Alchemystic (9 page)

He cocked his head. “I can hear it, but I have no idea where it
is
.”

I grabbed Marshall’s hand. It was clammier than I had imagined they’d be. “Stay close,” I said, moving to the left of the path, closer to the tree line there. The sounds of the small river increased with each step we took, so much so that I didn’t even hear the lone shadowy figure as it crashed out of the trees directly in front of me. I went to scream, but a hand clamped down over my mouth. The metallic taste of several rings filled it instantly.

Rory.

One of her hands was over my face and the other was raised up to cover Marshall’s mouth. Even with Rory’s speed at silencing us, a muffled cry came from him behind her fingers.

“Shh!” Rory hissed, then whispered, “There’s someone else in the park.”

I pulled her hand away from my face, then spat to get the taste of metal off my tongue. “Who is it? One of my neighbors?”

Rory shook her head, looking off toward the center of the park. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I mean, I’m not sure, but he or she is hiding by the statue at the center. That doesn’t exactly sound like resident behavior, now, does it? Come on.”

She turned, walking off with her hand still firmly planted over Marshall’s mouth, her fingers clutching his cheeks. He didn’t even bother to put up a fight. Dazed, he simply followed after her.

Rory didn’t seem to have any trouble seeing in the dark, stepping sure-footed over the thin stream of water that I caught myself avoiding at just the last second. The center of the park was an open space surrounded by iron benches, and a lone statue sitting at the middle of it.

Marshall pried Rory’s hand from his face. “Who is that?”

“We don’t know yet,” I said. “Didn’t you hear Rory?”

“I meant the statue,” he said in a hushed tone. “I doubt it’s like Superman or something.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. It’s Edwin Booth—some old-time actor—dressed as Hamlet.”

That seemed to satisfy him and he returned to peering at the base of the statue. “So where’s this other person?” he asked Rory. “I don’t see anyone.”

Rory pointed low. “Down there,” she said. “Hunched down by the base.”

I couldn’t see anything abnormal about the base of the statue. It was a large rectangular block of shadow from here, but there might have been the hint of a shape just on the other side of it. Marshall moved forward first, with Rory and me falling into step right behind. The closer we got, the more obvious it became that the hidden shape was that of a man, and that he was no longer living. The shapes of a body were familiar—an arm along the left side of the base and the bend of a leg beneath it, twisted, broken. The clothes were familiar, too, as was the symbol tattooed on its left hand—the stylized but blocky demon. Thick tree branches lay scattered and torn apart all around the figure.

My eyes rose up to what should have been the person’s head, only what was there could no longer be called one. What remained reminded me of the teen Halloween years when Rory and I used to hang with the badass boys who went around smashing pumpkins. The arrival of flashing red and blue lights drove away the shadows for a second, revealing a spill all around the body that definitely wasn’t pumpkin guts or seeds.

“What the hell happened to his head?” I asked, but as soon as the words were out I felt my stomach rise in my throat and I turned away from the sight of it. I stumbled away as the
contents of my stomach pushed their way up. It burned as I threw up and unfortunately there was no quiet way to do such a thing. Flashlight beams from outside the gates turned on me just in time to catch my dinner from hours ago splash into some of the shrubbery in front of me.

“Hey!” a man’s voice shouted, full of authority. Cops. “Stop where you are.”

I stood to respond, but my stomach coiled up on me once more and I doubled over, still hacking.

“Shit,” one officer said to another, his light finally training in on me. “A bunch of drunk kids in the park. Looks like one is passed out.”

“We’re not drunk!” Rory shouted out.

“Shut up and
don’t move
!” the officer called out. “One of you get over here right the hell now and open this gate.”

“Hold on! Hold on!” Rory called out as she came over to me, rubbing my back as she did best-friend duty pulling my hair out of the way. “My friend is throwing up.”

“Stupid underage kids don’t know their tolerance,” the other officer said.

“We’re not underage,” Rory called out. “And we’re not drunk. It’s worse than that…We think someone’s…dead.”

“Son of a bitch,” the officer swore. Uncertainty crept into his voice. “Think the kid’s telling the truth?”

“Only one way to find out,” the other one said. He shouted, “Get your ass over here. Now!”

Rory gave an angered sigh. Marshall stumbled over to us. “Shut your mouth, Ror,” he said, holding his hands up like he was being robbed. “This is no time to drop attitude on anyone,
especially
an officer of the law.”

“But—”

Marshall pointed toward the bright light shining on us. “He’s got
a gun
,” he said. “Will that convince you?”

“He does…?” The wind went out of her words as she spoke them.

“Get the hell over here right
now
!” the officer repeated.

Without brooking further argument, Marshall stepped carefully off in the direction of the flashing lights, raising his
hands even higher. “We’re coming,” he called out, his voice wavering with obedient fear.

Rory helped me up. I wiped the back of my coat’s sleeve across my face and allowed her to lead me toward the gates as well. My arms and legs felt like jelly, twitching and shaking as I tried to walk.

“Easy,” Rory said, noting my weakness.

“Open the gate, slowly,” the officer said. Up close, I could finally make them out, one younger, taller, with a short blond crew cut, and the other shorter, stockier, older. They didn’t scare me as much as the short, rectangular end of the gun Tall and Blond had pointed at the three of us.

Rory saw it, too, and didn’t argue as she fished my key out of her front pocket and slid it into the gate, unlocking it from the inside. The blond officer pushed the gate open toward us using his foot.

“What’s this about someone being dead?” he asked.

I nodded, and raised my arm, pointing into the park. “There is,” I said. “At the base of the statue.”

“Back to the center of the park,” Short and Stocky said, already driving us back as he walked forward with caution. “Now.”

I shook my head, my legs shaking. “I don’t think I can,” I said.

“You can,” he insisted, grabbing one of my shoulders hard, “and you will. You’ll do as we say until I see what’s going on there.”

It’s amazing the strength you can find when someone is pointing a gun in your general direction. Although I had no desire to go anywhere near what I had just seen, I found myself doing as I was told. When we were close enough to the statue for Tall and Blond, he turned his light on the base of it. In regular light the body was more broken and tangled than the shadows had told. A crimson-brown spatter of blood radiated out from the body, and it was all I could do to turn away before my stomach retched again.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. He flicked off the light and turned away from it as his partner focused his on it instead. Tall and
Blond’s voice went from dark wonder to something colder, more formal. “Would you care to explain what you were doing in here?”

“That man,” I stammered, unable to shake the surreal, dreamlike state that was slowly washing over me. “His head…”

The officer’s eyes fixed on mine, unmoving.

“I need you to explain what you three were doing in here. Now.”

I couldn’t speak. The image filled my mind, threatening to take it over. When I felt someone touch my arm, I just about screamed before I realized it was Rory.

“Relax,” she said. “Does it look like any of us could have done
that
?”

He considered this, then sighed and went for the thick black book sitting in the oversized pocket on his uniform. “You live here, then?”

I nodded. “Not in the park…” I corrected, then felt my face flush.

Rory squeezed my arm and stepped forward. “She’s just flustered, but yeah. She does.” She pointed to the west side of the park. “Over there. The Belarus building.”

I could have hugged her just then. Even though she had been the one to rush into the park, Rory was busy talking while I simply couldn’t.

The officer scribbled in his book. “And the three of you are each other’s alibi, I suppose?”

“Alibi?” Marshall said, nerves filling every word. “What do we need an alibi for?”

“We were walking along the south side of the park and saw the cop car lights flashing,” Rory said. “From the
other
side of the park, so I used her key so we could cut across and see what all the fuss was.”

“Did you see anything?”

“Other than the body?” I said, finally able to speak, but still in shock over the deformed shape of the dead man’s head. “No. We didn’t even know it
was
a body until we got close to the statue…Are we in trouble here?”

The officer shrugged. “That depends on how cooperative you are, miss.”

I shook off my shock as best I could. He was right. I needed to tell him everything. The symbol on the man’s hand, my encounter with him earlier—

“If you want her cooperation,” my father’s voice boomed out from somewhere back toward the direction of the police lights, “you will have to talk to me first.”

Both officers turned. “And you are…?” the short and stocky one asked.

“Douglas Belarus,” he said, moving close enough that I could see his face. “Her father.” His eyes were locked onto the two officers. “Is there a problem here, gentlemen? I’m a trustee of the park. My family has been for several generations.”

“Hello, Mr. B,” Rory said, giving him a grim half smile.

He looked at her as if he was noticing her for the first time, giving her a curt nod.

He turned to me, his face cold, but his eyes concerned. His heavy hands rose and came to rest on both my shoulders, squeezing. “Are you all right, Alexandra? What is going on?”

“I asked you a question, Mr. Belarus,” the officer continued, his voice full of indignation at being ignored.

“I’m fine, Father,” I said. “We’re all fine…just a little unnerved.”

He relaxed a little, his grip easing. “Good. I thought I told you not to leave the building.”

I didn’t want to get into that here, now, and flicked my eyes over toward the cops.
They’re waiting.

My father looked over his shoulder at the officers, but made no attempt to turn to them, which seemed only to piss them off.

“So tell me, Mr. Belarus,” the blond officer said, looking down at the shadow-covered body over by the base of the statue. “How do
you
think this body got here?”

“Body?” he repeated, raising an eyebrow.

The second officer waggled his flashlight back to the base of the statue, drawing my father’s attention to the broken body lying there.

I started to speak, wanting to tell the police what I knew
of the man, but my father silenced me with a firm squeeze of my arm and spoke instead.

“I am certain I have no idea,” my father said. “I have no idea who would have done something so heinous. Why someone should leave a body with a caved-in head here in our park is simply beyond me.”

“No one just left him here,” Marshall added.

My father gave a grim chuckle. “Oh, really? He certainly didn’t climb over the gate and walk in here of his own accord with a crushed-in skull like that.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Marshall said.

The blond officer turned to him. “Well, what
do
you mean?”

Marshall pointed at the ground beneath the body. “See that spatter? That’s from impact. Whoever he was, he fell from at least ten stories.”

I stared at him.

“What?” he asked.

“How does your brain even come up with that?”

He shrugged, then looked away. “I had a cruel Dungeon Master in my D and D group. He made us work hard for every experience point. Lots of puzzle solving in our games. I can’t help but think critically in a time like this.”

“So what we have is a jumper,” the blond officer said to the other.

Marshall shook his head. “The buildings aren’t that tall around here,” he said, looking up. “And we’re in the
middle
of the park. He couldn’t have jumped this far in from one of the buildings. It’s impossible.”

“You sure you didn’t have something to do with this?” the dark-haired officer asked, shining his light in Marshall’s face.

What little color there was in Marshall’s face went away. “N-no, sir.”

The officer turned back to my father. “Well, then, any thoughts, Mr. Belarus?” he asked.

“Maybe he jumped from a plane,” Marshall offered.

My father’s eyes turned on him, on the verge of burning like lasers straight through my friend.

“Marshall,” I warned. “Shut it.”

“You explain it, then,” Marshall said, getting defensive.

I gave my father an apologetic look, going for the most disarming expression I could muster under the circumstances, but he turned his glare to me and it was withering.

“Go home, Alexandra,” he said.

“But—”

His withering look that meant there was no arguing with him. “Go home. Now. I will deal with these officers.”

I didn’t even bother trying to respond when he had his business voice on. I simply turned from him and headed toward the north gate, Rory and Marshall falling in behind me. My father must have bigger contacts out there than I thought because the officers didn’t make any move to stop or detain us. Sometimes I forgot how hard-core a leader of industry he could still be despite his flakier moments.

“I expect you to be alone when I get home,” he called out, causing Rory to swear under her breath.

The three of us pushed through the crowd standing outside the gate and walked down the block back toward my home. None of the other arriving officers tried to stop us.

“Did you see the way your dad just took over?” Marshall asked once we cleared the gathered crowd, still walking.