Fallen Angels, Part six - Murder in Mind
#6 of Fallen Angels
Chapter Five
Murder in Mind
The tiny traveling Circus Mascot was part circus and part freakshow, all mixed up. The performers traveled across the country to entertain towns large and small, with their acrobatic acts, freaks of nature and illusionists. Local artists joined the circus along the route, did their act for a few stops and left pairwise when forming relationships grew more rewarding than performing for fifty patrons under a leaky top.
"Carlo and I shared the same talent," Irene said. "You can see things, but we make people see things. We made people hear, taste and feel imaginary things. Together, we created beautiful illusions."
Irene showed me a faded photo of the troupe. "Not all acts were professional, but Carlo and I used our talent to make the audience believe in them. He played the guitar and I sang, so when the townies believed they saw a nine-ball juggler, it was in fact old Rusty, a three-ball juggler who dropped his balls half the time. With a little persuasion, Carlo and I turned a mediocre show into an experience."
"And you turn cheap coffee at Port Salute into premium beans?"
Irene blushed. "It's actually carry-out from the Starbucks around the corner."
I snickered at the thought of my coffee-enthusiast friend unknowingly awarding top score to a brand he disliked so deeply. Maybe his nose wasn't as accurate as he imagined. Either that, or Irene was in possession of a rare talent, powerful enough to fool a werewolf.
"Creating a few illusions for the sake of entertainment, sounds innocent enough?"
"It was." Irene let out a sigh and stroked the photo of Carlo with the back of her little finger.
"Right until he teamed up with Zak, the ice-cream guy."
"Did they turn bad ice-cream into Ben and Jerry's?".
"Nope, they cruised the gas stations at night and sang the clerks into handing over their brass and whites."
I couldn't help laughing out loud at the thought of an operatic criminal. "So, we're talking robbery at counterpoint. Then what happened?"
"CCTV cameras happened." Irene tucked the photo of Carlo back into a crumbled brown envelope.
The police couldn't do much because Carlo and Zak hypnotized the mark, but the three of them were kicked out of the circus. Carlo started drinking and they moved into a shelter for the homeless. Six years ago, Dr Gill and Carlo became drinking buddies. Carlo had complained about a numbness in his right shoulder that made it difficult for him to play, and Gill offered to treat him for free. They found a small tumor at the top of the spine and Carlo was scheduled for an operation.
"Gill was drunk that night," said Irene. "More so than usual, and Carlo died during the botched operation. He was weakened from living on the streets
... at least, that's what they told us."
"You've been out for revenge for six years?
Irene shook her head. "I forgave Gill years ago. He was an alcoholic, like my brother. When Carlo died, the hospital covered for Gill and he swore to clean his act. He visited the city shelters and started taking in patients for free. He became a friend to the homeless - someone we could turn to when we couldn't afford medical attention."
At first, everything was fine. No, better than fine. Dr. Gill sobered up, he took in patients directly from the streets. He visited the shelters to check that everyone was alright.
El angel de blanco, he was known among the locals - the angel in white, referring to his white lab coat. Three years later, Irene noticed a gradual change of things. Too many homeless were taken from the shelter and operated on. Many of them seemed to have trivial health issues only. Several died during operations, but with no relatives to contact, nobody cared enough to look into their deaths. Nobody, except Irene. She took a job at the hospital to snoop around. When she saw her friend_Toledo_ being wheeled in to be operated on, she feared the worst.
Irene paused her tale and lit a cigarette.
"My fears came true in that operating theater, three days ago."
"But, there's always a risk when they poke around in your brain," I argued.
"_Toledo_was never diagnosed with a brain aneurysm. He had a bum liver from drinking and bad lungs from smoking, but there was never anything wrong with his head.
She grabbed my arm and squeezed. "They killed him, Daniel! Gill killed him. Just like he killed Carlo and the other homeless people before him."
That same night, Irene let herself into Gill's office. She placed the flask of bourbon on his desk to prime him.
"I'm a gitano," Irene said. "of the Sapéré clan. We have the gift of convincing people through our singing."
"Brain-fuckery, you mean?"
"More like encouraging. It's not magic - everyone has their own trigger."
"And in Gill's case, that trigger was bourbon?"
"No, it was guilt. The bourbon triggered his guilt and it was easy to sing him into..."
"And Quinn?"
"Nostalgia. He kept staring out the window when I sang. I knew he longed to be out there. He wanted to go to that place he calls home."
"And me?"
Irene laughed. "The ones who are starved for sex are always the easiest targets."
I felt uncomfortable about being labeled an easy target, but Irene was right. My guardian demons had warned me of her, and I ignored them.
I should have called Quinn and told him to book Irene for singing a man into committing suicide, but we had no evidence that would hold up in court. No judge or jury would ever believe the existence of a modern day siren, not unless Quinn and I made a public display of transforming into demon and werewolf inside the courtroom. Besides, Irene and I had something in common:
We were freaks.
Over the next few days, Irene and I trawled Pubmed for publications by Dr. Gill. He had written a slew of papers, all about brain hormones, but he stopped his output the year he began working at St. Mary's Grace. The papers were hidden behind paywalls, and we were stuck with a handful of short abstracts.
Isolation and purification of amygdala regulating factor (ARF-I) by Gill T and Crane D.
A novel treatment for persistent angst in PTSD patients. Gill T and Crane D.
Most of his later papers were all co-written with a Professor named Desmond Crane.
"I think I know this guy," said Irene after some thought. "I made an audio recording for him once."
"Desmond Crane?"
"He hired me to write songs. Songs that would keep morale high with a bunch of army soldiers. They were growing lonely and homesick, stuck on duty in the deserts of Yemen. "
"Like battle hymns?"
"More like a one-girl brass band; he kept calling me the modern day Vera Lynn."
Irene opened a drawer in her desk and rummaged through a pile of writable CD-roms. She put on a CD on her stereo and a quiet piece of piano music poured out of the speakers.
"It's pretty," I said. "But it doesn't make me want to fight."
"I couldn't do it," she said. "I can sing people into loving or leaving."
"... but you can't sing them into fighting." I finished the sentence for her and picked up the jewel case. " Song for Carlo was handwritten in green ink across the cover.
"I made this one because I couldn't stop thinking of my brother. It was all I could write."
when Irene handed in the CD, Crane was not pleased.
"This won't make our boys fight," he complained. Then Irene got paid and laid off. At the time, she was almost broke and who cared if cash payment was outside standard practice? She was relieved that Crane didn't blow a fuse, she stuffed the envelope into her bag and left the building. Outside she recognized Gill's car pulling up to the lab, and she was almost about to ask him for a ride back to town, when she noticed how uncomfortable the doctor looked. Instead, Irene stayed put and quietly observed Gill taking a large glass jar out of the trunk of his car.
When she recognized the shape of its contents, she had to clasp both hands to her mouth to prevent her from screaming.
Gill wasn't only taking money; he was delivering brains.
"You're shitting me!" Laughed Quinn. "Brains?"
"I know it sounds like something out of a zombie film, but."
"But brains? Seriously."
"Maybe he didn't scoop out the whole damn thing -but bits and pieces of it."
"You know how crazy that sounds, right?"
I shrugged. Irene sang people into throwing themselves off their balconies, Quinn ran on all fours and howled at the moon, so why couldn't Gill be a brain collector. Everything in this damn case was crazy anyway, including everyone involved. By the looks of it, I was the only one with an official diagnosis.
"Did the techies come up with anything from the SIM card?" I asked.
Quinn nodded. "He made a phone call to one Desmond Crane at eight thirty." Then he added "You know him?" when he saw me wince.
"I'm gonna know him shortly," I said. "You're coming or not?"
"Can't go with you," said Quinn. "Last night a bunch of army boys went on a rampage downtown. I'll be stuck behind the desk all day, filing reports."
He showed me a stack of photos. Five soldiers who had recently returned from duty in Yemen had gone berserk and attacked three civilians outside a restaurant.
"They were local boys," he said. "Just returned from peacekeeping duty in the Al-Mahra desert. Must have been wasted on Khat or something," said Quinn. "We're still waiting for the lab report."
In that moment, I was glad I didn't have Quinn's job. There are some things that are so gruesome you wish you can unsee them, but the images stay with you forever. This was one of those moments. The five soldiers had maimed and killed three innocents in an orgy of mindless violence.
"Don't show me this kind of shit," I cursed, but it was too late. The images of mangled bodies had already etched themselves onto the canvas of my mind.
"Two men and one woman," said Quinn. But we can only tell by their clothes. Dental records are of no use, because..."
"Don't..." I snapped. "Don't even go there."
"We had to put down three of the soldiers," said Quinn. "They didn't care about warning shots or anything. They just kept coming at us."
"And the last two?"
"They collapsed. One is in a coma, and we can't make any sense of the other guy. They were riding high on something like cocaine or PCP. Definitely something that makes you real freaky. These guys were wired out of their skulls."
I turned and was about to leave when Quinn called.
"Wait! You're in love with her, aren't you?"
I sighed. "I guess I am."
"You know she's our prime suspect."
"Being around her makes me feel..."
"Human?" Quinn intercepted my thoughts.
I nodded. "She accepts me for what I am."
"Just...Be careful with her," said Quinn. Then he went back to his paperwork.
For the first time in weeks, I whistled as I left the office. Quinn had given me a subtle warning: be careful with her, he'd said. Not around her. He knew I wasn't in any danger from her, but that she might be the one at risk.