Magie Noire

By Rurouni Star

Chapter Five

"You want your hands on the drugs?" a harsh voice spat at me. "Here. You can have 'em."

A disgusting, herbal taste. The smell of ammonia and antifreeze. I choked and coughed. Someone was holding me down, prying open my mouth, splashing something on my face. More of the shit got on my shirt than it did inside me… but there was enough of it that it didn't really matter.

I moved on pure muscle memory, twisting out of the grip that held me. I slammed into the man on the other side of me, bringing the full weight of my body into the punch to his kidney. The fight became a dirty, desperate blur. I took more than a few hits, ringing my head. The growing euphoria that sang in my blood dulled the pain to barely a whisper.

I don't remember how that fight ended. All I remember is that the world was beautiful and terrible. Shadows laughed around me. The sky rumbled with thunder. Rain and snow and dying leaves rushed past, each distinct in their place in time. Gunshots and screams from years past echoed, piling atop each other in a blurred cacophony.

Everywhere I looked, there was another ghost — another crying shadow, another smear of blood. I looked down at myself, and saw that I was bound by a fiery red rope, my wrists knotted so tightly together that my hands were pale from lack of circulation. I twisted my hands, prying at the red strands with my fingernails until my skin bled.

The city of Chicago was one great big scream for help. It was a river full of life. It was a hiding place for wicked things that thirsted for my blood.

But there was a bright, reassuring light in the distance, beckoning me on. I staggered toward it, step by step, knowing that my sanity depended on me reaching it. It held a promise of rest, and safety, and the most absolute love that I had ever seen before.

The pillars of a great white temple rose before me. I climbed the steps, hands bound and bleeding, until I came before an angel of mercy, who reached out to support me with frail old hands.

"Karrin?" said the angel. "Karrin, what happened?"

0-0-0-0

I woke up.

It took me a second to get my bearings. It felt like time had slipped backward. My head throbbed. I recognized the hard cot, the way the thin morning sunlight streamed through the window.

Which part had been the dream? Had I just been attacked, overdosed with Three-Eye? Had I never testified, never gone back to the department, never joined Special Investigations? Or had I been in the Velvet Room, talking to Madame Bianca, fighting off some weird Three-Eye throwback?

Either way, I'd somehow ended up back at Saint Mary of the Angels.

I groaned, and rolled off the cot. My head hurt so damned bad. But why? I hadn't touched the port Bianca had offered me. One moment, I'd been there talking to her… and the next, I was losing my mind, hallucinating bat-like figures and desperately searching for safety.

I searched for the purse I'd been carrying — thankfully, it was there on the bed stand right next to me. I quickly rummaged through it, checking for the things I was most worried about. My badge, in the side pocket. My cell phone… dead. I winced. Rachel's phone number on a piece of paper. Clearly, no one had gone through the bag, if it was all still there.

I pushed my way out of the little side room. Father Forthill's voice filtered back toward me, soft and steady. I flinched. Some cowardly part of me considered finding a way out that didn't involve walking past him. He wasn't the last person in the world that I wanted to see right now, but it was a pretty close tie between him and Marcone.

I buried the instinct. Forthill had saved my bacon for the second time now. Conscious Karrin might have wanted nothing to do with the old man, but Subconscious Karrin kept crawling her way here for some fucked up reason. To his credit, Forthill kept putting up with it without complaint.

"Karrin!" The old priest turned as I staggered out of the hallway, into the tiny kitchen area. He reached out to steady me, concerned. "Are you all right? You're lucid now?"

I balled my fingers up into fists at his touch, but I was polite enough not to jerk away. "Yeah," I said. "What happened? I came here on my own?"

Forthill nodded slowly. "I was worried you'd been poisoned again. You were acting very similarly." He paused. "Your partner called while you were unconscious. I told him you were here. I hope that was all right."

I sighed. "Yeah, great. I get to explain the weird shit to him, too." I gave the Father a wary look. "Did I say anything about what happened this time?"

Forthill frowned. "You said there was a long shadow following you," he told me. "That there were eyes in it, watching you."

A sudden memory came to me, as clear as day.

The shadows were watching me. They'd been watching me. There were uncountable eyes in them, all belonging to the same man. One of the shadows reached out toward my heart…

I gasped, clutching at my chest. The fear tasted fresh, overwhelming. I had the most terrible, certain conviction that the shadows were coming for my heart.

Something about Saint Mary of the Angels dulled the fear. Even while I was awake and sober, it had a kind of quiet reassurance to it. As frightened as I was of the shadows, I was somehow equally certain that they couldn't get to me there.

It was probably some lingering leftover from my childhood. When Dad was still alive, we'd come to church like clockwork, every Sunday. Back then, Saint Mary was my safe place, and Father Forthill was the closest thing to perfect that young Karrin Murphy had known.

The older me had long since been disillusioned. No one was perfect — Father Forthill included. Hell, not even God was perfect. Me and the Big Guy were on the outs, and I was damned if I was gonna apologize first. I mean… literally, I was damned. I was going straight to hell, according to the Father's favorite book.

That was fine by me. It was God's fucked up policies that said my dad deserved hell for committing suicide. At his funeral, I'd decided on the spot that if I had to choose between seeing my father again or going to heaven, I'd rather give God the finger and deal with the brimstone. If I'd had it my way, I never would have darkened Saint Mary's with my shadow again.

Unfortunately, the Karrin that surfaced whenever Three-Eye got involved seemed to forget my bitter aversion to the church. This was the second time I'd woken up there.

"Karrin?" The Father didn't touch me again, though I saw him suppress the instinct. "Are you all right? Do you need me to call someone else?" His concerned gaze made me look away. I didn't like the feeling it gave me.

"I'm fine," I gritted out. "Thanks for the crash space." Expressing any gratitude at all felt like pulling teeth, but I'd been raised to be polite. And anyway, I knew somewhere deep down that I only resented the Father because I'd put him on a pedestal in the first place. It wasn't his fault he was just as flawed and disappointing as every other normal human being in my life.

Forthill clearly wanted to say more. I saw him carefully searching for the right words, looking for a gentle conversation opener. I wasn't in the mood. Maybe, in some ways, I was too cowardly to deal with it.

I pushed past him for the exit.

"If you need something," Forthill said, "I'm here. Not that you will need something. But if you do."

It wasn't up to his usual thoughtful conversational standards. But then, I'd put him on the spot a bit.

"I'll keep it in mind," I lied. It was the easy way out. We both knew I'd do my best to forget this place even existed as soon as I walked out the door.

As I walked out into the early morning sunlight, I really tried. I shoved at the idea of the church, struggling to refocus on the case, on the Velvet Room, on what the hell had happened there that I couldn't remember.

Instead, the image of that white, pristine temple and its merciful angel remained clear and unwavering in my head. It taunted me with the illusion of love, grace, and peace in which I'd once believed.

"Fuck you very much too," I muttered at the church. My head was still pounding like a hangover.

I raised my middle finger back toward the building as I left.

0-0-0-0

"What the hell happened last night?"

I groaned at Carmichael on my way into the station. I was still wearing the same rumpled clothes from the night before. I'd tried combing my fingers through my hair, but it was probably still a bit of a bird's nest. The last remnants of the washed-out eyeliner and mascara still touched at the corners of my eyes.

Carmichael, of course, looked almost as worn out. He'd spent the night working — and probably covering my ass with the Lieutenant.

I closed the conference door behind me tiredly. "Hell if I know," I said. "I got into the Velvet Room just fine. I even had a sit-down with the Madame. She's a real piece of work, by the way." I paused, and closed my eyes. I tried to focus on the memory — Bianca, sitting across from me, her legs crossed, her red lips curved upward. What happened next?

Nothing. There was a big, blank space in my memory between the Velvet Room and Saint Mary of the Angels. A few scattered, far-too-vivid images broke that emptiness, but they didn't make much sense. A big bat-like thing hissing at me. Shadows with a hundred eyes trailing after me, reaching out for my heart. It didn't make any fucking sense.

"I didn't eat or drink anything while I was there," I said. "I can't figure out how that woman could have drugged me. But somehow, I went from sitting in a chair in Bianca's library to waking up at Saint Mary, and I don't know what happened in between." I very carefully didn't mention the weird visions I'd had. I didn't want anyone thinking I was still under the effects of the Three-Eye… though some part of me worried that was exactly what had gotten to me.

Carmichael whistled. "Guess there's a reason we've never managed a raid there," he said. "Maybe you ought to get a drug test, find out how she got to you. Could be useful down the line."

I grimaced. It was a good thought. But if it was the Three-Eye come back to haunt me, I wasn't sure I wanted that on paper. "I'll see if I've got time," I said, deflecting the question for the moment. "What about Marcone's guys? Did you weasel anything out of them?"

"Nothing they wanted me to know," Carmichael said. "But I can read between the lines. They're hunkering down. I think they're expecting an encore performance."

"Great," I muttered. "Just fucking great." I rubbed at my face. I'd taken some advil, but it hadn't even taken the edge off my headache. "We got a warrant for Jenny's place?"

"Jenny's place and Tommy's place," Carmichael told me. "His fingerprints came in, so I took the liberty of putting in for another warrant." He shot me a lopsided smile. "Am I a good partner or what?"

I sighed. "You're the best partner in the whole precinct," I said. I laid on the flattery so obviously that he couldn't have missed it by a mile, but Carmichael just grinned wider.

"Great," he said. "Cause I need a nap. I'm tagging out."

"Fair," I muttered. "Yeah, go get some shut-eye. I'll grab some uniforms and take a look though their stuff."

0-0-0-0

I wasn't too proud to grab some Mickey D's on the way to Tommy's place. My stomach was running on empty, and I was craving something guilty and greasy. I hoped the food might help my headache, but no dice: the pounding was so bad, I was beginning to worry my body had discovered the joy of migraines. I probably wasn't going to get any relief until I got a solid eight hours of sleep — and that was still looking pretty far off.

Thankfully, our victims had been carrying their keys on them when they died, even if we hadn't had the corresponding addresses at the time. I pushed through my bad mood long enough to toss Tommy's place while a uniform watched the door. No surprise: the place was spick and span, and the trash was empty. One of Marcone's men had come along before us to clean the place, to make sure we didn't find any evidence of other crimes. They'd been thorough, too — the place stank of bleach.

I spent an hour or two searching anyway, but the whole affair eventually ended with me swearing up a storm as I stalked out past the poor kid I'd ordered to watch the door.

Fucking mobsters.

I left a few cops to canvass the surrounding apartments, to ask around about Tommy and his schedule and associates. I didn't actually figure they'd get the neighbors to talk, but that wasn't good enough reason not to try. A lot of effective detective work is more grind than glamor — by which I mean you do all the obvious, meticulous stuff, until a detail suddenly shakes loose. Even the most genius murderer is often just one person, acting under pressure; when you bring enough expert manpower to bear, it's inevitable that you'll find something they missed. The only question is whether that something is enough to go on.

I'd sent someone ahead to watch Jenny's apartment, hoping that Marcone would be at least somewhat delayed trying to track down her address. I went there next, and found the place slightly more promising.

Jenny's place was small, but it was clean and comfortable. Like many of the apartments of victims I'd been to, it was eerily lived-in. The milk in the fridge was still fresh, the blankets on the bed a little mussed. There was exactly one bowl and one spoon in the sink, waiting to be washed.

There were pictures hung up in the hallway — group shots, the sort that got sent out to friends and family around Christmas. Jennifer wasn't in them herself, but there was a blond woman who looked similar, along with a tall man and two kids. Her sister Monica, I thought. Jenny must have cared for her sister, or even just for the kids. One picture could have been an absent-minded decision, but three or four meant they mattered. I knew I had to call Monica soon, now that we'd positively identified Jennifer. The sight of those pictures made me think it was going to be a rough conversation.

I found Jenny's purse in her bedroom, with her wallet and ID inside. The photo on the driver's license matched our victim perfectly, but we'd known that would be the case. Jennifer's phone was still charging next to her bed — that, I considered to be a good find.

I flipped through the phone's call history, noting down names and numbers. There was a call from Tommy only a few hours before the two of them had died. Monica showed up more than a few times, which made sense. Someone named Linda was on there quite a lot — I'd have to track her down.

I chewed on my options. Monica and Linda both seemed like good sources to ask about Jennifer's recent goings-on, but the truth was, I didn't expect anything useful out of either of them regarding the murder. Tommy Tomm had a hundred enemies, and Marcone's guys were on edge. Everything pointed at Tommy Tomm as the intended victim. I still felt like I knew far too much about Jennifer and not nearly enough about Tommy Tomm.

Well. If Marcone and his guys were holding out on me, that was fine. I had other sources I could ask.

Maybe in the process, I could find out a thing or two about Bianca and her weird-ass private club.