Demon Hunts

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tuesday, December 20, 12:13 P.M.

I forgot about the bill and ran for the elevator, struggling to get my cell phone out of my pocket as I went. Billy shouted after me, then swore and hurried to pay the bill as I hopped around, waiting impatiently on both the elevator and the phone.

The phone came through first, Morrison sounding unusually gruff, which was saying something. "What do you want, Walker?"

"Get somebody over to the Fremont Troll right now. I don't know what I just saw, but it was something. Something bad. Billy and I are on our way, but we're at the Seattle Center and traffic's going to be impossible."

Morrison went silent and the elevator dinged. I rushed in the instant the doors were open wide enough to let me. Billy finished dealing with the check and hurried after me, but not fast enough. By the time he joined me in the elevator I was jittering around like a wind-up toy. Morrison came back to the phone, gruffer yet. "I've got a car on the way. Call me the minute you know something, Walker."

"You're a good man, Charlie Brown." I hung up before I heard Morrison's response to that, and Billy folded his arms and gave me a look that said "Well?" as the elevator made its way down six hundred feet.

"I don't know. I saw something. It looked bad." I had the gut-deep feeling I'd just witnessed a murder, and I was weirdly excited about it. I mean, not that I wanted to be seeing murder done at a distance, but it was a brand-new and interesting aspect to my powers. It seemed like it could do some good if I could figure out how to harness it.

"Is it our guy?"

"I don't know. The troll's even less rustic than Ravenna Park. We're just going to have to go find out. Do you have a siren for the minivan?"

"Yeah, but if you tell my kids, no one will ever find the body."

I made a vague attempt at a Scout's oath salute, and we ran for the car the moment the elevator disgorged us.

It took eight minutes to get to the troll. Short of teleporting we couldn't have gotten there faster, but I still leaned into the seat belt like I was at the races and my willpower alone could get my horse across the finish line first. Well, except any races I'd go to would be NASCAR rather than Kentucky Derby, but the sentiment was solid.

The Fremont Troll was one of Seattle's more charming landmarks, as far as I was concerned. He was a concrete monster beneath the Aurora Avenue North bridge—they'd even renamed the road Troll Avenue in his honor— and he had a real Volkswagen Bug in one hand, like he'd just grabbed it from the bridge above. People came to climb and play on him regularly, and every Halloween the locals threw a party at him. I'd never gotten around to going, and now with my exciting new power set, I was sort of afraid to. He was only concrete and rebar, but that was in the Middle World, the one we lived in day-to-day. I wasn't quite sure what would happen if somebody with shamanic gifts came by on a night when the world walls were thin.

Two patrol cars and a paramedic ambulance had gotten to the scene before us. I knew one of the cops—Ray Campbell, a six-foot-tall bodybuilder squished into a five-foot-five body. He'd been a patrol cop for years, never interested in moving up to detective or even to a command position. "No chance to bust balls," he'd explained to me once. Busting balls was Ray's favorite expression and possibly his favorite pastime, and I was hardly going to argue with him about when and where the most opportune moments to do so came along.

He turned toward us with a determined expression that said "I'm sorry but you'll have to leave now" before it faded into a grimaced greeting. "Hey, Walker, Holliday. Don't know why the captain sent us down here, but it was a good call. She's not dead yet."

Billy and I said, "Yet?" together, then traded off on other questions like, "Is she going to be?" and "What happened?" and "Can I help?"

That last was me, edging toward the ambulance. The paramedics no doubt had it under control, but healing magic made my palms itch with the desire to do something.

Ray looked back and forth between us, then folded his arms over his broad chest. "You know how bums hole up down here. Looks like a fight over some booze got out of hand, and she got stabbed with a broken bottle. She oughta be dead. If we hadn't gotten here she would be. Stay out of it, Walker. You don't want to give the Captain anything else to explain."

I did a fine job of freezing like a nervous rodent before my shoulders slumped and I shifted back toward Billy. Ray looked like he'd gone up against a wrecking ball and lost, but he was plenty smart. He nodded firmly once I got back to where I'd started, and cheer crept across his face. "Somebody'll have blood on their hands, or know who does. Just gotta bust a few balls to find out who. Probably don't need you two down here, if you want to head back up to the station."

"Okay. Good. That's great. I mean, it is. It's great. I'm glad she's not dead." And I was. I'd just been hoping we'd gotten a lucky break, and happened on our cannibal in the middle of chewing on someone. I got on my phone and called Morrison, feeling like quite the sad sack as I offered, "All it was was a mugging over some booze. A woman got stabbed, but the paramedics got here in time, so it looks like she's going to be all right."

"All?" Morrison said incredulously. "You just saw an aggravated assault from halfway across the city and saved somebody's life, and all it rates is an all?"

When he put it that way it seemed like more of an accomplishment. I cleared my throat uncomfortably, and Morrison said, "Good job, Walker," and hung up the phone to leave me standing next to a giant concrete troll. I stared up at his hubcap eye, and thought if he winked it wouldn't be any more startling than my boss telling me I'd done well.

He didn't wink, and after a minute I reeled back toward the minivan. Ray and the others had this one under control; no need for the Paranormal Pair to hang around getting in the way of a perfectly ordinary assault investigation. "I think this puts us back at Joanne Walker as bait. Unless you've come up with something better."

Billy said, "I think I have," and a Channel Two news van came whipping down the road and screeched to a halt in front of the ambulance.

Laurie Corvallis jumped out of the van like she was on the verge of a huge news story. To the driver's credit, he pulled the van back out of the paramedics' drive path before dragging a camera out and following Laurie. She was already halfway to where I was struggling to yank the minivan's door open. Billy had locked it. Very safe of him. Annoying, but safe. I jerked at the handle, then put my back against the vehicle like I had enemies approaching from all sides. "What in God's na—"

Wrong approach. I thrust my jaw out, trying to rewrite my internal dialogue, and tried a second time. "Can I help you with something, Ms. Corvallis?"

"Just going where the stories are, Detective Walker. Do we have another cannibal victim here?" Her blue eyes were eager in much the same way a piranha's were. I wondered why I kept comparing her to carnivorous fish.

"We have a completely unrelated incident here. Go away." I winced. "I mean, sorry you came out for nothing."

"Now, Detective." Corvallis's voice went from eager to warm, even condescending, like we were old friends and I was being silly over something unimportant. "I saw how you went tearing out of the Seattle Center. Do you really expect me to believe it's over nothing?"

"You were following me?"

Her cameraman got the camera up and running as I asked, and I found myself suddenly blinking into its brilliant light. It was a gray Seattle day already, and under the bridge it bordered on dark, but the floodlight seemed like overkill. I shielded my eyes with one hand and squinted toward the camera guy. "I fed you a burger and fries this summer. Is that enough of a bribe to get you to turn that thing off if I ask you to?"

He gave me a bright smile. "Maybe once."

"Right." I didn't ask, and his grin broadened. Corvallis gave him a dirty look and he wiped the smile away, but he winked when she turned back to me.

"To answer your question, yes, I was following you. I think you're where the action is, Detective."

Billy, on the far side of the minivan, snorted over the clunk of the doors finally unlocking. "You've obviously never checked her social calendar, then."

"You're not helping."

"Want me to?" Ray stumped over to us, looking Corvallis up and down with an expression that lay between lascivious and threatening. I had a sudden vision of him asking me if she needed her balls busted while the cameraman was filming, and blurted, "This is Ray Campbell, the officer on this case. He's the man you'll want to talk to, Ms. Corvallis. Thanks for your interest. I'm sure your superiors are eager for an in-depth report on the plight of the homeless in Seattle. We all need our social awareness raised."

I pulled the door open and fell into the seat, hauling my legs up in my haste to escape. Ray planted himself front and center between the minivan and Corvallis, and she gave me a daggered glare over his shoulder before putting on a reporter-playing-nice smile and stuck her microphone in Ray's face. Billy hopped into his side and closed the door behind him. "That woman's going to get you in trouble someday."

"You mean more trouble than the Seattle Slaughterer thing this morning?" I put my seat belt on and tried not to look over my shoulder as we left the scene a few seconds behind the ambulance. "I know. Worse, though, she's going to get herself in trouble. Look, this whole Magic Seattle thing, the whole world of the other and all that. How do you keep people from getting in over their heads and getting hurt?"

"Lobotomization." Billy grinned at my expression. "You can't keep people from getting hurt, Joanie. You can warn them, but somebody like Corvallis isn't likely to leave the hunt unless something throws her off the scent. You're doing a good job of leaving a scent." He thumped his hand against the steering wheel and muttered, "That analogy might've gotten out of control."

I laughed. "You think?" My humor slipped away. "I just don't want people getting hurt on my account."

"Laurie Corvallis won't get hurt on your account. She'll get hurt on the story's account, but never on yours." He shook his head. "We do the best we can. You did good today. You just saved somebody's life. That's about all we can ask for."

"That and a break on the cannibal case."

Billy eyed me. "Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back, there, Joanne. You just pulled off a miracle. What's the problem?"

I rubbed my thumb over my palm, then cracked my knuckles, feeling like I was trying to discharge the healing power that had sprung to life. "I don't know. I wanted that to be our cannibal."

"So did I, but come on, Walker. What's it take to make you happy? First you don't want to be a shaman, now you're hitting it out of the park and you're not satisfied because it's a different ball than the one you were watching? Give yourself a little credit."

"Okay, okay, I'm happy, I'm happy!" I wrinkled my nose at the traffic and said, more quietly, "I'm glad she's alive, Billy, and maybe you're right. Maybe I should be elated. It just feels like in the grand scheme of things this is what I should be doing all the time, so it doesn't feel like…enough." By the time I got to the end of that, I was smiling again, ruefully. "I need some serious work on my perspective, don't I?"

"You sure as hell do."

"Arright." A little bubble of delight burst inside me, like that healing power had figured out what to do with itself after all. I'd saved somebody. That was, in fact, pretty cool. Good thing I had people like Morrison and Billy around to beat that into my head. "Okay. Can we head back up to the Needle? We kind of bolted out of there, and I can't think of anywhere better for a perspective adjustment."

It wasn't perspective I was after so much as trying to map out Seattle's hot and cold spots, magically speaking. The good news was, our brief dash to the Troll had given me enough time to digest lunch. Turning the in-depth Sight back on didn't upset my tummy again. Triumphant, I ordered us each another one of the amazing chocolate desserts. Billy pulled his cell phone out and sat down to wait for them while I took a slow meander around the restaurant.

I wanted my city to be a bastion of light and happiness. What I could See, with the initial shock of looking into darkness reduced, was that it looked pretty well-balanced. It was no shining city upon a hill, but neither was it one drawn into despair. Pockets of brilliance matched patches of darkness closely enough that I actually let go a sigh of relief. Sonata's concern about the city, maybe the world, being pulled out of whack was very likely a valid one, but at least it wasn't going to all come tumbling down tomorrow. Reassured, I turned my focus on Ravenna Park, where Karin Newcomb had been found that morning.

Someone or something mystical had dumped her there. It had left ice-cold marks on the earth. It had to have left some kind of trail. If I thought it with enough determination, maybe it would be true.

Apparently I wasn't thinking hard enough. Either that or I'd wiped away any trace when I'd pressed my hand into the cold tracks the thing had left, because there was barely even a streak of darkness where Newcomb's body had been found. She hadn't died there, and dead bodies evidently didn't carry bleak marks of their own; only violent deaths did.

Good to know, but not at all helpful to me at the moment. I stood there a long time, gaze unfocused as I studied the highs and lows of passion and power within the city, but there were no trails leading in or out of anywhere we'd found a body. Our cannibal was a lot better at hiding his tracks than I was at following them. I felt like I was just a step too far behind, like I could track him if I could only catch up just a little more. I wished to hell I hadn't flattened out the cold marks he'd left beside Karin Newcomb.

Next time. Next time I'd know better, but next time meant somebody else would already be dead.

Billy said, "Anything?" quietly from just behind me. I startled out of my reverie and blinked over my shoulder at him before shaking my head. He put his phone away and pointed a thumb at our table. "In that case, you might as well eat dessert before it melts. And then we'll try my idea."

"Your idea is to consign me to consumer hell?"

I balked in the doorway of an outdoors store, which was to say it sold outdoors equipment, not that it was outside. If it had actually been outside it might've been less overwhelming; there wouldn't be three visible stories of canoes, bicycles, skis, winter gear, tents, campfire utensils, hiking boots and backpacks. And those were just the things I could recognize. There were hundreds of items within eyeshot that I simply had no name for, and no earthly idea what their use might be.

The whole place made my heart beat too fast, like it was actively dangerous. Grumpiness didn't so much creep over me as bludgeon me, and I tried to back up, trusting the door was an escape route. "I don't like shopping, Billy. Especially in giant warehouses filled with a million things I can't possibly need."

Sadly, the door was blocked by my partner, and made a lousy escape route after all. He prodded my spine to drive me forward, and I dragged my feet as I went. "What are we doing here? I guess if I'm going to go play bait I need equipment, but the department must have some." That didn't really seem very likely, now that I thought about it. "Or they could borrow it from Fish and Game, or something. I'm not spending eleven thousand dollars on setting a trap."

"I just want you to meet someone."

"Who, a psychiatrist?" Not that an outdoors store struck me as the most likely place to find a head doctor. A guru, maybe, but not a shrink. "Look, I know it's not a great idea, but we have to do something."

"Hey, Billy!" A tall, athletic brunette woman in the store uniform of a polo shirt and khakis leaned over the second floor wood railing and waved. Billy waved back, and she swung herself around the railing corner and took the stairs down two at a time, like a kid. I was torn between liking her instantly and utterly distrusting her, though the latter impulse came from the suspicion that she was the shape of my doom. She was close to my height, and her hands, one of which she offered me to shake, were bigger than mine. "Hey, I'm Mandy Tiller. You must be Joanne. Billy called a while ago to say you were coming by."

She turned and socked Billy's shoulder hard enough to make a meaty thump. "Good to see you, Holliday. How's Mel? How're the kids?"

"They're all good. Mel says hi." Billy rubbed his shoulder, smile a little pained as he explained to me, "Mandy's oldest son is in Robert's class. We've been doing field trips and class picnics together for years."

A tiny spark of recognition shocked me. "Jake Tiller? I met him one time over at Billy's house. He looks like you." They both had long jaws and sandy-gold skin that offset light eyes, though Mandy's hair was darker than her son's.

Mandy's smile lit up. She wasn't quite pretty, but the smile was terrific. "That's him. He's a good kid." The smile went away as fast as it'd come, worry pinching the space between her eyebrows. "Billy says you guys are on that cannibal case. He says you need a wilderness guide to try and flush the guy out."

I opened my mouth, shut it again, glanced at Billy, then looked back at Mandy with my own eyebrows elevated. "Yeah, I guess I kind of do."

She nodded once, somehow making it a stern expression. "I can take a quick break if you want to go over to the coffee shop with me and talk about it."

"I'll never say no to coffee." The three of us trundled out of the store, and I felt my stress level drop. It probably said something about me that I would prefer to discuss trapping a killer than face the prospect of shopping in a big box store.

We ordered what turned out to be more-than-passable coffee and sat around a table as far away from the other patrons as possible. Mandy said, "Sorry, I don't have much time, so let me tell you like it is. I know the news story only broke this morning, but for a big city with a lot of people, the real wilderness types are pretty close-knit. We don't all know each other, but it's like two degrees of separation, not six?" She nodded when we did and kept going. "So it's not like we haven't been talking about this among ourselves for weeks. It's gotten bad enough that the last week or so almost nobody's going out, or if they are they're going up to Canada to do their hiking and weekend camping. We're talking about a lot of green freaks here, people who avoid driving when they can, so that should give you an idea of how uncomfortable we are."

I said, "Maybe that's why this morning's body was found in Ravenna Park. The hunting in the wilder areas is getting scarce," to Billy, who nodded. I liked that idea better than the one about the killer looking for me.

"I haven't gone out since the second body was found," Mandy said. "Jake's dad and I are divorced, and there's no way I'm risking leaving him alone. That said, Billy wouldn't have called if he didn't need help, or if he didn't think you could make a difference. Do you think you can catch this guy?"

Truth, rather than reassurance, popped out: "I hope so. What I can do is make sure you're not going to get hurt out there." Mandy looked unhappy. I couldn't blame her. "Maybe there's somebody else, somebody without kids—?"

"Plenty of people. The problem is they're mostly guys."

I said, "Ah," after a moment, while Billy looked between us in bewilderment and demanded, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means guys are a lot more likely to get overprotective if something bad goes down," I said when it was clear Mandy wasn't going to explain. Billy started to look offended and I raised my coffee cup to stop him, then took a sip. It really was pretty decent coffee. "Say you're Generic Joe the Hiker. You're bringing a woman, somebody who hasn't done much hiking before, out on a trail for the first time. You happen to know she's a fourth dan in kung fu, but while you're out there a nutjob appears out of nowhere and attacks her. What do you do?"

Billy, just like I had earlier, opened his mouth and shut it again. I said, "That's what I thought."

"I would just let her kick his ass," Billy muttered sullenly. I laughed and reached over to pat his shoulder.

"I know you would, but you're a member of a specially trained elite force, and you're more likely to remember that your girl Friday there has a black belt. But most guys with an ounce of decency would act to protect the girl. In this particular case, working with somebody whose first instinct is to duck is going to be safer for all of us."

"So it's a date." Mandy still didn't look happy, but she sounded determined. "I don't work tomorrow, Detective Walker, so if you're free then, I'd like to get this over with?"

"Just tell me where to meet you."

We made arrangements, and I, heroically, went home and went to bed.