“Scalding…” Gomez spun and yanked open the cold-room door. The sound of a zipper was sharp and rough on the shining walls. She said, “Would that cause wounds like this?”
FireWind followed her. From the confines of the cold room he said, “Yes. Exactly like this.”
“I’ve got more.” Gomez’s voice was harsh and grinding, dry as stone.
“Open the others, please.”
The sound of zippers echoed off the sterile walls.
Occam walked up to me and pulled me to him, his cat warmth like a furnace against my cold body. I laid my head on his chest and shoulder.
Time passed, FireWind and Gomez speaking softly. The sound of zippers came again.
“Nell?” FireWind asked more loudly from the cold room. “Would you be so kind…”
Occam released me. I walked into the cold room and looked at the man on the first shelf. Only his face was exposed. “Not a church member I recognize. Not a…Not a church member I know.” I looked at the others. “That one. Maybe? The last two? I…I’m not sure. I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”But the first one was a Lost Boy.
Those words wouldn’t come.
“Then I’d say you have a serial killer who likes medieval torture devices running around the city. Because I have five male bodies of various races and ages whose feet, roughly speaking, have similar signs of a medieval torture device. All within the last week. All were homeless so far as we know, most unidentified, and with kin who haven’t bothered to file missing person reports or come claim the bodies.”
* * *
I was supposed to go to the church to pick up Mud. But I couldn’t. Not with a Lost Boy at the morgue.
Back at HQ, I sat in my cubby, typing up reports, lots of reports, of the events over the last two days. I also read the postmortem reports of the other men tormented by medieval torturedevices before being killed. No one spoke to me. No one bothered me. Occam walked by several times, and once placed a bottle of water on my desk, but he didn’t speak. I didn’t look at him. My brain was too busy on too many levels, processing too many things. The attack at Ming’s. The attack at Esther’s. The bodies in the morgue. The ties to the church and to thegwyllgimutation.
About nine p.m., I became aware that FireWind stood at the door to my low-walled cubby. I let him stand for a whole two minutes as I typed up the last paragraph and ticked the last boxes on the form. I saved my work and closed the file. Spun in my desk chair to face him.
He was a beautiful man. Golden brown skin, amber eyes, long silky black hair that he usually wore in a single braid down his back. Tonight he wore it in two braids and they hung over his shoulders in front, nearly to his waist. It was a very tribal look on him, and nothing else about him took that impression away, not his crisp white shirt and black pants, not his shiny black office shoes. Not even his glowing yellow eyes.
Aya stood in my office opening, but was turned to the side, so as to leave the appearance of an opening, a way for me to get out. Standing with his body turned, so that I didn’t—wouldn’t—feel trapped. It was another of the odd little kindnesses I never expected from him.
“Sir,” I said without inflection.
“Ingram. May we speak?”
It wasn’t an order. I cocked my head.
“In my office if you will?”
Again not an order. A request. “Yes, sir.” I stood, followed him down the hallway between cubicles, leaving my weapon locked in the drawer, my cell in my pocket.
In his office, the blinds that covered the glass walls were open, but he closed the door, took a seat in front of the desk he still currently shared with Rick, in the corner, his back to the wall. A visitor’s chair. A supplicant’s chair. I had a moment of mad mirth at the thought that I could take his chair, behind the desk, a position of authority. Instead I sat in the chair beside his. He had placed them at an angle, mostly facing each other, several feet apart. Well staged for an informal chat.
“Sir.”
“Talk to me, Ingram. What does the church have to do with this?”
I don’t know. I don’t want to know.Didn’t say that. “The church has a secret.” I shrugged. “They have lotsa secrets, or used to. But this one’s a secret mostly inside the church. They don’t talk much about it.”
I laced my fingers across my lap to keep their trembling from being seen. I kept my eyes on them as I spoke, and knew I had slipped into church-speak. I didn’t care.
“We’uns in the church tried mighty hard to keep from breeding too close. But the church land was less than a thousand acres, and not many townie women wanted to marry in with us. We sent our young boys off to war, off to the service. Off to homestead. But there were too few wars to fight to keep the numbers of men in check.
“The teenaged males who hit their majority, who don’t fit well into church life, are traditionally…kicked out of the church as soon as they reach eighteen. Sometimes sixteen, if they are gay, or too studious, or violent troublemakers. They’re expected to join the military or go to work as tradesmen in nearby towns when they’re ejected. They’re called the Lost Boys.
“Lost Boys are picked up from their homes in the dead of night and dropped off in town to live or die on their own. Some make it. Some disappear. Some die.
