Yes, I’d solved my case.
But that didn’t settle my head, which continued to churn out variations of a dream involving violet gems, blue cornflowers, and a hodgepodge of everything else that threatened to give me heartburn. And the way that the Reykajar Aerie had treated Lance Captain Thundercrack’s death had bothered me as well. It felt like everyone was all too eager to close the books. To put a shameful thing behind them. To pin it on a less than popular clan within the aerie system.
A vibration came from the table next to the couch, where I’d set my phone to the ‘stun’ setting. I managed to scramble and claw my way out of the couch and thumbed the screen before it went dark again. Instead of a phone call, it was a text message – a status update, to be precise – from the genetic testing company I’d hired to handle the buccal swabs.
The first batch of DNA test results were to arrive in three days. That meant I could soon complete the task that made up part of my cover story at the aerie. It really was incidental at this point, but I wanted to see if I could do some good for Shaw’s people. A quick look through the test results and I could at least identify genetic damage, maybe even a few disease markers.
But as far as Thundercrack’s guilt? It just felt too cut and dried for my tastes.
I scrolled through the screens on my phone, wanting to talk to someone about it.
I paused over Shelly’s listing. She was a friend, and would at least hear me out. But I scrolled on past her. Shelly didn’t really know about Andeluvia. And she was having issues of her own – issues that I was pretty darned sure came from the blowback of a pooka’s magic.
I finally got to Esteban’s number.
He’d given me permission to call him at any time. Encouraged it, even. And even though he wasn’t all that keen on Andeluvia, he did know about it. And he’d met a couple of the magical creature from there.
The throbbing in my head came back with a vengeance.
I gritted my teeth against all the awful thoughts that ran through my mind. He’ll only hang up. He might not even pick up once he sees your number. He hates you, after all. Everyone must hate you at the LAPD with all that you’ve done. Why would he feel any different?
Why indeed?
Because he’d been my friend before I’d finally agreed to go out with him. And he had been as patient as possible in trying to cultivate a relationship with me. Especially since I’d given him such rocky soil to start out with.
And the worst he could do was simply hang up on me. I’d probably curl up into a ball on that ridiculously saggy couch of mine when it happened. But I wouldn’t be banished from an entire world, flayed and hung up like a ghastly art project, gouged by a battle-mad griffin’s claws, or impaled on a sharp piece of rock.
Andeluvia had a way of putting the little things in perspective.
I tapped the key to dial Esteban.
His phone rang once. Twice. Three times. On the fourth ring, I expected it to go into his voicemail, and for the life of me, I didn’t know what to say.
A beep, and he picked up.
“Dayna,” he said, sounding a little out of breath. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I replied, sounding more scared than I wanted to admit. “And no. I…I didn’t think you would pick up. Not after midnight.”
A pause. “I won’t pretend that things are…all that settled between us. But I figured if you called this late, you were in trouble. You know I’d help you if I could.”
“Thanks, Alanzo. I really mean it.”
A sigh. “So tell me. Are you in any immediate danger?”
“Thankfully, no.”
“Good. Wait just a minute, then.”
A clunk as he put down his phone. I heard him moving around in his room for a bit before he got back on the line.
“Had to finish toweling off and find a clean pair of shorts,” he explained. “I got back from a stakeout a little while ago and heard your call just as I got out of the shower. You got lucky. Fifteen minutes either way, and I’d either have been on the road, or catching some Z’s.”
“Well, I do know I’m lucky. I have a Fayleene for a friend,” I said, trying to make light of the situation.
Esteban wasn’t having it. “And that hombrecito was the one who got kidnapped, right? Let’s leave luck out of this.”
“Okay.”
“If you’re not in immediate danger, that leaves three possibilities as to why you called me when you ought to be in bed. One: Something’s happened between you and McClatchy since he decided to make a run at Police Chief. Two: There’s something wrong in Andeluvia again. Or three: You want to talk about us.”
I bit my lip when I heard the choices. Technically, he’d hit all three areas correctly. But I didn’t want to get into inter-office politics right now. And all I had was my instinct telling me that Robert McClatchy’s sanity was eroding away like a sand castle on the beach at high tide.
“Can I pick two of three?” I asked timidly.
“Sure, I’m holding a special today.” I heard the creak of springs as he settled back into a chair that sounded in as bad shape as my couch. “Which two?”
“The most important one first. Us.”
“I’m listening.”
I could hear a smile in his voice that hadn’t been there before, and I knew I’d chosen the right answer.
“I was wrong not to tell you about my switching to part time,” I blurted, and then caught myself. Forced myself to slow down. “I know that you’ve been patient with me, and you’ve deserved an answer as to whether we should pursue a relationship. A real one, I mean. Not like how some people do it these days.”
“I know,” he said gently. “Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t want some ‘friendship with benefits’, or whatever people call it these days.”
“Me too. And you deserve to know why I haven’t given you an answer yet. Why I asked for part or even quarter time.”
So I told him, in my clumsy, halting way, how the newly crowned King Fitzwilliam had offered me the job. How I’d waffled on the deal. How it looked like I could have it yanked away if I didn’t solve the latest case.
And then something else came out. My feelings, my honest feelings, about being in Andeluvia. Yes, there were some awful times, some terrible people. But I told him about winning the respect of centaur King Angbor. Of being with the Fayleene at their Sacred Grove. And of sleeping under the stars of the Reykajar Aerie with a loyal griffin friend resting at your back.
“I wish I could visit like you,” he said quietly, when I finally wound myself down. “And now I feel a lot better.”
“You do?”
“Sure. That’s an awful lot on one side of the scale. And balanced equally against that…is me? I can’t help but be flattered.”
Alanzo couldn’t see me, of course, but I shook my head. I reminded myself to never underestimate the male ego again.
“That said,” he continued, “It sounds like nothing will be settled until your current case comes to a close. How is our grand theft progressing?”
“Depends on how you look at it,” I hedged. “And something tells me that it’s not ‘theft’ anymore. It might be murder.”
A second creak echoed down the line as he sat up. I mentally kicked myself for not leading off with this bit: nothing intrigued a Homicide Detective like discussing a new case. I brought him up to speed on the developments at the aerie, my growing suspicion of Thundercrack, and the video evidence that led to his exposure and subsequent death. It took a while to cover everything, especially with Esteban’s questions injected into my narrative, but like any good investigator, he followed along without much difficulty.
I listened to Esteban’s breathing as he sorted out the jumble of facts I’d just conveyed. I found that I was holding my breath, waiting for his answer.
“You may be right,” he said flatly. “Any way you slice this, it looks fishy. What was it, exactly, that moved the Elders to convict this ‘Thunder-crack’?”
> “Well, it was my evidence. The film clip that I got from Hector.”
“But you never showed it, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. They don’t have that kind of equipment in Andeluvia. One of the Elders noted how Thundercrack was known as something of a political troublemaker. When they revealed that he was planning on seizing power by force, he became hostile. I presented my evidence, and he completely lost it. He would have killed me if Hollyhock hadn’t stopped him.”
A pause. “Dayna, this is important. Think back. Immediately after you presented your evidence, what happened? Be as exact as possible.”
I walked through it in my head again. My memory wasn’t photographic, but it was pretty darned close, and I’d drilled it over the years on the job to stay sharp.
“Thundercrack took two…no, three steps towards me. He said, ‘You would dishonor me! Your tricks have gone too far, outworlder, and I will have no more of it!’ And that’s when Hollyhock shouted to stop him, that he was going to murder me.”
“How far away was this griffin when he said what he did?”
I closed my eyes. “Maybe twenty, thirty yards.”
“Close enough to kill you before someone intervened?”
“No, absolutely not. There were more than a dozen other griffins in the chamber. Shaw himself was at my side.”
“So, this Thunder-guy thought he could fight all of them? And then beat one of the toughest griffin warriors in Andeluvia? Only because he didn’t like what you were saying about him.”
“Well…griffins can act on impulse. And he did mean to kill me.”
“Did he? Because I didn’t hear a threat anywhere to do you bodily harm.”
I blinked. “I’ll be damned,” I whispered. “All he said was ‘I will have no more of it’. He could have meant ‘I don’t want to hear you talking anymore’ as well as ‘I will kill you so you’ll stop talking’.”
“Would a griffin be so…I don’t know, subtle in their threats?”
I shook my head. “No, they wouldn’t. They’d probably be pretty graphic about how they were going to kill you, to boot. Hollyhock must have been expecting Thundercrack to become violent…and she overreacted, worried that he would try and kill me.”
“Maybe. It still seems off to me, somehow. How sure are you that this case is closed at all? I don’t mean the possible murder here. I mean, did you nail the perpetrator of the museum heist?”
“Pretty darned sure. Holly took one of the missing crystals off of Thundercrack, for starters. Then there’s the security camera footage with the green-tinged feathers.”
“Any chance I can see it?”
“Sure, if you have a computer on your end.”
“Matter of fact, I’ve got my computer booted up and in front of me.”
“Sounds good.”
Phone in hand, I went back over to my kitchen table where I had my own laptop charging up. I flipped open the lid, plugged in the storage drive, and sent the video clip to Esteban via email. In less than a minute he had the clip downloaded and playing.
Over the phone line, the sounds of Tomás’ panic, the griffin screech, and the breaking glass were laughably tinny. But I heard Esteban’s puzzled voice at the end of the video’s playback. A pause, and he played the clip again. And again.
“That’s odd,” he murmured.
“What?”
“I don’t see that green plumage you were talking about.”
That got my attention.
“Maybe your monitor needs adjusting.”
“Maybe, but it’s pretty new. Have you seen the tape on your own laptop yet?”
“No, but I can fix that.”
I selected a media program to play Hector’s clip. Again, the burglary’s sequence of events played out. Tomás appeared and then started screaming as the glass broke. An answering griffin call. A blur of feathery wings appeared on the camera footage.
An icy chill ran down my arms.
I replayed the file, watching it more carefully. Then again, freezing it at the right point.
The green I’d seen on the mystery griffin’s wing feathers was completely gone.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I sat behind my desk, using every ounce of my willpower to keep from looking at the clock or grabbing the office phone. I read through the same damned office memo three times trying to force what it said into my brain. It was maddening work.
At the end of our phone call last night, Esteban had given me one piece of advice: Check and re-check all of your facts. You might find that some of them are actually assumptions in hiding.
Exhibit Number One in the catalog of ‘what I thought I knew’ was that video footage.
So, after another four or five hours of restless sleep, I came in to work early and visited the digital lab. Hector wasn’t there, but one of his co-workers said that he usually showed up around nine in the morning.
I went back to my office and tried to whittle down one of the desk’s paper piles, all while trying to keep a straying eye from the clock.
I called Hector at 8:59. Then at 9:04. Then at 9:10.
My hand crept up to the receiver at 9:17 when the phone’s ring made me jerk forward as if I’d been zapped with a jolt of electricity. I scrabbled with the receiver even as the first ring faded out. I didn’t even look at the extension shown on the phone’s display.
“Dayna Chrissie!” I exclaimed.
A friendly laugh on the other end. “Whoa, now. I heard that you were a live wire today, and they weren’t kidding. You need to cut back on that caffeinated sludge you call coffee.”
“Hector,” I sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s just…there’s something different about the footage you sent me. Different than when we saw it in the lab, I mean. Did you do anything to the tape?”
“Hm? Oh, that. I had to clean the footage up a little to make the freeze-frame clearer. Also, I color-corrected it. Had to do the same with my photos as well.”
I felt something terrible looming in my mind, coming in like a swell at night. It took everything I had to hold it together as I spoke.
“Color correct? I don’t understand…why?”
“Remember that odd lighting in the Hall of Gems? They’re all old sodium-arc lamps. They look cool but they throw the color off things by a full shade.”
“Can…can you send me a copy of the original, un-altered footage?” I swallowed, hard. “It’s really urgent. I need to compare it against…”
That same weird feeling surged up inside my head, making me feel faint.
“Okay, I’ll send it right now. You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just tired. Please send it, I’ll be at my desk waiting for it.”
I managed to get the phone to its cradle right as the awful feeling hit full force, right along with one of my head’s odd clicks.
Images and understanding now, in a flash.
Everything had been right in front of me the entire time.
And I had missed it!
The name of the million-dollar traveling exhibit from the Hall of Gems formed in my head: The Montana Cornflower Sapphires.
The fields of cornflowers that kept showing up in my dreams? They were just as they looked like in real life. Bright blue.
The little faceted gems that kept showing up in my dreams? They were just as I had seen the Montana sapphires when they were wheeled out of the Hall of Gems. Bright purple.
No one in their right mind would call a set of gems the color of Concord grapes a ‘cornflower’ exhibit.
Hector had even said, I had to switch to some different lenses and start over…the lights here are playing havoc with my photos.
It took everything I had to not break down and cry.
Stupid, stupid!
I’d made mistakes before. I knew that they were a fact of life. No one was perfect.
But this mistake had led to the Elders accusing an innocent griffin of wrongdoing.
This mistake had led to someone’s death.
&nb
sp; And if I wasn’t the only one responsible, then I sure as hell played a key role.
Twenty minutes later, one of Hector’s assistants came to drop off the additional copy of the footage. He found me at my desk, hands over my face, trying to hold my emotions together. I felt brittle, as if I’d been cast as a spun glass figurine.
He looked at me as if I were losing my mind. I suppose he wasn’t far off.
“You okay? Sure you don’t want me to get you some aspirin?”
“No, thanks. I just had…you know, a little tension strain. Had to rest my eyes for a moment.”
I waved him out of my office, copied over the file labeled Unaltered_MoNH_Data, and sat back to watch the footage with a different goal in mind. To see if I could spot facts, now that my assumptions were gone.
The first time through, I saw the green color on the feathers again.
The next time through, I froze the image and saw something new.
Hector had seen a pattern on the screen, which he assumed were the outlined ridges of individual feathers. But griffin feathers pressed tightly together in smooth folds. I knew that they had to, in order to hold in warmth. Like with waterfowl in my own world, it helped wick moisture away from the skin with a thick, plush barrier.
I took a bunch of screen shots from separate frames of the film and printed them out. I was sure of it now: the green color, which only came out under that oddball lighting, was actually a natural pattern. And I’d bet a month’s pay that each pattern would be as unique as a fingerprint.
It took a couple more viewings to realize that I’d had another assumption sitting in my way. An assumption I had to discard if I was going to make any progress on this case.
At the critical moment, the blur of green-patterned feathers blocked the security camera. It was close, within four or five feet of the lens.
The metallic keening sound came at the exact same time.
That was the vault door being ripped off its hinges and dumped on the floor.
The vault was at least sixty yards away, across the vast open expanse of the room. So that could lead to only one conclusion.
Grand Theft Griffin Page 20