26
An elevator chimes in the lobby of One Hundred Eighty Grand Avenue, a mirrored midcentury high-rise in booming uptown Oakland and home to the Bay Area offices of the FBI. Jack Kovac strides out between mirrored elevator doors, a different man.
He looks and acts like such a different man, I have to blink. Who is this man? An identical twin brother who covers for Kovac when he calls in sick?
Or maybe it’s just me. Research suggests that people who imbibe strong caffeinated drinks may be prone to seeing pink elephants and other hallucinations. I’ve got an adrenaline buzz that won’t quit as much from the Sumatra Extra-bold I’ve been guzzling all morning as my eagerness to give my statement. I’ve got a million questions of my own for Kovac about Tilden Park.
Jack Kovac is no pink elephant.
He’s smiling, keenly alert but relaxed, and awesomely dapper in an ivory linen suit over a black T, Miami Vice style. The planes and angles of his face are taut, not pinched with pain, and the scar from his eye to his jaw has nearly disappeared. The haunted sorrow in his ocean-blues is subdued, almost invisible but not quite, and glossed over by a take-care-of-business mix of professional courtesy and cop steel. And, if I’m not mistaken, lit by a delighted gleam at the sight of me.
Jack Kovac, delighted?
After pitying his painful hobble yesterday, I have to raise my eyebrows at his soccer-star stride today. He doesn’t lean on the cane. He doesn’t carry the cane at all. And the angry red aura from knee to toe? I can’t see it. Not a trace. Just space. Or rather, the usual sort of space surrounding inanimate objects, objects with no life-force of their own. It’s the aura of ivory linen trousers, a polished black leather shoe.
Only the mystery of his left leg ties the man I met yesterday with the man I greet today.
I’ve already gone through Security and walked through the scanner at the door. All Kovac has to do is lead me to the elevators. We enter one, he punches the button for the eighth floor, and the elevator whooshes up.
“Thanks for keeping our appointment, Abby.”
“Did I have a choice, Mr. Kovac?”
“No, but you’d be surprised how many people think they do. And it’s Jack, please.”
“I think I’ll stick with Mr. Kovac.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Are you angry with me?”
“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a classic horror story and the Spencer Tracy film is, I think, the best of the lot, but I really don’t care for the story in real life, thanks just the same.”
“I sincerely apologize for last night. I don’t like acting too personal around the police. They know I’ve got power. Now they know you do, too.”
“I think you don’t like acting too personal with me around Detective Valdez.”
He laughs and ignores my observation. He’s good at that, ignoring remarks he doesn’t want to respond to and changing the subject. “How did your hot date with the movers go?”
“It was a dream date. The truck rolled up right on time. The guys didn’t scratch my furniture and rearranged the living room and the dining room three times. I won’t know till I unpack all those infernal boxes whether anything got broken.”
“Glad to hear it. Moving your household is way up there on the top-ten list of life’s most stressful events.”
“Way up there along with the death of a parent, the death of a beloved spouse, or a major personal injury.” He doesn’t respond to my “major injury” comment so I hold out my hands, sporting a brand-new set of scratches and ragged fingernails, courtesy of a box of clothes and shoes I couldn’t wait to tear open. “And, unlike death or major injury, hell on your manicure.”
“You need to talk to Valdez. She swears by Linda’s Nails in Albany.”
“You’re pretty tough on Valdez.” Oops, there I go, shooting my mouth off about things that are none of my business.
Kovac stiffens. “We’ve got to work together sometimes but, when it comes to her and me, it’s over. You’ve got to be tough when it’s over.”
“No kidding.” I think about Daniel’s phone call at dawn yesterday. His emails that I deleted, unread. Am I being tough? Or cowardly? Or do I still care a little for the man I left behind in Buckeye Heights? Am I still attached to a longtime relationship I bailed out of during the hazy aftermath of my mother’s death?
“It’s over,” he continues, “because she insists on pitying me.”
“Why does she pity you?” I hope I don’t sound as prying and disingenuous as I feel. Or naïve. It’s only obvious why anyone would pity Jack Kovac.
“She’s a pitying kind of woman.” Cagey Kovac.
“For what it’s worth,” I say. “I think Valdez wants to take care of you and help you manage things.”
“You know what, Abby? I can take care of myself and manage things just fine.”
I take a chance, playing Dear Abby. “Taking care of someone and helping him manage things is part of my definition of love.”
He snorts, unimpressed with my platitude. “Valdez needs to find someone else to take care of and manage things for. A better man than me.”
“A man who doesn’t possess power like you. Isn’t that what you really mean?”
Oops, again. It’s one of those I-know-that-you-know-that-I-know kind of games. A game Brand played with me. From his disapproving frown, Kovac doesn’t like the game any more than I did, but he does get the message.
“Tracking down and capturing humans and unhumans who commit heinous crimes with their supernatural powers is my life’s work. I don’t need magic in my personal life.”
“I stand corrected, Mr. Kovac.”
“I’m not correcting you, Abby, and it’s Jack, please.” The elevator slides to a stop. “After you give your statement, I want to discuss some things with you that neither Valdez nor Malaky could understand.”
“Because they’ve got no power.”
He shoots me an exasperated look, which I coolly return. The elevator doors whoosh open and we step into a hushed hallway.
“That’s right. Malaky and Valdez know just about everything there is to know about human evil, but when it comes to evil magic, they’re at a disadvantage. That’s why Supernatural Crimes was called in on this case, though we each have our independent authority. The U.C. police are helping us out, too, asking around town about the girls. A crime like this up on the hill from campus doesn’t look good for the University. Or for Magical Arts and Crafts.”
“Who were they, Trish and Zarah?”
“We don’t know yet. No one has filed a missing persons report. The girls carried no IDs. They’ve got no criminal records, never served in the military or worked for the government so their fingerprints drew a blank in the database.”
“What about Brand? Are those really mug shots?”
“I’ll catch you up on Brand after the interview. To your left, please.”
Kovac guides me through another security checkpoint at the door to Supernatural Crimes, through a din of chiming telephones and clacking computers, to a conference room.
At the expansive picture window, I admire the meandering jogging path around Lake Merritt and the sparkling lake with its ducks and geese and long-legged water birds striding through the shallows. Seagulls perch atop the ornate amber lamps of the Necklace of Lights. The lush woods of Lakeside Park spread out on the shore opposite the high-rises of the Kaiser Center.
Kovac lowers the Venetian blinds and turns on a digital camera mounted in a corner of the conference room. He pulls out a chair in front of a humming computer set up on the conference table, toggles the Pause button, and the screen lights up. He pulls out a chair on the opposite side of the table and gestures for me to sit.
“Please note that I’m going to film our interview. The film will be stored in the archives of Supernatural Crimes and distributed to the Berkeley P.D. and the U.C. police.”
Oh, joy. My interview is going to be filmed? Did Kovac ask my permission to use my visual image? I don’t remember hearing him ask. I’m an innocent citizen, not charged with any crime, and I don’t like being entered into a police record. Am I starting to sympathize with Jake and Scorpio Rising? Not really, but I don’t like this.
Anyway, I’m glad I’m wearing my churchgoing white linen dress, pantyhose, and sensible white pumps. A Lady in White. Innocence Incarnate. I set my handbag on the table, finger-comb my hair, and wave at the camera. “What’s my motivation, Mr. deMille?”
Kovac smiles. When he isn’t wracked with pain or acting like a pain in the ass, he has a skip-a-beat-of-my-heart marvelous smile. A dimple nestles fetchingly below his right cheekbone. “To clear your reputation, miss, and do battle against the forces of darkness. Now. Please state your name.”
I recite my vital statistics and tell of the hitchhiker and the on-ramp on I-80 outside Sacramento.
“Why did you give him a ride?”
“I don’t know. My mother recently died. I broke up with my fiancé of three years. I put the house I grew up in for sale. I was. . . .I guess you could say I was lonely.”
How’s that for spilling my life story inside of five minutes? Kovac mm-hmms and I glance at him. He’s in full FBI Agent mode, but something interesting moves in his ocean-blues.
Encouraged, I continue. “Brand was a sorcerer of considerable natural power. Maybe he enchanted me from afar before he even got in the car.”
“Where did you drop him off?”
I continue the narrative of my crazy, wild night. Sparring with Barb and her knitting needles, her psychotic jealousy over Brand. Landing the job as super of the Garden of Abracadabra. Collecting rent checks from Esmeralda and Scorpio Rising. The insane vampire party in Twenty-seven. The coincidence of running into Brand and the girls in the lobby on their way to some parties upstairs. Barb calling me later, saying she found my number in his little black book and she was on her way to the Garden of Abracadabra to confront him.
“She said, and I quote, ‘I’m comin’ over to cut out his cheatin’ heart. Cut up those girls, too.’”
Kovac taps notes into the computer without comment. “Why did you go hiking in Tilden Park?”
“Like I told Detective Valdez, I needed to stretch my legs after my long road trip. And no, there’s no earthly rhyme or reason why I went to Tilden Park or took the route I took.” I describe the geezer with the spear, the three crows, finding the bodies.
Finally, thankfully, Kovac declares the interview over. He turns off the camera. “You did fine, Abby. Thanks again for coming in and have a nice day.”
Have a nice day? He’s not getting rid of me that easily. Now it’s my turn. “What did Hernandez and Montego turn up in their door-to-door?”
He strides around the room, turning things off, and opens up the window blinds. “They made the rounds till dawn.” He resumes his seat. “Not everyone was home or answering the door.”
“And?”
“And your tenants at the Garden of Abracadabra, the ones they did speak to, are weird.”
“No. My tenants are weird?”
“Hah.”
“How many parties were there at the building that night?”
“Hey, me Interrogator, you Interrogatee.”
There he goes again, acting like a pain in the ass.
“You know something, Jack? It’s my building now and my business as the super.” I stride around the table, pull out a chair, and sit beside him, facing him. “I need to solve this, too.” I count the reasons on my fingers. “One. If Malaky even breathes a word I had anything to do with it, I need to clear the air. Two. If one of my tenants did do it, I need to have the perpetrator apprehended and removed from the premises. And three, it’s like you said last night, Jack. If one of my tenants didn’t do it, I need vindication of them all, however weird. Even Scorpio Rising. Because who is going to rent a pricey apartment in a building where a mass murderer lived?”
Am I starting to think like a superintendent or what? I reach out and touch Kovac’s arm to emphasize my point. Not much of a touch, not even on his bare skin. And BOOM! My power ricochets off his in an explosion of sensation and light.
The touch of a power with a power–electric, electrifying–crackles through me, igniting me with a sultry heat. Only this time I’m the initiator. I like that.
We both heave huge pleasured sighs. He regards me intently, another new expression in his eyes I haven’t seen before and can’t quite identify.
“Showoff.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to do that.”
“You just couldn’t help yourself, right?”
“Jack,” I say, low and urgent, “let me help.”
“All right.” He leans forward so suddenly, so conspiratorially close that for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me.
“How many parties?” I whisper, leaning into the moment, allowing the “p” of the parties to purse my lips.
But this isn’t the time or the place—for what? Hell if I know, but this isn’t just about Tilden Park anymore. Tension coils between us, a palpable presence.
Kovac abruptly leans back and swivels the monitor toward me. He opens a file, his professional façade firmly back in place. “Seven, including Scorpio Rising’s.”
I don’t yet know all my tenants, and the apartment numbers, the names, the faces captured on Officer Montego’s cell are a blur and a bewilderment. Except for Esmeralda and Scorpio Rising, there’s only one other tenant I recognize. Recognize instantly. His face is unforgettable, as is his name emblazoned beneath the photo in the file.
“Prince Lastor? And his cousins are the Princesses Hoshanna, Bridolette, and Elvaun?” I look at Kovac. “Are you serious? He really is royalty?”
“So he claims.”
“Royalty is living in my building? Where do they reign? Why are they living in Berkeley, of all places? And why rent an apartment?” I recall the map of the building and the floor plans Twitch left for me, which I studied last night. “It’s a beautiful big apartment, a palace in the sky, sure, but still. Royalty owns castles and estates and horse farms in the country. Royalty doesn’t rent apartments.”
“Not always. Circumstances change.” Kovac closes the file. “We’re not sure who Lastor is other than he gave a party on the night of the murders. Told Hernandez and Montego he never heard of Brand or the girls. He wasn’t under oath, so we don’t have to believe him. But we’ve got no reason to doubt him, either.”
LasTOR, Prince of SpanDEX. My, my, this gives me a whole new view of the soft-core fantasy superhero. And I, Abby Teller, am invited to his Revel. Tonight’s the night! I decide not to mention my precipitous rise in social status. If Mr. FBI’s personal life is none of my business, mine is none of his.
“He’s got no motive I can see,” Kovac continues, “and seems harmless enough. Except that he’s very weird.”
“No. Lastor is very weird?”
“Have you met him?”
“You said all my tenants are weird.” I’m no good at lying, so I change the subject. “Why didn’t you or Valdez secure a search warrant before we went to question Scorpio Rising?”
“Oh, I tried. Insufficient cause. No one has filed criminal charges. You didn’t see Brand and the girls at their party. The bodies were found miles away from the Garden of Abracadabra.”
“Jake had a right to get up on his hind legs?”
“‘Fraid so. I was hoping they’d cooperate out of their own self-interest.”
“And you wanted their saliva samples for the DNA? Do vampires have DNA?”
“Vampires were once human. Doc Eve and her team have put half a dozen other stiffs on deeper ice just to scrape out every one of those puncture wounds on Brand and the girls for any trace of saliva.”
Vampires were once human. It’s an eerie echo of Lastor’s remark. I shudder, recalling the young man with Flame, his skin slick with spit and blood, his chest and thighs riddled with the twin puncture wounds of a vampire bite. “That should be easy, with so many wounds.”
“You would think. So far, Eve hasn’t had any luck. She’s ordered toxicology and serology tests, too, of course but those tests take time. The time factor worries me. If Scorpio Rising has acquired or rekindled a taste for killing, and we don’t shut them down, they could do it again, and soon. Go on a spree.”
“My God.”
“Yeah.”
“What about fingerprints? Do vampires have fingerprints? Never mind, I get it. Vampires were once human. Is it possible to find fingerprints on the corpses?”
“Brand and the girls were wearing belt buckles, jewelry, leather. Firm surfaces that could hold a print, so, yes, it’s possible. Now that we’ve got a fantastic new fingerprint tech, we can even disentangle overlapping prints.”
“Prints of Brand buckling up his belt from, say, prints of the murderer unbuckling his belt?” I recall the unwelcome image I had that night of Brand lying with Flame.
“Exactly. That’s what desorption electrospray ionization, or DESI, does best.” Kovac clears his throat, and I wonder if he’s picked up on my unwelcome image. That would make him a telepath. What fun. “Prints on the bodies won’t help us, though, if Scorpio Rising has no prints in the database.”
“Is it possible to find prints on a car door handle?”
“Difficult, but possible.”
“Scorpio Rising’s Rolls Royce, you know the one on that antique cover of The Black Album? It’s parked in the lot behind the Garden of Abracadabra. Maybe your team can pick a print off a handle.”
“Worth a try.” Kovac keys a note in the file. He eyes me. “Great idea, Abby.”
“Well, thank you. Now, about Brand.”
“Let’s talk about Brand.” Kovac opens another file and there they are: the mug shots of the man I knew as Brand. Kovac orders a printout, takes the page when the printer spits it out, and hands it to me.
“Robert Brett Rand is way, way in our database. Drug smuggler. Just got out of prison when you gave him a ride.”
“I wondered. I suspected. But I should have known. I should have known. And I didn’t.” I slump in the chair, disgusted with myself and my lack of commonsense. Where was my intuition when I needed it?
“Longtime hoodie, but strictly smalltime rackets, if that makes you feel any better. Kept pigeon coops on the rooftop of a foreclosed house in L.A. where he squatted for nearly two years. Couple times a month he packed pigeons in the side doors of a Cadillac Seville and took a cruise down to Tijuana. Pigeons are like that. Poor dummies will put up with anything.”
“Poor dummies climbed up the shirtsleeves of old-timey stage magicians. The stage magicians didn’t make them disappear, they crushed them to death.” I think of Jackal and her little sister’s Easter bunnies. “I hate magicians who kill animals for power.”
“Brand didn’t kill the pigeons, if that makes you feel any better. Police dogs never scented a thing. They were birds, just birds. And not exotic birds. Nothing illegal.”
“Let me guess. They weren’t just pigeons, they were homing pigeons.”
“Bingo. Brand and his dealer in Tijuana packed vials with prime H, strapped the vials on the pigeons’ gams, and set ‘em loose in the dead of night. Birds hightailed it to their coops in L.A., dependable as the rising sun. Our buddy Brand cruised back across the border, no problem, and took in the sights along the Pacific Coast Highway. Had himself a party in La Jolla, a party in San Diego, a party in Malibu. A party here, a party there, a party everywhere. A real roadrunner, that guy.”
“Some folks have all the fun.”
“It wasn’t a lot of dope, nowhere near what the gangs smuggle. He never hit any juicy jackpot. But it was a sweet little scheme he could have go on with till he was ready to quit. And party with, using his sex magic. That,” Kovac says, fixing me with his frank, appraising gaze, “is mostly what he used his power for. Some of his lady friends have records. Holding, petty theft, prostitution, that kind of racket. Many more are just ladies looking for a good time. We haven’t scared up a thing on the ex-girlfriend in Emeryville. No ID, nothing. If she’s the killer, it would be her first offense. Crimes of passion typically are.”
I shake my head. “You know what? I feel just like a pigeon. A pigeon in a pigeon-drop scam. I actually wondered whether I wanted to see him again because, hey, he had crazy, wild power. You’re right, Jack. I don’t need magic in my personal life, either.”
“Don’t beat yourself up over it, Abby.” Kovac shuts the computer down. “Someone snitched. L.A.P.D. got a hot anonymous tip. Police chopper snagged YouTube moments of the rooftop, Brand, and his birds. He served three years at San Quentin. Model prisoner. Very popular with the guards. I can guess why.”
I don’t want to guess why. “L.A.P.D. confiscated the Cadillac?”
“Of course.”
“So that’s why an able-bodied man his age didn’t drive his own car. Why he was hitchhiking.” Suspicion is twenty-twenty. Too bad I don’t always act on mine.
Kovac shuts the power strip off. “Brand’s got a huge record of power in the Yonder. Larger than his police records in our database. Abby, may I make a suggestion?”
“I’m all ears.”
“When you first learn about the Yonder, you’ll be tempted to poke around on your own. But the Yonder isn’t as simple as It appears. Some records have powers, strange powers of their own. My suggestion is that you wait till you’ve been properly trained at Magical Arts and Crafts before you try summoning on your own. Okay?”
“Sure.” Now that he’s lectured me against it, I can’t wait to try summoning on my own.
“Good. Have patience, my lady magician, you’ll learn. You’ve seen for yourself how power can be difficult to trace. It’ll take us weeks, maybe months or even years to sort through and analyze Brand’s records.”
“What about the Horde? Could they have been after Brand?”
“I’m not ruling it out.”
“But why would the Horde murder a smalltime drug smuggler and his party girls? Unless they’ve seen him and me in the Yonder and want to scare the hell out of me. Is that possible?”
“I’m not ruling that out, either.” Kovac reaches for a laptop on the windowsill. “Tell me again how you dropped Brand off in Emeryville.”
The lavender-and-orange sunset. The promise of my new life. My new job. My new school. Magic thrumming through Berkeley like runaway electricity.
“I took the University Avenue exit, westbound. Brand gave directions. Turn left, turn right, turn left. I’d been on the road for four days. I’d driven all day that day. I was beat! I’d never seen the place before. It was all new and strange.”
“No street names or numbers you’d remember? Landmarks or buildings?”
“No, they were lousy little town houses. All looked the same. Bus benches. Weeds in cracked concrete.” I rub my forehead. “I should have paid more attention, shouldn’t I?”
“It isn’t always easy to know what to do. Go on.”
“Like I told you. Barb poked me with her knitting needles. Later that night, she called me.” I recall the buzz of talk, raucous laughter, a jukebox blaring “Tumblin’ Dice.” “From the background noise, she must have called me from a bar.”
Kovac taps on his laptop. “Good, that’s a start. We can trace a reverse off your phone.”
I close my eyes, recalling that night. Recalling. “She accused me of being with him. I told her I’d seen him at the Garden of Abracadabra, and he was off to have his fun, but not with me.” My memory clears. “Jack, she knew those girls.” Barb’s three-pack-a-day smoker’s rasp echoes in my ears. Treacherous bitches. I’ve got it. “Neighb-whores, she called them. Lived in the unit upstairs from her.”
Kovac’s fingers fly over the keyboard. “Excellent. Then when we find Barb, we should be able to identify Trish and Zarah.”
“And we need to question Barb about the murders, too, right? How big of a place is Emeryville? I mean, to cruise around?”
“Bigger than Albany, smaller than Berkeley. What’ve you got in mind?”
“They were lousy little town houses, all looked the same. Except for one thing. One thing I’d recognize in a heartbeat.”
“What’s that?”
“A monstrous red eyeball weeping tears of blood.”
********
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