The first one he identified was Sheila, Shelia Colleen Maitland, who was one of the mug shot ones. She was younger, her hair was different, but it was her. Then he identified poor Rita, Margarita Helene Schillenger, caught at someone’s birthday party. The photo was a little overexposed, a little too close, but she was smiling and happy. It was heartbreaking. But then again, Sheila’s hard faced mug shot photo was heartbreaking too, simply because they were alive when these photos were taken, and now they weren’t. He also managed to identify Jessica, Jessica Lee Pothier, from a mug shot where she looked so wasted he had no idea how she was standing for the camera.

Clay had come into the kitchen to check on them at one point, and then offered them drinks, but Varner declined. Gryphon did too, but only because he thought his kidneys were about to burst from the sheer amount of tea he had in him.

As soon as he pulled out Rita’s file and handed it to Varner, he told him, “I’m not sure she’s like the other river victims. Her last recollection is driving alone in her car and being punched in the head.”

Varner raised a pale eyebrow at that. They were so perfectly arched, you’d think he had them plucked. “Punched while driving alone?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but sometimes victims get … scrambled. They’re not sure how they died, usually if it’s sudden or involves a head injury.”

“She’s sure there was no one in the car?”

“As she could be. She didn’t think she crashed either.”

Varner frowned and pondered that as he glanced at their files. As soon as he added Jessica to the pile - and she was the last one; he’d only identified the three of them - Varner said, “I came up from California. I used to work East L.A., and people who got shot but didn’t realize it - which was baffling to me as a rookie, but now I know better - sometimes described that they felt like they were punched or shoved. Could Rita Schillenger have been shot?”

East L.A.? Ray snorted. He don’t look like no chollo to me.

Gryphon hated to admit it, but as soon as he said that, he realized that felt right. After all, he’d been shot several times - well, okay, former passengers of his had been - and he knew how it felt. Sometimes it was a pain beyond describing, sometimes it was a numbness followed by odd type of paralysis or refusal of parts of your body to move, and sometimes it was more like a blunt pain, a punch or a kick.

Hey, I was shot in the fucking face! Ray exclaimed. I don’t remember nothin’! One second I was talkin’ to that fucker, and then - blammo! It was light, and then nada.

And sometimes it was absolutely nothing.

“Yes, I think that’s it,” he told the deputy chief. “I think she was shot in the head while driving. That would explain why she can’t remember a damn thing.” But as he shoved over the files of the women he didn’t identify, he added, “But that doesn’t fit the M.O. of the river killer. I mean, he did shoot them, but never from a distance. He shot them up close, where he could watch and control the environment.”

Varner’s hands froze on the file folders as he gathered them up. Gryphon noticed he was wearing a gold band with a small ruby on it, but it wasn’t a wedding ring, as he wasn’t wearing it on the right finger. He looked up to find Varner staring at him in a strange way. “Why do you say that, Gryphon? What do you mean he shoots them?”

“Because he does. He shoots them, and then he carves up their bodies in an abandoned store.”

That hollow eyed stare kept up for several more seconds, then he slumped in his chair with a sigh, like he was deflating. He quickly sat up straight again, though. “How much do you know? You need to tell me all of it, and you need to tell me now.”

So Gryphon told him of his “memory” (well, it wasn’t exactly a dream), of the white van and the gunshot, the shell casing rolling down the parking lot, the abandoned store where he had set up tarps to catch the blood. “He’s not a butcher - well, not right now, at any rate - but he knows how to cut up bodies. He knows what he’s doing.”

“But you don’t know what he looks like?” Varner prompted.

“Not yet. But I’d know him if I saw him. Hell, he probably has several ghosts with him that he doesn’t even know about - they’d point him out.”

Varner went into his messenger bag again, and pulled out a piece of paper. He showed it to him. “It isn’t him, is it?”

He looked at the two side by side mug shots of a rather non-descript middle aged man with a significant bald spot, his eyes looking at the viewer as though from the bottom of a well. Gryphon shook his head. “No, not him.”

“I thought not,” Varner admitted, putting the picture back in the bag. He added the files as well.

“Who is it?”

“Clifford Wax.”

“Ah, O’Leary’s obsession.” He paused a moment, and then felt like an idiot, as it all fell together in his head. “You told him about me, didn’t you? O’Leary.”

Varner grimaced as he zipped up the bag, avoiding his gaze. “Yeah, well … sorry about that. I didn’t think he’d actually seek you out.”

“So you are friends?”

“Fuck no. I mean, he’s a decent cop, an okay guy, we just don’t get along so well. Basically, he’s an old fashioned cop, and he thinks I’m too much of a new fashioned one.”

Old fashioned cop? Sylvio repeated skeptically. Is that some kind of euphemism for a cop who beats up on black guys whenever he gets the chance?

I think new fashioned cop is code for fag, Ray said.

“He doesn’t know you’re here.”

Varner snickered. “Why would he? He’s retired; we don’t work together anymore.”

“Why did he retire?”

Varner sighed explosively before he stood up, slinging his bag over his shoulder. “You should probably ask him.”

“I’d rather hear it from someone who won’t lie to me.”

That made the cop pause, hand on the back of his chair. Gryphon watched a muscle in Varner’s jaw twitch as his eyes roamed the sparse kitchen, looking for an escape. Finally, he said, “I think he was burned out. It happens a lot.”

“It had nothing to do with Jeff McCandless?”

Varner stiffened as if he’d just received a cattle prod to the ass, and he looked at him like he had done it, more surprised than wounded. “How do you - did he tell you about that?”

“Not really. He told me a story that wasn’t completely true. Jeff told me not to trust him.”

He seemed nonplussed. “You’ve talked to Jeff?”

“He appears periodically beside O’Leary. He doesn’t know, but I have a sense he wants Cal to admit something; he wants me to get him to confess.”

“To what?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. But my guess is Cal’s lying about how he died.”

Varner swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing almost spasmodically in his throat. “I … there were some questions about that raid that have never been resolved.”

“Do you think he was lying about what happened?”

For a moment, Varner avoided his gaze completely. But finally his dark eyes met his, and he nodded faintly. “I think the entire strike team was lying. They fucked up royal, but they held together so no one took a fall for it. The blue code. The inquest was a waste of time and money, but that’s okay, no one cared. A bunch of junkies get shot up - who gives a fuck? Dead cops happen.”

Bitter much? Hugh noted.

“Once I get the truth, I’ll let you know.”

He nodded, but didn’t seem completely mollified. Maybe because the truth didn’t matter anymore - there was nothing to be done. No one much cared anymore, besides the dead.

Gryphon stood, feeling like the kitchen chair had made his ass permanently numb, and asked, “Do you know of any abandoned stores around here?”

He snorted somewhat derisively. “Are you kidding? Ever since Wal-Mart moved into the state, there’s been a ton of them. Shut down, boarded up, burned down for insurance money.”

“Would you have time to take me out to some of them tonight?”

Kid, what are you doing? Ruby asked.

Varner looked just as surprised as most of his passengers felt. “Sure, yeah. Are you up for that? You look a little pale.”

“I’m fine, just tired. I just need to hit the head, then I’ll be ready to go.”

“Sure. I’ll be in my car.”

Gryphon went up to his bathroom - he could have used Clay’s downstairs one, but he felt funny about it - and after he drained his poor, taxed bladder, Hugh asked, What the fuck do you think you’re doing? And don’t you dare tell me washing your hands.

Gryphon looked at himself in the mirror over the sink. It seemed to him like his own eyes were sinking deep into the back of his head, but that could have simply been his imagination. “This guy is still out there killing. If I can find the spot where he cuts up the bodies, there might be enough forensic evidence there for the cops to find this guy and close the case. Women will stop dying, and I’ll be happy. Maybe I won’t dream of creepy things like that anymore.”

You already put an angry ghost kid to bed today, Hugh said. Not to mention found yourself in a car accident. Take a break. If you’re itching to get out of here, just call Lilly.

He dried his hands on the first towel he grabbed from the rack, and wondered if he should wash them sometime. Clay seemed to do all the laundry around here, and that was unfair. “Who’s Lilly?”

The paramedic. You know, we got her number?

Gryphon wanted to laugh, but couldn’t quite. He searched his coat pocket and found some caffeinated gum, a piece of which he popped into his mouth. Eventually the taste of peppermint would give way to the bitter, disgusting taste of caffeine, but he could use the jolt. “You got her number, Hugh. It never would have occurred to me to hit on a woman while she was doing her job.”

She was cute, Hugh said, as if that explained everything.

The Asian girls are usually cute, Ray said.

Shut up, you fucking pig, Ruby snapped.

It was probably a good thing for Ray that his passengers couldn’t vote fellow passengers out of him, or Ray would have been booted out of him a long time ago.

He told Clay he was going out with Varner to look at some abandoned stores, and Clay was giving him that look, that look that seemed to suggest he was a crazy person with a loaded semi-automatic handgun and a ticking time bomb. He told him he’d be fine, that he felt he had to do this, but he didn’t know if Clay actually believed him or not.

He went out and got into the passenger seat of Varner’s car, secretly hoping that he was a better driver than O’Leary, even though the accident really hadn’t been his fault. The car interior was neat, with almond colored leather interior and a fruit scented Yankee Candle air freshener making things smell like a farmer’s market. At least it was better than those damn pine trees; the smell of those made him sick.

Varner was happy to be silent, so Gryphon just closed his eyes and leaned back in the soft seat, resting his eyes, until they came to the first location. It was a closed down drugstore, with plywood over the windows, but it was absolutely not what he had seen.

The same was true of the next two locations, although one was a grocery store that almost looked promising in its general shape, but the parking lot was wrong. It was starting to get late, late enough that Varner had to stifle a yawn, and Gryphon was going to tell him it was okay, this could wait, until he saw the hulking shadow of a building on a run down street.

There was the dive bar, the one he’d been sitting in front of when he heard the shooting in the van. It too was shut down, but that didn’t really matter.

“This is it,” Gryphon said, pointing towards the silhouette of the store. There were streetlights in the parking lot, but all but one of them had been broken out, and the one that was working flickered constantly, like it had a short.

Varner swung the car into the cracked, sloping lot, and drove very carefully, as there was a lot of trash and various detritus scattered about the lot. Broken glass glittered like diamonds, and char marks from fireworks and impromptu bonfires made the asphalt look diseased. “This is the old Packer’s,” he said. “It’s been closed down since the parent company went bankrupt three years ago. I was always kinda surprised it didn’t get accidentally burned down.”

“They can’t sell the land?”

He grunted in a smothered, sarcastic laugh. “They can’t sell shit down here besides eight balls and ass. Everything from West 224th to Aspen Boulevard has been bled pretty much dry. It’s not so much a depressed area as a bludgeoned one.”

“So there wouldn’t be any witnesses willing to report anything suspicious,” Gryphon said, thinking aloud.

“Oh sure, the guy buying a vial of crack is gonna report a gunshot,” Varner agreed bleakly. He reached across to the glove compartment, where he took out a heavy LED flashlight, and a smaller MagLite, which he offered to him. Gryphon initially shook his head, but Varner continued holding it out, so he reluctantly took it. As soon as he got out of the car, he spit out his gum on the blacktop, because it was starting to taste disgusting and it wasn’t going to dirty up the parking lot much more than it already was.

Varner turned on his flashlight and started to sweep the surprisingly bright blue-white beam along the ground. “You said in your vision you saw a shell casing roll down?”

“It wasn’t a vision,” he argued, but in all honesty he had no idea what the fuck it had been; vision was as good a word for it as any. “But yeah.”

He joined Varner at the bottom of the sloped parking lot, where litter had gathered in rather large amounts. There were lots of fast food detritus, mostly from McDonalds, and roaches scurried as they kicked the trash and shone lights on it. There were the shattered remains of beer bottles and crushed cans, giving the trash a yeasty scent, shattered crack vials and pipes, used condoms, used syringes tinged with blood, even the remains of an exploded sports drink bottle. But after a minute, Varner muttered, “Son of a bitch.”

Gryphon joined him as he crouched down and pulled a pen out of his pocket, sifting through litter until Gryphon saw the glint of metal. Using the pen, Varner expertly picked up a hollow shell casing. They exchanged a look of surprise, as Gryphon didn’t honestly think the casing would still be at the scene. Of course it could be a different casing entirely, but that would be for the cops to figure out.

Varner gently put the casing back down and once he stood up, kicked a Big Mac wrapper over it to hide it. “You definitely need to work for us,” he said, turning towards the store.

“Somehow I don’t see any police department wanting to justify the expense of me,” Gryphon replied, following him up the lot towards the abandoned store.

“Yeah, well, maybe I can find a way to sneak you on the payroll. I honestly think you’ve just broken this case, Gryph.”

“Don’t count your eggs yet, or whatever the fuck that expression is. That could be anybody’s shell casing.”

“But this is the store, right?”

‘Yes, it is.” Even the bloated letters from the gang tag graffiti on the plywood nailed over the broken main window was precisely the same as he saw it in his “vision“. They approached a front entrance that was not only chained with heavy cables but boarded up, and Gryphon surprised himself by blurting out, “He goes in a back way, so nobody driving by on the street can see him.” Since when did he know that?

But Varner just nodded and started around the side, Gryphon following him like an obedient dog. Somewhere in the middle distance, a car alarm was whooping and hollering into an indifferent night, and Gryphon couldn’t quite shake the scent of stale beer out of his nose.

The back lit up in trails, caused by Varner’s super bright flashlight beam. It struck him that he would have known he was a cop simply by that flashlight - cops always wanted to see what was going on, and it was a weapon as much as it was a tool of illumination. He could blind someone with the light, or simply clip them on the head with the butt end, but either way it gave him an immediate advantage.

There was a loading access door, wide enough to unload palettes of goods into, but because it was a metal door it wasn’t boarded up; there was simply a very heavy industrial padlock and chain on the door. But oddly enough, the chain and lock looked newer than anything else here.

Varner grabbed the chain and tested it by pulling, but it was solid. “Think he picks the lock?”

“He has a key,” a woman’s voice said, and Gryphon turned to see a young Hispanic woman standing on the loading riser with them. She was wearing a half shirt and miniskirt, inappropriate for this time of night, but then Gryphon noticed the neat hole in the middle of her forehead and the blood trickling down to bifurcate her face. Her ink black eyes settled on him, and told him crossly, “It was about time you pendejos got here.”

“You’re into the S&M scene?”

“Naw, I just have a regular who pays me to do nothing but tie him up and beat the shit out of him. Seriously! I’ve never fucked the guy; he just wants me to beat and humiliate him. He travels a lot, and he calls me whenever he’s in town. I go to his hotel room, truss him up like a turkey, and smack him around while calling him a dirty cocksucker.” He grabbed his keys off the kitchen counter, along with his cell phone. “You know how weird it is to show up in the lobby of a Best Western or a Sheraton - someplace sedate and normal like that - with a backpack full of whips and restraints? He’s married too; he wears a wedding ring. Sometimes when the session’s over and I’m untying him, he tells me about his wife and kids, and about somebody at his church he really likes - he’s a big time Catholic, apparently. Big shock, huh? Anyways, he always says his wife wouldn’t understand - isn’t that always the way? I don’t know how breeder marriages ever work since the wife never seems to understand.” He paused briefly on his way out the door. “I think he’s an airplane pilot. I’ve seen the cap in his luggage.”

Roan frowned. What a frightening thought. Then again, a pilot into pain probably wouldn’t fear a terrorist pistol whipping him - he’d probably look forward to it. It’d be like a little bonus.

Roan thought about taking his own car and following him to the club, but Holden smirked and asked him what he was afraid of, making him feeling a bit stupid. Was he actually afraid of being alone in a car with Holden? Why? So he got into Holden’s car, a sleek black Mitsubishi Eclipse with some minor body damage on the side, although the engine purred in a way that would have pleased Paris.

They were quiet for a while, the local college radio station filling the void, but after a while the silence became awkward, almost vaguely hostile. Roan finally asked, “What kind of web thing are you involved in with an S&M guy?”

Holden’s almost ubiquitous smirk reappeared. “Soft core porn.”

“Of course.” Why had he bothered to ask?

“But we’re also trying to get this charity going.”

Was this the set up to a joke? “What kind of charity?”

“To help out homeless gay kids. It’s a growing problem, although you’d never know it through the mainstream media. And the majority of these kids aren’t white, so that just makes it more of an invisible problem somehow. But it’s gettin’ really bad out there.”

He was actually serious. This was weird. “I had no idea you cared about things like that.”

He gave him a sidelong glance. “What, ‘cause I’m a whore I’m a heartless bastard?”

“No. It’s just it seems … noble. And you’ve never struck me as the noble type.”

That made him snort a laugh. “’Cause I ain’t, Officer Roan. But even I know I can’t be a whore forever, and Jesus fucking Christ I hate seeing fifteen year olds out on the boulevard. They should be in school or skateboarding or some shit; they shouldn’t be peddlin’ their ass. I mean, I was seventeen when I started and I made a deliberate choice; I could have done other things, other avenues were open to me, but I had a game plan and I knew what I was doing. I was not an innocent, and while I was doing it to survive, I wasn’t gonna starve if I didn’t do it for a night or two. I always knew the game, I knew the risks and the price. These kids are too fucking young, and they end up too fucking dead way too soon.”

Normally Roan wouldn’t buy that Holden was so sophisticated that he knew even at seventeen what prostituting himself was going to be about, but in his case he could almost believe it. It wasn’t because he graduated high school at sixteen, although he did, and had just started college at seventeen before dropping out due to the fallout over his sexuality with his parents, although the fact that he went to college at all, however briefly, was more then most hustlers in his age range could say. No, it was simply because of his personality - Holden did seem to be the perfect manipulator. He was always thinking of how something could benefit him the most - he never went into anything if there wasn’t more in it for him than anyone else. It was why Roan couldn’t completely trust him. Oh sure, he wanted him to find his long lost sister, but he didn’t believe that was all there was to it. He was up to something, he just wasn’t sure what yet.

Holden drove them to the warehouse district, which seemed kind of odd, but it turned out the Dungeon was in a warehouse. It was just a normal looking tin sided affair, a squat rectangle amongst a sea of other rectangles, but up close you could feel music starting to throb through the walls. The door was unmarked. Holden just opened it and walked right into what appeared to be a small foyer lit by a red light bulb, showing a single stool, a heavy black leather apron (?) hanging down over the inner doorway, and a rather large man sitting on the stool. He was, in gay parlance, a bear - well over two hundred pounds, with a massive chest that was so thick with dark curly hair he could have actually looked like he was wearing a shirt from a distance. His chest was crisscrossed with a leather harness, and he wore black leather chaps, black leather boots, a black leather cap and absolutely nothing else. He had a handlebar style black moustache that hid his upper lip in its entirety. “Hey, Fox, long time no see,” the man said, in a painfully scratchy voice. Did he have a sore throat, or did he just always talk like that?

“Rocky here, Yogi?”

“Yeah, I think he’s in the break room.”

Yogi?

“Great, thanks.” Yogi got off his stool - all six five of him - and stood aside so Holden could go through the leather curtain. Yogi eyed him warily as he followed, but he didn’t say a word; being with Fox was enough to get you a free pass.

The club wasn’t as noisy as he feared, although Roan couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult playing anywhere. It was lit in even more red lights with just an occasionally pale white one, leaving the entire space cloaked in bloody shadows. There was a conventional style bar and leather stools off to one side, while what may have been a small dance floor - currently empty - led off to four closed doors and a single beaded curtain. He was afraid to know what was going on behind those doors. “So this is an active sex club?” Roan asked him. An S&M club was one thing, but sex clubs, gay or straight, were illegal. No wonder the club wasn’t marked in any way.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Holden replied, as Roan could just make out the sounds of what sounded like whips barely audible under the music. The place smelled like sweat and booze and wet leather and sex, with just a hint of blood. In other words, it could have really used some air freshener.

“Is that guy out front actually nicknamed Yogi Bear?”

“Yep. Well it’s perfect for him, don’t you think?” Holden stepped up to the bar, and said, “Troy, is Rocky accepting visitors or not?”

“I’m not sure,” Troy replied. Troy was the most aggressively androgynous person Roan had ever seen. He - she? - was bald, but fine boned and very pale, wearing a tight leather vest that could have concealed small breasts (or not), and was wearing a heavy grey utility kilt with Doc Martens, while he/she had a chain connecting his/her earring to his/her nose ring, and tattooed on the back of his/her perfectly rounded head was a tiny rose. The eyes were small and pale blue, but the lashes were long … although not so long that you’d think female. He/she also wore a thick spiked dog collar around his/her neck, right where an Adam’s apple would be, if he/she had one. The voice, which was light and slightly feminine, still could have gone either way. Damn it! This was going to bug him.

“Fine,” Holden sighed, sitting on one of the stools. “Can I have a gin and tonic?”

That made Roan stare at him. “You drink gin and tonics?”

“Yes. So? What’ll you have?”

“Nothing thanks, I’m good.”

Holden just smirked at him again. “I bet you are.”

He rolled his eyes as he took the stool next to him. “Make that the last cheap innuendo, all right?”

He raised an eyebrow at him. “Who said it was innuendo? Boy, do you have a filthy mind.”

He shook his head and looked around. You’d have thought they were all alone here, save for the gender neutral bartender and a woman down at the opposite end of the bar, a hard faced brunette dressed in black vinyl, with a scrawny guy on a leash. He was on all fours, drinking out of a dog bowl by her feet. He liked to think of himself as open minded, but exactly how was that erotic? Wouldn’t that collar chafe?

The music hit a dead spot just as there was a rather loud noise - whip lash? - from the back, followed by a yelp that was part pain and part pleasure. Just the noise of the hit made him start, and he rubbed his nose, covering his face in an attempt to hide the discomfort. The faint smell of blood was doing him no favors either. “You okay?” Holden wondered.

“Can we just find this guy and go? I really don’t want to stay here longer than I have to.”

Holden studied him for a moment, then got wide eyed. “Oh shit! I knew those scars were too old to be from your cop days.”

Roan glared at him, afraid he’d already guessed and loathing him for it. “What? What the hell does that mean?”

Holden grimaced as he slid off the stool. “You got knocked around as a kid, right? Man, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t tryin’ to be insensitive. I’ll just barge back there and see if I can get Rocky out for a few minutes.”

“That’s not - that has nothing to do with anything,” he protested. “It’s the smell of blood. It’s putting me on edge.”

Holden’s look turned from worried to puzzled. “Blood? What are you talking about? I don’t smell blood.”

“I’m infected, remember? I smell the slightest traces of blood.” And it always disturbed the beast within him; he could almost feel it pacing, not sure if it wanted to attack or feed. Or both.

“Weird,” Holden said. “I’ll be back as soon as possible.” He disappeared behind the beaded curtain, which clacked like dry bones, and Roan rubbed his eyes, once again avoiding his surroundings.

Was that it? Was he so “damaged” by his childhood that he couldn’t stand this? It seemed too glib, too simple an explanation for what was almost knee jerk revulsion. He liked to think, as a gay man, he simply couldn’t be uptight, but that was as much a bullshit stereotype as the limp wrested queen. He’d met gay guys so fucking uptight he had no idea how they could stand themselves. God knew he couldn’t.

He was trying to figure out what his problem was - maybe it was just the blood - when a woman’s voice asked, “Hey honey, you okay?”

He looked over as she took the stool on his left. She was an overweight woman, but had managed to work that into a certain voluptuousness that was appealing, even though she was dressed in a black leather corset and what looked like leather shorts, although her thigh high black leather boots made it hard to determine that. She was showing off an impressive amount of cleavage, as well as a tiny red heart tattoo on her left breast that almost appeared to be a mole, and she had her artificially red hair tied back in a high, tight ponytail. She also wore a leather eye mask, making him think bizarrely of Zorro, and her long fingernails were painted the same wine bright color as her lips. She’d put her riding crop on the bar, shoved to the side. “I’m fine, thank you.”

She grinned at him, her eyes bright behind her mask. “You’re a newbie.”

“I’m just here to talk to Rocky. I’m not staying. I’m not … into this.”

“That’s okay. It takes all kinds.” She signaled for Troy, and said, “Set me and my shy friend here up with Sweet Sidecars.”

“Thank you, but -”

“Don’t refuse a drink, that’s rude,” she chided. She then held out her hand, and said, “Bellatrix.”

Oh, that certainly wasn’t a fake name. “Roan.” He shook her hand, which was so dry he suspected it was powdered.

“Nice. Is that a reference to your hair color? That’s a great color. Where’d you get it done?”

“Nowhere. It’s my natural color.”

“Cool. So, if I may be so nosy, why are you seeing Rocket J. Squirrel?”

He looked at her in surprise. Oh please, let her be kidding. “That isn’t his actual nickname, is it?”

“Oh yeah. Although since he got his teeth fixed, it doesn’t seem so appropriate anymore.”

Holy shit, this place was an S&M cartoon zoo. “Unbelievable. Well, I’m here to talk to him about a guy who was thrown out of the club a week or so ago.”

“Oh, you mean that pig faced bastard who blackened Velvet’s eyes?” Troy brought their drinks over, and Bellatrix gave her a polite nod as she did so.

“You saw him?”

She made a noise that was probably a small, dark laugh. “I clipped that fucker in the ear with the handle of my crop to get him off of her. I heard her scream and I knew it was wrong - I was the first one in. He was just lucky I didn’t have my steel tipped bullwhip with me. That thing cuts aluminum siding.”

To avoid commenting on that, he took a sip of his drink. He’d never had a sidecar before, but it wasn’t bad considering he’d braced himself for the worst. He could tell it had some powerful alcohol in it, though. “Why do you call him a pig faced bastard?”

“’Cause he looked like a pig. I mean, his eyes were small and too close together, which I never trust, and his nose seemed kinda … flat. Well, no, not flat, just … weird.” To illustrate, she pushed back the tip of her own nose with her finger, making her nostrils flare.

“Pug nose?”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Can you describe him?”

She considered that a moment, taking a swig of her own drink. She belted it down like she had a bus to catch. “I guess so. He was about five nine, two hundred pounds, brown brush cut that made his ears stick out, probably in his mid-thirties. He must love The Gap.” She then tilted her head at him curiously, making her long rope of red hair swing to one side. “Why do you want to know?”

He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out one of his business cards. “I’m a private investigator, I’m looking for this man as a possible suspect in some beatings of some hustlers on the boulevard.”

She took his card with a big smile. “A private eye? Oh cool! Just like in the movies. Ever shoot a guy?”

“Not as a private investigator. Do you think you’d recognize this man if you saw him again?”

“Absolutely.” After reading his card, she tucked it into her cleavage. “Shouldn’t this be a police matter?”

“I’m working with the police. The victims have been unwilling to talk, so they don’t have much to go on.”

She reached into the top of her leather boot, and pulled out her own business card, which she handed to him. It had her name and number on it in thick black font, with a tiny drawing of a cartoon dominatrix with a whip and devil horns drawn on the side. “Oh wait a minute,” she said, plucking the card out of his hand. “Troy, you gotta pen?”

The androgynous bartender reached under the bar and tossed Bellatrix a Bic, which she grabbed before it hit her. She then scribbled a new phone number on the back. “This is my home number,” she said, giving him the card back. “Don’t share it with anyone.”

“Scouts honor,” he promised.

“You can call me if you need me to identify the guy. I’ll bring my bullwhip and peel him like a grape.” She pushed her mask up to her forehead, revealing a friendly, almost maternal face, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Name’s Fiona.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said, tucking her card in his inner jacket pocket.

As she secured her mask back over her eyes, she said, “Or you could call me for whatever. It might be fun to hang out some time.”

“I’m sorry, I’m gay.”

“Oh sweetie, I know. You came in with Fox. Also, this entire time you haven’t once looked at my tits.”

He smirked. “That is a giveaway, isn’t it?”

“With me, oh hell yeah,” she said, pulling up the top of her corset and making her ample cleavage shift ever so slightly. “I’m lucky to get three seconds of eye contact from straight men.”

Feeling he should say something, he said, “Well, they’re very nice.” Oh god, could he possibly be more gay? Maybe if he was in full drag and waving a rainbow colored dildo around.

She looked down at her own boobs, and said, “Thank you. That means a lot coming from you. Straight guys just like boobs - all boobs are good with them.”

“Except for man boobs.”

That made her laugh. “Okay, yeah, nobody likes those.”

“Is there any way Velvet would speak to me?”

The dominatrix mulled that over as she tapped her empty glass on the bar, signaling for another sidecar. “You know, she probably should. She’s not here tonight - she hasn’t been back since then; it really freaked her out - but I can call her. Troy, can I have my purse?”

The bartender reached under the bar, and produced a brown suede bag that sagged like it was heavy. She/he dropped it on the bar with a thunk and a rattle, suggesting she was carrying around a lot of spare change … or maybe just chains. Fiona unzipped it and groped through it for a moment before pulling out a Motorola and flipping it open.

Holden wasn’t back yet, but he didn’t much care. Who knew a friendly professional dominatrix would give him a better lead?

Of course the room was an illusion. In the real world it was as old and desolate as the rest of the house, but as he crossed the threshold, he crossed into someone else’s world. Miraculously, sunlight was pouring through the window, revealing a tidy room with a small, narrow bed in a black metal frame, the covers pulled so tightly across the mattress they looked stapled on. The walls were covered with oatmeal colored wallpaper with a tiny pattern that turned out to be dainty sprigs of violets between thin, pale ribbons that looked like faded stripes from a few feet back. There was a cedar chest at the foot of the bed with several metal toy soldiers lined up across the top, as shiny and clean as if they were new, and a small desk and shelf combination on the far side of the room that also looked new, but whose style betrayed it as astonishingly old. Gryphon got a sense that his target was here, but still hiding from him.

“I don’t want to fight with you, I’m here to help you,” he said, looking around. Under the bed? No, it was too easy to see. There was a wardrobe on the other side of the door, and he figured they were hiding in there.

Please don’t open the closet door, Ray said. That’s when the killer jumps out and puts an axe through your forehead.

There ain’t no killer I can’t kill first, Ruby snapped.

“There’s no killer,” Gryphon replied, exasperated. “Just an angry poltergeist. What the fuck do you think you guys are?”

I wasn’t angry, Mr. Aronofsky protested.

Gryphon opened the door to the wardrobe, which was full of coats and suits, all old yet new, and remarkably small. He was pretty sure he saw someone hiding in the far corner. “Please come out so we can talk like civilized people.”

“This is my house,” a small, angry voice said. “Get out.”

It’s a kid?! Ray exclaimed. How can a fucking kid do so much damage?

I take it you’ve never had children, Mr. Aronofsky noted wryly.

“Son, it’s not your house anymore,” Gryphon told him, not unkindly. “It hasn’t been your house for a very long time. Please come out and I’ll explain it to you.”

“You’re a liar! It is my house! Mummy and Daddy will be back soon!”

“No they won’t. They’re dead - just like you.”

Finally the boy climbed out of the wardrobe. He was wearing long sleeved pajamas, so pale blue they were technically white. He had short brown hair and a round, wan face, with small blue eyes radiating nothing but the type of unbridled fury that kids actually were very good at. “They are not dead! You’re a liar! I’m not dead, I’m here! Where’s Mummy?!”

Gryphon crouched down to be more at eye level with the ghost. How old was it when he died, eight? He knew just by looking at him that his name was Phillip Chapman, and his death was due to prolonged illness, which might explain why his pajamas looked so baggy and he seemed so ashen. Ghosts weren’t really white, not unless their deaths involved it somehow (illness, wasting, blood loss). “Phillip, what’s the last thing you remember? When your Mummy and Daddy were here? Think hard.”

He pouted, his bottom lip jutting out, but he did comply with his request. His brow scrunched in thought, and he looked away, at his neatly lined up toy soldiers. “I was sick. I couldn’t get up and play.”

“And then what happened?”

His scowled deepened. “I … I woke up and I was … fine. But I was alone.”

“You woke up dead.”

His look was both evil and confused. “You can’t wake up dead. When you’re dead you can’t wake up at all.”

“Normally, yes. But sometimes, for reasons I can’t even begin to fathom, people who honestly can’t conceive of their own death remain here. Do you wonder why your parents are gone? Do you wonder why there’s strangers constantly coming in and out of your home? It’s because time has moved on even though you haven’t. Your parents are gone and they’re not coming back, because they can’t. It’s time for you to go too, Phillip.”

Phillip squinted his eyes angrily, but they were starting to water. “You’re lying!”

He sighed. “Why do you think I can see you and talk to you? Why do you think others couldn’t?”

He bit his lower lip and looked around the room as if appealing for help. “You’re saying you’re dead?”

“No, not quite, but all my friends are.” He reached out to touch Phillip on an impulse, belatedly remembering he was dead and he couldn’t, but as he touched his shoulder he did feel … something. Not quite a physical body, but something cold and semi-solid that didn’t give at slight pressure, but felt like it would if he pressed. “I’m sorry, I really am, but you can’t stay here anymore.”

Gryphon had no idea why Phillip believed him, but he did, and tears started streaming down his cheeks. It was that weird kind of understanding that existed between two things that equally shouldn’t have existed but did anyways. Somehow they lived in the world with others but still lived apart - they were monsters who hid in plain sight, mainly because no one wanted to see them. But they could still make their presence known; they could destroy and disrupt and turn their little pocket of reality upside down.

“Where will I go?” he sobbed, his voice breaking.

“I don’t know.”

“Will my parents be there?”

“I don’t know.”

He found the time to be pissed off in spite of still crying, and Gryphon felt that was fair enough. “What do you know?”

“You won’t be lonely anymore.” It was really the only thing he could offer him. He could have made up stories about heaven or even reincarnation, but at the end of the day, he didn’t know anything. Heaven just felt wrong, and while reincarnation made more sense - energy not being destroyed and whatnot, and what were ghosts but energy, as his interruptions of electronic equipment proved - it didn’t feel any more right. The only thing that felt right was an ending, a peacefulness where you simply stopped. Stopping wasn’t so bad, especially if you’d gone on too long.

“How do we go?”

Gryphon slid his hand down the boy’s tiny, semi-corporeal arm. “Just take my hand, and we’ll walk out the door.”

The boy seemed doubtful, but Gryphon could sense his exhaustion. He’d been haunting this place for what, seventy years? More? And with such constant rage. Probably only the young could keep up with that kind of energy output.

Phillip took his hand, though, a semi-solid, cold feeling, but there was no need to even make an attempt to walk out the door, as quite suddenly Phillip disappeared and Gryphon felt something like a cold wind pass through him, making him drop to all fours on the floor. It wasn’t like one of his passengers leaving him, but he felt a minor variation of it, a sense of leaving.

He wasn’t in the daylight room anymore, with its toy soldiers and fancy wallpaper, but a bare, dusty room with black specks of mouse droppings scattered about like fallen commas. He was alone in the house, and the window let in only early evening gloom. That went much easier than I thought, Hugh said.

“He’s a kid who must have seen nearly a century of disjointed weirdness pass him by. No matter how much he denied it, I think he suspected he was dead. He just needed someone to tell him.” He stood up, feeling momentarily woozy, and then left the bedroom, sneezing the inhaled dust.

By the time he was downstairs, Clay and Shane were in the front doorway, just shutting down their ghost hunting equipment. “Who was it?” Shane asked first.

“An eight year old boy named Phillip Chapman. He died of either flu or maybe tuberculosis, some illness that made him malinger, sapped his strength and made it progressively harder to breathe. I have a feeling he died approximately around 1935 - ish.”

They both just stared at him in that mock deadpan way they always did when he surprised them. They’d been at this long enough that they had all developed visual cues. Clay and Shane exchanged a look, then Clay admitted, “He wasn’t on our shortlist. Or long list. He wasn’t on the list at all.”

He shrugged as he reached the bottom of the stairs, almost knocking over the bell jar on the last step. “I wasn’t expecting a kid either. But we never do.”

“It didn’t take you too long,” Shane prompted, clearly wanting to hear a gory story.

Gryphon couldn’t indulge him, even if he wanted to. “He was ready to go. He just didn’t know how.”

They headed back out to the van, Shane and Clay discussing the buttload of money they’d get for “cleaning” this place up, and to celebrate they all stopped at this Vietnamese restaurant they all liked for dinner. Gryphon was starving, probably because he’d used - well, his passengers used - a lot of psychokinesis today, and while Clay and Shane were happy he was eating (they both thought he was too skinny), even they looked at him funny when he ordered a second dish of green curry and a third bubble tea.

By the time Shane drove him and Clay back home, it was full on night, stars in the sky fighting to be seen through an uneven layer of wispy clouds, but as they drove up, they saw a red sedan parked in the driveway. “Someone you know?” Shane asked, as a man got of the car and gave them a friendly wave.

“No,” Clay replied, sounding confused. “Gryph, you know this guy?”

Gryphon looked over the back of the seat, and saw the guy wasn’t very tall - five eight, tops - and fairly lean, with a boyish face and a neatly trimmed head of dirty blond hair. He was wearing dark jeans, a Henley style olive green top, and a brown J. Crew jacket, average clothes, but Ruby said, Oink oink, I smell bacon.

I swear to god you say that about every other guy, Ray complained.

I do not - I only say it about the cops. And this guy’s one.

“No, I can’t say I do,” Gryphon told them, as Shane brought the van to a stop. Clay got out, and asked, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, you surely can,” the man said, in a friendly, laid back drawl. “I’m Deputy Police Chief Jason Varner, and I’m looking for Gryphon Ashmore.”

“Oh shit,” Gryphon muttered, crawling to the van’s back door.

Told ya, Ruby said.

How the hell do you develop a sixth sense about cops? Sylvio asked.

Be a hooker long enough, and you can tell just by the way they carry themselves, she replied.

“What for?” Clay asked defensively.

“It’s about the bodies he found near the river.”

Gryphon peered around the back of the van. “You a friend of O’Leary’s?”

The cop grimaced in a way that suggested he was trying to hide an eviler expression. “We’re acquaintances.” Only now did Gryphon see that the black shadow on the hood of his car was a soft sided messenger bag.

“Should we call our lawyer?” Clay asked, continuing to be vaguely hostile.

Varner shook his head, and gestured at his wardrobe. “I’m here unofficially. Gryphon is not in trouble. I just want to talk.”

Both Shane and Clay looked at him, awaiting either confirmation or the order to send him away. In the odd dynamic of their business relationship, both of the guys were very protective of him. Maybe because he was the cornerstone of their entire business, or maybe because he was younger than the both of them and possibly unstable, maybe all of the above. I can fuck this guy up. Ruby said.

He’s kinda cute, Hugh said.

Oh for fuck’s sake, you’d find a hole in the wall cute! Taneesha snapped.

“Fine, we can talk,” Gryphon finally said. “Clay, can we use your kitchen?”

Clay gave him a look that clearly communicated his displeasure with all of this, but after a frown he said, “Yeah, sure.”

Varner gave them a tight, professional smile, and grabbed the messenger bag off his car. Gryphon led the way inside, followed by the Deputy Chief, who looked no older up close, and had a faint whiff of cologne about him. It wasn’t obnoxious, though, which was a point in his favor. “Aren’t you a bit young to be the Deputy Chief of anything?”

He smirked painfully. “You know how many times I’ve been asked that? Even by other cops. It’s sad.”

They took seats at the small kitchen table, and Varner zipped open his messenger bag. “I know you’re dying to know why I’m here, so I’ll just get right to it, shall I? I know O’Leary said you spotted body parts by the river, but I also know that’s complete bullshit. Those teeth that were initially turned up were only found by a dog; they weren’t visually apparent to anyone. They were buried in mud.”

“I thought you weren’t here to arrest me.”

“I’m not. I’m here to ask for your help.” He pulled a thick sheaf of files out of the bag and plopped them on the table.

What the fuck is this? Ruby asked.

“I don’t understand.”

He sighed wearily, sorting through the files. “I know about you, Gryphon. May I call you Gryphon? I’ve read up on the Stanhope incident, and I know there’s more than you simply trashing an interrogation room without lifting a finger. You identified a cause of death for all of the children with more accuracy and detail than the coroner was able to, since the bodies were so badly decomposed. You even knew the family had a black cat, which Louis Stanhope also killed. There’s no way you could have known any of these things.”

“I was too young to have killed the family myself.”

He gazed at him wearily. He had dark brown eyes the color of mud. “I know. Louis Stanhope is the only suspect in the slaughter. Quizzing O’Leary, he told me you claimed to know the names of the victims whose parts we‘ve been pulling out of the river, that you saw them and talked to them. True?”

Gryphon scowled at him. “Of course it’s true. Sheila, Rita, Amber, Jessica, Vanessa.”

He rifled through the files with his thumb. “There might be women with those names in here, I’m not sure. “ He shoved them towards him.

Gryphon looked down at them, confused, but didn’t touch them. “What are these?”

“Missing persons reports from Portland and the general vicinity over the last ten years, involving Caucasian women running the gamut from seventeen to thirty five. That is essentially the victims profiles, yes?

“Um, yeah … you’re saying you believe me?”

He met his eyes fearlessly, and nodded. “Yes, I do. I realize this has earned me the nickname “Mulder”, but I honestly believe that there are some odd things in the world. I mean, I know most psychics are con artists or delusional people seeking publicity or better medication, but every now and then there’s a person with a genuine gift. I think you’re the most genuinely gifted person we’ve ever encountered.”

Gryphon studied him for a minute, then glanced around the kitchen. “I’ve passed out, haven’t I? I’m asleep in the back of the van.”

“No, you’re not. I’ve checked up on the work you’re doing with these ghost hunter guys, and everyone seems to be of the opinion that you guys are the real deal. The Oregon Historical Society was really pleased with your work.”

This was all incredibly weird, and he felt that he wasn’t quite up to this today. “I’m not a psychic, you know that, right?”

“Yes. You talk to dead people, right?”

“No, they talk to me. Some, not all. I’m … I’m like a bridge, in a way. I’m half in the world of the dead and half in the world of the living. I don’t know the mechanics of it, I can’t explain it in a way that sounds remotely sane, but it’s not really in my control. I don’t want to do this - if I could make it go away, I would. It’s not a gift; it’s a nightmare.”

Gee, thanks, Hugh said sarcastically.

“Not for the families of the missing it isn’t.”

Is this some weird variation of good cop/bad cop? Ray wondered.

Gryphon dry washed his face, and decided to give this another shot. “Let me get this straight. You want me to look through these and see if I can identify the river victims?”

“Yes.”

“What if they’re not all here?”

“I’ll find them,” he said simply. “Give me all the information you have on them. I’ll bring in a sketch artist.”

“And you don’t think your boss is gonna find this odd?”

He settled back in his chair, slumping slightly. He looked tired. “He might, but if I bring you in as a special consultant, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

“A special consultant? Are you saying you want to hire me?”

“If you’re the real deal, you’d be worth the money. And I think you are.”

Holy shit, kid, Hugh said. He wants you to go legit.