Shed worry about that later. For the moment she focused on Jillian Morrows ready smile as the Inquisitor looked down at Chess and said, Sure. Ill meet you out front in fifteen, okay?
Chess was ready in ten.
Shed run to the student dorms, tucked behind the main Church building, back past the building housing the elevator to the spirit prisons, behind and to the left of the Church employee cottages. Maybe someday shed have one of those, although she had to admit the thought didnt appeal as much as it should have. Life in the dorms made her itch, all those people on top of her; life in the cottages would be just as bad, she imagined.
But some employees lived off-grounds. Some of them got permission. Maybe one day maybe one day she could, too. If she worked hard enough, was smart enough. Which she would be. The others didnt know how lucky they were to be there; the others had families to fall back on. All Chess had to fall back on was the knowledge that she could turn tricks for food money if she had to, and she refused to allow that to happen. Not now. Not when shed almost had something different.
The early afternoon sun blazed right into her eyes, like a finger pointing straight at her, as she crossed the square of bare earth where the Reckonings were held every Holy Day morning. That day, Monday, the stocks stood empty, the dirt around them freshly combed after the mess Saturdays always brought, the piles of rotten vegetables and tears that always ended up there after sinners gained their redemption, after crowds got off on giving it to them.
She crossed the space and waited right outside the enormous double doors of the main entrance until a dull black sedan pulled up to the curb fifteen feet or so away and Jillian Morrow beckoned her through the open window. Cmon, lets go.
Chess forced her reluctant feet to move. She didnt want to do this. Didnt want to work for the Squad. Working for the Squad meant having a partner, someone to cozy up with and have over for dinner or whatever else, and she did not want that.
But she didnt have a choice, at least not at the moment. So she popped the door handle of the sedan and sank into the pine- and Armor Allscented interior, clutching her bag on her lap and fastening her seat belt with the feeling that she was on a roller-coaster ride she didnt want to be on.
Guess you didnt think youd end up working with the Squad, Jillian said, pulling carefully away from the curb. Dont worry. Nothing big on the schedule for today, just going for a drive.
Great, Chess said, because it seemed like an answer was required.
Mostly we just
Static on her radio broke into her sentence, made her brows draw together in annoyance at first, before anger and a little fear replaced them. Damn it.
Chess didnt reply. She was too busy listening to the radio, the announcers voice saying something about bodies found and an address.
Jillian glanced at her as the announcernot an announcer, Chess realized, a dispatcherwent quiet. Well, she said, lunging the car into traffic and speeding down the road, cutting off another car behind them, looks like youre going to get a taste of real Squad work after all.
Chapter Two
The sedan pulled up in front of a bland-looking ranch house in Cross Town, a semi-suburb struggling to leave the working class behind. The house, a slab of dull tan and brown, hid behind a couple of trees and about half a dozen sedans and Squad cars. Holy shit, this was a real crime scene.
Well, duh, people were dead, right? Of course it was a crime scene, or at least a dead-body scene. But still Chess was aware of her feet crossing the tidy green lawn, the sound of her boots sliding against the grass and the sound of her bag shifting on her shoulder. The lawn looked extra green, the sky extra blue, like the nights back in the Corey Youth Home when she and a few of the others would score some Sizzle and spend the night giggling and watching the colors dance in the air. But that had been fake. This looked too real. It looked like something she didnt want to see.
Jillian approached two men standing just outside the wide-open front door. Vaughn, Trent.
The men nodded. One of them spoke. Morrow.
Their gazes fell on Chess, who forced herself not to fidget under their weight. They wanted to look at her and wonder? Let them. She didnt need to offer them any information.
Jillian gave her up. This is Cesaria Putnam. Shes a student, out with me for her last-year shadowing.
The mens eyes thawed a little. One of themTrent?gave her an appraising kind of smile. Thinking of joining us?
Chess shrugged.
Trents face hardened; clearly hed expected her to blush and giggle under his manly attention or something. Well, he said, stepping back and sweeping his arm out in a you-first kind of gesture, this is as good a start as any, right? Go ahead.
She should have hesitated. She should have looked at Jillian, waited for a nod.
But she didnt. Not with Vaughn smirking and Trent still standing there waiting for her to move.
She started walking.
Lets see how tough she is now, she heard one of the men murmur. Her back stiffened. They had no idea what tough was.
Tough was walking through that wide-open doorway and entering an entirely different world, a world full of blood and body parts thrown around, a world of overturned furniture and broken glass and death. A world where the walls themselves seemed to vibrate with horror, still in shock at what theyd been forced to witness.
Holy shit. Bile rose in her throat; stars exploded before her eyes. What she was seeing? How many people had been killed there, how many bodies made up the clutter of lost mortality strewn across the oat-colored carpet?
A chuckle from behind her managed to penetrate the roaring in her ears. Right. Right, they were watching her, waiting for her to break down. She wouldnt give them the satisfaction.
Jillians hand on her arm. Something in her eyes, something not quite sympathy but not quite pleasure, either. More like curiosity, maybe? Annoyance. You okay?
Chess nodded, forcing herself not to pull away from Jillians presumptuous touch no matter how much it made her skin crawl. She was trying, she was getting better with that, better every day, but it still sent discomfort skittering along her skin, down her spine. Im fine.
Jillian paled as she looked at the mess. Damn. They werent kidding when they said it was awful.
What happened? I mean, what do
These people were murdered, thats what happened. Trent stood in the doorway; as he spoke he started walking, essentially shoving Chess and Jillian further into the death-chamber. Sunlight made his hair a brownish halo around the shadowed oval of his face, so she couldnt read his expression. She bet she knew what it was, though. See, when people get all torn apart like that, they usually cant live anymore.
Chess stared at him. A long, even stare, one that told him exactly what she thought of him and his patronizing little games.
Vaughn cleared his throat. Neighbor called this morning, screaming, saying shed come over to pick up the womanMrs. Waring, Shannon Waringto go shopping, found them all like this. She said she didnt enter the house.
Any confirmation on that? Jillian asked.
Still working on it. Vaughn flipped a page in the little notebook he carried. Nobody heard anything, nobody saw anything, everyones horrified, the Warings were such nice people, you know, the usual shistuff neighbors say. Doors werent locked, garage door was open. Theres a tire track off the driveway, but we have no idea when it might have been made.
I guess we should Jillian started, but Trent cut her off.
I think we should ask our new recruit what she thinks we should do. Amusement glinted in his eyes as he looked at Chess. She can learn by doing, right?
Was he always this much of an asshole, or was it something personal?
Not that it mattered. Fine. He wanted to be a dick, he could go right ahead. One benefit of an upbringing like hers: nobody could make her feel worse about herself than she already did. His attitude, his dislike, was just another raindrop hitting floodwaters.
There was a pause; in it she felt them all waiting for her reaction, Jillian and Vaughn torn between wanting to stand up to Trent and wanting to see what shed do.
So she looked around the room, thought for a second. What about the weapon? Do you know what kind of weapon was used?
A knife. Trent had moved, so she could see his face, the glint in his eyes. What did it feel like to be so smug all the time? Not that she cared, really; it was just idle curiosity.
But wait. He did look smug, didnt he? And he wouldnt be looking so smug if she wasnt missing something, if there wasnt something big she should have figured out but hadnt.
She stopped and inspected the scene again, trying to separate the bloody limbs and lumps of flesh from what they meant. It was so grisly. What did thatwhy was that? Why had the bodies been chopped up and left lying around like that? Usually when killers chopped up bodies it was to make them easier to dispose of, right?
Well, she didnt know that for a fact, but shed known a few people in her life who would have. And it justit just seemed like if a killer was going to go through all the trouble of slicing and dicing a corpse, there ought to be some purpose to it aside from making the biggest possible mess.
But. There was one type of killer who might very well chop people up just for fun and discard the individual parts like peanut shells tossed on a barroom floor. There was one type of killer who had the kind of rage that would drive a person to destroy another like that; one type of killer who felt nothing but hate.
Chess lifted her chin, looked right into Trents oh-so-clever eyes. Ghosts did this, right? You found ectoplasm?
His face fell. She managed not to smile.
Vaughn shifted uncomfortably on his feet. We did, yes. And this isnt the He stopped himself. The three Squad members exchanged looks.
Thereve been others? Chess asked.
Pause. Long pause, while the others had some sort of silent conversation. Chess didnt watch them. Now that her initial shock had passed she was more interested in the room, in the house itself.