Disclaimer:

I don't own it, I don't pretend to own it, I intend no monetary gain off of this, and don't wish any kind of copyright infringement on Top Cow production or TNT or whomever.

I also borrowed the phrase 'psychic woo-woo' from my dear friend Nora Roberts.

In honour of the officers of the NYPD who served and protected their last on 9-11-01

Chapter Two

Sara felt odd coming back to the station house after so long an absence. It was like her whole body was different, even her clothes fit differently, and her boots didn't squeak as much over the cheap linoleum flooring.

The clothing could easily be explained away; Ian had purchased an entirely new wardrobe for her to replace the ones she'd left in her closet and gotten ashed over with that damn grey dust. She was usually a cotton-and-cow-hide type person, favouring the knockoff of the imitation, rather than the real deal. Ian was a cashmere and Italian leather kind of guy, who always bought the original.

Not that she minded, any woman will tell you that cashmere beats cotton hands down for a comfortable sweater. And soft, supple Italian leather beat the fell-off-the-back-of-the-cattle-car brand any day of week. 

But she was still a cowhide and cotton woman, cashmere just wasn't Sara Pezzini.  

Neither was walking into the police station wearing more weapons than the average third world army. Ian had also, in his tender loving care, carefully laid out knives, guns, mace, and an assortment of neatly concealed super comfortable sheathes.

Even to the paranoia fuelled Witchblade it had seemed a bit excessive, but Sara really didn't have the strength to argue with the man. Besides, he was damn good at what he did, anyhow, even if he was an assassin.

"Hey Petzini," heaved a slimy, ego-inflated excuse for a man. Great, just the man she wanted to see, Bruno Dante, Captain of the imbeciles, "Fancy seeing you here"

"Good morning" she let a heartbeat pass, "Sir"

"Yeh, I hear yous been down by Ground Zero, huh? Workin' hard Petzini," he reeked of stale cigarette smoke and cheap cologne, "We almost missed ya, word came out yous was still among the missing. Kinda freaked some people out."

Well knock her over with a feather; Dante was actually putting forth an effort to act like a semi-decent human being, instead of an athletic asshole. It must be raining snowballs in hell, "It kind of freaked me out too"

"Good thing yous here, then, eh? Got a live one for ya, real weirdo," he hacked a deep smoker's cough, but politely turned his head so not to spray her with spit, "Thinks she saw something or other."

"Psychic, psycho, same deal," Sara shrugged, "I'll get to the bottom of it."

"You do that," he grunted, "but yous lissen to me now, no more overtime, you heah? You do your shift an' you go home. I don't want no pasty IA asshole comin' in heah an' sayin I work my people too hard. Got that?"

"Yes, sir"

She was outwardly calm, but struggled with the insane urge to giggle, this was Bruno Dante? Even if he wasn't very gracious about it, he'd just given her a break, and without her asking or complaint. Sara fully expected pigs to go soaring by her office window any second now.

"Hey Pez!" exclaimed a much more welcome voice, "Thank God."

"Hey Jake," she allowed him to pull her into a hug, not a manly sort of backslapping hug, but a nice, even, I'm-glad-to-see-you-alive type thing. She remembered what Danny had told her last night about Jake being distraught over her 'missing' status.

"You weren't worried about me, were you rookie?" she made her tone light and teasing, "You know, I always land on my feet."

"Nine lives, huh?" his voice was shaky, but bantering, "Just remember curiosity killed the cat, willya?"

"Got it," she let him go and surveyed the office around her, "Grab me a cup of coffee, Jake, and let's get down to business."

"Sure thing," Jake turned around and meandered towards the homicide office's wheezing excuse for a coffee machine.

"That was smooth," Danny complimented, "and so are you. Did you get attacked by the fashion police on the way here or something?"

"Top of the laundry pile," she claimed smoothing down the cherry red turtleneck, not really wanting to get into details, "Stuff it, what have we got?"

"Pretty weird," Danny tossed her the folder, "You got the average two bit fortune teller and then you got the average two bit fortune teller who got the willies and came down to the station to report a crime that hasn't been committed."

"Don't suppose the 'psychic trance' was chemically induced?" Sara asked, figuring that was ninety-eight percent of the time what happened with the quasi-mystical faction of the city.

"Nope, she was clean as a whistle; let them test her on the spot. Not even trace elements in the hair or blood. Nothing" Danny leaned back in his chair, confident.

"Great," Sara absently accepted Jake's offering, a cup of steaming black mud that passed for coffee, "any witnesses to this…premonition?"

"Nope just her word"

"Gaaagh" Sara spat the thick, gooey substance in her mug all over the papers in her hand. "What the hell is this?"

Danny looked at Jake who looked at Danny and who both looked at her and said, simultaneously, "Coffee"

"Not in this lifetime," she looked at the mug as though it contained noxious chemical waste, "It might be pretending, but this ain't no cup of coffee."

"Same stuff as it's always been," Danny remarked absently, "maybe you're just not used to it."

"Yeah," Sara thought guiltily of Gabriel's gleaming stainless steel restaurant quality espresso/cappuccino machine. "Guess not."

They were all silent for a long moment, as two of them remembered why it was that the third hadn't been there to pick on the 'company' coffee. 

 "Anyhow," Jake said, trying to ease the sudden tension, "We were waiting for you to get back to deal with this one, these weirdoes are your turf, not ours."

"Oh gee thanks," Sara said rolling her eyes, "love the vote of confidence there"

"Hey," Danny said mildly, "the psychic woo-woo crud has always been your forte, yes? No one else does it better."

"Thrilled, I'm sure," Sara flipped absently through the pages of the file, "Just what I want to be known for: Mistress of the Psychic Woo-Woo Crud."

"Hey wasn't that one of those girly books, Divine Secrets off the Woo-Woo Clan, or something like that?" Jake asked, puzzled.

"Yeah, it was a book and a movie too," Sara sighed, "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Not bad."

"See?" Danny said charmingly, "it's one of those woman things."

"You wanna eat this?" Sara retorted, waving her folder threateningly, "Or do you want me to go home and tell your wife you said that?"

"Hey now," Danny put up his hands, "No need to get nasty."

"Remember that" she said, "C'mon, let's go find our woo-woo sister."

***

The Lady woo-woo, or Miss Dominique De Laurie, ran her business establishment on the basement level of a sleazy looking Mom & Pop grocery that had long ago got taken over by the local drug lord. Beaded doorway, day-glo orange shag carpeting, low lights, and a neon sign read "Psychic Reading: Tarot, Palms, and Tea."

"Great," Danny muttered, "I feel like I'm walking into a cliché"

"Than you're going to feel like a real ass before long" Sara said wryly, "I got a feeling that a cliché is exactly what we're walking into."

"Fan-fuckin-tastic" Jake grunted, "Remind me why we do this."

"Concerned citizens, rookie, we like to keep them calm." Sara rapped sharply on the door, from the side, not the front. "Pezzini, NYPD homicide, open up"

What appeared to be an overexcited customer heard 'NYPD' and bolted, nearly running over Jake, who had stood in front of the door, with his eagerness to get out. When the Miss Cleo look-alike came to the door, Sara fully expected to be treated to a diatribe on 'scaring away the clientele'.

"Good morning officers, to whom do I owe the pleasure?" she dropped the fake Jamaican accent with the first two syllables.

"Yourself I imagine" Sara enjoyed the slight jump that Miss Dominique made as she hadn't expected the gritty roughness in her voice, "Or did you not come down to the station to report a crime?"

"Ah, the token female," Miss Dominique said pleasantly, "Must be a slow day at the office. Run out of coffee to make?"

"Funny," Danny said, defending Sara, "Considering she's the ranking Detective here, I must spend my days polishing the floor."

"So they sent you out to deal with the Psychic? Or did they say Psycho?" Miss Dominique laughed, "I must be moving up in the scheme of things if I get three of you."

"Something like that" Jake said, "May we come in Miss De Laurie, or do you want to hold this conversation in the street?"

"After you, Detectives" Dominique pulled back the beads and offered them the interior of her 'den', "Tea?"

"Not if you're gonna charge us for it," Sara pointed to the sign, "I don't want my fortune told, thank you."

"Consider it complimentary, Detective. I don't think I want to read your fortune any more than you want me to." Dominique poured each of them a steaming cup from the carafe on the sideboard, "So what got you assigned to the psychic?"

"I've got something of a reputation in the department. I work well with the weirdoes."  Sara said, appreciating the fine flavour of the tea, and toasted with her cup, "Good stuff."

"Thank you" she said gracefully, seating herself, and ignoring the 'weirdoes' comment, "But a homicide Detective in the New York City Police Department having an affinity for the arcane? Forgive me if it sounds a little…over the top."

Jake snorted at the thought of a woman who made her living as a psychic thinking that anything was 'over-the-top'.

Pezzini just arched a brow and replied, "Not so much for the arcane, just an ability to see through bullshit and get to the heart of the matter."

"Ah, and we come to the heart of the matter now, yes?" Dominique sipped her tea, cautiously, "You no doubt have read a report of my vision?"

"Of course," Sara smiled.

"But you want me to repeat it, in order to test if my story changes. This would be the logical thing to do. Very well Detective, I shall go over it yet again." Dominique set her cup down and sighed.

"It was, now almost four nights ago, a very quiet evening. Not many customers. I was sitting then where you are now, doing nothing more than eating a light meal and reading, waiting for someone to come in."

"What were you reading?" Danny asked.

"Isle of Dogs, by Patricia Cornwall, it was excellent." Dominique replied.

"Are you fond of her work?" Jake questioned.

"Yes, but I digress. While I was reading and eating, it was a slow night you understand, I was at one moment in my 'office', if you will, and the next I was not." Dominique hesitated, "Understand that most of the 'psychic' work I do has little to do with the true arcane, and much to do with keen observation and the slight of hand. However, there are occasions when I see things, things that others do not."

"Like the future" Sara prompted.

"Yes," Dominique took a breath, "I was in the body of someone else. A man, he was tall…"

"How tall?" asked Sara.

"Taller than I, at least, I'm five foot eight, in the proper shoes, and he was much taller." Dominique sipped her tea, "Dressed in all black, he had a gun, a very long gun. He was on a rooftop, overlooking the docks. Some people got on a boat, a yacht, a very…large yacht. He sighted through a… scope, I think; I'm not familiar with guns."

"Yeah, a scope," Danny confirmed, "Can you tell us more about it?"

"The gun, yes I suppose, it was long, with a two little legs on tip, like this" she splayed her fingers in an upside down 'v', "To stand it upright, he was lying down, flat on his belly."

"Did you see who was in the scope?" asked Sara.

"A little, there were several men, one of them in a long, crème coloured jacket. It looked like the two of them were the important men; the others were thugs, just bodyguards."

"Tell me more about the gun, did it have a magazine like a pistol, or did he load it bullet by bullet?" Danny persisted.

"One at a time," Dominique responded, "It had a thing that slid back, like a lever, and pulled. Then he put in one of the shots."

"What about the bullets, can you describe them?" Danny asked.

"They were a little longer than this," she held up her fingers, "and very slender, and pointed at the top."

"Do you think you could identify the targets if we ran some pictures by you?" asked Sara.

"I think so," Dominique thought about it, "They had suits on, both of them, dark ones, you couldn't see really in the light. The one had the crème coloured jacket, it was open. He was lean, but older I think, with a very prominent nose and dark hair. The other one was not slender; he was round, with smaller eyes and a bald spot."

"Is it one of these guys?" Sara held out a small picture wallet, like one someone would use for baby portraits or graduations. Dominique flipped through it, absently.

"This one, he the skinny man, I recognise the jacket." Danny, whose face betrayed nothing, looked at Sara who nodded. They knew whose picture it was.

It was Gallo.

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