever and doesn’t want me around.”

“How does that make you feel?”

She shrugged again. “I dunno. Hurt, I guess. But I’m not mad. I just feel bad he’s in his room by himself all the time. Mom barely says two words to him anymore.”

I nodded.

Brooke finished her cigarette and crushed it. “I should go,” she said. She stood. “I’m supposed to be packing.”

I dropped the cigar and pressed the lit end gently with my boot.

“This kinda thing is hard for everybody,” I said. “I don’t have a magic wand, but—” I stopped. “Well, technically there’s one in my bottom drawer, but it’s broken.”

She made a face like she wasn’t a kid and I didn’t have to joke like that.

I reached into my side pocket and handed her my card. “You don’t have to use this. Sometimes it’s just nice to know there’s someone you could call if you needed to.”

She just looked at it at first. I held it closer and she took it.

I watched her walk diagonally up the grassy embankment. “Just don’t let your mom find it.”

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

[image error]

The disappearance of Alexa Sacchi

04Oct

It was only later that I came across Detective King and the Albert Fish case, and the numerous others the department conveniently files under similar headings—which is to say I didn’t start my career as the NYPD’s resident occultist. And I can’t say I ever intended it. It’s not like you know where you’ll end up when you step off the straight and narrow. But there was never any doubt why I went off. I had a clear reason. I wanted to save a child.

Alexandra Sacchi—Alexa to her friends—wasn’t a normal girl. She didn’t just have Down’s Syndrome but a severe form of autism as well. Not that she threw tantrums or had any of the other awful stereotypes. She could talk—when she wanted—with only minor impediment, and she liked to draw. She was good at it, in fact, and could render reproductions of just about anything she saw, even if only for a second, with near-photographic quality. But she did have trouble looking after herself. Food preparation, for example, always eluded her, which meant she ate a lot of junk. Her friends at the group home said they’d walk in and find her sitting silently by herself, drawing ghosts and monsters, surrounded by empty packages of junk food, chocolate-colored crumbs at the corners of her mouth.

Alexa’s mother was an alcoholic with a history of bad decisions and all of her children had been in and out of the foster system. It was during one such stay that Alexa’s foster parents noticed she spoke at length to imaginary people and talked about them as if they were real—normal behavior for kids under six, but Alexa was nine. When the adults suggested to her that the people weren’t real, Alexa got confused, then sullen. She had apparently assumed everyone could see and hear the same things she could, and when it was clear they didn’t, Alexa accused her foster parents of attempting to trick her. She became increasingly difficult and withdrawn, and there were occasional tense outbreaks. She changed homes once, but when that ended badly, no one would take her and she was hospitalized by the state before being placed in a monitored group home. After that, she would only occasionally acknowledge that the subjects of her near-photographic reproductions were anything other than artwork.

Four years later, Alexa was released to the custody of her older half brother, Dominic, the only sibling of five to survive and her only remaining family. Dominic, who went by “Dom,” was only twenty-six and had never had children, but he was married and had held a steady job selling cell phones for several years. I wanted to think the couple weren’t motivated by the monthly stipend from the state that came with custody, but honestly you just never know with people.

Unfortunately for Alexa, after her arrival, Dominic’s relationship with his young wife, Palmer Bell, turned toxic. Witnesses reported the couple started arguing, usually over Alexa. Police were called on two occasions, but other than noting the couple kept a lot of New Age and occult paraphernalia in the house, none of the officers had much to say. Run-of-the-mill “he said/she said” domestic disturbances, we were told.

Then, about seven years ago, on the night of October 24th, Dominic Sacchi called 911 and claimed he was being attacked by his sister, but when officers arrived, he recanted and said there’d been a misunderstanding and that the sliver cuts on his hands and face were the result of a kitchen accident. Two weeks later, Alexa was reported missing. She was found on the side of the road by a Massachusetts State Trooper and returned to New York. When she ran away a second time and then a third, Dominic got permission from her doctor and case manager to fit her with a GPS anklet, like they put on convicts and sex offenders.

The very next week, Dominic Sacchi didn’t show up for work. When one day turned to two, the police were called. They found the Sacchi apartment empty. The door was unlocked. There were dirty dishes in the sink, wet clothes in the washer, and a hair dryer still plugged into the wall. But no family.

Palmer was traced by her cell phone to a rent-by-week motel in Flushing, where she was alone and panicked out of her mind. Neither her husband nor her 15-year-old sister-in-law were anywhere to be found. Clearly distraught, she claimed Dominic had left, taking Alexa, after Palmer confronted him. Alexa, she said, had told her that Dominic had been sexually abusing her. It sounds horrible of course, but after repeated questioning, elements of Palmer’s story changed and the case was remanded to me and my then-partner, Craig Hammond, as a possible homicide.

Thing is, it’s hard to prove a murder when you don’t have a body, or even evidence of one. But when three days turned to four, and four days turned to a week, and a week turned to a month and there was still no sign of either Dominic Sacchi or his sister, everyone suspected the worst. Certainly, the more Hammond and I dug, the more we got the sense that there was definitely something very wrong. For one, we had no witnesses. To anything. No one would talk to us. They would never say that, of course. They would just say there was nothing to tell. But in my experience, everyone has something to tell. Even when they don’t know anything at all, people will fill your ears with gossip and speculation. Hammond and I got the distinct impression they’d been intimidated—at first we thought by Dominic, in an attempt to hide the sexual abuse. But the more we pressed, the more it seemed the person they really feared was his wife, Palmer Bell.

We did find one acquaintance, a former neighbor and dog groomer named Bea Bostwick, who’d had a falling out with the couple over their treatment of Alexa and who subsequently quit her job and moved to rural Ohio. Bea agreed to talk to us on the phone, but only off the record. She wouldn’t meet and wouldn’t testify, she cautioned. We said we understood and she proceeded to tell us a story that still gives me chills.

Bea said she saw Alexa outside the apartment one day, drawing, and went to talk to her. She said she remembered because the Sacchis had mentioned that Alexa hadn’t been herself lately, that she’d been acting strange and hadn’t drawn anything in weeks. As Bea approached, she noticed spots of blood on the back of the girl’s blouse. When she asked about it, Alexa casually reported that her sister-n-law had sewn a crystal into a cut in the middle of her back, where she couldn’t reach, which was too bad because it really itched. Bea was skeptical of course, given the girl’s mental condition, but when she asked Alexa why Palmer would do such a thing, she was told it was to suppress the evil presence that had possessed her and that she had a new necklace she was supposed to wear all the time, just like the GPS anklet—a disc of carved silver with a drop of obsidian in the center.

Bea bent to see what Alexa was drawing and casually touched the girl’s back, where she felt something hard. She looked under the girl’s shirt—over her protests—and discovered a long cut in the skin that ran along the spine, sewn shut with twine. There was a hard bulge underneath. Ms. Bostwick immediately opened the wound with scissors and removed a blood-covered crystal shard. But as soon as she tried to clean and bandage the gash, Alexa turned violent and nearly stabbed her with the scissors.

The girl ran home and Bea lifted the drawing on the ground. She described it in simple terms as a kind of hellscape: naked people, screaming and writhing, grew out of pits in the jagged face of a cliff that rose over a boiling lake of fire. The lake itself was empty save for one figure, at the center, standing calm and straight waist-high in the inferno. She said it was just a fuzzy silhouette but the figure was clearly looking straight out at the viewer, as if whoever it was could see out of the drawing and was watching her. And this, she reminded us, from a girl who could only reproduce on paper what she’d seen in the world.

The next day, Bea confronted Palmer Bell. At first she denied everything, but eventually she declared, in hushed tones, that it was in the girl’s best interests, that Bea had no idea what was going on, and that Alexa’s business was hers and Dominic’s and no one else’s. Bea said she was given a very vague threat, something about her needing to stop worrying about other people’s families and pay more attention to her own, lest anything bad happen, which she thought was odd given that she was both childless and single.

Two days later, Bea’s best friend, an eight-year-old black lab named Betty, who minded her every word, bolted out the door of their apartment as if driven by a terrible fright and was struck by a car and killed. Bea left her apartment the next day and never returned.

Everyone knew the girl was the key to the case. But Alexa had vanished without a trace. Her GPS anklet was found in the trash in a New Jersey service area. Her brother Dom was found in Delaware. He’d been dumped in a landfill after being strangled to death with the chain that held the silver talisman, which I found on the ground nearby.

Detective Hammond and I instructed Palmer Bell not to leave the state. When she did anyway, a warrant was issued, which was executed several days later in Ohio. Palmer was brought back to New York and charged with felony child endangerment and two counts of second-degree murder. But without any physical evidence, and without the testimony of Bea Bostwick, who staunchly refused every request, the prosecution had nothing but the secondhand accounts of some of the neighbors, and Palmer Bell was found not guilty and released. She fled immediately. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

To this day, the disappearance and presumed death of fifteen-year-old Alexa Sacchi remains officially unsolved.

 

I’m posting the chapters of my forthcoming urban paranormal mystery, FEAST OF SHADOWS, in order until the book is released. A blend of hard-boiled whodunit and contemporary urban fantasy, it’s been described as “Tolkien meets Dashiell Hammett for dinner in the present day.”

You can sign up here to be notified when the book is released.

You can start reading in order here: The old ones are patient.

The next chapter is: (not yet posted)

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