Walking down the hall, walking down the stairs, I could hearmy steps echoing but nothing from Sergeant Cash. No keys or loose changejingling, not even squeaking leather from her boots and Sam Browne belt. Shedidn’t chatter, either. Anyone listening in the offices we passed, they’d swearI went alone.
There was that hunting cat again. I reminded myself for maybethe hundredth time that I never wanted to become her prey. Cash was just aboutthe best cop I knew, the best I’d everknown, smart and tough and dedicated, with that twisty edge to be able tofollow twisty minds and catch them, able to step back from a problem and tellwhere the “book” would work and where it wouldn’t. She made me proud — I’dhelped train her, the first couple of years out of college and the policeacademy, before she moved on to the state force.
Yeah, if she thought she needed me on a case, I’d go.
She’d parked her cruiser at the curb, smack in the middle of ano-parking zone, but the meter-maid would ignore it. Professional courtesy. Irelaxed a touch — the Professional Regulation unit still used those bigold-model Crown Victorias.
The rest of the State Patrol had switched to downsizedcruisers, but I guess some rare genius remembered just what “ProfessionalRegulation” did and who they worked with. The shotgun seat up front was acustom job and sat on extended rails, enough room for a big butt and big belly,and they’d mounted the radio head clear of my knees.
She cranked it and pulled out into thin traffic, windshieldwipers thumping, left and right and a couple of blocks and right again downtoward the waterfront, she stopped at a light and turned to me.
“You and Sandy still getting together?”
Odd question, no context. I nodded. Sandy. Sandra Cormier,classmate to Maggie and me at college, roommate of Maggie’s. The funny thingwas I started out dating Sandy and ended up with Maggie in the sillybed-hopping of our freshman and sophomore years. We’d eased back to beingfriends again after a period of Category 5 hurricanes, practically a three-way,but Maggie was just more comfortable to be with. I never could have lived with Sandy, even though the sexhad been good.
Couldn’t live with her now, but the sex was still good, evenat our age. Wizards and witches usually live alone — that mental noise thing,again. Anyway, Sandy showed up at my apartment door one evening a week afterMaggie’s sentencing. She told me she was taking me out for drinks and she’d laya compulsion on me if I didn’t come along quietly.
I didn’t argue. A drink or two or ten sounded like a goodidea. We ended up in bed, of course, crying all over each other. She filled ahole in my life, if you don’t mind cross-gendered innuendos.
II
We pulled up to that crime-scene tape, went inside, and Ifound a bunch of nasty memories risen all too solid from their grave.
I sniffed along Kratz’s trail through rat-piss shadows andtrash in the warehouse to another kicked-in door that led out into cold drizzleand a dark musty alley, the sort of place your mother warned you to stay outof. I could feel that the place was empty, safe except for the chance ofbreaking an ankle in a pothole hidden by the shadows.
One thing caught my eye, out of place, a bit of redspray-paint graffiti next to that door. It looked fresher than the rest, almostnew, and splashed a Russian Orthodox cross over the grime, the one with theextra cross-bar at the top and a third one lower at a slant. It didn’t fit. Istepped over to it and sniffed. Yes, fresh paint, day old or less. But I didn’tsense magic involved, no signature, just paint. I waved at one of the forensicphotographers and pointed at the cross. She gave me a thumbs-up back. Eitherthey already had it or would get it, no sweat. They knew their jobs.
So I headed out. Cash followed me, a ghost in the twilight,keeping well back beyond the edge of my space, my touch. She knew how far — we’dworked this two-legged bloodhound bit a dozen times before. The buzzing residuevanished into wet night air. No surprise there. Kratz had been crazy, butnobody ever claimed he was stupid. He could break his trail just by climbinginto a car and driving off.
A big car, probably, like my old Lincoln, which didn’t narrowthe search a hell of a lot. He’d been just as fat as the average high-poweredmage. We’d guessed that was why his miserable carcass had burned as well as ithad.
Or hadn’t, it seemed. Maybe he’d soaked some graveyard bone inhis own blood, to provide that DNA for the lab-rats to tease out of the ash.Other tricks he could have tried, now that I had to think about it, wizardtricks. We’d been so sure. . . .
I stood there, staring into the dark drizzle, wondering. Cashcame out of the shadows behind me and stood there, doing the same thing.
Finally she broke the silence. “Any chance we’ve got acopycat?”
I shook my head. “After all these years? Copycats usually docurrent stuff, newspaper stuff. And it’d have to be someone on the force orwith contacts inside the force. Details — things about the crime scenes thatnever made the papers.” As if a newspaper would ever print those pictures. Talk about killing circulation.
“More than that, the bastard had one of the most distinctivesignatures I’ve ever tasted — part of being a certified psychopath, I guess.Best I can describe it, he’d set your teeth on edge, sort of like a mistunedviolin played by a beginner. Or maybe a twin-engine plane with the engines outof sync — a beat-note that made you want to puke just listening to it.”
She mulled that over for a while. I could hear the straightforensics guys and the local force’s current mage working inside, pointing outthis and that to each other, bagging chunks from the butcher’s shop and shiningUV light around and placing numbered tags on spots of blood, all the otherstuff you do on a crime scene these days. Occasional bits of strobe flashleaked
