I thought of Emma and Stephen. “That’s the truth. Hey, did either of you see or hear anyone go into Oliver Dale’s apartment in the last half hour or so?”
Rosie frowned. “No, I’m sorry. The landlord was there last night gathering boxes to clear the place out, but I haven’t seen anyone today. Why, do you think someone broke in?”
“It would be just like Oliver to cause trouble even after he’s dead,” Mia growled. She dropped the box of dog necessities and crossed her arms. “Let me guess, he owed someone money and now that he’s dead they’re trying to collect?”
“No, no, it’s just— Never mind. I’m sorry I bothered you.”
I bolted down the hallway, ignoring the dumbfounded looks on Rosie and Mia’s faces. I kept from tumbling head over teakettle down the stairs, but collided with my car door in my rush, grunting before pushing off enough to open the door.
“Slow down,” Peasblossom wailed. “Where are we going?”
“To find Emma,” I said, breathless from the mad dash. “If I hurry, we might catch her before she hides the yearbooks.”
“You know where she is?”
I slid into my seat and closed the door behind me. “If she holds true to her schedule, she’s on patrol on the reservation.”
“And you think she’d finish her shift after stealing the yearbooks?”
“I think the reservation is close enough she might pop out to help herself to the evidence and return before she’s missed.”
Peasblossom squeaked as she was almost squished between my neck and the seat as I leaned back to put my seatbelt on. “Hey!” She huffed and grabbed hold of my hair with a vicious yank and then hauled herself up to sit on my head. “You can call, you know. You don’t have to drive there. Call ahead and have Liam ask Emma to come to his office and hold her until you get there.”
I paused with my hand halfway in the side pocket of my pouch to retrieve the keys. Peasblossom was right. As much as I hated to bring Liam in on this before I had any evidence, or even a reasonable explanation, it would be even worse if Emma destroyed the yearbooks before I could get to her. If she did think she’d gotten away with it, had gone back on patrol intending for no one to know she’d ever been missing and then destroy them later, then this was the best way.
“You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Peasblossom grumbled.
I fished my phone out of the side pocket on my pouch opposite my keys and called the main office of the Rocky River Reservation.
The secretary picked up on the second ring. “Rocky River Reservation, ranger station, Amy speaking, how may I help you?”
“Hi, Amy, this is Shade.”
“Oh, hi. What can I do for you?”
“I need to speak with Sergeant Osbourne.”
“He’s not in his office right now. Can I take a message?”
I slumped back in my seat. “If you could just ask him to call me, that’d be fine.”
“I can do that. What’s your number?”
Liam already had my number, but I gave it to her anyway.
“All right, I’ve got it. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
I thought about it. “Could you tell me if Emma is on patrol tonight?”
Papers rustled as I assumed Amy checked the schedule. “Yes, she is.”
“Could I have her cell phone number?” I asked.
Amy hesitated. “I’m not allowed to give that information out. But if you’ll hold for a second, I’ll call her and ask her to call you.”
“W—”
Too late, Amy put me on hold and clicked over to the other line. I cursed and hung up.
“This isn’t good. If Emma knows you’re looking for her, she’ll bolt with the yearbooks,” Peasblossom pointed out.
I dug out my keys. “I don’t think she’s going to destroy them. She loves Stephen enough to lie to him, but I think she’s a good enough cop that destroying them would be going too far. She’ll probably just hide them.”
Peasblossom crawled into my lap and grabbed the zipper on my pouch. “Same problem.”
I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the headache I could feel forming. “Liam will never agree to search her stuff if I can’t offer proof she’s involved. I need physical evidence that will prove Stephen committed the murder and Emma is helping him cover it up.”
“What about the wizard?”
I stared at Peasblossom and smacked her hand away from the zipper. “Yes! Yes, Vincent. He has that spell, the one that manifests images of what left behind biological samples.”
“He already cast it on the crime scene—what good is it going to do to cast it again?” She tried for the zipper again.
“Not on the crime scene.” I put a hand over the pouch and gave her a warning look. “You’re not getting any more honey. I have some of that vegetable soup left. You can have some when we get back to the apartment.”
“I don’t like vegetable soup,” Peasblossom whined. She furrowed her brow. “Wait, what apartment?”
“Oliver’s. If he can prove Emma was there…”
“Then that might be enough to convince the alpha she’s involved,” Peasblossom finished. “She’s not on the case, so there’d be no reason for her to be there.”
I got out of the car and made my way up to Oliver’s apartment at a more sedate pace than I’d left it. When I let myself in this time, I stayed in the entryway. I was fairly certain that Vincent’s spell would differentiate between a human woman and a witch—at least, I hoped so, since otherwise I’d already contaminated the scene.
Vincent blessedly answered on the first ring. “Aegis Analysts, how can I help you?”
“Vincent, it’s Shade.”
“Ah, yes, how can I help you?”
His tone was pleasant, but I’d used that voice often enough to know what it meant. He expected me to ask him to do something he didn’t want to do, and he intended to refuse and then end the conversation as quickly as possible without offending me. I called it my “how can I help you, Mrs. Harvesty” voice.
“I need your help,” I told the wizard.
Vincent took a deep breath. “As I told you before, I am not a detective. I—”
“You analyze crime scenes, yes, and that’s what I want you to do.”
“Oh. This is another crime, then, unrelated to the Oliver Dale murder?”
I hated to destroy the note of hope in his voice, but there was nothing else for it. “No, it’s still the same case. Listen, I need you to come to the victim’s apartment and cast that spell from the video, the one that identifies trace evidence. Um, tell me, can it differentiate between a human and a witch?”
“I suppose I could do that. And yes, the spell can identify a witch.” Confusion chased some of the hesitation from his voice. “May I ask what it is you expect to find?”
“Someone took something from the apartment, today. Within the last hour, in fact. I need to know who it was.”
“As I mentioned earlier, the spell is not that detailed. I can only tell you gender and species. Science, now science could tell you everything. But that in-depth analysis takes time—”
“Yes, I understand, but right now your spell is what I need. I assume you can tell male or female, black or white?”
“Race? Well, yes, I suppose I can.”
I said a small prayer of thanks. This had to be enough for Liam. “Excellent, that’s exactly what I need. Will you come?”
“Of course.” He hesitated. “Dare I ask if Sergeant Osbourne is aware of this request?”
My phone beeped, telling me I had a call on the other line. “He will in a second,” I muttered.
“I see. Well then, I will let you attend to our diligent werewolf sergeant, and I will see you at the scene.”
“You have the address?”
“I do.” He paused, then added, “Good luck.”
“I’ll need it,” I said. I steeled myself, then clicked over to answer the incoming call. “Hello?
”
“Why do you need to talk to Emma?”
I leaned against the wall, trying for a casual pose in the hopes I would sound casual. “Sergeant Osbourne, how lovely to hear from you. How are things going with Anthony?”
“Why?” he barked.
I looked at Peasblossom. She shrugged, then followed it with a series of gestures that resembled charades. Or possibly a seizure. I shook my head.
“Well, it’s sort of a long story.” I eyed Peasblossom, then remembered the soup. I unzipped my pouch and fished around inside for the takeout container I’d taken to go from the café.
“Shade, this is not a joke. One of my officers is missing, and you called here looking for her.”
I frowned as I pulled out the evidence bag with Emma’s bloody sweatshirt. I’d forgotten about it. “Emma’s missing?”
“Her phone is off, so we can’t track her GPS. She’s supposed to be on patrol, but no one has seen her for the last hour.” He took a slow, calming breath. “Tell me why you wanted to call her.”
I set the bag down on the floor and nudged it inside, where it wouldn’t be seen by any hapless neighbors that might wander by. Abandoning the search for Peasblossom’s unwanted dinner, I paced up and down the hall, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t agitate the alpha werewolf further. “I need to see some evidence from Oliver Dale’s apartment. I—”
The door at the end of the hall opened and Vincent Aegis walked inside. I stopped and stared. “How did you get here so fast?”
“Gateway.”
“How did who get where so fast?” Liam said.
I brushed off my questions concerning whether gateway was a thing or a person and waved a hand at Oliver’s apartment. “In there.”
Vincent nodded and went inside.
“What evidence?” Liam asked. “Ms. Renard, if you don’t tell me what’s going on…”
“Okay, fine.” I glanced at the apartment, bouncing on my feet as I prayed Vincent’s spell would give me results before I got to the end of this conversation. “I…visited Stephen.”
Silence fell over the line. Not comforting silence, or even awkward silence. Tense silence. The sort that promises unpleasantness at the end.
“You what?” Liam’s voice was deadly calm.
At least he wasn’t yelling. That was a good sign, right?
“After I left you, I decided to find Anthony myself. Then things got interesting.” I explained my meeting with Mia, my subsequent introduction to Greg, and the unfortunate, if intriguing, events that followed, all leading up to my conversation with Anthony. “After Anthony agreed to turn himself in, I decided it was time to talk to the only suspect I had, to this point, not been permitted to speak to.”
“So you violated my orders and spoke to a member of my pack without my presence or permission. An act that violates his rights under the guidelines set down by the Vanguard.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Stephen agreed to talk. And besides, as you said, they’re more like guidelines than laws.”
Liam was silent for a minute. I wasn’t sure if it was to calm himself, or to plot my untimely demise. I hoped for the former.
“What did Stephen say?” he asked.
I slid down the wall to sit cross-legged on the carpet. “I thought he would confess,” I admitted. “I thought he did confess. He kept going on about how Oliver Dale had been a star in high school, how it had gone to his head and twisted him into the jerk everyone’s been telling us about, how he was getting worse, more violent. He talked about how there are people who can’t give up on someone even when they’re a lost cause. He said no one should lose everything because they couldn’t give up on someone when everyone else had.”
“But he didn’t confess.”
“No, he didn’t. But when I mentioned that I’d looked through Oliver’s yearbooks, he panicked. He yelled at me to get out, and suddenly he refused to talk anymore. Which is strange, because when I looked through Oliver’s yearbooks, I didn’t see Stephen at all.”
“Stephen moved to Ohio ten years ago. He attended high school in Michigan.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Liam, I’m telling you, he went white when I mentioned those yearbooks. And then I came to Oliver’s apartment straight after—I mean, I drove here as fast as I could. Those yearbooks are gone.”
“And you think Emma took them.”
Vincent came out of the apartment, puffs of smoke trailing in his wake. I focused on his face, ignoring all the shapes rising in the trail of his spell and what that meant about all those suspicious stains on the hall carpet.
“Hold on, I’ll know for sure in a moment.” I looked at Vincent. “What did you find?”
“There are two blood samples on the sweatshirt—female dog and male human.”
I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
He frowned. “The bloody sweatshirt. The one in the evidence bag. Isn’t that what you wanted me to inspect?”
“No. No, I meant for you to analyze the apartment itself. I—”
“Well, it was in an evidence bag,” Vincent said, exasperated. “A bloody sweatshirt in an evidence bag sitting in the murder victim’s apartment you called me to. You can see my confusion?”
“Shade, what’s going on?” Liam demanded.
I returned the phone to my ear, my mental gears spinning with the new information. “The blood on Emma’s sweatshirt wasn’t all Gypsy’s. It was human. Male.”
“Oliver Dale’s?”
I looked up at the wizard. “I don’t know. Vincent said he can’t tell.”
Vincent puffed out his chest and grabbed the lapels of his wool coat. “I bloody well can.”
“But you said—”
“I said the trace spell didn’t work that way. I have other spells, you know. And this is blood we’re talking about, full of information, and one of the most ancient—” He stopped waving a hand through the air as if to wipe away the conversation. “Really, Mother Renard.” He straightened his spine. “Tell Sergeant Osbourne that the blood on the sweatshirt matches Oliver Dale’s blood type. Given time, I can run a DNA analysis and tell you for certain if it’s him.”
I repeated the information, but my voice sounded like it was coming from far away.
The pieces were falling into place. Details linking, revealing an image that made my stomach roll. I was vaguely aware of Vincent saying my name, of Liam shouting into the phone. I lowered my hand and let the cell phone sag in my lap.
I knew why Mother Hazel had assigned me this case.
I knew why Stephen had lied to Liam.
And I knew who killed Oliver Dale.
Chapter 17
Vincent picked up my phone. I could see his mouth moving, knew he was talking to Liam, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying over the rush of blood in my ears.
“Emma’s sweatshirt is covered in Oliver Dale’s blood,” I mumbled. “She was in the forest that night.” I closed my eyes. “She carries the same gun as Stephen.”
“Don’t rush ahead of yourself, Shade,” Liam said. Vincent had switched it to speaker phone, so the alpha’s voice sounded tinny and foreign. “Emma wasn’t wearing the sweatshirt that night. She and Stephen were dating—it’s possible she left the sweatshirt in his car.”
I stared at the phone. “You’re quick to defend her considering she just became an alternate suspect to your wolf you’re so certain is innocent.”
“I’ve been a cop for a long time, Shade. I don’t jump to conclusions—no matter who’s in the hot seat.”
“You’re right.” I stood up, a strange numbness crawling over my body. “We need more evidence.”
“Shade, what are you doing? Vincent, what is she doing?”
“She’s standing up,” Vincent said. He watched me as if he expected me to break into hysterics at any moment, and he kept his voice calm, careful.
I took the phone from his hand and switched off the speaker before putting it to my ear. “I�
��m going to get more evidence.”
“No,” Liam said. “Just come to the station. I’m sending people out to search for Emma, and Blake and Sonar are heading to Stephen’s house. We’ll find her, and we’ll get answers.”
“See you soon.” I hung up.
Vincent put a hand on my shoulder as if to steady me. “Are you all right?”
I tried to smile, but my mouth was too brittle. “I’m fine. I have to go to the reservation. Liam wants to… He wants to speak with me.”
The wizard still looked uncertain, and he hadn’t let go of my shoulder. He glanced at the apartment, the bloody evidence, then back at me. “If I might trouble you for a ride? I’d like to speak with the sergeant as well.”
He was only saying that for an excuse to ride with me, so I must have looked worse than I felt. It didn’t matter, though. He could come along if he wanted. “Sure.”
I started walking without waiting for him, listening idly as he scrambled to retrieve the bloody sweatshirt and lock the apartment before racing down the hallway to catch up to me. Peasblossom didn’t say a word, but I wasn’t sure if she was just giving me space, or if she was as upset as I was.
Emma did it. Emma killed him.
Vincent remained silent as we got in the car, but the need to say something, to ask me if I was all right—again—hung heavy between us. I resisted the urge to warn him into silence, the very strong desire to use magic to ensure his silence.
Barely.
I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to think about the victim, and I didn’t want to think about the murderer. I didn’t want to think of Mother Hazel and her deal, or the sadistic reason behind my assignment to this case. I just wanted to drive, in silence. Drive to the forest to get the last piece of evidence.
Emma did it. Emma killed him.
A deep breath was my only warning that Vincent intended to start a conversation I wasn’t willing to have. I spoke first.
“I have a cat.”
A pause followed my announcement. Vincent fidgeted in his seat, twiddling his thumbs in his lap as he struggled for something to say. “Um, a cat, you say?”
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