28
Drawers have been yanked out, the contents spilled. Cupboards flung open and dishes swept out, the broken pieces of mismatched porcelain littering the kitchenette floor. Closet doors pulled ajar, and coats and clothes ripped off their hangers and strewn around. Everything is turned upside-down and inside-out. The sort of frenzied ransacking that screams of a rampage for drugs or money or both.
Or something else? What else?
“I’m probably missing something, Jack, but I don’t see Brand’s little black book.”
“You don’t have to. The investigators will find it.”
The wreckage of ruined things speaks of discount stores and garage sales, haggles and bargains, the discards of a world wealthier than Barb’s. Her lethal-looking knitting needles, the ball of homely gray yarn, and the nearly-finished man’s sweater lie abandoned in a wicker basket in a corner of the living-dining. The end of the affair, at last.
“Touch nothing.” Kovac gives me his handkerchief. “You all right, Abby? Watch your dress.”
I nod, unable to speak. I press the handkerchief over my nose and mouth. It doesn’t help.
Barb sprawls on her back where her killer left her, arms and legs flung akimbo. Her skin is bluish-gray, her face contorted in rigor mortis. Jagged slashes have ripped away her clothes and ripped through her skin, exposing layers of raw-beef-colored muscle and yellowish fat. Blood pools around her body in stinking little lakes of scarlet Jell-O and spatters the bruise-blue carpet in rusty arcs.
In a corner of the asbestos-spackled ceiling whirls a forlorn little whorl of light, one of the most disconsolate spirits I’ve ever seen. Barb’s soul, it’s got to be, lingering over the scene of her horrific death.
But no unnatural fear lingers, thick and clinging. No dangerous magic, ageless and devouring.
“I see her,” I whisper, pointing at the ceiling. “Just there. Do you see her?”
“No, I’m not a medium,” Kovac says so curtly, I turn to look at him. Cold anger grooves his face. He hates this brutality against a defenseless woman as much as I do. I suddenly feel better about the gun in his shoulder holster.
Footsteps pound into the town house and uniforms surround us: Emeryville police, Berkeley police. Valdez seizes my arm and tries to pull me out of the room. I resist her and stand my ground.
“I’m coping, thanks, Detective Valdez.”
“No, you’re not, Ms. Teller, and you sure as hell don’t belong here. How,” she snaps at Kovac, “could you allow a civilian?” She shouts at the uniforms, “Secure the scene!” and an officer strings yellow crime-scene tape across the door.
If Kovac is a different man today, Valdez is a different woman. Not the warm, sympathetic detective. Not the fawning, jealous ex-lover, either. A cool professional, all cop steel.
I’m all steel, too. “Detective, I can identify the victim. She’s Barb, Brand’s ex-girlfriend. There are her knitting needles.” I pry my arm away. “I wanted to be here. Don’t blame Jack.”
“Don’t. Blame. Jack. Who else. Is there. To blame?” She aims at furious glance at Kovac, at me, at Kovac. He looks away, frowning. I wish I could tell Valdez her anger will never repair the damage between them.
Her voice, her speech patterns, her behavior make no sense. And then they do.
Does Valdez possess some power, after all? The receptive, unconscious power of a channeler? Is she channeling Barb? Another woman who, like Valdez, desired a man of magic she couldn’t have?
I suspect so. And I suspect she doesn’t know a thing about it.
The cop with the pouchy eyes strides in. “Why is it, Ms. Teller,” Lieutenant Malaky says, “you’re always around when bodies are on the ground?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Stow it, Malaky,” Kovac snaps. “Ms. Teller gave her statement at my office this afternoon. She graciously agreed to assist me in finding Brand’s ex, taking her valuable time away from her job and school. We found her.”
“Not soon enough.” Malaky stoops to examine the corpse. “What do you make of it, Kovac?”
“Burglary gone wrong, maybe, but I’m betting Brand owed money or dope or both to one of his connections. The connection figured Barb had the goods. Either that, or she was the snitch who busted their racket, and the connection wanted payback.”
“It’ll interest you to know Mike the Pike got out of the Q last week.”
“A real sweetheart,” Kovac says, “and Brand’s good buddy. Too bad Berkeley P.D. can’t make anything stick to him worse than minor drug-dealing and bubblegum.”
“Maybe we just got lucky.”
“Maybe you did. Put an APB out on him, ASAP.”
“It’s done, Jack,” Valdez says, her voice trembling.
Too bad. I was starting to like her impersonation of Barb.
Now the cap of silver curls belonging to Doc Eve ducks under the tape. Her extraordinary crystalline eyes peer up at me through the thick lenses of her steel-rimmed spectacles. “I’m happy to see you again, Abby. And I’m sorry to see you again–like this.”
“My sentiments, exactly.”
She glances up at the forlorn little whorl of light before she even looks down at the corpse, catches me watching her, and nods. We both see the soul. She sets her blue toolbox down and pulls on her latex gloves. “Got a take, Abby?”
“Knife wounds inflicted with psychotic savagery, but nothing like the wounds on Brand and the girls. Nothing like vampire bites. Nothing,” I add carefully, as Malaky stares at me, “supernatural. I sense no evil magic here like in Tilden Park. Just evil. Human evil.”
“Agreed,” Kovac says.
“Supernatural Crimes ought to consult with her, Jack,” Doc Eve says, grunting as she stoops to examine the corpse, her knees cracking. “She’s got the knack.”
“I’m considering making her an offer,” Kovac says.
Valdez swivels around from the blood spatter she’s examining, face tight.
Kovac shakes his head. Tough guy, but I can see why. Valdez needs to move on with her life for her own sake.
“We’re through here, Abby. Let’s take a look upstairs.”
“What’s upstairs?” Malaky says. “You two running off for a quickie?”
Kovac strides to Malaky and confronts him, towering over the paunchy cop. His power radiates off him in a tangible pulse. “You’re going to apologize to Ms. Teller. Then you’re going to apologize to me.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I said apologize.”
“So sue me for being an asshole.”
“I said apologize.” Kovac’s power thrusts out from his solar plexus, two translucent hands that throttle Malaky’s throat.
Everyone in the room turns to watch, in spite of their professional duties to process the murder scene. Can they see the translucent hands as clearly as I do? I don’t know, but they sure as hell see something.
I watch, too, fascinated. It’s the first time I’ve seen Kovac use his power so boldly. And in public before an audience of law enforcement staff. What will he do next?
Malaky backs down. “Sorry, Ms. Teller. Sorry, ya freakin’ supernatural creep. And I’m not sorry I said that. Back off.”
Kovac still stands over him, his ocean-blues icy with power.
Malaky thrusts a finger in the collar of his uniform and pulls, loosening the cloth. “So what’s upstairs, anyway?”
“Barb told Ms. Teller the girls lived there.”
********
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