Suzanne Johnson - Elysian Fields

Rooting through my glove compartment, I finally dug out my fake FBI badge—then realized I had nowhere to put it. Cropped black running tights and a red T-shirt did not give me a pocket, belt, or collar, and I didn’t want to go into a crime scene carrying a purse. Finally, I found a small notebook in the backseat and clipped the badge and a pen to that.

I shouldn’t call the badge a fake, anyway. It was real, because “real close” is how hard you’d have to squint to find the tiny word consultant printed at the bottom.

After locking the car, I strode purposefully toward two officers standing like sentries in front of a small Victorian cottage, its clapboards painted a mint green and gingerbread trim all in eggshell. Only in New Orleans were food-colored houses considered not only normal, but desirable. I’d been thinking about replacing my merlot-and-cream color scheme with something like sage or mocha.

The officers, wearing the black uniforms of the NOPD, didn’t appear nearly as sweet as dark cocoa, with plastered-on scowls and eyes in constant motion. Ken had said the Axeman Deux attacks, with no leads or motive, had made the cops edgy. Having another one happen this soon wouldn’t help.

I got within four feet of them before the older cop, a buzz- cut, middle- aged bulldog of a man who screamed ex- military, settled his cold gaze on me, eyes widening slightly when he realized I wasn’t just out for a morning jog or being a nosy uptowner.

He placed his hands on his hips and adjusted the heavy belt loaded down with a gun and a baton and a pair of clinking handcuffs before sauntering onto the sidewalk to meet me. The belt- jiggle was obviously cop-code for “look what’s coming,” because his companion stayed in the yard but turned a full 180 to watch me approach without a word being exchanged.

“Morning, officers.” When feeling insecure, flash badge. I held mine in front of me like a tiny leather-encased shield clipped to my spiral notebook. “I’m here to meet up with Detective Ken Hachette and my partner, agent Alex Warin. Sorry”—I waved in the general vicinity of my clothes—“the call came while I was running.”

Officer Buzz-cut took the badge. “Ms . . . Jaco?” He pronounced it “Jock-O” instead of “Jake-O,” but I didn’t bother to correct him—we weren’t destined for a lengthy relationship.

I waited while he examined the badge. He couldn’t question its authority, but he didn’t have to like it, either. Local cops didn’t like feds poking around in their murder cases. Female feds? Even worse. He thrust it back at me with a scowl and a blatant look-see at my assets. I’d have kicked him in the nuts if I thought he wouldn’t arrest me and enjoy it.

“Back bedroom of the house.” He yelled over his shoulder at another officer who’d come out to stand on the porch. “Heads up, Matty—legs incoming. Oops, fed incoming, I meant to say.”

I gave him a saccharine smile, made a show of squinting at his badge number as I slowly wrote it in my notebook, and nodded at the other officer.

The scent of blood hit me before I cleared the front room. Ken sat on a sofa facing the door, talking to an el der ly man whose fear and sorrow soaked into my skin. I’d done my grounding ritual this morning, so only the strongest emotions reached me.

Ken knew how to keep his mind a blank. Thank God for the U.S. Marines and the police academy. Note to self: wear your mojo bag while jogging; you never know when you might have to jog over to a crime scene.

“Alex is in the back bedroom, checking out the scene before our guys go in to bag and tag,” Ken said. “Tell him they’re gettin’ impatient.”

“Straight back?” I pointed down the hall, and at Ken’s nod, approached the source of the heavier blood scent, thick and rich and meaty. Everyone says blood smells like copper, but to me it reeks of iron and rust, earthy and viscous.

The metaphysical chaos hit me before I reached the door: the wonky tingle of Alex’s shapeshifter aura, the lingering energy of violence, plus the light undercurrent of not-quite-human energy that told me a member of the historical undead had been here. And mixed with it, the buzz of a wizard’s magic—like a necromancer would leave behind. I’d not felt it at any other crime scene.

I held my breath, pulled the neck of my shirt over my nose to blunt the blood scent when and if I did have to breathe again, and tiptoed into the room. No one was inside but Alex. He squatted next to the bed, studying his surroundings and ignoring my presence. He was focused, engrossed, a man engaged in his calling.

I stared past him at the bed and had to close my eyes, fighting for control of my heaving gut. Thankfully, I hadn’t eaten this morning. Sheets stained the color of raw meat were dotted with clots and chunks I wanted to pretend I hadn’t seen. Blood spattered the lampshade on a nightstand, the pale green walls behind the bed, the hardwood floor.

I had to clear my throat a couple of times before getting words out. “What can you tell?”

“Not much.” Alex stood and walked to the other side, getting another angle on the scene and, unfortunately, giving me a clearer view of the mattress.

“I’m assuming nobody lived through that.”

He knelt next to the nightstand and disappeared from view as he checked under the bed. “Still alive for now. Critical condition, though.”

Being careful not to touch anything, I walked into the postage-stamp-size half bath off the bedroom, trying to get a break from the blood. An old-fashioned white iron pedestal sink sat adjacent to a low white toilet. I gazed in the plain, unframed mirror, and a ponytailed blonde with dark circles under her eyes gazed stared at me. Blood had even spattered the mirror.

I turned back to the gore, watching for a few seconds as Alex contorted to examine every nanoparticle of the bed without touching anything. “Anything different about it? Where did he leave the ax?”

He stood up and shook his head. “He didn’t—and that’s what’s different about it besides the location being outside our French Quarter radius. We’ve combed the house and the grounds and the ax isn’t here. Blood droplets led out the back door, so he must have taken it with him. I’m wondering if it could be a copycat.”

The ax was the killer’s calling card, so not leaving it fell way outside his normal pattern. But the energy signatures told a different story.

“No, it isn’t a copycat,” I said, and Alex stood and looked at me for the first time.

“Tell me how you know.”

I glanced into the hallway to make sure the forensics team was still keeping its distance. “I can still feel the aura of the historical undead here. Plus a wizard’s magic, which I’ll explain when we get somewhere more private. Who’s the victim?”

“A Times-Pic reporter,” Alex said. “So you know this is gonna get played up. This wizard’s magic—it’s important?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to get into it here.” I turned to study the woman’s dresser. A couple of rings and a bracelet looked real enough, but robbery hadn’t been the motive in any of these cases, so the culprit wasn’t a necromancer in need of cash.

I scanned the rest of the cluttered dresser top. A small packet of tissues. Bottles of perfume—what I thought of as pop-culture scents, named after people like Beyoncé and Britney. A spiral reporter’s notebook. A couple of lipsticks lying atop a page of lined notebook paper.

Good grief. Blood spatter had even gone on the wall behind the dresser, except . . . “Alex, come here.”

I pointed at the wall, where the numeral 25 had been written in blood. “What does that mean?”

“We don’t know.” Ken walked into the bedroom and stood next to us, studying the wall. “There was a number at the last crime scene too. It’s one of the details we aren’t releasing to the media. We always hold a few things back to help us filter out crackpot leads and confessions.”