“Yes. If you’ll have a seat, I have the pictures right here.” He picked up a folder from his desk.
“Pictures?” I stepped forward and put out my hand. He handed over the file. “What about the scene of the most recent crime? There have been two, correct?”
“Two, yes. With the recent one, the body was found in a dumpster in the Seattle port. We processed the evidence already. We’ve noted everything of value.”
“How long ago did the recent crime happen?”
“About a week ago now.”
I sighed. Even if I saw an actual crime scene instead of a body dump, there was no way I’d feel even earth-shaking magic a week later. Still, maybe I would find something the others missed.
I opened the file and immediately felt my brow furrow. Beyond the fact that it was disgusting, the picture didn’t mean anything to me. The next one was the same. It was the third one that I pushed away from my face. “Gross.”
Darius stepped forward to look.
I checked out the rest quickly before closing the file and handing it back. “You know what I do, right?”
Oscar hesitated, like I was asking a trick question. “We have an office here with a field of expertise similar to the one you’re associated with in NOLA,” he said slowly.
I shut his door, having to maneuver around Darius to do it.
“Magic,” I said bluntly. A wary smile curved Oscar’s lip. Like most humans “in the know,” his logical mind clearly tried to pass my talents off as a joke so it didn’t seem so utterly outlandish. “I suss out magic. To do that, I need to see the most recent body, where the body was dumped, and where the crime might’ve originally happened. Otherwise, there is no point in my being here.”
Oscar studied me for a moment before looking at Darius. “Is she always this pushy?”
“Questions such as those will likely insult her, and then she’ll assuredly hurt you in some way,” Darius said in a bored voice. “But by all means, waste our time. It will benefit me.”
He was, of course, referring to the promise I’d given him regarding my blood. “So that’s why you won’t actually help me, is it?” I asked.
“Yes. Next, he might ask if you are always this dim. I am starting to wonder myself.”
I took a deep breath and let it out noisily before hooking a thumb at Darius and directing my focus to Oscar. “He’s right about one thing. I feel a surge of violence coming on. Let’s get this done, or I’m going home now. Time’s a tickin’, man. I need to solve this quick-like.”
With a dark chuckle, Oscar came around the desk. “Have it your way, but I saw the way you looked at those pictures. The real thing is much worse.”
“And I will tell you that I’ve seen worse still, believe me. Usually it’s the smell that gets you. That doesn’t make this any less gross, though.”
A short car ride later, we arrived at a nondescript building without so much as a number indicating its address. Cameras pointed down at us as Oscar unlocked the door. No receptionist sat at this desk. He led us down a hall and to a back room, watched by various cameras the whole time, then unlocked the door and flicked on the lights.
I half expected a bare bulb swinging over a dirty, cracked concrete floor, and while the reality wasn’t much better, it was certainly cleaner. Harsh white light rained down on a viewing table in a sea of beige. Just one table dominated the three-hundred-square-foot space, with a few folding chairs positioned around the sides. On top of the table was a pile ofew.
“Cozy,” I said, walking up to the table. “So yeah,skin taken off. No bones broken in the process?”
Oscar leaned against the wall by the door. “No. His face was left alone. His expression, as you can see, was one of intense pain, but he didn’t have any abrasions that would suggest he’d been tied down or forced to endure the torture in any way. The skin has been put to rights in the next room.”
“Gross,” I muttered. That seemed to be the worddu jour.I didn’t feel any residual magic, not that I would after so long.
I put my hands to my hips and turned away, biting my lip in thought, running through all the great many spells stored in my brain. I couldn’t do any of them, or, at least, hadn’t tried, but I’d either read about them or seen them in action. I could usually match a spell to the effects of said spell.
Usually.
“A freezing spell wouldn’t allow the mage to access the whole body.” I looked at Darius, since he collected magic for his faction of vampires, which meant he knew about freezing spells, too. “They could just do sections, I suppose. Maybe freeze his upper body and one leg while working on the other…but what would happen when they took the spell away to reapply?”
“It seems as though the torso was first.” Oscar pushed away from the wall and slowly made his way to the top of the body. He gestured near the neck. “Youcan see the cutting marks there. They’re rougher than the cuts on his legs. Like the assailant was rushed, or distracted.”
“Someone screaming would certainly be distracting.” I eyed the wounds. “I can’t tell you how many people I’ve punched out so they’d shut up. So annoying.” I put my hands into the air. “I was not torturing them at the time, detective. It was all above board.” I paused. “Mostly.”
“Your humor would certainly torture them, if you lobbed jokes at them along the way,” Darius said, having stepped closer to see the body as well. Maybe part of him did want to prolong the case, but his natural urge to problem-solve wouldn’t let him leave this solely to me.
