* * *
"You're late," Leon said, not looking up from his phone.
"But I brought delicious baked goods," Alec stated confidently, brandishing a large paper sack, certain in the knowledge that the offering would appease the great and terrible police deities lying in wait within the meeting room.
"Did you get one of those cranberry cream cheese things?"
"I got two," the magician revealed, triumphantly. "And organic fairtrade coffee buns for your bleeding heart liberal partner."
"You can have them," Leon said, "he isn't..."
"Yeah," Alec interrupted, "I see he's mysteriously mutated into a woman since I last saw him. The excess estrogen is throwing off my brilliant menu calculations. You gotta do something about that, Leon. You can't keep changing the sex of people around you, it's just inconsiderate."
"He's on vacation," Leon said, rolling his eyes. Putting down his phone, he finally deigned to look at Alec, giving the mage a glare. Then he waved in the direction of the redhead seated at the end of the table, who was busy trying not to laugh. "This is Denise Fitzgerald from the crime lab. She's the one who's been poking at the evidence. Fitzgerald, this is Alec Kazam, registered wizard and costumed smartass. He's the magical help the FBSA sent us."
"Hi," Denise spoke up, making a cursory attempt to be polite. Her badly suppressed sounds of amusement instead came out as a kind of strangled cough. "Though I kind of guessed who you were from the cape and mask."
"I try to make fashion statements. Mind you, I'm not sure what those statements are, but I try. Nice to meet you," Alec said, as he set the brown bag on the table and found a chair for himself. "I'm always glad to meet new people I can traumatise. But...vacation? Now? I thought this was a busy period for you police types. You know, with all the..."
Leon glowered. Obviously the subject was a sore point for him.
"It is, yes. But Leon and his buddy are a special case," Denise explained, filling in the awkward silence. "After Halloween last year, new policy direction from upstairs is...they should be as far outside the city limits as possible when it rolls round to October 31st. So extra vacation time."
Ailes blinked. "What happened last year?"
"You don't want to know," Leon said firmly, opening the bag of baked goods and reaching inside.
"Oh, come on," Alec protested, "you can't bring up something like that and just leave it there."
"Watch me," Leon stated flatly. Turning his baleful gaze from Alec, he gave his crime lab colleague a look that promised dire retribution if she let any more details slip. The aura of menace was unfortunately diminished due to the fact he was holding a cranberry and cheese roll, but he valiantly fought to maintain the strength of his glower despite this handicap.
"Okay, fine, fine. That explains Hutch being gone," Alec said, "but what's Starsky still doing in town?"
"He's going to a costume party," Denise quipped.
"I promised my girlfriend I'd be at her sister's party," Leon clarified, stressing the identity of the individuals involved. "A smart man doesn't argue about social engagements."
"Not if he wants the other sort of permanent engagement later down the line, anyway," Alec said, sympathetically.
"Going too far, Kazam," Leon warned.
"Hey, just calling it like I see it," Alec responded, undeterred by the threat, "I mean, this one's lasted longer than all your previous relationships combined. Though I guess that's because you were actually friends before."
"They were friends when she was still a he," Denise remarked, "that's a bit different."
"This is Paragon City," Alec said dismissively, "random gender swaps from mad science or magic accidents happen all the time. Especially around Leon. Most people see Facebook friends changing their status for stuff like single-attached-married, for Leon it's male-female-other..."
"This conversation is rapidly approaching the point where I snap and kill you all," Leon growled, brandishing his half-eaten roll as if it were a weapon.
"Relax," Alec said,"I'm paying you a compliment here. You've got to be real serious and committed to your relationship if you're willing to risk nebulous unspecified Halloween-related doom by staying in town when everyone wants you to flee."
"There's a pool on whether disaster will happen because Leon's defied the Chief's edict and refused voluntary exile," Denise revealed, while claiming one of the orphaned coffee buns for herself.
Alec perked up a little at this. "Can I join? Put a little something on the disaster side?"
"No," Leon said quickly.
"Sure," Denise answered, almost at once.
"I don't think you get a say in this," Alec commented to Leon, as he reached for his wallet. "If you ran a betting pool on yourself, that would be a hideously unethical conflict of interest."
Leon ate his roll in resignation while money exchanged hands between the mage and the criminalist. Then he spoke up. "Can we talk about the case now? I was somehow under the impression we were here to work."
"I don't know where you get these strange ideas," Alec remarked, with a perfectly straight face.
"He drinks a lot," Denise confided, "we think he might have a problem."
"Ha ha," Leon said, pronouncing the syllables rather than actually laughing. "l am overwhelmed by your scathing wit. But I still want to talk about dead people. Fitzgerald, you wanna start, tell Kazam what we have?"
Resting her bun on a napkin, Denise opened the thick folder on the table in front of her, and started thumbing through the contents. "The guy we got yesterday has been tentatively identified as Abraham Kowalski, 47. Stage magician, like the others. Divorced, lived alone. He's got a daughter in state, though. PCU Salamanca campus. She's coming to town this afternoon for the usual."
"I'd like to talk with her, if that's possible. Sit in on the interview or whatever, ask a few questions," Alec said.
"Sure, stick around," Leon said. "We can set up more interviews if you need to talk to the families of the other victims, roommates, so on. I sent you the transcripts, but I'm sure there's special mystic things you need to know."
"Mostly I'm curious if the victims were just performers, or whether they were genuine magic practitioners," Alec explained."I got the sense Kolwalski might have been, but I'm not hundred percent on that."
"We can confirm that for Kolwalski at least," Denise said, turning a page in her folder. "He registered with the FBSA in 2007."
"Applied for a hero license," Leon added. "Was turned down on grounds of inadequate power."
Alec nodded. "Do you have his test scores?"
"They were in his file," Denise said, detaching a sheet from her documents and handing it to the magician.
Alec accepted the paper, looked it over quickly, and made a small thoughtful sound. "Huh. Pretty standard for a low level mage, either minimal gifting or an amateur. Though...there's a couple spikes here, could be he was just real specialised. You said his daughter is a student at Paragon City U, the Salamanca campus. Is she actually doing a magic related major, or..?"
Denise frowned. "I don't know. Leon? You called the college admin, right?"
''She's going for a Bachelor's in Thaumaturgy," Leon confirmed, as he finished his cranberry and cheese roll. He immediately went searching for the second promised treat, digging through the paper bag.
"Definitely need to talk to her then," Alec said.
"The other thing is," Denise continued, "you're the one who identified the killers as zombies, right?"
"That would be me," Alec answered. "I see dead people. Well, most folks can see dead people, since the majority of corpses aren't exactly invisible. But you know what I mean."
"Not really," Denise told him, "because we're not seeing these dead people. Zombie attacks leave behind all kinds of traces. We're talking about walking corpses in states of decay, stuff tends to drop off them. But there don't seem to be any, not at last night's scene, not at the others."
"I can't really comment about the first couple murders," Alec said, "I haven't checked out those scenes in person. But I bet you can't find any traces of the assailants at all. Or very little. Barely any fingerprints, hair, flakes of skin, anything. Whether undead or otherwise. I bet that's been puzzling you about all the crime scenes. Probably one reason Leon's on this case, and why he called me in. We're the weird squad."
"That's true," Denise admitted.
"Okay. Here's what you're missing. See, if you're a smart necromancer, you don't want your minions decomposing and falling apart. That's just inefficient and messy. So ideally you use a fresh corpse to start with, not one that already has bits missing," Alec explained. "Think about it. lf you had a choice, wouldn't you go with minions that have, you know, actual structural integrity? And muscles that actually function, et cetera. Follow?"
"I'm not sure I like getting into the head of someone who makes zombies," Leon said, "but I'm with you, so far."
"Right, so from an efficiency point of view, really the best kind of zombie is a dead body that's essentially been brought back to life, biological processes and all," Alec continued, "and at the other end of the scale, the worst kind is the shambling animated corpse that's just driven purely by magic. Still decomposing, the body doesn't really work...there's no muscular contractions moving the limbs, there's no functional inner ear providing balance when it walks. Magic is doing everything. But this is a spectrum, right? Two extremes."
"Right," Denise said slowly. She didn't sound very convinced, but seemed at least willing to let the magician finish his impromptu necromancy lecture. It also gave her an excuse to resume nibbling at her poor neglected coffee bun.
"What we have here is something in between. The bodies of these particular zombies are in some kind of magical stasis. Stops decomposition. Some organs and stuff possibly still work, to a degree. It's not perfect, though, since it's just real good preservation, not true reanimation."
Denise nodded, the light beginning to dawn. "Complete stasis means no metabolic processes either? No respiratory exchange," she asked, "no excretion of waste products?"
"Exactly," Alec said, "the body isn't really functioning, it still needs magic to bridge the gap. But a powerful enough stasis spell means the body isn't interacting with the environment at all, effectively. The magic makes sure anything defined as part of the body stays attached to the whole..."
"So that means nothing at the crime scene for the forensics guys and girls to find," Leon finished.
"Or vastly reduced traces, anyway," Alec said.
"But you're sure it was zombies," Leon pressed. "Can you prove that in court?"
"Well," Alec said, "I can prove it. I don't know if it'd be admissible, but I can prove it. Can I use the screen over there?"
"Sure," Leon replied, rising from the table. "I'll get the projector running."
Alec gestured for him to sit. "No need," the magician said. As he spoke, Alec started pulling out items from the inside of his jacket, starting with an antique watch and followed by a large manila envelope.
Leon eased himself back into his chair, a vague feeling of doom creeping across his spine. "You’re not going to do anything permanent to the room, are you? I still can't wear the shades you hexed yesterday. The world goes all..."
"Don't worry," Alec reassured him. "No lasting damage. And the sunglasses thing isn't permanent either, should wear off in another day or two. Though I can set it up for longer, and teach you how to interpret the output...no? Okay, fine, don't look at me like that."
Unable to restrain her curiosity, Denise asked, "What did he do to your sunglasses?"
Instead of answering, Leon pulled said pair from his own pocket, and passed them over. Denise slipped them on.
"Oh wow," she said, "pretty."
Leon stared at her. "Pretty?"
"Yes," she replied, waving her hands in front of her face. "This is awesome!"
Leon sighed. He could sense the vague beginnings of a headache gathering inside his skull, the invading forces of migraine massing at the borders of the kingdom of sanity.
"Glad you like it," Alec said to Denise. "Though you might want to put those away before I start the show. I’m not sure what you’d end up seeing."
“Right, gotcha,” Denise murmured, as she reluctantly took the sunglasses off.
Once the bewitched sunglasses were safely away from her face, Alec slid a sheet of paper out from the manila envelope. It was immediately recognizable as a printout of one of the photos taken at the previous night's crime scene.
But Alec's printout had been... embellished. The photo was no longer a clinical visual record of the scene, but quite a different beast, one that would be more at home in a modern art exhibition.
Denise gaped. "Did you smear blood on that?"
"Blood from the victim, threads from the carpet and sofa, couple of other things I picked up," Alec confirmed. He held up the sheet between his gloved thumb and forefinger, as his other hand worked the dial of the old pocketwatch. "Mix it all together in a stirring bowl, add a dash of flour and an egg to thicken before baking...wait, no, that's a different recipe. Sorry. This one just goes like..."
The watch clicked.
A flickering image sprang to life on the meeting room's screen, swirls of light resolving themselves into a moving image of the apartment's interior. On the screen, a balding man sat on his couch, a beer in hand, watching something on the television that was just outside the mystical camera's field of vision. It was the same angle as the crime scene photograph on Alec's printout.
The sofa's occupant took a long swig of beer, reaching past the waistband of his boxers to scratch an itch in regions unsuitable for exposure in polite company.
"I feel like a voyeur already," Leon commented, wincing. But his eyes remained fixed on the screen. Leon could guess what was about to happen.
There wasn't any fanfare. No flash of light, no smoke, no special effect. The three attackers just appeared with absolutely zero warning, materializing around their victim, already lunging in attack. No sound accompanied the flickering images, so when the late Abraham Kolwalski screamed, his face was a silent rictus of terror.
Then the blades came down.
Long after Kolwalski had ceased struggling, his killers stood, as one, moving in perfect synchronity. They dropped the knives...and vanished.
"That explains the lack of any signs of forced entry," Denise remarked.
Leon grimaced. "I don't even want to consider the implications of phasing or teleporting zombies."
Alec adjusted his old pocketwatch again, and the picture faded from the screen.
"Yeah," the magician said, "that surprised me to. It's quite clear we're dealing with some kind of controlling agency here, a mastermind, if you will. The method of entry and exit, how they used knives to kill instead of just clawing or biting...that says a lot."
"You sure they were zombies, Kazam? Those three looked reasonably healthy to me," Leon asked.
"Oh, trust me. Those were dead people, but the processed funeral home kind of dead people," Alec said. "I've matched a couple of those faces to recent obituaries in the Paragon Times. Not sure on the last one. Maybe no obit, maybe in a different paper, or the newspaper photo was a real old one or something. But two out of three ain't bad."
Denise looked thoughtfully at Alec. "How certain are you about those matches?"
Alec shrugged. "Quite? Magical version of an image search, really. But, here, I zapped the relevant obituaries, you tell me."
The mage produced two photocopies from a coat pocket. The copies were full A4 size, without any creases or folds, despite the fact the pocket Alec was pulling them from seemed too small to hold them. This fact did not pass unnoticed by Leon and Denise, but they consciously declined to comment.
Leon picked them up, squinting at the pictures. "Think you're right," he said. "These do look like the male and one of the two female...zombies. I I wonder what cemetary they were buried at."
"I figured you could get your guys to check on that," Alec suggested, "or any reports of other freshly buried people going missing. Maybe even bodies being stolen out of an undertaker's establishment."
"lf they were buried," Denise said, "it can't be too hard to find out. Most families around here opt for cremation these days, precisely because they don't want their loved ones coming back and eating their brains."
"I think we can work on the assumption our real killer is a necromancer of some kind," Alec added, "and the zombies are just pawns. I doubt there's any connection between our victims and who the zombies were in life, but it can't hurt to check."
"lf there is," Leon said, ''it'd make establishing motive for these murders easier. But I'd be shocked if it were that easy."
Denise frowned. "If we're talking motive and things like that...will this whole magic video show be valid evidence in court?"
"Honestly? I'm not sure," Alec admitted. "I'm a wizard, not a lawyer. Although religious groups tend to group us together as dark soulless creatures of the devil, there's actually quite a big difference."
"Postcognitive testimony's been accepted in Paragon courts before," Denise mused, “but that was psychic, not magic.”
"And Sister Psyche vouched for that one, a recognised authority in psychic talents,” Leon said.
"If we need to use Alec's show as evidence," Denise asked, "can we get someone of that stature to back him up as reliable?"
Leon snorted. "This is Alec Kazam we’re talking about. What do you think?"
"Numina owes me a favor," Alec said.
Leon gave the magician a look of disbelief. "Why does the Freedom Phalanx's mystic owe you a favour? You, of all people?"
"Nothing much, really," Alec said, "I just figured out a way to extend the time she can go corporeal. You know, as opposed to the whole ghostly astral projection thing Numina normally manifests as. You've met my assistant, right? Bell? She's a wisp, so I've been studying that stuff for a while."
"That makes sense," Denise remarked.
Alec smirked at Leon. "Occasionally I do manage to be helpful, you know."
"Fine," Leon spat, "you’re an exemplar of virtue and loving kindness, and I’ve terribly misjudged you. Happy now?"
"Well, yeah," Alec mused. "Of course, Numina did say something about having a hot date, so that’s why I..."
Leon sighed. "Figures."
"Hey," Denise said, "if his helping a premier heroine get some nookie ends up helping us nail this case, I'm not complaining."
Alec winced. "Could you not use the word 'nail' in the same sentence as 'nookie'? Especially since this case has dead people in it. That's kind of gross."
"Only you would think that," Leon grumbled, "but...now you've got me thinking it too. Thanks, Kazam."
"All part of the service, all part of the service," Alec said. "Though I probably shouldn’t have used the word ‘service’ either, I suppose."
"Just stop," Leon begged. "Please."
"I thought it was funny," Denise remarked.
"Nobody asked you," Leon growled.
"Don’t mind him," Alec said to Denise. "He’s just being a petty tyrant. Your opinions are important to me. See, I value your feedback, unlike some people I could name."
"Kazam," Leon rumbled, dangerously, "I think there’s something you should realise."
Alec tilted his head to one side. "Yeah?"
Leon smiled. "If you don’t shut up, another magician is going to end up as a murder victim. Very very soon."
Alec winced. "Gotcha."
* * *
A/N: For those of you keeping score at home, Leon's partner is, of course, Daley Wong. And Leon, as of MatrixDragon's own fictional efforts, is dating Knight of the Peace...who was a guy before he ran afoul of Yarnball (tm) and ended up as a catgirl. I figure that kind of stuff must be water cooler humour for the PPD.
Rev: I write for a living, effectively. I always have. It's just that I write BORING things for a living. Occasionally I am struck with the desire to use my powers for good rather than evil.
-- Acyl
"You're late," Leon said, not looking up from his phone.
"But I brought delicious baked goods," Alec stated confidently, brandishing a large paper sack, certain in the knowledge that the offering would appease the great and terrible police deities lying in wait within the meeting room.
"Did you get one of those cranberry cream cheese things?"
"I got two," the magician revealed, triumphantly. "And organic fairtrade coffee buns for your bleeding heart liberal partner."
"You can have them," Leon said, "he isn't..."
"Yeah," Alec interrupted, "I see he's mysteriously mutated into a woman since I last saw him. The excess estrogen is throwing off my brilliant menu calculations. You gotta do something about that, Leon. You can't keep changing the sex of people around you, it's just inconsiderate."
"He's on vacation," Leon said, rolling his eyes. Putting down his phone, he finally deigned to look at Alec, giving the mage a glare. Then he waved in the direction of the redhead seated at the end of the table, who was busy trying not to laugh. "This is Denise Fitzgerald from the crime lab. She's the one who's been poking at the evidence. Fitzgerald, this is Alec Kazam, registered wizard and costumed smartass. He's the magical help the FBSA sent us."
"Hi," Denise spoke up, making a cursory attempt to be polite. Her badly suppressed sounds of amusement instead came out as a kind of strangled cough. "Though I kind of guessed who you were from the cape and mask."
"I try to make fashion statements. Mind you, I'm not sure what those statements are, but I try. Nice to meet you," Alec said, as he set the brown bag on the table and found a chair for himself. "I'm always glad to meet new people I can traumatise. But...vacation? Now? I thought this was a busy period for you police types. You know, with all the..."
Leon glowered. Obviously the subject was a sore point for him.
"It is, yes. But Leon and his buddy are a special case," Denise explained, filling in the awkward silence. "After Halloween last year, new policy direction from upstairs is...they should be as far outside the city limits as possible when it rolls round to October 31st. So extra vacation time."
Ailes blinked. "What happened last year?"
"You don't want to know," Leon said firmly, opening the bag of baked goods and reaching inside.
"Oh, come on," Alec protested, "you can't bring up something like that and just leave it there."
"Watch me," Leon stated flatly. Turning his baleful gaze from Alec, he gave his crime lab colleague a look that promised dire retribution if she let any more details slip. The aura of menace was unfortunately diminished due to the fact he was holding a cranberry and cheese roll, but he valiantly fought to maintain the strength of his glower despite this handicap.
"Okay, fine, fine. That explains Hutch being gone," Alec said, "but what's Starsky still doing in town?"
"He's going to a costume party," Denise quipped.
"I promised my girlfriend I'd be at her sister's party," Leon clarified, stressing the identity of the individuals involved. "A smart man doesn't argue about social engagements."
"Not if he wants the other sort of permanent engagement later down the line, anyway," Alec said, sympathetically.
"Going too far, Kazam," Leon warned.
"Hey, just calling it like I see it," Alec responded, undeterred by the threat, "I mean, this one's lasted longer than all your previous relationships combined. Though I guess that's because you were actually friends before."
"They were friends when she was still a he," Denise remarked, "that's a bit different."
"This is Paragon City," Alec said dismissively, "random gender swaps from mad science or magic accidents happen all the time. Especially around Leon. Most people see Facebook friends changing their status for stuff like single-attached-married, for Leon it's male-female-other..."
"This conversation is rapidly approaching the point where I snap and kill you all," Leon growled, brandishing his half-eaten roll as if it were a weapon.
"Relax," Alec said,"I'm paying you a compliment here. You've got to be real serious and committed to your relationship if you're willing to risk nebulous unspecified Halloween-related doom by staying in town when everyone wants you to flee."
"There's a pool on whether disaster will happen because Leon's defied the Chief's edict and refused voluntary exile," Denise revealed, while claiming one of the orphaned coffee buns for herself.
Alec perked up a little at this. "Can I join? Put a little something on the disaster side?"
"No," Leon said quickly.
"Sure," Denise answered, almost at once.
"I don't think you get a say in this," Alec commented to Leon, as he reached for his wallet. "If you ran a betting pool on yourself, that would be a hideously unethical conflict of interest."
Leon ate his roll in resignation while money exchanged hands between the mage and the criminalist. Then he spoke up. "Can we talk about the case now? I was somehow under the impression we were here to work."
"I don't know where you get these strange ideas," Alec remarked, with a perfectly straight face.
"He drinks a lot," Denise confided, "we think he might have a problem."
"Ha ha," Leon said, pronouncing the syllables rather than actually laughing. "l am overwhelmed by your scathing wit. But I still want to talk about dead people. Fitzgerald, you wanna start, tell Kazam what we have?"
Resting her bun on a napkin, Denise opened the thick folder on the table in front of her, and started thumbing through the contents. "The guy we got yesterday has been tentatively identified as Abraham Kowalski, 47. Stage magician, like the others. Divorced, lived alone. He's got a daughter in state, though. PCU Salamanca campus. She's coming to town this afternoon for the usual."
"I'd like to talk with her, if that's possible. Sit in on the interview or whatever, ask a few questions," Alec said.
"Sure, stick around," Leon said. "We can set up more interviews if you need to talk to the families of the other victims, roommates, so on. I sent you the transcripts, but I'm sure there's special mystic things you need to know."
"Mostly I'm curious if the victims were just performers, or whether they were genuine magic practitioners," Alec explained."I got the sense Kolwalski might have been, but I'm not hundred percent on that."
"We can confirm that for Kolwalski at least," Denise said, turning a page in her folder. "He registered with the FBSA in 2007."
"Applied for a hero license," Leon added. "Was turned down on grounds of inadequate power."
Alec nodded. "Do you have his test scores?"
"They were in his file," Denise said, detaching a sheet from her documents and handing it to the magician.
Alec accepted the paper, looked it over quickly, and made a small thoughtful sound. "Huh. Pretty standard for a low level mage, either minimal gifting or an amateur. Though...there's a couple spikes here, could be he was just real specialised. You said his daughter is a student at Paragon City U, the Salamanca campus. Is she actually doing a magic related major, or..?"
Denise frowned. "I don't know. Leon? You called the college admin, right?"
''She's going for a Bachelor's in Thaumaturgy," Leon confirmed, as he finished his cranberry and cheese roll. He immediately went searching for the second promised treat, digging through the paper bag.
"Definitely need to talk to her then," Alec said.
"The other thing is," Denise continued, "you're the one who identified the killers as zombies, right?"
"That would be me," Alec answered. "I see dead people. Well, most folks can see dead people, since the majority of corpses aren't exactly invisible. But you know what I mean."
"Not really," Denise told him, "because we're not seeing these dead people. Zombie attacks leave behind all kinds of traces. We're talking about walking corpses in states of decay, stuff tends to drop off them. But there don't seem to be any, not at last night's scene, not at the others."
"I can't really comment about the first couple murders," Alec said, "I haven't checked out those scenes in person. But I bet you can't find any traces of the assailants at all. Or very little. Barely any fingerprints, hair, flakes of skin, anything. Whether undead or otherwise. I bet that's been puzzling you about all the crime scenes. Probably one reason Leon's on this case, and why he called me in. We're the weird squad."
"That's true," Denise admitted.
"Okay. Here's what you're missing. See, if you're a smart necromancer, you don't want your minions decomposing and falling apart. That's just inefficient and messy. So ideally you use a fresh corpse to start with, not one that already has bits missing," Alec explained. "Think about it. lf you had a choice, wouldn't you go with minions that have, you know, actual structural integrity? And muscles that actually function, et cetera. Follow?"
"I'm not sure I like getting into the head of someone who makes zombies," Leon said, "but I'm with you, so far."
"Right, so from an efficiency point of view, really the best kind of zombie is a dead body that's essentially been brought back to life, biological processes and all," Alec continued, "and at the other end of the scale, the worst kind is the shambling animated corpse that's just driven purely by magic. Still decomposing, the body doesn't really work...there's no muscular contractions moving the limbs, there's no functional inner ear providing balance when it walks. Magic is doing everything. But this is a spectrum, right? Two extremes."
"Right," Denise said slowly. She didn't sound very convinced, but seemed at least willing to let the magician finish his impromptu necromancy lecture. It also gave her an excuse to resume nibbling at her poor neglected coffee bun.
"What we have here is something in between. The bodies of these particular zombies are in some kind of magical stasis. Stops decomposition. Some organs and stuff possibly still work, to a degree. It's not perfect, though, since it's just real good preservation, not true reanimation."
Denise nodded, the light beginning to dawn. "Complete stasis means no metabolic processes either? No respiratory exchange," she asked, "no excretion of waste products?"
"Exactly," Alec said, "the body isn't really functioning, it still needs magic to bridge the gap. But a powerful enough stasis spell means the body isn't interacting with the environment at all, effectively. The magic makes sure anything defined as part of the body stays attached to the whole..."
"So that means nothing at the crime scene for the forensics guys and girls to find," Leon finished.
"Or vastly reduced traces, anyway," Alec said.
"But you're sure it was zombies," Leon pressed. "Can you prove that in court?"
"Well," Alec said, "I can prove it. I don't know if it'd be admissible, but I can prove it. Can I use the screen over there?"
"Sure," Leon replied, rising from the table. "I'll get the projector running."
Alec gestured for him to sit. "No need," the magician said. As he spoke, Alec started pulling out items from the inside of his jacket, starting with an antique watch and followed by a large manila envelope.
Leon eased himself back into his chair, a vague feeling of doom creeping across his spine. "You’re not going to do anything permanent to the room, are you? I still can't wear the shades you hexed yesterday. The world goes all..."
"Don't worry," Alec reassured him. "No lasting damage. And the sunglasses thing isn't permanent either, should wear off in another day or two. Though I can set it up for longer, and teach you how to interpret the output...no? Okay, fine, don't look at me like that."
Unable to restrain her curiosity, Denise asked, "What did he do to your sunglasses?"
Instead of answering, Leon pulled said pair from his own pocket, and passed them over. Denise slipped them on.
"Oh wow," she said, "pretty."
Leon stared at her. "Pretty?"
"Yes," she replied, waving her hands in front of her face. "This is awesome!"
Leon sighed. He could sense the vague beginnings of a headache gathering inside his skull, the invading forces of migraine massing at the borders of the kingdom of sanity.
"Glad you like it," Alec said to Denise. "Though you might want to put those away before I start the show. I’m not sure what you’d end up seeing."
“Right, gotcha,” Denise murmured, as she reluctantly took the sunglasses off.
Once the bewitched sunglasses were safely away from her face, Alec slid a sheet of paper out from the manila envelope. It was immediately recognizable as a printout of one of the photos taken at the previous night's crime scene.
But Alec's printout had been... embellished. The photo was no longer a clinical visual record of the scene, but quite a different beast, one that would be more at home in a modern art exhibition.
Denise gaped. "Did you smear blood on that?"
"Blood from the victim, threads from the carpet and sofa, couple of other things I picked up," Alec confirmed. He held up the sheet between his gloved thumb and forefinger, as his other hand worked the dial of the old pocketwatch. "Mix it all together in a stirring bowl, add a dash of flour and an egg to thicken before baking...wait, no, that's a different recipe. Sorry. This one just goes like..."
The watch clicked.
A flickering image sprang to life on the meeting room's screen, swirls of light resolving themselves into a moving image of the apartment's interior. On the screen, a balding man sat on his couch, a beer in hand, watching something on the television that was just outside the mystical camera's field of vision. It was the same angle as the crime scene photograph on Alec's printout.
The sofa's occupant took a long swig of beer, reaching past the waistband of his boxers to scratch an itch in regions unsuitable for exposure in polite company.
"I feel like a voyeur already," Leon commented, wincing. But his eyes remained fixed on the screen. Leon could guess what was about to happen.
There wasn't any fanfare. No flash of light, no smoke, no special effect. The three attackers just appeared with absolutely zero warning, materializing around their victim, already lunging in attack. No sound accompanied the flickering images, so when the late Abraham Kolwalski screamed, his face was a silent rictus of terror.
Then the blades came down.
Long after Kolwalski had ceased struggling, his killers stood, as one, moving in perfect synchronity. They dropped the knives...and vanished.
"That explains the lack of any signs of forced entry," Denise remarked.
Leon grimaced. "I don't even want to consider the implications of phasing or teleporting zombies."
Alec adjusted his old pocketwatch again, and the picture faded from the screen.
"Yeah," the magician said, "that surprised me to. It's quite clear we're dealing with some kind of controlling agency here, a mastermind, if you will. The method of entry and exit, how they used knives to kill instead of just clawing or biting...that says a lot."
"You sure they were zombies, Kazam? Those three looked reasonably healthy to me," Leon asked.
"Oh, trust me. Those were dead people, but the processed funeral home kind of dead people," Alec said. "I've matched a couple of those faces to recent obituaries in the Paragon Times. Not sure on the last one. Maybe no obit, maybe in a different paper, or the newspaper photo was a real old one or something. But two out of three ain't bad."
Denise looked thoughtfully at Alec. "How certain are you about those matches?"
Alec shrugged. "Quite? Magical version of an image search, really. But, here, I zapped the relevant obituaries, you tell me."
The mage produced two photocopies from a coat pocket. The copies were full A4 size, without any creases or folds, despite the fact the pocket Alec was pulling them from seemed too small to hold them. This fact did not pass unnoticed by Leon and Denise, but they consciously declined to comment.
Leon picked them up, squinting at the pictures. "Think you're right," he said. "These do look like the male and one of the two female...zombies. I I wonder what cemetary they were buried at."
"I figured you could get your guys to check on that," Alec suggested, "or any reports of other freshly buried people going missing. Maybe even bodies being stolen out of an undertaker's establishment."
"lf they were buried," Denise said, "it can't be too hard to find out. Most families around here opt for cremation these days, precisely because they don't want their loved ones coming back and eating their brains."
"I think we can work on the assumption our real killer is a necromancer of some kind," Alec added, "and the zombies are just pawns. I doubt there's any connection between our victims and who the zombies were in life, but it can't hurt to check."
"lf there is," Leon said, ''it'd make establishing motive for these murders easier. But I'd be shocked if it were that easy."
Denise frowned. "If we're talking motive and things like that...will this whole magic video show be valid evidence in court?"
"Honestly? I'm not sure," Alec admitted. "I'm a wizard, not a lawyer. Although religious groups tend to group us together as dark soulless creatures of the devil, there's actually quite a big difference."
"Postcognitive testimony's been accepted in Paragon courts before," Denise mused, “but that was psychic, not magic.”
"And Sister Psyche vouched for that one, a recognised authority in psychic talents,” Leon said.
"If we need to use Alec's show as evidence," Denise asked, "can we get someone of that stature to back him up as reliable?"
Leon snorted. "This is Alec Kazam we’re talking about. What do you think?"
"Numina owes me a favor," Alec said.
Leon gave the magician a look of disbelief. "Why does the Freedom Phalanx's mystic owe you a favour? You, of all people?"
"Nothing much, really," Alec said, "I just figured out a way to extend the time she can go corporeal. You know, as opposed to the whole ghostly astral projection thing Numina normally manifests as. You've met my assistant, right? Bell? She's a wisp, so I've been studying that stuff for a while."
"That makes sense," Denise remarked.
Alec smirked at Leon. "Occasionally I do manage to be helpful, you know."
"Fine," Leon spat, "you’re an exemplar of virtue and loving kindness, and I’ve terribly misjudged you. Happy now?"
"Well, yeah," Alec mused. "Of course, Numina did say something about having a hot date, so that’s why I..."
Leon sighed. "Figures."
"Hey," Denise said, "if his helping a premier heroine get some nookie ends up helping us nail this case, I'm not complaining."
Alec winced. "Could you not use the word 'nail' in the same sentence as 'nookie'? Especially since this case has dead people in it. That's kind of gross."
"Only you would think that," Leon grumbled, "but...now you've got me thinking it too. Thanks, Kazam."
"All part of the service, all part of the service," Alec said. "Though I probably shouldn’t have used the word ‘service’ either, I suppose."
"Just stop," Leon begged. "Please."
"I thought it was funny," Denise remarked.
"Nobody asked you," Leon growled.
"Don’t mind him," Alec said to Denise. "He’s just being a petty tyrant. Your opinions are important to me. See, I value your feedback, unlike some people I could name."
"Kazam," Leon rumbled, dangerously, "I think there’s something you should realise."
Alec tilted his head to one side. "Yeah?"
Leon smiled. "If you don’t shut up, another magician is going to end up as a murder victim. Very very soon."
Alec winced. "Gotcha."
* * *
A/N: For those of you keeping score at home, Leon's partner is, of course, Daley Wong. And Leon, as of MatrixDragon's own fictional efforts, is dating Knight of the Peace...who was a guy before he ran afoul of Yarnball (tm) and ended up as a catgirl. I figure that kind of stuff must be water cooler humour for the PPD.
Rev: I write for a living, effectively. I always have. It's just that I write BORING things for a living. Occasionally I am struck with the desire to use my powers for good rather than evil.
-- Acyl