Those Who Fight Monsters Part 9

"Sorry. It gets worse. You want to sit down?"

"No. What is it?"

"It looks like acid burns," Dominguez said. "But the a.n.a.lysis says salt. Plain old table salt."

"Salt can't do that to an open wound, can it?"

"In large enough quant.i.ties, salt can be corrosive on an open wound. But we're talking a lot of salt, and I didn't find that much."

That didn't answer any of Hardin's questions. She needed a cigarette. After thanking the ME, she went outside.

She kept meaning to quit smoking. She really ought to quit. But she valued these quiet moments. Standing outside, pacing a few feet back and forth with a cigarette in her hand and nothing to do but think, let her solve problems.

In her reading and research - which had been pretty scant up to this point, granted - salt showed up over and over again in superst.i.tions, in magical practices. In defensive magic. And there it was. Maybe someone thought the victim was magically dangerous. Someone thought the victim was going to come back from the dead and used the salt to prevent that.

That information didn't solve the murder, but it might provide a motive.

Patton was waiting at her desk back at the station, just so he could present the folder to her in person. "The house belongs to Tom and Betty Arcuna. They were renting it out to a Dora Manuel. There's your victim."

Hardin opened the folder. The photo on the first page looked like it had been blown up from a pa.s.sport. The woman was brown- skinned, with black hair and tasteful makeup on a round face. Middle-aged, she guessed, but healthy. Frowning and unhappy for whatever reason. She might very well be the victim, but without a face or even fingerprints they'd probably have to resort to DNA testing. Unless they found the missing half. Still no luck with that.

Ms. Manuel had immigrated from the Philippines three years ago. Tom and Betty Arcuna, her cousins, had sponsored her, but they hadn't seemed to have much contact with her. They rented her the house, Manuel paid on time, and they didn't even get together for holidays. The Arcunas lived in Phoenix, Arizona, and this house was one of several they owned in Denver and rented out, mostly to Filipinos. Patton had talked to them on the phone; they had expressed shock at Manuel's demise, but had no other information to offer. "She kept to herself. We never got any complaints, and we know all the neighbors."

Hardin fired up the Internet browser on her computer and searched under "Philippines" and "magic." And got a lot of hits that had nothing to do with what she was looking for. Magic shows, as in watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat, and Magic tournaments, as in the geek card game. She added "spell" and did a little better, spending a few minutes flipping through various pages discussing black magic and hexes and the like, in both dry academic rhetoric and the sensationalist tones of superst.i.tious evangelists. She learned that many so-called spells were actually curses involving gastrointestinal distress and skin blemishes. But she could also buy a love spell online for a hundred pesos. She didn't find anything about any magic that would slice a body clean through the middle.

Official public acknowledgement - that meant government recognition - of the existence of magic and the supernatural was recent enough that no one had developed policies about how to deal with cases involving such matters. The medical examiner didn't have a way to determine if the salt she found on the body had had a magical effect. There wasn't an official process detailing how to investigate a magical crime. The Denver PD Paranatural Unit was one of the first in the country, and Hardin - the only officer currently a.s.signed to the unit, because she was the only one with any experience - suspected she was going to end up writing the book on some of this stuff. She still spent a lot of her time trying to convince people that any of it was real.

When she was saddled with the unit, she'd gotten a piece of advice: the real stuff stayed hidden, and had stayed hidden for a long time. Most of the information that was easy to find was a smoke screen. To find the truth, you had to keep digging. She went old school and searched the online catalog for the Denver Public Library, but didn't find a whole lot on Filipino folklore.

"What is it this time? Alligators in the sewer?"

Hardin rolled her eyes without turning her chair to look at the comedian leaning on the end of her cubicle. It was Bailey, the senior homicide detective, and he'd given her s.h.i.+t ever since she first walked into the bureau and said the word "werewolf" with a straight face. It didn't matter that she'd turned out to be right, and that she'd dug up a dozen previous deaths in Denver that had been attributed to dog and coyote maulings and gotten them recla.s.sified as unsolved homicides, with werewolves as the suspected perpetrators - which ruined the bureau's solve rate. She'd done battle with vampires, and Bailey didn't have to believe her for it to be true. Hardin could at least hope that even if she couldn't solve the bizarre crimes she faced, she'd at least get brownie points for taking the jobs no one else wanted.

"How are you, Detective?" she said in monotone.

"I hear you got a live one. So to speak. Patton says he was actually happy to hand this one over to you."

"It's different, all right." She turned away from the computer to face the gray-haired, softly overweight man. Three hundred and forty-nine days to retirement, he was, and kept telling them.

He craned around a little further to look at her computer screen. "A tough-nut case and what are you doing, shopping for shoes?"

She'd cultivated a smile just for situations like this. It got her through the Academy, it got her through every marksmans.h.i.+p test with a smart-a.s.s instructor, it had gotten her through eight years as a cop. But one of these days, she was going to snap and take someone's head off.

"It's the twenty-first century, Bailey," she said. "Half the crooks these days knock over a liquor store and then brag about it on Mys.p.a.ce an hour later. You gotta keep on top of it."

He looked at her blankly. She wasn't about to explain Mys.p.a.ce to him. Not that he'd even dare admit to her that he didn't know or understand something. He was the big d.i.c.k on campus, and she was just the girl detective.

At least she had a pretty good chance of outliving the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

Donning a smile, he said, "Hey, maybe it's a vampire!" He walked away, chuckling.

If that was the worst ribbing she got today, she'd count herself lucky.

Canva.s.sing the neighborhood could be both her most and least favorite part of an investigation. She usually learned way more than she wanted to and came away not thinking very highly of people. She'd have to stand there not saying anything while listening to people tell her over and over again that no, they never suspected anything, the suspect was always very quiet, and no, they never saw anything, they didn't know anything. All the while they wouldn't meet her gaze. They didn't want to get involved. She bet if she'd interviewed the Arcunas in person, they wouldn't have looked her in the eyes.

But this was often the very best way to track down leads, and a good witness could crack a whole case.

Patton had already talked to the neighbor who called in the smell, a Hispanic woman who lived in the house behind Manuel's. She hadn't had any more useful information, so Hardin wanted to try the more immediate neighbors.

She went out early in the evening, after work and around dinnertime, when people were more likely to be home. The neighborhood was older, a grid of narrow streets, eighty-year-old houses in various states of repair jammed in together. Towering ash and maple trees pushed up the slabs of the sidewalks with their roots. Narrow drives led to carports, or simply to the sides of the houses. Most cars parked along the curbs. A mix of lower-cla.s.s residents lived here: kids living five or six to a house to save rent while they worked minimum-wage jobs; ethnic families, recent immigrants getting their starts; blue collar families struggling at the poverty line.

Dora Manuel's house still had yellow tape around the property. When she couldn't find parking on the street, Hardin broke the tape away and pulled into the narrow driveway, stopping in front of the fence to the back lot. She put the tape back up behind her car.

Across the street, a guy was on his front porch taking pictures of the house, the police tape, her. Fine, she'd start with him.

She crossed the street and walked to his porch with an easy, nonthreatening stride. His eyes went wide and a little panicked anyway.

"I'm sorry, I wasn't hurting anything, I'll stop," he said, hiding the camera behind his back.

Hardin gave him a wry, annoyed smile and held up her badge. "My name's Detective Hardin, Denver PD, and I just want to ask you a few questions. That okay?"

He only relaxed a little. He was maybe in his early twenties. The house was obviously a rental, needing a good scrubbing and a coat of paint. Through the front windows she could see band posters on the living room walls. "Yeah ... okay."

"What's your name?"

"Pete. Uh ... Pete Teller."

"Did you know Dora Manuel?"

"That Mexican lady across the street? The one who got killed?"

"Filipino, but yes."

"No, didn't know the lady at all. Saw her sometimes."

"When was the last time you saw her?"

"Maybe a few days ago. Yeah, like four days ago, going inside the house at dinnertime."

Patton's background file said that Manuel didn't own a car. She rode the bus to her job at a dry cleaners. Pete would have seen her walking home.

"Did you see anyone else? Maybe anyone who looked like they didn't belong?"

"No, no one. Not ever. Lady kept to herself, you know?"

Yeah, she did. She asked a few more standard witness questions, and he gave the standard answers. She gave him her card and asked him to call if he remembered anything, or if he heard anything. Asked him to tell his roommates to do the same.

The family two doors south of Manuel was also Filipino. Hardin was guessing the tired woman who opened the door was the mother of a good-sized family. Kids were screaming in a back room. The woman was shorter than Hardin by a foot, brown-skinned, and her black hair was tied in a ponytail. She wore a blue T-s.h.i.+rt and faded jeans.

Hardin flashed her badge. "I'm Detective Hardin, Denver PD. Could I ask you a few questions?"

"Is this about Dora Manuel?"

This encouraged Hardin. At least someone around here had actually known the woman. "Yes. I'm a.s.suming you heard what happened?"

"It was in the news," she said.

"How well did you know her?"

"Oh, I didn't, not really."

So much for the encouragement. "Did you ever speak with her? Can you tell me the last time you saw her?"

"I don't think I ever talked to her. I'm friends with Betty Arcuna, who owns the house. I knew her when she lived in the neighborhood. I kept an eye on the house for her, you know, as much as I could."

"Then did you ever see any suspicious activity around the house? Any strangers, anyone who looked like they didn't belong?"

She pursed her lips and shook her head. "No, not really, not that I remember."

A sound, like something heavy falling from a shelf, crashed from the back of the house. The woman just sighed.

"How many kids do you have?" Hardin asked.

"Five," she said, looking even more tired.

Hardin saw movement over the mother's shoulder. The woman looked. Behind her, leaning against the wall like she was trying to hide behind it, was a girl - a young woman, rather. Sixteen or seventeen. Wide-eyed, pretty. Give her another couple of years to fill out the curves and she'd be beautiful.

"This is my oldest," the woman said.

"You mind if I ask her a few questions?"

The young woman shook her head no, but her mother stepped aside. Hardin expected her to flee to the back of the house, but she didn't.

"Hi," Hardin said, trying to sound friendly without sounding condescending. "I wondered if you could tell me anything about Ms. Manuel."

"I don't know anything about her," she said. "She didn't like kids messing in her yard. We all stayed away."

"Can you remember the last time you saw her?"

She shrugged. "A few days ago maybe."

"You know anyone who had it in for her? Maybe said anything bad about her or threatened her? Sounds like the kids around here didn't like her much."

"No, nothing like that," she said.

Hardin wasn't going to get anything out of her, though the girl looked scared. Maybe she was just scared of whatever had killed Manuel. The mother gave Hardin a sympathetic look and shrugged, much like her daughter had.

Hardin got the names - Julia Martinal and her daughter Teresa. She gave them a card. "If you think of anything, let me know."

Two houses down was an older, angry white guy.

"It's about time you got here and did something about those Mexicans," he said when Hardin showed him her badge.

"I'm sorry?" Hardin said, playing dumb, seeing how far the guy would carry this.

"Those Mexican gang wars, they got no place here. That's what happened, isn't it?"

She narrowed her gaze. "Have you seen any Mexican gangs in the area? Any unusual activity, anything you think is suspicious? Drive bys, strange people loitering?"

"Well, I don't get up in other people's business. I can't say that I saw anything. But that Mexican broad was killed, right? What else could have happened?"

"What's your name, sir?" Hardin said.

He hesitated, lips drawing tight, as if he was actually considering arguing with her or refusing to tell. "Smith," he said finally. "John Smith."

"Mr. Smith, did you ever see anyone at Dora Manuel's house? Anyone you'd be able to pick out of a line up?"

He still looked like he'd eaten something sour. "Well, no, not like that. I'm not a spy or a snitch or anything."

She nodded comfortingly. "I'm sure. Oh, and Mr. Smith? Dora Manuel was Filipina, not Mexican."

She gave him her card, as she had with the others, and asked him to call her. Out of all the people she'd left cards with today, she bet Smith would be the one to call. And he'd have nothing useful for her.

She didn't get much out of any of the interviews.

"I'm sorry, I never even knew what her name was."

"She kept to herself, I didn't really know her."

"She wasn't that friendly."

"I don't think I was surprised to hear that she'd died."

In the end, rather than having any solid leads on what had killed her, Hardin walked away with an image of a lonely, maybe even ostracized woman with no friends, no connections, and no grief lost at her pa.s.sing. People with that profile were usually pegged as the killers, not the victims.

She sat in her car for a long time, letting her mind drift, wondering which lead she'd missed and what connection she'd have to make to solve this thing. The murder wasn't random. In fact, it must have been carefully planned, considering the equipment involved. So the body had been moved, maybe. There still ought to be evidence of that at the crime scene - tire tracks, footprints, blood. Maybe the techs had come up with something while she was out here dithering.

The sun was setting, spa.r.s.e streetlights coming on, their orange glow not doing much to illuminate past the trees. Not a lot of activity went on. A few lights on in a few windows. No cars moving.

She stepped out of the car and started walking.

Instead of going straight through the gate to the backyard, she went around the house and along the fence to the alley behind the houses, a narrow path mostly haunted by stray cats. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye; paused and looked, caught sight of small legs and a tail. She flushed and her heart sped up, in spite of herself. She knew it was just a cat. But her hindbrain thought of the other creatures with fur she'd seen in back alleys. The monsters.

She came into Manuel's yard through a back gate. The shed loomed before her, seeming to expand in size. She shook the image away. The only thing sinister about the shed was her knowledge of what had been found there. Other houses had back porch lights on. She could hear TVs playing. Not at Manuel's house. The rooms were dark, the whole property still, as if the rest of the street had vanished, and the site existed in a bubble. Hardin's breathing suddenly seemed loud.

She couldn't see much of anything in the dark. No footprints, not a stray thread of cloth. She didn't know what she was hoping to find.

One thing she vowed she'd never do was call in a psychic to work a case. But standing in the backyard of Manuel's residence at night, she couldn't help but wonder if she'd missed something simply because it wasn't visible to the mundane eye. Could a psychic stand here and see some kind of magical aura? Maybe follow a magical trail to the person who'd committed the crime?