A Life for a Life

Jess showed Charlie to their desks, directly across from each other in the pen. Jess’s desk was a clutter of papers and sticky notes while Charlie’s was bare.

“Organized chaos?” Charlie asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Hey, it works for me,” Jess answered with a grin. She was quick to temper, but also just as quick to let it go and no longer felt annoyed at her new partner. “Used to drive my last partner nuts. Of course, he kept a clean desk but a mess of a car, full of takeout wrappers and such, so he wasn’t one to talk.”

Charlie winced. “I guess at least papers on a desk probably won’t attract bugs.”

“Exactly.”

“So,” Charlie said, putting aside the desk discussion, “shall we start with Detective Jacobs?”

“Yeah.” Jess opened one of the files and found his number, dialing it up.

“Jacobs.”

“This is Inspector Jess Baker with Witch Investigators. My partner and I need to meet with you for a briefing on your murder cases.” Jess drummed her fingers while waiting for Jacobs to respond. Eventually she heard him sigh.

“We might as well start with the bodies. Can you meet me at the morgue in an hour?”

Jess gave the affirmative and hung up, letting Charlie know the plan. “The morgue isn’t far from here so we’ve got about thirty minutes. We might as well look over all the files and get up to speed.”

Charlie nodded and they sat down to read, rotating the files between them. Thirty minutes later, they headed outside into bright sunlight. Charlie squinted and pulled out a pair of sunglasses.

“I thought it always rained here?”

“Oh, it’s definitely cloudy a lot,” Jess agreed, “but we’ll get some nice days too, especially during the summer.” It was the beginning of July.

“I can drive,” Jess continued, leading them to the parking garage. “I imagine you don’t know your way around the city yet.”

“Not really,” Charlie admitted. “Not that it would matter if I did since I don’t have a personal car yet. I didn’t need one in New York.”

“But can you drive?” Jess had heard before that there were plenty of people in New York City that never bothered learning how to drive. She couldn’t imagine it herself.

“Yes, I can drive,” Charlie replied, narrowing her eyes. “Also, I didn’t grow up in the city; I just worked there for the last six years.”

“Really? Where did you grow up?” Jess hoped she hadn’t offended Charlie right out the gate. She dropped her shields a little to get a better sense of the other woman. She seemed honest. There was the sense of a secret but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. They had just met; Jess didn’t expect Charlie to bare her whole heart immediately. She did have a clear yellow soul, though it darkened to more of an orange around the edges. Jess found this common with cops who had seen a lot on the job and needed that little bit of a shell to keep going or they ended up quitting.

“Albany.”

“Sweet. I’ve been in Seattle all my life. I’ve always wanted to visit New York City, just haven’t done it yet.” By then they had made it to Jess’s car, a sporty little Acura NSX that Jess loved driving. Charlie got a weird look on her face as she opened the passenger door.

“Your parents bought you this car, didn’t they?” she asked.

Jess looked at her in surprise. “Yeah, my dad got it for me. Graduation present after I made it through the WISP Academy. Why?”

“Your dad’s been in the hospital. Heart problems, nothing too serious now because they’ve taken care of it with medication. Still, you might want to give them a call.”

“Wow, you got that just from touching my car?”

Charlie shrugged. “That’s what I do. I’m a sensitive clairvoyant and I do best with inanimate objects that have a magic essence but sometimes other objects randomly tell me things. This car doesn’t have any magic in it, but you have plenty and you’re in it enough that it probably triggered my abilities.”

“Hmm, that’s handy.” Jess made a mental note to call her dad, but at the moment was much more interested in what her partner could do. Charlie appeared uncomfortable with her scrutiny so Jess motioned for her to get in the car.

With Jess asking probing questions and cheerfully offering up her own answers without prompting, they continued to swap backgrounds on their way to the morgue. Jess learned that Charlie had three older brothers and being both small and a girl, she learned early on how to defend herself. They teased her constantly but if anyone outside the family gave her trouble, they were quick to protect their baby sister. Charlie rolled her eyes as she described the minor coronary her family had when she told them she was going to the academy to be a witch inspector and moving to the City, but there was a fondness in her voice too.

For her part, Jess told her about being one of those rare witches who didn’t have any other witches in the family. In most families, everyone had some magical talent, but occasionally a child would pop up in a Norm family who exhibited powers, usually starting around age five. Jess’s family loved her, but they didn’t know what to do with a witch and shipped her off to a witch-based boarding school when she was ten. It came after the final straw when she flooded the public school for the third time (by accident of course). She was the middle child with an older brother and younger sister, Norms like her parents. Jess kept in contact but wasn’t especially close to any of them now.

The King County Medical Examiner’s office was in a tall cement building downtown. After circling a few times, they found parking on the street about a block away and walked in. Rather than go to the office, Jess led the way down to the morgue, where a man was waiting outside the doors.

He was tall and well built, with the shoulders of a previous football player maybe. Probably late thirties. He had sandy blond hair that was in need of a trim and a round face with blue eyes. His dark slacks and blue polo shirt were clean, but slightly rumpled, as if he didn’t own an iron. He was handsome in a boy-next-door kind of way, despite his large frame. It was a face that probably helped him gain people’s trust quickly. He straightened when he saw them approach.

“Inspector Baker?”

“Call me Jess, please,” she said, hand extended.

“Matt,” he said gruffly, shaking her hand. Jess introduced Charlie and they shook as well before Matt turned back to Jess.

“Look, this will probably end up your case if there’s magic involved, but I don’t want it to become all about the journalist. Those homeless folks were decent people down on their luck. I’ll want to be kept in the loop.” His eyes were stern, but Charlie was already shaking her head.

“Matt, you won’t need to be kept ‘in the loop’,” Charlie told him, “because you are part of the loop. We’re not here to take the case away from you but rather to work together to figure this out. We want the homeless victims to get justice as much as the journalist.” Jess tilted her head in agreement. She might not want to work with him, but since she had to, at least they were all on the same page about solving all the homicides, not just the journalist.

Matt grunted, but he looked appreciative. He motioned for them to follow him into the morgue where the medical examiner, Riley Portner, was sewing up a dead body on the table.

“Be right with ya folks,” Riley waved at them. She tied off the last stitch on Mr. Dead Guy and covered him with a white sheet. She stripped off her bloody gloves and apron, throwing everything into the trash before going to the sink to wash her hands.

“Jess, Matt, always good to see you two, though I don’t think it’s ever been together before,” Riley said with a smile. She was an average looking brunette that you’d forget as soon as she left unless you happened to get a good look at her eyes. They were a pale gray and some liked to jokingly call her Storm after the X-Men comic book character. She was bright and quick-witted, able to discuss the latest scientific journals as well as be the best player at beer trivia Tuesdays.

She was also half-elf but since she didn’t look it, not many people knew that. Norms knew supernaturals existed, at least of the witch and vampire variety, but that didn’t mean they were in the know about much that went on in the supernatural world. Many sups pretended to be human if they were living in a populated area and only shared the truth with close friends or other supernaturals. Even if you were a supernatural yourself, you wouldn’t necessarily recognize another one, unless you happened to be a particular kind of sensitive like Jess. She could tell when almost anyone was a sup and most of the time what kind, but people like her were rare.

“Hey, Riley. I’d like you to meet my new partner, Charlie Morgan. She just moved up here from the Big Apple.”

“Ah, the land where car horn honking is technically illegal, but people do it anyway. Welcome to Seattle,” Riley said, smiling.

“Thank you,” Charlie answered, bemused. Jess wasn’t surprised though; Riley was full of trivia.

“So, you guys got the three homicides, right?” Riley snapped on a fresh pair of gloves, bringing them back to work. At their nods, she walked over to the wall of coolers and opened three of the drawers, pulling out the trays that held their occupants. Though the bodies were respectfully covered, Jess could tell that they were all very small and skinny. Had she not known what to expect, she would have thought they were children.

“I’m not one for detecting magic, but there is definitely something off about these.” As Riley pulled off the sheets, they could see what she meant.

All three bodies, one female and two males, were nothing but bones with skin stretched over them. Even the woman’s breasts had no shape but were flaps of skin hanging off her chest.

“Now, my first thought with these two was that they were held and starved over a long period of time before they were killed,” Riley told them. She held a clipboard of notes but didn’t bother consulting it.

“But then we got victim number three. I ran prints on all of them of course, but he was the only one to pop up, having been arrested a few times for not revealing a source. His name was Joseph Park. He wasn’t a missing person yet, but I called his wife who told me he had been working on a story about the city’s homeless population and wasn’t due home until yesterday. Time of death was approximately three days ago so he lasted only one night before he was killed. According to his last physical six months ago, he weighed 251 pounds, and his wife claims he hadn’t lost any weight since then.”

“So, they lost the weight all at once?” Jess asked, frowning.

“Near as I can tell,” Riley confirmed. With quick efficiency, Riley pulled the sheets back over the corpses and stripped off her gloves. Crossing her arms, Riley tapped four fingers along her forearm as she regarded them. There was a high energy quality about her, as if she couldn’t stay still if she wanted to. She focused on Matt as he picked up the conversation.

“After learning that, I had the tech guys add more weight to the facial reconstructions and showed them around on the street again,” Matt said. “I still haven’t found anyone who knows the man, but I finally met two people who admit to knowing the woman only as Lady Red. I guess she always wore a red coat. Anyway, they said they saw her about a week before her time of death and though she was short, she wasn’t even all that skinny. That’s when we decided this must have something to do with magic and called you guys.”

“Not only did they get really skinny but they shrunk in height as well, even their bones shrunk,” Riley interjected. “According to his wife, Joseph Park was nearly six foot when he died but I would have guessed he was only five foot three, tops, based on the remains. Lady Red looks like she was maybe four foot five but according to the detective, her friends thought she was a little over five feet. Short but not tiny.”

“Yeah, okay, it’s weird,” Jess admitted. “I’ve never heard of a spell that would do this. Charlie?”

“No, I have no idea.” Charlie squinted at the bodies like she was trying to see through the sheets, then shook her head. “I can’t sense anything around the body either but my strengths are more towards inanimate objects than people, even dead ones. Do you sense anything?”

“I haven’t tried yet, but I’m going to lower my shields now,” Jess said. She closed her eyes and carefully cracked her shields. Unlike Charlie, she did have an affinity for people, living and dead, so she had to keep her shields up all the time in public places or she would be bombarded by sensations.

Almost immediately she sensed a faint hum around all three bodies and when she opened her eyes, she saw some sort of black aura. Opening her senses wider, she realized it was more of a visible black void. Despite being able to physically see the bodies on the tables, she couldn’t feel them with her magic, which was unusual. Jess conveyed her observations to the others.

“So, like a black hole kind of?” Matt asked, his brow creasing.

“Not exactly,” Jess answered after thinking about it for a minute. “There’s no pull from it or anything. It’s more like their very existence was erased from the universe and what’s left are just these hollow shells, surrounded by a black haze.”

“Anyone else thinking aliens?” Riley quipped, but her eyes were serious. Matt raised his eyebrows at her, but the others ignored her comment.

“Do you get any sense of the spell that was used to do this?” Charlie asked.

Jess bit her lip. “No, it’s like there’s nothing left for the spell to attach itself to so I’m not getting anything on that. This was definitely caused by magic though,” she added, addressing Matt.

His shoulders slumped. “Well it looks like we’re stuck together for the duration.” He turned to Riley. “Is there anything new you can tell me?”

“Sorry, but no. Despite their appearances, the official cause of death is still the knife wound to the throat. There was blood flowing when the throat was cut so they were alive, in a manner of speaking.”

“How could they lose so much of themselves and still be alive?” Charlie asked, incredulous. Riley tilted her head and began rocking back and forth on her heels as she thought it over.

“It would have been extremely painful and they probably lost consciousness before the end, but technically the heart was still beating. That’s all I can tell you, I’m afraid. They were also all filthy and I took samples, of course. I imagine you’ll be getting the latest lab results any time now, but the first two victims didn’t yield much that’s been useful so far.” Riley handed Matt a printed copy of her findings.

“Alright, thanks Riley,” he said with a sigh. Turning to the inspectors, he gestured for them to head out.

As they left the morgue and made their way outside, Jess said, “Well, why don’t you two let me buy you lunch and Matt, you can fill us in on everything you know that’s not in the official files yet.” They agreed this was a good plan and Matt said he’d meet them at a nearby diner.