17
Valdez, Malaky, and I hike through the forest, guided by crime-scene tape strung across the branches of saplings, break through the front line of trees, and stumble out onto the fire road. Hallelujah. Don’t get me wrong, I love primordial forests with whippy saplings, stabbing twigs, razor-edged leaves, bloody corpses, and dangerous magic. But never have I been so glad to step free of a majestic wilderness onto the humble dirt road of civilization.
Black-and-white patrol cars crowd the road, a mud-brown Buick with rooftop antennae and “Cop Car” written all over it in invisible ink, and an Alameda County Coroner’s van.
Two paramedics in short-sleeved shirts, sweat-stained in the high morning heat, lean against the van’s back bumper, joking and toking Marlboros while they await the word to proceed to the crime scene and earn their paychecks bagging bodies.
“You,” Malaky snaps at them–snapping being, apparently, his other mode of communicating with people besides shouting–“she needs medical attention.”
The paramedics—two sweet-faced boys who look as if they barely qualify to hold a driver’s license–fling down their cigarettes, stamp them out, and throw open the back doors of the van. One climbs in and totes out a white plastic box emblazoned with a Red Cross.
He douses my hands with hydrogen peroxide and takes his time cleaning the scratches on my dancer’s legs. Ouch, ouch, ouch. The second paramedic tenderly tapes me up with bandages. They’re so sweet, I could weep.
“Ms. Teller, I’m going to run your ID through the computer,” Valdez says. “That okay with you?”
“Help yourself, Detective.”
Valdez strides to the Buick and climbs in. A moment later she climbs out and hands my license back, her warmth totally restored. “Not even a parking ticket.”
“Yeah, amazing, isn’t it?” Malaky says. “How some people get away with it for years?”
“Get away with what, Lieutenant Malaky?”
He starts in with a sneer, but the purr of a well-tuned car approaching on the fire road interrupts our pleasant repartee.
“Kovac is here,” Valdez says in such a breathy voice, I turn and look at her.
Her face remains a cop face, impassive and professional, but her vivid red lipstick on generous lips takes on a whole new meaning. Beneath her façade, Maria Valdez conceals a powder keg of passion, little explosions of which are detonating at the arrival of Jack Kovac.
Fine with me. I have every intention of staying out of the detective’s way. If Malaky’s got a bone to pick with me, I need all the friends at the Berkeley P.D. I can get.
Malaky doesn’t notice Valdez and her little explosions. Neither do the paramedics. But all three men get a wary look in their eyes when the car drives up and brakes.
It’s a 1970 Touring International Injection BMW 2002 with those thin roof pillars, that wide, wide windshield, and mint-condition chrome. Antennae bristle on the roof and the jet-black paint job sparkles darkly in the sunlight.
Not exactly a flashy car. As a connoisseur of mint-condition chrome, though, I think it’s a very classy car. What can I expect of the driver? Sherlock Holmes? Batman? James Bond? Malaky called the man a creep. Darth Vader?
No, he’s a man, just a man. Just a man? He steps out from the driver’s seat, six feet of sinewy. His hair, cut a little long, is the red-gold color of ripe wheat. Shadows pool beneath his cheekbones, the cheeks and jaw clean-shaven. He wears a light blue business shirt, the collar unbuttoned, khaki-colored slacks cinched with a woven-leather belt, and some kind of European men’s shoes. Sky above, earth below. His mouth neither smiles nor frowns but holds itself in reserve. A slash of sunglasses conceals his eyes.
Whoa! I take a step back. Do I sense the pulse of power? Oh, yeah.
But a subtle power. A shimmer of power. Not a lot of power? Or maybe so much power, Kovac knows very well how to conceal his true nature from the quotidian world.
He walks toward me, the strength of his stride oddly interrupted by a limp in his left leg. An angry red aura flares from his knee to his toe.
When he stands before me, he pulls off the sunglasses, and I can’t help but flinch. From the outer corner of his left eye down to the angle of his jaw runs the hard white keloidal line of a serious scar.
His eyes–the cool blue-gray of a deep-water ocean wave–take their time looking me over, frank and appraising. His ocean-blues aren’t the usual cop eyes, but something more sorrowful, more haunted, with a ferocity that hates whatever it is he hates. Under his gaze, a force penetrates me like an X-ray, invisible to me but laying my bones bare to him. Not a power play or a bold invasion the way Brand toyed with me, but a scrutiny that makes me squirm.
“Phil, Maria.” He nods curtly at Malaky and Valdez. His voice, a resonant radio voice in the tenor range, pulses peculiarly in my ears. He holds out his hand to me. “I am Jack Kovac, FBI Special Agent, Supernatural Crimes.”
Just what I need–another handshake with a strange man possessing power. Unknown power. Thanks, but no thanks. I cross my arms over my breasts and tuck my hands in my armpits. Sweaty armpits and mine, all mine.
“Abby Teller.”
He drops his hand. “I know who you are, Abby Teller.” I’m not sure I like the way he says that. “Detective Valdez sketched your story on the phone. I’ll need to schedule an appointment to take your statement. But right now, I’d like to hear from you how you got to the murder scene from the road.”
“Me, I’d like to hear how Ms. Teller is enjoying the show,” Malaky butts in.
“The show?” I look back and forth between Valdez and Kovac for help.
Valdez blushes again and averts her eyes. I’m not sure where the blush comes from. Either she’s embarrassed that Malaky is harassing me, an innocent citizen, or she guesses, from the way I look at her and Kovac, that I intuit a connection between them. A not-so-good connection.
“You know, the show,” Malaky persists. “Us dumb cops falling all over ourselves, admiring your handiwork. And now a real, live FBI agent-man, talking to you, cozy like.”
I turn to Valdez. “What is he talking about?”
She rolls her eyes at Malaky. “Some perps get their kicks out of coming to the scene and watching the police work.”
I puzzle over her comment. “So?”
Kovac allows the slightest of smiles to play across his mouth, but the smile doesn’t reach his ocean-blues. “Let me tell you a story, Ms. Teller. A true-crime story. A local sorcerer marries a mail-order Russian bride. Sorcerer and bride don’t get along. Bride goes missing, sorcerer is accused of supernatural murder. But it’s all circumstantial. Someone in Tilden Park saw the sorcerer’s SUV parked on a fire road. Berkeley P.D. strip-searches the area. Nothing. Case goes to trial, defendant pleads innocent. Jury verdict is about to come in. Can’t prove he’s guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. All of a sudden, the sorcerer cracks. Says the bride’s corpse is there, off the fire road, in the very woods Berkeley P.D. searched through and through. He tells them where, exactly, and what do you know? His graveyard spell has worn off, and there she is, way the worse for wear.”
His story still doesn’t quite connect with Valdez’s comment. “The point being?”
“The point, Ms. Teller,” Kovac says, “is that there are sixty-three thousand acres of old growth in these hills. How many killers, garden-variety or supernatural, have dumped bodies up here? If we found even one percent, we’d beat the odds.”
“Get it, Ms. Teller?” Malaky says. “The odds of you wandering off the road and stumbling on the bodies by chance? People you knew, people you picked up last night? I wouldn’t make book on it.”
“Got it.” I wonder again whether I should request a lawyer, then decide to trust my innocence and the power of justice. “Hey, that’s what I do, folks. I beat the odds.”
“Why did you go into the forest instead of staying on the road?” Kovac demands.
“I didn’t want to wind up with a spear in my back. Or a weed-digger. There’s this geezer–”
“Yes, yes,” Kovac says, cutting me off. “But you could have outrun him on the road. You look like you’re in shape.”
I look like I’m in shape? What does he hope to gain with a backhanded comment like that? I shut my mouth and my blood begins to boil. I hate it when people interrupt me. Daniel interrupted me constantly. I even bought him etiquette books on the art of conversation, but he never changed his habit of interrupting me.
“You would have been safer on the road?” Kovac prompts.
I shrug. “How should I know.”
“All right.” Kovac makes a point of studying the imposing wall of trees bordering both sides of the road. “Ms. Teller, why did you go in the direction you went?”
“The crows led me.”
“Now I get it,” Malaky says. “A little birdie told you.”
“Three little birdies, actually. The crows are at the murder scene right now. Or were, last time I looked.” I widen my eyes. “You mean you didn’t notice the crows, Lieutenant Malaky?”
Malaky glares at Valdez, glaring being his third mode of dealing with people. “You notice any crows?”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t see any crows but, hey, Phil, I wasn’t bird-watching.”
“Maybe they’re invisible crows,” Malaky says. “Maybe they’re hanging out with the invisible geezer and his invisible spear.”
“I want to see for myself,” Kovac says.
********
Enjoy the book here for free!
Or buy it at the links below. Or donate if and when you wish, whatever you wish, at https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/lisamasonthewriter/
The choice is yours!
The Garden of Abracadabra is on BarnesandNoble, US Kindle, Canada Kindle, UK Kindle, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.
The Garden of Abracadabra is also on Amazon.com in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and India.
Copyright © 2012–2016 by Lisa Mason.
Visit me at Lisa Mason’s Official Website (newly updated for 2016) for books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, and blogs, adorable pet pictures, forthcoming projects, fine art and bespoke jewelry, and more!
And on my Facebook Author Page, on my Facebook Profile Page, on Amazon, on Goodreads, on LinkedIn, on Twitter at @lisaSmason, at Smashwords, at Apple, at Kobo, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
If you enjoy a title, please “Like” it, add five stars, write a review on the site where you bought it, Tweet it, blog it, post it,, and share the word with your family and friends.
Your participation really matters.
Thank you for your readership!
