Last Impressions (The Marnie Baranuik Files) Read online

  LAST IMPRESSIONS

  THE MARNIE BARANUIK FILES,

  BOOK THREE

  A.J. AALTO

  Booktrope Editions

  Seattle, WA 2014

  COPYRIGHT 2014 A.J. AALTO

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

  Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).

  Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

  No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.

  Inquiries about additional permissions

  should be directed to: [email protected]

  Cover Design by Greg Simanson

  Edited by Rafe Brox

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to similarly named places or to persons living or deceased is unintentional.

  PRINT ISBN 978-1-62015-434-2

  EPUB ISBN 978-1-62015-424-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910391

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  MORE FROM A.J. AALTO & BOOKTROPE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This time, I am totally not letting my editor write this for me, because he'll make me dedicate it to Tim Horton's and Fireball whiskey and the company that makes all my sex toys, and I will die of embarrassment so completely that I won't be able to show my face in a coffee house or sex emporium again. And then I will be bereft of both caffeine and orgasms, and will want to die for realsie-reals. (Author’s note: obviously, my editor DID write that bit, because everyone knows I wouldn’t use a highfalutin word like “bereft.”)

  I’d like to thank my future Chief Science Officer, Gordon Bonnett of Skeptophilia fame, who is always there to inspire me when I need him, and to answer my hey-this-isn’t-quite-science-but-what-if questions like an open-minded pro. Someday, when I rule the galaxy, your giant brain is gonna come in real handy, Gordon; I should maybe keep it in the freezer until then.

  I owe a huge thanks to Constable Jack Sawatsky of the Peel Regional Police for walking me through Canadian police procedures and investigative techniques. Sorry I got you stabbed on our first hike, Jack. Thanks for tolerating my ditzy research questions about the law, life, and death; for letting me drag you from abandoned graveyard to canal to “crime scene” to haunted tunnel, and for never asking, “You wanna go where, now?”; for never saying “no,” even when the timing sucked or the weather was hideous or the path was inaccessible, and for always insisting on going first wherever the terrain was iffy. Finally, even though I’m fairly certain you’re Batman, if you don’t stop flicking salt on the table, I will spin-kick your ass through a window. Hey, check me out, threatening a cop in writing. So much sass.

  Last but never least, I’d like to thank my long-suffering editor Rafe Brox, who probably still has a sprained face from all the eye-rolling I’ve caused. For your patience, insight, fortitude, and sense of humor, thank you a million-billion times, Rafe. You are completely irreplaceable… so don’t croak yet, eh?

  [Ribbit. Soorry. - Ed.]

  For Jennifer

  My dark angel, my outlier, my rule breaker, my heart.

  CHAPTER 1

  MY SHADOW STEPPED on Sheriff Rob Hood’s all the way across the parking lot, slicing a mismatched but merciful pair of respites from the glittering mica underfoot. Though it was November and bone-bitingly cold, snow had yet to fall; the asphalt was gritty but dry. I found I was anxious for the crackle of ice underfoot, the same way I’m always restless for the first wild thunderstorms of spring. The wind whisked away my breath in ragged clouds, and the chill seeped through two pairs of socks and my navy blue Keds to curl my toes, the skin on my thighs chilled and taut right through my jeans and a pair of silk and cashmere long-johns. There might have been a boogercicle forming at the tip of my nose, but it had already gone numb.

  “It’s only four and the sun’s weakening,” I said. “It’ll be dark before supper.”

  My companion liked to walk in silence. In fact, the sheriff of Lambert County could sit on my couch for hours and say nothing at all, and often did. That was okay with me. After all the shit I’d been through, his familiar presence — non-threatening, yet capable and generally good-natured — was a comfort. Fortunately for him, there were few calls for serious sheriffing, so he could usually get away with doing it as much as he did; today, he hadn't.

  “That’s the least depressing thing I’ve heard all day,” Hood muttered uncharacteristically. More than the swirling red and blue lights of the patrol cars or the sight of his haphazardly-parked olive drab Hummer H1, the tone of his voice put me on edge.

  “What have you got here, anyway?” I asked.

  “There was a standoff. The driver of the truck shot himself point-blank in the face.”

  “Gross. Why’d you call me?”

  “It grew back.”

  My Keds came to a crunching halt, and I gave him my best hairy eyeball. I'd been practicing it in my bathroom mirror, along with several other facial expressions inspired by Special Agent Heather Golden and her attitude problem. I arched an eyebrow, too. I knew it was an awesome arch. Totally skeptical and challenging and dubious of his authority. Unfortunately, it went unnoticed underneath my dark grey knit hat with its chorus line of frogs around the trim.

  A white and blue eighteen-wheeler was half-jackknifed across the road by the tunnel's entrance, its rear axles slewed onto the soft shoulder with barely five feet of rocky grit between two-lane hardtop and a thirty-foot drop into the winding Redfern River.

  “And when, exactly, were you planning on telling me about that little trick?” I asked. “Is the driver alive?”

  “You’re the expert, Mars,” Hood grumbled.

  At some point in Hood’s timeline of affection I had earned the dubiously-convivial nickname, “Mars.” It was cute, but I was wary; it’d be far too easy for the tiny romantic hitchhiker in my brain to believe a nickname meant something more than it actually did. I forced myself not to think about it.

  “So, where's the not-so-stiff?”

  Hood grimaced and indicated an SUV belonging to the State patrol. In the back seat was a young man with a head of floppy blond hair with a pronounced pink stain and a left cheek like chipped beef.

  “Well, he’s not a revenant,” I said. “It might not be middle-of-summer bright, but it’s not late enough for the undead to be drivi
ng around with confidence unless he's got painted-over windows and a periscope. One break in the overcast and poof.”

  Hood’s Stetson bobbed. “What are the other options?”

  “Based on the speed of his recuperation, some form of lycanthrope, I’m guessing.”

  “Don’t guess,” Hood said in a very unfriendly flavor of Cop Voice, the one I forgot he could pull off because he was so perpetually amiable. “We can’t afford to guess. Lycanthropy can be contagious depending on the phase of the moon.”

  Point: Hood. I was impressed that he knew that, but let him finish.

  “I’ve got splatter everywhere, both in the cab and on the road.”

  Numbered yellow markers pointed out the globs. I picked out the familiar form of my sometimes partner, Agent Elian de Cabrera of the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit, stepping carefully to one side of the carnage as he came to fall into step beside us.

  “Hey, Baranuik. About time you showed,” de Cabrera said, jerking his chin at me. “What kept you?”

  “Cut me some slack, Cuban. I was on a date,” I said.

  He barked a laugh, which Hood worked hard at not echoing. “Good one,” de Cabrera said.

  “I know, right? What’s a date?” I agreed. “I’d almost forgotten.”

  “Wait, like a real date? With a man?” he amended, bending to hear me over the squawk of radios. “A living, breathing man?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Yes, one of those strange creatures. You should try it yourself. Seduce him with your coffee and dance moves and biker booty. Whatever. He was nice, too.” That was a lie. My date was a total dickweasel; I’d rather stick a lit match in my eye than suffer through another meal with Richard Binswanger. He’d ordered for me without asking what I liked and spent most of the meal droning on about what a drag it was that people envied him so much. I envied the people who were at every other table, and who could escape their lunches without faking epic menstrual cramps or food poisoning. I had already mentally recited half the script of Spaceballs by the time Hood’s call came in.

  “Does, uh, anyone else know about this date?” de Cabrera asked carefully, wary of Hood’s looming presence over my shoulder.

  What he wanted to ask was: Does Batten know? But I was fighting my not-so-secret addiction to Special Agent Mark “Kill-Notch” Batten with impressive fortitude lately. Batten and I had been working on a system of trying not to hate-fuck each other to death. So far, that required an aggressive regimen of rubber-band snapping against my wrist, and a total hands-off approach. The ol' Nookie Cold Turkey, or “NCT” as I dubbed it in my new Moleskine diary – this one sporting a totally unsexy orange cover. Batten and I had no viable future, other than the occasional, breathless, wall-shaking tryst, and I was trying to forget those and get on with my life so I could keep my job and my sanity.

  “Don’t figure my love life is anyone’s business but mine.” And Harry’s, I thought. If it doesn’t bother Harry, then everyone else can suck it. That jogged my memory about something else I needed to excise from my sex life; the bond of my long-suffering dhaugir. “Where’s Chapel?”

  Hood spoke up, following close. “He was unavailable.”

  I stopped with a squawk. “So was I! I was very unavailable. I was, like, maybe an hour away from getting lucky.”

  “What can I say, Baranuik? He’s the boss.” Hood shrugged.

  Supervisory Special Agent Gary Chapel was technically my boss, not Hood’s, but pointing that out would change nothing about my current situation. I inhaled deeply and let the air out the side of my mouth in several cheeky duck noises to express my unhappiness.

  De Cabrera added, “Assistant Director Johnston’s in town.” Ah; the boss’s boss.

  “Don’t worry. Batten’s on his way,” Hood said.

  “Is that supposed to cheer me up?” I asked.

  Hood elbowed me and ducked his head closer to my ear. “Go on, you love the abuse. He’s five minutes out.”

  “Goody gumdrops.” I marched to the back bumper, ignoring the new hot roar in my veins. I pictured battle-hardened Batten in his worn Wranglers and reached down under the cuff of my parka to snap the elastic band against my wrist to distract myself with the sting. “I’ll try to contain my bliss. Is the victim human?”

  The Sheriff stared at my wrist for a second, was kind enough not to react to my negative reinforcement strategy, and gestured for me to take a look underneath the truck. “No. We need you to tell us what it is, since we know what it isn't.”

  “You want me to look?” I felt my upper lip curl. “What am I, some kind of monster expert?” I looked at the gaggle of state troopers who had stopped what they were doing to stare me down. “Oh. Right.” Then, under my breath, “Balls.”

  De Cabrera cleared his throat and gave me the stink-eye. He’d been trying to encourage me to develop the power of positive thinking since he’d got wound up by some self-help book a year or so before. He was the type who learned a new buzzword and then had to teach everyone else about it or he'd explode from having nobody to annoy. It was easier not to fight him on it, and I thought I was handling the lessons quite nicely.

  I told him, “This positively sucks balls.”

  His answer was a snort.

  When I lowered myself next to the truck the frigid grit dug into the knees of my jeans and to my gloved palms, stones scuffing leather. I turned my face to look under the truck, not really wanting to see, knowing it was my job. My stupid, stupid job.

  As Hood had said on the phone, the body had been chained by the neck to the back of the semi's frame and dragged along beneath the trailer. Flesh and bone and viscera had been abraded nearly as far up as the rib cage, and I had to stifle an unladylike urge to vomit at the thought of what kind of person would do that to someone else, followed by a competing urge to take Hood's gun and try to do the driver better than he'd done himself, and I was pretty sure Hood kept a clip loaded with sliver rounds handy. Where the remains now lay, it looked like a horror movie prop boy had tripped with a Bucket o’ Guts, wasting a whole day’s budget. Despite the gory mess, there was a thing or two that were not quite right.

  Without looking up I told de Cabrera, “When Batten gets here, tell him I quit.”

  “When’s the last time you quit?”

  “Yesterday,” I said. “Noonish.”

  “Think he’ll ever buy it?”

  “Hey, a girl can dream.” And, in some cases, have job-related nightmares, whether she was awake or not. Was this really better than an awkward, stilted lunch with a self-centered blowhard? I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against a clean patch of asphalt, and admitted the truth. Yeah, it probably was. No wonder I couldn't get a date; I thought half of a degloved corpse was more attractive than a forty-dollar dessert crepe.

  De Cabrera held a hand down as if anticipating my answer before he asked, “Want your biohazard bins?”

  “My trunk, thanks.” I handed the keys to the new-to-me Buick back at him. “Better get me two or three, and some neoprene gloves. I’m not mucking up my leather with this shit. Where’s Golden?”

  De Cabrera played with the keys until he found the right one. “Still off sick.”

  “Think I should make her some soup?”

  “Can you cook?”

  “Not remotely.”

  “You don’t want to kill off the only female friend you’ve got here,” he advised.

  “Hey!” I objected, though his assessment was unfortunately dead-on. There had been the older woman who lived in the cabin next to mine, but her and her Labradoodles had become zombies and tried to eat me, so that’s not chummy. There was Claire, the proprietress of the Early Bird coffee shop in Ten Springs, but even I would be hard-pressed to call “hasn't tried to poison me yet” friendship.

  De Cabrera marched away from us in the direction of my car, and Hood took his place. I squinted up at him against the glare as the sun slipped below the edge of the cloud cover.

  “The driver’s definitely not a revenan
t,” he said. “Getting sun now. No poof.”

  I nodded, not really that surprised, and tried to figure out what was hinky about the partial corpse that hung like a pathetic, broken toy off the silvery chain that bound it.

  “There’s about two miles of gore behind the truck.” He planted both hands on his athletic thighs and squatted beside me fluidly, bouncing slightly; always ready for action, though there seemed no danger. “A motorist noticed a pile of intestines fly out from under the truck, thought it looked too big to be roadkill, and called 911.”

  Good call, innocent bystander. “Where’s he?”

  “Ambulance, chest pains. Need to see him?”

  I shook my head; the ever-patient Agent Chapel didn’t like me using my psychic Talents on witnesses without him first approving it. I’d been both an Empath and a Psychometrist ever since becoming a DaySitter when I was seventeen, and had been using my Talents to help law enforcement for the last few years. It’s not nearly as glamorous as it sounds; most of the time, it’s downright awful. If Chapel didn’t need my Talents, I didn’t volunteer them. I stuck to the business of preternatural science, and the occasional corpse-ogling under a truck. Like you do.

  “First cop on the scene thought it must have been an elk until he saw the hand half a mile back.” Hood’s exhale fogged. “It’s been bagged and tagged. I can get it for you, if you need it.”

  I breathed in through my nostrils so I didn’t yurp up all over the crime scene. “Gee, that’s quite all right,” I smiled tightly.

  “Cavalry’s here,” Hood reported, meaning the tires crunching in the distance must belong to an FBI SUV.

  “Is it Batten?” I asked him, ignoring a hopelessly aroused flutter in my stomach. I snapped my wrist-elastic. “Tell me he brought coffee, keeping in mind I’ll die if you say no.”

  Hood made a non-committal noise. “I’ll find you some. Anything else you need?”