Jay Lake - Last Plane to Heaven

“She came down here,” Sesalem said. He framed his thoughts into a narrative as he always did when working a case. “For… something. To find help, to offer help. Not to score, I don’t think. Though someone scored off of her.”

The victim was perhaps sixteen, African-American with short, wiry hair. She’d been carrying a canvas bag from the Albina Church of God in Christ All-Saved and wearing a white sundress. At least, they assumed it had been a sundress. Covering her head, the bag had been tugged off by a forensics tech who now waited for the detective to finish his meditative contemplation.

Sesalem couldn’t imagine any local nut-cutter carrying that bag. It had to belong to her. Logo aside, it was too clean for downtown.

“Stupid,” rumbled Fork-Foot. “I tell you, you listen. People never listen.” His voice faded to a ritualistic grumble.

“Was the perp one of yours?” If so, case closed, and move on. Make a call to her parents, if she had any they could find.

“No. Aura’s no good.”

Demons killed for sport, about like people ate and slept—automatic as breathing, hard to get through the day without. Most victims were in free-kill zones, where there was no call for investigation. Even when not, the crime was usually so obvious as to merit only the most cursory review.

People killed for sport too, some of them far too emboldened by the demon-haunted world of the Rapture. That was still illegal. In theory.

“What about one of the Damned?”

“No.” Fork-Foot offered no further explanation, but his word was literally law.

Sesalem sighed. “One of ours, then.” He nodded at the forensics tech. “Okay, Jackie. Do your stuff, tag and bag her, then ship her to county. Somebody text me if we get a positive ID from this mess. And… be kind.” Sometimes it took a soul a while to realize it was finished with life.

He walked back to his parked car, ignoring the stabbing pain in his kidneys. Those who hadn’t rammed broken-necked through the roofs of their houses and cars to go to Jesus during the Rapture were mostly Afflicted since. Kidney stones sucked, but it beat having snake hair or tear ducts that dripped shit.

Fork-Foot leaned on the fender of Sesalem’s car, a short-wheelbase Toyota Land Cruiser painted to resemble a zebra—if zebras had balloon tires and bull bars. The metal groaned, eliciting a sympathetic wince from Sesalem.

“Not one of yours, either.” Fork-Foot’s tongue shot out of his muzzle to lick one eyeball.

“Not one of ours?” Sesalem asked. “That doesn’t leave a lot of options.”

“Them.” Fork-Foot pointed at the sky. He locked his thumbs to make butterfly wings. “Bird brains.”

Not butterfly wings, Sesalem realized. Angel wings. “I don’t believe it.”

Fork-Foot shrugged, then jumped straight up to the top of the building they had been standing in front of. Sesalem watched the demon leap across the stunted skyline of the Pearl District. It was headed downtown, presumably for the local demons’ nest in Pioneer Courthouse.

“Angels.” Sesalem shook his head. “No way.”

The instant message came through on his cell phone’s tiny screen about two hours later. Sesalem was eating a pork burrito in front of a little trailer on Southwest Fifth.

“Alley vict Sheshondra Rouse 17 yrs Albina resident cause of death heart failure. Mutilation post-mort.”

Post-mortem mutilation? Not demon work, then. Pre-mortem was their style. They definitely preferred to prolong the suffering.

The pay phone a few yards to his left began ringing. Sesalem glanced at it, then at the vieja running the trailer. She shrugged. Cell phones had continued to work pretty well since the arrival of the Legions of Hell, but the land lines had really suffered. They mostly worked by Demonic—or sometimes Divine—intervention.

Rational people didn’t answer ringing phones.

Rational people didn’t work Homicide in a demon-haunted world, either. Sesalem walked over and picked up the receiver. “Hello?” he said cautiously.

“Detective Sesalem.” It was a distant, tinny voice, the line crackling with static and crosstalk in some guttural tongue. “This is Control.”

Control . What the few agents of the Divine still on Earth called their semimythical upstream management. Parallel to the demons’ New Jersey headquarters, in a sense. Either this was some joker with brass balls the size of coconuts or Heaven was calling.

Under the circumstances, Sesalem went along with it. “Sure. Go ahead, Control.”

“Back off the Rouse case. Let it go, and return to doing good works.”

“Good works my ass,” Sesalem snapped, his own self-discipline slipping. “Too damned late for that.” He slammed the handset down onto the hook. He truly hated being told what to do.

Then he sat down to finish his burrito and think about why a birdbrain would commit murder. The pay phone rang again, but he ignored the noise.

It had to be murder. Otherwise Control wouldn’t have bothered to call him. And it wasn’t a demon. Notoriously dishonest as they were, he couldn’t figure why Fork-Foot would bother to lie.

But Fork-Foot had hinted at something.

Sesalem needed the demon again, needed to know what Fork-Foot knew. He walked far enough away from the still-ringing pay phone to dial Fork-Foot’s pager from his cell phone.

Fork-Foot dropped to the bricks of Southwest Fifth like a runaway freight elevator. Sesalem flinched from the cloud of chips and dust accompanied by a stench like an electrical short. Brimstone would have been an improvement.

“Nothing to liaise here,” said Fork-Foot in his metal-shredding voice as he looked around. “You got something personal to discuss?”

Cut to the chase, thought Sesalem. Don’t extemporize, don’t apologize. Just look him in the eye pits and talk. The detective took a deep breath. “Why would an angel have murdered Sheshondra Rouse?”

Fork-Foot shrugged. It was like watching an earthquake ripple through a wall. “Why not?”

“They’re forces of good.”

Fork-Foot laughed. At least Sesalem thought it might be a laugh. “Read the Bible, little man. Angels are no different from demons. Just prettier wardrobe, better public relations.”

“This isn’t Gomorrah. It’s Portland. She was a good kid from the Albina neighborhood. There’s no reason .”

“Even angels got to play.”

“Sport? That’s all you think it was? A sport killing, like one of your hunts through Old Town?”

“You better off believing that.”

What the hell did that mean? “Better off than what? Some dead black kid?”

“Better off than some dead black detective,” said Fork-Foot.

“Tell me,” hissed Sesalem, his voice dropping like it did when he was sweating a perp.

“Already did,” said Fork-Foot. “Don’t need to page me no more.”

Then the demon was gone in a swirl of brick dust. All around Sesalem, phones were ringing, from office windows, from passing cars, his own cell.

Back at the crime scene, Sesalem left his cruiser blocking the mouth of the alley. There was nothing left but draggled police tape and some empty film canisters. Forensics still hadn’t gone all digital.

He stood where Sheshondra Rouse had screamed her last. Black paint had been hastily slopped over whatever stains had resisted the quicklime and hot water the cleanup crew normally employed. It was still sticky, already crisscrossed with boot prints, clawed demon feet, and a motorcycle.

“Why’d you die here, baby?” he asked the brick walls. Somehow this didn’t seem like angel play.