Kira Malone Chronicles: Vol 1 (Slaughter USA) Page 9

  She snorted at that. "An investigation? I don't think credentials from Ominous Omens are going to cut it, Andy. I know you said you wanted to look into fake IDs for agents or something, but that's a federal offense. I don't think we're ready for that kind of a commitment to this. If we're going to impersonate someone, I think journalists might be best, even though some might still refuse to speak to us. At least that won't get us thrown into prison if we get caught, and our IDs are actually legal."

  He shrugged, reaching for a few fries from the container in the cup holder, chewing them for a moment and swallowing before answering her. "Right, some people won't talk to reporters after an incident like this. But you're right, I don't think even my parents could get us outta trouble if we get arrested for impersonating federal agents. Starting smaller might be best. We'll try OO, see what happens. Things might be just weird enough that she'd be willing to talk."

  Finishing the hamburger, Kira scrunched up the wrapper and tossed it into the bag resting on the floor in the back before leaning back in the seat. Sliding her sunglasses on, she shrugged. "I can't see much weirder than finding your employer the way she did. Hopefully she's not superstitious. Those are the worst. We'll never get any usable information if she's convinced it's the devil at work. Though, with the things we've seen so far, I wouldn't even discount it anymore."

  Kira had come into this line of work after being kidnapped by a wendigo. It'd been traumatizing, but she'd survived. He was still out there, too. Taking new victims and biding his time. She'd made it her personal mission to find him one day and erase at least one stain on the world at large. Once she'd found Andy, they'd joined forces, against her better judgment. He'd refused to let her go at this alone.

  Their last case was an Aswang, a rogue one at that. A demon that feasted on pregnant women, they'd managed to save the last victim and kill the creature before he could claim any more lives with the help of Noni, an elderly woman who'd given them the weapon they needed. Now, she'd become a sort of mentor for them, someone they called when they needed extra help and research done.

  She was happy to be needed and respected, and they could always use someone who knew myths and legends far better than they did. It worked. She was also a healer and knew herbs and remedies better than anyone they knew. Kira had been having nightmares since the wendigo attack. Noni had given her a vervain root that she'd blessed somehow, told her to keep it under her pillow.

  Kira had been unimpressed with the dried up little brown thing, but the effect was instantaneous. She still had the dreams occasionally, but she didn't wake up as terrified as before. She slept better, stayed asleep longer, the dreams were few and far in between. Visions of the wendigo coming back to trap her no longer haunted her daytime hours. She was sold and kept the ugly little root with her wherever she went now.

  It was currently in her backpack, actually. Watching the exits flash by, Kira began seeing one's for towns in Massachusetts, and then streets in Boston. The best part of road trips was when you started seeing signs for your actual destination. The GPS squawked out directions through the downtown area and directed them towards the suburbs where the streets were quieter and tree-lined boulevards sheltered the stately homes behind them. It wasn't the place you'd expect as the scene of a brutal murder.

  Andy pulled into the first hotel he came across, as the neighborhood their victim lived in didn't seem like one they'd find lodgings in. They'd have to drive to get there, but this was the closest accommodations the GPS could find. While Andy paid for the room, Kira amused herself flipping through the colorful brochures, taking special notice of the historical areas in the town. Boston did have a lot of history. Could that have something to do with their case? They couldn't discount anything just yet, so she took a few of them to peruse later.

  Trudging after Andy with her backpack and laptop bag once he'd gotten the room keys, she tossed the brochures onto the table along with the laptop, before digging through the bag to put her vervain root under the pillow where it belonged. Andy had grabbed a few of the local newspapers, which was great. Local papers generally had more information on things going on in the town than national papers did, so they were a far better source of the kind of intel they were after.

  They needed to know what kind of a man he was. People who were killed in violent ways tended to have enemies, and as insane as it sounded, they needed to do their due diligence and exclude other possibilities first. That didn't mean they expected to find a jilted lover or cheated work partner, mind you, but they still had to look.

  They both knew there wasn't a natural explanation for the state he was found in. A human couldn't have done this. How would he have gotten in and out without notice? How could he have burned the body and beat it beyond measure, without anyone hearing it or the fire spreading? They rarely said things were impossible anymore, but this was. They weren't looking for a normal situation.

  "Let's try the house first. If the housekeeper is there, we can talk to her and get her story first-hand. If not, we'll sneak in and check out the room itself. There's bound to be something overlooked that the police wouldn't have noticed but might help us with what we're looking for. If you don't believe in something, you don't look for proof of it."

  Wasn't that always the way of things though? People could see evidence of monsters walking among them all day long, but if they didn't believe in boogeymen, they found ways to pass it off. They were imagining things. A quirk of the light. They were tired and saw something that wasn't there. Someone was playing a prank on them. There were a million excuses and it came down to the same thing- people just didn't want to know. Problem was, what you don't know? Really can kill you.

  Chapter Three

  "Hello, Mrs. Sardoza? I'm Andy Garcia, and this is Kira Malone. We're investigative journalists from Ominous Omens, a network station that investigates crimes and occurrences that aren't easily explained. Would you be willing to talk to us? It can be off the record, if you'd prefer that."

  Andy's guileless smile and cherub-faced demeanor generally worked well with the older women, and it didn't fail them this time, either. With only a slight hesitation, the motherly Italian woman opened the door, allowing them entrance. Her hair was a vivid white, but framed a face that looked far younger, eyes still bright with awareness and plenty of suspicion. Kira supposed she'd been hassled quite a bit these past few days. She couldn't blame her for being on edge.

  Leaving Andy to sweet talk the woman, Kira moved through the house, camera in hand. She'd take pictures for their 'story', but in reality, it was for them to look over later, see if there was anything they'd missed. The sources they'd pored over so far had said he'd been in an upstairs study, so she quietly took the spiral staircase in the foyer leading upwards. Her shoes didn't even squeak on the polished marble.

  Impressive. The place was spotless, every surface gleaming and dust free. Mrs. Sardoza took pride in this residence, that much was sure. If there had been something amiss or out of place, she would have noticed it. Kira made a note to ask when she went back downstairs, the woman probably already fixed anything if something had been moved.

  Trying the first door she came to, Kira found herself looking into a bedroom. The next three doors were the same. The fourth was a game room, the fifth a bathroom. Finally, the sixth door she tried led to a stately office, the heavy oak desk the centerpiece of the room. Done in dark colors, it was meant to look rich and inviting, with small statuettes and vases in cases with lighting underneath them.

  Whistling under her breath, Kira peered at a few of them. These were, quite literally, priceless. Mesopotamian and Etruscan pottery sat next to colorful Native American art. The man was a collector.

  Snapping photos of everything in the room for them to study later, Kira turned to the desk next. Rifling through the drawers, she looked for any paperwork or hidden notes. False bottoms, locked containers. Anything that could hint at a motive for what had happened to the man who sat in this chair last. Whatever e
lse had happened, supernatural or not, the injuries as they were described in the reports she'd read so far seemed incredibly personal. You didn't beat someone to a pulp for no reason. That was anger, pure and simple.

  He'd been a stickler for organization, though, so she didn't find anything scattered around. His file cabinet was neatly labeled with his trips, the artifacts he'd found there, which museums were currently hosting which pieces of his collections. Just in case, Kira snapped photos of each page. Since he carefully cataloged everything, they might as well. The photos may be useful to check over later, see what didn't match up, if anything.

  Turning to snap a photo of one of the lighted cases behind the desk, Kira's brow rose. Elsewhere in the room, it was rather warm. Standing here, she could see the wispy puff of air as she exhaled, her warm breath fogging the view of the camera for a moment. As she wiped it clean with the edge of her shirt, her lips tilted downward in confusion.

  She could have sworn she'd just replaced these batteries in preparation for this trip. She hadn't really been paying attention to it, but the blinking red 'low battery' warning in the corner now couldn't be ignored. She was sure it hadn't been there before, but was she certain the batteries hadn't been low when she'd turned it on?

  Sadly, she couldn't say with 100% certainty. Still... cold spots? Battery drainage? Old artifacts? Those three things together could really only lead to one place. It didn't make sense though. Ghosts normally weren't able to interact with the physical realm this much, at least not in the varied reports and stories she'd read. Sure, there were some that swore things had moved, or items were knocked down, but nothing had ever been reported of this caliber.

  Then again, she and Andy so far had stumbled into cases where nothing acted like it was supposed to. Maybe that was their eternal curse. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck.... for anyone else, it'd most likely be a damn duck and they wouldn't expect different. For she and Andy, it'd end up being a Yeti with broken vocal cords. Such was their luck, it seemed.

  Chapter Four

  "Thank you, Mrs. Sardoza. I took a few photos of his collections, but I guess I got a bad batch of batteries. We should have enough to add to the article though, with your interview with Andy and the photos I took for artistic interest. If we need anything else, we'll be in town for a few days to check out the sights, so we'll be sure to let you know. We're so very sorry for your loss."

  Shaking her hand, Kira gave Andy a look as she headed outside, knowing he'd wrap up his goodbyes and quickly follow. Climbing into the van, she rifled around in the back for the bag that carried their extra batteries to replace the ones that seemed to have been mysteriously drained while she was in the study.

  As Andy climbed in after her to start the ignition, he glanced towards her, one brow raised in question. "You want to tell me what happened first, then I'll share what I learned?" Kira fumbled with the camera to add the new batteries, flicking through the images to make sure they all saved properly before turning it off and sitting it aside.

  "Well, the man kept a lot of artifacts around. He cataloged them all though, so we should be able to go through everything quickly. I took photos of the notations he added to the files."

  "Behind the desk, there was a pretty big cold spot. At one point, I could see my breath, it fogged up the camera viewfinder. When I wiped it off, the battery power was blinking at me, telling me the batteries were dying. Obviously I can't be sure they weren't low when we went in, as I didn't really pay much attention, but I didn't take so many photos that they should have drained that fast, regardless."

  Andy made a face as he turned onto the entrance to hop on the expressway to reach their hotel, carefully merging with daytime traffic before speaking. "Well, I mean, we really can't count the batteries then, since we don't know for sure what the level was before that. If they'd been full and we were sure about that, we could say that something was definitely wrong, but without knowing, it's kind of chalked up in the 'I don't know' column. Cold spot is interesting though. He'd have been at the desk."

  Following the flow of traffic, they made it to the hotel quickly, as it was only ten or fifteen minutes from the victim's neighborhood. At little out of the way, but not by much. As they headed into their room, Kira checked her phone. They'd made good time getting here, and even with the visit to the house, it would still be at least five hours before they could safely attempt to breach the morgue security.

  Settling into the chair, she motioned to him. "Alright, what did Mrs. Sardoza have to say about it? I forgot to ask if she'd cleaned or moved anything, if that becomes important, we can call and find out." The most it would pinpoint was if someone had been looking for something specific, but that would be more for a human-variety crime. Kira was fairly certain this wasn't, so robbery wasn't a motive they should really focus on, in her opinion.

  "Well, she confirmed the official version of events, at any rate. She served dinner, they usually ate together as it was just them in the house. After dinner, he goes up to the study to write and respond to emails and things, work on any important requirements teams currently in the field need, stuff like that. Then he goes to bed around ten." Andy sat across from her, steepling his fingers as he perused the notes he'd taken.

  "She stays up to watch the late night shows, so she usually hears him as he walks across the hall to his bedroom. She swears she didn't hear him go to bed, but figured she'd just missed it. If she didn't, means the attack took place between seven and ten, otherwise he would have gone to bed. Next morning, police broke down the door. His chair was tipped over, like he'd fallen out of it. Or been yanked out of it."

  "He was closer to the door. She said it looked like he'd tried to run towards it to escape whoever had attacked him, but never made it. If he'd been by the fireplace, that could have explained the burns, but we'd have seen residue if flames had touched anything else, and Mrs. Sardoza claims there was no smoke damage, no charred carpet, nothing resembling the kind of damage fire would have done anywhere else in the room. The carpet underneath him wasn't even singed."

  Kira could vouch for that. With the injuries that had been described in the reports, she'd expected to see staining where the body had been, blood that couldn't be bleached out. She'd checked it thoroughly. The room had looked pristine. She'd assumed the housekeeper had cleaned it, but if she hadn't, then this case was getting more peculiar by the minute. She hadn't even smelled smoke.

  Chapter Five

  With the schedule they were on, both of them decided to take naps to refresh for the night after the drive in. When the alarm pierced the quiet with a shrill shriek, Kira slapped blindly towards the table, groaning as she heard the clock hit the floor. Rubbing at her eyes, she peered blearily over the edge of the bed for it, snatching it to put it back where it belonged before looking over to see Andy had the same half-awake and bewildered expression she did.

  Falling asleep during the day and waking up while it was dark was awful and completely disorienting. She had no idea how people handled polar night, or managed to live in places like Barrow or Tromso, where they had sixty seven full days of darkness or more. She'd never survive it.

  Rising from the bed, she stretched, ignoring the random popping sounds coming from the other side of the bed. Andy's joints made the weirdest noises when he stretched. She'd swear he was a werewolf transforming if she hadn't seen him fully human during a full moon. Bending to grab her backpack, she tugged clean clothes free before heading into the bathroom to change.

  Black pants, black tank, black bra. Nothing obtrusive that would catch the dim light. She wanted to blend into the shadows, not draw attention to herself. Brushing her hair back from her temples, she quickly braided it over her shoulder, before heading back into the main room. Spotting Andy similarly geared up, she pulled her boots out to tug them on. "Camera, night vision lens? Micro recorder?"

  After he confirmed he had both of them already packed, she checked her own supplies. The lock picking set
had come in handy before, but the security system bypass was new. Rather than pulling the power and risking being noticed, they were simply going to walk through the back door. They'd tested it a few times at the university with the excuse that they'd forgotten their badges, and so far hadn't had an issue, but this wasn't a test.

  The drive into town was quiet, both preoccupied with their own thoughts. As the GPS directed them to the city morgue, Andy drove around back, parking well away from any security cameras. There would be a brief span of time when they'd be visible on camera at the back door, but that couldn't be helped. With any luck, their new tool would bypass service fast, foregoing the alarm with no one the wiser.

  Stepping from the car, Kira pulled a ball cap low on her head, shielding her face as Andy did the same. Hurrying towards the door, she handed Andy the lock picking tool to get started, as she began toying with the bypass tool. Most city buildings were understaffed and under-funded, so their security systems were older.

  It worked in their favor. This little toy functioned by scanning the nearest connections and hijacking into the circuit. Once she pressed the button to engage, it would keep that circuit steady. No break in the circuit, no alarm being triggered.