May 28th, 2015

It was hard for Athena to stomach a sandwich at what well could have been the city's best remaining deli just hours after George Pavlou and a dozen innocent victims had been killed in the Flying Pig Deli explosion. Or perhaps not entirely innocent. Surely some of them had involvement with the criminal element.

But she knew she would get weak if she didn't eat anything.

It was surprising there was a deli in this part of Potrero, or in the no-man's-land between Portero Hill and a neighborhood called Dog Patch, but the industrial construction area near Pier 80 was coming along. Luke's Deli was situated at the street level of an office building that felt like it belonged to the burbs of Michigan or New Jersey, not California.

They got the pastrami right, too.

Guilt didn't keep her appetite at bay. It had been coffee for breakfast, after all.

Her fourth meeting of the day was due to meet her in this unlikely lunch spot; the third had been a brief update with the SFPD on the particulars of Mayor Banakis's murder and the progress of the case to solve it.

The police commissioner himself had met with her. Eric Calazans. Her tiny hand had slipped into a big meaty one that hadn't held a service weapon in decades. He was surprisingly smiley for the man in charge, and the man was in charge of a suffering regime, both in the public eye and internal morale.

"Do you like the building?" he had asked. No 'nice to meet you,' no, 'thank you for coming.'

"It's a fortress," said Athena, without losing stride — literally. She walked through the foyer doors into an open office of cubicles and strode down the aisle that split them all up as if she knew where she was going, which she didn't.

When Calazans followed, she assumed it was the right direction.

"Listen, I need to know where you're at with an arrest," she said, not lowering her voice. She wanted everyone in this damn precinct to know she was taking a personal interest in the case, no games.

She didn't, however, expect Calazans to answer out here. "Please, step into my office," Calazans said, though striding behind her. He held out an arm to gesture to the closed door on the other side of the room. As Athena neared it, she noticed the sign on the door indeed read Eric Calazans, Chief of Police.

"I thought you'd never ask," she said.

He showed some hustle to get in front of Athena and open the door for her. Inside was a very barebones and by-the-book office. Cold, even. The desk's tidiness was a relief, however, after both George Pavlou's and Zenobia King's disasters this morning. Ugly Venetian blinds kept the light out, and the walls were furnished only with bookshelves full of what looked like gray textbooks. Athena took the offered office chair and swiveled it closer to the exposed metal desk.

Calazans was very forthcoming. After offering her coffee, which she turned down after a new affectation for quality Yirgacheff, the office door was closed, and Calazans had several thick files out on his desk. "Where to begin?" he said with a jolly smile.

"I won't bother asking about the Pavlou investigation," Athena said helpfully.

Calazans laughed outright. "Thanks. Last I heard, they hadn't pried his flesh apart from that of the other twenty-two deceased, but there's an eagle-headed steel pendant that survived the blast to place the interim mayor in the building at the time of the explosion. Plus, a couple of witnesses, his staff's accounts, and the note in his agenda to spend the afternoon in front of the bar's TV screen. That is absolutely and completely all that I know on that case.

"The Banikas case is different." He withdrew crime scene photos and didn't hesitate to present them to the senator. He narrated. "The crime scene specialists were scared half to death that the body was going to disappear before their very eyes, like in the recent murder of Janis Orologas.

"In that case, investigators at the scene swore that in the mere minutes they had to examine the body, what had once been gunshot wounds to the head and chest had been . . . restored to their previous, whole condition. Blood pooled and had begun to congeal on top of healthy flesh and skin tissue. There were no wounds. Not anymore. This sounded loopy, like pure baloney, but here we have the body of Mayor Banakis. And as you can see from the photos, there's blood, but no holes. They took these first shots in a rush because Orologas's body vanished before they got a chance.

"We're keeping these details from the press, you appreciate, in no small part because it's ludicrous malarky. I mean, sure, strange things happen. Magic is everywhere — but this is new."

Athena had no plan to interrupt. From what she could tell, the police chief began at the beginning, and his storytelling was detailed enough for now.

"There was a similar murder yesterday, some lawyer named Alex Argyros, and although pictures were taken, that body also disappeared with six officers in the room. Why so many uniforms, you ask? Unfortunately, word is getting out in the force, and the number of first responders responding, hoping to catch a glimpse of this magical phenomenon, is really drawing the crowds. It's only a matter of time before the story breaks. The kind of panic that might ensue with bodies disappearing might just be reason number two we need to keep this under wraps, or at least solve the case as fast as humanly possible."

He showed her the picture of Alex Argyros. "So you have maybe a dozen cops as witness to the vanishing act," said Athena, "but no video?"

"I know, I know. This day in age, everyone's instinct is to pull out their phones and video record anything that can get them a couple of likes on Facebook, make a fucking Vine out of it." He shook his head and muttered, "Damn, actually, that's my worst nightmare. Anyway, no video yet. Just several trustworthy, mindblown patrol coppers."

"Put out an order to catch this on video," said Athena. "The next time you lose a body right under your damn nose, I want to see it in real-time."

The smile left Calazans's face for the first time. "You want me to make an announcement to the force?"

"Trust me, the rumor mill has you beat. They already know. Prep them to do their jobs, sir."

"All right," said Calazans, not putting up a fight. His face became friendly again. "I don't see what the point is, but I don't see the harm either. The statements of trained officers are enough for me, and you can see the truth in their eyes. I mean, they don't even believe it themselves. That's how you know it's true."

"Moving on," said Athena, "what other evidence do you have?"

She mused over the details while she munched on pastrami. Banikas had been killed in an unrented and unoccupied apartment. It was unfurnished but carpeted. First responders mucked up the carpet, which could have retained footprints indicating the number and movements of the perpetrators.

The crappy old apartment building had no security cameras in the hallways or stairwells, but there was just one with a reasonably good angle over the front entrance facing the stairs. About five minutes before the estimated time of the murder, someone threw a jacket over the one security camera and left it there for the police to find; someone knew the building, had probably appeared on the security camera footage in the past. So the number of perpetrators remained unknown, and it was unknown how Mayor Banikas had been persuaded to enter the building and accompany his murderer or murderers into an abandoned apartment.

Police had made a gallery of every face caught on the security footage in the past six months, some two hundred faces. This was odd because the building only had thirty units, and several had been empty for some period of the six months preceding the murder.

The best lead was another question: why were so many people coming and going from this apartment building? Would the mafia commit a murder in a building where so many of them met regularly?

Then there was the 911 call. A female voice, polite. It had been played for Athena, and she had a copy on a thumb drive she had been given. "Hello, good evening. Mayor John Banikas has been murdered." The address where his body could be found was delivered with the same friendly tone. Then there was a click, and the call ended. The murderer or murderers wanted the police to come quickly.

Four minutes later, first responders burst through the door and found Mayor Banikas dead, in the middle of the carpet, one shot to the head and one to the heart. There was blood, but there were no gunshot wounds.

Four minutes after that, after photographs had been shot of the corpse, said corpse disappeared before their eyes.

Athena looked up from her last bite of sandwich as her fourth meeting of the day appeared. Detective Malyssa Fog took off shiny black leather gloves and offered a hand to shake, which Athena grasped firmly, and Athena invited Malyssa to sit across from her. A sandwich awaited the detective.

"Thank you for coming, detective," said Athena, and she took the thumb drive with the information she had already copied onto her laptop and gave it to Detective Fog. "I need someone competent to crack the case, and maybe there's a competent detective on the police force, but I have no way of knowing who that would be. There's something else, too. I don't want to simply solve this murder. Within six months from today, I want organized crime to be eradicated in this city, and every member of Sigler's Mafia and the Andreou family behind bars, to stay. Can you help me with that?"

Detective Fog looked up from the sandwich she had already half devoured. "If you have a plan, sure, why not?"

Thank you for reading Detective Fog. Any bets on how well Athena's plan is going six months from now?

Just kidding, as we all know, she's dead. Leave me your thoughts and your stars, please :)

I hope you will continue to join me for Detective Fog's adventure as chapters unfold. This book updates on Fridays. If you are looking for more to read, my completed novel Stars Rise can be read alongside this one, as the different pieces of the Constellations universe click together.