Martin Greenberg: The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told

“How did you get this job?” said Ms. Fate.

“I think I must have done something really bad in a previous existence,” the Governor said grandly. “Cosmic payback can be such a bitch.”

“You got this job because you got caught,” I said.

The Governor scowled. “Yes, well… It’s not that I did anything really bad…”

“Ms. Fate,” I said, “Allow me to introduce to you Charles Peace, villain from a long line of villains. Burglar, thief, and snapper up of anything valuable not actually nailed down. Safes opened while you wait.”

“That was my downfall,” the Governor admitted. “I opened Walker’s safe, you see; just for the challenge of it. And I saw something I really shouldn’t have seen. Something no one was ever supposed to see. I ran, of course, but the Detective tracked me down and brought me back, and Walker gave me a choice. On the spot execution, or serve here as Governor until what I know becomes obsolete, and doesn’t matter any more. That was seventeen years ago, and there isn’t a day goes by where I don’t wonder whether I made the right decision.”

“Seventeen years?” said Ms. Fate. She always did have a soft spot for a hard-luck story.

“Seventeen years, four months, and three days,” said the Governor. “Not that I obsess about it, you understand.”

“Is Shock-Headed Peter still here?” I said bluntly. “There’s no chance he could have got out?”

“Of course not! I did the rounds only an hour ago, and his cell is still sealed. Come on, Detective; if Shock-Headed Peter was on the loose in the Nightside again, we’d all know about it.”

“Who else have you got down here?” said Ms. Fate. “Anyone… famous?”

“Oh, quite a few; certainly some names you’d recognise. Let’s see; we have the Murder Masques, Sweet Annie Abattoir, Max Maxwell the Voodoo Apostate, Maggie Malign… But they’re all quite secure, too, I can assure you.”

“I just needed to be sure this place is as secure as it’s supposed to be,” said Ms. Fate. “You’d better prepare a new cell, Governor; because I’ve brought you a new prisoner.”

And she looked at me.

I rose to my feet, and so did she. We stood looking at each other for a long moment.

“I’m sorry, Sam,” she said. “But it’s you. You’re the murderer.”

“Have you gone mad?” I said.

“You gave yourself away, Sam,” she said, meeting my gaze squarely with her own. “That’s why I had you bring me here to Shadow Deep, where you belong. Where even you can’t get away.”

“What makes you think it was me?” I said.

“You knew things you shouldn’t have known. Things only the killer could have known. First, at the Library. That anthropology text was a dry, stuffy and very academic text. Very difficult for a layman to read and understand. But you just skimmed through it and then neatly summed up the whole concept. The only way you could have done that was if you’d known it in advance. That raised my suspicions, but I didn’t say anything. I wanted to be wrong about you.

“But you did it again, at the autopsy. First, you knew that the heart had been removed before the liver. Dr. West hadn’t worked that out yet, because the body’s insides were such a mess. Second; when I asked you to name the victims in order, you named them all, including the werewolf. Who hasn’t been identified yet. Dr West still had him down as a John Doe.

“So; it had to be you. Why, Sam? Why?”

“Because they were going to make me retire,” I said. It was actually a relief, to be able to tell it to someone. “Take away my job, my reason for living, just because I’m not as young as I used to be. All my experience, all my years of service, all the things I’ve done for them, and the Authorities were going to give me a gold watch and throw me on the scrap heap. Now; when things are worse than they’ve ever been. When I’m needed more than ever. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right.

“So I decided I would just take what I needed, to make myself the greatest Detective that ever was. With my new abilities, I would be unstoppable. I would go private, like John Taylor and Larry Oblivion; and show those wet behind the ears newcomers how it’s done… I would become rich and famous, and if I looked a little younger, well… this is the Nightside, after all.

“Shed no tears for my victims. They were all criminals, though I could never prove it. That’s why there was no paperwork on them. But I knew. Trust me; they all deserved to die. They were all scum.

“I’d actually finished, you know. The werewolf would have been my last victim. I had all I needed. I teleported in and out of the Library, which is why no one saw me come and go. But then… you had to turn up, the second-best detective in the Nightside, and spoil everything. I never should have agreed to train you… but I saw in you a passion for justice that matched my own. You could have been my partner, my successor. The things we could have done… But now I’m going to have to kill you, and the Governor. I can’t let you tell. Can’t let you stop me, not after everything I’ve done. The Nightside needs me.

“You’ll just be two more victims of the unknown serial killer.”

I surged forward with a werewolf’s supernatural speed, and grabbed the front of Ms. Fate’s black leather costume with a godling’s strength. I closed my hand on her chest and ripped her left breast away. And then I stopped, dumbstruck. The breast was in my hand, but under the torn open leather there was no wound, no spouting blood. Only a very flat, very masculine chest. Ms. Fate smiled coldly.

“And that’s why you’d never have guessed my secret identity, Sam. Who would ever have suspected that a man would dress up as a super-heroine, to fight crime? But then, this is the Nightside, and like you said; we all have our secrets.” And while I stood there, listening with an open mouth, she palmed a nausea gas capsule from her belt and threw it in my face. I hit the stone floor on my hands and knees, vomiting so hard I couldn’t concentrate enough to use any of my abilities. The Governor called for two of his golems, and they came and dragged me away. They threw me into a cell, and then nailed the door shut, and sealed it forever.

No need for a trial. Ms. Fate would have a word with Walker, and that would be that. That’s how I always did it.

So here I am, in Shadow Deep, in the dark that never ends. Guess whose cell they put me next to. Just guess.

One of these days they’ll open this cell and find nothing here but my clothes.

“I checked them out myself,” Myra snapped. “Have you ever just considered that your boy isn’t the angel you thought he was?”

Stella took off her glasses and set them on her desk. “I think that we both need some perspective. Why don’t you take the rest of the afternoon off?” Before I slap your stupid face. People like Devonte don’t change that fast, not without good reason.

Myra opened her mouth, but after she got a look at Stella’s face she shut it again. Mutely she stalked to her desk and retrieved her coat and purse. She slammed the door behind her.

As soon as she was gone, Stella opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the crime scene again. They were duplicates, and doubtless Clive, her brother the detective, had broken a few rules when he sent them to her-not that breaking rules had ever bothered him, not when he was five and not as a grown man nearing fifty and old enough to know better.

She touched the photos lightly, then closed the folder again. There was a yellow sticky with a phone number on it and nothing else: Clive didn’t have to put a name on it. Her little brother knew she’d see what he had seen.