Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) (10 page)

In the total darkness of the car, I could barely make out Suzy’s slender face, the bow curve of her lips, the black tie peeking out from underneath her bulletproof jacket. “When would I have had time for that?”

“I don’t know. You had a few hours at work without me.”

“If you want donuts, Hawke, you’re going to have to get them for yourself.” Suzy pressed the button on her Bluetooth headset. “How do things look up front, Aniruddha?”

“All quiet here.” His tiny voice came in over my headset, too. “Having fun, Suzy?”

My Bluetooth headset beeped softly, nearly interrupting Aniruddha.

“Hang on,” I said, accepting the call.

“The church and soup kitchen are clear,” said the pleasant female voice on the other end. “The suspect is unaccounted for.”

The light in the bathroom blinked on. Golden light pooled over the lawn, brightening her bushes, shimmering on the recently watered grass.

I put two fingers to my headset, pressing the button. “There’s activity at her house. We’re going in.”

I slammed my foot into the door beside the lock, shattering it. The door flew open. Bounced off the wall.

Keeping my gun drawn but aimed at the floor, I slipped into Sister Catherine’s mudroom. Shoes were lined up in a rack under the window. Potted plants decorated the opposite wall. Nobody in sight, nowhere to hide.

Suzy pushed past me. “I’ll check the rear bedroom.” She ducked into the hall.

I stepped through the other doorway and found myself in a dining room. The table was covered in papers. I shined my light on them as I passed, taking a quick read of the top page of one pile. It was nothing incriminating. Just a typewritten plea for donations.

A crashing sound told me that Aniruddha and his partner, Donahue, had entered through the front door.

Abandoning the dining room, I pushed into the kitchen.

My flashlight skimmed over the stove, the cabinets, the teapot on the counter. Long shadows painted the walls with cloven-hoofed monsters waiting to jump out at me. My heart raced as I shoved the pantry door open and found nothing in there but Tuna Helper.

Kitchen was empty. Hall was empty. I moved down to the bathroom on the far end of the house.

I kicked open the door. The sudden light stabbed into my skull, but my vision cleared quickly. It was a tiny closet of a room and just as empty as the rest of the house—but the shower curtain was closed. I swung the gun around, aimed it into the tub. “Don’t move,” I said, and I whipped it aside.

Nobody was in the shower. The pink floral bath mat looked dry.

Then who turned on the light?

I turned to look at the switch and found a timer on it. It was a cheap security measure—just a way to turn the light on and off to make it look like someone was home. Sister Catherine had set the timer’s clock to activate three times a night.

Right on cue, the bathroom light turned off.

“Shit,” I said.

Suzy spoke from down the hall. “Clear in here.”

“Here too,” said Donahue. Sounded like he was in the living room.

I left the bathroom door open behind me. There was still one room unchecked—a bedroom across from the bathroom.

I opened the door and aimed both gun and flashlight inside.

Sister Catherine wasn’t there, but the room wasn’t empty, either. A large oak table stood in the center of the floor. There were two statues the size of my arm at the center: one with horns curling from his hair, and a woman with a pregnant stomach. Judging by the glossy reflection of my light on the stone, they both looked to be carved from marble.

“I’ve got an altar with a Horned God and Mother Goddess in here,” I called to Suzy. “Sister Catherine’s not just a witch. She’s a full-blown naked-in-the-moonlight, please-call-me-Phoenix-Winterfire pagan.”

“Phoenix Winterfire’s a pretty cool chosen name.” Suzy appeared at my side to look into the altar room. “Yep. Pagan.”

Sister Catherine also had incense on her bookshelf, a few crystal balls, some bundles of sticks, altar cloths trimmed with golden coins, all the traditional paraphernalia you’d expect to see a practicing pagan to have. Not so much for a nun.

I checked my watch. It was after midnight. “Where the hell does a nun hang out after midnight on a Sunday?”

“Maybe she likes to party. She’s a nun, not dead.”

Or maybe she was killing someone else as we looked in the wrong place. “Shit,” I said, returning to the hallway. Aniruddha was waiting for us in his own enchanted bulletproof vest. Felt a little silly to be milling around a nun’s empty home in so much gear.

“Well, she’s not coming back here if she’s smart,” Suzy said. “You broke her back door. Nice move, Rambo. She’s going to know we’re onto her as soon as she sees that.”

“We can prop it up, make everything look good, leave a car here to see if she comes back,” suggested Aniruddha. “I’ll stay if Suzy’s game to back me up.”

“Not tonight. I hate stakeouts,” she said.

“I’ll call in and see if anyone else is available to watch tonight.” I raked a hand through my hair. “Fuck.”

Suzy punched me in the shoulder. “Don’t stress it. Let’s make a quick sweep for anything incriminating. Sacrificial goats or whatever. Make sure that we’re breaking doors on the right woman’s house.”

My phone rang, interrupting her. It was the same number that had texted me three times now, sending me increasingly flirty messages that I hadn’t had the time or energy to respond to.

I stared at it for five full rings, trying to decide if I should answer it.

I’d wanted a way to contact Isobel. Now I had a way to reach her and I was working too much to talk. I had thought to shelve a conversation with her until the case was over, but what if her call was work-related?

I spent too long debating with myself. The screen went dark again.

“Problem, Hawke?” Suzy asked.

My phone lit up once more. Same number. “I need to take this. I’m going to step outside.”

I exited from Sister Catherine’s front door. We weren’t bothering with subtlety now that we had kicked her doors in; Donahue had left his SUV’s lights splashing over her patio, illuminating the entire yard so that nobody could hide in the shadows.

Stepping down onto the grass, I answered my phone.

“Isobel?”

“There you are. I was getting worried.”

Damn, but it was nice to hear her voice right at that moment. “I’ve been working. You okay? You’ve been texting a lot.”

“You haven’t responded since you asked me to talk to the body of that kopis.”

“Yeah, we didn’t manage to recover him from Mercy General Hospital. Sorry. I thought Fritz would have told you.”

“He did. That’s not why I wanted to talk,” Isobel said.

Oh. “I haven’t had time for socializing. Murders. You know.”

“I know,” Isobel sighed. “I’ve been busy, too.”

“Lots of people want to talk to their dead aunts and dogs, huh?”

“I don’t talk to dogs.”

“You should try sometime,” I said. “Bet that’s a pretty big niche in the market waiting to be filled.”

Her voice dropped, becoming throatier. “I’d rather just talk to you.” That tone made it sound like the kind of talk that a lot of guys paid three dollars a minute for. I might have been at a suspect’s house, but I was only human. Blood redirected south, away from where it was needed most in my big brain.

My physical reaction to her tone was made slightly more awkward by Aniruddha walking out of the house with a few things confiscated from Sister Catherine’s altar. I coughed and turned away, giving my back to him.

“Not the time, Isobel,” I said.

“Is it ever?” She sighed. “Well, do you want to tell me what happened to the missing body?”

“It’s missing.” It came out a little curter than I’d intended, but my night hadn’t been awesome. “Hospital staff claimed to have released it to the Compassionate Heart Ministry, but that place doesn’t exist. Someone stole the guy.”

“Oh,” Isobel said. “The Compassionate Heart Ministry? It actually does exist. I know that one.”

I frowned. “You do?”

“Yeah. I used to go there sometimes for mass.”

“We ran a search and couldn’t find it. Is it in Los Angeles?”

Isobel sighed. “Yeah, but you wouldn’t find it on Google Maps. I don’t think anybody has ever managed to draw a map of Helltown.”

I DROVE BACK TO the office with Suzy, leaving Aniruddha and his partner behind to watch Sister Catherine’s house. If I was taking Isobel into Helltown, I needed to prepare.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t really any way to prepare for heading into Los Angeles’s neighborhood of demons, evil witches, and human slaves. You kind of just had to do it the same way you got into a freezing pool.

Just close your eyes and step off the edge.

Suzy spent the drive texting on her company cell phone.

“What are you doing?” I asked as we got onto the freeway again.

“Updating the team. Don’t mind me.”

The team? We had a team?

“You’re texting Fritz.”

She shrugged. “He told me to keep him apprised.”

I wanted to order her not to tell him anything, but I resisted the urge. Fritz needed to know what was going down if I hoped to have any backup on my trip to Helltown.

But if I were about to do something dangerous with Isobel, he’d probably want to be involved in a bigger way than sending backup.

“What are you telling him, exactly?” I tried to make it sound like a casual question.

“Just a general update.” She turned off her phone and tucked it away. “Get off at the next exit. It’s faster.”

“What are you talking about? The office is right off the ramp two exits down.”

“Not the office,” Suzy said. “Canyon Creek. You still owe me drinks.”

I checked the time. “At one o’clock in the morning?”

“Problem?”

Yeah, it was kind of a problem. I couldn’t go into Helltown until dawn hit. I wasn’t stupid enough to visit at night. That meant I should have had at least three whole hours to sleep, and I was going to need all the rest I could get.

But I could tell by the way that Suzy was looking at me that she wasn’t going to let me off the hook. Once she got something in her head, she was an unstoppable force.

“No, not a problem,” I said. “As long as you don’t mind being drunk and exhausted at work Monday morning.” Actually, it was already Monday morning.
Jesus, I need to sleep
.

“Not everyone’s as much of a lightweight as you, Hawke,” she said cheerfully.

Canyon Creek never closed, but they did stop selling alcohol at two in the morning—unless you worked for the government office a couple blocks down. In that case, they were always serving drinks.

And they seemed to be expecting Suzy.

“I almost thought you weren’t going to come tonight. Who’s the new guy?” The bartender, Carlos, seated us at a booth underneath a couple of hanging yokes.

I gave Suzy a questioning look. She ignored me. “The usual guys are working. Put it on the new guy’s tab.”

Carlos already had her favorite brand of beer ready. He must have filled the pitcher as soon as he saw her come in. I reluctantly handed over my credit card, and the bartender left.

“I’m the new guy?” I asked.

I don’t have a lot of pride, but I’d been Suzy’s desk mate and punching bag for two and a half years—as long as either of us had worked for the OPA—and I thought that made me a little bit more than “the new guy.”

Suzy rolled her eyes. “Aniruddha and Donahue have been keeping me company most of the time.”

My eyebrows lifted. “Both of them?”

“Keep the dirty thoughts to yourself. We’re all insomniacs who have a mutual interest in beer.”

“So you’re spending a lot of time here.” It wasn’t really a question. Carlos knew her preferred beer and had it ready after the hours it was legal to sell alcohol, for fuck’s sake.

“Home’s a long drive away. If I’m working late, it’s sometimes easier to hang out instead of going back.”

“Who watches Cat? And when do you sleep?”

“My neighbor feeds Cat, and I sleep on the ladies’ room couch on lunch breaks.” There was a hard edge to Suzy’s voice now. She didn’t like this line of questioning. She poured herself a glass of beer, started drinking, and didn’t stop until the glass was empty.

“Why does the ladies’ room have a couch? The men’s room doesn’t even have soap half the time.”

“Women need somewhere to do personal stuff, you know.”

“Personal couch stuff? This is sexism. I need a bathroom napping couch.”

“Agent Rosnovski used the couch to pump breast milk when she returned from maternity leave in February. When’s the last time a guy needed to pump titty juice?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. “Pull the ‘women make babies’ card on me. It’s still discrimination.”

Normally, that would have sparked a spirited argument from Suzy. I wanted to see her get angry. I wanted her to laugh and smile and punch me in the arm.

Today, she just drank more beer.

I put my hand on her wrist, preventing her from refilling her glass for a third time. “Is this because of what happened a couple months ago?” It was my tactful way of asking if being incarcerated had fucked her up in a bigger way than I’d thought.

Suzy loosened her tie and unbuttoned her collar. “No,” she said. And then, “Yeah. I’m not sleeping well.”

Now that I thought about it, I’d seen her heading to the bar with coworkers more often than usual. I’d just figured she was being her usual level of social.

Suzy lived alone. She’d always preferred to drag people into yet another long night of drinking instead of going back to hang out with Cat, her cat. But this was something else.

“You can’t just drink it off.”

“I’m not,” Suzy said. “I’m not diving into a keg to shut up my brain. Trust me. Alcoholism isn’t on the menu. It’s just the dreams that I can’t handle.” She forced a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I figured you’d understand.”

I did. I didn’t want to think about what had happened any more than she did. I’d killed a woman—a half-demon, sure, but still a woman who I’d been flirting with for months.

My way of dealing with trauma was to lift more weights, eat good food, try to keep well rested. Suzy was punishing herself with long nights of beer and sleep deprivation.