Free Demon Hunts by Ce Murphy Page A

there’s some lunatic controlling a…” I had no idea what, really. A cannibal, clearly, but beyond that I didn’t know. “A flesh-eating monster. And then we can bag the guy and be done.”
    Billy gave me a look that said when have we ever been lucky? and I shrugged it off. “And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll try the bait thing.”
    â€œNeed I point out that this thing is going after outdoorsy types, which you’re not?”
    It was true. I was more the grease monkey type. I said, “Still,” like I’d presented that comment aloud, then leaned heavily on the hood of his minivan. “Ravenna Park isn’t exactly a great outdoors kind of landscape, either, Billy.”
    â€œYou know, I’m pretty sure I hate where this is going, too.”
    â€œShe was found in Ravenna Park. She lived in my apartment building. What if—”
    â€œI seriously doubt it.”
    A tiny rush of relieved laughter escaped me. “You didn’t let me finish.”
    â€œYou were going to say, what if this thing that eats souls was after you. What if it’s circling around to you, and Karin Newcomb just got in the way. Joanne, do you know any of the others who died? Is there any kind of connection at all?”
    â€œNo….” Even I knew the apartment building connection was tenuous, but my life had been one unpleasant coincidence after another all year long. Stranger things could, and had, happened.
    â€œThen don’t do that to yourself. This is bad enough as it is.”
    â€œOn the other hand, if it’s not coincidence,” which I reallywanted it to be, “I’d make good bait. So unless you’ve got a better idea, let’s try scoping out the city from the Needle, and then…” I shrugged. “Then we’ll see.”
    Billy ground his teeth, got in the minivan, and drove us to the Space Needle. Normally he might’ve proposed we do something crazy like actual detective work, but there were about a hundred cops on the cannibal case and so far no one had gotten a break. Every crime scene had been utterly bereft of DNA evidence. We hadn’t been able to pinpoint an area the killer might be in, because the victims were from all over the city. In my grumpier moments I suspected our cannibal had watched too many crime shows and knew better than to hunt in a six-block radius around his home. Or a six-mile radius, for that matter.
    The total lack of DNA was part of why Morrison had called Billy and me in. It wasn’t like chewed meat could be licked clean, and there were streaks of blood on the bodies, if not puddles under them, which suggested they hadn’t been thoroughly washed before being dumped. But even if they had been washed, even in the unlikely event that someone could scrub every last bit of their own genetic markers out of the body they’d just snacked on, that would’ve left residue, too. The absolute nothing was impossible, and impossible was supposed to be our department.
    Billy, who would’ve scolded me for doing the same thing, came down Broad Street, parked the van in a taxi zone about a hundred feet from the Needle’s foot and hung a police vehicle tag in it. We waved our badges at security and hopped the “only going to the restaurant, don’t need the tour guide” elevator to the fiftieth floor. It wasn’t as much fun, but it was faster.
    The police badges also meant we didn’t have to buy therestaurant’s overpriced lunch, although my stomach rumbled when the scent of food hit my nostrils. “Think we can expense it to the department?”
    â€œI’m writing off filling up the minivan’s tank. Might as well try expensing filling up mine.” We got a table at the room’s outer edge and ordered lunch while I turned the Sight on the city.
    It looked healthier than it had the last time I’d done this. Then there’d been a malaise