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

He was a victim. He was my job.

Just another case.

The nose had been cut off cleanly. Sharp knife. Same knife that had gutted the sofa and cut his throat open. Same knife that had removed his lips.

His lips.
Jesus
.

“Why are his teeth…?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. It looked like someone had tried to punch them into dust.

“I don’t think it was because he was struggling,” Suzy said, digging her fingers into his mouth and pulling the jaw down. “It seems to have been part of the mutilation. See this?”

I didn’t see it. The kitchen was hot, the walls were close, and everything seemed to be spinning.

She kept talking. “The missing teeth are in his mouth, so this was done while he was lying here. But this isn’t where he was killed. That was done in the hallway.”

“The hallway?”

“Hung him from a rafter by his feet while cutting his throat. That’s how most of the blood ended up all over there…” Suzy waved at the blood-soaked carpet. “And then in here, once the perpetrator dragged him into the kitchen. Probably after he was dead.”

He’d been bled out like a pig. A kosher pig.

“You okay?” asked one of the forensic guys who had been taking a sample of blood from the counter. “You don’t look good, Agent Hawke.”

“I think he’s going to yark.” That was from Janet, the vulture of a woman who led the forensics team. She had a smear of chocolate on her bottom lip. Definitely one of the ones who had eaten the donuts. But now that chocolate glaze looked like blood to me.

This was probably Suzy’s cue to jump in and help tease me, so I didn’t look at her. I tried to look at the body, focus on the job, think of him as just part of the case.

Suzy still had her fingers in his mouth. I glimpsed the white shine of shattered teeth in the back of his throat.

And that was when I finally lost it.

I didn’t throw up. Okay? I’m bad, but I’m not that bad.

I did, however, spend about two minutes hovering over a toilet with a padded pink seat while the donuts I didn’t eat strongly contemplated visiting the porcelain gods. Probably a good thing I’d only managed to get one poultice in my gut before leaving the apartment that morning.

Jesus, the bathroom smelled like old people. Foot creams and shit. That didn’t help.

What did help was the idea of the forensics team in the kitchen just down the hall, waiting to hear if I barfed on a crime scene. They’d never let me hear the end of it if I did.

So I swallowed down the bile, splashed some water on my face, and loosened my tie.

No vomiting.

I’d been in such a hurry to get to the bathroom without splashing in blood-drenched carpet that I hadn’t remembered to close the door. Behind my reflection, I could see Suzy leaning against the doorway, arms folded and eyebrows lifted.

“Go ahead,” I said, sipping water out of the palm of my ungloved hand. “Say it. I know you want to.” I splashed the rest of the water on my hair. It wasn’t that it was an unusually hot day for Los Angeles, especially not this early in the morning, but panic messes with a guy.

Suzy rolled her eyes. “Come here, Hawke.” She straightened my tie and tightened it once more. “You good?”

“I told Fritz that I don’t do bodies when he offered me the job,” I said.

“Yeah. I remember that.”

“Nothing’s changed. I still don’t do bodies. Missing persons, sure. Witches abusing power, heck yeah. Demons supplying infernal bongs to college students—I’d do that again. It was hilarious. But murders? I draw the line at murders.”

“I know,” Suzy said.

She wasn’t giving me a hard time. I wondered if she was sick.

“Are
you
good?” I asked.

“This guy wasn’t just killed. He was mutilated.” She said it matter-of-factly. Suzy wasn’t bothered by dead guys at all. “Director Friederling called to tell me we’ve been assigned to this case, but there might be someone outside the organization who could find answers a hell of a lot faster. Save us some work, you know. And help us catch the killer before he kills again.”

I looked at her blankly. “Like…the LAPD?”

“Like…some kind of consultant.” Suzy gave me an expectant look.

“Oh,” I said. “You mean
her
.” I didn’t say her name, not when we had a house filled with personnel who weren’t supposed to know that she existed.

“That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“Kind of. I haven’t really spoken to her since we got back from Reno. I’ve been busy.”

“Oh yeah?” That information seemed to perk Suzy up for some reason.

“I don’t even know where to find her.”

“Guess it’s time to look her up again. You’ll do it, right? You don’t like bodies, I don’t like necrocognitive witches.”

Could I find Isobel Stonecrow? Hell yes I could. I’d found her before, I could do it again. “I’m on it,” I said.

“Great. Get out of here. Track her down. I’ll have the body taken to the morgue, and we can just ask Jay Brandon who killed him.”

YOU’D THINK THAT FINDING one of our consultants should be pretty trivial. I’d worked two cases with Isobel Stonecrow now, taken her on a road trip with my team to Reno, and I’d even taught her a thing or two about magic.

We were kinda coworkers. I hoped that we were also friends. It should have been as easy as picking up a phone and making a call.

But Isobel didn’t do well with phone numbers. Or being tracked, for that matter.

Which meant that finding her always required a little investigation of its own.

“Working overtime?” Aniruddha asked, stopping beside my desk. His coffee mug said “Don’t Look at Me, I Just Cast the Magic” and was roughly the size of a bathtub. And that was his weekend cup. His mug was more like an Olympic pool during the week.

Talk about a guy who can’t get enough of work.

I minimized the window I’d been looking at and swiveled in my chair to face him. “Some cases just don’t have the courtesy to stick to office hours.”

“Were you looking at Craigslist?”

“No,” I said, by which I meant,
Yes, now go away.

His lips curled into a smile. “I heard you tossed your cookies all over a dead body today.”

It had only been three hours since I left the Brandon house and rumors were already getting around. Again, on a Saturday. It seemed like the need to get a life was growing pretty desperate around the OPA offices.

“No idea where you heard that,” I said. “Hey, are you working on the crank calls?”

“Agent Gonzales was doing some research on that,” Aniruddha said.

“Then what are you doing here on a Saturday?”

He shot me a mind-your-business look over the rim of his coffee tub. His expression was less than intimidating with the broomstick-riding cartoon witch painted under the snarky text. “Well, look at the time. Seems I have to get to a phone meeting.” He hadn’t even checked his watch.

But hey, Aniruddha was gone, and I opened Craigslist again feeling just a few degrees more dispirited.

I’d been using the website to keep tabs on Isobel over the past few weeks, even though we weren’t talking. She never posted her ads in the same section twice. I’d found her posting in the farm and livestock section once, which was just about the last place I’d ever think to look for a necrocognitive.

She wasn’t in the farm section today, or community services, or anywhere else on the Los Angeles site. I actually found her posting on the San Francisco boards this time. In the women-for-men personals section.

“Home of diseased escorts and death witches,” I muttered.

Her advertisement just said, “Lost a beloved family member or friend? Have unfinished business? Call me to find peace.” And then a phone number I didn’t recognize. No other contact information.

Don’t ask me how she ever managed to get any business with vaguely worded messages like that, but I know that she did pretty well for herself. We’d only crossed paths because Fritz had hired her to talk to his late wife in the first place. Or maybe she’d been talking to his grandfather. They kept changing the story on me, and I didn’t know which one was true.

I peered over the walls of the cubicle farm to make sure Aniruddha was nowhere in sight. Then I called the number on the ad.

A woman picked up on the third ring.

“Hello?” Her voice was musical and pleasant. Not the way I’d expected husky, melodramatic Isobel to sound on the phone.

“Izzy?” I ventured.

“Who’s Izzy? Oh. Isobel. No. I mean, yes!” The girl’s voice dropped to a mysterious undertone. “You’ve reached the shaman named Isobel Stonecrow. How may we lay your troubles to rest?”

I glanced at the computer monitor to make sure that I’d called the right number. “Uh…who are you?”

“I’m blessed to be in training with the shaman.”

Jesus, Isobel
. She’d picked up a fucking intern. “Look, can I just talk to Isobel? Tell her it’s Cèsar.”

“We don’t interrupt the mystical vibrations surrounding Shaman Stonecrow until the appropriate phase of the moon. Phone calls are incredibly disruptive to her gods-granted powers. But I’d be happy to take a message for you.”

What bullshit. Isobel was about as attuned to the phase of the moon as my desktop computer.

My magic was pretty traditional, hooked into the Earth and sky and seasons. It was summer—bad time to brew strength potions. The moon was waning, too, which meant I hadn’t been able to replenish my supplies in over a week. I knew moon cycles. It was a big part of my witchcraft.

Isobel had no clue what the moon did to magic. Her talent was more like a psychic power. It was definitely not gods-granted and did not require meditation.

She didn’t need anything to raise the dead but a dead body.

I couldn’t tell if Ms. Perky knew any of that or was just feeding me a line, so I said, “Just tell Isobel that it’s Cèsar.”

A long pause. “I don’t know where she is.”

“She’s missing?” I couldn’t keep the hard edge out of my voice.

“No, on the road to meet a client. I couldn’t leave town for this one. I’d miss too many classes.” Ms. Perky had turned to Ms. Sulky just like that. “I don’t know where she arranged to meet this guy.”

“But she’s on the road. So she’s really in San Francisco?”

“I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she said.

Fuck me
. “No, wait—”

“Don’t call me back. I’ll have the shaman call you.”

The phone was already shuffling, making those telltale “I’m going to hang up on you” noises. I raised my voice, as if that would help. “It’s urgent that she—”

And the line went dead.

San Francisco was a good seven hours north of the OPA offices in Los Angeles, and there was no way my beater of a Camry was going to make the trip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d changed the oil. My windshield was more cracks than glass. The tires were so bald that Mr. Clean would have been envious to see them.

Working for the government isn’t a rich or glamorous lifestyle, but hey, at least I had great health benefits. Who needs a sexy car when you’ve got sexy teeth?

I abandoned my car in the parking lot and requested use of one of the company SUVs from the motor pool instead. Apparently, they also had people on staff this weekend. My request was approved immediately.

Grabbing the case file, I headed down to the garage.

Seven hours of driving on three hours of sleep. It was going to suck, but at least Isobel would be waiting somewhere at the end. One of the last times I’d seen her, she’d left me with a pretty memorable kiss and the promise of a lot more than that to come.

Considering I hadn’t heard from her for months, I was dealing with some pretty mixed signals here. Searing kisses followed by chilly silence.

I never would have wished for an excuse to talk to Isobel—especially since the only good excuse was someone dying—but since I had one, I was going to take advantage of it.

The thought carried me down three flights of stairs, across the bridge to the parking garage, and down a few more floors.

Where a cherry-red Bugatti was waiting for me.

The driver’s side window rolled down and Director Fritz Friederling peered at me over the frames of his sunglasses. “I intercepted your request for a car. Need a ride?”

Checking my watch, I found that it was still, in fact, Saturday the fourteenth, just after lunchtime. I could tell the date because of the fancy-ass timepiece that Fritz had given me for my birthday two weeks earlier. It had the moon phase and everything.

There definitely hadn’t been a time warp back to Friday or ahead to Monday.

“Does everyone here work on Saturdays?” I asked.

“Just the lucky ones. Get in.” The doors clicked as they unlocked.

“I’m headed on a research trip,” I said. “You probably don’t want to come along.” Normally, I would have been happy to see him. Fritz and I had been swapping movie recommendations. I’d introduced him to anime; he’d gotten me started on silent movies, and now I was hooked on Buster Keaton.

But anytime I was hoping to see Isobel was a time that I was also hoping not to run into Fritz.

He didn’t look impressed by my attempt to divert him. “Now, Agent Hawke.”

I slipped into the passenger seat and was hugged by cool leather. The dashboard looked like it belonged on an alien spacecraft, although the effect was kind of blown by the cacophony of nineties music coming from the speakers.

He might have been my boss, but I still couldn’t help but give him a Look. The kind of Look that said, “You’re a billionaire with a passion for silent movies and aggressive stock investments, yet you listen to jock jams in the car?”

He gave me a responding Look that was like, “Don’t forget that I gave you this job and saved your life. I can listen to whatever I want.”

And my Look was conciliatory, because he was right.

Kind of a dick move to go all judgmental on someone who’d done as much for me as Fritz had.

We have really meaningful Looks.

Fritz pushed his sunglasses back up and put the car into gear. The silent conversation was over. “You were going to look for the necrocog, weren’t you?”

“So you’ve been talking to Suzy.”