Heaven can Wait Read online

  Well wasn't that fantastic, a gruesome crime scene at breakfast. I looked at my watch, a gruesome crime scene before breakfast, I had ten minutes until my ride arrived and that wasn't time to make and eat something, even cereal or toast. I stuck an arm into the tiny kitchen to grab an apple from the fruit bowl to eat while I got dressed. It would have to be a casual look for once, with all the interruptions the night before I had never gotten time to wash my hair and it was a greasy unmanageable nest right now. It was too late to do it now so I had to settle for combing it straight and tying it back. With an electric-blue baseball cap covering the top of the mop I looked reasonably presentable. But a baseball cap didn't go with a suit or a skirt, hence the faded jeans and darker blue T-shirt. I tucked the T-shirt into the jeans so I looked sort-of smart, and I chose a pair of ankle boots instead of trainers. It was the best I could do in the short notice. I retrieved the ID badge that identified me as a civilian consultant and put it over the cap and my head, pulling the pony-tail back over the string when I was done.

  This crime scene wasn't quite as bad as the first had been. That isn't to say it wasn't gruesome. It was just as horrifying as the first scene in the details. All I could put it down to was the location, or maybe because this wasn't my first time and I had gotten a little used to it. I wanted to think it was the location, I didn't want to get used to things like this.

  Instead of a body ripped apart and turned to blood and mush in a kitchen in a nice family home. This was a body torn apart and plastered over the walls of a public bathroom. It was impossible to tell whether all of the blood, shit and urine on the walls and floor and ceiling came from the victim or if it had been there already.

  "Your forensics guys must have had a heck of a time in here."

  Braun, standing just inside the bathroom, nodded. "I pity whoever has to sort through those samples."

  He looked the consummate professional in his pressed trousers, shirt and tie. He had been here hours longer than me and he looked much fresher than I felt.

  "So what can you tell me about this one? We really need something to work with, Jones. The press have started sniffing around and we can't keep them out forever. The brass wants us to have this solved or at least to have a solid lead before we have to give a statement. Crimes like this, you know exactly where the speculation and hysteria is going to lead."

  "Exactly where it should."

  I turned away from my survey of the crime scene to get a look at the newcomer. He was standing beside Braun, just inside the entrance. He was probably a few years younger than Braun, but then again he could just dye his hair. He was dark skinned and I had noticed that in humans that sometimes seemed to make them look younger. He was dressed even more smartly than Braun, he had the matching suit jacket to go with the trousers, shirt and tie. Despite the fact that the day had already started to heat up he wasn't sweating, at least not anywhere I could see.

  "Jones, this is-"

  "I can introduce myself, thank you Detective Sergeant."

  The newcomer stayed where he was, he didn't offer me his hand. I was already pretty sure I didn't like this guy so I made no move to offer him mine.

  "My name is Stern. I am with the non-human investigation and response unit."

  I gave him no response. If my casual ignorance bothered him he didn't let it show. His eyes flicked around the interior of the public toilet that had been decorated with things that shouldn't really be seen outside of a human body. I watched his nostrils go wide as he took in the stench.

  If either sight or smell of the butchery bothered him he disguised it well. I was sorely tempted to let down my mental barriers to get a read on what was really going on with this Stern. But I stopped myself. As far as I knew he was just here to do a job. The same reason why I was here. He hadn't been overtly hostile to me in any way.

  There was a scuffling of feet and yet another man came into view. This newcomer stayed just outside the door. When he looked in he almost immediately looked away, in the next moment he brought a handkerchief out of his pocket to cover his mouth and nose.

  "This is Alex Frost, also with NIRU."

  Frost glanced back into the room so that he could see me and raised a hand in greeting. He might have been smiling behind the handkerchief but I couldn't see.

  I felt a smile tug at one side of my mouth and nodded a greeting to Frost. He was much younger than either other man, coming in at the mid-twenties or so. He was in trousers, shirt and tie, but the tie was loose around his neck so that his top button could be undone, the sleeves of his shirt had been rolled back to the elbows and the front left side of the shirt had come untucked. He kept his hair longer than the other men and had it in a stylish birds-nest on his head. As I took these details in he brushed the fingers of his free hand through the mop of hair to fix the rough style. The motion tugged the exposed flap of shirt up and I noted the firearm and holster I had missed in my first evaluation of him.

  "Ms Jones is going to do her magic and pluck the name of the son-of-a-bitch that did this out of the air for us." Stern said to Frost without looking away from me. "Save us having to bother with any actual investigating."

  I tilted my head to the side and regarded Stern with my hand on my hip. "You sound like you'd prefer not to have my help, like you don't want to catch this killer."

  Stern eyed her evenly. "I don't see those two as being particularly related."

  Braun puffed his chest up and came to my defence. "Ms Jones has provided the department with a suspect that has led to a conviction on a number of occasions."

  Stern didn't look impressed. "I don't doubt that her circumstances and heritage can give her a certain advantage. I mean, I would trust a sniffer dog to do its job better than a human could. But everything has its place."

  I glared at him. "And what does that mean?"

  Stern wasn’t intimidated, sometimes my femininity could be used to my advantage but at times like these I wondered if I would be able to get by better if I was a man, maybe maybe not. If I was a human, definitely.

  "What that means, Ms Jones, is that people like you have your uses, but you should know your place. In a murder investigation, especially an investigation of this nature, your kind should be used sparingly, if at all."

  Frost looked like he was about to say something to the older man but a look from his superior shut him up before he started. The younger NIRU agent looked apologetically at me.

  Braun wasn’t so easily shut down. "Now listen-"

  But I was well used to having to fight my own battles, and when you got me riled up . . . "I’ll let you off the casual references to my kind for now," I said dropping the temperature several degrees with just my tone. "But would you care to explain the rest of that?"

  Stern stepped further inside the toilet. Braun didn’t move to make it easier for him to enter and Stern didn’t even look at him as he brushed past. Looking a little unsure of what to do with himself, Frost remained floating by the entrance.

  "These murders are now being treated as supernatural crimes. Whatever did this was sure as hell not human."

  I arched an eyebrow. "I think I would be the expert on what was or was not human, sure as hell especially."

  Stern looked like he was about to laugh. "Oh, of course, yes I have heard the particulars of what exactly you claim to be. But be that as it may, what you are not is human, that makes anything you have to say in these cases suspect."

  "Are you accusing me of providing false information, just because I am non-human."

  "You all look out for each other."

  Braun spoke up, "Accusations like that can be very serious. If you want to go down this route I suggest you make it official."

  Stern shook his head. "How could she have provided false information? She hasn’t provided any information yet."

  "If you would let her get on with her job, maybe she’d be able to give us something."

  I really didn't like how everybody had started talking about me like I wasn'
t standing right here in the middle of this mess. I couldn't call Stern up on it without having to do the same to Braun, alienating the only person to come to my defence didn't seem like the best idea.

  "If you would stop talking about me like I'm not right here." I didn't always do what was best.

  Stern made a placating gesture that his eyes decried as false. "Very well. Go ahead, Ms Jones, let’s see what you can tell us."

  I was tempted to refuse, but this thing had to be stopped and petty rivalries could wait. Truth be told I wasn't sure Stern was on the entirely wrong track. I had never encountered a human being that could control their emotions to the extent that I would get nothing from them. Whatever had done the killing at that first scene had either felt nothing, shielded it's emotions or hadn't been human. It was so that I could intervene in just these sorts of incidents that had brought me to live in this realm in the first place. It certainly wasn't that I found the living conditions and company any better.

  "Fine, you want me to do my job take a couple of steps back and try not to think too much."

  I resisted adding to that comment out loud but a distinctly Selene sounding voice in my head said; "That shouldn't be too hard."

  Stern glared at me almost as if he could sense the silent comment, maybe it was just too obvious.

  I turned away from the trio at the entrance to the bathroom and started to drop my shields. My hands balled into fists, and not because I wanted them to. The first thing I got was a sort of cold hostility.

  I turned back to look at the three men, the hostility I was sensing was present here and now not residual. It wasn't surprising to feel much of the hostility being targeted on me and radiating from Stern. There was also a fair degree of hostility coming off of Braun, quite apart from feeling hostile on my behalf Braun, like any other cop, resented interference in his cases.

  I bricked those two up to keep their feelings out of my head. Now the strongest feeling was best described as curiosity. I glanced at Alex Frost, he was regarding me intently but with no judgment. The young NIRU agent wanted to see me at work. It wasn't a challenging thing, he wasn't hoping I would fail like Stern was, and there was none of the . . . macabre interest some others had felt wanting to watch the freak at work. Frost was just genuinely interested in seeing something that he hadn't yet experienced.

  The tousle-haired agent smiled when he saw me looking and I quickly bricked him away as well. There had been some other more distracting feelings there as well as his good-natured curiosity.

  I turned my back to them again and let the past emotions of this place sink in to me. It was an unpleasant but not horrifying experience. I just stood there for several minutes trying to sift through it all. In the end I slammed the doors back closed in her mind and shook my head.

  "I'm sorry, a high-traffic area like this, I'm getting plenty but everything is smudged together. Without a frame of reference I can't pick anything out from the jumble. If you get a suspect I might be able to tell you if he was here, but otherwise . . ," I shrugged and trailed off, trying to ignore the smug look on Stern's face.

  "Can't you even tell us if it's human?"

  I shook my head. "All I got that I can say with any degree of surety is related to this crime is the pain and fear of the victim."

  I looked at Braun. "This time, whoever the victim was, they had time to realise what was happening. And they were terrified."

  "Like somebody facing a monster." Stern said.

  I nodded. "Like somebody facing a monster," I agreed. "But not all monsters are non-human. Anything that can do this qualifies as a monster in my book."

  "You and I have different tastes in literature, Ms Jones. I don't think we will be calling on your services again in this case."

  With that he strode out of the toilet and away up the stairs. "Goodbye, Ms Jones," Frost said with a genuine smile, before following on the heels of the older agent.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Supernatural and Non-human Quarantine and Education Zone, the SNQEZ. Neither name was as simple as the one that everybody knew it by. Those on the outside who ignored its existence when they could, who walked or drove past it just a little bit faster than they normally would, when they were forced to pass close by, and those who were forced to reside there both knew it by the same simple name: the Zone. There was never any need to specify further than that because there was only one Zone.

  When I had first made my home in this realm I had had to endure an eighteen-month stay in the Zone. Apparently someone had put in a good word and fast-tracked my application. It had no doubt helped that my first police consultation had resulted in the rapid apprehension and conviction of a rapist. But I knew very well that for a great many non-humans the Zone would be their home for a number of years, some would be there the rest of their lives, for beings that could be almost immortal that would be a very long time.

  I hadn’t been back to the Zone since I had been let out. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone but I was always slightly afraid that once I went back in they would decide to keep me there all over again.

  I looked over at Selene to see if the half-demon was having any of the same apprehensions I was. As ever it was impossible to tell what the other woman was thinking. She just sat there all rigid and leathered up. For my part I had added a short denim jacket to her jeans and T-Shirt as a concession to the cooler night air.

  "Doesn’t that get uncomfortable?" I asked.

  "What?" Selene said keeping her eyes on the road, since she was the one driving that was a good idea.

  "What?, that," I waved a hand at Selene’s shiny trousers and tight vest that was stretched over her breasts. "And not just all the leather but those holsters and weapons."

  Selene took her eyes off the road for a moment to give me a look that made me feel like some naïve youngster. "The leather is there to keep the holsters from chafing, that’s half the point."

  "But does it need to be so tight."

  Selene half smiled, "That’s the other half. You should try it sometime; there are a number of other benefits to an outfit like this. With it so tight it can rub in just the right places."

  The look on Selene’s face told me everything I needed to know about the interpretation of that little comment.

  We continued in silence for a few moments but in the end my curiosity won out over my better judgement. "Doesn’t it get frustrating for you?"

  Selene looked at me sideways. "What?"

  I knew full well she was baiting me but she had started the conversation down this road. "You know . . . to get all worked up like that . . ."

  Selene kept glancing across at me with that smile on her face and the blood rushed to my cheeks, too late to back out now so I pressed on. "To . . . to get an itch like that and have nobody around to scratch it when you get home."

  Selene shook her head. "Sometimes I can’t believe you. I know you had to live with certain restrictions when you were up there, but you live here now. You need to start enjoying yourself, you don’t always need somebody else to scratch those itches, girl. Take it from me you can take care of those sorts of things quite well enough on your own."

  I laughed uncomfortably to cover my embarrassment, Selene laughed with genuine mirth. "Seriously, if you need any tips call me."

  I really didn’t want to go any further into the sort of assistance Selene would be willing to offer, luckily I was saved further discomfiture by our arrival at the Zone.

  "Back again," I muttered under my breath.

  The pair of us approached the checkpoint with me holding a little back so that Selene would be the one doing all of the talking. Not because I was reluctant to be here, honest.

  The bounty-hunter had put a long leather coat on to conceal her personal arsenal. The guards manning this post weren't armed with such a variety of weapons as Selene had scattered about her person, but the automatic rifles they had pointing at us as we approached looked more than lethal enough.

  The guard post was
as much for keeping people in as it was out, if not more so, and there was no disguising the fact. A similarly equipped post stood just inside, next to the inner fence of the double fences which surrounded the Zone. Spaced every few hundred metres along the perimeter, in the middle of the space made by the double fencing, there were guard towers manned by men with even more powerful weapons. Both sides of the fence were very well illuminated even in the dead of night.

  "I need to see some ID," one guard spoke, his voice pretty robotic as he made his general statement to the two women while two of his colleagues kept him covered.

  I fished my ID out of my pocket and passed it forwards to Selene to hand to the man. As there was no disguising the dual purpose of the guard posts there was also no disguising the fact that the guards themselves were drawn from the army. They all had that regulation haircut and attitude. I guessed there would be regiment tattoos somewhere on the lads’ arms or chests.

  The guard/soldier glanced from the ID's to us and back again. Like his colleges he was looking at us from behind mirrored glasses, that macho thing going on to wear sunglasses at night, but it was easy enough to tell where he was looking. The guard put a finger to the communication set fixed on the side of his head. He handed the documents back to Selene and slipped something into his pocket.

  "What is the purpose of your visit to the Zone?" All still standard questions the guard sounding wholly disinterested.

  "We are here to visit friends?"

  "Friends huh?"

  I half expected him to make some crack about it being a little late for social visits but he didn't. Then again if he had spent any length of time on this duty he would have realised not all of the beings in the Zone kept to human timetables.

  We were waved through, just as we passed the inner check-point the guard called after us. "You ladies should think about the things you socialise with. Stick to your own species."

  Neither of us looked back.

  "He saw my ID; he can't think I'm human."

  Selene took my arm to keep me moving forwards. "He saw an ID, which wasn't yours, and a wad of cash."