down on my head

1

The sidewalk was completely cordoned off by the time Keith arrived, and there was a small gathering of bystanders off to one side of the yellow police tape. A few were being interviewed by uniformed officers, but most were gawking at as much of the crime scene as they could easily see, which, judging by the scent of putrefaction in the air, must be gruesome.

Keith wrinkled his nose and lifted the police tape, ducking under the line of demarcation and waving cheekily to the LEO who turned and spotted him. The man started to move in his direction but hesitated when the officer by the scene spotted Keith and waved him over, a tired expression on his lined face. "Long day, detective?" Keith said when he got into range, and managed to keep the look of disgust off his face as a fresh wave of decomposition assaulted his delicate nose.

Detective Tringham scowled at Keith, but was too tired to keep the expression up for long. He sighed and pushed a hand back through his hair, his other hand on his hip. "You know I hate when you people show up on my crime scenes," he said, as Keith stopped beside him.

"Your disgust would seem genuine if I didn't already know you," Keith said, and touched a finger to the tip of his own nose, looking past the tow-headed detective and toward the actual crime scene. He hadn't beaten Krolia to the scene, she was standing with the medical examiner and the crime scene photographer and talking animatedly, so he didn't have much to cover. "What have we got?"

"One fresh corpse, one not-so-fresh," Tringham pulled out a pack of cigarettes and offered it in Keith's direction, he put up his hand to decline. "The fresh corpse is already in the care of our M.E., but the other one is kind of..." he gestured broadly. "Everywhere."

Keith looked back up at the building - there was activity all along the fourth floor, police presence there as well. "What do you think?"

"Guys upstairs think it's Satanists," Tringham said. "Any time they see something that looks even slightly like it came out out of a roleplaying manual they jump immediately to Satanists, I think it's a conspiracy." He shrugged loosely. "There were some circles and runes painted in the apartment upstairs, they're all bullshit. Probably done to divert the investigation, which they did a good job on because you better believe the folks downtown will have our department running down all the local cults."

"It's definitely not a cult." Krolia said, stepping around a wet puddle that might have been entrails. "I took a peek inside before some over-enthusiastic officers shooed me off." She was dressed nicely, for once; so much that Keith barely recognized her. "Got some quotes, though."

"Mistook you for a journalist again, huh," Keith said, and Krolia smiled at him.

"Blend in and you never know what you'll learn," she said sweetly.

"So," Keith said. "Not a cult. Are we going to play twenty questions, or...?"

"Possession," Krolia said confidently. "All the symbols were fake, except one." She folded her arms and looked up at the balcony, where a photographer now stood, taking pictures of the small markers set on the railing. "Don't know what a demon-possessed soul was doing with a corpse in a bathtub and frankly, I probably don't want to know."

"Well that's just peachy. Demons give me hives." Tringham shuddered. "Am I going to have to lock down over this? Without a body that demon will be looking for a new host."

She shook her head. "He was branded."

Keith let out a low whistle, and Tringham looked between them with a frown. "What?"

"It's the new thing in demonic loyalty," Keith said. "They brand their hosts with a sigil that traps them in the flesh. If the mortal body dies, then..." he shrugged. "Best guess is that the demon goes back to hell or wherever these things come from and won't be back to bother us for a few centuries."