J Duncan - Deadworld

Straining his senses, Nick could almost hear their voices if he remained perfectly calm and still. His heart pounded now in his chest, and he sniffed away a tear that threatened to spill. In moments like these, Nick wanted nothing more than to just lie down and let that doorway draw him through to the end.

“Goddamn you, Cornelius. Damn you to hell.” He slammed the book shut and marched out of the room.

There was another victim.

At least the call came while they were on their way downtown, allowing them to avoid some traffic and head toward the bank.

Jackie glanced at the GPS system in the dashboard after Laurel put in the address. “This bank is close to Special Investigations, isn’t it?”

Laurel nodded. “About six blocks.”

“Coincidence?”

“Doubt it.”

“Anderson isn’t dumb enough to dump the body right by his place of work,” Jackie said.

“Unless he has good reason to put it there.”

Jackie pulled her five-shot venti on ice from the cup holder and took a long draught. She needed it after last night’s endlessly frustrating picking through of Nick’s story. The key piece of information still eluded them.

She could see the flash of blue and red before they even arrived at the scene. Television vans were parked along the street. A small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk along the bank’s parking lot.

“Or someone is trying very hard to make Anderson look like a suspect,” Jackie said. She had gone to bed last night with that thought, based on a question Laurel had given. Who else could be involved and why? As much as she wanted to hold on to the idea that Nick Anderson might be a split personality, a far more disturbing notion waited in the wings. The original killer was still following Nick Anderson around.

“You didn’t want to entertain that idea last night,” Laurel said.

Jackie shrugged and swung their car up into the bank parking lot behind the flashing lights of several police cars. “Because I have no clue how we’ll find out who that is if Anderson won’t tell us.”

“I still think we should just ask him. Our info didn’t indicate who killed his family. They were never caught.”

“And for some reason, the bastard doesn’t want to clue us in.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening the car door. “Look at this mess. It’s sad that the TV crews are out here before we are.”

She closed her door and leaned on the roof, looking out at the crowd, a very different look on her face. The skin between her eyebrows crinkled down in concentration. She turned and leaned back against the car a few seconds later. “He’s not here. I don’t think anyway.”

Jackie walked off toward the bank. “Figured. Let’s go have a look.”

Inside the bank, the officer in charge of the scene was actually someone Jackie knew. He was a detective from their violent crimes task force, a lean, tall black man with facial features sharp enough to hurt yourself on. She had slept with him a few years back after hooking up in a hotel bar during some law-enforcement conference. He had abs you could springboard off of.

“Detective Morgan,” Jackie said, shaking his hand. “Good to see someone familiar on the scene. This is craziness.”

“Cluster fuck is more like,” he said, frowning. “Some bozo ran down the street screaming his goddamn head off. This a fed case now?

“Think so. You got someone drained of blood?”

“In the vault there. It’s all yours, Jackie girl. I hate these freaked cases.”

She waved him off. “Coward. You have the guy who went screaming down the street?”

“Yeah, somewhere. I’ll make sure he sticks around.”

“Thanks. You’re on the task force, Morgan, so we’ll be seeing you later today I expect. Let’s go have a look, Agent Carpenter.”

In the middle of the vault floor, thousands of pennies had been poured into a large pile. On top of it, a young man lay in coffinlike repose, feet crossed at the ankles, hands folded over his chest. He looked peaceful. The gentle smile on his face gave her the uneasy feeling that he was glad to be dead. Jackie knelt down next to the pile, surveying the body. Her finger trembled slightly as it pointed at the body’s hands.

“Care to take a guess at how old our vic is here?”

Laurel nodded. “Fifteen.”

She had no doubts now. Two down and three to go, which meant that soon a little eight-year-old girl was going to fall into the hands of this monster.

“Look, Laur. Same ligature marks on the wrists. Zip ties.”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice hoarse and quiet. “Same sense of evil, too.”

The forensics team was coming in then, the toolboxes in hand. Jackie stood up and nodded to Mike Leavy, who led their group of micro snoopers. “Mike, you let me know if you find anything odd on the body.”

“Like?”

“No clue. Last vic had a collectible penny under him. Just keep an eye out, okay?”

“Sure thing, Jack. You okay?”

She shook her head. “Not particularly. This case is really starting to get on my nerves.”

He gave her a grim smile and went to work. Jackie led Laurel out of the vault. No reason to be in there until they were done, and the feeling Laurel had was wigging her out, as evidenced by the heavy sigh she gave upon passing the threshold. Jackie touched Laurel lightly on the elbow as she stopped. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’ll be fine. This guy is just really bad, Jackie. It’s going to get worse, you know.”

Words of encouragement. “Then we better hurry up and catch this fucker.” She turned and looked at the vault door, going over the frame and edges of the large metal door. There was not a scratch or ding on it. “Hey, Morgan!” she shouted across the lobby at him. He had moved over by the main door, likely hoping to sneak out. Jackie pointed up at the video camera.

“It’s clean,” he replied. “Not a thing on it.”

“Security company?”

“On my to-do list,” he said with a humorless grin.

“I’ll track that down later, Jackie,” Laurel said.

“I want a report on what you got before you bail on me, Morgan.”

He nodded and went back to talking to one of his officers who had popped his head in through the door. Jackie looked around in thought, trying to think how someone could have gotten into the vault without causing any damage. “Someone had to have let him in.”

Laurel agreed. “Sure looks that way.”

“Or gave our perp the code.”

“That could be, or maybe they work here.”

“We’ll check them all out, but that is way too obvious for this.” Jackie stared at Laurel, noticing the little crinkle in her forehead had never gone away. She was still stressing. “What else?”

“Huh?”

“You have another theory. I can tell by that look, and it’s probably one of those shitty ghost theories that I’m going to hate.”

Laurel gave her a hesitant smile. “Probably.”

“Jack? Got something here,” Mike’s voice called out from the vault.

Inside the vault, Mike sat crouched on the balls of his feet next to the victim. In his hand he had a pair of large tweezers, which grasped a card-sized object.

“What is it?”

He held it up for her. “Looks like a tarot card to me.”

“Oh, really?” Suddenly interested, Laurel leaned over Jackie’s shoulder to look. Her gasp hissed in Jackie’s ear. “Wow. I think I know what that is.”

“Yeah? Mike, you get that bagged up for us? I think I’d like to show it to someone.”

“Sure. Let me dust it and log it in, and it’s all yours.”

A few minutes later, Jackie held the sealed card out to Laurel. “You okay to be touching this? In case it’s… evil or whatever? I don’t want you puking on my shoes.”