Free Botanica Blues by Tristan J. Tarwater Page A

death at three days ago, sometime between midnight and three in the morning.” She points at the piles of remains as she speaks, and I can't help but stare at the maroon splattered on the bright blue. “Five females, seven males, all between the ages of nineteen to late 40s, I'd say. One even went to your alma mater.” She holds up a student identification card. NCU. It's the nineteen year old. The picture is of a sullen undergrad, dyed hair, dark circles under her eyes. Pretty. I probably would have asked her out if we were classmates. Hell, I might have asked her out today, if she were alive.
    “I'll have fun looking through the yearbook,” I say. It's a dumb joke, I know but sometimes dumb jokes are all I got. Yang manages a smile and Hunts crosses his arms across his chest. “What about the candles?” Start off easy, before I have to look at the gruesome stuff, shove my face into it.
    “A little gift left by whoever did this,” Hunts says, walking over to one corner of the room. There's actually a trash can in this part of the room, a small one. The contents have been laid out across the ground, strewn methodically, tagged and bagged. Hunts picks one up and hands it to me.
    Botanica de los Fondos
. I know the place. They close at eight, so I've got time. I nod and put it in my bag, and one of the other officers call Hunts over so he excuses himself.
    Now's the time to put my face in it. I pull out my pad and pencil and I walk around, careful not to step in any of the crusted smears on the floor. It's a new pad, spiral bound. I stand in front of one of the eyes and I draw it. Some people would just take a picture and I'll take a picture too but for me drawing gives it more meaning. I'm not the best artist but I'm okay. I practice by trying to copy pictures. It's all just lines. Straight lines, curved lines, lines making no sense. Beginnings and endings. I draw the eye from the wall drawn in blood. I wonder where the blood came from. Yang's crew will be able to tell me later.
    I draw the eye with thick lines. Thick strokes, back and forth, sloppy. There are spatters of blood on the wall. I draw a few dots. Lines and dots. Pulling out my phone I take a few pictures.
    I turn around and take in the scene. I count the steps between the bodies and draw the rough circle. I look at the candles and sketch them in. Limbs become crooked lines, blown open heads interrupted circles, pools of gore curves with no logic. I look over the clothes. Brown robes. No jewelry.
    The lines on the floor and the circles I draw next. I turn the page and the sound makes people look toward me. They can fuck themselves. Symbols are written and I write them as carefully as I can, inspecting each one. I pull my phone out to take another pic and I've got a message.
    [Frankies Bday this Sunday. You comin?]
    I blow out my cheeks and dismiss it, turning on the camera again. A few pushes on the screen. Twenty new pics added to the gallery. The symbols seem familiar but don't place with anything I've come across recently, nothing I’ve studied. But it's obvious from the scene the person I'm dealing with is one of the bad ones.
    “Quintana, you heading out?” I just close my notebook and shove it into my bag when Yang waves me over. I step toward her, trying to ignore the stains on the floor but avoid them at the same time. It's hard. My stomach hurts. But she pulls back the sleeve of one of the bodies.
    A tattoo. I pull out my notebook to sketch it and she laughs. She's got a nice laugh, Yang. She doesn't laugh enough. “Just take a pic and be done with it,” she said.
    “Drawing it makes it stick more,” I say. Another circle in a circle. Looks like a stylized skull to me, but not one I've seen before. “When you ID them, send me the info,” I say, pulling out the phone. I snap a picture of it and put my notebook away. “I'm heading out to check on some people before I head back to the office.”
    “We know how to get a hold of you,” Yang