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Cry Me a Murder, VI.

Only a Scream Away.

Hotel Kisanti lay without electricity. The lights were out, the whooshing of the ceiling fans slowed and rattled like the exhale of a dying man. The industrial freezers thawed, endangering the shelf-lives of a thousand dollars' worth of ice cream. The graying Ted Jones, commonly known simply as "Mr. Tejon" flipped the power-switch aimlessly, but always economical with his words, he judged it unnecessary to comment on the situation. In contrast, Fernando complained uninterrupted about the UPS he'd installed at great expense. "I'll give it a good kick, that's what." We followed him to the electric control room, which was the name Fernando had given a broom closet that contained a fuse box and cables turned spaghetti on the floor.

"It's gone? What the..." Fernando pointed his torch at an empty shelf, and switched it on and off as if expecting the UPS to materialize in between strobe flashes. "It's gone!" he repeated, "stolen." I was about to ask him why anyone would even bother to break in for an oversized battery, when a prolonged scream echoed down the hall. Although she had not spoken much since her arrival, we recognized the voice of nurse Richards in an instant. She was in the elevator, alone and stuck between ground floor and first. Through the porthole, we could see her shaking and clawing at the door in panic. "Thank Iuna you heard me," she cried. "I want out."

Slater and I tried to pry the elevator doors open, but the safety lock wouldn't budge.

"Without electricity, we'll have to crank the wheel by hand," said Slater, "It's at the top of the shaft."

"Don't leave me!" cried nurse Richards. She was shivering, almost to the point of hysteria. Slater looked around for Mr. Tejon who was nowhere to be seen. "Now, where's the old dude when you need him?"

I stormed up the stairs and crawled into the elevator shaft through the maintenance grate. The elevator was stuck twenty feet below me, suspended by a thick cable connected to a pulley. I turned the driving wheel and the elevator inched itself downward. All the while, Slater kept talking to the nurse to calm her down. "That's it!" she cried, when the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors slid open. "I'm going back to the convent after this."

At least she wasn't sobbing anymore.

---

I hadn't seen Miguel since the police took him away, but he knew more about the case than he would admit. Time was running out and I needed to make progress before the MI-16 decided to check on Phelps in person. I was on my way out of the front door when Catalina bolted from the reception desk and flung her arms around me, her eyes red and puffy from crying.

"Please, Mr. Wolf. Miguel had nothing to do with Tell's death."

"I know."

"You do?" Asked Catalina.

"You do?" Echoed Fernando.

"There's a good reason why you didn't answer calls for room service on the night of Tell's death: you'd left your duty at reception to be with Miguel in his cabaña."

Fernando looked mildly shocked. "But Catalina was supposed to attend the desk?"

"Let's just say, Miguel was getting all her attention that night, and you can get a lot of attention for a thousand dollar ring."

Embarrassed, Catalina looked at her finger. Today she wore only a silver ring with a small, blue topaz.

"Miguel... proposed to me that night. Oh, Fernando! He wants to marry me."

Miguel was an honest man, but sometimes reality gets in the way of honesty; some circumstances make it easier to tell a lie. Miguel was bleeding from a wound when I first met him; the same wound that smeared blood on the window of room 203. He'd climbed through that window with one purpose in mind but he left with rubies in his pocket. But he also saw something in there, something so terrifying he'd rather face jail time than share his knowledge with anyone. Now he slumped on the jail bed, unmoving, unresponsive and pale as a plate of sashimi. I seated myself next to him and gave him the rag I'd used to wipe the blood off the window. "Any need to send this in for analysis?"

Miguel bowed his head and studied the laces of his cheap sneakers with no desire to see the bloodied rag. "There's no need," he said; "it's my blood."

"Tell shot at you," I guessed. "You discovered he sold rubies to the underworld, and you figured he wouldn't miss a few. But he caught you with both hands into his stash."

Miguel shook his head slowly. "That's the story I'm gonna tell the judge," he sighed. "Nobody would believe what I saw in that room."

"Try me," I replied.

Miguel eyed me closely. He didn't trust Fernando enough to come forward; he didn't even trust his own fiancée, so why trust some nosy stranger? Yet, the burden of his secret was too heavy for one man to bear, and he knew I wouldn't be the one to judge.

"Got cigarettes?" He tried with half a grin.

I shook two cigarettes from my pack and lit them. Miguel's gaze followed the lazy trail of smoke drifting out of the open window and disappearing between the bars.

"I was outside cleaning the windows, when I saw the boy wheeling himself into 203."

"So, Chris can move around by his own?"

"He closed the door, he was nervous, hiding. I was about to wave hello when Tell opened the door."

"His dad?"

"Oh, he was loco and he shouted at the boy, I have to deliver by tomorrow! He took off his belt and..."

Miguel inhaled a lungful of smoke and held his breath, waiting for the nicotine to surge through his nerves. "... He struck the boy across his back, many times, and his arms, the face..."

"You saw all this from the window?"

"The boy was crying. It was terrible; he sounded like a wounded animal, but..."

Miguel stubbed out the cigarette and asked for another.

"But?"

"He was crying blood and not tears."

"Maybe he was wounded from Tell striking him?"

Miguel paid me no attention; I had pushed his emotional auto-pilot and his memories from that day flowed freely.

"His tears flowed like rivers of blood, and Tell collected them all in a plastic cup, every single tear, except for a few that rolled onto the floor."

Absentminded, Miguel massaged his wounded arm. "I think I must have cried out, because Tell turned around and saw me."

"And that's when he shot you?"

Miguel chuckled, but it wasn't a happy laugh; it was the desperate laugh of a man who couldn't believe his eyes, the laugh of a man about to crack apart. "He didn't shoot me. I fell from my ladder and caught my arm on the bucket hook, I fell two stories and landed flat on my ass. That's when Tell fired, a warning shot only, but he screamed at me, If you ever tell anyone, I'll KILL you."

When I had my drink-fueled vision in 203, I sensed pain, betrayal and sorrow, and Chris had been betrayed by the man he trusted the most: his own father. He fled into 203 to escape a beating, but he was trapped on the second floor with no means to escape before Tell found him and whipped him till he bled. No wonder they left a fog of frustration behind.

"So you didn't tell anyone, and Tell didn't kill you."

Miguel nodded and sobbed quietly. "What was there to say? When Tell got in his car and drove away, I raised my ladder and climbed back up to check on the boy. I must have smeared blood on the window coming back in."

"Only, the boy wasn't there anymore?"

"I found something on the carpet." Miguel reached into the pocket of his worn jeans and took out a single ruby. "That boy cries ruby tears, like the Madonna."

Miguel reached for me, tugged at my sleeve and his eyes grew wide. "Mister, do you think Chris may be a saint?"

Tell paid Miguel a private visit later that same day. He didn't come alone, but brought one thousand dead presidents with him to make Miguel forget the whole thing. From that day, Miguel didn't set foot in the hotel, but stayed outside managing his beloved fish farm. Believing Chris was blessed by the Madonna, he spent seven hundred bucks to have the ruby set into a wedding ring. Two days later the tentacle creature attacked Catalina and Miguel realized the rubies were not the creation of heaven,

but that of hell.

---

I returned to the hotel late that afternoon. The tide was high and waves washed over the beach in a display of white watery teeth. A fifteen foot wave rose from the water like a surfer's wet dream, crashed into the mountainside and sent a shower of rocks tumbling into the maw of the ocean. In my soul I felt the abyss stirring and growing restless with my every step up the stony path. I was close to solving the case, but I still needed a get the who's and why's into place. Something moved in the corner of my eye, something black -a shadow perhaps. But when I turned around the shadow followed my motion, moved away to remain a constant presence in the peripheral field of my vision. More shadows joined the first, until my entire outlook was one writhing mass of black flames. But I was never afraid -not any more. Someone or something at the hotel was tearing a hole in the fabric that kept our two worlds separate, and Chris with his ruby tears was caught in the thick of it.

Inspector Quinn was busy back in Oakenford, Lt. Ramirez couldn't care less and Agent Phelps was dead. Only one man was left to crack the case, and that man was me. I could open my own business; I thought and began daydreaming about turning paranormal investigations into a profitable future. I'd have a business card reading Carter Wolf, S_upernatural investigator and part-time demon_. I could get five hundred business cards for free from HastalaPrint.com if I agreed to have their logo printed on the back of every card, but it was the best I could do on my budget.

I was yanked out of the comfort of my daydream by a horrified scream coming from further up the hill, near the hotel. I squinted in the bright afternoon sun, and saw a large object heading down the hill, at collision course and breakneck speed. At first I thought it was a boulder crashing towards me, but the shape was wrong. The still dancing flames in my vision made it difficult to see anything clearly. I whirred my head and sneered "Go away! I get the message alright," and the flames subsided. Then I gasped. The runaway object was Chris in his wheelchair, out of control and veering down the hillside. He was off the path by a few yards, swaying left and right and I got ready to leap out and catch him before he raced off the cliff. A hundred yards above me, the stunned nurse Richards kept screaming and waving the handles from the wheelchair; somehow they had come off.

When the wheelchair was fifteen feet from me, one of the wheels bumped over a rock and turned to the right -the wrong direction. I threw myself in its unsteady path and scrambled hands and knees to reach him as he screamed by.

Close, so close...

But not close enough.

My fingers closed around the left wheel but the weight of the moving wheelchair was so massive it almost yanked my arm out of its socket, and Chris was out of my grasp and out of reach within seconds. With a howl of fear, the boy continued his deadly descent over the cliff and plummeted hundreds of feet towards the rocky beach. Paralysis lasted scarcely a moment, before nurse Richards darted down the stone steps with Darleen and Slater in tow.

We discovered Chris' body between the rocks on the beach. He was breathing but bleeding out, his pulse almost gone and he was only minutes away from exhaling for good. With a determination I had not before witnessed or expected, Darleen shoved the shocked nurse aside and knelt by the dying boy. Richards was about to object when Slater put his hand on her arm to stop her, and we remained silent as Darleen pressed the palms of her hands to Chris' chest and began weeping. Tears flowed down her face in thick rivulets, but instead of soaking her dress, the tears dried in an instant turning into dry salt-like crystals -the same crystals I'd found on Tell's floor. Darleen concentrated, and I knew from my own experience what she was doing: like myself to Irene, Darleen siphoned energy from the void and into the boy - I was not the only one in the hotel to possess this ability.

Minutes passed before the boy opened his eyes; neither Slater or the nurse showed much surprise at his sudden recovery, yet everybody's jaw dropped when Chris opened his mouth and spoke a single word in that throaty voice of his:

"Mother!!"

---

Darleen smiled weakly at Chris and stroked his hair. She shook the dried crystals from her dress and tried to stand up, but her legs failed her and she slumped to the ground.

"So, now you know." said Slater. "Healing always exhausts Darleen."

"Like the way she healed you in Tell's room, that night?"

Slater scratched the back of his head, thinking. "Yeah, I was in pretty bad shape."

Darleen kept stroking Chris' hand. She was exhausted, but recovering.

"I'll go call an ambulance, just in case" said Slater and headed up the stairs, leaving me alone with Darleen, nurse Richards and the boy.

"Mother?" I asked.

Darleen looked up. Her eyes were red from crying, but at least she didn't cry blood like Chris. "He is my son." she said. She seemed relieved to finally confide in somebody "Jack Tell was his father, and my ex-husband."

I whistled, hadn't seen this one coming. "So the father got the child custody when you separated? That's an unusual decision."

Darleen laughed. "Well, ain't it amazing how a few visits to rehab can mess up your resume?"

"And now you wanted your son back?"

"Tell abused him; he hit my boy to make him cry those damn rubies."

Darleen Thomson met Jack Tell seventeen years ago. He wasn't handsome or rich, he didn't have a promising career or much of a personality, but he could drink just as hard as she. She was studying to be a nurse at the hospital in Ra'gasso when she discovered her ability to heal patients. But her ability came at a terrible price: that of her own health. She exhausted herself with every patient, and after six months her body gave up. That's what comes from caring too much, I guess. Darleen met Jack in a random bar on the corner of seventh and Lakeview, and they soon became drinking buddies. They moved in together, because the rent they saved could be spent on drink - it looked like a practical solution at the time. At some point, Chris was born in a haze of cheap booze and filter cigarettes. Chris was born with muscle dystrophy and needed extra attention, so Darleen stopped drinking for a while, only to relapse the day she discovered how Chris shared her strange ability to cry crystals. Tell believed he'd struck gold, and tried to hock the dry baby tears that flowed so freely every time he beat the infant. But they were too small to rake in the profit he was looking for so he left the boy alone. That was, until he discovered how the pointed rubies could be sold as laser parts to the underworld. He filed for divorce when Darleen was in the slammer for possession and was granted custody of the boy. Now, four years later, Darleen was clean and with Slater by her side, she wanted her son back. Unable to talk reason with her estranged husband, Darleen hired the best marriage counsellor she could find. She reasoned if the famous Ted "Tejon" Jones couldn't get through to Jack Tell, then nobody could.

Darleen shook her dress and a few dried tears flaked off.

"You left these in Tell's room the night he died," I said. "You healed someone, but it sure wasn't your husband."

"Tejon doesn't come cheap," said Darleen "and we weren't making progress, so Slater decided to give it a shot, to try and talk some sense into my husband." She spat out an embittered laugh. "As IF."

"You were having tea with Mr. Tejon when you heard the scream?"

"Tell SHOT Paul!" shouted Darleen. "That crazy, trigger-happy fool of my ex-husband shot him in the stomach...twice."

"So, you ran to his rescue?"

"They were both on the floor. Jack was clutching at his heart but still scrambling for his pistol. Then he collapsed. Paul was bleeding from the bullet wounds. He too was dying."

"You healed him?"

Darleen winked and flashed me a weak smile. "That's MY little talent. We're a real bunch of cry-babies in my family. But it's so draining every time. I must have passed out, because next thing I knew I was in the hotel bed and Paul was playing a game on his laptop."

"Did you notice if Paul was barefooted at the time?"

Darleen shrugged, "he's a surfer; he's in and out of the water all the time.

"What did you do with Slater's shirt?"

"His shirt?"

"He was shot twice in the chest. Unless you know how to heal textiles, bullets have a nasty habit of leaving marks on your shirt."

"Come to think of it..." Darleen looked puzzled. "I don't remember him wearing any."

"No shoes, no shirt, no service... especially when you meet with someone to discuss custody issues."

"I... I really don't remember much after that."

"You passed out from exhaustion and Slater carried you back to the room. Only, he left by the window when he heard us banging on the door. That explains the deep footprints outside, but you left your own trail behind; a trail of tears."

We walked up the steps to the hotel while we talked. I'd tried to fix the handles back onto the frame of the wheelchair, but they kept coming loose, as the four screws that held them in place were missing. This wasn't an accident; someone had sabotaged his wheelchair to bump the boy off -someone wanted him dead. I supported Darleen as we walked, while Richards pushed the wheelchair by the frame. She never complained about the hard work, but kept pushing the now conscious Chris, who smiled up at his mother.

"Did you ever leave him out of your sight, today?"

"NO!" snapped nurse Richards and stopped, only to shoot me an angry look. Then she reconsidered. "Wait!" she said. "I was stuck in the elevator when the hotel was without power."

"So, someone knowing you were stuck could have fixed Chris' wheelchair while we were getting you out; someone who could get close to him without raising suspicion."

Darleen shook her head. "Chris won't allow anyone to come close. He panics when strangers come near his wheelchair, he's uncomfortable even around you."

"Yes," I said. "But there is someone in the hotel, someone who knew you were stuck, someone close enough to earn your trust."

"But we have only spent time with Mr..." Darleen was cut short by Fernando, who came storming towards us, wild eyed and panting like a marathon runner.

"Homicidio!" he cried. "Homicidio, oh mother of God... He's in the kitchen."

The remains of Mr. Tejon -soon to be buried under his official name of Ted Jones, were all over the floor. Like agent Phelps before him, Ted Jones had been torn to shreds. Deep claw marks ran from his torn throat to his abdomen that was now spilling its warm contents onto the cold floor. The second the stench of exposed intestines reached my nose, the unwelcome memory of two dead MI-16 agents flashed by like snapshots tinted in blood. Agents Burris and Bruckner had looked much like Mr. Tejon when I clawed into them during the case of a murdered games designer [in: My Guardian Demons]. The main difference was how the head of Mr. Tejon was still attached to his corpse. Agent Burris had not been that lucky, in fact I had enjoyed plucking his head off like a ripe cherry from its stalk. But Burris had threatened me at gunpoint, but worse, he had threatened my sister Kamryn. The brutality of Tejon's murder echoed the fury I felt back then, when my sister's life was in danger. Mr. Tejon had not been killed for being in the wrong kitchen at the wrong time; he had called down the wrath of a demon.

---

"Three dead in as many days!" Lt. Ramirez was angry and uncomfortable with the case and the stench rising from the Tejon's carcass. "I'm shutting this place down for the summer."

"Tell the remaining guests not to leave the town," barked Ramirez. "They are all suspects to a murder case."

"It's too late..." panted Fernando, just returning from the lobby. "They're all gone. Ms. Thompson, Mr. Slater, the nurse, the boy... Everyone has left."

Lt Ramirez looked confused as I burst out laughing. Some detective I had turned out to be. Here I was, asking around and trying to ferret out the identity of the killer, while the solution had been in plain sight all along. There never was one murderer: They had all been working together.

Why the kitchen? I wondered. What was Mr. Tejon doing in the kitchen when he got himself murdered? This place was staff-access only, but maybe the murderer had lured him here with the promise of a midday snack? The idea was ridiculous, but Tejon's corpse was on its final journey to the morgue and offered no further clues. I bit my lip and looked at Fernando who was quietly feeding the dishwasher, having nothing better to do.

"Power's back up," he commented. I shrugged. Unless electricity could solve the case for me, I could care less.

"How long has it been up?" I asked, mainly to keep the conversation going.

Fernando checked his watch "Couple of hours." I stared at Fernando, shocked. If the power had been up when Tejon was murdered, maybe the kitchen CCTV had recorded it - the only CCTV in the building Fernando hadn't shorted with his amateur electronics. Feverish, I climbed onto a stool to reach the camera, but to my dismay the lens was covered with some kind of silk cloth. It was too thin and delicate to be a dish cloth and carried a faint smell of lavender.

"It's a handkerchief," noted Fernando. "Looks expensive too."

Maybe it belonged to Mr. Tejon? I wondered. Whoever hung the handkerchief knew the CCTV would record the murder, but maybe that was the whole point of using the kitchen. I opened the camera and took out the SD-memory card. Together Fernando and I watched the surveillance video on his hotel computer.

"This is when the power came back up," said Fernando as an angry flurry of colored stripes flashed across the monitor. The next thirty minutes showed only the empty kitchen. "Fast forward a bit." I yawned and watched hours being compressed into minutes, a white kitchen, slowly reddening by the setting sunlight. Catalina flashing by, carrying a basket, Fernando breaking the monotony by storing a tray of eggs in the fridge. Catalina coming back into the frame, trimming a bouquet of flowers by the sink, Mr. Tejon stumbling into the picture.

"Pause!" I cried and Fernando rewound the last few minutes of the recording. Mr. Tejon trying to regain his footing after being pushed into the picture. Mr. Tejon looked at his off camera soon-to-be-killer, and his mouth moved. Maybe he pleaded for his life or explained himself?

"Can't you turn the damn thing UP?" I sneered impatiently. Fernando apologized, but the CCTVs were not fitted with microphones. That would have set him back another fifty bucks per camera.

"If I had only known someone was going to get killed in my kitchen, I'd have bought the audio model," excused Fernando.

A hand now reached towards the camera and placed the black silk hankie over the lens.

"Shit!" I cried as the picture went dark. "There goes evidence."

"It'll come back," said Fernando. "Just wait for the camera to adjust."

A few seconds later, the aperture expanded to let in more light and the picture faded back in. The colors were dull and the resolution was shot to hell from recording through the cloth, but we could still make out the shape of Mr. Tejon shuffling about. He took two sudden steps back as another character joined him in the frame; a creature, one and a half times the size of a human, covered in thick fur and having the head of a large feline -a feline with horns.

"Look," shouted Fernando. "It's a big guy in an animal costume."

"Sure," I bluffed, but this was no fursuit. The newcomer was a shapeshifter just like me, and he wanted me to see it and know.

"Don't do it," I whispered under my breath, but I had already seen the end result first hand. The creature tore into Mr. Tejon with both clawed paws, tearing him open. Tejon clutched at his chest, trying to stop the bleeding while leaning heavily against the stove, but the murderer slashed at him, over and over, carving large chunks of meat from Tejon's thin frame. At this point I was relieved by the lack of an audio track. The camera kept recording after the murderer left, showing only the kitchen with Tejon's mutilated corpse going sharp, then blurry as the camera tried to autofocus on him through the black veil. Minutes later, Fernando showed up in the picture and let out a silent scream for help.

"I was _this_close to slamming into a murderer," he said after watching the footage. "It's one huge fella," he noted "much larger than anyone staying with us."

"Oh, he was staying with us, alright," I replied. "And he wants us to know it."

---

"The first word is 'EYE' or maybe 'I'"

We forwarded the CCTV recording a few frames. Mr. Tejon had spoken a few words before the creature tore into him. Five seconds of silent footage, but we had gone over it for hours now, trying to interpret his moving lips.

I think he says "I am?"

"No, the lips don't form an 'M'"

"I have you?... I hate you?... I have to?"

Forward a few frames.

"It's an ooo-eee sound he makes there."

"Huey...Louie?"

"It's not an 'L'"

"I hate you, Huey?"

"Maybe Huey is the name of the murderer?"

"After that he says... Mary Poppins?"

"Fernando nodded enthusiastically. I'll bet you, Mary Poppins is a secret code."

I slumped back in the chair and rubbed my eyes. It was past midnight and we had been going over the same five seconds worth of footage for hours. "Screw you, Huey!" I grumbled. We needed someone who could read lips, someone deaf or professional, or professionally deaf. I've played with many tone-deaf people but none of them could read lips, or lip reeds for that matter; we were stuck with five seconds of useless visemes.

"Let it go." Fernando yawned and patted my shoulder. "I'll pull the curtains and pour us a man-sized bourbon.

Something stirred in my mind by the mentioning of the word curtains, and a crazy idea began to take form; an idea so batshit I had to laugh out loud and Fernando wondered if I had lost it completely, but now I knew where to find an expert in lip-reading. I took out Phelps's cell phone and dialed a number in memory: the one number that had been awaiting his call for days.

"Apex Curtains," said the female voice at the other end. "How may I help you?"

"Hello mother?" I replied. "This is Agent Phelps speaking."

---

TO BE CONTINUED

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