Secrets of the Demon

by Diana Rowland

  “Holy crap,” I said, sincerely impressed.

  “Isn’t it amazing?” Roger said, nearly beaming. “Now he weighs one-ninety and his doctors say he’ll probably outlive all of us.” Then his smile slipped. “I went by his house and his office and he wasn’t at either place. I have keys,” he explained. “If Vic was busy he’d have me come to him so that he could still get a workout in.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Vic’s not just a training client. I mean, he’s a friend as well. He’s helped me out of some tough spots and given me some great financial advice, and ... well, I’m really worried about him.”

  “I understand,” I said in a reassuring tone. I asked a few questions about Vic and his family—of which there was practically none. Parents deceased, no spouse, no kids. A brother who lived in Seattle who Vic almost never spoke to—not out of any sort of antipathy, but more because they’d gone different directions with their lives, and their contact was now down to obligatory phone calls on birthdays and Christmas.

  “Let me make some calls,” I said. “I want to rule out the possibility that he had an accident and hasn’t been able to get in touch with you.”

  He gave me a relieved smile. “I tried calling hospitals but they said that they weren’t allowed to give patient information because of privacy rules.”

  “Right. I should be able to get more info.” I’d also call the coroner’s office to see if Mr. Kerry was in the morgue, but I wasn’t going to tell Roger that. I was sure he knew that would be one of my calls, but that didn’t mean I had to say it outright.

  Roger excused himself to go tend to a client, and I used the opportunity to make the calls.

  “Well, no one with his name or fitting his description is in any of the local hospitals. Or the morgue,” I told him when he returned about ten minutes later.

  He gave me an uneasy smile. “I don’t know whether to be relieved or more worried.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “But that’s only the first step. Do you have time to take me by his office and house?” Since he had keys and—I assumed—permission to enter, that made my life a bit easier.

  “Yeah, I just had my last client. I start at five A.M.” He grinned at my involuntary shudder. “I’m free until about four-thirty this afternoon. Band rehearsal every night this week,” he explained.

  “Oh? Where do you rehearse?”

  “Adam owns a studio in town—Sound Systems. It’s convenient and free,” he said, “which is nice since we’re spending so much time practicing right now.” A faint grimace flashed across his face. “Lida’s putting together some new songs and it usually takes us some time to get all the instrumentation right.”

  I thought I could sense a touch of resentment about the amount of time the band demanded. “Lida writes all of the songs?”

  “Most of them,” he said, “though Trey’s put together a few as well.”

  “What about Michael?”

  Roger gave a small laugh. “Um, no. I mean, Michael’s brilliant at playing existing stuff, but he doesn’t do the creative stuff. At all.”

  “Does he read sheet music?”

  He shook his head firmly. “No. Plays strictly by ear. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s absolutely amazing at it. He can hear something once and then play it damn near perfectly, but someone always has to play it for him first. Usually Lida does that.” Then he smiled. “But she’s incredibly patient with him. It’s really cool.”

  “Sounds like it,” I said, suddenly wishing I knew more about music and performance. I also wished I had more time to grill Roger about Lida and the other band members, but that would have to wait for another time. “Well, we’re burning daylight. Let’s go look for your client.”

  Taking separate cars, I followed Roger over to the City Towers, where Vic had his office. The City Towers building was a landmark in town, not only because it used to house the city offices, but it was also the skyscraper in Beaulac. If a seven story building could be called a skyscraper. But it was the tallest structure in town other than the water tower.

  Unfortunately, the building had lost a number of its tenants in the last year due to newly constructed office complexes that were willing to price their rent competitively in order to fill their spaces. Judging by the almost empty parking lot, I didn’t think there were more than a dozen occupied offices in all of City Towers. It looked as if any attempts at landscaping that were more complicated than cutting the grass had been abandoned. Bushes ringed the building, but they’d been allowed to grow so high and thick that the first-story windows were almost completely obscured. Walking into the building, I could see more reasons business owners would have left. The linoleum in the lobby was stained and cracked, and the walls probably hadn’t seen a new coat of paint since the seventies. In fact it didn’t look as if anything had been updated or maintained for a few decades.

  Roger took me up to the sixth floor and unlocked the door to a very ordinary office. Utilitarian and boring were the words that first leaped to my mind. Black and white tile floor, metal desk, a row of metal filing cabinets, and a couple of slightly battered chairs. I had to wonder how successful an accountant and financial advisor he was if this was the best office he could afford. It certainly wasn’t the sort of place I’d want to meet clients. As far as I could tell, Vic Kerry had the only occupied office on this floor. And, I didn’t think the other floors were too much better.

  Maybe he’s simply frugal, I thought charitably. On the other hand, the view from his window was nothing short of spectacular. I could see down the entire length of Lake Pearl from here, and with binoculars I thought I’d probably be able to pick out my aunt’s house on the lakefront.

  “He has a little home gym set up through there,” Roger said, gesturing to the another door. “Once he started to lose the weight he shelled out some serious bucks for really nice equipment.” He opened the door and flipped on the lights. Still the same ugly tile floor, but this room was packed with weight benches and machines, and the far wall was taken up with a small kitchenette area with refrigerator. I didn’t know a whole lot about exercise equipment, but even I could tell that this was gym-quality stuff—not the kind sold at Walmart. Okay, so maybe he preferred to spend his money on stuff that actually mattered to him.

  “Actually, I work out here pretty often,” Roger told me. “I gave Vic a discount on my training fee in exchange for being able to use the equipment here.” He glanced at me with a wry smile. “Sometimes it’s nice to get a totally uninterrupted workout. If I’m at Magnolia I’m kinda always on duty, and I get interrupted all the time by people wanting help or a spot or whatever.”

  “Trust me,” I replied, “I totally sympathize with the ‘always on duty’ thing getting old.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, I guess cops get it all the time.”

  “You know it. So, was Vic dating anyone?” I asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Roger said. “I’m pretty sure he would have mentioned it if he was.”

  “What about business dealings? Did he ever talk about that?”

  “Um, sure, Vic mentioned some stuff sometimes,” he said. “But he never gave details about the accounts he worked on. He knew his shit, though. He gave me some great advice.”

  “What sort of advice?” I asked.

  “Investments. That sort of thing.” He gave me a casual shrug that struck me as being a bit too casual. Maybe some of Vic’s advice had been off the mark and Roger had retaliated? Just because Roger was reporting Vic missing didn’t mean that he wasn’t the cause.

  I turned back to the front office and went to the desk. Neat and tidy, obsessively so. I riffled through a stack of papers on the desk, but didn’t see anything that leaped out at me as a reason to go missing. No threatening letters from an ex-girlfriend. No blackmail notes.

  I sighed and looked out at the view. A few sailboats were making their way across the lake in meandering patterns. I stepped closer to the window then stopped, frowning as a strange sensation rippled over me.


  What the hell? I shifted into othersight, shocked as a familiar resonance washed over me. Like the creature that grabbed Lida.

  Pulse quickening, I switched back to normal sight, then crouched and peered at the tiled floor. There was dirt there. Not much, but on the pristine floor it was noticeable. I straightened and looked at the window itself.

  “Did you find something?” Roger asked.

  I glanced back at him. “Do these windows open?”

  “Yeah, they prop out,” he said, stepping up to point to the latch mechanism at the bottom.

  “This one isn’t latched,” I murmured. Shit. I knew I needed to look, but I didn’t want to. I had a sick and certain feeling that I knew where Vic was.

  “Oh, god. Do you think ...” He trailed off.

  I took a piece of blank paper from the printer and put it against the window so that I could push it open without marring any possible prints too badly. I peered down, then looked at Roger.

  “I think we found your client.”

  Chapter 12

  I removed Roger from the room and secured the door, then parked him in the hallway while I started making calls. My first call was to dispatch, informing them of the situation and requesting a patrol unit to help secure the scene. My second call was to Sarge to let him know that I’d found the missing person—and not in the desired way.

  “No such thing as a simple case with you, is there?” he grumbled after I gave him the rundown.

  “I’m an overachiever,” I said. “If I give you the particulars, can you get a search warrant for me so that I can go through the office? He’s a financial advisor and I don’t want to get flak later over privacy issues from client information I might run across.”

  “Always safer to get the warrant,” Crawford agreed. “Text me the details.”

  I hung up with him and thumbed in the pertinent info, grateful that I had a sergeant willing to dig in and help with stuff like this. It was a basic boilerplate warrant, but if I had to take care of it myself it would be hours, since I’d have to wait for the scene to be secured and processed before I could leave to type it up and hunt down a judge.

  Roger hadn’t moved the entire time I’d been on the phone. He wasn’t freaking out or falling apart, but he did appear stunned. It didn’t take much urging from me to get him to come downstairs. Fortunately, the body was deeply hidden in the bushes at the base of the building, so I wasn’t too worried that anyone would disturb it while I waited for the patrol unit to arrive and get the area properly cordoned off. Right now I was more interested in watching Roger’s reaction. I was convinced that Lida Moran had been attacked by the same sort of creature that had apparently tossed Vic out a window, and Roger Peeler was a big glowing link between the two incidents.

  “I never thought Vic was the type to kill himself,” he said in a rough voice, eyes hollow. He leaned up against the wall, looking stricken.

  I knew that wasn’t what had happened, but I figured I’d go along with that for a while to see what I could get out of Roger. “Well, you said yourself that he didn’t have much family. Maybe he got tired of being lonely?” I offered, keeping my tone gentle.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I ... I guess. But he had lots of friends. He was a super nice guy.” He looked up at me. “Look, I can’t see him committing suicide. His dad killed himself and Vic used to go on and on about how selfish and vicious suicide was to everyone left behind.”

  Well, that wasn’t quite the response I’d have expected from someone who might have wanted to stage a murder as a suicide.

  “All right,” I said. “Had he mentioned anything about arguments or bad business deals he’d made recently?”

  Roger shook his head slowly. “No. He was such a nice guy. Everyone liked him. He got along with everybody.”

  I nodded in response, but I remained skeptical. Nobody got along with everybody.

  The marked unit pulled up then and I excused myself from Roger for a few minutes to get the scene secured. As soon as the tape was up and the crime scene log started I returned to Roger. He didn’t look as if he’d moved—he was still in a stunned daze.

  “Roger, I’m going to need to talk to you more a bit later, but for now you’re free to leave. Are you all right to drive?

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be okay.” He took a deep breath and straightened. “You’ll let me know what you find out?” The expression on his face was pleading.

  “I promise,” I said, then watched as he returned to his car, those wide shoulders seemingly crushed under a great weight. If he’s responsible, then he’s also a fucking good actor, I thought. I wasn’t going to dismiss him entirely as a suspect, because I’d definitely been snowed before, but my gut instinct was leaning pretty far away from him at the moment. But if he’s not the link, then what is?

  Or maybe he was still the link. If Roger had a habit of using the workout equipment here, maybe the golem had been after him, and Vic had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe someone had a beef with the band, not just Lida.

  I put Roger out of my mind for the moment and returned my attention to the crime scene here. I’d yet to get a good look at the body and I hadn’t wanted to do so with Roger around.

  The bushes ringing the building were high and deep, and it wasn’t easy getting to where I could even see the body up close. It would have probably been another week before the body had been found, and then only if someone decided to investigate the smell. I didn’t want to mangle the bushes too badly, but I managed to squeeze through enough so that I could get a peek. Not that the effort and scratches were worth it. He was quite clearly dead, and had been so for several days. He had on dark blue pants and a leather bomber-style jacket over a dress shirt that had once been white, though blood and dirt now marred it. I could see a few maggots around the eyes and nose. A couple more days and his face would have been barely visible beneath the carpet of maggots.

  I extricated myself from the hedge in time to see my sergeant get out of his car and head my way.

  “Got your warrant. Search away. You do know this was supposed to be a simple do-nothing case?” Crawford said with a sour look as I brushed leaves off my pants.

  “It’s my own fault,” I said with a sigh.

  He regarded me with narrowed eyes.

  “I made the mistake this morning of saying that things were pretty slow right now.” I gave an apologetic shrug.

  “God almighty, are you nuts?” He rolled his eyes. “So, do you figure he took a dive out the window?”

  “He took a dive all right, but I think he was helped along.”

  He looked at me sharply. “Not a suicide?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” Together we headed upstairs to the office. I unlocked the door with Roger’s key, then walked to the window, carefully avoiding the thin smear of dirt on the floor.

  “The windows prop open and have to be pulled shut,” I said. “But it was shut—even though it wasn’t latched. I doubt he climbed out, hovered for long enough to push it closed, and then plummeted down.”

  Crawford frowned. “No way the wind could have pushed it closed?”

  “I don’t think it’s likely.”

  “Well then, we’ll treat it like a homicide unless some other evidence to the contrary comes along.”

  I gave a slow nod as I stepped back out into the hallway. “It’s a funny coincidence too ...”

  “What’s that?”

  I looked up as Jill exited the elevator with her case in her hand and camera slung around her neck.

  “Bitch, you suck,” she grumbled with a good-natured gleam in her eye. “Two scenes for the price of one?”

  “I hate for you to get bored,” I replied. “And can you please collect a sample of the dirt at the base of the window?”

  She nodded and proceeded on in, too used to me to question any of my strange requests. But Crawford gave me a funny look.

  “What’s so special abou
t the dirt?” he asked.

  “I don’t know if there is,” I replied glibly. “But the rest of the floor seems pretty clean, so it might be from the attacker’s shoes. Can’t hurt to collect it.”

  He seemed content with the answer, to my relief. “So, what’s a funny coincidence?” he asked, dragging me back to the subject from before Jill arrived.

  “Oh, right. Well, the reporting person is Roger Peeler, who also happens to be the drummer in Lida Moran’s band.” Too bad I couldn’t tell him about the fact that I was fairly positive that Lida and Vic were attacked by the same sort of creature.

  “What about the victim? Any connection there?”

  “Not that I know of,” I replied. “But I haven’t had a chance to look it into yet.” I then explained how Roger was in the habit of using Vic’s private gym.

  “Hunh. That’s interesting.” He pursed his lips, silent for several heartbeats. “It looks like you have a lot of digging ahead of you.”

  “Yay. Woo,” I replied, deadpan.

  “Don’t bitch about digging,” Jill said from across the room as she snapped pictures. “I’m the one who was asked to pick up dirt.”

  Crawford glanced at me. “Is she always such a whiner?”

  “Always,” I said with a deep sigh. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “I heard that!” Jill mock-snarled.

  He chuckled. “I think I need to leave before this gets bloody.”

  “Smart man. I’m going to go through the office and see if anything leaps out as a motive,” I said.

  “Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll see about talking to others in the building.”

  “Can you check and see if there’s any video surveillance?” I wasn’t too confident that there would be. The building was old and decrepit, and I seriously doubted that any of the cameras still functioned properly.