The Best Paranormal Crime Stories Ever Told (3 page)

“Ah, Detective,” said the Governor, sitting down again behind his desk. “It's always business with you, isn't it?”

“Ms. Fate is concerned that one of your inmates might have escaped,” I said.

“What? Oh no; no, quite impossible!” The Governor turned his full attention and what he likes to think of as his charming smile on Ms. Fate. “No one ever escapes from here. Never, never. It's always dark in Shadow Deep, you see. Light doesn't work here, outside my office. Not any kind of light, scientific or magical. Not even a match . . . Even if a prisoner could get out of his cell, which he can't, there's no way he could find his way through the maze of tunnels to the transfer site. Even a teleporter can't get out of here, because there's no way of knowing how far down we are!”

“Tell her how it works,” I said. “Tell her what happens to the scum I bring here.”

The Governor blinked rapidly, and tried another ingratiating smile. “Yes, well, the prisoner is put into his cell by one of the golems, and the door is then nailed shut. And sealed forever with pre-prepared, very powerful magics. Once in, a prisoner never leaves his cell. The golems pass food and water through a slot in the door. And that's it.”

“What about . . . ?” said Ms. Fate.

“There's a grille in the floor.”

“Oh, ick.”

“Quite,” said the Governor. “You must understand, our prisoners are not here to reform, or repent. Only the very worst individuals ever end up here, and they stay here till they die. However long that takes. No reprieves, and no time off for good behaviour.”

“How did you get this job?” said Ms. Fate.

“I think I must have done something really bad in a previous existence,” the Governor said grandly. “Cosmic payback can be such a bitch.”

“You got this job because you got caught,” I said.

The Governor scowled. “Yes, well . . . It's not that I did anything really bad . . .”

“Ms. Fate,” I said, “Allow me to introduce to you Charles Peace, villain from a long line of villains. Burglar, thief, and snapper up of anything valuable not actually nailed down. Safes opened while you wait.”

“That was my downfall,” the Governor admitted. “I opened Walker's safe, you see; just for the challenge of it. And I saw something I really shouldn't have seen. Something no one was ever supposed to see. I ran, of course, but the Detective tracked me down and brought me back, and Walker gave me a choice. On the spot execution, or serve here as Governor until what I know becomes obsolete, and doesn't matter any more. That was seventeen years ago, and there isn't a day goes by where I don't wonder whether I made the right decision.”

“Seventeen years?” said Ms. Fate. She always did have a soft spot for a hard-luck story.

“Seventeen years, four months, and three days,” said the Governor. “Not that I obsess about it, you understand.”

“Is Shock-Headed Peter still here?” I said bluntly. “There's no chance he could have got out?”

“Of course not! I did the rounds only an hour ago, and his cell is still sealed. Come on, Detective; if Shock-Headed Peter was on the loose in the Nightside again, we'd all know about it.”

“Who else have you got down here?” said Ms. Fate. “Anyone . . . famous?”

“Oh, quite a few; certainly some names you'd recognise. Let's see; we have the Murder Masques, Sweet Annie Abattoir, Max Maxwell the Voodoo Apostate, Maggie Malign . . . But they're all quite secure, too, I can assure you.”

“I just needed to be sure this place is as secure as it's supposed to be,” said Ms. Fate. “You'd better prepare a new cell, Governor; because I've brought you a new prisoner.”

And she looked at me.

I rose to my feet, and so did she. We stood looking at each other for a long moment.

“I'm sorry, Sam,” she said. “But it's you. You're the murderer.”

“Have you gone mad?” I said.

“You gave yourself away, Sam,” she said, meeting my gaze squarely with her own. “That's why I had you bring me here to Shadow Deep, where you belong. Where even you can't get away.”

“What makes you think it was me?” I said.

“You knew things you shouldn't have known. Things only the killer could have known. First, at the Library. That anthropology text was a dry, stuffy and very academic text. Very difficult for a layman to read and understand. But you just skimmed through it and then neatly summed up the whole concept. The only way you could have done that was if you'd known it in advance. That raised my suspicions, but I didn't say anything. I wanted to be wrong about you.

“But you did it again, at the autopsy. First, you knew that the heart had been removed
before
the liver. Dr. West hadn't worked that out yet, because the body's insides were such a mess. Second; when I asked you to name the victims in order, you named them all, including the werewolf. Who hasn't been identified yet. Dr West still had him down as a John Doe.

“So; it had to be you. Why, Sam? Why?”

“Because they were going to make me retire,” I said. It was actually a relief, to be able to tell it to someone. “Take away my job, my reason for living, just because I'm not as young as I used to be. All my experience, all my years of service, all the things I've done for them, and the Authorities were going to give me a gold watch and throw me on the scrap heap. Now; when things are worse than they've ever been. When I'm needed more than ever. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

“So I decided I would just take what I needed, to make myself the greatest Detective that ever was. With my new abilities, I would be unstoppable. I would go private, like John Taylor and Larry Oblivion; and show those wet behind the ears newcomers how it's done . . . I would become rich and famous, and if I looked a little younger, well . . . this is the Nightside, after all.

“Shed no tears for my victims. They were all criminals, though I could never prove it. That's why there was no paperwork on them. But I knew. Trust me; they all deserved to die. They were all scum.

“I'd actually finished, you know. The werewolf would have been my last victim. I had all I needed. I teleported in and out of the Library, which is why no one saw me come and go. But then . . . you had to turn up, the second-best detective in the Nightside, and spoil everything. I never should have agreed to train you . . . but I saw in you a passion for justice that matched my own. You could have been my partner, my successor. The things we could have done . . . But now I'm going to have to kill you, and the Governor. I can't let you tell. Can't let you stop me, not after everything I've done. The Nightside needs me.

“You'll just be two more victims of the unknown serial killer.”

I surged forward with a werewolf's supernatural speed, and grabbed the front of Ms. Fate's black leather costume with a godling's strength. I closed my hand on her chest and ripped her left breast away. And then I stopped, dumbstruck. The breast was in my hand, but under the torn open leather there was no wound, no spouting blood. Only a very flat, very masculine chest. Ms. Fate smiled coldly.

“And that's why you'd never have guessed my secret identity, Sam. Who would ever have suspected that a man would dress up as a super-heroine, to fight crime? But then, this is the Nightside, and like you said; we all have our secrets.” And while I stood there, listening with an open mouth, she palmed a nausea gas capsule from her belt and threw it in my face. I hit the stone floor on my hands and knees, vomiting so hard I couldn't concentrate enough to use any of my abilities. The Governor called for two of his golems, and they came and dragged me away. They threw me into a cell, and then nailed the door shut, and sealed it forever.

No need for a trial. Ms. Fate would have a word with Walker, and that would be that. That's how I always did it.

So here I am, in Shadow Deep, in the dark that never ends. Guess whose cell they put me next to. Just guess.

One of these days they'll open this cell and find nothing here but my clothes.

PATRICIA BRIGGS

“I checked them out myself,” Myra snapped. “Have you ever just considered that
your boy
isn't the angel you thought he was?”

Stella took off her glasses and set them on her desk. “I think that we both need some perspective. Why don't you take the rest of the afternoon off?”
Before I slap your stupid face.
People like Devonte don't change that fast, not without good reason.

Myra opened her mouth, but after she got a look at Stella's face she shut it again. Mutely she stalked to her desk and retrieved her coat and purse. She slammed the door behind her.

As soon as she was gone, Stella opened the folder and looked at the pictures of the crime scene again. They were duplicates, and doubtless Clive, her brother the detective, had broken a few rules when he sent them to her—not that breaking rules had ever bothered him, not when he was five and not as a grown man nearing fifty and old enough to know better.

She touched the photos lightly, then closed the folder again. There was a yellow sticky with a phone number on it and nothing else: Clive didn't have to put a name on it. Her little brother knew she'd see what he had seen.

She picked up the phone and punched in the numbers fast, not giving herself a chance for second thoughts.

The barracks were empty, leaving David's office silent and bleak. The boys were on furlough with their various families for December.

His mercenaries specialized in live retrieval which tended to be in and out stuff, a couple of weeks per job at the most. He didn't want to get involved in the gray area of unsanctioned combat or out-and-out war—where you killed people because someone told you to. In retrieval there were good guys and bad guys still—and if there weren't, he didn't take the job. Their reputation was such that they had no trouble finding jobs.

And unless all hell really broke loose, they always took December off to be with their families. David never let them know how hard that made it for him.

Werewolves need their packs.

If his pack was human, well, they knew about him and they filled that odd wolf-quirk that demanded he have people to protect, brothers in heart and mind. He couldn't stomach a real pack, he hated what he was too much.

He couldn't bear to live with his own kind, but this worked as a substitute and kept him centered. When his boys were here, when they had a job to do, he had direction and purpose.

His grandsons had invited him for the family dinner, but he'd refused as he always did. He still saw his sons on a regular basis. Both of them had served in his small band of mercenaries for a while, until the life lost its appeal or the risks grew too great for men with growing families. But he stayed away at Christmas.

Restlessness had him pacing: there were no plans to make, no wrongs to right. Finally he unlocked the safe and pulled out a couple of the newer rifles. He needed to put some time in with them anyway.

An hour of shooting staved off the restlessness, but only until he locked the guns up again. He'd have to go for a run. When he emptied his pockets in preparation, he noticed he had missed a call while he'd been shooting. He glanced at the number, frowning when he didn't recognize it. Most of his jobs came through an agent who knew better than to give out his cell number. Before he could decide if he wanted to return the call, his phone rang again, a call from the same number.

“Christiansen,” he answered briskly.

There was a long silence. “Papa?”

He closed his eyes and sank back in his chair feeling his heart expand with almost painful intentness as his wolf fought with the man who knew his daughter hated him: didn't want to see him, ever. She had been there when her mother died.

“Stella?” He couldn't imagine what it took to make her break almost forty years of silence. “Are you all right? Is there something wrong?” Someone he could kill for her? A building to blow up? Anything at all.

She swallowed. He could hear it over the line. He waited for her to hang up.

Instead, when she spoke again, her voice was brisk and the wavery pain that colored that first “Papa” was gone as if it had never been. “I was wondering if you would consider doing a favor for me.”

“What do you need?” He was proud that came out evenly. Always better to know what you're getting into, he told himself. He wanted to tell her that she could ask him for anything—but he didn't want to scare her.

“I run an agency that places foster kids,” she told him, as if he didn't know. As if her brothers hadn't told her how he quizzed them to find out how she was doing and what she was up to. He hoped she never found out about her ex-boyfriend who'd turned stalker. He hadn't killed that one, though his willingness to do so had made it easier to persuade the man that he wanted to take up permanent residence in a different state.

“I know,” he said because it seemed like she needed a response.

“There's something—” she hesitated. “Look, this might not have been the best idea.”

He was losing her again. He had to breathe deeply to keep the panic from his voice. “Why don't you tell me about it anyway? Do you have something better to do?”

“I remember that,” she said. “I remember you doing that with Mom. She'd be hysterical, throwing dishes or books, and you'd sit down and say, ‘Why don't you tell me about it?'”

Did she want to talk about her mother now? About the one time he'd needed to be calm and failed? He hadn't known he was a werewolf until it was too late. Until after he'd killed his wife and the lover she'd taken while David had been fighting for God and country, both of whom had forgotten him. She'd been waiting until he came home to tell him that she was leaving—it was a mistake she'd had no time to regret. He, on the other hand, might have forever to regret it for her.

He never spoke of it. Not to anyone. For Stella he'd do it, but she knew the story anyway. She'd been there.

“Do you want to talk about your mother?” he asked, his voice carrying into a lower timbre; as it did when the wolf was close.

“No. Not that,” she said hurriedly. “Nothing like that. I'm sorry. This isn't a good idea.”

She was going to hang up. He drew on his hard-earned control and thought fast.

Forty years as a hunter and leader of men had given him a lot of practice reading between the lines. If he could put aside the fact that she was his daughter, maybe he could salvage this.

She'd told him she ran a foster agency like it was important to the rest of what she had to say.

“It's about your work?” he asked, trying to figure out what a social worker would need with a werewolf. Oh. “Is there a—” His daughter preferred not to talk about werewolves, Clive had told him. So if there was something supernatural she was going to have to bring it up. “Is there someone bothering you?”

“No,” she said. “Nothing like that. It's one of my boys.”

Stella had never married, never had children of her own. Her brother said it was because she had all the people to take care of that she could handle.

“One of the foster kids.”

“Devonte Parish.”

“He one of your special ones?” he asked. His Stella had never seen a stray she hadn't brought home, animal or human. Most she'd dusted off and sent home with a meal and bandages as needed—but some of them she'd kept.

She sighed. “Come and see him, would you? Tomorrow?”

“I'll be there,” he promised. It would take him a few hours to set up permission from the packs in her area: travel was complicated for a werewolf. “Probably sometime in the afternoon. This the number I can find you at?”

Instead of taking a taxi from the airport, he rented a car. It might be harder to park, but it would give them mobility and privacy. If his daughter only needed this, if she didn't want to smoke the peace pipe yet, then he didn't need it witnessed by a cab driver. A witness would make it harder for him to control himself—and his little girl never needed to see him out of control ever again.

He called her before setting out, and he could tell that she'd had second and third thoughts.

“Look,” he finally told her. “I'm here now. Maybe we should go and talk to the boy. Where can I meet you?”

He'd have known her anywhere though he hadn't, by her request, seen her since the night he'd killed his wife. She'd been twelve and now she was a grown woman with silver threads running through her kinky black hair. The last time he'd seen her she'd been still a little rounded and soft as most children are—and now there wasn't an ounce of softness in her. She was muscular and lean—like him.

It had been a long time, but he'd never have mistaken her for anyone else: she had his eyes and her mother's face.

He'd thought you had to be bleeding someplace to hurt this badly. The beast struggled within him, looking for an enemy. But he controlled and subdued it before he pulled the car to the curb and unlocked the automatic door.

She was wearing a brown wool suit that was several shades darker than the milk and coffee skin she'd gotten from her mother. His own skin was dark as the night and kept him safely hidden in the shadows where he and people like him belonged.

She opened the car door and got in. He waited until she'd fastened her seatbelt before pulling out from the curb. Slush splattered out from under his tires, but it was only a token. Once he was in the traffic lane the road was bare.

She didn't say anything for a long time, so he just drove. He had no idea where he was going, but he figured she'd tell him when she was ready. He kept his eyes on traffic to give her time to get a good look at him.

“You look younger than I remember,” she said finally. “Younger than me.”

“I was thirty-five or thereabouts when I was Changed. Being a werewolf seems to settle physical age about twenty-five for most of us.” There it was out in the open and she could do with it as she pleased.

He could smell her fear of him spike and if he'd really been twenty-five, he thought he might have cried. Being this agitated wasn't smart if you were a werewolf. He took a deep breath through his nose and tried to calm down—he'd earned her fear.

“Devonte won't talk to me or anyone else,” she said, and then as if those words had been the key to the floodgate she kept going. “I wish you could have seen him when I first met him. He was ten going on forty. He'd just lost his grandmother, who had raised him. He looked me right in the eye, stuck his jaw out and told me that he needed a home where he would be clothed and fed so he could concentrate on school.”