Anton Strout - Dead Waters

Davidson reached out and shook the officer’s hand. “What’s got your men so spooked, Sergeant?” he asked.

The head officer hesitated, a look of frustration crossing his face. None of his men made a move to offer up anything.

“You know what, Mr. Davidson?” he said. “Why don’t you just take your Monster Squad inside and see for yourself?”

“Nice,” I said. “Why don’t you clear out some of your boys, then? Or is the NYPD afraid of a little rain outside?”

The officer’s eyes widened. He looked like he might be on the verge of pulling his gun on me.

Davidson raised one hand to the officer and the other to me. “Gentlemen, please,” he said. “Let’s just do our jobs.”

The officer nodded, and then started ordering his men off the floor of the apartment building. Once they cleared the area, Davidson threw open the door to the apartment in front of us.

The space itself wasn’t the first thing my eyes landed on. A magnificent view of the East River and the Queens skyline filled up an entire wall of sliding glass doors at the far end of the room. The shadows of gargoyles stood out along a patio beyond the windows, lit up occasionally by a reflection of city lights coming off of a full-sized pool. Already I had a bit of apartment envy and I hadn’t even stepped in yet.

“Welcome to the home of Mason Redfield,” Davidson said. “Deceased.”

The four of us entered the apartment and the first thing I noticed was that the main room was several times larger than my entire apartment and almost as tastefully decorated. The owner of the apartment was lying dead and faceup in the middle of the living room.

“Nice place,” Jane said, nervously looking around the space and avoiding looking at the guy. “Bet there’s a lot of drawer space.”

I tensed as a surprise twinge of the tattooist’s raw emotional anger flared up for just a second, and I shot Jane a look as I pushed it down as best I could. “Not now, Jane. Not here.”

Connor circled around the dead man in the center of the room, barely paying attention to the body. “You know, for a crime scene, it looks remarkably tidy,” he said.

I walked over to where the body lay. He was an older gentleman in his late fifties with gray hair pulled back in a widow’s peak like an aging Eddie Munster.

“His eyes are open,” Jane said from where she stood farther away. His cold blue eyes were staring up at the ceiling, blank. “Creepy.”

Connor knelt down and closed them.

“Thanks,” she said.

“No problem,” Connor said, and then began looking over the body without disturbing it. “It’s the least I could do for an old acquaintance of the Inspectre.” He studied the corpse for a few moments more before speaking. “I don’t see a mark on him.”

Connor looked around the room, and then pulled out one of the vials of ghost bait he always had on him. He uncorked it and the smell of patchouli hit my nostrils. After several moments of nothing happening, he corked it and slid it back inside his coat.

“If his ghost is around here somewhere,” Connor continued, “I’m not picking it up.”

Jane moved a little closer. She cocked her head down to look at the corpse more closely. “Look at his mouth,” she said. “His lips are parted and there’s some kind of sheen just behind them.”

“Let me,” I said, kneeling down on the other side of the body. “I’ve already got my gloves on.”

I grabbed the side of his jaw and eased the corpse’s mouth open. “What the hell. . . ?”

I turned his head to the side. A clear liquid poured out of the man’s mouth onto the fancy wood floors.

“Water,” I said. “Or at least it looks like it.”

By now, Connor had slipped on a pair of gloves as well. He moved the man’s head back to the way we had found him. He pulled out a Maglite, twisted it on, and held it up to the man’s mouth. “There’s more.” He compressed the man’s chest and water poured out of his mouth again, this time to both sides of his face. “His lungs are full of it.”

Davidson stepped back. “Are you telling me he drowned?”

“From the inside,” Connor said. “Yes.”

“But his clothes and hair are dry,” Jane said.

Davidson jerked his thumb at her. “What she said. Maybe someone forced a hose down his throat?”

“I don’t think so,” Jane said. “Look at the floor. Until Simon tilted his head, there wasn’t a drop of water anywhere. If there had been a struggle or something like that, you’d think there would be water all over the place.”

I stood up. “She’s right. No wonder the regular cops are spooked. No signs of struggle. . . nothing that makes sense.”

Davidson crossed his arms and stood in silence for a minute. When he looked up again, he was staring at me. “You want to do your little magic-fingers thing you do?”

“Magic fingers,” I said, standing. I stripped off my gloves. “You make me feel like a coin-op bed in a sleazy motel.”

“Hey, if that’s what works for you . . .”

“Quiet,” I said, and then set to work passing my hands over all the objects, antiques, and decorations around the room.

“Well?” Davidson said, sounding rather annoyed.

“Nothing,” I said and shrugged.

“Did you forget to charge your psychometry or something?” he asked.

I stared at him, shaking my head. “Do you have the first clue how this works with me? The building is new, and I think a lot of the stuff this guy has here is new, too. All of these quality-looking antiques? Fakes.”

“So?”

“I can read a lot of objects—old, new—but it helps if they have some significance for there to be a psychometric charge. Either everything is too new to have a lick of a charge or something is blocking it somehow. Not everything in this world carries a charge to it.”

Davidson looked more confused than ever. He turned to Connor. “Is there a chart of some kind that I could use to follow all this?”

“This isn’t science,” I said. “It’s parascience. The research, even in our records down in the Gauntlet, is a bit sketchy on the how and why of it all. I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit your investigative needs.”

Davidson unfolded his arms and pointed at the corpse in the center of the room. “What about reading the body?”

“Thanks, but no, thanks,” I said. “I don’t do the dead.”

“Eww,” Jane said, flailing her hands like she was trying to shake the mental image off of her.

I scrunched my face up. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I just meant Connor’s the guy who deals with the dead.”

Connor stood up from the body. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Like I mentioned a minute ago, this guy’s soul ain’t around here.”

Davidson’s lips were pursed in agitation. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his usual mask of composure was back in place. He walked over to Jane and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Listen, Jane,” Davidson said. “I need you to go around to the rest of the apartments on this floor and ask some questions. See if anyone heard anything.”

“That’s why you brought me along?” she said, looking a little miffed. “Couldn’t your cops have done that for you?”

David Davidson shook his head. “Did you see them in the hallway before?” he asked. “They were freaked-out enough that they didn’t even want to come back into the apartment. You want me to send those guys knocking on all the doors? I think you’d be a far more welcome sight to the residents. The people who can afford to live in a building like this are either cultured or rich beyond the beyond. Probably both. They’re going to be more receptive—more forthcoming—to a pretty young woman than to creepedout cops.”