Джим Батчер: Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations

When we walked out of the darkness of that bar a year ago and into the late afternoon sun, Rachel had said, “What will you write in your report?”

“I don’t know. Probably nothing. No one would believe it anyway, and I haven’t got a shred of real evidence.”

The sun glinted off her key. “But you believe.”

“Yes.” I stared down at her a few moments. “You’re leaving.” Not a question.

“Yes. It’s a big world, Detective Saunders. A lot of monsters to hunt.”

I nodded. “Mind if I ask you a question? Why did you stay? You had to know about Adam and Rabbi Dietterich. And the way you’ve left your tracks out there for anyone to see . . . you had to know that, eventually, I’d figure this out.”

For the rest of my life, I will remember how she looked at me then: with great compassion and something very close to love.

“Detective, how do you know that you are not the one for whom I remained?” Then, before I could speak, she stepped forward and spread the fingers of her right hand over my heart, and a surge of emotion flooded my chest so that I had to fight for breath. It was like something had come alive in there and was being pushed, no, forced out—and I knew that when I was alone, I would cry in a way that I hadn’t since I was a small child.

“Wounds of the heart are the most difficult to heal,” she said gently. “There are many monsters, Detective. But there are the angels. We are here. All you need to do is know how to look.”

And then I’d watched her move west, into the light of the setting sun. The light was so brilliant my eyes watered and I had to blink. When I’d opened them again, she was gone.

Since then, well, it’s been a long year. One thing, though: I don’t think about Adam as much, and when I do, I’m not as angry. I’m just sad, and even that’s getting less over time, as if the past is bleaching out of my mind like an old photograph, the kind where people fade into ghosts and then penumbras—and then they’re just gone, with only the suggestion of an outline to show that they’d been there at all. So that’s probably good.

I hear the crunch of gravel. Then, a voice I recognize: “Detective Saunders.”

“Rabbi.” We shake hands. “What brings you here?”

Dietterich’s in his standard uniform: long black coat, the hat. A quizzical look creases his features. “I don’t really know. I visit cemeteries, though. I pay respect. There are so many,” he gestures toward the markers, the flowers, “and never enough time to remember them all. And you?”

“Just thinking. Actually, I was getting ready to leave.”

“Ah.” He nods. We stare at the grave. Then, without looking up, he says, “Whatever happened with that case?”

“We didn’t catch anyone.” That’s about as close to the truth as I can go, even with him—because he was right. There are some things people just aren’t meant to handle.

He looks over, and his eyes are keen. “But you found an answer. You found some measure of peace.”

“Yes. Yes, I did.”

Dietterich nods. “Did you know that Detective Lennox came to see me a few months before he died?”

I’m genuinely taken aback. “No. Why?”

“I think he wanted to unburden himself, but he couldn’t, or maybe he wouldn’t. He came a few times. We had coffee. Then he just stopped coming, and I didn’t call. Perhaps I should have.”

“Adam had a choice.” It’s taken me a while, but now I can say it. “Adam may have had his monsters, but people have to want the help. They have to want to work at being free.”

Dietterich sighs. “Yes. I see so many people in pain, Detective, more than you can know. Sometimes I think God asks the impossible.”

“A leap of faith?”

“Nothing makes sense otherwise, does it?”

“I guess not.” I stick out my hand. “I should go.”

“Let’s go together.” Dietterich smiles. “We’ll have coffee.”

“I’d like that,” I say, and mean it. “Cop coffee stinks.”

Dietterich laughs. He loops his arm through mine, just like I’ve seen all those Chassids do. “I’ll let you in on a secret. So does Miriam’s.”

We walk toward the entrance. As we step onto the sidewalk, into the world of the living, a sudden bolt of light knifes the clouds. Sun splashes gold upon the walk and touches the leaves with fire.

We walk, together, into the light.

Ilsa J. Bickis a child psychiatrist, as well as a film scholar, surgeon wannabe, former Air Force major, and an award-winning author of dozens of short stories and novels, including the critically acclaimed Draw the Dark ; Drowning Instinct ; Ashes , the first book in her YA apocalyptic thriller trilogy; and the just-released second volume, Shadows. Forthcoming are The Sin-Eater’s Confession and the last installment in the Ashes Trilogy, Monsters . Ilsa lives with her family and other furry creatures near a Hebrew cemetery in rural Wisconsin. One thing she loves about the neighbors: they’re very quiet and only come around for sugar once in a blue moon. Visit her at www.ilsajbick.com.

The Case: The body of a newborn is found by a jogger in a DC park. A strange tattoo and a small piece of cloth inscribed with arcane symbols are the only clues.

The Investigators: Kay Rollins and Jason Saunders, DCPD detectives. Both are good cops, but Saunders is still trying to shake the suicide of his last partner.

Kay said he was probably a week old. Two weeks, tops: the stub of the umbilical cord was still there. Found in a shallow grave, on the far side of a hill in Rock Creek Park, off Klingle Valley Parkway, not far from the National Zoo. The jogger was hunched in the back seat of a black-and-white, the golden retriever that went nuts over something that wasn’t a chipmunk looking embarrassed, nose on its front paws, wondering what the hell it did wrong. There was a uniform with the jogger. We—my partner, Rollins, and I—passed them on our way down the hill that was high with grass and damp from last night’s rain. The retriever looked up, hopeful, its tail thumping. The jogger’s eyes slid past to stare at nothing.

The baby was a little white boy. Hair short and fuzzy, like a wool cap. Thick, sludgy purge fluid flowed from his nose and mouth. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the stuff was blood. I know better. The purge meant the boy had been dead about three, four days. Luckily, it’d been a cold October so far; Halloween coming up that week, and Kay figured this slowed the rot. Still, there was that sick-sweet smell of death, and the baby’s abdomen was huge with gangrene and greenish yellow, like a bruise changing color. Thick green-blue vessels showed beneath the skin of his chest, and his eyelids were bloated and black. Made me want to rip someone’s head off.

“Anything?” I asked Kay.

“We won’t know until we do the cut, Jason. Kid might have been delivered at home, though.”

“Why?”

She pointed. “Not circumcised. These days, all hospitals circumcise unless parents specifically ask that they not.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing obvious. My guess is exposure and dehydration. Of course, there’s the tattoo.” Her gloved finger hovered over a blue smudge above the baby’s left nipple. “I’d say gang-related, Jason.”

I didn’t buy it. “I don’t buy it. I’ve lived in DC all my life. I’ve seen little babies in dumpsters, washed up along the Potomac. I’ve seen kids splattered in drive-bys while they’re doing their homework. But a gang revenge killing? Of a baby? That’d be a first.”

“But the tattoo . . . what else could it be?”

She had me there. I flipped to the page in my notebook where I’d written the symbols down. We used a magnifying glass: L-M-Z-2-9, as best we could make out. The M was done in cursive. The entire tattoo was smudged, like a rush job.