Dead Demon Walking (10 page)

We followed Martinez through a warren
of brightly lit, blank-walled corridors. Strager came close behind
us - as if we meant to shoot off and infiltrate a janitor’s closet,
because that’s all I saw until we came to a square hall surrounded
by anonymous doors. Martinez led us through a door to a stairwell.
We went up, and stepped into a corridor lined with office doors and
windows. We were still at the rear of the building.

Doors at the end of the
corridor slid apart as we neared them. We followed Martinez to a
big office. Busy personnel filled the place, but they took the time
to look us over as we passed their desks. Men and women wore dark
suits and white or pale-blue shirts, with FBI badges either clipped
to pockets or belts, or on chains around their necks. Apart from
the uniformity of dress, it could be a police division bullpen:
desks piled with untidy stacks of paperwork, fast-food containers,
half-eaten food on paper plates, soda cans and coffee mugs, family
photos, overflowing wastepaper baskets. One mug said
My
MOM
loves me
but she doesn’t
know where I work
, another declared
World’s Hottest Special Agent.

At the back of the room, a staircase
went up to a railed balcony and three big offices with glass walls,
as if the occupants needed to look down and keep tabs on the entire
area. Martinez climbed the stairs, Royal, me and Strager following.
We went in the middle office.

The floor to ceiling windows in the
outside wall looked over a huge concrete quad and rows of cars.
Glass walls gave us an unobstructed view of the room below and into
the other two offices. There were blinds, but they were pulled up
to the ceiling. I felt exposed. I wanted to find something to hide
behind.

The room had a big glass-topped desk
with a black leather office chair behind it and an even bigger
glass-topped conference table. A rack of lateral filing cabinets
lined one wall, a trolley with a coffee-maker, cups and all the
fixings in a corner, and a fax machine on another trolley in the
opposite corner. It had a sterile atmosphere. Not an office; they
used it as a conference or interrogation room. At least the chairs
at the desk and conference table weren’t glass.

The rooms either side were functional
offices, but empty at the moment.

Martinez indicated two chairs at the
conference table. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. Someone
will be with you shortly.” Then she shut the door behind her as she
and Strager left, enclosing us in silence.

I thought about our suitcases, which
we left in another black SUV. Were agents going through them? Would
they be able to get into Royal’s laptop? Were they fingering my
lovely new underwear?

We sat at the table side by side. I
whispered to Royal, barely breathing out the words, knowing his
super duper hearing would pick it up. “Can we talk?”

He shook his head. “Best
not.”

I nodded back. The room could be
bugged.

We waited there fifteen minutes.
Bored, I circled the table, then stood at the huge glass window to
look down at the lower office. I drew back when I saw half the folk
down there looking up at me.

“
I know it goes with the
territory, but sometimes I get sick of folk looking at me like I
flew down from another planet.” I dropped in the chair next
Royal.

His eyebrows drew together. “Look at
you how?”

I made a meaningless
gesture. “I expect new clients to give me the once-over, clients
who’ve heard what I can do. But . . . look at them, Royal! Do I
have
freak
stenciled on my forehead?”

He eyed me for a second, and then gave
his head a little shake, smiling. “You have no idea, do
you?”

Huh?
“Of
what
?”

“
Why they cannot take their
eyes off you. Don’t you ever look in a mirror?”

He had completely lost me. “Every day
when I wash my face and brush my hair.”

“
Look again.”

My voice pitched higher. “Look
where?”

“
Down there.”

Clearly, Royal had lost his mind. I
rolled my eyes and twisted to pan my gaze over the inner office
from my seated position. Sure enough, several guys still stared at
me, though they lowered their eyes quickly. Not unusual - women who
are six-four, pale-skinned with silver-white hair can attract
attention. They probably thought I’m an albino.

“
Tiff, my wonderful Tiff,
when Chris called you lovely he was not stroking your
ego.”

I swiveled to face him. “Er. . . .”
What could I say to that? I put my hand to my head, grimacing. “Um
. . . that’s sweet, Royal, but it’s the white hair, and I’m tall
for a woman, and - ”

“
You are an adorable
idiot.”

He took my hands and kissed the backs,
breath and lips a warm caress.

I stared into the depths of his
glowing copper eyes. “Why are you looking at me like you want to
take me to bed?”

“
Bed? I’m not,” he said as
he released my hands. “This big, sturdy table, though. . .
.”

“
Royal!” I pulled my
shoulders back. “You want to see me blush.”

One hand swept over the table; his
lashes dipped, making his expression lazy and suggestive. “I know
better ways to make you red in the face.”

I swallowed a snicker as I spied three
men heading for the stairs. One looked in his forties, a beanpole
with buzz-cut, light-brown hair dusted with gray. Another stood a
few inches shorter, maybe late-thirties, well-built with blond hair
cropped close to his skull. The third man could also be in his late
thirties, a bit on the chubby side, his short sandy hair already
thinning.

“
Here we go,” Royal
murmured.

We stood as they opened the door and
came in. The older man swept his hand at the table. “Please don’t
get up,” he said with a smile, so I sank back. Royal remained on
his feet.

Older guy sat opposite us, still
smiling pleasantly. His blue eyes had a twinkle to them and his
lips were soft, mobile, as if they often quirked. “I’m Pat
Garrett.” He held up his hands palm out. “If you have anything to
say about that, let’s get it out of the way now.”

A small frown puckered my brow, then I
got it. Pat Garrett, famous lawman. Right?

When he got no response from us, he
tilted one hand at the blond guy to his left. “Agent Solomon
Gunn.”

A small scar slashed Agent Gunn’s
upper lip and another ran horizontally over his left cheek just
below his cold, pale-blue eye. He nodded at Royal and eyed me with
something between a smirk and a sneer.

“
Agent John Vanderkamp,”
Garrett said, indicating the thickset guy.

Vanderkamp had a broad smile, which he
beamed over me and Royal, and wide brown eyes. A bump on his nose
attested to a break he’d left to go its own way instead of getting
fixed. Although his face was chubby, his body bulked with muscle.
He came around the table, offering his hand to first Royal, then
me. Royal shook and I had to stand to do the same.

With the formalities over, we sat at
the table and got down to business.

Garrett linked his hands on the
tabletop and leaned on his elbows. “Mr. Mortensen, Miss Banks,
thank you for coming.” He turned his face to me. “Miss Banks, the
Federal Bureau of Investigation requests your help.”

I swallowed nervously. “Me?
How?”

Vanderkamp passed a folder to Garrett,
who opened it and withdrew a handful of eight by ten color
photographs. He laid them face down on the table. “We know of your
special . . . talent, Miss Banks. We’ve followed your career for
some time now.”

Gunn’s scar emphasized the sarcastic
hitch of his lip.

I couldn’t respond to Garrett as his
words twisted in my head. Not only did the FBI know what I could do
- or thought they did - they’d kept an eye on me, FBI
style.

I didn’t know what to say. I felt for
Royal’s hand, then realized they would see me groping for a
lifeline beneath the glass tabletop. I brought my hands up and
clasped them on the table.

My brain started gearing up, though I
doubted it knew what it was doing. The dang fool thing made me say,
“You have a case that with all the resources at your disposal, you
can’t solve, so you want my help?”

“
Yes, Miss Banks, that’s
it,” Garrett confirmed with a thin smile.

“
More than one?” I added,
because the Bureau generally does not stick its nose in a single
homicide unless it’s relevant to national security, but they do go
after serial killers.

He didn’t corroborate as he flipped a
photo and slid it over the table to me. “A week ago. Brian Fensham,
twenty-two.”

A young man on a mortuary slab. Short
red hair and a square face. His skin had that dead look I know all
too well. His eyes were closed. I’m glad when their eyes are
closed, not staring sightlessly. His arm had been removed from the
shoulder blade and lay beside his chest. The condition of his arm
and shoulder made me think the limb had been torn off.

“
Have you seen Braveheart?”
Garrettt asked.

Had
I
seen Braveheart? Only half a dozen
times. Mel loved the movie, although she asked me to turn it off
before Mel Gibson was hanged, drawn and quartered. “I’ve seen
it.”

“
Then you know the medieval
practice of quartering. Each of the victim’s arms and legs are tied
to a horse and - ”

“
Yes, I know.”

He laid his arm on the table so he
could point at the photo. “We found bruising and abrasions on the
wrist, here. And here on the shoulder. As if something took hold
and pulled the arm from the torso.”

Ginormous
yuck! “Surely you don’t think a horse did
this.”

He leaned back. “We would see ligature
abrasions, which these bruises are not. But the end result is
similar.”

Was this a first? With medical
examiners’ expertise nowadays and the technology at their
fingertips, I thought they always identified the murder weapon.
Maybe I saw too much TV.

Garrett shoved another photo at
me.

Brian lay on his stomach, a big ugly
hole just below his left shoulder blade. My stomach
curdled.

Garrett shrugged and spread his hands.
I didn’t ask if they knew what made that hole in young Brian;
obviously they did not. Another photo came my way as Royal looked
at the first.

“
Gregory Fensham, Brian’s
father, retired software CEO. He, wife Daphne and Brian were found
at their vacation home in Bella Vinca, Arkansas. Their neighbor
went over when their dog kept barking.”

“
Poor neighbor,” I
commented in a murmur as I perused the second photo. A chubby,
middle-aged man with thinning blond hair. I held it closer to my
eyes. His head seemed . . . peculiar, not properly . . . aligned on
his neck.

“
Head taken clean off,”
Garrett said. “Again, we can’t identify the weapon, but the neck
was not cleanly severed, or sawn.”

I gave my head a little
shake as I blinked. Now Garrett pointed it out, I saw the ragged
line where the head had been
positioned
on the neck.

This was bizarre; cops and
other law enforcement
always
identify the murder weapon. Or, in this case, as
body parts may have been wrenched off, the murder
gadget?

Royal laid the first photo on the
table. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“
It seems as if something
was clamped to the neck and. . . .” Garrett let the sentence
hang.

He had another photo. I held out my
hand.

A red-haired woman. “Daphne
Fensham?”

Garrett nodded.

I hate mug shots of dead people. Mrs.
Fensham was an attractive woman with perfectly plucked eyebrows and
sculpted cheekbones. I expect she looked nice when wearing makeup,
but medical examiners remove cosmetics. She had a messy hole in her
neck, shredded flesh through which the vertebrae peeked. I couldn’t
see any other damage. I laid the photo down with the
others.

“
Okay?” Royal
asked.

I nodded, my lips tight. Sweat beaded
along my hairline and nape. I’ve seen gruesome corpses, but not
this ugly. I wanted to heave.

I met Garrett’s steady gaze and had to
lick my dry lips before I could speak. “What do you expect from
me?”

“
My understanding is you
communicate with the ghosts of homicide victims,” he said as if the
statement were not totally outré.

I could explain my shades
were victims of violent deaths which did not always include murder,
but I didn’t want to give the agents something they didn’t already
know. They likely got their information from the police departments
I’ve worked with, probably Clarion PD, and maybe from FBI Agent
Matt Larsen of Salt Lake City. Garrett knew only what other law
enforcement agencies
thought
they knew.