C.E. Murphy - Demon Hunts

"Hey, Billy!" A tall, athletic brunette woman in the store uniform of a polo shirt and khakis leaned over the second floor wood railing and waved. Billy waved back, and she swung herself around the railing corner and took the stairs down two at a time, like a kid. I was torn between liking her instantly and utterly distrusting her, though the latter impulse came from the suspicion that she was the shape of my doom. She was close to my height, and her hands, one of which she offered me to shake, were bigger than mine. "Hey, I'm Mandy Tiller. You must be Joanne. Billy called a while ago to say you were coming by."

She turned and socked Billy's shoulder hard enough to make a meaty thump. "Good to see you, Holliday. How's Mel? How're the kids?"

"They're all good. Mel says hi." Billy rubbed his shoulder, smile a little pained as he explained to me, "Mandy's oldest son is in Robert's class. We've been doing field trips and class picnics together for years."

A tiny spark of recognition shocked me. "Jake Tiller? I met him one time over at Billy's house. He looks like you." They both had long jaws and sandy-gold skin that offset light eyes, though Mandy's hair was darker than her son's.

Mandy's smile lit up. She wasn't quite pretty, but the smile was terrific. "That's him. He's a good kid." The smile went away as fast as it'd come, worry pinching the space between her eyebrows. "Billy says you guys are on that cannibal case. He says you need a wilderness guide to try and flush the guy out."

I opened my mouth, shut it again, glanced at Billy, then looked back at Mandy with my own eyebrows elevated. "Yeah, I guess I kind of do."

She nodded once, somehow making it a stern expression. "I can take a quick break if you want to go over to the coffee shop with me and talk about it."

"I'll never say no to coffee." The three of us trundled out of the store, and I felt my stress level drop. It probably said something about me that I would prefer to discuss trapping a killer than face the prospect of shopping in a big box store.

We ordered what turned out to be more-than-passable coffee and sat around a table as far away from the other patrons as possible. Mandy said, "Sorry, I don't have much time, so let me tell you like it is. I know the news story only broke this morning, but for a big city with a lot of people, the real wilderness types are pretty close-knit. We don't all know each other, but it's like two degrees of separation, not six?" She nodded when we did and kept going. "So it's not like we haven't been talking about this among ourselves for weeks. It's gotten bad enough that the last week or so almost nobody's going out, or if they are they're going up to Canada to do their hiking and weekend camping. We're talking about a lot of green freaks here, people who avoid driving when they can, so that should give you an idea of how uncomfortable we are."

I said, "Maybe that's why this morning's body was found in Ravenna Park. The hunting in the wilder areas is getting scarce," to Billy, who nodded. I liked that idea better than the one about the killer looking for me.

"I haven't gone out since the second body was found," Mandy said. "Jake's dad and I are divorced, and there's no way I'm risking leaving him alone. That said, Billy wouldn't have called if he didn't need help, or if he didn't think you could make a difference. Do you think you can catch this guy?"

Truth, rather than reassurance, popped out: "I hope so. What I can do is make sure you're not going to get hurt out there." Mandy looked unhappy. I couldn't blame her. "Maybe there's somebody else, somebody without kids—?"

"Plenty of people. The problem is they're mostly guys."

I said, "Ah," after a moment, while Billy looked between us in bewilderment and demanded, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means guys are a lot more likely to get overprotective if something bad goes down," I said when it was clear Mandy wasn't going to explain. Billy started to look offended and I raised my coffee cup to stop him, then took a sip. It really was pretty decent coffee. "Say you're Generic Joe the Hiker. You're bringing a woman, somebody who hasn't done much hiking before, out on a trail for the first time. You happen to know she's a fourth dan in kung fu, but while you're out there a nutjob appears out of nowhere and attacks her. What do you do?"

Billy, just like I had earlier, opened his mouth and shut it again. I said, "That's what I thought."

" I would just let her kick his ass," Billy muttered sullenly. I laughed and reached over to pat his shoulder.

"I know you would, but you're a member of a specially trained elite force, and you're more likely to remember that your girl Friday there has a black belt. But most guys with an ounce of decency would act to protect the girl. In this particular case, working with somebody whose first instinct is to duck is going to be safer for all of us."

"So it's a date." Mandy still didn't look happy, but she sounded determined. "I don't work tomorrow, Detective Walker, so if you're free then, I'd like to get this over with?"

"Just tell me where to meet you."

We made arrangements, and I, heroically, went home and went to bed.

I dreamed of a funeral on Christmas day. Dozens of mourners were in attendance, washed out in the gray winter light. I was among them, taller than most, grim in the black slacks and sweater I'd bought for the service. I'd worn the only shoes I had with me, stompy black boots that didn't match the outfit. I'd secretly liked the fact that they set me apart, that they weren't appropriate. They played to an already-present sense of alienation from the people around me. I thought of myself as fish-belly pale, but looking at my distant family, I saw a golden cast to my skin that none of them had. I looked better in black than most of them did.

Growing up, I'd never thought about my mother's family. She was persona non grata to me, the bitch who'd abandoned me with a father who didn't know what to do with me. I'd never indulged in the luxury of imagining my life would've been better with her, and it had flat-out never occurred to me that I might've had aunts and uncles, or cousins, much less siblings and nieces and nephews.

By the time she finally called, I was twenty-six and she was dying. She wanted to get to know me in the time she had left, but she never did. We spent four months traveling around Europe on the basis of a relationship that meant nothing to me, and, as far as I could tell, meant very little to her. We never broke down the barriers of silence, and saw Rome and Barcelona and Prague as two strangers standing side by side. When I met her family at the funeral—aunts and uncles and cousins, yes, but no half siblings, for which I was grateful—they were too caught up in their own sorrow to know what to do with me. I didn't exactly blame them, but I was bitter anyway.

Three months later, when my dead mother rescued me from a banshee, I learned that every one of her choices had been based on trying to keep me safe. I learned, way too late, that she'd loved me. But in the immediacy of the dream, all I knew was I stood amongst strangers who had lost someone much more important to them than she'd been to me.

They had offered—or asked, I wasn't sure which—to let me help shoulder the weight of her casket. I'd wanted to say yes, and had declined because I was so much taller than the others. It was a stupid, pathetic logic, and I'd regretted it immediately, not just for my sake or my mother's, but because of how her family's faces had shut down. In instantaneous hindsight I'd understood they were trying to reach out to me, but my talent had always been in pushing people away.

The priest spoke, as unmemorable in dreams as he'd been in life. Others nodded, wiped tears away; I stared at my stompy boots and waited for it all to be over. Voices murmured around me, whispered remembrances that the priest's words brought to the fore, and all I could offer was she liked Altoids. A bark of laughter filled my throat, inappropriate to release, and so I jolted guiltily when I heard that sound outside my own head.