Chapter 7

My eyesight had improved to a passable level by the end of my second cup of coffee, and, after promising that I’d help Tamara shop for wedding dresses later in the week, we said our good-byes. Then I took the elevator up one floor to Central Precinct proper, went through security again, and made my way to the office of my favorite homicide detective.

“John, you busy?” I asked as I knocked on his slightly ajar door. Then I peeked my head inside.

John Matthews, a bear-sized man with a spreading bald spot and a mustache that up until recently had been red, looked up from his desk. “Alex, girl, what are you doing here?” he asked as he hastily shoved the papers on his desk into a large file folder.

I took that as an invitation and stepped inside. “Mrs. Kingly hired me to—”

John made a rude sound before I could finish the sentence. “That woman. She just can’t accept her husband bailed, in the final sense.”

Wow, my client had certainly made an impression around here. Not that I liked her any better, but the fact she was an overly opinionated bigot didn’t mean she was wrong.

“Actually, I think she’s right, John.”

He harrumphed under his breath. “Yeah, Jenson said you’d given a report to the first responding officer at the scene. Said you’d claimed to have spoken to the man’s ghost and he said that he hadn’t jumped. Alex, as much as that woman might not want to face the facts, the case for suicide is rock solid.”

“Unless magic was involved,” I said, sliding down into one of the chairs in front of his desk.

John shook his head and opened his desk drawer. He drew out a folder and passed it to me. “The day James Kingly jumped, the OMIH was surveilling a business that had been reported for gray magic. When the investigator saw Kingly climb over the railing, he snapped some photos. Kingly was alone. No one made him jump, and even I know compulsion spells can’t overcome the will to survive.”

The “even him” was because John wasn’t just a norm, he was a null—completely devoid of any magical ability.

Perfect. I had a pretty good idea what business had been under surveillance. The damn matchmaker I’d reported. Well, as they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

I opened the thin file. It included little more than the responding officer’s notes, a brief of the autopsy report, and two pictures, each showing a skeletally thin man. In one he was halfway over the railing. The next he was in the air and definitely not pushed because he’d jumped upward. I returned the photos and handed the file back to John. I had to admit that they were rather damning. And yet, I still had my doubts. Not just because of the shade’s missing memories. The weight loss, and the fact the Kingly’s hadn’t mentioned he was ill, bothered me.

“I don’t know how it was done yet, but the pieces don’t add up,” I said, and told him about the shade and the ghost missing three days of their memories, about the abnormality Tamara had found in the autopsy, and about the theories Tamara and I had batted around. None of which had a satisfactory answer. “It’s worth looking into at least, isn’t it?”

John ran a hand over his haggard-looking face. “Alex, I’m running a joint task force with narcotics on a triple murder. I don’t have time to look into a suicide just because a shade has memory loss.”

“But I don’t think it was suicide.”

“You have no evidence that it wasn’t either.”

I frowned but was forced to shake my head. If the shade had said he’d been murdered, a case would have been opened, but the shade not knowing what happened just muddied the water. With physical and eyewitness evidence pointing to suicide, I didn’t have anything that could definitively prove James Kingly hadn’t simply freaked out about being a father, gone out on the town for a couple days, then in a fit of guilt had someone erase his memory of the time. But when would the spell have been cast? And how? It could have been a potion he drank as he fell, or maybe something time-released? John was right, while it was suspicious, I couldn’t prove anything.

I pursed my lips and glanced at the large folder on John’s desk. “If I look into your triple—no charge—will you at least reopen the Kingly case?”

John looked away, his eyes fixed on the mostly empty pen holder on his desk. “Alex, it’s not like I don’t want to help, or that I don’t appreciate everything you’ve done for the department in the past—God knows we’ve closed some cases we’d have never done without you, but I can’t let you in on my current case.”

I blinked at him for a moment. I’d met John by chance during my first year of college. He’d seen me in a cemetery chatting with a shade and asked if I could talk to murder victims as well. He’d cut some red tape to get me on the books as a consultant, and in all the years since, he’d never once refused my offer to help, especially if I waived my fee. And a triple homicide? That was big. Why would he possibly…?

His eyes cut to me for a moment before darting away, and he leaned forward to straighten his stapler. “It’s not personal, Alex,” he said, his mustache, now nearly white, tugged down as he frowned. “It’s not that you’re exactly a persona non grata in the department, and you know I care for you like you’re my own daughter, but you’ve been neck deep in two of the largest murder cases any of us have seen in as long as I’ve been on the force. Hell, they were my cases and I’m not even privy to all the details, I’ve just been told they’re closed and to stop investigating. A gag order from the governor himself. All anyone here knows is that you were found in the center of two very nasty-looking ritual scenes. It hasn’t exactly engendered you with the brass.”

“So what you’re saying is that I’m no longer on retainer for the NCPD?”

He straightened the pile of folders, pushing them up beside the stapler, and I noticed that he was, either consciously or subconsciously, building a wall of office supplies between us. “It’s more that we’ve been told to consult you only as a last resort. We have a witness to the triple—if he ever comes down off whatever drug cocktail he’s on. And there’s still physical evidence to process.” He added a coffee mug to the growing line of supplies. “And to complicate your position, the first round of appeals just went before the court for the Holliday trial. If they throw out the testimony of the shade, it could bring any evidence found or warrants issued from evidence shades have provided into question.”

I forced my back straighter, lifting my chin, because the only other option was to slump into a miserable pile in John’s chair. I was still cold from my contact with the grave, but that didn’t stop burning heat from building behind my eyes, threatening to turn into tears. Two months ago I’d raised the shade of Amanda Holliday. The five-year-old’s shade was the first to ever be used as a witness in the victim’s own murder trial. We’d gotten a guilty verdict, and I’d known it would go through appeals, but I thought it would get me more business, not less. As for the sealed cases, I sure as hell hadn’t meant to get involved in them, and wasn’t I already paying a price for that involvement?

It had been several weeks since John called me in on a case, but that happened sometimes. I wasn’t a shortcut for good police work, especially since the department’s already overtaxed budget had to pay my fee. Sometimes a month or two passed before a case hit a wall and John called me. I’d also considered that maybe he’d heard I was recovering and was giving me time to recuperate.

It had never occurred to me that my position with the police had turned precarious.

Giving John a curt nod, I pushed out of the chair and said, “Well, I guess that’s that. I’ll get out of your way.” Then I turned on my heels and marched toward the door.

The heavy office door was swinging shut behind me when John called my name. I stopped, trying to keep my face neutral as I turned and stuck my head back inside. “Yeah?”

John slumped in his chair, looking like what he needed most in the world was at least one good night’s sleep—which it didn’t look like he’d had in a long time. When he heard my voice he glanced up, finally meeting my eyes. “It’s been a long time since you came by for Tuesday dinner—hell, I’ve missed quite a few myself, but I promised Maria I’d make it this week. Why don’t you join us? You can bring what you’ve dug up on your suicide case. Maria will kill us if we discuss cases at the dinner table, but I’ve a nice bottle of Scotch. We can break it open and look over what you’ve got.”

I stood there a minute, studying the weary lines in his face, and I was struck once again by how much he’d aged in the last few months. After a long moment I nodded, accepting the verbal olive branch he’d offered. “I’d like that.”

John smiled, making his mustache twitch. “Good. It’s set then. But, Alex,” he said, his smile slipping. “Call first. Regardless what I promised my wife, if a new development occurs, I might not be able to break away from my case.”

I nodded and waved good-bye. Then I left Central Precinct feeling only slightly less dejected by my dismissal.

I called Holly as soon as I reached the sidewalk. Central Precinct was a multipurpose building. As well as the morgue in the basement and the central police station on the lobby floor, the building housed the crime lab on the second floor, and several floors of offices, including a suite devoted to the district attorney and his staff. As an ADA, Holly would either be here or a few blocks away at the courthouse. I’d lost track of time while waiting for my vision to clear and then talking to John, and now taking the bus was no longer an option if I was going to make it back to Tongues for the Dead by six. Which meant catching a cab—not a cheap trip from the middle of downtown to the Quarter—or catching a ride with Holly if she was still around. She rarely broke away from work on time, so I gambled that there was a good chance I could skip the cab.

The phone rang. And rang.

This would be the day Holly made it to dinner on time.

I’d accepted I was going to get her voice mail when Holly finally answered. “I’m not late. It’s not even dusk yet. And sunset isn’t until six forty—I looked it up.”

Or not.

“No worries, you’re not late.” Yet. But I kept that last bit to myself as I forced false cheerfulness into my voice. That was something I’d been doing a lot recently. Holly had always been intense, but since her misfortunate trip to Faerie and subsequent addiction to their food, she’d become down right volatile, her moods unpredictable. As she’d been kidnapped to be used as a bargaining chip against me, I felt responsible.

She hadn’t admitted it, but I think sometimes part of her blamed me too.

So I weathered her bad days, both in guilt and in hopes of saving a seven-year friendship. I didn’t make friends easily, though I’d clearly been doing a bang-up job of trying to lose them.

I smiled because I’d always heard people could hear a smile through the phone. “I’m actually glad you’re still at work. I’m at Central Precinct and I was sort of hoping I could catch a ride with you.”

“Oh,” she said, the sharpness fading from her tone. “Alex, I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” I said, cutting her off in case she apologized. She’d been renting from Caleb even longer than I had, and as he was fae and one of the house rules was no apologies, she usually remembered. But me being fae—or enough so that I suffered their weakness of iron and could call in debts—was new to all of us. “So, can I bum that ride?”

“Yeah, of course.” Papers rustled in the background. “Just let me finish what I’m working on and pack up. I’ll be down in”—she paused—“fifteen minutes?”

That worked for me. We said our good-byes and hung up.

Since I had some time to kill, I dug Mrs. Kingly’s contact information out of my purse. This call did go to voice mail, which was a relief. I wanted more time to consider the case before she grilled me for details. I left a message with an abbreviated breakdown of what I’d learned, without extrapolating any theories—she already hated magic. This case presented an interesting puzzle, and it was exactly the kind of investigation that the new Tongues for the Dead should be able to handle. Now I’d just have to convince Mrs. Kingly to keep me on retainer and investigate the suspicious circumstances and anomalies in her husband’s alleged suicide.

I reported that the police still refused to open a homicide case, but that the medical examiner planned to look over the body again before Kingly was picked up in the morning—or at least, Tamara had said she would. She was as curious as I was. I wrapped up the message by suggesting Mrs. Kingly make an appointment to discuss the details of my findings in person. What I didn’t tell her was that who I really wanted to speak with was her husband—whom I assumed still tailed her. I also didn’t mention the recording of the ritual. Tamara e-mailed me a copy before I’d left, and as promised, I planned to strip the audio for Mrs. Kingly, but only if she insisted on hearing it. There was nothing she could learn from that recording except that one of the last things her husband did was lie to her. I might not particularly like the woman, but I’d spare her that pain if I could.

With my call complete, and still no sign of Holly, I claimed one of the benches in the bit of green space surrounding Central Precinct. Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on perfecting the mental shield I’d spent the last month building. But constructing new mental shields took concentration, and mine was fractured, my thoughts circling back to my case.

The shade having absolutely no memory of the time he was missing bothered me. I’d raised a shade or two of people who had been victim to memory altering spells before, and there were always fragments of the original memory left behind. But not in this case. It was like the soul had hit pause for three days.

But how is that possible?

I knew one person who might know. Death. But even if he weren’t avoiding me, there was a good chance he couldn’t tell me. The collectors had a fairly rigid code of secrecy. But I still would have liked to discuss it with him, see if he could at least point me in the right direction.

“Are you out there?” I whispered. The light breeze picked up the words, carrying them away, but no jean-clad collector appeared. Not that I expected him to.

I sighed. Unless I wanted to go troll some high-risk area—like an intensive care unit—hoping someone died and that Death happened to be the collector to respond, I had no idea how to find him. He’d always found me, popping in from places unknown and leaving the same way.

I’d have to puzzle this out on my own.

So how did the memory wipe tie into the suicide? They had to be connected—the timing was too convenient otherwise. But why? And how? And most important of all, if James was an innocent victim, what kind of magic was I dealing with?