The Criminal Touch

Jenny

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god-"

"Would you relax?" Jenny said.

"Relax!?"

"Yes, relax!"

"Do you have a driving license!?"

"Not, um… you know, paperwork never fully matches up to real-world experience, Clara," Jenny told her firmly, "Now, just let me parallel park right there."

"What do you mean parallel park!? You're going forty!"

"Look, it's fine," Jenny said, and then she veered away from the space she had seen – finding it very tricky to drive with her broken thumb bandaged up the way it was – and span the wheel around wildly so that the whole car turned, dragging up the handbrake at the right moment so that the car neatly slid, sideways, into the space, just knocking the curb but missing both the other cars. While this had happened, Clara had screamed. The bright red Porsche now stopped, Jenny looked to her right at Clara, who was grasping the side of her seat and the door so tightly she might break them, and raised her eyebrows.

"You're a lunatic," Clara said, "I can't believe you just did that."

"I'm a great driver!" Jenny protested. Clara gawked at her.

"No! No, you're not! Who told you you're a great driver!?"

"Excuse you – I'm the best pilot in this entire galaxy," Jenny said.

"Holy – Jen – spaceships and planes are not cars!"

"They're near enough," Jenny shrugged, going to get out. Clara was also not happy about the fact the Porsche didn't have seatbelts, and even less-so when Jenny pointed out that no cars in 1948 had seatbelts. The light outside was fading enough that Clara didn't feel the need to take out her umbrella again as she followed Jenny, Jenny walking into the road without looking as usual.

"Do you have a death wish? How did you manage to go two-hundred years without dying?" Clara hissed at her as they approached, next to the pawnbrokers as Viola had directed them, an alleyway with a vaguely familiar cop guarding it. A young officer who tipped his hat to Jenny as she approached and then, a smile breaking on his face, he recognised her.

"Shush, would you? Only Viola knows that stuff about me," Jenny whispered to Clara, the officer not abandoning his post, "I'm not the mob's pet alien."

"Are you sure about that?" Clara quipped, and Jenny ignored her.

"Seamus!" she exclaimed, putting a name to the face when they were closer. The sky was orange and pink, the sun in the distance halfway sunk behind the horizon, "This is crazy, how old must you be now?"

"Twenty," he answered her.

"Wow, haven't seen you since you were ten. I remember your tenth birthday party – Viola got me to do magic tricks, you remember?" Jenny said, then she remembered Clara was hanging about there and turned to explain, "This is Seamus Mahoney. You remember Viola mentioned somebody called Mahoney was talking to Francesca Mancini? Mahoney's one of her mob enforcers. Seamus is his son."

"Son of a mobster? In the police?" Clara questioned.

"Who's the limey square?" Seamus asked Jenny, who hadn't thought through that Clara might not approve of the mob sinking their claws into the New Orleans Police Department.

"This is Clara Ravenwood," Jenny introduced, "My girlfriend." She had yet to take off the scarf Clara had knitted her since Clara had first given her the thing. It was very soft. Would it be acceptable to sleep in it…?

"As in how?" Seamus frowned, like he didn't understand what she had said.

"As in I love her – no more questions about that, she's alright to go in, Viola said. Where's this crime scene?"

"The boss told me she was gonna call O'Reilly to have a look from Seventh."

"That was before I showed up," Jenny said, "Tell me what's so interesting about these crimes – I heard something about people being turned into a 'substance'?"

"Ah, I wouldn't know how to describe it, Miss DeLacey – ain't no one does. Best you see for yourself."

"Why is Viola interested in it, though?"

"Because this is the third in a row, looks like the beginnings of a serial killer," Seamus explained, "A murderer like that's the last thing we need, bringing unwanted attention to the family. The boss wants it monitored because the first two were found on Big Sal's turf, and the second one they figure was Carlito. Course, Sal blamed the boss so the Scarpellis have been after the O'Haras ever since. That musta been a month back. The boss has closed up shop in a couple 'a joints this last week to avoid the backlash since she got Johnny to steal Sal's fancy new wheels just recently."

"All this because someone whacked Carlito?"

"And some other broad in Sal's neighbourhood, though Sal didn't care at all for it until Carlito was iced." Jenny sighed.

"Well I'm not bothering myself with that. I'm here to catch whoever the real culprit is."

"Or whatever. If you don't mind my saying so, I'm not sure there's a person alive who could do that to another human being – but I'll let you be the judge, Miss DeLacey," he said, "It's just this way." He motioned for them to follow him, which they did, meandering down the damp alleyway until rounding the corner and being faced with what could only be described as a puddle of goo. That was what Viola had meant by 'substance', surely.

"Huh," Jenny crossed her arms and looked at it, "And – how can you tell that this used to be a person?"

"There were clothes in it," he said, "In the others, too, but they got taken to evidence. Covered in that stuff." Jenny had never really seen anything like it before. "Funny thing, though – Carlito and the other broad ain't nowhere to be found, 'cept in here we found the ID of a dame called Kitty Winthrop, lives just in the block here, Apartment 19."

"So this is Kitty Winthrop, then?" Jenny said, nodding at the green goo. It just sat there, like putty, sort of shiny.

"Naw, Kitty Winthrop ain't dead, she's been seen around since this showed up. Best we can figure someone tried to burgle her and ain't reporting it for whatever reason," Seamus shrugged, "That's all we know. Anyway. I was only holding the scene for O'Reilly. I'd better be leaving yous now." Then Jenny waved him off as he wandered away down the alley and around the corner. She wondered if he was actually on duty, or if Viola had just bribed him to stand there in his uniform for hours.

"I can barely keep track of all this mafia stuff," Clara sighed once he was gone, "Who knew organised crime could be so complicated?" Jenny didn't answer, she was looking at the goo. "Do you know what it is, Miss DeLacey?"

"No. I was hoping you'd know what it is. I haven't a clue," Jenny said.

"Me either, Miss DeLacey."

"Why are you calling me that?" she frowned, arms crossed.

Clara shrugged, "It sounds pretty? Prettier than Harkness at any rate."

"Well you would say that – and every time I do I ask if you'd prefer it if I took your name instead." Clara pulled a face. Jenny went to crouch down by the goo. "What does it smell like? Ooh, can you track it?"

"Like a dog?" Clara questioned, and Jenny faltered.

"No, not… well… but in a good way! You know, like a bloodhound."

"Just because it says 'blood' in the name doesn't mean I'm the same as it," she said, "No, I can't track whatever this is – it smells like dead person and alien. I don't know how to follow scents anyway. I'm still unclear on what this has to do with the mafia, anyway."

"Okay – there's clearly an alien going around killing people," Jenny said, "It killed a woman in one of Big Sal's districts, but since this woman was anonymous to the mob, he didn't care. And then whatever it is killed Carlito – Big Sal's consigliere."

"And what's a one-of-those?"

"Like, advisor to the don, very important, a prime target for a rival crime family to kill – so Big Sal blamed the O'Haras and came after them. The O'Haras at the ones we're working for, remember?" Jenny explained.

"I wouldn't say we were working for them…"

"Well, we are. Guilty by association. You, that is. I'm guilty for a bunch of other things as well. So the Scarpellis come after the O'Haras and the O'Haras retaliate by stealing a bunch of cars, that's what Seamus just said, and Viola didn't care until this person here, this Kitty Winthrop, ended up dead in Irish territory. I don't think that this alien has anything to do with the mob at all, it's just bad luck they killed Carlito and started this new blood feud," Jenny said, "And now Viola's closed some of her front businesses so that her customers don't get blown away by the Scarpellis if they want to come and shoot them up, and she's taken Eddie Mancini to hit Sal first. And I just had an idea…"

Clara, still a little confused, watched Jenny silently take off the transdimensional bag she was carrying and reach into it to find something, drawing out when she did that funny old mirror her father had given to Ravenwood nearly a week ago. It was a good thing Seamus had left.

"What are you doing with that?"

"Dad told me it was a species identifier before he modified it to show vampires," Jenny said, looking at it, "There must be some way to get it to work again…"

"Wait," Clara grabbed her wrist, "What if you break it?"

"You mean what if you can't stare into your own eyes anymore?" she said, "I'll draw a picture of you. What do you care about more, your own reflection or catching whoever's killing these people?" Clara couldn't argue with that, and resigned to let Jenny mess around with the species identifier as she saw fit, Jenny getting her sonic screwdriver out again to try and fiddle with the settings, wondering what her father had done to it initially. "You know, dad said that 'a godmother' of his gave him this as a present," she talked while she messed with the mirror, "That makes it the closest thing we have to a family heirloom."

And then the thing started to display white pictures on its screen so Jenny turned the screwdriver off and held it between her teeth. When Clara came to peer over her shoulder, her face was still visible on its surface. The pictures just looked like very detailed pencil drawings, and when Jenny showed it to Clara the drawing morphed into a human-esque shape, which then turned into a bat.

"Ah! It knows you're a vampire," Jenny, amused, said. Or rather, mumbled; she still had the screwdriver between her teeth, which Clara promptly took so that she could talk properly.

"This has your spit on it now," Clara commented, looking at the slender, silver thing. Way cooler than her dad's, Jenny thought. Looked more like an actual screwdriver.

"Your mouth has my spit on it," Jenny retorted, "The rest of you too, probably."

"That's different," Clara whinged, and Jenny rolled her eyes and crouched down, pointing the mirror in the direction of the green blob.

"Can you walk around to see what it shows on the other side?"

Clara did, still holding the screwdriver with her fingertips as though it was diseased, leaning down to squint at it through her shaded glasses lenses.

"You know I can't see very well."

"Well we can swap and you can come hold the mirror if you want, but I'd rather stay behind it since it gets confused by me," Jenny said. Clara said nothing on the topic of swapping, so Jenny just assumed she didn't want to.

"Uh… it's hard to describe."

"It's showing something, though? That isn't a big bat monster?" Jenny asked, and Clara scowled at her.

"Don't call me a bat monster. And it's sort of… did you ever see that Futurama special?"

"What's Futurama?"

"Never mind… it's kind of like a ball. But with loads of tentacles. D'you think the mirror's broken?"

"It identified you correctly," Jenny said, turning the mirror quickly so that she could also get a look at this tentacle-ball-thing. Clara was right, though. That was exactly what it looked like. A tentacle ball. Then the image vanished and was replaced by a stream of messy lines, because it couldn't quite work out what she was. "I think it's meant to tell you what the thing is, too, but it's too far gone to do that anymore. Dad's done a number on it." She put the mirror away in the bag. "Why would it have Kitty's clothes if it isn't Kitty? If she's not dead?"

"Yeah – and doesn't it seem funny that nobody's seen a tentacle monster rolling around New Orleans?" Clara said.

"Well, we don't know how big it is. It could be tiny. Or invisible. And besides, all sorts of things live in the swamp. I used to live in the swamp," Jenny said, then she took her screwdriver back from Clara and took her hand. "C'mon, let's go have a look in Apartment 19 where this Kitty Winthrop lives."

"You know, Jen, you're being a bit touchy to say we're in the 1940s," Clara said, freeing her hand from Jenny's as they walked back around to the front of the building, "And you keep introducing me as your girlfriend, is that, you know, wise? Isn't everybody homophobic now?"

"We'll be alright," she said, trying to ease Clara's worries about the period, "We're not hanging around, so it should be okay. Besides, people aren't… so bad… they want to shame you, is the thing, you have to not let them." Jenny held open the door for them to go into the apartment block, Jenny smiling kindly to the receptionist before slipping past to go towards the stairs. It was modest, but not squalid, a decent sort of area. Then again, all of Viola's territory was decent, because she wouldn't touch the slums. Too much of a bourgeois snob.

"So, do you think of Louisiana as your home?" Clara asked curiously, and Jenny laughed.

"How do you mean?"

"Well – if I asked you where you're from, what would you say?"

"Uh… I know that I definitely wouldn't say I'm from New Orleans," Jenny said, perplexed by Clara's question as they mounted the scuffed stairs. It was five apartments on each floor, so they were heading to the third. "I don't think I identify with any specific place. Born to be a transient. Do I have to have a home? I think we have different concepts of what home is."

"I don't know. Somewhere you want to go back to? Somewhere you feel safe?"

"You're what I want to go back to, and I feel safe when I'm with you," Jenny said, taking Clara by surprise with her tendency to casually drop rather romantic statements.

"That's ridiculous – two of the three times you've regenerated I was there," Clara pointed out.

"Then I suppose I'm a fool in love. Look, here's Apartment 19," Jenny said, nodding to the door as they just got to the top of the flight of stairs. It had Kitty's name on it, Katherine Winthrop, scrawled there on a piece of paper and stuck above the doorbell, which Jenny went and rang, just in case she was in. "Do you hear anything in there? With your bat-hearing?"

"Would you stop referring to me as a bat?"

"You love being a bat!"

Clara grimaced, but paused to listen anyway, before answering that no, she couldn't hear anything coming from inside Kitty's flat. Jenny proceeded to reveal her sonic screwdriver again and held it at the lock, where it buzzed and glowed pink.

"You really are just like your father sometimes," Clara commented, and Jenny smiled at her when she said so. The lock clicked and Jenny turned the doorknob slowly, but all she saw was an empty and very cosy flat. Stowing her screwdriver, she stepped inside, leaving the door open for Clara, peering about. She didn't spy anybody though, and then Clara cleared her throat loudly. Jenny turned to see her standing there in the hallway still.

"Aren't you gonna come in?" Jenny said.

Bitterly, Clara reminded her, "You have to invite me."

"Oh, sorry – I forgot about that," Jenny said, glancing around at the room.

"Jenny," Clara hissed.

"Right – um – you can come in?" she said, and Clara stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind her, "What happens if you try to walk into somewhere and you're not invited?"

"I just can't do it. It's like I freeze up," Clara shrugged, "Like – if you tried to fly. You can't fly. You'd just be sort of… stood there."

"You can fly."

"Alright, yes, fine, I can fly, but I meant you specifically. Do you have any blood in that bag?" Clara asked, knowing full-well that Jenny did have an entire flask full of blood, "People are starting to morph into rare steaks in front of my eyes at this point."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Jenny asked, unzipping the bag again and rooting around in it for the black flask designated for human blood, which she passed to Clara. Clara, unscrewing the cap, didn't even bother to use the lid as a cup, she just drank from the rim, "You're an animal. That's unhygienic."

"Nobody else drinks out of this flask except me. Unless you've suddenly got a taste for human blood?"

"Of course not. Now, let's look around." It was tiny and pleasant; clearly, Kitty Winthrop lived there alone. Or had lived there alone, there was still a bit of ambiguity surrounding if she was dead or not. There was a lot of plush, pink furniture and girlish ornaments strewn about; fancy high-heels littering the floor, a nice dress hung over the back of the small sofa to dry. It had all the signs of being lived in. Clara idly switching a quaint, chunky radio on made her jump, but it was only playing Let It Snow.

"Funny, didn't think a radio station in Louisiana would play Let It Snow."

"I've seen it snow here before," Jenny said, "I had enough to build a snowman about a foot tall in 1929."

"That's cute," Clara said, leaving the radio on while Jenny went into the adjoining kitchen (the apartment only had a kitchen/living room, bedroom and modest bathroom) with Clara on the other side of its small bar to see what was in the large pot on the stove, because whatever it was, was still cooking. At least, the hob was still on. She lifted the lid and smelt something foul.

"Eurgh, this is rank – and this coming from a girl who used to live off meat stew that was sometimes weeks old. Although, I'll have to make us a meat stew one day; the longer you let it simmer the juicier the meat," Jenny said.

"Old meat. I'll look forward to it. What's in the pot?"

Jenny switched off the heat and moved the whole pot onto a rung that wasn't turned on and picked up a ladle from the side, fishing out some frankly horrible-looking dregs of meat.

"It's beef stroganoff," she answered, "But it has to have been here for two days at least."

"You just said you would brew meat stew for weeks."

"Yeah, that's just like, meat and water. There wasn't a lot to eat on Tungtrun, alright? It was an ice planet. It's not as good as my classic alligator meatballs…" Jenny mused, "So, Kitty Winthrop is apparently not dead, but she's left this cooking here for days? And her clothes in the alley? And Seamus said they thought it was a burglary, but this place hasn't been burgled. Are you sure you can't pick up her scent?"

"The only scent I'm picking up is whatever's in the pot – are you sure it's stroganoff? It smells like bleach to me."

"Bleach?"

"Yeah," Clara said. Jenny dipped her finger in the stuff in the pot, still very hot, and licked a drop tentatively, then pulled a face.

"You're right. Ew."

"That's one hell of a way to commit suicide – bleach stew."

Jenny put the lid back on the pot and carried on looking around, when she was, all of a sudden, struck by what a resemblance this small apartment bore to a different small apartment she had once inhabited. She stared at their surroundings, and spoke without thinking of the implications such a comment might have: "This reminds me of where Astrid used to live."

"Who's Astrid?" Clara asked, and Jenny faltered. She had never mentioned Astrid to Clara before – she didn't think she had really mentioned Astrid to anyone before, except in passing; once when she had compiled a vague list of the reasons people in the past had broken up with her. She hadn't referred to her by name, though.

"An ex-girlfriend of mine. Astrid Eicher," Jenny answered uneasily. She felt like she was tearing an old wound open, and sighed afterwards, contemplating, looking at the floor instead of at Clara.

"When you lived in New Orleans?"

"Uh, no, when I lived in Berlin, in my eighties. Over a hundred years ago now. Back when I was Jenny Kitzler – nobody could tell me apart from a native German," she said, shrugging, "I used to smuggle between East and West Berlin after the Soviets built the wall. I don't want to talk about that now, though."

"Okay. I'm not gonna force you to," Clara said. She was smiling softly when Jenny looked up to meet her eyes, and then she went back to investigating. Outside, the light was dwindling, melting away into night time with stars hanging in the sky. "What if…" Clara began, then trailed off, getting Jenny's attention. She was thinking, then she started again, "What if it's some sort of shape-changer?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well – if that out there is a dead body, what did it do to it? And there has to be some reason nobody has seen a tentacle-thing rolling around the streets," Clara said, "And why people think that Kitty Winthrop, who is apparently dead outside, is still alive."

"Oh – it's wearing her face…" Jenny said, "That would make sense…"

Just then, there was knocking on the door, loud, and a voice called through addressing Kitty, a woman's voice. She had heard the music on the radio and assumed Kitty was home. Jenny and Clara shared a look of confusion, before the former moved back through the apartment to go and open the door, trying to think of a convincing lie about what they were doing rifling through Kitty's things as she did. She put on her best friendly expression and pulled it open.

"You're not Kitty," an old lady said abruptly.

"No, sorry – we were actually just looking for her," Jenny said, holding the door open so that the woman could see they hadn't been ransacking the place, just nosing about, "My friend and I." Clara smiled, but Clara had an odd effect on people sometimes. The old woman squinted at her like she couldn't see her properly. Jenny hoped the woman didn't notice that Clara didn't cast a shadow. Though Clara had a generally creepy vibe about her undead person, they were both so petite and genteel looking that the old lady didn't think that much of them being there.

"You know Kitty?"

"Not personally. Are you her neighbour? We're worried about her," Jenny said. The old lady narrowed her eyes.

"You look funny. Are you O'Haras?" she asked, and Jenny was startled.

"Should Kitty know the O'Haras?" Jenny inquired.

"I know the Green Bayou is their front, I told her she oughtn't get mixed up with the likes of you. Has she got a debt to repay? She's been acting funny. Are you collectors? Funny-looking collectors if you ask me. I ain't scared of you mob-types."

"Kitty Winthrop works in the Green Bayou?" Jenny asked.

"How are we supposed to find her if she's run off to the bayou?" Clara interjected, and Jenny was confused for a moment.

"No, Clara – the Green Bayou is a club," Jenny explained, then asked the old lady, "Kitty doesn't owe the O'Haras any money at all, we're just… looking after our employees. Heard she might have been burgled."

"I know what's going on in the streets, you know. I keep my ear to the ground. You can't pull one over on me. You're British. That makes you O'Haras." Didn't even make sense, really, but Jenny wasn't going to argue with her. Viola and all of her cronies and her ancestors had come over from Southern Ireland, which was most definitely not a part of the United Kingdom, and god help you if you ever presumed as much around one of them. She'd once seen Mahoney shoot someone for calling him 'English' by mistake (though, Mahoney was a famously loose cannon. Hence why Viola was such a big fan of him.)

"Kitty was acting strange, though?"

"Hardly even recognised me when I talked to her this morning, ran off somewhere, didn't even take her car, just walked," the old lady said.

"Right. We're leaving, Clara," Jenny said to Clara, who switched off the radio accordingly as some other swing number came on, "See if anyone at the Green Bayou knows where to find Kitty Winthrop."