Possessed

A light from a street-level window above the stairwell caught her eye.

Palm Reader—Fortune Teller.

It was a red neon sign with the outline of a crystal ball in its center. Cass could see that it belonged to the same apartment whose doorway the woman lay in. Guessing from the nightgown, Cass had little doubt that it was the dead woman’s apartment, which meant that she was likely the palm reader. Not that Cass could ask her.

Cass turned back and stared down at the still motionless feet.

“I’ll bet you didn’t see this coming,” she mumbled, more to break the morbid silence than anything else.

There was no reply to the bad quip. Not that Cass expected one. She never communicated directly with the dead. Except in one case, which was completely different altogether.

Of course, there was the monster to contend with, but the resolution of what that thing was, was still too far off to consider. Was it connected to the woman at the bottom of the steps? Was it too much of a stretch to believe that it wasn’t?

Cass wasn’t ready to think about it. Better to wait for Dougie and let him decide what had happened before she started leaping to conclusions she couldn’t back up with facts. She trembled involuntarily and Muffy squirmed in her arms. She set him down, careful to keep a firm grip on his collar so he couldn’t return to the body. Turning to her right, she spotted the older woman scurrying down the sidewalk as fast as her aging body would carry her.

“The police are coming. They’re coming,” she huffed as she came within hearing distance of Cass.

Cass nodded in thanks, then handed her back her dog. The woman reattached Muffy’s leash and together they all stood in front of the stairwell like sentinels standing guard over the body.

Minutes later, sirens broke through the early-morning quiet. Two cars screeched to a stop as uniformed officers popped out and started barking orders to one another.

“Do we need an ambulance?”

Cass shook her head at the stocky officer who approached her first. “No. Maybe to take her to the morgue…”

The cop’s face didn’t change with her answer. “Right. We’re going to ask you to wait over there. We’ll need to ask you some questions in a little bit.” He was pointing to a stoop a couple of feet away and numbly Cass nodded. Sitting suddenly seemed very necessary. She tugged on the arm of the woman, who was trying desperately not to look down the steps as the uniformed officers secured the area.

“Come on. We should get out of their way.”

From the third step of the stoop, Cass watched as two standard-issue city cars pulled up. She wondered how it was that detectives were always so shocked when they were made so easily by the criminal element. The car reeked of cop.

Dougie’s long form emerged from the vehicle and instantly he spotted her. Ignoring her for the moment, he checked on the scene. The uniforms had taped off the stairwell, and soon the techies would be by to snap photographs and collect evidence from the apartment and from the victim. Evidently satisfied with the progress they were making, Dougie made his way to where she sat with the old lady at her side.

“How…”

“I don’t know. I think she was stabbed.”

“No, I meant how are you here?”

Cass knew what he meant, but there wasn’t an easy answer. She certainly didn’t want to elaborate with the woman, Ethel, she’d come to learn was her name, and her dog sitting next to her.

“My Muffy found her. My Muffy was very brave,” the woman interjected.

“Yes, ma’am,” Dougie replied politely. “Very brave. The PPD thanks you very much for calling this in and for waiting so that we can question you. If you would head over to the officer with the blond hair, he’s got some questions for you.” Dougie pointed to one of the uniformed cops, who looked to be just out of school. Surely someone so young wasn’t able to handle the responsibility of standing between evil and the rest of society? Someone with a job like that should at least be shaving, Cass decided. Then again, given her youthful appearance and the fact that Ethel called her honey as if she were soothing a child, she guessed she couldn’t throw stones.

“Just tell him everything you saw and heard. And don’t leave anything out,” Dougie said.

Ethel nodded slowly as if to suggest that she took her civic duty very seriously. “Of course I will.”

Cass stood and reached for the woman’s elbow, helping her to her feet even as Dougie reached for the woman’s other arm. On legs that probably weren’t as steady as they had been when she’d set out that morning, Ethel managed the few cement steps until she was back on the sidewalk. “You’ll catch the person who did this? That’s your job.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Satisfied, Ethel led Muffy to the blond kid in the blue uniform.

Once she was out of earshot, Cass asked, “Does the PPD thank me, too?”

“No,” he growled softly. “The PPD wants to know what the hell you’re doing here.”

How could she tell him? What would she tell him?

There was a monster in my mind.

To her it sounded a lot like having one under your bed or one in your closet. Like the kind of nightmare a child might have. Only she wasn’t a child and it, whatever it was, hadn’t been a nightmare. She was pretty sure of that now.

She was afraid that Dougie, despite all his good intentions to be open-minded where she was concerned, wouldn’t get it. He might believe she spoke with the dead, but this was asking too much of anyone.

“I think you must be grumpy because they got you out of bed.”

“Absolutely I’m grumpy but not because of a lack of sleep. It’s the lack of answers that’s annoying me right now. Talk to me, Cass.”

She took a breath and tried to explain. “I had a thing. A weird thing. I felt…”

Fear. A deep and gut-wrenching fear of the dead, something she’d never felt before. And a darkness. She’d felt that, too. Beyond the beast, there had been inky blackness rather than the hazy fog she’d become used to.

As if the horns hadn’t been sinister enough.

No, there was no point in telling Dougie this. Not when she couldn’t explain what it meant.

“I heard a dog barking,” she said. “I came out here, followed the sound and there she was.”

“That’s not even remotely convincing.”

Cass shrugged. “It’s the best I can do for now. Let’s just say…I had a gut feeling.”

“Right.” He snorted somewhat disgustedly. “Look, I’ll let it go for now until I can pull all the facts together. But we’re eventually going to have to talk about this. Whatever happened to this girl…”

“She had her tongue cut out, Dougie.”

He didn’t bother to issue the standard police line that nothing was certain and that until evidence was gathered and analyzed nothing would be accomplished by leaping to conclusions about the relationship between two seemingly unconnected victims. She knew better.

“I don’t have to tell you to keep this quiet.”

That made her laugh. “Who am I going to tell?” Her world consisted of about three people, one of whom was standing in front of her.

“I’m just saying we don’t need the press…”

“Dougie? It’s me. I’m not going to talk to the press. Ethel you might have to talk to.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Two women, a few blocks apart, both missing their tongues and no signs of sexual assault. This doesn’t smell right.”

“At least one thing is for sure,” she reminded him. “You know now that Malcolm McDonough didn’t kill his sister.”

“Great,” Dougie muttered unenthusiastically. “Mr. Connections goes free, but there’s a wacko loose in the city.”

“A psycho-city wacko,” Cass repeated, recalling his description from last night.

Dougie looked back to the stairwell where they were finally bringing the body up. That they had tried to be careful with her was obvious, but the body bag was still covered in the woman’s blood.

“Definitely.”

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