Kill the Dead (Sandman Slim 2)

The marshal doesn’t look at me. He’s staring off at something across the room.

“You do your job and let my people do theirs.”

What Wells is looking at is worthy of some top-drawer staring. There’s an altar and above it, a six-foot-tall statue of Santa Muerte, a kind of grim reaper parody of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Despite her bony looks, she’s someone her believers pray to for protection. I guess whoever owned the statue wasn’t very good at it. It looks like half of his blood is sprayed across Saint Death, the altar, and the walls. The rest is in a nice congealed pool of rust-colored Jell-O around what’s left of his body. You can’t even call what’s on the floor a corpse. There isn’t enough of it. It looks like he tried to crawl into a jet engine, changed his mind, and tried to crawl out again.

I say, “I think he’s dead.”

Wells nods, still staring at the slaughter.

“I’ll be sure to write that down. Anything else?”

“This was no boating accident.”

Wells looks at me like he’s a trash compactor and I’m week-old bacon.

“Damn you, boy. A man is dead here and he was one of yours. Sub Rosa. And he died badly. Do you have anything to contribute to our finding out what the hell happened here?”

I want to get closer to the death scene and I have to walk around several agents to do it. Glad I’m not claustrophobic.

The body is lying in pieces scattered inside a strangely modified calling circle. The edges are sharp. It’s not a circle. It’s a hexagon, a shape only used in dark magic. It looks like at least part of the circle was painted with blood, though it’s hard to be sure with pieces of the guy laid out across the floor like a buffet. There are a lot of bones scattered around. Too many to all be his. He probably used them to reinforce the hexagon.

I have to walk all the way around the room to get back to Wells.

“He doesn’t stink. How long has he been lying there?”

“At least two days. There’s been very little tissue breakdown. No blowfly eggs. Not even rigor mortis in the one elbow joint we found.”

“Did you find anything in aether tracings?”

“There’s definitely dark magic residue. We’re not sure what kind yet.”

I go back to the body and stand as close as I can without touching it. Even without trying, I can feel something radiating off the mangled flesh and bones. But I can’t tell what. It’s ancient and cold. For a minute I wonder if the Kissi could have done it, but there’s no vinegar reek. If Wells’s crew would quiet down for a goddamn second, it probably wouldn’t be hard to figure out. Some of the angel devices are pumping out celestial energy fields, stinking up the aether.

“Can you get these people to quiet the hell down for a minute?”

“This is a priority job. It’s a big crew and everybody works. Do some magic, Sandman Slim. You’ve worked loud rooms before.”

I can’t get hold of whatever it is that’s coming off the body. I touch part of what I think is an arm with the toe of my boot. Turn it over. One of the forensic techs says something.

“Get that machine out of my way so I can work,” I say.

I’m not sure exactly how I sounded, but half of Wells’s crew suddenly find other parts of the room to work.

Kneeling down, I take a close look at the not-rotting skin. There are funny marks there. Old ones. He’d tattooed over them, like he was trying to camouflage them. There are marks on the bones, too. New ones.

The altar is a jumble of magic objects. Saints and rosaries. A sephirot stitched together from separate pieces of parchment and linen. Pentagrams and swastikas drawn on Post-its. An old bottle of no-name whiskey. Animal bones. Bowls full of meth, joints, and poppers. Yojimbe bark. Gray’s Anatomy. And a very nice selection of dildos, gags, butt plugs, nipple clamps, and antique handcuffs.

I drag a chair over to where Wells is standing. The forensic crew is falling in love with me.

“Who is this guy? Was this guy?” I ask.

“Enoch Springheel.”

“Springheel, like the Springheels?”

“Yep. Supposedly, the first Sub Rosa family in L.A. I guess a couple of hundred years back, when this was mostly Indians and coyotes, they were the cock of the walk. But other families settled here and things sort of fell apart for the Springheels. Lost most of their land. Lost their status. Homeland Security doesn’t know why. Neither does the Vigil. I was hoping maybe you knew something.”

“When I was a kid, I spent most of my time trying to get away from the Sub Rosa. I know the names, but not much of the family histories.”