St. Clair Ch. 02: Witch

"Glad she got away. I was worried about her, but she looks a lot better than she did last time I visited. I about died laughing when she did that karaoke."

"I think Tammi's message went through to everyone loud and clear."

"TJ was smiling but I'm not sure how much of that was an act."

"TJ will forgive her, she seems to need Tammi as much as Tammi needs her. Besides I saw how TJ was looking at her toward the end."

"Yeah, it's more than a physical thing, that's for sure."

"I'm glad, I was afraid Tammi'd end up with another jackass who thought she was a punching bag or a life support system for a pair of tits."

Angie smirked. "From the way TJ looks at her, she appreciates those too."

"Everybody appreciates those, they're practically a national treasure."

Angie looked down at her flat chest. "Thanks a lot."

Swede shook his head "Hey, you've got plenty enough for me. Besides hers are dangerous, a guy could get lost in those and never find his way out."

She finished pulling her shirt on, then her skirt.

"Nobody seems to care that they're together."

"I'm sure somebody's offended, but Shannon put the word out that he'd take it very personally if anyone makes anything of it. Besides, everybody here's used to it. You remember Irina and Flora? Went to church together every Sunday, ran the Fourth of July committee?"

"Yeah" she paused. "I guess I never thought about it. They were lesbians?"

"My mom told me they were together fifty two years. They both just died last year, about a month apart."

"So TJ and Tammi are the new Irina and Flora?"

Swede shrugged. "Can't really picture TJ making paper flowers for a Fourth of July float, but its close enough. People are okay with what they're used to."

***

"Oh God. Please turn out the lights."

TJ, sitting on the edge of the bed, raised one eyebrow at Tammi. "The lights are out. The shades are down. But its afternoon and the sun just won't turn off. Lightweight."

"Not funny. God. I feel awful. "

"I'd imagine so. I was seriously thinking of changing your name to Jenny last night."

"I earned that. I don't remember much of last night."

"Well, nobody at Bert's is going to forget it."

"Shit. What did I do?"

"What do you remember?"

"The VFW... I think I talked everyone's ear off about that beaver dam on the Bramble."

"And at Bert's?"

"Guys hitting on me at the bar. Over and over..." Tammi suddenly fell silent.

"It's coming back to you now isn't it?"

Quietly. "I know I was pissed -it was just ... all those assholes did nothing while Andy was hurting me. Sometimes right in front of them. Now they all want to put a brand on my ass and claim me since you dealt with Andy."

"So you decided to clear things up."

"I don't remember..."Tammi's eyes shot open suddenly. Then slammed shut again as the painful light bore in. "Oh. My. God."

"... And there it is."

"I remember singing 'Let's Give 'em Something to Talk About' and..." She stopped, desperately wanting to disbelieve her own memories.

"And gave me a very thorough, certainly immoral, and possibly illegal, lap dance in front of the entire bar. You did manage to keep your clothes on though. Barely."

"God. I'm so sorry. I know you aren't really comfortable with... public... that kind of thing."

TJ reached over and put her hand on Tammi's shoulder. "Angie and Swede egged you on."

"Those two always knew how to get me in trouble, even in grade school. Especially Angie."

"A whole bunch of the other guys there cheered you on too, but you can't blame it all on them - you started off dedicating the song to 'All the jackasses who stood around while Andy beat my ass.' And you ad-libbed some pretty raunchy verses at the end."

"Shit."

TJ sighed. Tammi waited but TJ didn't say anything.

"What?"

"I'm not good at this shit." TJ studied the slash of sunlight that slipped in under the shade. "Last night though, you didn't just make things clear for all those assholes. You made it clear for this one too."

Tammi silently pulled herself up to sitting, a trace of fear beginning to fight with the nausea and pain.

TJ hesitated, then drove on. "I've always sort of had a two or three year plan. I've never had anything last longer. Re-assignments, deployments. Nothing ever lasted. I always tried not to get too tangled up."

Tammi felt a sick feeling growing that had nothing to do with alcohol.

"I guess what I'm saying is that I was sort of thinking along those lines in the back of my head. But you aren't are you? You're in it for the long haul. I don't know if I can do that." TJ's voice quavered just a bit. "But I'm gonna try like hell."

Tammi buried her face in TJ's shirt, and just clung for a small eternity.

"So you forgive me?"

"Forgive, yes. Forget... well, that'd be kinda tough. I'll be hearing about it from everybody for the next year. Once this hangover is done, you made some pretty specific promises with those lyrics in front of a lot of people that you need to pay up on."

Tammi smiled softly. "Once this headache clears up. I won't forget."

TJ ran fingers through Tammi's hair. "I didn't think you would. Besides, once those cell phone videos everybody took get loose, they'll be popping up forever."

"Oh God."

***

TJ watched Shannon talking calmly with the near-panicked woman. "Sandy, I give you my word, we'll get right on it. When was the last time you saw your daughter?"

"Last Wednesday, she was headed over to Tony's and I figured she'd be there, but when the feed store called looking for her because she hadn't shown up for her shift, I got worried."

"You try asking Tony?"

"Nobody's home - place is locked up."

"Maybe they ran off to have some fun. Wouldn't be the first road trip to Saint Louis or Nashville for Tony."

"His truck is still there - and it's all messed up. Windows broke, tires slashed. Outside all tore up - hit with rocks or something."

Shit.

She watched Shannon heaved himself out of his chair. "Let me get a pad of paper so you can write down everything you know."

While the woman was writing, he drifted over to TJ.

"You hear that?"

"It's the same Tony as Jenny's Tony?"

"Yeah. Better swing by there and see if Tony is just hiding or if there's something going on." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Her daughter's never been busted for anything stronger than a little weed. Tony's the same way. I don't like the way this feels. Have Melanie send Don over to meet you."

TJ pulled her belt tight and slipped out of the building.

***

"Dispatch this is 253"

"This is Dispatch Go 253"

TJ requested back up and gave the location - Don was the only other deputy on the road and he was actually physically closer than she was. By the time she got there he was waiting, pulled off the side of the highway nearly 200 yards from the house.

The powerful, heavyset deputy had a Remington 870 dangling from one massive paw. He caught TJ's glance at it.

"Last time Shannon had a bad feeling about something, we ended up in a shootout with a carload of Latin Kings on the run from a murder in Kansas City."

TJ pulled her shotgun out of the truck and readied it without discussion. Gut feelings were sometimes the difference between walking away alive and never walking again. They headed slowly for the house.

"Jenny was here four days ago. Bad break up."

Eyes never leaving the house, Don's chuckle rumbled softly. "Never a good break up. Especially with Jenny." He gestured toward the abused truck. "That's kind of her signature."

The house was closed up, curtains closed.

Don shifted to the side while TJ knocked.

"Anybody home?"

Five minutes of knocking brought nothing. Neither did a check around back.

Back around front Don looked at TJ. "Sandy's daughter? Sara?"

TJ nodded.

"She wouldn't run off without telling her momma. No way."

TJ looked around.

"You hear something?"

Don nodded, understanding. "Could be a bird, could be someone needing help. Only one way to know."

He shouldered the door open almost effortlessly, moving the shotgun with fluid ease as he scanned the living room while TJ moved into the kitchen.

They found her in the spare bedroom, face down on the floor, nude, a long track of blood leading from the bed.

"She's breathing. Shallow and weak, but breathing."

Don was calling it in even as she checked the girl for more injuries.

***

The EMT talked as they loaded her into the ambulance.

"Dehydrated, bad concussion for sure. Nasty blow to the head, I'd guess the skull is fractured - she had a hair clip that turned it just enough. Probably lose the top half of that ear if she lives."

"What are her chances?"

He shrugged. "We're not supposed to speculate, but she had to be pretty damned tough to live this long if you're right about when she was attacked. You won't be getting anything coherent from her for a long time though."

TJ noted the details down in her notebook as the ambulance pulled away.

Don looked down the road after it. "What the hell was that on her back?"

"I don't know, some kind of symbol, but the blood it was written in was too smeared to make out. I snapped a picture before the ambulance got here, but I don't think it will do much good."

"Shannon is on his way out. This is about as weird as it gets. Since he's not sure whether we should be looking for Tony or Jenny at this point, he's having Ray pick up Jenny and putting out a BOLO for Tony. Swede's picking up Sandy and taking her to the hospital."

Shannon arrived just as the crime scene tech showed up. He let TJ and Don explain what happened and barely even raised an eyebrow at the "odd sound" explanation.

"Ray has Jenny down at the station. It's officially just for a potential witness interview."

That was TJ's queue to raise an eyebrow.

Don shook his head. "I don't know, Jenny may get outta hand, but she never hurt anyone. Not even when she really had cause."

Shannon stared out over the trees for a minute. "I've known her as long as anyone here and I'm not sure. It doesn't feel right, but it's all we've got." He paused. "TJ, regardless of how we do this, you'll have to be present."

TJ nodded. "I'll do the interview if you want. Might be simpler."

***

"Nothing?"

"Nothing."

Jenny sat straight up in her chair, hands resting primly on the table.

The interview simply hadn't gone the way TJ expected. Hell, it really hadn't gone any way at all. Jenny simply insisted she didn't remember a damn thing after picking up the bottle of rum and taking the first swig.

Worse than that, TJ believed her.

After nearly two hours of discussion and minute by minute dissection of her day, Jenny hadn't waivered at all on what she remembered - and what she didn't.

TJ recognized that the interview was essentially over, so she went off script a little.

"So why 'Jenny Leffler' and not 'Genevieve LeFleur'?"

"Trying to leave a bunch of baggage behind." She grimaced. "Not that it worked."

"What kind of baggage?"

"Family stuff. My mother wanted me to follow in her footsteps and I refused."

"And that was?"

Jenny rolled her eyes. "She was a Mambo Asogwe, a senior Vodou priestess."

TJ managed, just barely, to keep a straight face. "Oh."

Jenny looked away for a second, obviously embarrassed. "Look, it's just another religion. Almost all of it is positive, or at least harmless. All that crap in movies is based on stories about the tiny part that is the Petra side and their curses. And I don't believe in any of it at all. Curses or anything."

That last bit sounded odd. And it was too interesting to let go anyway. "Curses?"

Jenny started to glare at her for a second, then stopped. "Sorry, I know I'm overly sensitive about this stuff." She rubbed her forehead. "Women in my family don't have good relationships. Ever. And I've been worse than any of them. Hell, I can't keep a boyfriend for more than a few months."

TJ kept her face perfectly straight. "Me either."

Jenny looked up confused for a second, then smiled despite herself. "Funny. According to tradition, it's because of an old Petra curse on the family. 'Unhappiness in Love for Generations' kind of stuff. Maman said I always get drunk on rum because my Loa is trying to protect me from the pain of the curse."

"And you don't believe it?"

"I get drunk on rum because I like the taste, I'm upset, and I'm a goddamned binge-drinking alcoholic. I don't have blackouts because some Loa is protecting me from the pain of a break up. I have blackouts because I've drunk too damn much rum too damn fast."

Jenny froze - her voice had risen at the last of that, and the soft lilt TJ remembered from the "Jenny Call" had started to creep in.

She closed her eyes for a second. "When my mother died, I moved away and worked damned hard to get rid of the accent, the slang and all that. I scraped the money together for cosmetology school. When I went through here five years ago with some school friends on a river float trip, we had some problems with our bus and everybody treated us so nice I came back. I realized I don't like cities; that was part of what I wanted to get away from."

Shannon tapped on the glass window on the door and signaled TJ to come out.

"Anything useful."

"Not really, I think she's being honest about not remembering anything. I'm not feeling this for her."

"Me either. Cut her loose. I can't picture Jenny doing this, and if she did, I think she'd be too damn drunk to lock everything up."

"She could barely put one foot in front of the other when I rolled her up."

"We'll see if Sara has anything to say when she wakes up, and we'll keep looking for Tony. The BOLO is out statewide."

Sara, it eventually turned out, wasn't any help at all - when she finally came to, she didn't even remember going over to Tony's, much less being attacked. She'd be healing for a good long while, but none of the Doctors actually expected her memory to come back.

And Tony had apparently evaporated.

Shannon hadn't given up on it, but there just wasn't anything to chase. Plenty of evidence of Jenny at Tony's house, but since she'd half lived there for months, that wasn't a surprise. And none of it linked Jenny to the attack on Sara.

Even Sandy eventually quit pressuring Shannon to "do something" about the attack on her daughter, though it took a few months.

***

"So what do you think?"

Tammi struck a pose in her new State Park Naturalist uniform.

Angie grinned. "I like it, nice handcuffs."

"They'll always be my favorite part of the uniform." Tammi leered over at TJ.

TJ almost snorted her coffee out.

"That sounds like a good story."

"TJ helped me with my class on prisoner control and search. She got to be my detainee."

"You do a good job searching her?"

"Once I had her cuffed, I 'searched' her until she was exhausted."

Angie snickered. "Glad to hear you're keeping some of those promises you made on karaoke night."

Tammi gave a slight scowl. "You'd think by this time, that video wouldn't be quite so interesting."

"That thing'll never get old, Tammi."

TJ looked at her over her coffee cup. "Neither will the handcuffs."

Angie and Tammi walked out of the office giggling like a couple schoolgirls. Angie on her way to work down the block, Tammi off to pull water samples out of the upper watershed at the park.

Swede watched them until they were out the door. "Two sticks of the same brand of dynamite. Been getting into trouble together since first grade. Closer than sisters."

TJ paused for a second before saying anything. To her shock, a little flash of possessive jealousy flashed over her. She wondered if Angie had been the "real close girlfriend in High School" that Tammi had mentioned. She covered herself by pulling her chair over to face Swede and sat back in it. "Angie seems to bring out the best in everyone."

"Yeah, she's good at that. But Angie's also good at convincing Tammi to do some crazy stuff - they released a skunk in a school assembly in middle school one time."

Before TJ could pry any further, Shannon came out of his office gripping a sheaf of papers. "We've got a problem. I just got a call from the hospital on Cody's autopsy. Looks like he didn't die by accident."

"So how did he die?"

"Thought it'd be an overdose - he had cocaine, meth, Ketamine and marijuana in his system, but that probably wasn't it. They can't be sure, the body's pretty far gone, that's why they waited for confirmation on what they thought they saw."

TJ and Swede waited.

"This is really one for the books. They said there are 'tool marks' on the bottom ribs. Cut marks. It looks like somebody carved his heart out."

TJ raised her eyebrow. "As in 'Temple of Doom' bad guy 'Kali Ma' stuff?"

Swede looked offended. "Seriously? Did you even see that movie? The bad guy pulls the heart out with his hand, he didn't use a knife."

"I didn't mean for you to take it literally."

Shannon tapped his pen on Swede's desk. "I think you two are kind of missing the point. If the autopsy is right, Cody was killed in some kind of ritual thing."

TJ rubbed her socket through her eye patch. "Ritual. As in magic."

"As in Magic."

"Like Voodoo. Maybe."

Swede was looking anywhere but at Shannon and TJ. "If I remember right, Jenny broke a bottle over Cody's head at Bert's about three or four months before he disappeared. She was about half in the tank, he grabbed her ass and said something really stupid. Something about wanting a taste of hot chocolate. Concussion, stitches, but he grabbed her first, so it was self defense. She didn't press charges against him."

Shannon handed the report to TJ. "We don't have anything yet, but I want to see that report on the bar incident. Cody's dead after a run in with her and now Tony is missing. The body was buried for quite a while before the floods washed him down from somewhere along the Bramble. Looks like he was buried in one of the areas where the red silt builds up."

He looked over at TJ. "We probably need to go over your interview with her and maybe look into her religion a bit. Everything I know about that stuff I learned from late night movies."

TJ pulled her notebook out. "I'll see what I can find."

Swede settled his gaze on his desktop. "I don't even want to think about it, but if the body washed down from somewhere along the Bramble, we may need to do a search along the banks. For Tony."

Shannon nodded. "Yeah, we'll have to set that up. I'll have Ray coordinate it. I still don't like her for any of this. If she killed ex-boyfriends, the county would be damn near empty by now."

He turned to Swede.

"When we were looking for Cody, he'd been running with Crowder, right?"

"Yeah. Questioned him, but we weren't sure anything had even happened to Cody, so we didn't push him."

"Go over any interview notes you've got. I can see Cody with meth and weed in his system, but the cocaine and Ketamine is something he wouldn't have been able to get just anywhere. Crowder dealt in that level of stuff."

TJ smiled grimly. Crowder was no crime lord, though he no doubt had seen himself as one.

She'd had a run in with Crowder not long after she joined the Sheriff's department. She'd stopped him because he was weaving all over the road, and found him driving under the influence, with a 15 year old girl in his car at 2AM. The girl had denied anything had happened, though TJ could tell she was lying.

TJ had put the girl on the phone with her parents, then dragged the hand cuffed Crowder around the back of the Beast where the girl couldn't see, pulled her eyepatch off and whispered a solemn promise to him that if she ever caught him with another kid, he'd never get to trial.