Personal Demon

HOPE: POSITIVE ID

A young man in a suit that screamed “security detail” met Paige, Karl and me in the Cortez Corporation lobby and explained the situation as he led us to the basement, where the morgue and lab were located. The body had come from a contact in the city morgue.

“How does that work?” I asked.

“Mr. Cortez has friends everywhere and systems for everything. No one’s ever going to come looking for this guy.”

“The coroner said it was murder?” Paige prompted.

“Gunshot to the back of the skull. Right through the CNS. That’s the central nervous system.”

“Right.”

“And it was a professional body dump too.” He glanced at Paige uneasily, as if she might be shocked at the thought that someone could be a professional in such a thing. “It was pure luck that he was found so quickly. They ran his prints through their system, but he wasn’t in it. He was in ours, though.”

“So that’s how you flag them,” I said.

He deflated a little, as if I’d figured out the secret behind an illusion.

“But if his prints match the ones on file, he’s already been ID’d,” Karl said. “I don’t understand why you need Hope.”

“We have a name,” Paige said. “Whether it matches this man is another question.” She lowered her voice. “I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.”

The officer pushed open a set of swinging doors into the morgue. I’ve been in morgues before. Quite a few. One of Philadelphia’s coroners was a past beau of my mother’s, and when I’m on a story where a body is involved, he can usually make a few calls and get me in. He says it’s because he trusts me to do a fair job, but I suspect he’s still trying to earn brownie points with my mom.

A city morgue is usually pretty shabby. This one looked more like a slick TV show. No peeling paint or old textbooks propping up broken equipment tables. Everything gleamed and blipped and beeped. It was so state of the art that I wasn’t sure what half the machines did.

I couldn’t help but think we had indeed walked onto a set, that this was a fake morgue constructed to trick visitors and dispel the rumors I’d heard about how the Cabal really investigated suspicious deaths-by tossing the body into an incinerator and faking the reports.

A woman in a lab coat introduced herself as Dr. Aberquero. Late thirties, with a pinched face, no makeup and her black hair tightly drawn back. When she turned to shake Karl’s hand though, a flash of consternation clouded her face as she stammered an introduction, probably regretting that decision to show up for work without makeup.

She cleared her throat and tore her gaze from Karl. “The, er, decedent shows no signs of trauma except for the gunshot, which entered at the base of the skull, killing him instantly…”

Karl slid a glance my way, and I shook my head. No chaos. Confirmation that whoever was on that table had, indeed, died without knowing what was happening to him, like Max and Tony.

Karl cleared his throat. “We appreciate the explanation, Dr. Aberquero, but I’m afraid anything beyond ‘gunshot to the head’ is wasted on us.” A wry smile that had her fingers trembling on her clipboard. “We really just came to identify the body.”

“Yes, yes, of course.”

She stepped back, nearly smacking into me and blocking my approach to the table as she gave Karl ample room to move forward.

I stepped around her. Karl surreptitiously slid his hand against the small of my back, warm and reassuring. The doctor noticed and her disapproving gaze shot to me, another twenty-something dipping into her dating pool. I guess I’d have to get used to that.

She turned away and folded back the sheet. I let out a gasp, and could only stare, stupid with shock.

“Th-there’s been a mistake.”

“This isn’t Guy Benoit?” she said briskly.

“Y-yes, but didn’t you say…” I faltered and looked at Paige.

Karl answered. “You said he’d been dead over twenty-four hours?”

“I did,” Dr. Aberquero replied.

“I’m sorry,” Karl said. “But that isn’t possible.”

Paige nodded. “That’s what I said. I thought maybe the fingerprint had misidentified him or that this wasn’t the man Hope knew as Guy.”

“It is,” I said. “But I saw him yesterday. Talked to him.”

The doctor flipped a page on her clipboard. “Then you must be mistaken.”

“She isn’t,” Karl said. “I saw him as well. I’m sure we can get security camera footage from the club to confirm it. He was there yesterday afternoon meeting with people who knew him and saw nothing amiss.”

“And as far as we can tell, he killed two people less than six hours ago,” Paige added.

“Could the time of death be wrong?” I asked. “I know that under some conditions, the initial estimate can be off.”

Dr. Aberquero sniffed. “CSI or Law and Order?”

“The State of New York v. Edwin Cole, 2005. Later evidence showed the victim’s body had somehow been in a chilled state. Because that wasn’t immediately detected, the time of death was wrong. As for the ‘unidentified chilling,’ it was postmortem freezing from a clever Gelo half-demon. I know this is the opposite problem, but in our world, changing body temperature isn’t impossible.”

“You’re right. But we look for that here and there’s every indication that this man has been dead at least twenty-four hours. I’d even say it’s closer to thirty-six.”

Paige thanked her. As we were about to leave, I saw Karl’s gaze drifting around the room. Searching for something? Whatever it was, he’d have a better chance of getting it without me around, so I left with Paige.

A few minutes later, Karl emerged, dark blue fabric balled in one fist.

“Guy’s shirt?” I said.

“Scent.”

He waved for us to follow the officer to the elevator.

On the way upstairs, Karl said only that he wanted to return to the warehouse, presuming, I suppose, that we’d know he wanted to search for Guy’s scent.

The officer took advantage of these last few minutes to tell Paige how happy he was that Lucas was investigating. How he’d heard such good things about his work. How he looked forward to working under him.

It could have been a show of support, but as Paige’s fingers clenched around her purse strap, I knew she thought otherwise. With two brothers gone and the third accused, that left one Cabal son to inherit it all, and this young man was brown-nosing as fast as he could.

On the elevator, I touched Karl’s elbow, hinting for him to work his magic, cut in and smoothly rescue Paige. I was surprised he hadn’t already. But Karl just patted my hand, his mind miles away.

AT THE WAREHOUSE, Karl set about searching for Guy’s scent. He found only old trails.

“But I know he was here yesterday,” I said. “I heard him talking to Max about getting the equipment, and this is where they keep it. I suppose he could have waited in the car…” I glanced around the room where we’d found Max and Tony, now empty except for the table and chairs. “Where’s the note and bottle? Taken into evidence I guess, but if you could sniff those, maybe you’d know who brought them.”

“My sense of smell isn’t that good.”

“It looked like Guy’s writing, and the wording was his.” I knew I was grasping at straws. However impossible it seemed, Karl’s findings only confirmed that Guy hadn’t been alive six hours ago to kill Max and Tony.

“Dr. Aberquero thinks Guy has been dead since the night before last,” Paige said. “But you and Hope both spoke to him past midnight that day, which means Karl was close enough to get a scent, right? Was it Guy?”

Karl lifted the shirt. “Is this the man I smelled the other night? I couldn’t tell you. I think I faintly detected this scent, but there were others too, and he was wearing so much cologne, I couldn’t be sure.”

“Is there cologne on that shirt?” Paige asked.

“No.”

I remembered thinking Guy must have been heading out on the town that night, because I’d never known him to wear a scent.

I glanced at Lucas. He was trying to listen, but his ear was attached to his cell phone, as it had been since we’d arrived.

“How could it be done?” I asked Paige. “Fake being someone else? And do it so well that it fooled his entire gang?”

Lucas hung up and pocketed his phone. “The most obvious explanation is the nonsupernatural. Guy has an identical twin.”

I pulled out a chair and sat. “So, we have twins, playing the same man, fighting over what action to take with the Cabals. One wants to help Carlos kill his family, the other balks, the first kills the second. Very…Hollywood.”

“Agreed,” Lucas said.

“I don’t think that’s the answer,” Karl murmured.

I glanced at him, but only got that distant look as his thumb rubbed his jawline.

“On to supernatural means, then,” Lucas said. “The most obvious is a glamour spell. Under the circumstances, however, I can’t imagine it.”

“With a glamour spell, you have to expect to see someone else,” Paige explained. “For example, if Lucas and I left and I said I was coming back, then cast a glamour spell to make him look like me, you’d see me walk into the room. But if I didn’t say I was coming back, there’s only a fifty-fifty chance it would work. And if you expected Lucas, you’d see right through it.”

“It’s a temporary illusion,” Lucas said. “Prolonged use isn’t possible.”

“Especially if multiple people saw and recognized him, without expectations.”

“That’s the only supernatural solution I know of, but I’ll go to headquarters and conduct the proper research. They have the most extensive files in-”

His cell phone rang. A line grew between his eyes as he answered it.

Paige lowered her voice. “He’s not going to find the time. I’ll do it. Do you guys want to come? Or, better yet, maybe you could check the scene where we found Carlos. If there are scents or visions, it might help fill in the blanks.”

“Will do,” I said. “Is the site still secured?”

“Discreetly. I’ll have Lucas call ahead.”