December 18th- Pixieland Part 1 by Dawnwind

This story is in the same universe as The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be but isn’t a sequel.

He always kept the bedroom door ajar, as his mother had taught him, to allow the spirits access. Most folk only felt the spirits in their dreams, or on those days fraught with grief or pain, when the veil between worlds was thinnest.

David Starsky was not most folk—a rare male born mage. The spirits spoke to him through the silver pentagram tattooed on the palm of his left hand. They poked him, pointing him to where he needed to go by channeling the conduit of his Gift.

He woke that morning knowing they were calling, urging him out into the world to solve some unspeakable crime. He wasn’t ready to move yet, still warm, curled against the long body of his partner, Ken Hutchinson.

His palm tingled, silver light flaring from the pentagram, a bat signal just for him. He sighed, having hoped for a more restful morning, and turned, seeking the strength Hutch provided.

With the flat of his hand, Starsky fit his palm over the pentagram inked on Hutch’s upper hip. It was an ordinary tattoo, not specially formed to focus magic. Hutch had had it done where it could be covered by clothing, even a speedo, so only one other person would ever see it.

“Hot,” Hutch muttered, barely awake.

“You discussin’ the weather this early in the a.m. or is that a comment on my lusty bod?” Starsky teased. “Cause while it’s not bad for December, I ain’t going to the beach.”

“Your hand.” Hutch  scrubbed his face with one hand, pushing his longish bangs out of his eyes. “It’s almost burning me.”

“Damn.” Starsky peered at the pentagram. It was still visible, which was unusual. Generally, the tattoo barely showed. Today, it was as bright as a star.

“Trouble?” Hutch asked, standing in all his naked glory.

Extremely distracting. Starsky’s mouth watered at the sight, but there were obviously more urgent matters to attend to. “Separate showers or it’ll take too long to get ready,” he said quickly. “Something’s going down in the spirit world.”

“Following your lead, Sir Merlin.” Hutch smiled wolfishly. “Get the coffee started and I’ll make toast when you shower.”

Starsky flexed his fingers over his burning palm and pulled on Hutch’s ratty old orange robe. Felt like a thousand tiny needles stabbing into his skin. A lot like when he’d first received the tattoo as a boy.

She was long limbed and unnaturally thin, skin pulled tight over knobby bones. In the corona of Hutch’s flashlight, she appeared bluish. Of course, the color of her hair might be affecting his vision. Starsky couldn’t tell at a glance how she’d died. A question for the coroner.

“Who has blue hair?” Hutch asked rhetorically, then answered his own question. “Punk rockers?” He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd behind them.

The area had been cordoned off with yellow tape by the officers who’d responded to the original distress call.  A dozen or so eclectically coiffed and dressed people gathered just outside the tape, talking nervously to one another.

“Or faeries,” Starsky said sotto-voce, hunkering down on his heels to examine the body. She looked human enough but there was something slightly off. Ears were decidedly pointed, but not like the TV character Spock. She was probably a halfling—one of her parents from the Seelie Court.  A more common phenomenon than most Californians realized.

The silver ink on his palm that had pulsed steadily since he woke had dimmed to its ordinary flesh tone by the time they arrived at the converted warehouse. Dubbed Pixieland by the locals, it was a haven of punk rockers, artists, and other marginalized people. Most sported piercings through the nostrils and ears, odd hairstyles that seemed to defy the law of gravity, and tattoos.

Hutch’s eyebrow raised in surprise and he tapped his mouth with one finger which helped disguise his lips when he spoke. “You can sense that?”

“More or less.” Starsky stood, brushing off the knees of his jeans. Who knows what was on the cement floor around here. Didn’t smell great, although the residents had made an effort to create a homelike atmosphere. There were piles of pillows in one corner around a relic of a TV with a metal hanger for an aerial, and mattresses with handmade quilts in another area. Here and there were small holiday decorations: a sprig of holly, a wreath of bay leaves, and the occasional red candle flickering in the dim light.

“Like a…” He truly couldn’t describe why beyond her physical appearance, but he could feel a fizziness inside as if his own fae abilities were reaching out to the poor girl’s. “Hey!” He waved to the approaching lab crew. “Here’s Ginny and her fan club.”

“They view me more as a slave master,” Ginny Simpson said, dropping her equipment just beyond the crime scene. She glanced around at the lookie-loos. “Who found her?”

“I did.” A small woman with a jewel in her left nostril and tightly braided cornrows raised her hand uncertainly. An older woman wearing five strands of multi-colored beads gave her a slight shove to move her to the front of the group.

Starsky and Hutch stood to flank Ginny and hear what she learned. The fresh-faced uniformed cop who had arrived on the scene first hadn’t said there was a potential witness. A big mistake on his part.

“Was she in that position when you found her?” Ginny asked.

“I wouldn’t touch a dead body!” the woman replied, horror stricken. “We were all asleep and I got up to…” She gestured awkwardly at a curtained off section on the far side of the building.

“Bathroom?” Hutch asked gently.

She nodded vigorously, stopping suddenly when a child of about five crept over to grasp her hand. “My kid,” she said unnecessarily, holding the girl’s hand. There was a strong family resemblance although the little girl had distinctively pointed ears and tilted green eyes. “Lily and I were sleeping. When I got up to go, I saw Renalen lying on her back.”

“That’s her name?” Ginny asked, snapping on rubber gloves and paper shoe covers.

“Renalen Bosh,” the bead wearing lady affirmed. “Dolia screamed when she found her and woke the rest of us. Renalen was just lying there…dead.” Her eyes glistened with tears and she crossed herself. “It happened…“ She abruptly stopped whatever she was going to say, eyes sliding left toward Dolia for an instant. “I called the cops.”

Hutch glanced at Starsky with a significant, let’s get the crowd away while Ginny works vibe and took two steps to the right, signaling the nearby officers. “You were first on the scene?” he asked, eyeing a young cop.

Starsky would have grinned under any other circumstance. Hutch’s take-charge persona was in high gear. Hutch particularly got that way when they both suspected supernatural involvement because Starsky had to stay focused to deal with the magical details.

“Mannheim, sir,” the rookie responded promptly.

“Get the names of everyone here when Renalen Bosh died, and who might be missing or left before you arrived,” Hutch explained. “Ask if they saw anyone who doesn’t belong.”

“Right away, sir!” Mannheim nearly saluted, whipping out his pencil and pad.

Good thing he hadn’t asked Hutch for writing utensils, Starsky thought, taking in the surroundings. Didn’t look like it would have been too difficult for the residents to move around while others were sleeping. There were numerous sleeping alcoves scattered around the large place, and probably more on the second floor. Wouldn’t someone have heard a scuffle, fight, or argument? He watched Ginny begin her assessment before joining his partner.

Hutch had culled their two most valuable witnesses out of the group and followed the ladies to the kitchen. It had probably been the cafeteria for a large factory at one time. A huge stove and refrigerator dominated the room. Foodstuffs were stacked on shelves. Several women shepherded a gaggle of school-aged children eating fruit for their breakfast.

“Everybody loved Renalen,” Dolia was saying. “She had this… what would you call it, Carmen?” Lily was clinging to her tie-dyed tunic and crying, her hitching sobs painful to hear.

“Glow about her,” the older woman, Carmen, explained. “She could sense when you were upset or sad, always had a kind word for the children. She taught the littler ones not yet enrolled in school.”

“Is there anyone you could think of who’d want to kill her?” Hutch asked gently, empathy coming off him in waves.

“Not one! Not like…” Dolia said overly loudly, startling the children eating. Several gasped or began to cry.  She lowered her voice, wiping away her own tears. “Renalen was my best friend–”

“Actually,” Carmen cut in. “I can think of a man who didn’t like her.”

Starsky got the distinct impression Dolia would have said more if Carmen hadn’t interrupted.  She looked shocked that the other woman would reveal that much.

“Your full name?” Hutch prompted.

“Carmen Santamaria,” she said tipping her head proudly.

“I don’t think…” Dolia began, pale. She snatched a napkin off the large pine table to wipe Lily’s nose and then gave her an apple to silence her.

Carmen folded her arms firmly over her generous bosom, scowling. “We have to tell someone, Dolia.”

“What?” Hutch leaned forward slightly.

“It’s difficult to explain,” Carmen back-pedaled, chewing on her lower lip. She crossed herself again which seemed to provide strength. “I still consider myself Christian, even after I met…”

“Faeries?” Starsky said quietly, watching the other children file out of the kitchen under the watchful eye of two grannies. At his count, there were three others, besides pretty little Lily, who had fae features. Not counting Lily, Renalen and those kids, there must be multiple adults from the enchanted realm living in the building. No wonder the warehouse had been dubbed Pixieland. And not all the children appeared to be of faery origin. Two small boys sported outsized ears, bulbous noses and protruding foreheads, clearly trolls or possibly brownies.

“Yes.” Carmen nodded. “So when Reverend Allbright began visiting, I thought it was a wonderful opportunity to bring many of these marginalized families into the Christian fold. Baptize them, start Bible studies…”

“What is the name of Reverend Allbright’s church?” Hutch asked, patting his pockets for a pencil.

Starsky automatically placed the one he kept in his jacket for expressly this purpose in his partner’s palm. At least Hutch had a small pad of paper.

“New World Worship,” Dolia said with a scowl, smoothing her daughter’s hair.

Lily had stopped crying, munching on her apple. She waved good-bye to the last child filing out of the kitchen. “He teached us about demons,” she said with a slight lisp.

“Demons?” Starsky echoed with a growing sense of dread. That he could understand. Although magic and enchanted beings were far more accepted now than when he was coming up, believers were still in the minority. He’d been ridiculed and bullied much of his life, not only by mainstream, disdainful humans, but even more from fundamental female mages who looked down on male practitioners.

“He was very fire and brimstone,” Carmen took up the narrative again. “Insisting that everyone here was going to hell unless we confessed the sin of demon worship, and only then we’d be saved. That was ludicrous. Most turned their backs on him, including me, very quickly.”

Hutch shook his head sadly, rubbing his face. “It’s people like him…” he started with a sigh, “You think he could actually have wanted to murder Renalen?”

“Ren told him to get the hell out of her home. But kill?” Dolia shuddered, her eyes bright with tears. She gathered Lily onto her hip. “May I…?”

“Thank you,” Starsky nodded. “We’ll get back to you if we need more information.”

“Where is his church?” Hutch asked Carmen after the other two had left.

“About a mile from here.” Carmen pointed to the right. “Can’t miss it, there’s a golden cross on the front door.”

On the way out of the warehouse, Starsky saw Ginny overseeing the loading of the body into the morgue wagon.

“Anything you can tell us, Gin?” Starsky asked, sending a silent blessing for the dead girl. Didn’t matter if she was Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, or atheist—no one deserved to be murdered.

“Like how she died?” Hutch tacked on, with a tilt to his mouth signaling how unlikely that might be.

“As a matter of fact, sort of.” Ginny waggled her hand. “Strangled—I think.” She made a circle with her fingers and pressed inward with her thumbs. “Fairly certain her hyoid bone is broken. Difficult to see in that dark warehouse, but petechiae in her eyes—“ She winked at Starsky, “that would be—“

“Spots of blood in the eyes to those of you without a medical degree,” Hutch mimicked her usual comment. He helped the morgue guy shut the back doors of the vehicle.

She smirked but there was a grim undercurrent. “But oddly, no bruising in the neck or jawline. No marks at all.”

“Was she sexually assaulted?” Starsky sighed. Sometimes he hated this job so much, particularly at the holidays when people should be preparing for celebrations.

“Nope. It’s weird, as if no hands touched her body.” She waved as the van drove off. “Thing is, I’m seeing a pattern. I think there were two others—when you and Hutch were back east—“ Ginny said, frowning.

“For my mother’s birthday,” Starsky clarified, with a glance at Hutch. He could read his partner’s eyes clearly. Why hadn’t they heard about this before? He and Hutch had gone to New York for two weeks, but had been back for three days. Surely Dobey would have mentioned two murders in their patch of Bay City. “These other murders were like Renalen’s—no marks?”

“And you think the deaths are connected?” Hutch asked, hand to his neck as if choked up about the deaths before hearing all the details.

“There are too many similarities to discount the possibility.” Ginny pointed to the left. “One was outside, in what used to be the parking lot for this warehouse, over there on the western edge. The other was less than a mile away, in a vacant lot—both women, and…” She paused, inhaling.

“You had a gut feeling?” Starsky put in.

“Something like that.” She bit her lip, brushing fingers through her bristly short hair. “One woman had safety pins for earrings. Both had a peak on the helix of the ear and brightly colored hair.” She touched the top of her own ear sporting two gold hoops, and traced a little point. “Look like they’re fans of the Sex Pistols. The first one was even wearing a God Save the Queen shirt. Only…”

“You know they’re not punk rockers,” Hutch finished for her.

“I do autopsies all day long.” Ginny sighed. “Halflings are very, very similar to full humans. Probably someday, when we learn more about DNA and chromosomes, it will be easier to prove, but there are these tiny signs I see. I’ve seen.”

“Plus, you know me,” Starsky said flatly.

“I know you.” Ginny touched two cool fingertips to his left palm. “No disputing that there is magic with the likes of you and Hutch in town.” She tipped an imaginary cap. “I’ll give you more info when I get Renalen on the table. Meanwhile, find the bastard who did this.”

“Will do.” Hutch saluted her in return. He gazed out past the nearly deserted half acre of cracked and broken macadam to the west. “That the church, you think?”

Starsky followed his pointing hand. A white spire was just visible about a mile away. In between were mostly deserted, boarded-up buildings. This part of town had once been a thriving industrial area with factories that produced vacuum cleaner parts, plumbing pipes, nails, and shoelaces. Unsexy objects necessary for daily life. Items now made more cheaply in China, leaving the former workers without employment. Poverty, homelessness, and sadness—so typical, yet so forgotten. The church looked like a relic from another era, not a beacon of salvation and love.

It was December, when TVs aired a Christmas special every night, department stores were crammed with holiday shoppers spending all their cash, and every school kid learns that Santa is coming and Rudolph is lighting his way. But what about those who could barely afford to feed themselves, much less buy gifts and a great big tree?

What about those who didn’t believe baby Jesus was born on December twenty-fifth?

Raised Jewish, Starsky had embraced every winter holiday with the passion of a true merrymaker. Light the menorah and play dreidel for Chanukkah with his mother’s family? A blazing fire and warm cider on the Winter Solstice with his father’s? Exchange gifts on Christmas with Hutch? All, and more, were how Starsky spent the holidays.

Damning gentle folk just trying to survive in the world with a modicum of love in their lives? No, that was anathema to everything he believed in.

“Reverend Allbright, here we come,” Starsky said.

“I didn’t get to jog this morning.” Hutch unzipped his black leather jacket. “Feel like some exercise?”

“And leave her here?” Starsky glanced at his bright red Torino parked near the entrance they’d used for the warehouse. A couple boys, possibly ten or twelve-years-old, were huddled near the hood, admiring the sleek muscle car.

“They’ll protect her from danger.” Hutch rolled his eyes, bouncing on the balls of his suede sneakers.

“As long as they don’t drive her off,” Starsky groused, then broke into a run when he realized Hutch had dashed ahead.

To be continued….