“Yeah, Einstein.” Franklin rolled his eyes. “The mask is clean.”
I looked again. The leather didn’t have one speck of vomit on the outside.
“And is it me or has the body been posed?” Morales asked.
We all stepped back for a wider look. Sure enough, the mayor’s body had been arranged to look like—
“Hold on,” Mez said, “that’s the hanged man!”
I squinted at the body and realized he was right. In tarot, the hanged man was the twelfth card of the major Arcana. In it a man was depicted as hung by one foot from a tree, which corresponded with the body being oriented with the head at the foot of the bed. Also like the card, his hands were bound behind his back and his left ankle was tied to the headboard. Meanwhile his right was bent and the foot tucked behind the left knee to form a number 4. Even the spray of green vomit under his head was reminiscent of the halo of light around the figure in the card.
“I don’t see it,” Duffy said. “You’re stretching.”
I shot him a look. “Really, Detective? Do you make a habit of dismissing possible clues without further investigation?”
His eyes narrowed. “No, I make a habit of not trying to complicate cases that are cut-and-dried.”
“Maybe that works in the Mundane precincts of this city, but you’re in the Cauldron now. When chances are good the perp was an Adept, you can’t discard magical evidence outright like that.”
“All right, Miss Wizard,” Eldritch said, “why don’t you tell us what it means.”
Duffy crossed his arms and shot me a challenging look. On the other side of the room Gardner and Mez looked at me expectantly. I cleared my throat, damning myself silently for walking into this. “All right,” I hedged. “It’s been years since I studied the tarot in depth, so I might be a little rusty. However, I remember that the hanged man represented sacrifice or martyrdom to the greater good.” I glanced at Mez for confirmation. He winked and nodded for me to continue. “It can also mean surrender, I think.”
“Don’t forget it can also mean to beware a traitor,” Gardner added quickly.
I cringed. “Oh right.”
“And its a card ruled by Neptune, so it’s associated with water,” Mez continued. “It tells us not to fight against the current, to let it take you wherever it’s flowing.”
Duffy clapped slowly. “Holy shit, that explains it all, then.”
I grimaced at him. “Don’t be a smart-ass. We’re just saying it’s not something to dismiss outright.”
“All I need to know is that we have proof the mayor was involved in illicit dealings with a known prostitute who is known to grow poisonous plants,” Duffy countered, “and he was found wearing accessories common in sex play, dead from apparent poisoning.”
It was hard to argue with that logic, but from what I knew of Aphrodite s/he was too smart to leave such obvious clues around if s/he was to kill someone. The Hierophant’s words from the other day came back to me: They’d have to find the body first.
“You don’t think Aphrodite is too obvious?” Morales said suddenly. During the tarot discussion, he’d been standing to the side with his arms crossed, looking over the entire scene. Now that he spoke, he had everyone’s attention. “I mean, we seem to be forgetting that the mayor received a threatening letter from Dionysus less than a week ago.”
Duffy’s brows rose. “What are you talking about?”
Eldritch made a dismissive sound. “Rogue wizard robbed Johnson last week and then sent a vaguely threatening letter to the mayor. From it we gathered he plans to attack the city on the Blue Moon.”
I held up a hand. “Hold on. Dionysus robbed Aphrodite.” I glanced at Morales. His eyes widened, as he came to the same conclusion. In stereo we both said, “He stole the poison from her/m.”
I looked at Gardner, who’d gone still. “He’s trying to frame her/m for this,” she said slowly. “Why?”
“Aphrodite’s been on his trail ever since he robbed her/m,” I said. “This might be about getting her/m off the streets so s/he can’t put heat on him while he carries out his plans.”
“Plus, didn’t the leprechaun say that Dionysus had several tattoos of tarot cards?” Morales asked.
Duffy’s clapping was slow and sarcastic. “That would all be very convincing if this were a cop show. But this is the real world where we need actual evidence to convict a person of a crime. And right now, all the evidence points to Aphrodite Johnson.”
“Not yet, it doesn’t,” Franklin said. “I still need to get the samples back to the lab to test for the poison.”
“What are you waiting for?” Duffy snapped.
His jaw clenched tight, he started gathering his things together. “Call me,” I said under my breath. He paused in the process of putting a set of calipers in the bag and nodded slightly.
Once he was gone to let the boys in the meat wagon know it was okay to remove the body, Eldritch turned to Duffy. “I’ll have a detail stationed on Aphrodite. If that freak tries to leave town before we have those labs back, they’ll stop her/m.”
“We’ve been looking for Aphrodite for two days now,” Morales said. “There’s no evidence s/he left town, so we think s/he’s hiding out.”
“The BPD won’t have problems tracking down the city’s most famous hermaphrodite,” Eldritch said in an insulting tone.
Duffy nodded. “In the meantime, I’ll have the unis get statements and review the security footage in the building.”
“What can we do to help?” Gardner said.
Eldritch frowned at her. “You can stay out of our way. This is a BPD matter.”
“Then why did you ask us to come to the scene.”
Eldritch’s chin lifted. “I needed you to see what you cost this city by dragging your feet on the Johnson case.”
With that the captain stormed out of the room, shouting orders at the remaining unis on the premises.
Mez, Morales, and I stood quietly in the wake of the captain’s parting zinger to Gardner. She cleared her throat, straightened the jacket of her pantsuit, and turned to address us. “Well,” she said, glancing toward the bloated body of the dead mayor, “I don’t know about you guys, but I need a fucking drink.”
Chapter Twenty
Hours later, we had all gathered at a pub called the Irish Rover. It was a favorite watering hole of the BPD, but that evening there weren’t any cops in the place besides us since all the city’s officers were busy hunting down Aphrodite Johnson.