C.E. Murphy - Thunderbird Falls

Faye eyed me dubiously. “If you think so,” she said with such exaggerated politeness that I knew I’d be succumbing to peer pressure. I closed my eyes momentarily and scolded myself for being a weenie, then put on a fake smile.

“Or not. Okay. I’ll see you tonight, then.”

Faye beamed, tongue lolling out just like a retriever’s. Well, no, but boy, she looked happy. “Thank you, Officer Walker. We’ll see you tonight.”

“It’s Joanne,” I said, resigned, and let myself out to the jangling of bells. Morrison was going to kill me.

Friday, June 17, 5:15p.m.

I rapped twice on Morrison’s door frame, cautious taps, and said, “Captain?” before screwing my face up in a wince. Knocking was about the sum total of politeness Morrison could typically expect from me. Bringing his title into the conversation before it even began gave him warning to be wary.

And the look he gave me as he glanced up from paperwork was, indeed, wary. “What do you want?”

I sighed and hunched my way into his office even though there’d been no invitation issued. “I am not investigating Cassandra Tucker’s death,” I offered as my initial foray.

Morrison’s eyebrows beetled down. “But I was wondering if we knew anything else about it yet.” I set my teeth together in a grimace and added, “A friend of hers approached me today.”

“Approached you.” Morrison got up from his desk and walked around me, closing the door with a final-sounding click. I watched him over my shoulder as he stood there with his mouth held in a thick purse, then jerked my gaze forward again as he turned back around. “Sit,” he said from behind me, and I did as he went back to his desk. “Approached you,” he repeated.

I sank down into the chair and pressed my fingertips against my eyelids, speaking into the cover my palms made. “While I was on patrol. She said…” I trailed off long enough to sigh, then lifted my eyebrows over the protective steepling of my fingers, eyes still closed. “She said she’d had a dream about me and she was waiting for me. She wanted me to meet some of Cassandra’s friends tonight.”

“A dream.” Morrison’s voice sounded exactly like mine would have in his position: exasperated, frustrated, and annoyed. I felt sorry for him. I’d have felt sorry for myself, too, except world-weary resignation seemed to have overcome the self-pity. Morrison dragged in a deep breath and said, “You’re telling me this because…?”

I dropped my fingers to look at him. “Because you told me specifically to stay away from this case, and whether you believe it or not, I’m actually trying to follow orders. Except the case may not want to stay away from me.”

“A case,” Morrison said through his teeth, “is not something that makes choices about who it’s assigned to, Walker.”

“No, sir, not normally.” I’d spent the better part of the day since encountering Faye trying to find a way around having this conversation with Morrison. The only alternatives I could come up with were considerably worse than having it. Somehow the inevitability made me less antagonistic than I usually would have been. “But under the circumstances, I don’t really think it’s coincidence that this girl came to me.”

“Under what circumstances?”

I turned my hands palm-up, a shrug, and said, “Me.”

Tension spilled through Morrison’s expression, aging him years in a few seconds. I looked away, uncomfortable with seeing him look so defeated. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he said, but we both knew the growl in his voice was only for show. I pressed my lips together, daring to glance back at him, but only for a moment. He still looked aged and unhappy.

“It means something’s wrong with Cassandra Tucker’s death, sir.” I really didn’t want to say I think magic may have been involved, sir , and I was pretty sure Morrison didn’t want me to say it, either.

He didn’t let the possibility of clarification linger on the air, snapping, “Of course something’s wrong. She was twenty years old and ended up dead in a locker room. There’s nothing right about it.”

“That’s not what I mean, Captain.” I didn’t want to push it any more than that, but I felt like I had to at least say that much. “I’d like your permission to go talk to her friends.”

He gave me a baleful glare. “Are you going to do it anyway?”

“Yeah,” I admitted, “but at least I’m trying to be aboveboard here, Morrison. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

He sighed explosively. “They’re doing an autopsy. It’s being investigated as a homicide. Right now that’s all I know.” He clenched his jaw, muscle working. “Get back to me if you learn anything.”

I said, “Yes, sir,” and got the hell out of his office before we were forced to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

Friday, June 17, 7:25p.m.

The graduate library’s reading room was dim and dark, which wasn’t unusual. What was unusual was that the dimness came not from clouds overhead, but from smoky torches that couldn’t possibly meet fire code. I hung in the doorway, squinting into smoke and trying to get the lay of the land before anyone noticed me, but Faye clapped her hands, letting out a squeal of delight. “You came! I knew you’d come! This is Joanne Walker, everyone. She’s the one I dreamed about.” Her voice lowered portentously with the last several words, but I was the only one who seemed to notice.

The rest of the group took Faye’s lead, climbing to their feet and encircling me. There were eleven or twelve of them, all of them smiling politely and offering me their hands to shake. With the exception of a man and a woman both in their fifties, and another man in his thirties, the median age of the gathered group appeared somewhere below the legal drinking age.

I said, “Um, thank you,” with every handshake and introduction and welcome, a little taken aback. I wished I’d brought along a tape recorder so I could be sure of everyone’s names. Faye hadn’t turned up a police record—not even so much as a driver’s license—but I wasn’t above doing a quick investigation on all her friends, too. When everyone was done greeting me and I’d forgotten most of the names already, I asked, “Faye told you why I was coming here tonight, right?”

They all exchanged glances, amusement suddenly coloring the air. “Of course,” one of the young men said. He was Garth; I remembered that because he didn’t look at all like Garth Brooks. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest mnemonic device ever, but it worked for me. Garth-not-Brooks went on, “She dreamed that you would come to lend us your power. With Cassie’s death—” A ripple of pain, tangible, went through the little gathered crowd. I drew in a sharp breath, pushing their loss away long enough to get through the conversation, at least. It was possible I could do something later to ease the sharpness of grief, but I thought it was a bad idea. Only a day after Cassandra Tucker’s death, none of them would have had the time to work through it naturally. Mucking about with it at this stage struck me as premature.

Maybe I was learning something after all.

While I was thinking all that. Garth continued, “—we don’t have a Mother anymore. You must be her—Faye dreamed you.”

“A mother? I don’t know what you’re tal—”

There are phrases that I never think describe a real feeling until I experience them myself. “The words turned to dust in my mouth,” was a new one on me, but it happened. My saliva shriveled up, leaving my tongue feeling thick and dry. My throat constricted, and the taste of ashes, flat and sticky, filled my mouth. I choked and coughed, and one of the young men leaped up and got me a cup of water. Faye hovered at my side, patting my back in concern as I drank. It still took a few long moments before I was able to croak, “Mother. Maiden. Crone.” The older woman’s mouth twisted wryly as I said the third word.