Seeing Red

by Lyra Evans

  “Don’t you dare apologize, Niki.” She shook her head at him, statement as stern as any order Cobalt gave. “This isn’t your fault. I’m thinking of starting my own detective service, anyway. Be my own boss. I work best that way, I think.”

  But however she spun it, it was another casualty of his actions. And Niko was about done with watching his friends suffer for someone’s grudge against him. Flipping open the files in front of him, he resolved against the guilt. Phoebe Linden was responsible for all of this. Her and all her Woods cohorts. And it was time they learned the meaning of retribution.

  ***

  The wall was plastered with photos and case paperwork. There were printouts of news articles and maps of different neighbourhoods tacked up around them. Lines of different coloured markers drew connections between things that seemed otherwise unconnected. But maybe they were unconnected. Circles drawn around certain faces in the photos were linked with events from a case across the wall. On one document, the license plate of a witness to a disappearance was connected to the list of vehicles present at the scene of a domestic disturbance. In another case, the complainant in a robbery case was connected to the lawyer of a man charged with aggravated sexual assault. The charges were dropped in the latter.

  Niko stared at the wall, occasionally scratching out connections and drawing in new ones. Underlining specific words or details, then crossing out others. He pinpointed every incident on the appropriate maps and tried to reason out some connection, some pattern, some link he hadn’t thought of before. And at the top of the mass of papers and photos and maps was one photograph. The portrait’s subject stared out at him with steely eyes and an arrogance that burrowed under Niko’s skin. Phoebe Linden’s official Court photograph wasn’t meant to make her look sinister or haughty, but it did. Or maybe it was just that Niko couldn’t see her any other way now.

  “Are we absolutely sure all these cases are Woods cases?” Uri asked for the tenth time. It had been hours now since they’d begun searching. Or begun searching again. The sky outside had bled to purple in that time, and Niko’s anxiety had hiked up three notches.

  “These are all the case numbers Preston sent us,” Starla repeated, a heavy sigh in her chest. “He gave us the details we were missing about the drunk driver case, but Niki said that’s all Preston’s got. In that case, the car belonged to Banyan’s kid, but the registration was changed. Maybe we’re not seeing things because that kind of thing happened in all these other ones, too. If we check the archived documents on—”

  “We already did that,” Uri said, dropping his head back against the sofa. “The deeds to the properties, when applicable, and the registrations for vehicles. We’ve checked into familial ties between victims and suspects and lawyers and arresting officers. We’ve checked into social media connections and political connections and fucking everything we can think of. Nothing is coming together.”

  “We’re missing something,” Niko said, only vaguely aware of what Uri was saying.

  “Obviously,” Coral muttered.

  Niko stared at the drunk driving case Chief Banyan’s son was responsible for. It was clear that case was not going to solve their problems. Phoebe wasn’t directly involved in covering that up. She was, however, using it to control Chief Banyan now, but Niko didn’t think there was much more to it than that. Banyan was a good pawn to have, but she was hardly high up in the structure of the Woods. Still, something about that case pricked at the back of his mind.

  “Star, can you check my phone records?” Niko asked suddenly. “Look specifically for the texts we know now were from Preston.”

  “Sure,” she said, sitting up straighter and tapping away on the laptop placed on her lap. Uri shifted over to watch her work, and he frowned.

  “You shouldn’t be able to access that information without a warrant,” he said to her, suspicious.

  “Oh no? Weird,” she said, essentially ignoring him. “Got it, Niki. What are you looking for?”

  Cobalt stood at Niko’s side, studying the wall and thinking his own thoughts. He looked at Niko here, but even without looking directly at him, Niko could tell Cobalt wasn’t puzzling out the case. Something else struck him as he watched Niko, but neither of them said anything about it.

  “Find the text that mentions the drunk driving case,” he said. “Tell me if he mentioned other cases in that text, or in the ones immediately before and after.”

  Niko listened to her fingers tapping away on the keys without looking at her. He stared instead at the crime scene photo of the car wrapped around the tree. There was no gore to see in that particular image, but the wreckage of the car perfectly illustrated the Woods’ impact on the lives it touched. Nothing but ruins.

  “Yeah, there are a few,” she said. “He texted three times in four days, referencing four cases. I remember now. I remember being kinda weirded out we were getting so many all at once. Like something was happening.”

  Niko felt a buzzing at the back of his mind. “Which cases?”

  A pause, then Starla said, “The drunk driving one, obviously. The painting theft from that gallery. The missing woman—Esther Cottonwood—and the Tilia domestic disturbance case. Why?”

  Niko sidestepped. He turned to face the others now. “Those were some of the first he sent us, right?” he asked. She glanced down at the screen, though she likely didn’t really need to. He didn’t. The drunk driving case had stuck in his mind in particular because it involved deaths. It was the first case Preston had sent them that had documented fatalities.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Only a handful came in before that. A couple other domestic disturbances, a few drug-related arrests, one stash of unregistered, smuggled sapphires, and then these. What are you thinking, Niki?”

  He didn’t answer. “Uri, can you pull up Sade’s prison internet records? The penitentiary logs all usage for inmates, right?” Uri nodded, bringing up the information requested on his own screen.

  “It’s mostly emails from sick fans or spam,” Uri said, scrolling through. “He also visited this one website a hell of a—ohhhh fuck, yeah, that’s porn. Ash and Fir, that’s disgusting.” He shuddered visibly. “Okay, anyway, some basic searches beyond that. He did look you up regularly. That’s also pretty fucking creepy.”

  Niko brushed the thought aside. “Emails, please,” he said. “I need to know when he was first contacted by his appeal lawyers.”

  There was silence as Uri searched for a few moments. His brow furrowed, his expression compressed, and all of them watched him as he sifted through.

  “I can’t find anything from their law firm,” he said. “Nor any emails from them personally, unless they used fake names or throwaway accounts to email him. Might have.”

  Crossing his arms over his chest, Niko accidentally brushed against his nipple rings. He shivered, the little twinge of pain sparking in him. But he forced it aside, grasping with his mind for the thread he needed to pull.

  “Are there records kept for visits? Phone calls?” Niko asked.

  Uri looked up. “Well, sure. But visitation records are mostly internal. Without a warrant, I’d have to hack into the prison’s system.” He paused, and Starla tried to look innocent as she began tapping away. “As for phone records, those will be privileged. Any contact the inmate has with lawyers is covered. Can’t access that. The prison stops monitoring the moment the call connects in those cases.”

  Niko swore to himself. Pressing fingers to his temples, he began to rub in small circles to stave off the budding headache. “Is there anything weird in the emails? Weirder than normal for Sade, I mean,” he asked, grasping at straws.

  Uri opened his mouth to say no, shrugging his shoulders as he scrolled, but before the words fell from his tongue, he stopped. Eyes narrowing slightly, he tilted his head and studied something more closely. Niko felt his heart skip.

  “There are a couple messages here,” Uri said slowly. “The sender seems to be Sade’s brother. But—I didn’t think Hemloc
k had any siblings?”

  The buzzing was back. Niko was floating in water, everything moving more slowly. “He doesn’t,” he said. “Only child. His mother was an unlicensed prostitute, way back when. She got knocked up by a young gang member who insisted on no prophylactics. He dropped her when he found out and was killed in a shooting soon after. She never made that mistake again. Took the infertility potion they were passing around years back. She never had any other kids, and it gave her a cell mutation disorder to boot. Died when he was about fourteen. DNA searches for other relatives came up with nothing.”

  Uri made a face. “Well, someone started emailing him claiming that. The messages sound personal. Saying they heard of the treatment he received and wanted to help. Apologizing for not being in his life more. Saying they weren’t going to let him rot in there.”

  “The first time the lawyers met with him was about two weeks after these emails,” Starla said, glancing between her own screen and Uri’s. The buzzing in Niko was loud as a hive of angry wasps.

  “What was the date of the email?” Niko asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  Cobalt’s scent overwhelmed him momentarily. The Selkie was very close. “You think that was Phoebe. Or someone acting on her behalf.” He paused, nodding slowly. “The point when she contacted Sade was the moment she decided she needed to get rid of you.”

  Niko nodded. “What was the date?”

  Uri opened his mouth, but Starla answered for him. “It was within days of the cluster of texts Preston sent. The ones you asked about.”

  Niko turned back to the wall and began pulling down casefiles and photographs.

  “What are you doing?” Coral asked.

  “These cases don’t matter,” Niko said, unsticking the robberies and the assaults. He removed the disturbance at the night club and the vandalism of the luxury car dealership. He pulled them all down. Except the four Starla had specified. As a last thought, he picked up the image of the wrecked car from Banyan’s case and set it aside.

  “How is that? Aren’t they all Woods cases? Don’t we need to sort out all the lies and corruption?” Coral asked.

  Cobalt took one of the remaining three cases and spread out the images and files more clearly on the wall. “We do. But that is not the most urgent problem. We know Phoebe decided to target Niko personally and aggressively because she believed he had something on her. Getting Hemlock out of prison took time, effort, favours, and money. It was not worth the effort unless she thought it was necessary.”

  “She acted the moment she realized Niko had whatever she is afraid of,” Starla reasoned out, watching Niko and Cobalt arranged the information. “So whatever cases Preston gave us just before she contacted Sade…those have to be the relevant cases.”

  Niko nodded. “Preston sent those texts in a cluster because he was about to leave the city for the jungle-forest. He sent us a set of all he had at the time. The best he had. Turns out he had something better than he even realized.” Standing back, Niko scanned the casefiles for the painting theft, the missing woman, and the domestic disturbance at the Tilia household. “Somewhere in these three cases is the clue Phoebe Linden doesn’t want us to find.”

  “So break them down,” Coral said, sitting up straighter on the couch. “You know them best, right? Talk it out.”

  Niko cast her a glance, finding her green eyes earnest. With a shallow nod, Niko picked up the file for the painting theft first.

  “The Lime Gallery was prepping for a show. It was closed to the public, with only the gallery director, the artist—one Seong-Jin Serrata—and the set-up crew inside the building. The set-up crew was four people from a company the gallery routinely engages for these kinds of events. The four people had all, at different times, worked set-up for the gallery in the past. This was Serrata’s first professional showing, and it was met with growing buzz in the art community.” Niko paused, flipping through the pages. “The final painting was hung in the gallery around three-thirty in the afternoon on the Wednesday of the show. Once it was in place, the gallery director dismissed the crew. The four members returned to their company headquarters to return their truck and signed out. Logs corroborate this. The gallery director and Serrata locked up the gallery, went to dinner together, and returned at six o’clock to open the show.

  “Upon entering the gallery, Serrata did a quick circuit of the area to check on things. It was at this point he noticed one of his pieces missing. The largest painting, entitled She Held Open, had vanished. The gallery director and Serrata searched the entire premises, as well as the security footage, and found nothing.” Niko scrutinized the responding officer’s paperwork. “They then called the police, who sent two officers to the scene. Another search of the building was done, as well as scan of the security footage. Nothing. The footage shows the crew setting up the painting with Serrata overseeing. The crew leave, Serrata talks with the director, then they lock up and leave. The painting is there the entire time. Then, from one second to the next on the footage, it vanishes. In the end, they interrogated security staff and found one guard had a history of theft she’d never disclosed. She also admitted to being glad the painting was destroyed, despite no one knowing if it was still intact or not. They arrested her and closed the case, but there’s no evidence the painting was ever in her possession, and she appeared on the footage elsewhere in the building when the painting vanishes.”

  “What time?” Starla asked. “What time exactly?”

  Niko searched the report. “Five forty-seven and ten seconds. At eleven seconds, the painting is gone.”

  “Obviously the tape’s been tampered with,” Uri said. “What did the officers do about that?”

  Niko shook his head. “Not much. They took it to our forensic department for analysis. Found the footage to be untouched.”

  “How is that possible?” Uri snapped. Niko had no answer to that.

  “Forensics team corrupt?” Coral offered.

  Uri shook his head. “No way. I work with them all the time. They can’t—”

  “Anyone can,” Cobalt corrected. “But I don’t imagine it’s that simple. If the footage had been altered, the forensics team would likely have been able to reverse it, no?” Niko nodded after a moment’s hesitation. “Then it is possible they would have easily uncovered who or what took the painting. If this was a Woods operation, they likely employed means more secure than that.”

  It was a fair point. Niko stared at the stills from the folder.

  “What was it a painting of?” Starla asked.

  “It’s not fully detailed,” Niko said.

  There was silence. “I thought you said there was video footage?”

  Niko frowned. “It only showed the very top of the painting. About an inch from the edge.” He sighed and rubbed at his temples. “Serrata’s work apparently deals in the aura of art, according to the notes. He refused to allow his paintings to be photographed or reproduced in any way, which meant tilting all the cameras up. Visitors to the gallery would have had to forfeit their cellphones, cameras, even sketchpads. Apparently the work only has value as long as it is purely unique. Reproductions of any kind diminish the aura of a piece and weaken its power.” Niko shrugged. “We only have descriptions.”

  “What the fuck,” Coral said rather than asked. One eyebrow arched to the heavens, her eyes bulged in a way to indicate she thought the art world of Maeve’s Court was insane.

  “So describe it,” Starla said.

  Niko opened his mouth to read the descriptions and choked on the words. Gathering himself, he said, “Serrata’s focus was on pleasure. Of a kind. I guess. He mainly illustrated female climax, it looks like. So the various paintings were of different women caught in the moment of orgasm, with extreme close-ups. Like stills, I guess. Except some of the paintings also alluded to various kinks. Some included lingerie, some toys, still others involved whips or floggers, bindings of rope or leather, and a few more intense than that. One involved barbed wire. Another might
have been—ah—bodily functions. The missing painting may have illustrated a woman getting off to—” Niko stopped, blinking at the description. “A woman in the midst of orgasm…while being murdered.”

  No one spoke immediately. Coral eventually broke the silence by repeating herself.

  “What. The. Fuck.”

  “Did—did the artist murder someone?” Starla asked.

  Cobalt crossed his arms over his chest. “Surely even the most corrupt officers of Maeve’s Court would have noted that detail.”

  “No,” Niko said after a moment. “Serrata explained to the officers his models are all from videos he found online, available to the public. He also said that in every case possible, he received signed permission.”

  “There’s video of a woman being murdered online?” Uri asked.

  Starla snorted. “There’s worse than that, I can assure you. But it also said she was orgasming.” He paused, pulling a face. “Is it possible it wasn’t murder?” Waving her hands to stave off their arguments, she added, “I know, I know. But what if she asked to be killed? Like it was her fetish? Or something?”

  Niko didn’t like that idea in the slightest, but he searched through the file. “It doesn’t say. It just says ‘dead end.’”

  “I think Star’s right,” Coral said, searching on her laptop. “I guess. I found the video. The woman was terminally ill. She wrote this long article about it and posted a video of herself saying it was what she wanted. She wanted to be killed rather than die slowly. Somehow she obtained some kind of permission for this through the Court? The killer was actually her husband, and in the video, if you listen closely, you can apparently hear him crying.” She shuddered violently. “No. No. No.”

  “So that’s it then? The Court,” Uriah said. “Linden and the others, they gave her permission to be murdered—wow that sounds weird—and didn’t want it coming to light?”

  “Only it did come to light,” Niko said, moving around to see the screen Coral was reading. There was a snippet from a news article. “It was news at the time that the Court allowed this to happen. People actually called for the Courtiers to give her husband immunity for the day to allow his wife her chosen death. People largely seemed to support the idea.”