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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