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WORK IN PROGRESS: A serialized novella about a very odd detective agency. |
| Did you ever start at sight of something at the corner of your eye, something that, looked for, wasn’t there? Did you feel the fear, the chill up your spine, the rush of heat at the back of your neck? Why? Nothing was there… was it? Those chills are provided courtesy of a million or so years of evolution. We’re too sophisticated to believe in monsters, demons, and creatures from beyond anymore, but our genes remember what goes bump in the night. The fear is baked into us, and for good reason. They view our world as a hunting ground, and in a way, our very sophistication makes it easier for them. But they haven’t won yet... Part I Rick Borden turned into the doorway of the rundown hotel off West Fillmore, hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his heavy coat. Winter in Chicago was never any joke, especially not with the Hawk blowing in off the lake making the block walk from the bus stop to the hotel door an exercise in agony. Stopping on the sheet just inside the door, he stomped the slush off his boots and unzipped his coat, shaking the wetness from his shoulders and hood. "About like it appears," he replied, brushing the last of the moisture off his sleeves. "Can't wait for spring. How about yourself?" "Oh, one day's just like another in this job. You know, Howard and I were just talking about you." I'll just bet you were, he thought as he stepped up to the desk while she got his key from the pigeonhole. "Oh?" "Yes. We were just hoping something would turn out right for you for a change. You're about due for a break. I remember that you almost couldn't make the rent last month." "Don't you worry about that, Mildred. I may have to skip a few meals, but I'm not about to move outdoors in the wintertime. Anyway, I'm sure McDonald's will need a manager just any time now." "Well, let us hope," she said, handing him his room key. "Let us hope." Borden slogged up the ancient, creaking stairs to the second floor of the old three-story. Room twenty-four, front of the building, overlooking the street. He felt fortunate; the odd-numbered rooms overlooked the rear parking lot the hotel shared with the greasy spoon and the honky-tonk on the next street over. At least he was spared the nightly commotion. He was fortunate as well to have a room with a rudimentary kitchen. Opening the decades-old refrigerator, he took out a TV dinner, poked a hole in the film, and slid it into the microwave with a setting for four minutes. He'd eaten so many of these that he didn't have to read the instructions any more. Four minutes on high, stir, recover, and two more minutes. Remove film and enjoy your gourmet meal. Be careful, it's hot! As the dinner began to cook, he turned on his laptop, allowing the startup procedure to begin, and switched on his small TV. The afternoon news was covering congress in one of their endless shouting matches over bullshit while the country was drowning in life-and-death issues. If pro is the opposite of con, is congress the opposite of progress? Snorting in derision, he turned it back off. "Damned sure is," he muttered. He stirred the reddish glop in the plastic tray and started the second phase of cooking his dinner. YouTube looked like a better bet tonight. The computer screen displayed his homepage, and the little red block on the toolbar told him he had six new e-mails. No hurry. Dinner was ready. He peeled the top off his spaghetti with meat sauce tray, took it to the table, and got out some flatware. Sitting down at the table, he clicked on the button. "Refresh your spring wardrobe," the first subject line screamed, attached to a clothing company with a hip name and an Asian address. "You're pre-approved for a gold MasterCard." "Would you like to have larger breasts?" "Saw your resume on Monster." What? Borden froze with a fork of spaghetti halfway to his mouth. He put it back down and with a shaking hand, clicked on the address. The Akuma Agency. "Dear Mr. Borden," the missive read, "we read with interest your resume on monster.com, and would like to discuss the possibility of placing you in a position with our firm. Please call (619) 555-0861 at your earliest opportunity, should you still be interested, and speak to Ms. Grace McFarlane." Hands still shaking, he pulled out his phone and switched it on. 3:57 PM. Where was the 619 area code? He had no idea, but it was coming up on the hour, and people might still be in the office. He punched in the numbers and listened to the phone ring once, twice, three times. Thinking he must have missed them, he started to put the phone down. "Akuma Investigations, may I help you?" a voice came from the speaker. "Good afternoon," Borden said, heart pounding. "This is Rick Borden. I have an email here to call you." "Good afternoon, Mr. Borden. My name is Parker Mason. I manage the office here. I'm not involved with your case, so does the email give you any instructions?" "Yes. I'm to speak with a Grace McFarlane concerning a job opportunity." "Oh, yes, Mr. Borden. My apologies, I should have recognized your name. We've been extra busy this past week, and I'm a bit disorganized." "That's quite all right." "Well, I do like to be more on top of things than this. Look, Miss McFarlane read your resume. She liked what she saw, and got our director's approval to interview you. I have authorization..." Borden heard paper shuffling and a distinct thump in the background. "Sorry about that. Like I was saying, I have authorization to provide round-trip air fare and accommodation while you're here if you could come in for an interview." "Air fare? Where are you?" "El Cajon." He pronounced it Ka-hone. "It's a suburb of San Diego, California." "San... You want to fly me out to the west coast and put me up in a hotel so I can have an interview? Are you sure? What does Ms. McFarlane say about this? Is she available?" "It's just a Motel 6, and she's out on a case and I don't know whether to expect her back in the office today. But she was quite explicit in her instructions. If you're interested in this job, I'm to offer you every assistance in coming out for a meeting." "What kind of job is this? Or I guess I should ask, what sort of firm are you?" "We're a private detective agency." "That's it? And there's no one local you can hire?" "The cases we handle are, well, let's say they're sensitive, Mr. Borden, and Miss McFarlane feels that you're the best candidate among all the prospects we've seen. So, would you like to take the red-eye, or shall I get you on a flight first thing in the morning?" "You know I'm an ex-cop, right?" "That's one of the reasons that Miss McFarlane is interested in you." "Then if you could hear the alarm bells going off in my head right now, you'd most likely be frightened by their intensity." "I understand there are a lot of scammers out there, Mr. Borden," Mason said with a smile in his voice, "but I assure you, we are not among them. We know that you are a former detective with the Chicago Police Department who recently lost his position to the current recession. We know that you are working the early day shift at the McDonald's on West Allison Avenue, and that you intensely dislike taking orders from your nineteen-year-old shift manager. We know that you are having difficulty making ends meet and would dearly love to get back into investigative work. With the recommendation your former lieutenant would probably give you, that is most unlikely to happen, except that our lead investigator thinks you are just the man she's looking for. This offer would seem to be the answer to a prayer, Mr. Borden, so I'll ask you again, red-eye, or first thing tomorrow?" "Better make it tomorrow," Borden said, head spinning. "That will give me a chance to clean up and pack a bag." "A wise choice, sir. Watch for my email. It will have the confirmation numbers for your flight, and directions for your driver when you arrive in San Diego. Have a good evening, sir." * * * Gabriel Goldstein returned to a dark house late Sunday evening. He expected nothing else as he had enjoyed his guilty pleasure, a live murder mystery at the dinner theater in La Jolla. His wife Jamie had no use for such things, and usually went up the coast to visit her sister in Solana Beach. It was her wont to stay the night, so he had their home to himself. He stopped what he was doing and listened intently for a good minute, but no further sound came. He turned back to the list of messages on the screen, and it immediately came again. Tuned in to hear it this time, he realized that it had come from the display room. Strange, he thought, the alarm wasn't tripped. He rose from the desk, taking a small Beretta pistol from the drawer. Slipping off his loafers, he padded silently down the hall and stopped outside the display room. He listened for another minute, and hearing nothing, eased the door open and reached inside to flick on the lights, flooding the room with light like the brightest day. No sound came to him of anyone starting or scurrying for cover. He eased the door slowly open, keeping the barrel of his pistol aligned with the door edge, covering anything that might be exposed. Several glass cabinets stood in the middle of the room, various art objects resting on custom stands, with more shelves against the walls. There was no furniture for anyone to hide behind. As the door swung all the way back against the stop, it revealed a dark-complected man seated on the floor in the corner. "Stefan?" "Hello, Gabe," the man said, rising. "I thought you'd never get here." "What are you doing here?" Goldstein asked, lowering his pistol. "Why didn't you come to the den?" Stefan, his neighbor, was his friend and alternate, possessing the pass key for his security system which explained why the alarm hadn't been tripped, but why had he waited in here? "I wanted to see you in here," Stefan said, making no move to leave. "How's Carol Anne been these days?" "How would I know?" Goldstein asked with a puzzled look. "She's your wife." "Not so anyone could tell. You think I don't know what's going on when you and her disappear at the same time?" "What? What are you saying?" "I'm saying that you and my wife have been having a lot of fun at my expense. Has she showed you that little hip-roll yet?" "You're talking crazy, Stefan. Make sense, for God's sake." "Oh, I'm making sense, Gabe. I'm making sense for the first time in months. At first I didn't realize what was bothering her, but then I started noticing that every time she's gone, you're gone. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to put the two things together." "Oh, come on, Stefan. I love Jamie. I've never even looked at another man's wife, never mind one of my best friends." "Yeah, keep talking. Did you know that when somebody's lying to you, they use your name in every other sentence?" "What?" "Yeah. I read that in a criminology article. It's one of the tells the F.B.I. uses. The liar uses your name a lot to try to convince you of his sincerity." "Stefan— Look, I don't know what's going on between you and Carol Anne, but there's nothing going on between us." "I'm sorry, Gabe, I can't believe you. But you can believe there isn't going to be when I get finished with you." "What are you going to do, kill me? You know you can't do that." "We'll just have to see about that." From behind his back, he raised a knife with a polished jade handle and a short, curved black blade. "Where did you get that?" "Why, from your collection, Gabe. Don't you recognize your own property? This is quite a collection of antiquities you have here. A lot of museums would be jealous. Fitting, don't you think, that a man committing a crime older than time should be killed with a weapon older than time?" Goldstein raised his pistol, but Stefan was on him with breathtaking speed, deflecting his gun hand upward, directing the one shot he got off into the ceiling, driving the wicked, hooked blade into his chest. As Goldstein's breath exploded and he leaned forward, his inevitable collapse beginning, Stefan withdrew the blade. Smiling into Goldstein's eyes, he drove it into the bottom of his jaw, withdrew it, and drove it into the side of his neck. As Goldstein fell to the floor, Stefan followed him down, stabbing repeatedly, savagely, until there was no life left in the body. Panting, shaking with adrenaline overload, he crouched for a time beside the body. Finally, having regained control of himself, he cleaned the knife on Goldstein's pant leg, the only part of his clothing not stained with blood, then he rose and dropped it into his jacket pocket. Slipping off his shoes and walking carefully around the spreading pool, he switched off the lights and left the house as dark as it had been when he arrived. * * * Borden studied the city of San Diego as his flight descended from the northeast. As nearly as he could tell from the air, the whole place consisted of freeways and tract houses, with no sign of a city anywhere. It seemed like twenty or thirty miles passed beneath the wings before he started seeing some proper buildings, and when he did, the plane was right down among them.  They passed beside a concrete parking garage, he was sure of it this time, crossed a six-lane surface street, skimmed over a putrid-green blast fence, and the wheels hit the ground, a hard bump, but then a precise roll-out as pilot managed his charge with skill. The roll to the terminal seemed to take a long time as the chief steward went through all the usual platitudes about remaining seated, the local time and weather, and most importantly, to be sure to think Western for all your travel needs. When the plane finally rolled to a halt and the tunnel was attached, Borden got up and joined the cattle-line disembarking, followed the signs to baggage pick-up, and retrieved his suitcase. Putting on his overcoat, he walked to the main entry, opened the doors, and walked out into the bright sunshine. He immediately sat his bag down and took the coat back off. It was only in the mid-sixties, but that was a balmy summer day where he had come from, and the coat was far too much. A red-cap drifted over to him to see whether he needed help. "No, I've got it," Borden told him. "Where does Uber pick up?" "They have a lot down at the end of the building," the man told him. "It's a bit of a walk. I can call you a cart." "No, I'm okay," Borden told him. "Save it for somebody with a lot of luggage." He picked up his suitcase and headed down the sidewalk, leaving the disappointed red-cap without a tip. It wasn't that far for a man in good shape, and shortly, Borden was looking over a lot with several cars and vans, all with Uber or Lyft placards in the windows. He picked out a compact, as the larger cars and vans would cost more, and approached the driver. "Afternoon, sir," the driver said, standing up from his lounging position on the fender. "My name's Richard. How can I serve you today?" "My name's Richard, too. I need a ride to an address in a place called El Cajon." "Sure. That's about twenty-five miles out to east county." "Got a price estimate?" "Fifty bucks, for sure. Could be a bit more. Depends on where exactly." "Sounds good to me. Shall we?" The youngster put Borden's coat and suitcase on the back seat, and they got in for the half-hour ride. During the trip, Borden learned that San Diego had year-round great weather, its zoo was the best on earth, everything cost twice what it should because everyone with money wanted to live here, and that El Cajon was the armpit of the county. "You'll see," the kid said when Borden questioned him on it. "We'll be there in a couple of minutes. Just set your watch back seventy-five years." He took the ramp labeled "El Cajon Blvd.," and they descended into an industrial section of town that did indeed seem to have remained unchanged since the 1950s. Car repair shops alternated with used tire emporiums and ancient roadside diners, the landscape broken up by an occasional car dealership. Borden was wondering whether the landscape would change when the driver took a right turn onto a residential street, hundred-year-old houses lining both sides. "This here's it, East Roswell Avenue," Richard told him. "275 will be down at the end." Borden looked around at the old houses. "Are you sure? Is there a West Roswell?" "May have been before the freeway came through. If there was, it's gone now. This is it, 275." They pulled up in front of a wide two-story, positively modern compared to the houses around. There was a parking lot to the right of it, a garage underneath, and a brick building beyond. "Looks like offices," the driver told him, consulting the app that would tell him the fare. "That's the El Cajon Library across the lot there, and City Hall and the courthouse are a couple of blocks up to the left. That will be fifty-four sixty." Borden took three twenties from his wallet and handed them over. "Keep it," he said. "Thanks for the tour." Collecting his coat and suitcase, he approached the center entrance to the offices. Suites E through H, upstairs to the right. Borden climbed the stairs, walked past the door marked E, and opened the one marked F. It opened on a small office lined with file cabinets, sideboards with stacks of papers, and a slim young black man with a phone to his ear, typing on a computer, narrowly missing a paper cup of coffee with every move, sat behind a nameplate that read Parker Mason. A row of uncomfortable chairs lined the wall inside the door, and the harried young man at the desk waved him toward them. He took a seat next to a sallow-faced man in a black suit. He nodded when the man looked at him, but the man just looked away. "That's right, Mrs. Mundy. We're following leads as we speak... I do sympathize, but... I will, Mrs. Mundy, as soon as she's free... Same to you, Ma'am... You have a nice day, now." He hung up the phone with a disgusted expression and looked up at Borden. "May I help you?" "Rick Borden. I just got in from Chicago." Sallow-face gave him a sharp look, then turned away again. "Ah, yes, Mr. Borden. I'll just tell her you're here." Picking up the phone again, he punched three numbers. "Yes, Mr. Borden just arrived, and Mrs. Mundy wants a full report. She doesn't think we're doing enough... Yes, Ma'am, I will... You can count on it." He hung up. "You can go right in, Mr. Borden," he said, pointing toward a door, drawing another foul look from Sallow-Face. "And, Mr. Borden." "Yes?" "I couldn't say anything on the phone. All our calls are recorded as evidence, but you might want to think about taking this job. There are other ways to make a living." "What does that mean?" "Oh, she'll explain it. Just follow your gut and remember what I said. Best of luck." * * * "You're late, Mr. Borden." Grace McFarlane wasn't what Borden had expected. The Senior Investigator was a stack of pennies short of 5'6", and had a very exotic look to her features, something Asian in her background, perhaps. Borden wasn't sure; in this part of the country, it was more likely to be Hispanic. What he was sure of was that her shiny black hair and delicate features made her instantly alluring. Careful, boy! "There wasn't. I was just hoping you'd have made it sooner. We've pulled a case, Mr. Borden. I have to attend, and it presents a golden opportunity for you to get a look at what we do instead of just having it explained to you." "I have a fair idea of what a private detective agency does." "Not this one, you don't. Do you need to use the rest room?" "No, I'm good." "Let's roll, then." She led him back through reception where Sallow-Face glared at McFarlane's departure and started to complain to Mason about the lack of service in this office. "We're headed out to the scene," McFarlane told Mason. "Have Vickie take Mr. Galloway's statement, will you? And expedite it. He's waited quite long enough." "Right away, Ma'am. Do you know how long you'll be?" "I'm guessing a couple of hours. I'll let you know if that changes." She led Borden out of the office and down to the parking garage where she chirped the locks on a late-model BMW X5. "Nice," he remarked as he climbed into the passenger seat. "Thanks," she said, starting it up and pulling out onto Roswell. "This is where you'll park if you take the job. We have a dozen spaces reserved in our corner." Borden found it interesting that she said take, not get, as if it had already been offered and the job was his to refuse. "What we work on, Mr. Borden—" "Call me Rick." "Perhaps. What we work on are special cases that require delicate handling. We take very few walk-ins. Mr. Galloway, for example, that man who was waiting in the office?" "Yes." "He undoubtedly picked our name more or less at random off the internet. Vickie, Mrs. Turner, is in the process of telling him why we can't take his case right now." "Must be hard to make a living turning away cases like that." "Not at all, Mr. Borden. We aren't paid by clients. Most of our cases are brought to us by local law enforcement agencies needing our expertise." "Is that the norm out here?" Borden asked. "In my experience, the first thing the police do is shoo off any private investigators that turn up at a crime scene." She turned onto the westbound ramp of Highway 8, the same one he had just arrived on, and accelerated smoothly to merge into traffic. "But as a policeman, you worked with expert consultants, didn't you?" "Yes, of course." "Well, we fill the role of those consultants in certain special cases?" "What sort of cases, exactly?" "When you were with CPD, did you ever have cases that defied solution? That no matter what sort of theories or forensics you came up with, it didn't quite fit, and couldn't lead to an arrest?" "Sure. Everybody has those. They wind up in cold-case files, and the old guys near retirement take them over." "Sometimes. Sometimes they're jobbed out to agencies like ours." "Well, here, I suppose." "Everywhere, Mr. Borden. Major cities all over the western world and parts of Asia have something similar to Akuma that steps in when the cases can't be solved by traditional methods. You had one in Chicago, you know." "Not likely. I would have known about something like that." "I highly doubt it. We go to great lengths to fly under the radar. Here, we masquerade as a detective agency. The Chicago branch has a different cover, and very few members of the force are aware of it. They recommended you, you know." Borden mulled that over for a moment. "Why?" he asked. "Anyone helping the police should have nothing to hide." "But we do, Mr. Borden. We have more to hide than you might imagine." "What? We help the police. What's to hide?" "There's more going on in this world than what meets your eye in the bright light of day." "Yeah? Tell me about it, then." "I'm deliberately easing you into it. I'm giving you a little at a time for you to digest. Plus, if you decide not to join us, the less you know, the better." "Well... How am I supposed to know whether I want to join you if you aren't going to tell me anything?" "You will be told all you need to know, Mr. Borden. Within the next two hours, I promise you, you'll know more than you ever wanted to about things that go bump in the night." "Oh, come on! You're making it sound like... I don't know, like... well, I just don't know what it sounds like, but it sure isn't rational." "Watch and learn, Mr. Borden. Last night, in a very affluent neighborhood down by the coast, a prominent banker was murdered. His wife returned home from visiting a relative this morning and found him. The police responded, of course, our liaison determined that we should be involved, and we were duly summoned. That's where we're going now." "And what, pray tell, are we expected to do that the police can't?" "Patience, Mr. Borden. All will be made clear." * * * McFarlane turned off the busy boulevard onto Manzanita Lane, a residential street as twisted and winding as its namesake. She informed Borden that they were at the north end of Pacific Beach, or as the locals called it, "South La Jolla," a name she pronounced La Hoya. "An extra zero on the price of your house." They rounded a corner to see half a dozen police cars, including an unmarked, pulled up in front of a low, modern home, gleaming white paint trimmed in brown, one end made almost completely of glass. Bet there's a few zeros attached to that one, Borden thought. McFarlane pulled to the curb half a block up the street and popped the tailgate. "If you start coming to these alone, don't park up front with the cops. Most of them don't know exactly what it is we do, and the ones that do view us with a suspicious eye." "Why's that?" he asked as they got out. "We aren't exactly a conventional enterprise," she said as they met at the tailgate. "We'll let it go at that for now. Here, take this." She handed him an unmarked black gym bag, and picked up a briefcase. Closing the gate, she chirped the locks and they started toward the house. "Well, well," a swarthy little man in blue jeans and a grubby sport coat whose heyday had been somewhere around the Carter Administration greeted them as he popped out from behind an equally grubby van, "if it isn't the queen of the parasites! Found a new host to sink your proboscis into, have you?" "Speaking of parasites, isn't there an ambulance you should be chasing somewhere?" McFarlane countered without breaking stride. "Oh, don't try to deflect your guilt with cheap sarcasm. It was just a matter of time before you turned up at a crime scene in this neighborhood. I'm surprised it took you this long. I had quite a wait. Got your snake oil samples with you, I see." "You'd do well to get off my back before you have a bad accident," she told him. "You didn't just threaten a member of the press, did you?" the man asked, sidestepping to keep facing her as she walked. "No, you little puke, I threatened you." "So," Borden asked in his most wide-eyed, innocent tone, "do you two know each other?" McFarlane stopped walking then and rounded on Borden. "Unfortunately." She turned back to her tormentor. "Tibor Kovács, meet Rick Borden, my new bodyguard. Mr. Kovács found a press card in a Cracker Jacks box, and now he thinks he's a journalist." "Now, look here—" "And that isn't the worst of his delusions," she continued, talking over him. "He also thinks he's a Hungarian count. If you see his face again, step on it." "Yes, do that, Mr. Borden, and spend the next twenty years of your life in a cell." "Why do I get the feeling that I'm not getting the full story here?" Borden asked. "All right, Mr. Borden," McFarlane said, "full story. Mr. Kovács is a hack writer who works for the sleaziest of tabloids because that's the only job he can get. He thinks that if he can expose us as frauds, it will make him the next Geraldo Rivera." "Very picturesque, Miss McFarlane, and just the sort of lies I would expect from a confidence swindler. I haven't seen you at one of these crime scenes, Mr. Borden, so I'm assuming you're new to the agency. Has your trainer told you yet what kind of hoodoo she investigates?" When Borden didn't answer, he continued. "Hauntings, possessions, hobgoblins, poltergeists. She and her whole organization prey on the desperate, the bereaved, the vulnerable, in short. Why are you here, Miss McFarlane? Who's your client? Our readers would love to know." "I'll bet they would," McFarlane replied. "That's privileged information." "I'll find out, you know, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts that when I do, it's gonna blow the lid right off of this little scam you're running here." "You know nothing, Kovács," she snarled at him, "and you'd do well to keep it that way!" "Touched a nerve, did we?" "The detectives are waiting for us," she said, turning toward the house. "Wait, wait," Borden said, turning to Kovács. "If you're a journalist, and you think you have a story, why not just print it?" "He does that all the time," McFarlane answered for him. "His stories appear in American Exposé right next to the ones about the friendly bigfoot who performed open heart surgery on a stranded camper with a sharp stick and some goat hair." "Your attempts at humor are quite feeble, Miss McFarlane. No one begins their career writing for the New York Times." "No, they don't, and there's a very good reason for that. Come on, Rick, let's go inside with the dead body and get some fresh air." * * * Manzanita Lane continued in a gentle curve past the crime scene for another five houses, then took a sharp left turn. Placed at the break of that curve to look back up the street stood a classic New England-style two-story, all gleaming white paint and hunter green shutters, and in an upstairs bedroom stood a man. He stayed carefully in the shadows, curtains shifted to form a slit of less than an inch as he watched the police buzzing in and out of the Goldstein home up the street. He fingered the shiny jade handle in the pocket of his robe, knowing he would become a suspect once the police discovered that he was Goldstein's trusted keeper of his alarm codes. Still, that could be explained away. There were too many other ways an intruder could have gotten into the house without tripping the alarm. In any case, he could cast enough doubt to buy all the time he needed to complete his work. He fingered the knife in his pocket again. Maybe I should have put it back on its stand. Well, it was too late to worry about that, and in any case, in this age of microscopic forensics and DNA analysis, there was no telling what clues he might have presented them by doing that. The world has changed a lot since I ruled the fields and forests of eastern Prussia. It pays a fellow to keep current. Anyway, a weapon like this is bound to prove useful in the days to come. Not that he'd need such an esoteric tool to kill that cheating whore of a wife, but once that was done, he'd be on the run for a while. The cursed blade could serve him well in his search for a new lair. * * * "Miss McFarlane," the uniformed cop at the crime scene tape greeted Grace as she held up a plastic ID card for him to read. "Detective Gomez is expecting you. Who's this?" "I don't know. The detective didn't mention anyone else." "No problem. We can wait here while you go get her." The officer screwed up his face and gave a deep sigh. "Well, I guess it's all right. Make sure he stays with you, though. He gets caught wandering around alone in there, it'll be my ass." "Don't worry, Officer Figueroa, your ass will be safe with me." He lifted the tape as McFarlane and Borden ducked to pass underneath and continue up the walk. The front door stood open, and as they stepped into the immaculate living room, they were greeted by a burly plainclothesman, jacket off, sleeves rolled up, his decision to skip shaving this morning plain on his face. "Who're you?" "Grace McFarlane. I'm with the Akuma Agency," she replied, holding up her badge. "Oh, those people, huh?" he said, a sneer in his voice. "What do you want here?" "We were summoned by Detective Gomez." "We, huh? Meaning you and this guy?" "That's right." "Where's your badge, bub?" he asked Borden. "Uh, I don't actually— " "We haven't had time to press him one yet," McFarlane said. "He just joined us this morning." "Huh. Don't matter. Those things ain't worth the plastic they're printed on, anyway. Hey, Gomez!" he shouted toward the back of the house, "Your guests are here!" A Latina woman in blue cargoes and a matching T-shirt approached down the hall from the back of the house. Her lush brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a gun and badge on the belt at her hip. "Finally," she said by way of greeting. "I was afraid I might be on my own here." "You're still on your own, for my money," shirtsleeves said. "What the hell did you call ghostbusters for? Solid police work ain't good enough for you?" "I see you've met Detective Green," Gomez said. "Detective Green believes that if it isn't in the book, it doesn't exist. You guys, for example." "Good afternoon, Nell," McFarlane replied. "He raises a valid question. What did you call us for?" "You'll soon see." "Fair enough," McFarlane replied as Detective Green dismissed them with a shake of his head and moved off with another man. "What do we have here?" "The house is the residence of Gabriel and Jamie Goldstein. They have one child, a daughter Denise, who's away at college. We're coordinating with the police there to make the notification. Jamie spent last night with her sister Betty in Solana Beach. She waited for the traffic to die down before she made the trip home, so she didn't arrive here until a little after ten. She found her husband dead in what she calls the display room. Gabriel was an investment officer whose own portfolio had done quite well, and he has quite a collection of antiquities." "Did her alibi stand up?" Borden asked. "Yes, we called her sister right away. Who are you, please?" "This is Rick Borden, late of the Chicago Police. We're sizing each other up for a possible position in the agency." "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Borden." "Likewise." "Now, Mr. Goldstein's body was mutilated far beyond what was necessary to kill him, so we're looking at this as a crime of passion." "Do you have the murder weapon?" Borden asked. "Hitting the ground running, are you, Mr. Borden? I like that. No weapon has been found in the house other than Mr. Goldstein's pistol, but from the look of the wounds, it was done with some sort of punch, a curved, cylindrical tool with a sharp point. It's possible that he may have been killed with one of his own display pieces. There's an empty stand in one of the cases that could have held a tool of about the right size." "His wife doesn't know what was on it?" "She had no particular interest in his collection. He kept a photographic record though, and she's going through it now. "Did he normally carry a pistol around the house?" "His wife said not. He kept it in a desk drawer in his study." "So he must have heard something, armed himself, and come looking." "That's what we think, Mr. Borden. He got a single shot off, but it went into the ceiling." "Ambushed, then. The killer was a thief, but when Goldstein showed up with his gun, it was kill or be killed." "Perhaps, but then there's the overkill. Plus, there are millions in artifacts in that room, but nothing was taken but what we think was the murder weapon." "That's doesn't make any sense," Borden said. "If he'd come to kill, he would have brought his own weapon, but if he came to steal, he would have taken more items. I'm sorry, Miss McFarlane, I'm stomping all over your turf here." "Oh, you're doing fine, Mr. Borden. Carry on." "Should we look at the scene, then?" he asked as McFarlane stood back watching his technique. "Why not?" Gomez asked. "The body's been removed, and forensics is dusting the room. You'll have to limit your movements." She began to lead them down the hall toward the back of the house. "So, detective," Borden asked, "why did that Green fellow call us ghostbusters?" "Grace hasn't told you?" "No." "Not my place, then." She stopped them at the threshold of a white room. White walls, white display cases with ancient weapons, clothing, religious artifacts, and various other items from cultures all over the world. All were arranged on a white deep-pile carpet with a large bloodstain just to the left of the door. Borden gave a long, low whistle. "Is all this stuff authentic?" "According to his wife, it is. The contents of this room are worth several million dollars. Grace, you'll want to get a sample of that blood. It's still wet enough down below the pile." "Any particular reason?" McFarlane asked, kneeling beside the stain and opening her case. "Yeah. I'll show you when we go out back." McFarlane opened a test tube with a cotton swab built into the lid and began pushing it down into the stain. She wrinkled her nose, then gave a couple of sniffs. "You smell that?" "Kind of like burnt garlic?" "Yeah." "That's why I called you. It was overpowering when we got here. It isn't coming from the victim, but within the past dozen or so hours, there's been a werewolf in this room." This was the last straw for Borden. "A were— what?" * * * Detective Gomez led McFarlane and Borden back toward the front of the house, stopping along the way to open the bedroom doors. Opening the one across the hall, she continued the tour. "This is the wife's room, Jamie, her name is." "Not theirs together?" Borden asked. "No, and that's the point I wanted to make. See, it's all feminine in here. Curtains, carpets, perfumes and makeup on the dresser, everything in here says female." Leading them to the front bedroom, she opened the door. "This was Mr. Goldstein's room. Single bed, framed knives and antique pistols on the walls, masculine deodorant in evidence, male slippers. It's like they each had a space, and neither entered the others." "Seems to be by mutual agreement," Borden said. "Marital problems?" "Mrs. Goldstein says no. Says they just liked their own surroundings, and they socialized out in the living room. But most of the house is divided like this. He had a den and that display room, and she has her sewing room, where she mostly reads, by the way, and she also works in the garden. And there are some interesting developments out there, as well." "No doubt," Borden muttered. Gomez led them out onto a patio that overlooked a yard worthy of a magazine layout. A large yard was carpeted with lush green grass even here at the end of winter. A bird bath stood in the middle, and the perimeter was surrounded by full, leafy shrubs, a fountain bubbling in the far corner. Off to the right against the house was a shed, and she led them there next. "We went through this as well," Gomez said. "Mrs. Goldstein gave us permission to search for the murder weapon, and we've been pretty thorough. But, look in here." Gomez led them into an artificial cave of dim light and rich, earthy smells. There was a workbench with flowerpots and tools, bottles of chemicals lined up underneath. Shovels stood in the corner beside a couple of barrels with planters and flowerpots stacked around. "You must have found something, or we wouldn't be in here," Borden offered. "Indeed we did." She led them to the back of the shed where a dirty plywood box sat in the corner opposite the work bench. "This was under a tarp. When we opened it, there were some old more or less worn-out gardening tools on top of some burlap, but look what we found underneath." She took out a small square plastic container like would be used to store leftovers in the refrigerator, only this one was full of dirt. "There are twenty-four of these in here, all of them full of dirt like this. You'll want to get some samples, Grace, but this looks to be ordinary soil just like what's found in the garden out there." "So, what?" McFarlane asked. "He was going to grow something in them?" "So why would they be buried in this box instead of out in the sunlight? Plus, Mrs. Goldstein is the gardener. She swears her husband never showed the slightest interest. But here's the thing. She also swears she knew nothing about this box." "The hell?" Borden exclaimed. "This yard's a big job for one woman. Did they have a gardener? Maybe it's his." "In fact, they do employ a service. Two men come every other week, but they bring their own equipment and work out of their truck. But, you see how these are packaged up, sealed, easy to transport? Goldstein had to travel around the region in his work, and sometimes had to spend the night away from home. Couple that with the separate sleeping arrangements, the lycanthrope smell in his display room, and, well..." There was a brief delay while McFarlane connected the dots. "He was a vampire!" "That's what all this points to, and depending on when he was turned, his daughter could be a dhampir. That would prove a useful addition to the agency, no?" "What the God damned hell is the matter with you people?" Borden asked slowly, trying to make sense of what he was hearing. "Rick—" "No, no, it's too late to start using my name now. Do you expect me to believe that we're standing in the middle of some damned Twilight story? Easier to believe that I'm on one of those prank shows. Where's the camera, what's the punchline? You people aren't right in the head!" He stormed out onto the grass, stopping by the bird bath and staring off over the shrubbery. McFarlane followed him, leaving the detective in the shed. "Rick, I know this is a lot." "A lot? That's an understatement and a half!" "It is, and maybe I should have presented it differently, but I assure you that all of this is all too real." "You're insane." "Well, if you believe that, you still have the return half of your ticket, and there are flights leaving around the clock, but before you use it, sit down with me and listen to what I have to say. I'll put everything on the table, and you can make your decision with all the facts in front of you." He turned and stared at her. "Please?" "Well, why not?" he asked with just a hint of a smile. "I have to go back there to get my stuff anyway. We can have our little chat, then I'll be on my way." Part II The room was 1950s trash. Situated on the fifth floor of an ancient six story brick office building in that nebulous area between National City and Barrio Logan, it was in a neighborhood that made an armed security guard non-optional. The room was long and narrow, entered through a single door near one end. To the right were three desks standing perpendicular to the wall, affording each occupant a panoramic view of a crappy part of town, dying light industries interspersed with abandoned buildings. A fourth desk sat against the interior wall next to the coffee mess and microwave, a wheezing old refrigerator completing the inventory. Two of the window desks were occupied. All of them were littered with typewritten papers, newspaper clippings, photos, and printouts. Tibor Kovács stood before the desk, looking very small as he endured a dressing down from Joseph Woods, "Uncle Joe" to his employees, at least when he wasn't around. "This Grace McFarlane is accusing you of stalking her! She's talking about getting a restraining order against everyone on the paper! What have you been doing to this woman?" "I'm not stalking anybody, Joe. I'm working on a story." "She claims that you're working on her, specifically. There are close to a dozen employees in her firm, and she's the only one who's ever seen you. Now, what the hell's been going on between you two?" "I told you, I'm following a story. A big one." "What story, Tibor? Tell me about it." "I don't want to parcel it out in pieces. It isn't ready yet." "Tibor, the paper's about to get hit with a lawsuit. We don't want that, and you damned sure don't want to be responsible for it, so I suggest you get it ready before you're unemployed." "All right, all right. See, Joe, this McFarlane woman is one of those ghost hunter psychic types who prey on the feeble-minded." "Kind of like us, you mean?" "What? No! We tell creepy stories, bring a smile to people's faces, or a nice scare like any good horror movie does. This woman and her agency show up at the scene of terrible crimes with her strobe lights and ultrasonic resonators, and the cops greet her like she's the second coming. All of these 'great psychics' are hucksters who prey on the bereaved. The real story is how she's tricked the cops into letting her in." Woods took a moment to think about this. "All right," he said, sitting down and laying the letter on his desk, "let's say she's the queen of the con men, and she's even hoodwinked the cops. If she has that kind of power, she'll have to be handled carefully." "What does that mean?" "I'm thinking. One thing we know is that you're going about it all wrong. Going to her crime scenes and harassing her, whatever it is you're doing, just gives her the moral high ground, and if she has the cops in her thrall, it will probably get you arrested." "So, what do I do?" "Back off. Let her think her letter has scared us off." "But, boss—" "Tibor, this is the age of the internet. Dig into this woman's history, her agency, see where her Facebook page leads you. Get some real dirt on this broad, and you may find her a bit more open to reason." * * * "What do you think, Rick, that we spent $300 to fly you out here so we could play a joke on a stranger? Do you think we somehow got the police to take time out from a murder investigation to help with the prank?" "Well, here's a few things to consider. The cops don't get involved in fraternity pranks. They know, some of them, they know what we're doing, and a lot of our cases come from them calling us in. You ever have a case in Chicago that you couldn't solve, and eventually your captain just pulled you off of it and assigned you to something else?" "Sure, it happens." "But you know the police don't just quit investigating a major crime. If you were pulled off, it's a safe bet that someone else was put on it." "Sure. It goes to the cold-case squad." "Does it? After what you've seen today, are you sure?" "I'm more sure of that than what you're suggesting." He continued to stare out the passenger window, avoiding eye contact as rows of hotels slid by. "Are you?" "Of course I am," he barked, turning suddenly to look at her. "I was a cop for a decade, uniformed and plain-clothes, in a big city. I know what people do to each other, and I don't need a monster from The Outer Limits to explain it." "You don't need jellyfish to explain someone drowning, either, but they exist. There are all sorts of huge stars and nebula and supernovas that can wipe out life from across the galaxy, but all you can see are little points of light. Do they not exist either?" "It's not the same thing. Those things don't sneak into neighborhoods and murder people. For Christ's sake, you're talking about vampires and werewolves like they live down the street and work at the bank. Mythical monsters don't murder people. People murder people." "Oh, Rick," she said, shaking her head, "you've so much to learn." "What, that the boogie man is real?" "Yes, that, and a number of other things. You know what the dark web is, right?" "What cop doesn't?" "Well, you could look at things like the Goldstein murder as sort of a dark reality. Most people don't see it, can't see it, maybe, won't see it when it's right in front of them. But it's there, nonetheless, always present, always waiting for an opportunity to make itself known." Borden stared at her for a moment as if she were growing a second head from the side of her neck. Then whatever he was feeling passed, and he looked away again. "I'm not six anymore. I left all this behind with childhood." "It didn't leave you behind. It's been looking for you, Rick, and today it's found you." * * * Stefan had watched the uniformed officers going door-to-door questioning residents in a search for witnesses. Two blocks up the street, he had some time and he used it to prepare carefully, so when the knock on his door came, he was ready. "Oh, I'm sorry. I've just been teleconferencing. The camera doesn't show them what's under the table." He unknotted his tie and pulled it off around his collar. "I presume you're here about whatever happened at the Goldstein's house?" "That's right," the female said, consulting a list on a clipboard. "Are you Stefan Naj... Najdenik?" "It's Na'denik, actually. How can I help you officers?" "I'm Officer Warren. This is my partner, Officer Grogan. We need to ask you a few questions about the deceased." "All right. Who is the deceased, actually?" "Gabriel Goldstein. Did you know him?" "Only casually," Najdenik replied, tossing his suit coat toward a couch inside and opening his collar. "We attended the neighborhood parties, exchanged greetings in the morning, that sort of thing." "You didn't socialize, then?" "Not really. We didn't have much in common." "It says here," Warren said, consulting her clipboard again, "that you installed his home security system. Was that a social arrangement between friends, or a business dealing?" "Business. I work for Sunland Security. I installed half the systems on this street. Everyone knows what I do, and people would rather deal with someone they know than a stranger." "Makes sense," she said as her partner took notes. "So, this system you installed for him, on a scale of one to ten, how effective was it?" "Oh, better than most. I'd say about an eight. He kept a lot of valuable artifacts in that house. Well, I'm sure you've seen them." "We have. Why not a ten?" "The ten is our model 12-300. It's normally reserved for businesses with sensitive government contracts, though we'll sell it to anyone who wants to pay for it. The cost to rig up a house the size of his would have been close to $200,000. He opted for a $7,000 installation. Would you like to come in?" "No, thank you. This won't take that long. If the detectives want to talk to you, they may ask. So, Mr. Najdenik, did you hear or see anything unusual last night between the hours of ten and midnight?" "Well, I wouldn't normally be up that late on a Sunday, but there was nothing on the schedule this morning, and I knew I could sleep in, so I took the opportunity to watch an old Bogart movie. The only thing I remember is that I heard what could have been a shot." "What time was that?" "Oh, eleven, eleven-thirty." "Didn't you find that unusual?" "No. Dr. Velarde's boy up the street here," he pointed off behind him, "is restoring an old jalopy. It's at a phase where it backfires every time he turns it off. It's a real pain when he does it at three in the morning." "I see. It says here you live with your wife. Is she home?" "No. She's a school counsellor, so she would have left before seven." "All right. What school does she work at?" "Mission Bay High." "Thank you for your time, Mr. Najdenik. We'll give our notes to the detectives, and they'll be in contact if they need to talk with you further. Meanwhile, call us if you think of anything that may be helpful." She handed him a card. "I sure will," he replied, shaking hands with them. "This is a shame, a nice guy like that." They turned to leave, and he watched them make their way back to the sidewalk before going back inside and closing the door. Idiots. He climbed the stairs to the bedroom to finish his preparations for his wife's return. * * * When he'd stopped responding, she'd stopped badgering him, a fact for which Borden was grateful. What could have happened to this otherwise level-headed young lady to cause her to believe in this crap? They parked under the building that housed her offices, and she led him up the stairs and through reception. "Hold my calls, Parker," she said before Mason could speak. "Come with me, Mr. Borden." "What for? If you'll just call me an Uber, I'll be on my way." "You agreed to hear me out." "I thought I'd done that in the car." "That was just small talk. My attention was on the road. Come on." She led him into her private office, everything modern art, polished chrome, and brushed steel, a diametrical contrast to the analog chaos that was reception. "Have a seat, Mr. Borden. Make yourself comfortable." The large open space in front of her modest desk played home to a conference area of sorts, a couch against the wall faced by two easy chairs. He took a seat on the couch; she took one of the chairs. They studied one another for a few moments, until he said, "Well, convince me." "I don't know whether I can do that, Mr. Borden. You have made it clear that you regard the supernatural as made-up tales to frighten children, something that has no place in the adult world. I can't really hold that against you. You share the mainstream view in which anyone who expresses a belief in these things is dismissed as a crackpot, unworthy of further consideration. I perceive that that is how you view me." "Oh, now, wait a minute," he protested. "You're a perfectly nice girl, uh, woman, and you seem to have a good head on your shoulders from what I saw at the crime scene. You're just asking me to believe the unbelievable. My universe doesn't include these things, and you're asking me to throw out a lifetime of viewing the world in a logical, rational way to embrace something that is, I don't know, not normal." "Mr. Borden — Rick — do you know how I came into this line of work?" "Obviously not." "My great uncle is Japanese. He and his wife embraced the traditions of the old country, and I used to love spending time in their home. It was neat beyond any concept of what Americans think of as neat. That aesthetic has found expression in my office." She gestured at the almost sterile furnishing and displays. "I especially loved the tea ceremony. It was so ordered and structured, and every gesture had a meaning. What I didn't know was that my grandmother, his sister, fancied herself a witch. She combined the traditions of Japanese and European witches, and one side or the other must have been offended, because one night an onryō came to punish her for her transgressions against the traditions." "A what?" "An onryō. A ghost of vengeance." "That right there, see, that's where we part company. I don't know what happened to her. I assume that she was assaulted or murdered—" "She was murdered." "All right, that's sad, and I'm sorry for your loss, but how do you get from a murder to this unryu thing?" "Onryō. They lived in Sacramento, a good hundred miles from the ocean, but my grandmother died of drowning. Her lungs were full of sea water. Not salt water, sea water. It had plankton and algae in it of a sort not found locally, and her hands were bound with the stipes, or runners, of kelp. It was still wet. You were a detective, Rick. Any theories?" "No," he said after a moment. "That's... that's a strange case." "But not if you're steeped in Japanese folklore. Vengeful spirits often kill with water, and usually water from their own home area." "Someone must have known of these beliefs and concocted a crime taking advantage of them." "That's what the police thought. They tried to pin it on my grandfather for quite some time, but no one could explain the sea water. But my uncle knew. He went on to found this agency, devoted to the detection, prevention, and solution of supernatural crimes. The name of the agency, Akuma, is the Japanese word for demon, you know. The police over the years have come to rely on our assistance in certain cases, though they dare not publicize the fact." "No, I wouldn't imagine." "I have helped him in an ever-increasing capacity since I was fourteen. He is retired now, and I am the nominal head of the agency, but we still consult with him regularly on our tougher cases." "Wait a minute. You said he founded this agency, but earlier you told me that there were similar agencies in Chicago and all over the world." "That's true. After he began his work here, he was contacted by a man named Andrew Tunney. Mr. Tunney is highly placed in a network of agencies just like this one that have been working on cases like this for a good many years. It took some doing, but he sold my uncle on joining his network and pooling resources. You might look on these agencies as a sort of Interpol of malicious supernatural activity, and when it extends into apparent crimes, such as this case with Goldstein, most police forces have methods that allow us to work with them. You saw it happen today." "I saw something today, I'll agree on that. I still don't know what it was, exactly." "Does what you saw mean nothing to you?" "It does. It might mean more if we weren't in California." "Land of the fruitcakes, huh? You know, San Diego has some of the most haunted places on Earth. The Whaley House, the Davis House, the Hotel del Coronado are famous for their hauntings. The ferryboat Berkeley, Old Point Loma lighthouse, the gold mines in Julian. I could go on. People come from all over the world to search for the Proctor Valley Monster. Are all the thousands of people who come here in search of these things fruitcakes? Even the majority of them who aren't from California?" "Well, there are fruitcakes everywhere. Most of them just seem to end up here, and I'm beginning to see why now." "Really? You know, if that's your attitude, maybe you should just go home." "Maybe I should." "It was my decision to recruit you, Rick. Do you know why you're not a cop anymore?" "I was downsized. A victim of the recession, you might say." "Sure, but do you know why they cut you, and not the guy in the next cubicle?" "Seniority." "To some extent, but they had choices. We know why they chose you, Rick. Are you interested?" "Hard not to be." "You went instead of Detective Cox because you were viewed by your bosses as a loose cannon." "What? A loose cannon?" "Yes. You followed up on unpopular theories, you didn't accept the easy solution, you raised uncomfortable points. In other words, you rocked the boat, and they took the opportunity to get rid of you. Now, what they call rocking the boat, we call thinking outside the box, and that's just what we need at this agency. I thought you'd be a good fit here, but I've never been afraid to admit when I'm wrong. I'll tell you what. Your stuff's in the corner over there. Grab it, and I'll take you to the motel. You can get a night's sleep, and I'll send an Uber in the morning to take you to the airport." She stood up and turned away to pick up her car keys from the desk. "Hang on a minute," he said. "I haven't eaten all day. Is there a restaurant in this town, or does everyone eat fast food?" "There's a Jimmy's Family Restaurant two blocks up on Main. Good food, friendly service, decent prices. I eat there a lot myself. If you don't mind walking up there, I'll finish up here and pick you up on my way out." "I appreciate that. It'll give me some time to think." * * * The walk to Jimmy's was pleasant, though he had to smirk at the fellow walking the other way, jacket zipped against the mid-sixty degree breeze. If this was what passed for winter here, a guy could get used to it. This was the slow time between lunch and dinner, and Borden pulled open the buffered door to find that he had the place virtually to himself. "The counter will be fine." With a smile he'd be willing to bet none of those high school boys ever saw, she led him to the counter. The restaurant was laid out in an L, the counter along the right leg, with everything in brown wood and gold fabric and lighting; very restful, no doubt to encourage a healthy appetite. The counter stood on the inside face, with booths against the windows. The left leg was the main dining room, tables covering the floor. The rest of the presumably square floorplan comprised kitchen, refrigerators, and pantry. He took a seat at the counter and picked up a menu. "Coffee?" a quiet, pleasant voice asked with a mild but distinct southern accent. "Please," he said without looking up. "Regular." The voice's owner turned his cup upright and poured. "When y'all are ready to order, just let me know." "I think I'm ready now. I'll have a club sandwich with a side of fries." She was, or had been, quite attractive. She was edging into middle age, her still-pretty face surrounded by a mop of dirty-blonde curls. He shifted a bit to read her name tag as she logged the two items on her order pad in waitress shorthand. Penny. "Anything to drink with that?" "Just coffee. Unless you've got some rum I can put in it." "Sorry, sugar. State licensing board would take a dim view of that." She turned to put the order sheet on the shelf the dining room shared with the kitchen. "That should be up in just a moment. Y'all need anything else, just holler." A transplant, he thought. Interesting. His order came up, and she rose from her stool at the end of the counter to pick it up. She slid it into place in front of him, noticing as she did that he'd already finished most of his coffee. "Like a refill on that?" "Please." "Rough day, sugar?" she asked as she topped off his cup. "Shows that much, does it?" "Little bit." "Yeah, well, I don't even know what's rough anymore. I feel like I've been kidnapped to the Twilight Zone." She put the pot back on its hotplate. "What's happened to you? If you don't mind me asking, of course." "No, it'd be nice to talk with somebody sane for a change." "Y'all want to be careful making unfounded accusations like that. But what seems to be the trouble?" "God, I don't know where to start. This time yesterday I was in Chicago flipping burgers for McDonald's. Then I got an email to come out here for a job interview, all expenses paid. So I hopped a plane and came to the address I was given. But it turned out to be a bunch of psychics who think they hunt werewolves for the police. I've been taken to a murder scene and told with a straight face that a werewolf apparently murdered a vampire." Her response to this was to let her mouth fall open. "Yeah. Then, when I questioned the sanity of that bit of news, I was told this sort of thing is as normal as traffic, and goes on all the time back in the shadows where most people don't know about it. I don't know who the hell I've gotten mixed up with, but I'm going to get a night's sleep at this motel they've booked for me, and I'm going home tomorrow." "Can't blame you for that, sugar. This place look legit?" "They were in an office." "They? There was more than one of them?" "Yeah. I saw two, and they talked about another. There was another client in the office, too." "Hmm. Tell me, sugar, what's the weather like in Chicago right now?" "The Hawk's flying low this week. Wind off the lake, and horizontal snow." "Why not spend a few days here, then, wait for things to lighten up back home?" "Can't. If I'm not back for my shift on Wednesday, I'll lose my job." "Flipping burgers at McDonald's? Is that worth fighting for?" "It's all I've got." "Is it?" She leaned close on the counter, a co-conspirator in a convoluted plot. "If these people flew you out here and put you up, they must be pretty sure that they want you for the job. Why not take it?" "And admit that I'm out of my mind, too?" "Not at all. It's a job. It's a paycheck. Is the pay good?" "Better than McDonald's." "So take it." "It's insane." "So what? Do you work at McDonald's because you believe in their corporate vision? Or is it a paycheck? Sounds like you need a change, sugar, and this here is Mr. Opportunity a-bangin' on your door. If they want you to study things that don't exist, the job can't be too hard, now, can it? Why not take the job and enjoy some nice weather for a while? And, what if it is real? Think of what you might learn." She jotted some figures on her pad and tore off the invoice, slipping it under the edge of his plate. "Pay at the register, sugar, and be sure to keep the stub. For your expenses, you know." "Okay. I have to wait here for my ride. I won't be in the way, will I?" "Not for another hour. We get a pretty good pulse for the dinner hour, though." "I'm still on Chicago time. This is the dinner hour." "Well, you just make yourself at home, sugar. I'll tell you if you're in the way." Another customer came in and took a seat at the counter, and she moved off to wait on him. He pulled out the bill to assess the damage. Written in pencil on the stub was a phone number. He could only assume it was hers. * * * McFarlane tidied up her desk, putting the file from an old case into her locking cabinet, and dropping the much thinner one from the Goldstein case into her top basket to consider first thing in the morning. Donning her jacket, she picked up her bag, took out her keys, and left her office. "Thanks, Miss Mac. You, too." She drove the two blocks to Jimmy's, parking in the structure built to serve the courthouse; most of the courtrooms had wrapped up their daily business by now, and very few cars were left. She walked a few doors down to the restaurant and opened the door. The dinner crowd was beginning to arrive, and there were two men in high-end suits waiting ahead of her; lawyers from the courthouse, she assumed from their attire. "Good evening, Grace. Just yourself tonight?" Monica Menard, the franchise owner's wife, greeted her. "Evening, Mrs. Menard. I'm meeting someone here." "Do you see the person?" Menard asked, leading Grace to the entry. McFarlane scanned the right leg of the L where singles usually ended up and spotted him at once at the near end of the counter. "Nice," Menard said in a suggestive tone. "New prospect?" "He was. We flew him out here to recruit him, but it looks like he's the one that got away." "That's too bad. Well, there are seats open, so you can go on over." "Hey, sailor," she said, sliding into the seat next to him, "you about ready?" "Just nursing a coffee. Can I get you something?" "Of course not. I'm the one with a job." A lift of her chin caught the waitress's eye. "Hey, Grace," the woman greeted her. "What can I get you?" "Just a decaf." "Comin' right up, sugar." As she turned to the hotplates, Borden said, "So, how does a nice girl like you get mixed up in the occult and paranormal business, anyway?" "I told you, my grandmother was killed by an onryō. Her brother, my great uncle, has devoted the rest of his life to the fight against the creatures and spirits of the dark side, and I joined him as soon as he would allow it." "I'm sure that's what you believe, but in the harsh light of day, you must know that it isn't rational. We don't live in fantasy land. How old are you, anyway? You know, if I'm allowed to ask that." "I'm twenty-four." "Twenty-four," he repeated. "A young girl who lost a loved one under those circumstances, that's understandable. But holding on to these beliefs into adulthood, that's what's not rational. Does it leave you any room for normalcy in your life?" "Not a lot. I'm being courted by a nonbeliever who wants to take me away from all this, and you can't mention your work in front of most people. But once you see its importance, none of that matters." "See? Irrational." "But it is rational if you've seen time and time again that it is absolutely real. What about you, Rick, why did you become a cop?" "I thought you knew all about me." "The high points. We know you're divorced; we know why CPD let you go, that sort of thing, but not the details." "That's somehow refreshing. I didn't start out as a cop. I went to law school. That's where I met Jennifer." "Your ex?" "That's right. She was an arts major. We had a whirlwind romance, married, had a kid too early. While I was still in school, I got work as a paralegal for a prestigious firm in Chicago. As a paralegal, your life is looking up old cases for precedent, carrying paperwork to and from the courthouse, you know. You're sort of a glorified gofer, and it bored me to tears. So I changed my major to criminal justice, completed the academy, and joined the force." "Was that what led to your divorce?" "It sure was. She was fine with me as a lawyer, even as a paralegal, but she changed the day I put on that uniform. She didn't come to my graduation, and from that day on, she never stopped badgering me about returning to finish my law degree. She didn't like the danger that's inherent in police work. She didn't like the odd hours, and mostly I think, she didn't like the lower pay. I loved those things. Well, not the lower pay, but you know." "Sure. No two days are ever the same." "Exactly. Well, one day she finally realized that all the nagging in the world wasn't going to change my mind, so she climbed on her broom and, pssssst—" he gave a credible imitation of a Nazi salute, "— off into the sunset she went. The divorce papers were served a week later." "So, you do believe in witches, then." He favored her with an innocent smile. "Certain varieties." He drained his coffee. "I've decided to take the job if it's still available." "It is, and I'm glad. What changed your mind?" "That waitress," he said as he slipped a five-dollar bill under his plate. "Penny?" The waitress's ears perked up as she heard her name, and she turned to see whether she was being summoned. "Need something, sugar?" "I don't know what you said to my new employee here, but I'm sure grateful." "Nothing to it, hon. I just appealed to his common sense. Y'all have a good night, now." Part III Kovács sat slouched sideways at his desk, chin on his left palm, neck and shoulders aching. He had been at it since shortly after lunch, and now darkness was settling outside the windows; the walk to his car should prove interesting this evening. But the work needed to be done. He stretched his shoulder and reached once again for the mouse. So he shifted his focus to the uncle; great uncle, actually, Keisei Echi. A pureblood Japanese, his sister was McFarlane's grandmother. She had married a Caucasian, which assuming that had continued, would make Grace one-quarter Japanese. Most of the extended family had lived in or near Sacramento, and presumably Grace had attended school there. Echi and his wife, Chihiro, ran a market. But as he paged through the archives of the Sacramento Union Herald, news of a grizzly murder quickly popped up, and wove through the thread thereafter. There weren't many details on the murder itself, other than lurid comments on how savage and unusual it was, and that the victim was Echi's sister, Grace's grandmother. It was hinted that the police, stymied, tried for a while to pin the murder on Echi. Why not the husband? The police seemed to have dropped that idea before too long, but eight months after the murder, Echi sold the store and moved to the town of Alpine in the foothills behind San Diego. Immediately after arriving, he founded the Akuma Paranormal Detective Agency, obviously a device to fleece those with too much money, but the kicker was that Grace had moved with him. Removed from school and sent to live with a widowed uncle at the far end of the state, an uncle who had been a suspect in his sister's murder. Kovács' investigative instincts were good, and they rarely led him astray. They were telling him now that in that combination of events was the information he wanted. He began to work backward through the archives, eyes scanning for stories that seemed unrelated, but might not be. And his instincts paid off. Buried on page C-6 was a brief article recounting an incident in which a sophomore at Sutter High School had been taken to a local hospital to receive stiches for a wound inflicted by another student with a pair of scissors. No names were provided for these minors, of course, but the other student was a female freshman who claimed the boy had assaulted her. He claimed she had attacked him for no reason, but as there were no witnesses, no charges were filed. But the girl was expelled "for the safety of all," and three weeks later, Grace McFarlane was living in San Diego County with her uncle. Coincidence? Kovács didn't think so. The direct line was as clear to him as a highlighted route on MapQuest. He picked up his cell, stared at it for a moment, then came to a decision, and thumbed his boss's name. "Tibor," came the gruff reply in the middle of the second ring. "What do you need?" "I need to go to Sacramento," Kovács replied. "Jesus Christ, it's never anything simple with you! What the hell's in Sacramento?" "I think I might have the dirt we want on Grace McFarlane." He went on to explain Echi's sudden move to Alpine, three weeks after an unnamed girl of McFarlane's age was expelled from McFarlane's school for putting a boy in the hospital. "I think it was her, Joe, I'm sure of it." "What do you think you're going to find up there? Her record will be sealed if she even has one." "Of course it will, Joe. I'm not that stupid. But there will be classmates. Friends, enemies, teachers even, who remember. It was a big deal in a small school, and it wasn't that long ago. People want their fifteen minutes, Joe. Hell, you've built a business on it, and who better to give them those minutes than a journalist working on a big story?" There was a long silence. "Joe?" "I like it. Okay, take a Greyhound up. Do everything as cheap as you can and save the receipts. Let me know what you find." "You got it, boss. I'll be there by morning." To be continued . . . |
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