Card Sharks

church there was only black silence.

Father Squid looked back once, then allowed Quasiman to drag him back: across the altar, into the sacristy to the side. That room was aflame too, but Quasiman roared back at the flames and leaped, gathering Father Squid in his arms. They crashed through the window in a cascade of glass, landing outside where suddenly there was air. Father Squid gasped and coughed, wheezing as he tried to drag some of that coolness into ravaged lungs. Half-conscious, he was aware of dark figures around him, faces peering worriedly at him through glass helmets. 'Inside!' he tried to say, but his throat burned and all he could do was grunt. 'For God's sake, please get them out!'

Someone murmured something, and he felt himself falling backward into arms. His head lolled back. Far above, a geyser of bright, whirling sparks spiraled heavenward around the steeple like burning prayers.

'Cassidy!'

At dawn, Hannah Davis stepped through the leaning, blackened timbers that had been a side entrance of the church. The wood steamed and fumed and hissed in the autumn drizzle. She noted immediately the black, rolling blisters on the wood — the fire had been unusually hot here. The floor had been burnt entirely away in front of her; the undersloping angle of the char told her that the fire had communicated up from below. Someone had laid planks across the gap, and she walked carefully over into the church. The roofless shell of the building smoldered around her. Leo Cassidy, a lieutenant in the Jokertown fire division, straightened up from where he was kneeling near the front of the church and looked back at her. His visor was up, and Hannah saw the scowl plainly. He turned back to what he was doing without a word.

Around the church's interior, department personnel were working, tearing down the walls as they searched out the remaining hot spots, or performing the grisly job of checking the soaked, black rubble for bodies. They were flagging the locations; there were far too many of the yellow triangles, more than seemed possible. The fire had come in as three alarms, had gone quickly to four and then five as soon as the first trucks had arrived on the scene. When Hannah had gotten the call to come down around midnight, the radio newscasters were already estimating that over a hundred jokers might have died. There'd been no hope of saving the building or getting anyone out — it had been all they could do to save as many of the surrounding buildings as they could. A strong wind had been blowing that night; the priest's cottage and two neighboring apartment houses had gone with the church. Burning ash had started several spot fires as far away as the East River. It had taken hours to get the fire under control.

The fire had been spectacular, fast, and extremely deadly. Even without the added interest of its location, the blaze would have made the national news. As it was, the torching of the Church of Jesus Christ, Joker was the lead story everywhere this morning.

And it was, somehow, Hannah's fire. Her file. Her problem. She still wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Hannah picked her way carefully toward Cassidy. The rain made the fallen, scorched timbers slick and dangerous, and the smell of damp ash was overpowering. She slipped once, putting her hand out for support on one of the remaining pews and noting the capriciousness of fire — the wood under her hand was untouched: polished and golden and unblemished.

'Where'd the chief get to, Cassidy?'

Cassidy was putting a tarp over one of the corpses. Hannah forced herself to look. The body — too elongated, and with a neck as long as a small giraffe's — was on its side in the curled 'fighting' position fire victims often assumed as the intense heat caused the major muscle groups to contract. The abdomen gaped open in a long crease that almost looked like a cut — another legacy of the fire: with the heat, gas formed in the intestines, swelling them until they burst out from the weakened, seared skin. Unburnt, pink loops peeked from the slit. The corpse was badly damaged. Hannah couldn't even tell if it had once been male or female. The smell made Hannah want to gag.

'Funny, isn't it, that no matter how deformed they were before, they all look the same once they're crisped.'

'The chief, Cassidy.'

'Why you need the chief, Davis?' Cassidy grunted. He looked at Hannah, cocking his head as he noticed the leather apron stuffed with tools under her slicker. 'Who you working under — Patton?' He put too much stress on the 'under.'

'I'm not under anyone. This is my case.'

Cassidy snorted. 'Fuck,' he said. 'I wondered why the hell you were hanging around. Just what I need. I guess they thought this was a barn that burned down and they wanted you to count the dead cows.'

Hannah ignored that, wishing she'd never mentioned that she'd grown up on the farm her parents still owned west of Cincinnati. She'd had to put up with the 'country girl' jokes, with the sexual innuendoes, with all the bullshit 'we'll never let you be just one of the guys' snubbing, with the 'just how the hell did you get this job' attitude. The first few months, she'd told herself that the abuse would ease up. It hadn't. It had gotten worse. 'Stuff it, Cassidy. Where's Chief Reiger?'

Cassidy snorted. 'In the basement.'

'Fine. I'll be down there. I have Dr. Sheets coming in to coordinate the photographing and removal of the victims. Pete Harris from the bureau will be here any time now — let me know when he gets here; he's bringing the forensics team. Tell him to start on the entrances — all the reports from the survivors say they were blocked. And, Cassidy … give my people some cooperation, okay?'

Cassidy just looked at her, and she could almost hear his thoughts with the expression on his face. Goddamn bossy bitch … She also knew that if she'd been Patton or Myricks or any of the male long-term bureau agents, Cassidy would've happily nodded and said 'Yes sir.' But Hannah was a newcomer, which was bad enough, and, even worse, a woman. Hannah forced her anger down. 'Any questions, lieutenant?'

Cassidy sniffed again. Rain beaded on the black rubberized jacket, sliding down the yellow flourescent stripes on the sleeves and waist. 'No, ma'am,' he said flatly. 'No problem, ma'am. Cooperation is my middle name.' A tic twitched the corner of his mouth as he stared at her, his face soot-stained. Hannah took a breath, making sure the anger was sealed in. 'Fine,' she said. 'I'll be down — '

She stopped. On the rear wall of the church where a crucifix would normally be placed, she saw something mounted. It was a wooden figure, blackened with smoke but unburned: a two-headed person, one head bearded, the other female. One set of hands were nailed to what looked to be a twisted wooden ladder behind it; another set of withered arms sprouted from the chest where three pairs of breasts ran down like the teats on a mother wolf. The feet were also nailed to the strange cross. Rain dripped from the feet, from the multiple breasts, from the faces. A chill went through Hannah, an unbidden outrage. Alongside her, Cassidy followed her gaze. He spat into the rubble; from the corner of her eyes, Hannah saw him make the sign of the cross. 'Fucking blasphemy,' he said.

'What is that?'

'Don't you hicks out in Ohio ever get papers?'

'Cassidy — '

'That's Jesus Christ the Joker, nailed to a DNA helix. This place is a joker's version of a Catholic Church. Our Lady of Perpetual Misery, they call it. They even have a priest — guy looks like a squid. He went on that world tour five, six years ago, the one Senator Hartmann was on. You must've heard about that — the big dust-up in Syria with the Nur, Hartmann getting kidnapped in Berlin … or did that get crowded off the front page because of the Pig Festival?'

'Yeah, it did,' Hannah replied. 'And they ran your picture right above the goddamn blue ribbon.'

Hannah walked away before Cassidy could reply.

In the basement, Chief Reiger was crouched in a puddle of water before an old porcelain-covered cast-iron sink. When the light of Hannah's helmet swept over him, the gray-haired man spoke without turning around. 'Okay, Miss Davis, give me your evaluation of this.'

'Chief, that's not fair. I'm a licensed — '

'Humor me, Miss Davis.'

I shouldn't have to prove myself over and over again, not to you, not to anyone. Hannah stopped the protest before she vocalized it. She sighed, taking a quick inventory. 'The porcelain's destroyed