Caitlin Kittredge - Devil's Business

Mayhew pointed at the photo in Pete’s hands. “Recognize that?”

Pete displayed a close-up of the door. The word PIG had been scrawled with a fingertip, in blood. “Copycat?” she asked Mayhew.

“I wish,” Mayhew said. “Manson family fanboys would’ve been a lot easier to close up than whatever I’ve got.”

“Manson’s people murdered a pregnant woman, too,” Pete said. “This one—her baby didn’t make it, did it?” She shifted in her seat, and Jack reached out without thinking and put his hand over hers.

“Honestly, we don’t know,” Mayhew said. He rubbed his thumb across his forehead, drawing beads of sweat. It was claustraphobically hot in the little office, and Jack itched to get up and throw open a window.

Pete laced her fingers with his, though, so he stayed where he was. “How can you not know?” she said. “It’s not as if you can lose an infant down the cracks in your sofa cushions.”

“We don’t know because when the first responders came on the scene, the Case baby was gone,” Mayhew said. He sat back, digging in an overflowing drawer and bringing out a bottle of bourbon. “Snort?” he said, dashing a bit into a glass.

“None for me,” Pete said. Mayhew tossed the drink back without offering Jack.

“The medical examiner said the kid could have survived,” he murmured. “You know, if they cut it out instead of just cutting. But I could never think that. Why take a baby and murder its parents and their dinner guests? What the hell would the point be of keeping that baby alive?”

“And you think they were involved in the Black?” Jack cut in. “The doers, I mean?”

Mayhew collected the photos, keeping his hand on top of the one of Mary Kay Case’s dead body. “We found evidence that the Cases were in the life, yes,” he said. “More than that, they didn’t have a single enemy on the daylight side. Larry Case was a tax accountant and Mary Kay was a real estate agent. Good people. Good people don’t deserve this shit.”

“So naturally you assume it’s some baby-stealing nutter from beyond the beyond,” Pete said.

“It’s not that,” Mayhew said. “I could never close this one. It’s not easy to tell your captain that you can find the murderer based on a load of horseshit that most people think went out with the Salem trials, if they believe it at all. But the Case murders aren’t why you’re here.”

He pulled a fax off the machine and thrust it at Pete. “My buddy in the ME’s office sent this to me. They caught the bodies last night.”

Pete shared the fax with Jack. The photo was of bad quality, but he could make out the same rough outline as the Case bird. A pregnant woman, missing the center of herself, on a steel table under harsh light.

“Almost identical to the Case murders,” Mayhew said. He poured himself another shaky measure of bourbon. “It’s been ten years, and whoever did this is back in LA.”

Jack excused himself to smoke. The street Mayhew’s bungalow occupied ended at a cement embankment, and from there it was just beach and ocean. The sun had set, and the memory of it was crimson contrails streaked across the sickly yellow sky.

Pete joined him after a few drags. “What do you think?” she said, looking at his cigarette longingly before Jack stubbed it out.

“I think it’s a sad story, but there’s nothing here to do with you, or us, or the Black at all,” Jack said. Sure, it was awful that some nutter was ripping babies out of their mothers. But no more awful than the usual sort of awful people could be.

“Oh, come on,” Pete said. “At the very least, somebody thinks they’re doing black magic with those bodies.”

“Thinking and doing aren’t the same thing,” Jack said. “Also, Mayhew’s about as twitchy as a rat on an electric fence. For all we know that case could not even be his. Just a lure to get you where he wants you.”

Pete folded her arms. “Just because you don’t like him, you’re saying there’s nothing to this. That’s a shit way to conduct business.”

“What business?” Jack demanded. He should know better by now than to try and fool Pete. “Pete, at the very least he’s a sad old lush who can’t let go of his big failure. At the worst he’s setting us up to be a snack for something we’ve pissed off that’s been biding its time.”

“Fine,” Pete said. “You can go on, then. I’m going to look into it.”

Jack blinked. “You can’t be serious.”

“I think by now you know the answer to that,” Pete said. “You want to stick your head under a rock until you can crawl back to London, go right ahead. No skin off of me.”

“Well, luv, if we’re shouting uncomfortable truths: You want to take on this stupid errand for Mayhew because you’re pregnant,” Jack said. “I saw your face when that picture came up.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Pete snarled. “Just because I’m knocked up, I suddenly have a deeper understanding of the feminine mysteries of motherhood?” She shoved Mayhew’s file at Jack, hard enough to knock him off balance. “Wanting to catch some depraved bastard who preys on helpless kids is not some flighty side effect of my owning a vagina, Jack. Not wanting to says a hell of a lot more about you than my having a baby bump says about me.”

“Wait!” Jack said when Pete turned to storm inside. The file fell between them and Mayhew’s slaughter porn scattered across his stoop.

Pete threw up her hands. “Why should I? You’re not going to be one bit of help. As usual.”

Stupid. He was stupid, and why couldn’t he have just kept his mouth shut? Now Pete was looking at him like he was less than dog shit on her boot, and he deserved it. “It’s not that I’m unwilling to look into this,” Jack said. “I mean, I still don’t think we should be here, but you can’t run on back to Mayhew on your own.”

“Why not?” Pete snapped. “You afraid I might get used to a man with a job who doesn’t constantly have childish fits at me?”

“He’s a liar, for one,” Jack said. Pete laughed, short and sharp.

“If being a liar was a disqualification, I’d’ve chucked you out years ago.”

“I know you’re angry at me now,” Jack said. “But Mayhew is not on the level, Pete. His office stank of demon.”

Pete stopped with her hand on the door. “You wouldn’t just be saying that to sway me into leaving, would you? Because then I’d have to hit you in the balls.”

“I’m not going to lie about something like that,” Jack said. Lying about demons was just inviting them to show up and make a truth-teller out of you. Anyone who said Hellspawn didn’t have a sense of humor had never met one.

“Why would Mayhew be having anything to do with demons?” Pete said.

“That,” said Jack, “is an excellent fucking question.”

“I still think he’s got something with these dead folks,” Pete said. “Assuming he didn’t just make it up out of whole cloth.”

Jack shrugged. “Easy enough to find out. We can go ask somebody who’s not arse-deep in black magic, for a start.”

“So you’re staying?” Pete said.

Also an excellent question. Pete didn’t want his help, and Mayhew sure as shit didn’t want him around. He practically puffed his chest out like a frog whenever Jack was within ten feet. He should do exactly as Pete expected—go hide somewhere until it was safe to go home. But separating made them both vulnerable. He’d stay—and keep up the line that he was only there until the kid was out, which Pete seemed to have no problem believing. She could take care of herself, then, and the baby, and he wouldn’t be a danger to anyone except himself.