Crime Spells

Martha smiled. “You go, but you’re going to come back later. We’ll be having a big crowd tonight, and I need an extra hand on the soup line.”

Leah nodded. “You soup them, I’ll bread them.”

I studied her face, then smiled pretty much against my will. “I think I’d like that.”

Back in the street, my phone rang.

Cate. “ 4721 Black Oak Road. You want to be here now.”

“Who?”

“E. Theodore Carlson.”

I glanced at the printout. “We have a wi

“I’d hate to see what happened to the loser. Hurry, Trick. It’s not pretty, and it isn’t going to get any better with time.”

Cate wasn’t kidding. The corpse was ripe. He’d been dead a couple of days. Carlson had a reputation as a food critic and gourmand who got himself a cooking show and sold a lot of cookbooks and spices. While he liked exotic stuff, his critics claimed he simplified things for the common man. He took folks living hand to mouth and made them think they were mastering haut cuisine.

All while using hot dogs, ground chuck, catsup, and the secret ingredient.

Food lay all around in the kitchen, on presentation platters, but it had curdled or dried, crumbled or gotten covered in flies. He even had packaged cupcakes arranged on a set of stacked trays looking festive. They were the only things that hadn’t gone bad yet, but that didn’t soften the most gruesome aspect of the scene-aside from the corpse, that is.

On the granite countertop of the island, in a roasting pan surrounded by potatoes and carrots and chopped onions, lay a leg.

A human leg.

Carlson’s leg.

He’d managed to hack it off at the knee, rub some salt on it, add pepper, before he collapsed and bled out on the floor. The butcher’s knife lay half beneath him, covered in bloody prints. The angle of the cuts and the way the bone was sheared meant he’d taken the leg off with only a couple whacks.

I looked around. “What did Prout say? Carlson slipped?”

Cate shook her head. “He was gone before I got here. Ma

Ma

“Same thing when his brain has movement.” My eyes tightened. “Time of death?”

“Two days, three.”

I glanced at my PDA and the listing of case files. “Killer’s on a tight cycle, and it’s getting faster. Two days between Carlson and Anderson. Someone is going to die in the next twelve hours.”

“No, they won’t.”

I spun. Prout had returned, with handkerchief in place. “We just arrested the murderer.”

“What? Who?”

He lowered the handkerchief so I could see his sneer. “Martha Raines.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Only if you are, Molloy.” His beady eyes never wavered. “You followed the money. So did I. The Fellowship’s made millions on these deaths. You didn’t want to see it because you always were a lousy detective.”

“Arresting Raines solves nothing.”

“You trying to confess to being an accomplice? How much did she pay you?”

I glanced at Prout through magick. He looked almost as bad as the corpse, all mushroom gray and speckled with black. He had no talent-nor talent, for that matter-so one spell, just a tiny one, and his white suit would be sopping up blood as he thrashed on the floor.

Cate grabbed my shoulder. “Don’t.”

Prout gave her a hard stare. “I think you better escort your friend from my crime scene.”

“He’s going. He’s got a friend in jail who could use a visit.” She poked a finger into Prout’s chest, leaving a single bloody fingerprint on his tie. It looked like a bullet hole, and I wished to God it were. “But this isn’t your crime scene. It isn’t even a crime until I says it is, Inspector. Right now, my ru

Prout snorted. “Take your time.”

Cate shook her head. “I don’t have any. The killer’s next vic will show up in another six hours, so time is not a luxury I enjoy.”

I would have stayed, just to bask in the glory of that sour expression on Prout’s face, but Ma

Cate had been right. Martha was in jail, and it wasn’t for picketing some city office this time. She needed a friend. I owed her. I didn’t think the bulls down in lockup would want to do her any harm, but they’d have to cage her with the hard cases. Still, a visit could get her out of a holding cell at least for a little bit.

I got down to the jail pretty quick. I only made one stop, at a drive-through liquor store. I bought a bottle of twelve-year-old Irish whiskey and took a long pull off it. Recorking it, I slid it under my seat. It burned down my throat and out into my veins. It made me feel more alive, and it prepped me to use magick, just in case.

I didn’t need it. Hector Sands was working the desk, and he’d always believed I’d been framed for bribery. “You want to see Raines? Do you have to?”

“What am I not getting?”

Hector took me through into the holding area. Two big cells separated by a tiled corridor. Usually it was awash in profanity, urine, spittle, blood, and any other bodily fluid or solid that could be squirted, hurled or expelled. People didn’t like being caged like animals; so they acted like animals in protest.

Not this time, though. Martha Raines sat on a cot, with all the other inmates sitting on the floor and the people across the corridor hanging onto the bars. And hanging onto her every word. She just spoke in low tones, so quiet I could barely hear her.

Maybe I couldn’t. Maybe I was just remembering her calm voice and soft words. I heard her telling me that drinking myself to death wasn’t going to solve problems. She told me I had something to live for. It really didn’t matter what. I could change things from day to day. They were out there. I owed it to them and myself to straighten out.

“Been like that since we put her in the population. See why I don’t want to take her out?”

“Yeah. You’ll call me if there is trouble?”

Hector nodded. “I have to call Prout, too.” He glanced up at the security cameras. “I wouldn’t, but he wanted to know when you showed up, and he’ll go through the tapes.”

“Got it. Don’t want you jammed up.”

“I’ll wait till the end of my shift, about an hour, to call, you know, if that will help.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t care. He’d call Prout. Prout would call me. I wouldn’t answer. It didn’t matter.

“Thanks.” I left the jail armed with two things. The first was the list. The fact that Martha had given it to me without hesitation spoke against her guilt. If she were killing people, there’s no reason she would hand me a list of her victims.

Unless she wanted to be stopped.

Serial killers feel compelled to kill, which is why they cycle faster and faster, their need pushing aside anything else. I wanted to dismiss the possibility of Martha’s guilt outright, but I didn’t know if she had alibis. I only had her word about how nicely things had gone. What if Anderson and Hogan set up the trusts for another reason, to deny her funding and to oust her? What if they were scheming to move the mission and profit from the location, using that project as some cornerstone to gentrify a swath of the city? Would that be enough to make her snap?

I crossed to a little bistro and ordered coffee. Martha was talented. She sat in that den of lions and made them into lambs. I’d felt it. I knew her power. I’d benefited from it. But that was the good side of it. Was there a dark side? Could she talk someone into hanging himself or chopping off his own leg?