Kat Richardson: Underground

Monsters in the sewers… As I waited for the police, I knew I wasn’t going to try that idea on them. There was an undeniable Grey element to the body in the Great Northern Tunnel, but I knew from experience that wild stories attributing crimes to the paranormal wouldn’t endear me. I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep Quinton out of it—or why I’d agreed to try—but I’d do my best. I didn’t think he’d had anything to do with the body other than stumbling across it, and I didn’t see much to be gained in alienating him by siccing the police on him.

The thing I couldn’t answer for myself was why I was waiting around at all. It was freezing in the frost-bound shade of the train yard, below the street level, and I was shivering and stamping, trying to figure out a plausible story to tell the police when they arrived, and guarding the arm from a small murder of curious crows—the biggest crows I’d ever seen.

Three of the birds had swooped down to walk around on the gravel and assess the situation. They kept themselves spaced around me so I had to turn constantly to keep one from darting in while I tried to keep an eye on the other two. One of them cocked its head and glared at me with a baleful yellow eye, cawing and clacking its beak.

“Shove off, Lenore,” I snapped back. “Not only ‘nevermore’ but never at all. Go bother a poet somewhere.”

I heard something scuffling through the gravel behind me. The crows shouted their disappointment and jumped into the air with a clatter of wings and beaks.

I turned to see a small procession of Seattle PD and rail yard employees approaching my position. I stifled a despairing groan at the sight of the man in the lead: Detective Solis.

“You talk to birds?” he asked as he drew near.

“Only when they talk to me first.”

I respect Solis; he’s smart, he’s honest, and he’s tenacious. Everything I really didn’t want to face right then. My only consolation was that the wiry Colombian looked even more miserable in the cold than I felt. I hoped I could use that to my advantage. He grunted in acknowledgment and glanced around me.

“This is the limb?” he asked, spotting the severed arm by my feet.

“Yeah.”

He motioned for one of the men to come forward and deal with the sad scrap of flesh and bone while he started to walk me to the side of the scene. “How did you come to find it?”

Showtime…

“I was crossing the bridge up there,” I said, pointing up to the street, “and I saw it flung out from under a train.”

“Why did you come to look at it? Why not keep going?”

“It was freaky. There was something wrong about the shape, and when I looked harder, I saw what it was. I couldn’t leave it lying there. So I came down.”

“Have you been standing here the whole time since you called?”

“Since I called, yes. But I started to go up the tunnel before I realized I shouldn’t. So I came back out and went into the station.”

“Why did you go into the station?”

I sighed, feeling uncomfortable and reluctant to stray too far from the facts, but equally unhappy about speaking some of them. “I had to meet my boyfriend—we were supposed to have lunch—but I had to break the date to wait for you guys. He wanted to argue about it and came down here. I didn’t want him to come out and see the arm and freak out, so I went in to him. He left after a couple of minutes and I came back out.”

I glanced back toward the arm. The man Solis had directed to it was laying markers on the gravel around the severed limb and playing with his camera. I turned my head back to Solis.

He frowned. “And the arm was just as you’d left it?”

“Yes. I wanted to check farther up the tunnel, but once the crows came down, I thought I shouldn’t leave.”

“What is up the tunnel?” Solis asked.

I snorted. “I have no idea, but the arm has to have come from somewhere nearby or it would be a lot more ripped up by being caught in the train’s wheels for any distance—the tunnel’s about a mile long, so I’d guess the arm got under the train somewhere in that distance. Has anyone from the station reported an injury on the train that came through or any accidents in the tunnel?”

“I can’t say. Yours was the first report we’ve had.” He raised his head to look toward the opening. Then he glanced around the gravel and tracks nearby, seeming to take a quick survey of the situation.

The large-sized gravel wouldn’t show any footprints, and it hadn’t developed much of an ice coating to trap fibers and blood on the surface. There wouldn’t be much physical evidence out here. If Solis was going to get anything useful, he’d get it from the hole in the wall or the slabcold tunnel floor. I doubted he’d find much, and there would be pressure to close the file quickly once they realized the victim wasn’t a taxpayer—unless he turned up as a missing person, which would change everything.

Solis looked back at me and sighed. “This has been an ill season. Like the weather, it seems people have gone mad. I could wish for less of this kind of thing to go with all the rest.” He shook his head. “You can go, Ms. Blaine. I know where to contact you. Unless there’s anything else you want to say now?”

I resisted an urge to be flippant and shook my own head. “No. I just want to get inside where its warm and thaw out.”

A little scowl and a flare of orange annoyance prefaced his nod of dismissal. I wasn’t too proud to scurry for the nearest heated room and leave Solis and his minions to the cold work of scouring for evidence. I knew he’d take my hint and go into the tunnel to find the body—he’s thorough and he probably would have done it anyway. I was glad I wouldn’t have to look at it again and see whatever grisly damage the train had added to what was already there.

This time, I didn’t take the stairs but went through the lobby of King Street Station. Outside, I glanced back toward the tunnel and saw Solis standing at the mouth of the hole bored through the hill. He was talking to one of the train yard men, and their conversation sent ripples of red fear or anger through the layers of the Grey around them. At my distance, I didn’t know which one of them was causing the disturbance. Solis was usually contained and quiet, but I’d seen his bright orange frustration earlier, and this wasn’t the right color. Maybe the yard man was obstructing him, or perhaps it was the yard man who was angry.

Before I could speculate further, I heard the hoot of a train and saw one of the Sounder commuters edging forward to begin its afternoon run north. It must have been after three, and I realized that Solis might not be able to secure the scene much longer. In the collective mind of the railroad and Sound Transit, I imagined, dead bums took a backseat to middle-class working stiffs at rush hour, and even the SPD doesn’t tangle with the transit system—and its politically powerful management—if they can avoid it. Even cops have to pick their battles at times.

I turned my back and walked west, squinting into a sudden beam of the early sunset that cut between the buildings. Standing in the cold had made my knee stiff and I found myself limping as I walked the six blocks back to my office.

I didn’t feel like dodging the first-round drunks on Second, so I walked over to Occidental and went up the broad, car-free boulevard that had once been the heart of Seattle’s vice district. Now it housed quaint galleries and shops and overpriced “pubs” whose “bangers and mash” were actually CasCioppo Brothers Italian sausages with a side of skin-on red potatoes mashed with garlic. The last bastion of Seattle’s original sin on Occidental was Temple Billiards, where lately the coat racks had begun to sprout leather jackets with designer labels more often than those with studs and chains. I was tired, and although it’s not the safest street in Seattle, “Oxy” was one place it was safe to let the Grey come upon me as it would, so I could relax my usual efforts to differentiate the normal from the Grey and just walk.