Rogue artists, p.14
Rogue Artists, page 14
And, despite the years that had passed, the one man she had never forgotten.
She touched his hand, then his arm. When he did not move, she manipulated him about and cut through fabric until his chest was bare. She brought her supplies close, and when she was ready, she turned him to his side.
Silence reigned throughout the chamber. His breathing was slow and shallow while her heart beat a staccato rhythm. She regarded the man laying before her in disbelief. Behind her, she heard a clinking of glass, quickly followed by the sound of vials smashing onto the floor around her feet. She had retreated far enough away from him that she’d bumped into her open cabinet along the back wall. She looked down and rivulets of ink coursed among the cracks and crevasses of the stone. She regretted the terrible waste, for it had been created from water blessed by the gods. But to see what lay before her was nothing short of a miracle.
The tattoos were gone. His back was a blank canvas, just like the day he’d met her for the first time. When last she’d seen Artamaru, there had been at least a hundred beautifully inked images across his back, each different than its comrades, each that said something about the person who had died.
Now there were none but for one.
Takarra slowly walked forward and hesitantly reached out a trembling hand. She skimmed her fingertips over the first tattoo that had ever graced the landscape of his body, and she shivered. The thing shifted and wavered as if alive, the raven’s wings shuddering as though they sought to break free and fly away.
The young man turned his head to regard the inked image that now adorned his shoulder, one that he could see only if he tried. His eyes then turned to regard her intently. “How did you know?”
She blinked at the vexed tone to his voice. “I . . . it’s a raven.”
“I know what it is. How did you know the bird was there when I took the jailor’s life?”
She started at him intently, wondering what he’d think when she gave him her response, a response that would make most men keep as far from her as possible. “Because it was the last thing he saw when he died.”
She broke free of the memory just to have the verses she used to read so avidly come to the fore of her mind, verses she’d not set eyes upon in years. The first came the easiest.
And with her siren’s voice,
The zhushexi ghigau shall call to the spirit of the deceased.
She shall call it and bind it to the dithihi,
Inking the spirit onto his flesh and thus into his soul.
The second verse came to her next, the one that seemed so much more magical. Because who would give up everything he had yearned to be? Everything he had become? Who would give up the life of a dithihi after he’d experienced the thrill of the rush, the feeling of holding a life in his hands?
Forever then shall the spirit be bound
Until the day the dithihi renounces his brotherhood
He shall renounce it, and for every life given back,
So shall a spirit be freed.
And thus shall the spirit of the dithihi also be freed.
The girl’s voice broke the silence. “Ama! I think he’s waking up!”
Takarra blinked but didn’t look to see. Her gaze was riveted upon the tattoo. Shuddering wings began to move as though maneuvering an air current and the raven peeled away from Artamaru’s flesh. It hovered in the air before her for a moment before the ink dispersed, the tiny droplets dissipating into the air.
Takarra.
Her name came as a whisper. She looked at the face before her, a face that had dominated her dreams every night since she’d met him. One that didn’t just grace the fabric of her dreams, but her reality. Every day for the past eight years she’d looked into his eyes every time she beheld the girl-child sitting across the room. The girl who had become her light when she’d thought he was gone. Takarra had thought it had been his voice that had spoken, but death had claimed him. He looked at peace and his body had relaxed. No longer could she see the slow rise and fall of his chest, or feel the rhythmic beat of his heart beneath her fingertips. A desolate cry gathered at the back of her throat, one she struggled to keep caged so that the girl would not hear.
And she mourned.
~
Tracy R. (Chowdhury) Ross is one of the authors of three fantasy/adventure series: Shadow Over Shandahar, Dark Mists of Ansalar, and The Chronicles of Rithalion. She has several short stories in print, many of which are in the annual Origins anthologies. Before beginning her writing career, she graduated from Miami University with a bachelor’s degree in Zoology. Since then, she has worked for the Cincinnati Zoo, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, and the University of Cincinnati. Currently, she does editorial work, and in her ‘spare’ moments she is writing. Tracy lives in Montgomery, Ohio with her husband and six of their eight children. Visit her at worldofshandahar.com or on Facebook.
The Chess Master
Chris A. Jackson
Tom pulled on a pair of blue shoe covers and stepped past the quietly vomiting Detective Weatherby. At least he wasn’t puking on the crime scene. The rookie’s partner, Maria Hernandez, patted Weatherby on the back and shot Tom a warning look in passing.
“Bad?” Tom affixed a hair bonnet and ran his gloved fingers together to tighten the blue nitrile, his palms already slick with sweat.
“Bad enough.” Maria shrugged and patted her partner on the back. “Weird as hell, too. Right up your alley.”
“Oh?” Tom had twenty-six years working blood for DC Homicide, and Maria knew he liked the weird ones. “Wanna walk me through?”
“Sure.” She patted Weatherby on the back again and handed him a bottle of water. “Go get a coffee, Chase. Get me one, too.”
Weatherby nodded and sipped water, swishing and spitting into the puke pouch. “Sorry, boss.”
“Hey, it’s a rite of passage to puke at a crime scene.” She grinned privately to Tom and gestured to the office door. “Fiber and prints will be here in half an hour with the ME wagon. Shall we?”
“Thanks.” Tom donned a face mask last; not enough to block odors—he could smell the blood, urine, and feces from here—but to keep the scene intact. His allergies were killing him, and sneezing on a murder scene was almost as bad as puking on one. Aerosolized DNA everywhere. He powered up his camera and followed Maria through the door . . . into an abattoir.
He stopped to take it all in: white male about Tom’s age seated behind a wide desk, an open folder in front of him, jacket draped over the back of a nice leather chair, tie loosened, head back, eyes open staring at the ceiling. His pastel blue Givenchy shirt was shredded and blood-soaked, the desk and everything on it sprayed crimson. In fact, the blood spray reached the carpeted floor beyond the desk, including two comfortable armchairs and table facing it.
“Spectacular.” Tom snapped a series of “big picture” shots in an arc. “Looks like a shotgun to the chest at first glance.”
“Right? But it wasn’t.” Maria pointed to the deceased. “Stephen Stevenson, sixty-two year old twelve-term senator working late. Everyone else long gone for the night. His wife calls security when he’s not home at three a.m. and won’t answer his phone. Capitol Police check and find this. Cursory look to make sure he’s dead, and they call us. You can see their footprints in the blood.” She pointed to the tagged outlines on the carpet. “At least they didn’t puke.”
“Preliminary cause of death blood loss?”
“Penetrating trauma to the heart and pulmonary arteries on both sides.” She pointed to the relatively small individual wounds. “A lot of secondary injuries, but at least twenty circular wounds about one to two centimeters in diameter. Some fractured ribs, so there was force behind the trauma. I’d say he died right where he’s sitting. No gunshot residue, no casings, no powder burns, and there are sensors in the outer office that sound an alarm at loud noises like shattering glass or weapons fire.”
Tom took a careful step forward, stopping behind one of the two chairs facing the desk to snap more pictures. “Defensive wounds?”
“Some gashes to his forearms. He didn’t have time . . . or enough blood left to get up, but he tried to ward off the weapon, whatever it was.”
“No murder weapon?” Tom looked around the room for blood trails, shadow casts, spray patterns, and saw nothing but uninterrupted droplet arcs. The blood cast covered a forward semicircle of lessening saturation with distance and widening angle, the primary spatter right in front of the body, thick and still congealing. “Jesus, what a pristine pattern!”
“I suppose. No weapon found yet, but we’re searching every trashcan in the Capitol. At the moment, I’ve got no clue what hit him, or whether all the injuries were inflicted at the same time or sequentially. I need a blood-cast pattern from you as soon as the body’s out of here.” She shook her head. “He just effing exploded. No blood on the door knob and no obvious foot prints, like the killer did it from the doorway, then backed out of the room.”
“Amazing.” Tom looked down between the two chairs and snapped a picture at the perfectly arranged chess set on the table there. “What’s that about?”
Maria shrugged. “The senator liked chess, I guess. Nice set.”
“No, the blood.” Tom snapped a photo straight down at the board. The white pieces looked like English soldiers, the black some kind of African warriors, and they were all spotless. “Or lack of it.”
“What?” Maria stepped up in the blood spatter shadow of the other chair to look down at the thirty-two pristine pieces, each one perfectly centered in its square, not a drop or fleck of blood on any of them. “The hell?”
“The board’s been spattered, but not the pieces.” He glanced to Maria.
“Right.” She reached down. “I’m going to lift one piece and put it back. The white king. Take pics.”
“Sure.” He snapped sequential shots as her blue-clad fingers touched the king’s crown, then as she lifted it, the blood beneath the piece, then again as she put it back down, slightly askew. “There was blood beneath it, Maria. These were placed post mortem.”
“I saw it.” She cleared her throat. “This is big. Get the rest, but focus on this. Photos of every piece, and underneath each one. I don’t even know enough about chess to tell if they’re in the right places.”
“They are.” Tom reached down to lift a rook, snap a photo, and put it back. “Blood under that one, too.”
“I’d bet they’re all the same, but make sure. As soon as the body’s out, get me that cast pattern. This guy’s high profile, so we’ll have an autopsy by lunchtime.”
“I’m on it.” Tom lifted the knight beside the rook he’d moved, snapped a photo, and examined the piece more closely. The horse’s mane was so detailed he could see the texture of the hairs and teeth within its wide mouth. The raised hooves even sported shoes, the saddle and bridle meticulously rendered. “These are really beautiful. Custom made, I think.” He took a shot of the underside of the piece’s base. Blood flecked the bottom, but there was a maker’s mark, too. He zoomed in and photographed it.
“Get everything down to the king’s nose hairs, Tom.” Maria reached out to touch his shoulder. “No screwups. I’ve got people looking into the senator, but he’s a piece of work. Hard line right winger. Anti critical race theory. A real ‘white lives matter’ jerk. Hell, this guy’s full-blown ‘white lives matter more.’ The list of suspects is going to be taller than an NBA Center in high heels.”
Tom snorted a laugh. “That’s tall.”
“Get to work, buddy. I need your eye on this one.” She started to turn, then turned back, looking over the whole scene. “God, I hate the weird ones.”
“I got this, Maria. No worries.” He put the knight back and picked up the bishop. Same story, same maker’s mark. He snapped photos and put it back, already in the zone, deep into his fascination of the scene. Yeah, this was a weird one, and a brain teaser if ever he saw one. “Senator murdered in his office by no one, who leaves a pristine chess set behind. Someone’s messing with us.”
-
“I can’t effing believe this!” Maria barged into Tom’s lab and slapped a folder down onto the spotless counter top. “Twenty-four penetration trauma points, and the deepest is only seven centimeters. About fifty secondary wounds, but none deeper than five centimeters. No foreign material in the wounds, no fragmentation, no residual trace elements in the blood or tissue . . . ”
Tom glanced down at the autopsy report. “Is that my copy?”
“Yes, and I want you to cross reference the ME’s findings with yours.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Damn political pressure to hell. I hate being salaried sometimes.”
“Same old song and dance. High profile victims get all the attention, but a ganger catches a nine millimeter brain enema, and it’s ‘untraceable street violence.’” He flipped open the first page and started scanning the report.
“That’s cold, Tom,” Maria said with a glare. “But accurate.”
“The truth is like revenge, Detective. It’s best when served cold.” Tom’s eyes narrowed. “Hey, you should look at this. These are like stab wounds, but not a blade, so they leave blunt penetrating voids that are easy to measure, right?”
“Yeah, so?” She leaned in to stare at the report. Her breath smelled of coffee and breath mints with an aftershock of cigarettes. Maria was trying to quit smoking for the eighth time.
“So, look at these.” He pulled up a file on his laptop and ran a finger down a row of numbers. “Look similar?”
Maria glanced back and forth between the screen and the hard-copy several times, her mouth slowly dropping open. “Mutha . . . ”
“Not a perfect match, but way too close to be coincidence.” The wound sizes and the measurements he’d taken from the chess set were an almost perfect match. “Right down to the sloping diameter of the wounds.”
“Death by chess set?” Maria shook her head. “We were thinking a hammer of some kind, but this is . . . ”
“Maybe it was a hammer, but if so, several, with identical chess pieces as the heads. Absolutely zero blood on the pieces, except for the underside of the bases. Whoever killed the senator put them in place afterwards.”
“We figured that out.” Maria turned to go.
“Oh, hey. Tell the fiber and ME guys not to touch stuff, would you?”
She flushed. “What did they touch?”
“The chess pieces. I moved them for photographs, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I snapped another pic after, just to document that they’d been touched. I didn’t get them exactly in the same places. After the ME team took the body, I went back in to set up my blood spray strings and took another shot of the chess board.” He pulled up two photos. “They were all right back where they were originally. I can sympathize with OCD, but they shouldn’t be touching evidence.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll talk to them. Any input on the secondary wounds?”
“I can’t figure them out at all. Some are cuts, others tiny rips almost like bites.”
“But the measurements on the penetration wounds are the same as this set, and you said they were hand-made, right?”
“Yes, and I found the maker.” He flipped the page on his screen to a website. “Donovan Custom Game Supplies, right here in town. Custom handmade game pieces. Not cheap either. Should be easy to trace the buyer.”
“Son of a two-dollar doxy!” Maria clapped him on the shoulder. Her euphemisms were getting cleaner, at least. “Tom, if I weren’t happily married, I’d kiss you!”
“Not with that breath, Maria.” He leaned back, giving her the look. They were close enough that he knew she’d take the comment as intended. “You really should have another mint and lay off the coffin nails.”
“Sorry.” She barely noticed the comment, riveted to the web page. The proprietor’s work was displayed in all its glory, chess pieces of every description custom made to the buyer’s specifications, minis for table-top games, even custom pieces for board games, and larger sculptures for display. “All this is handmade, not just printed?”
“Says so. The guy’s been at it for forty years or so. I looked him up.” Tom pulled another page to display a despondent looking old Black man standing next to a bust of Harriet Tubman. “He’s a sculptor. Even got some stuff in the NMAAHC.”
“Damn! He’s talented.”
“Yeah, but never made it big.” He looked to her. “For obvious reasons.”
She squinted at him. “Thomas, for an old gringo, you’ve got an incredibly realistic view of the world.”
“Just call ’em like I see ’em, Maria.” They had the same view on systemic racism.
“Which is part of your undying charm.” She squeezed his shoulder hard. “Can you do me a favor?”
He shot her a sour look. “It’s what I live for.”
“Sarcastic pendejo.” She grinned. “I’m going to look into this guy online, then make a trip to Columbia Heights. I’d like you along for the ride. Maybe Mr. Donovan can help us.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her. “And me because . . . ”
“Because a Latina detective and her bright-eyed young white partner are less likely to earn the trust of a disadvantaged older artist of color than a . . . gentleman of a certain age.”
“Old white guys don’t have much cred in that regard, Maria.”
“Old men don’t handle grilling by young women very well either. You at least have something in common with him.”
“Ageism, sexism, racism, murder, and chess.” Tom sighed and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Man, retirement’s looking good right now.”
-
The shop looked like a thousand others from the outside. There were no window displays, not in this neighborhood, just painted over glass girded by closely set iron bars and a door that would have stopped the Incredible Hulk. The whole block had that defensive look that meant high-crime, desperation, and little hope. Tom wondered briefly how a high-end game supply store could stay in business in this environment, then remembered the store’s website. They sold online all over the country.
