by RJ Blain
“The police might look into them, too,” Beatrice commented. “There doesn’t need to be private investigators for the police to look into their activities.”
“But will the police really look into them closely?” I challenged. “New York City has hundreds of crimes a day. We’re pretty safe in terms of being murdered, with only a murder or so a day throughout the entirety of Manhattan Island, but muggings and other crimes? You’re at pretty high odds of having someone picking your pocket on the street. Thefts are the most common crime here, but assaults and other violent crimes do happen with frightening frequency. All that said, if you want to live somewhere with an expectation of basic survival, here’s a good place. The police will want the case closed, and they’ll be pressured by the FBI to close it faster and cooperate with their investigation. That leads to mistakes. That leads to innocent people doing time for a crime they didn’t commit. They might even be intending to frame a specific person for it, too.”
Like me. I’d be a pretty damned good target to frame, as I had a known dislike for Senator Godrin’s policies. If the hate group had any sense among them, they’d realize I would hate them far more than I had ever hated Senator Godrin.
In so many ways, I made the perfect sponsor for the investigator cell, as I had damned good reason to want to clear my name of the senator’s death. I had even better reason to go after the assholes wanting to kill so many people only because they hadn’t been born with the right amount of magic to satisfy their prejudiced ways.
Interfering with an FBI case would land us all in deep water, but now that I had a better understanding of what was going on and why, I couldn’t let it go.
I understood why Bradley couldn’t let it go, either.
A noise from my bedroom caught my attention, and a sleep-rumpled Bradley staggered into the living room, yawning and rubbing at his eyes. “Do I want to know what time it is?”
I set my phone on my coffee table, grabbed my cane, and lurched to my feet. “Time for you to sit down while I make you something to eat that won’t try to kill you. Feeling better?”
“I think so. Please tell me your cooking is better than my cooking.”
“My cooking is far superior to your cooking. I’ve been doing it for years. You’ll be able to stomach it. You don’t want anything gourmet right now anyway.”
“I think gourmet is another word for pretty but bland. How long does it take for my taste buds to regrow after they’ve been burned to a crisp?”
Chuckling at the thought of my orange chicken doing his tongue in, I limped to the kitchen. “About two weeks. You’ll likely survive.”
“But are you sure?”
“I’m fairly sure you’ll survive. You won’t be impressed with what I’m going to feed you, but it should stay in your stomach where it belongs, and that’s the best you’re getting right now.”
Bradley took my seat between Ren and Beatrice, and he went for my phone, picking it up and swiping at the screen to review the webpage I’d been reading. “Ah, them. What did I miss? I’m going to guess Ren has tattled on my activities.”
“They had questions. I saw no reason to refuse to answer them. You’ve done a lot of work to make this meeting happen, so I cut through the typical bullshit, sir.”
“I have a name. It’s Bradley. You can use it. I even got Janette to use it, although she insisted on tacking a sir to the end of it. I have noticed she’s just using my name now, and I find this to my liking. I like my name, and I think people should use it more often.”
“You’re in a mood, sir.”
“I’ll consider asking multiple times in a form most people consider to be begging, although I will not make such commentary in public spaces or where my family might hear you.”
“Just give him what he wants, Ren. It’s not worth arguing about, and he’ll start whining in front of his family that his poor, fragile heart is broken because the people he has to spend the most time with won’t use his name. The Hampton family is fine with casual address as long as you remain respectful. I added the sir because it annoyed him.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Janette. You’re going to teach my bodyguard bad habits. You ran away from home, and now you’re digging in your heels and being stubborn. You can’t retrain Ren.”
While I had expected consequences should he learn of my survival, I had not expected the whining. “Why are you whining so much?”
“I’m whining so much because if I let you, you’ll retrain Ren.”
“Well, you should have trained him properly from the start. If you had, I wouldn’t have to retrain him.” I retrieved his rice from the fridge along with my jar of beef bouillon, grabbed a measuring cup, and went to work turning the rice into soup. “Do you think this group is behind it, Bradley?”
“I don’t know who is behind it. That’s the problem. Are they a possibility? Absolutely—and a strong contender at being behind it. Someone could also be setting it up to frame the group. That part I don’t mind as much, as that group supports the murder of those who do not have the appropriate magic ratings. They would kill hundreds of thousands of people for their cause, and I’m not all right with that. While my family and I would be safe, I know too many people who wouldn’t be—and if I allow those without magic to be wiped out, there’s nothing saying I won’t be next. I would rather go down trying to prevent this than go down as part of the next batch of victims because I stayed silent and did nothing.”
“What has your magic told you about the crime scenes?”
“Absolutely nothing of use.”
My brows shot up at that. “Nothing? How can your talent tell you nothing?”
“None of the victims were aware of any danger before their deaths. They saw no one, there was nobody suspicious nearby that anyone could see. One minute, everything is fine. The next, they’re dead. The only thing I find of comfort is that none of them suffered at all.”
I frowned, turning from the heating soup to face Bradley. “How is that even possible?”
“This is not public information, but according to the autopsy reports, the brain stem is severed prior to their forceful exsanguination. The autopsies also indicate that the second stage of the killing involves catastrophic brain trauma to ensure death is painless.”
“A humane serial killer,” I muttered, narrowing my eyes while considering the difficulty in such a planned attack. “The killer would have had to be nearby to make that happen. Or killers. There are not a lot of people capable of severing the spine like that.”
“Not the spine or spinal column. The brain stem. The spine remained intact in all victims, but the brain stem itself was essentially disconnected from both the brain and the spinal column. The damage is limited to that very small section. Biologically, the brain stem essentially connects the spinal column to the brain itself, so the damage is beginning in very close proximity to the brain itself. There’s speculation that the arteries leading into the brain were left open while the veins leading out of the brain were cut off, forcing mass quantities of blood to pump in with no way of leaving. This then leads to severe hemorrhaging of the brain. Add in some magic to increase the blood pressure, and the severity is increased to catastrophic. Then the telekinetic blow to the skull would result in the somewhat impressive spray.”
When I’d hit six stories, I’d done something similar, forcing blood to exit the cow’s body at high speed and volume. I marveled at the range of abilities required to pull the murder off, used in conjunction without any delays between phases of the killings. “That’s both horrifying and amazing.”
“It really is. We just can’t figure it out. Is it one person? Multiple people? How are they doing it? Why? We have so many questions but no answers—but that hate group? They’ll take advantage of the opportunity if the bill they were working on fails. And at this rate? It will. The rest of the politicians are terrified they’ll be next.” Bradley sighed and leaned his head back against my couch. “I warned him he courted trouble wit
h that damned bill. He refused to listen to me. He didn’t understand why I wouldn’t approve. The bill, after all, benefits me and my family.”
“But it doesn’t benefit people you care about.”
“Exactly. It doesn’t. Society isn’t nearly as segregated as he liked to believe. However much my mother takes pride in her rating, one of her favorite people is her maid. They go to the salon together now, did you know? My mother claims it is a ‘hiring benefit’ but really? They sit there, get their nails done, drink Champagne, and talk. Her maid used to be horrified over the situation, but it turns out she really likes my mom, so they’re actually friends now.”
“Which maid?”
“Jezabella. Remember the tiny little black girl my mother picked up off the street after she was orphaned?”
I nodded; for the first three weeks of Jezabella’s life at the residency, she’d lived in my bedroom while I had crashed on whichever couch was available because my room was the plainest by my choice.
She’d come from poverty, and luxury had unsettled her almost as much as being yanked out of her old life and essentially adopted into the Hampton family.
I’d liked Jezabella, as she’d possessed the nerve to try to fight Bradley’s father over some old rags.
Those rags had been her father’s shirt, and I’d helped Bradley’s mother clean it so the girl could keep it.
“How is she doing?” I finally asked.
“Pretty good. She’s in a fight with Dad right now.”
Uh-oh. “What sort of fight?”
“The kind where she got upgraded from maid to daughter, but she’s over eighteen now, and she can’t believe my parents would want to adopt her, some scrawny little black girl they’d picked up off the streets.” Bradley grunted. “She hasn’t figured it out yet. Mom wants me to talk sense into her, but I figure I’ll bring her over so you can talk to her.”
The private investigator cell would need a cleaner, the kind that could erase evidence of our presence on a crime scene and disappear in the rougher parts of town. We’d also need a record keeper, and while any one of the librarians on the team could, it would give the girl—no, young woman—a chance to prove herself without Bradley’s parents intervening. “Bring her over, but I make no promises I won’t corrupt her or bring her into the cell.”
Bradley frowned. “Why would you add her to the cell?”
Beatrice sucked in a breath. “Maids are perfect for tidying up a scene. They’re called scene cleaners in the cells. A scene cleaner makes sure we don’t change anything as we wipe away any evidence we were there, so they’re basically site supervisors who make sure we don’t fuck up the evidence. You need a strong attention to detail, which she’d have from the insane amount of work it takes to do something like properly clean a bathroom. She’ll also think in a completely different way than the rest of us. It’s brilliant. The only problem is she’ll have to pass the certification for it.”
“Jezabella is a quick study,” I replied.
“Understatement,” Bradley muttered, and Ren snorted a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Beatrice demanded, her gaze locking onto the bodyguard.
“Jezabella’s black, she grew up poor, and her magic rating is worse than Janette’s falsified rating,” Ren replied. “How much worse? We don’t know. She’s scared of learning to drive.”
I frowned. “Because of the crash?”
Bradley sighed and nodded. “She’s going to be pissed when she finds out you’ve been alive all this time.”
“Better to get it over with now, then. Go pick her up if you can, Ren. She might as well see me in my full limping glory. I’ll feed your charge and make sure he doesn’t end up in my bathroom again for the rest of the night. Bradley can loan me his little toy, and that’s all the protection he’ll need while in here.”
Rising to his feet, Ren nodded. “I’ll bring a present for you. I’ll have to notify the family, Bradley, sir.”
“It’s inevitable. Once Jezabella finds out, my mother will find out. She won’t be able to hide something like that from my mother. You might just want to bring Mrs. Hampton into the cell.”
“As what?” I blurted.
“The bouncer,” Bradley muttered.
I snorted at that, as private investigator cells didn’t have bouncers. They got one enforcer type, which would be my role.
“The attorney,” Beatrice suggested. “Legal advice will be needed, and there’s a slot available for someone to work with the courts if needed. Oddly, it’s the only position in the private investigator cell that doesn’t require some form of degree or qualification. You also aren’t required to have one as part of the cell. But yes, we could bring her in for that purpose.”
“She used to be a librarian, too.” Bradley laughed. “Jezabella would love to be a librarian, too.”
“Your mother used to be a librarian?” I blurted. “Since when?”
“Since she turned eighteen, went to school, got her degrees, and worked in Washington as one for the Library of Congress. She maintains her certifications because she gets bored, so she’s qualified. The thought of my mother operating as a private investigator is terrifying.”
“The legal counsel position can be done anonymously as well.” Beatrice checked her phone. “There’s a form to have that position kept secret and a gag order the judges have to abide by should the attorney be used.”
I gave Bradley’s soup a stir, turned the heat down so it wouldn’t burn on me, and limped to the coffee table, holding out my hand and wiggling my fingers until Beatrice handed me her phone. I checked the roles for private investigator cells. Including Jezabella and Bradley’s mother, we’d need Mickey as our cell’s expert on all things magical, requiring a certification he could pass while asleep. The six of us would make the base team, and we could bring in others from the branch as needed—if needed. Did sponsors count as official parts of the team? If so, Bradley brought us up to seven.
Technically, there weren’t any limits to the number of people we could have in the cell as long as we didn’t exceed specific position maximums.
Given a week on the job, especially when we hid the nature of our work, we’d need the extra hands.
I still had my real job to do. “Okay. We can build a team with this. Mickey will like his job as our resident expert of all things magical, I’ll handle being the brute force, Beatrice covers our requirement to have someone with higher than 70.0% aptitude on the team, Meridian can cover the accounting, and we’ll use Jezabella as the cleaner if she’s game. Heaven help me. Ren, lure Bradley’s mother here along with Jezabella. Depending on how they react, we can have her as the ace up our sleeve, since this says the legal counsel can join the investigators on the streets. Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah. We need a mortician,” Beatrice announced.
Fuck. I checked Beatrice’s phone, and sure enough, we needed someone who had the same general qualifications as a mortician. Upon closer reading, I realized they meant a forensics mortician. “Where the fuck are we going to find one of those? It’s not like the local cops just let their corpse checkers operate in cells. These guys are few and far between.”
“This is where things will take a very sharp left turn,” Beatrice warned.
I returned the woman’s phone to her. “Okay. Talk. How is this going to take a left turn?”
“Before he became a librarian, your boss was one of the city’s top forensic morticians. He got tired of stuffing screws up the asses of dead people after he had to peel answers out of them. He maintains his certifications because he likes keeping his options open, but he’d rather not have to do a close examination of a corpse again, if you please. That’s part of why your branch is getting so much scrutiny right now. Between all the librarians, everybody has the skills needed to have made the kill.”
For fuck’s sake. I raised my hand and rubbed my temple. “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I wish. We’ll bring him into it la
st. He’ll be the hardest to get onto the team, I think.”
I considered what I knew about my boss and shook my head. “No, he’ll be the easiest to get onto the team. There’s nothing that upsets him more than systemic injustice, and there’s nothing just about innocents going to jail for the crimes of another. He’ll do it because he might be able to make a difference. When you boil it down, that’s why we’ll all do it—because we want to make a difference. Isn’t that why we became librarians in the first place?”
“Yes,” Beatrice replied with a slight smile. “It is.”
“Ren, go get Bradley’s mother and Jezabella. Concoct something so we don’t notify the entire world I’m alive and kicking. It’s going to be a long day, and we have a lot of work to do.”
Ten
I warned you.