KISS THE WITCH by Dana Donovan

eyes the way Lilith does
sometimes when she knows I am lying. I get that often now when
introduced to someone I already know well. That is, someone the old
Tony knows well. People like Officer Brittany Olson, now Corporal,
who took one look at me upon my initial return and saw right
through me, made me think Lilith and Ursula were not the only
witches in my life. And Jack Cruz, New Castle’s medical examiner.
He did it, too. I actually got the chills when Jack looked into my
eyes. With a simple blink, he saw down into my soul and then gave a
nod and a wink for me to carry on, as if never missing a beat. I
remember he told me to have Tony senior call him. I told him I
would, but we both knew that would never happen.
    And now here was Larry Scorch doing the same
thing, digging deep into my soul, peeling back the façade of an old
man hiding behind a young man’s eyes. He said to Carlos. “Yes sir,
he does look just like Tony did forty years ago.”
    “ It’s uncanny,” Carlos
remarked. “I tell him that all the time. I say, Tony, you look
exactly like your old man. Don’t I say that, Tony?”
    I smiled politely, wanting so badly to move
things along. “You do,” I said, and I pressed my finger to my
watch. “But you know we have to hurry. We have that thing to
do.”
    “ Thing?”
    “ Yes.” I stitched my lips
tightly and drew a bead down on him that should have hurt
him.
    “ Of course. Yes. We have
that thing back at the ahm….” He looked at Larry and gestured over
his shoulder. “Back at the office.”
    “ That’s right,” I said.
“So, if you don’t mind, can you tell us what happened
here?”
    Larry backed away a measured step, taking a
deep breath and pulling on his suspenders to hike up his pants. He
gave a nod toward the smoldering rubble that was once Snow’s house.
“It’s early,” he said, “but preliminary reports suggest a gas main
rupture.” He sampled the air with a sniff like a bloodhound
catching scent of something on the wind. “Smell it?”
    I didn’t smell it.
    “ I smell it,” said
Carlos.
    He didn’t smell it, either.
    “ Anyone hurt?” I asked.
“The home owner?”
    Larry turned to the crowd of onlookers
gathered on the safe side of the yellow perimeter tape strung
across the street. He pointed out a young woman in a tan sweat suit
and running shoes. “That one there. The hot jogger with the tits.
She told us she saw the owner about an hour ago come out to get his
paper.”
    “ He went back in, did
he?”
    “ He did.”
    “ And he hasn’t come out
again?”
    “ Not in one
piece.”
    I pointed at the vehicle in the driveway.
The windows were shattered from the explosion, but it sat far
enough from the house to have survived the worst of the blast. “It
that his car?”
    “ According to your boys,
it is.”
    I said to Carlos, “Let’s tow it in.”
    “ You got it,
Tony.”
    “ Larry,” I said, “Will
you–” He interrupted me with a disapproving glare. “I mean Chief
Scorch; will you keep us apprised of further developments? That is,
if you find a victim inside or anything suspicious?”
    He gave Carlos a classic sour puss. “He’s
just like his old man, isn’t he?”
    Carlos feathered a shrug to make it look
ambiguous. “He is,” he said. “I think they partnered him with me
because no one else would have him.”
    “ What?” I fell back and
gave them both an eye-full of eat me. “Who partnered with
whom?”
    Larry reached out and gave Carlos a
good-old-boy pat on the shoulder. “Look, I got to go, but listen.
Keep your eye on this one.” He nodded conspicuously at me. “It’s
not too late to turn him around.”
    “ I’m on it,” said
Carlos.
    And like that, Larry Scorch was gone, not
even so much as a goodbye to me. I remembered then what an ass he
was when we were both still just a couple of punks rookies with a
fire truck and a gun. Two more pitiful examples of
over-compensating the phallic effect, I could not imagine.
    Back in the car,