The entryway held pots of cacti, different spiny little things that might have been flowering if they weren’t desiccated enough to be used for tinder. The charms in my hair tinkled as they rubbed against each other. Deep shadows at the end of the roofed entryway moved as I stepped forward, cautiously, and my sensitive nose picked out something it was all too familiar with. A ripe, overwhelming smell. Under my leather cuff, the scar pulsed hotly. It didn’t seem to be getting any bigger. Stop thinking like that, Jill. My entire body flushed hot, then cold. The wind was coming from behind me, or I would have noticed the smell earlier. The door creaked a little bit as the breeze pushed it.
It was open.
Monty swiped at his forehead. Sweat sheened his face. “Jesus,” he said, for the third time. Usually we only get one Jesus out of him per crime scene.
Jacinta Kutchner’s corpse hung from a white and blue striped nylon rope looped over an exposed ceiling beam creaking slightly as the house settled for the night. She wore a pale blue housedress and one slipper, and had been dead for a while, if the state of the body was any indication. The air conditioning had been turned off sometime in the recent past, and the house was breathlessly hot and stale. Not to mention reeking of decay.
I folded my arms, doing my best not to lean against the wall. The forensic techs were hard at work, gathering evidence, photographing, trying to ignore the smell. A few of them had Vicks smeared on their upper lips, it was that bad. A few days in desert heat will dry a body out, but hot moisture in an enclosed house is bad for dead human tissue.
“I don’t like this.” I kept my voice low. The techs were giving me little sideways looks, except for plump brunette Piper. She was off maternity leave and slimming down again, my very favorite forensic tech and my particular liaison with that department. Not much disturbs her serenity. Maybe it’s having kids that does it. I’ve never seen Piper even blanch. She’s even been known to whistle Disney tunes at scenes.
The mind boggles.
“I don’t either.” Monty looked miserable. I didn’t blame him. One suicide is chance, two coincidence. I didn’t want a third.
“This isn’t my type of case,” I said again. “There’s no smell of anything hinky on this one. Not extra-human hinky, that is.”
“What about human hinky?”
You don’t want me to tell you anything you don’t already know, Montaigne. You just want someone else to say it out loud. I glanced around the living room. “What the hell did she stand on? She’s only five-three, recent stretching notwithstanding.” It felt horrible, but you don’t last long around violent death without evolving some black humor. I ticked them off on my fingers. “Where’s her other slipper? Not to mention most women want to look pretty right before they take the plunge. They usually hang themselves in more private places, too.”
A fresh wave of stench rolled toward me. There was a large stain on the carpet below the body, and the insect life was having a ball. Not as much as there would be outside, but you’d be surprised how little time it takes for six-legged critters to find a recently deceased piece of meat.
“I thought about that too.” His gaze came up, touched my face, skittered away. He palmed a couple of Tums up to his mouth and started chewing. “Goddammit.”
Full night had folded around the house, darkness swirling in corners where it wasn’t driven away by electric fixtures and portable lights brought in by the crime-scene team. The shadows in the corners had weight, only seen through my blue eye.
Seen from between, violent death has its own eddies and currents. She had suffered before passing out of this place and into whatever awaited her.
This isn’t one of yours, Jill. Get going, there’s other things out there tonight you should be taking care of. But I made no move to leave beyond shifting my weight from one foot to the other.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Carper said irritably from the entryway, hunching his shoulders. His sharp blue eyes flicked once over the scene, taking everything in.
In his sneakers and tweed jackets, Carp looks more like a college professor than a homicide deet. Behind him, his partner Rosenfeld was conferring with the blue holding down the site log. Rosenfeld’s spiky auburn halo threw back what little light made it past the long mirror on the wall.
“Relax, Carp.” I let my shoulders drop. “It’s not one of mine.”
He looked only barely relieved. “Great. What’re you doing, then?”
“Conferring with Montaigne. If that’s all right with you.” Don’t get snitty with me, Carp. I’m not in the mood.
“Hi, Jill.” Rosie ambled past her partner, bumping him with her shoulder. Her jaw would have done a prizefighter proud, and her leather jacket creaked a little bit. The Terrible Two of the Homicide department, appearing nightly on the scene. “What’s going on?”
It was an excessively casual question. Santa Luz’s finest get a little bit nervous around me, though they take bets on where I’ll show up next. There’s a whole system of verifying hunter sightings left over from Mikhail’s time.
It’s when they lose track of me for a few weeks that everyone gets jumpy. Still, very few cops like being around me. The mandatory class I put all rookies through takes care of that. My tiger’s eye rosary bumped my stomach as I shifted again. “Not much for me here. See you later, Monty.”
He couldn’t quite bring himself to ask me, but he spread his hands as I passed, brushing close to Carp and almost enjoying when the man stepped away. He used to be able to get a rise out of me. Now Carper and I just go through the motions. It’s a comforting routine on both sides.
He rolled his eyes, and I grinned at him. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he looked away, the twinkle going out of his baby blues as he studied the shape of Jacinta Kutchner hanging, the edge of her robe fluttering a bit. “Goddamn,” he said, softly.
I paused at the entryway, next to the blue. He didn’t offer me the site log, but he gripped it until paper crackled. If I looked closely I would probably remember his name. “Monty.”
“Yeah?” He palmed another couple of Tums. The vacation was wearing off.
What else could I say? He wanted me to look into it, and someone else was dead. Worst case of suicide I ever saw, the tagline to an old joke floated through my head. “I’ll be in touch.”
Then I was out the door, plunging into the night, crossing the street to the Impala. She stuck out like a sore thumb, having no flashing lights, and I noticed something else about the neighborhood. Jacinta Kutchner’s neighbors didn’t come out to see what the fuss was. At all. So much for suburbia.
4
Gray predawn was breaking, again, when the phone rang and my pager went off simultaneously. I left my trench dripping on the rack in the utility room and hobbled through the hall, through the cavern of the sparring space and living room, every muscle I’d pulled singing its own separate note in the orchestra of pain. I’d broken my left arm this time, the arkeus I’d run across on the east side of town had put up a hell of a fight.
Get it, Jill? A Hell of a fight? Arf arf.
But I’d found out, to my lasting satisfaction, which pile of hell-soaked waste had given the mad accountant his power. It was unmistakable, especially when an arkeus pulls a flame-jet six feet long out of its mouth and tries to feed it to you.
The scar provides me with faster healing and damage regeneration, but when it’s busy splinting bones and replacing a few quarts of blood, pulled muscles heal more slowly. I didn’t want to think about what would happen if it started spreading, or if Perry decided it wasn’t such a hot idea to have me drawing on a hellbreed’s tainted power if he wasn’t getting anything in return—even if it was his own damn fault. Don’t think like that. The phone brayed, the pager buzzed against my hip, and I stopped short of picking up as the answering machine clicked. There were a few moments of silence, then a beep.
“Hey, kitten.” A voice I knew as well as my own slid from the speaker, only slightly distorted. “Guess you??
?re out—”
My pager quit buzzing. I was already scrambling for the phone. I scooped it up and pressed the talk button, and the machine clicked over with a feedback squeal. “Sorry about that.” Breathless, now, I folded down on the bed. “God, it’s good to hear you.”
“Hey.” Saul sounded tired. “Glad I caught you too, kitten. What’s happening in the big bad city?”
A sharp ache welled up in my chest. I miss you, and Perry called. “Not much. A couple things Monty wants me to look into. A Trader.”
“Bad?” He had a nice voice, to go with all the rest of him.
I shut my eyes, imagining him right next to me. Tall dark-haired Were, looking like a romance-novel Native American except for the gold-green sheen off his eyes in certain light, the rods and cones reflecting differently. “Nothing out of the ordinary. I even got a civilian out alive.”
“That’s my girl.” A warm rumble of approval, carried through a phone line and suddenly threatening to ease every muscle.
“How’s your mom?” I swallowed sudden dryness in my throat. Saul’s mother hadn’t been too happy to meet the hellbreed-tainted hunter he’d given up his place in the tribe for, but with faultless Were courtesy she’d accepted me into her home as a guest and cooked for me. She’d even introduced me to the extended family and officiated at the firelit ceremony that formalized everything. As far as Saul was concerned, we were formally mated.
As far as his tribe was concerned, we were as good as married, even if I was… well, disappointing. But they hadn’t said a word, just welcomed me with Were politeness.
I wondered if they regretted it now.
“There’s morphine.” Saul’s tone changed now. Deeper, and just a bit rougher. “It’s not bad. My aunts are here. They’re singing to her.”
Oh, Christ. She must be close to passing. No more needed to be said. I listened to him breathing for a few moments, knowing he was doing the same thing. “I love you,” I whispered. I can’t make it better. If I could I would. I’d hunt down the cancer and put a gun to its head. Slit its throat. Kill it for you.
“I know that, kitten.” A thin vibration came through the phone—he was rumbling, deep down in his chest, a werecougar’s response to a mate’s distress. “You sure you’re okay?”
His mother was dying and he was out there alone, because I couldn’t leave the city—nobody was around to take some of the load; the apprentices who had come out last time to handle the overflow while we were honeymooning had gone home and were needed desperately there.
And he was asking if I was okay.
I don’t deserve you, Saul. The charms in my hair jingled as I played with my pager, unclipping it from my belt. It was habit to take the damn thing with me everywhere, in a padded pocket except when I was hosing blood and stink out of my coat. “Right as rain. Wish I could be there.”
“I wish so too. You be careful for me, you hear?” He was already worrying about the next thing, or he wouldn’t have told me to be careful. He almost never did that, because it implied I couldn’t take care of myself.
Weres are touchy about things like that. “Always am. Do you need me?” Say the word, Saul. I can’t leave now, but I will if you ask me to.
Should I feel grateful, or more guilty, that he understood and hadn’t asked? That he had insisted I stay in Santa Luz, because he knew my responsibility weighed as heavily as his?
“I do, but I’m okay. They need you more.” A long pause, neither of us willing to hang up just yet. He broke it first, this time. “I’d better go back in.”
“Okay.” Don’t hang up. Perry called me, and I’m scared. Come home. I swallowed the words. “You take care of yourself, furboy.”
“You too. Tell everyone hello for me.”
“I will.” I waited another few moments, then straightened my arm to put the phone down. He hated saying goodbye.
So did I.
I laid the phone in its cradle and watched as the light winked off. Let out a long breath, muscles twitching and sore under my torn, blood-stiff T-shirt. My pants were shredded—the arkeus had just missed my femoral artery in its dying desperation, brought to bay and made physical enough to fight at last. I lifted my pager. The number on it was familiar, and I scooped up the phone and dialed again without giving myself time to think. It rang twice.
“Montaigne,” he barked.
“You bellowed?” I even sounded normal, sharp and Johnny-on-the-spot. All hail Jill Kismet, the great pretender.
“We got another disappearance on the east side. And there’s something else. Can you come in?”
My entire body ached. I hauled myself up from the bed, looked longingly at the rumpled pillow and tossed blankets. Saul was the domestic half of our partnership, I’ve never been good at that sort of shit. The hurt in my heart hadn’t gone away. It was still a sharp piercing, like a broken bone in my chest. I made it over to the dresser, wincing as my leg healed fully and the scar flushed under the damp leather cuff. The urge to tear the cuff off and make sure it wasn’t spreading suddenly ignited, I pushed it away.
“Jill?” Monty sounded halfway to frantic.
I snapped back into myself and jerked a dresser drawer open, scooping up a black Frodo Lives! T-shirt. “I’m on my way.”
The message light on the machine was blinking. I ignored it and bolted for the bathroom, another pair of leather pants, and quite possibly a sleepless day.
5
Michael Spilham.” Monty laid the file down on his cluttered desk. “Vanished from a bus stop out near Percoa Park last night. We have a verified sighting at ten-fifteen, when a coworker drove by and saw him waiting for the bus due at ten-twenty-six. The driver on that route doesn’t remember him, says she wondered about that because he’s a regular. His mother filed a missing-persons when he didn’t come home on time; says it’s not like him. It might be nothing, but it’s in the same area as the other disappearances.”
I nodded. Percoa Park. A brief cold wave slid down my spine—we’d found bodies there before. “That’s a small window.”
“The bus might have been off by five minutes or so. Still, you’re right.”
If Monty hadn’t had something else up his sleeve he would have given me the location over the phone, and I’d already be there searching for clues. The other disappearances on the east side were all the same—people vanishing without a trace, outside, often in very short spaces of time. Small windows in disappearances are common enough, but this one smelled fishy to me.
It stank of hell, actually. Or something unnatural. Still.… “I dunno. Everything about this fits except the gender of the victim.”
But that meant very little too. Women are just bigger targets of opportunity most of the time.
“Can you look at it?” He stared down at his desk. The bottle of whiskey was down by a quarter.
“That’s the plan. Want to tell me what’s bothering you?” I hooked my thumbs in my belt, my dangling fingers brushing the bullwhip’s oiled curve. The precinct building quivered, phones ringing and thin predawn wind boiling against the windows. Monty’s office didn’t have any outside portholes. It was more of a luxury than you’d think—on a summer’s day, the air conditioning didn’t have to fight for primacy.
“I got autopsy reports on the widow.” His shoulders dropped, and he cast a longing look at the Jack Daniels. I picked up the bottle, uncapped it, took a swallow. It burned on the way down. I used to drink a lot of this stuff, before Saul happened along. “And?”
“Hyoid crushed and damage to the strap muscles, but no cervical vertebrae snapped and no rope burns.”
Monty dropped down in his chair. “We’re waiting for toxicology, but there was… she was… there was vaginal bruising. And semen. We might get DNA.”
Oh, Christ. “So we’re looking at a murder here, not a suicide.” I said it so he didn’t have to.
“Whoever set it up didn’t work that hard. There was nothing for her to stand on to get up there. The rope was tied to the—??
?
“I saw the scene, Monty.” I didn’t want to revisit it. As gruesome as hellbreed get—and they get pretty damn gruesome—I’m still more upset by things human beings do to each other without needing any extra help. It’s in a hellbreed’s nature to be vicious, just like a cancer cell or a rabid animal. I’m still not sure why people do it.
Monty stared at his desk. “Her bedroom was torn apart. Looks like someone was looking for something, or maybe the attack started there. Carp and Rosie are betting on both. The screen in the master bathroom window was torn loose, but it’s too small for anyone but a five-year-old to shimmy through.”
That was odd, too. I replayed the scene in my head. Something about that bathroom nagged at me. “Who sleeps with their window open in that neighborhood? Even with bars on the window.” And why not tear up the rest of the house if they were looking for something?
“The neighbors aren’t worth jackshit.” Monty smoothed the fresh manila folder on his desk, the one with Jacinta Kutchner’s name on the tab. “Nobody can remember anything out of the usual.”
I exhaled sharply. “Monty. This isn’t my type of case. There’s no inhuman agency at work here. I’ve got those disappearances to look into and—”
“Jill.” He dropped down into his chair and glared at me. “I never asked you for anything like this before. Marv was my partner.”
I looked down at the file. Lots of people don’t understand that about cops. The partner isn’t quite a spouse, but they’re the person whose head you think inside of, whose judgment and reactions you trust your life to, the person you spend so much time with you might as well be twins.
It may not be love, but it’s close.
It wasn’t Monty’s tender feelings that made me reach across the desk and tug the file out from under his hand. It was the vision of Jacinta Kutchner’s body, gently swinging just the tiniest bit as her empty house breathed around her.