Her head was tipped back against the tile, so it was easy to see the startlingly dark bruises wrapped around her throat. They formed a perfect imprint of two long-fingered hands that must have seized her from behind.
At a glance, it was hard to say if it was the strangulation that killed her or if it was the gunshot wound positioned directly between the globes of her breasts. I did feel safe guessing that the gunshot wound was where all the blood came from, though.
The Glock on my table.
I was suddenly in motion again, lifting the baseball bat, moving through an apartment that suddenly felt like six hundred square feet of deathtrap.
My search for an intruder was short and fruitless. The closets seemed deep and dark and endless even though they were too small to hold all my TV show Blu-rays, much less a murderer. I opened every kitchen cabinet and there was obviously nobody in there, either. I just about tripped over my free weights as I searched behind the bloody couch—yeah, that was blood on the cushions, all right.
Aside from poor Erin and a Glock that wasn’t mine, I was alone in my apartment.
My cell phone appeared in my hand. I dialed without looking at it as I walked back to the bathroom. I didn’t want to see her like that again, but it seemed too cruel to leave her alone.
Staring at Erin, all I could think about was Ofelia. Erin didn’t look anything like my sister, who was dark-haired and tall, like me. Erin was a short redhead, ivory-skinned and lean. But I looked at Erin, and all I could see was Ofelia with her bloody neck and bruised, lumpy face, and I was filled with a burning hate at myself, hate at the world, hate for the tequila that had wiped my memory of what had happened here.
The phone stopped ringing. Switched to a voice.
“You’re late, Cèsar, and I’m going to have your nuts on a griddle for it. Little salt, lots of pepper, maybe some—”
“There’s a dead body in my bathtub, Suzy,” I interrupted.
Silence.
I probably should have called OPA dispatch or something, but I didn’t want to talk to dispatch; I wanted to talk to my officemate. She would get it. She would know what to do, how I should react, the steps we needed to take to fix it. Her head was always clearer than mine.
“You’re going to have to say that again.” She sounded so calm, but there was a hard edge to her voice. Suzume Takeuchi—Suzy to me—was usually unflappable. But I think I’d just flapped her.
“You heard me. There’s a body in my bathtub. You gotta head down here with a union unit. We’ve gotta pull this scene apart and figure out what the hell happened.”
Another long pause, and then, “Did you kill her?”
The question hit me between the eyes.
Scratches on my arm, body in my apartment, no memories in my skull—it hadn’t even occurred to me that I might have forgotten about killing Erin.
The idea was so ridiculous that I almost felt like I should laugh.
Almost.
“No, I didn’t kill her,” I said. “Who do you think I am?”
If she answered, I didn’t hear it. I was distracted by the wail of sirens through the cracked bathroom window. They were distant but approaching fast.
It wasn’t the union , which was like a special forces arm of the OPA. The union didn’t blast through residential zones with sirens wailing. They were covert ops. They rolled in with black helicopters and black SUVs and quietly arrested or assassinated the guilty.
Since it wasn’t the union , those sirens belonged to the LAPD. The mundane police force.
Someone had called the damn cops on me.
“I need a union unit now, Suzy.” I set down the Louisville Slugger and went to my living room window. It was a beautiful spring day. The oak tree blocking half my view was budding. Some kids that lived in the complex were playing on the grass. I could see the flash of lights beyond them.
Suzy seemed to understand why I was suddenly more urgent. “Okay, Cèsar, don’t do anything crazy. I’ll take this straight to Director Friederling. Cooperate with the police; we’ll be there shortly.” And then she hung up on me without saying goodbye because Suzy never said goodbye.
I pulled on the first clothes I found—boxer briefs, a pair of gray sweatpants with my alma mater’s logo on the hip, a white t-shirt—and that was when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs outside.
Every instinct told me to prepare to fight and run. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I shouldn’t have felt guilty. But I was the one with the scratches on my arm and bloody feet, and I knew what they were going to think. I wasn’t authorized to tell these people that I was with the Office of Preternatural Affairs. Officially speaking, the OPA and I didn’t exist.