We found Gardner inside the massive master bedroom with Eldritch, Detective Pat Duffy from the First Precinct, and my old friend Medical Examiner Thomas Franklin.
The bedroom was designed with a sort of seating area; an archway divided it from the sleeping area beyond. On the far end, massive windows overlooked Lake Erie.
“Prospero!” Franklin raised his hand for a high five, but when I saw the rubber glove on it I settled for a wave.
“What’s shaking, Franky?”
Before he could answer, Eldritch stepped forward. He pulled the mask covering his mouth and nose down to speak. “Oh good,” he said in a less-than-thrilled tone. “They’re here.”
Ignoring the jab, I nodded at all assembled. “What we got?”
Duffy turned toward Eldritch, ignoring us completely. “Sir, I’d like to go on record—”
Eldritch held up a hand. “The mayor was clear that he wanted the BPD to cooperate with the MEA.”
“Not like he can get pissed at us for ignoring that order now,” Duffy said under his breath. His reluctance to have the MEA involved had to do with more than a jurisdictional pissing match. A few weeks earlier, Gardner had approached the Adept detective about joining the MEA, but he’d shut her down completely. None of us understood why he’d rejected the opportunity, but whatever it was obviously colored his attitude now.
I frowned at Gardner. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Franklin jerked his head toward the arch. “See for yourself.”
Shooting a frown at his uncharacteristically grave tone, I moved forward. Morales and Mez were on my heels as I approached the opening. My first impression of the room beyond was that it was decorated like a bordello. Red silk slithered around the columns of the canopied bed. The walls were covered in paintings of naked, blindfolded women. The mattress itself was covered in black rubber sheets. From my vantage point, all I could see was the top of a leather cap or something on the body’s head.
I moved forward to see around the bed hangings. The male was upside down on the rubber sheet—his head was where the feet usually went. From my vantage point at the foot of the bed, I looked down the body at his pale torso, flaccid penis, and legs. The face was obscured by what I realized was a leather mask. The zipper over the mouth was open, allowing the blackened tongue to flop out like some kind of alien larva. I wasn’t real eager to do a closer inspection with the smell of expelled fluids and vomit permeating every molecule of air in the room.
“Who is that masked man?” Morales said, deadpan.
Gardner’s voice came from the archway. “Check out the right hand.”
Frowning, I peered over. My mouth fell open. A large signet ring with the seal of Babylon winked at us from the body’s right ring finger.
“Motherfucker,” I breathed. My stomach flip-flopped. I turned toward Gardner. “No fucking way.”
Her expression was solemn as she nodded.
“Um,” Mez said, “Someone want to clue me in?”
“That,” Morales said, “is the honorable mayor of Babylon, Skip Owens.”
“What the fuck?” Mez exclaimed.
“Our thoughts exactly,” Eldritch said, joining Gardner.
“Apartment’s registered to a dummy corporation. Probably to make sure Mrs. Owens didn’t know about it.”
“Someone want to fill us in on what we know?” I asked, turning my back on the dead man. Even with the mask, it was hard to look at the body of someone I’d spoken to only a few days earlier. Not that I was Owens’s biggest fan, but you had to have some pity for the indignity of his final moments.
“Anonymous call came in reporting there’d be a murder at this address. Volos said he was home at the time, but didn’t hear anything unusual. There weren’t any signs of forced entry, either.”
“So it was probably someone he knew,” Morales said.
Duffy nodded. “You could say that.” He held up a Baggie containing a photograph. “We found this sticking out from under the bed.”
I took it from him. It took me a minute to realize what I was seeing because the shot had been taken at such an odd angle. Apparently the photographer was standing over the subject. The subject, of course, being Mayor Owens with his face buried in a crotch. One side of the torso in the image had a large breast and the other had a clearly defined pectoral. “Shit,” I said, “that’s Aphrodite Johnson.”
“How can you be sure? Aphrodite isn’t the only hermaphrodite in the Cauldron,” Duffy argued.
I pointed to the tattoo on the left wrist, which was visible on top of Owens’s head. “The red spiral and hexagram is Aphrodite’s sigil.”
“That image isn’t enough to implicate anyone in the murder,” Duffy said.
“Of course,” I said. “What do we know about the body, Franklin?”
He stepped forward with a clipboard. “Cause of death is TBD, but if I had to guess it’s poison.”
Morales’s brows shot up. “Another argument in favor of Aphrodite.”
“Explain,” Duffy snapped.
“Oh right, the Cauldron isn’t normally your beat,” I said pointedly.
“Detective Duffy was kind enough to come over from the First. I requested him specifically because of his decorated history in homicide.”
I nodded. “Okay, so Aphrodite has this revenge garden. It’s famous in the Cauldron.” I glanced at Franklin. “You’ll be testing for plant-based poisons, right?”
He nodded. “It would help if I knew which ones the Hierophant had access to.”
“I was just there a few days ago. Would it help if I wrote down all the ones I can remember?”
“Might.” He grimaced. “But there’s something else that’s off about this scene.”
“What is it?” Eldritch snapped. He was a little green around the gills now that he’d removed his mask. The man had been out of the field so long he’d lost his edge when it came to dealing with the day-to-day realities of solving crimes.
“The forensics team also said it appears the leather mask was put on postmortem,” said Franklin.
I frowned. “Seriously?”
He waved us over. Closer now, the proof of poison was even more apparent. There was blood mixed in with green vomit all over the bed. “See anything odd?” he asked.
Mez tipped his head. “You mean besides the dead mayor wearing a gimp mask in a puddle of his own sick?”