Obsidian Butterfly - Laurell K. Hamilton [38]
11
I EXPECTED TO FIND a lot of things in the bedroom: blood stains, signs of a struggle, maybe even a clue. What I did not expect to find was a soul. But the moment I entered that pale white and green bedroom I knew it was there, hovering near the ceiling, waiting. It wasn’t the first soul I’d sensed. Funerals were always fun. Souls often hung around the bodies as if unsure what to do, but by three days’ time the souls were usually gone to wherever souls were supposed to go.
I stared up at this soul and saw nothing. If a soul has a physical shape, you couldn’t prove it by me, but I knew it was there. I could have sketched the outline of it in the air with my hand, knew about how much space it was taking up as it floated near the ceiling. But it was energy, spirit, and though it took up space, I wasn’t entirely sure it took up the same kind of space as I did, as the bed did, as anything else did.
My voice came out hushed, as if I were to speak too loudly, I’d scare it away. “How long have they been dead?”
“They aren’t dead,” Ramirez said.
I blinked and turned to him. “What do you mean they’re not dead?”
“You saw the Bromwells in the hospital. They’re both still alive.”
I looked into his serious face. The smile had vanished. I turned back to gaze at that slow hovering presence. “Someone died here,” I said.
“No one was cut up here,” Ramirez said. “According to the Santa Fe PD that’s the method of killing that this guy is using. Look at the carpet. There’s not enough blood for anyone to have been cut up.”
I looked down at the pale green carpet, and he was right. There was blood like black juice soaked into the carpet, but it wasn’t much blood, just spots, dabs. The blood was from the skinning of two adults, but if someone had been torn apart limb from limb there would have been more blood, a lot more. There was still the faint rank smell where someone’s bowels had let go either under torture or death. It was pretty common. Death is the last intimate thing we ever do.
I shook my head and debated on what to say. If I’d been at home with Dolph and Zerbrowski and the rest of the St. Louis police that I knew well, I’d have just said I saw a soul. But I didn’t know Ramirez, and most cops spook around anyone that can do mystical stuff. To tell or not to tell, that was the question, when noises from the front room brought us all around to stare behind us at the still open door.
Men’s voices, hurried footsteps, coming closer. My hand was on my gun when I heard a voice yell, “Ramirez, where the hell are you?”
It was Lieutenant Marks. I eased away from my gun and knew I wasn’t telling the police that there was a soul hanging in the air behind me. Marks was scared enough of me without that.
He stepped into the doorway with a small battalion of uniforms at his back, almost as if he expected trouble. His eyes were both harsh and pleased when he looked at me. “Get the fuck off my evidence, Blake. You’re outta here.”
Edward stepped forward, smiling, trying to play peacemaker. “Now, Lieutenant, who would give such an order?”
“My chief.” He turned to the cops behind him. “Escort her off the property.”
I held up my hands and started moving towards the door before the uniforms could move in. “I’ll go, no problem. No need to get rough.” I was at the door almost abreast with Marks.
He hissed close to my face, “This isn’t rough, Blake. You come near me again and I’ll show you rough.”
I stopped in the doorway, meeting his gaze. His eyes had turned a swimming aqua blue, dark with his anger. The doorway wasn’t that big, and standing in it we were almost touching. “I haven’t done anything wrong, Marks.”
He spoke low, but it carried. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
I thought of a lot of things to say, and do, most of which would have gotten me dragged out by a bunch of uniforms. I