“And I can pay all the bills,” Zaxil said. Though he’d inherited the building and owned it outright, he still had to pay property taxes and all the other fees and utility bills that came along with owning real estate in San Francisco. Keeping the structure up had been costly, too, because of the building’s age.
Thomas knew Zaxil had blown through most of his inheritance on the building and paying for upgrades required because of codes. It had been vacant for nearly a year before Thomas moved in. Now it was Thomas’s money that kept the building—and thereby Pete who was physically part of it—going.
The creature had to remain in contact with the building to survive, and would be slain if the building were to be demolished. Thomas knew Pete once had a companion, but it was lost to one quake or another. Pete would not discuss any of the particulars.
Thomas and Zaxil both passed on a second beer, leaving the remainder for Pete, who made quick work of them.
“Seriously good, Z-man, Mr. Brock,” the gargoyle pronounced. “Seriously, buy this again.” He finished the box of crackers, eased himself out of the chair, then politely folded it and laid it down against the ledge. “And if you want to come up with some more money, you better go downstairs, Mr. Brock. A car keeps circling the block. Maybe the driver needs a good attorney.”
He gave Thomas a salute and climbed back to his post, the sound of stone grating against stone echoing around them.
Chapter 1.6
Evelyn craved the adrenaline rush that jogging gave her. It was a pleasant, aching burn that started in her chest and spread to her toes. She should have worn different jeans, not this only-washed-once pair, something a little looser, or some decent sweatpants that wouldn’t have looked horrible in class, something not so stiff to run in. The sweatshirt was new too, ocean blue, thin and not bulky, with LITQUAKE in black block letters against a white word balloon. It had been a splurge when she’d attended the annual book festival a few weeks ago. More than eight hundred authors packed events spread across San Francisco.
She’d bought a dozen books, all but one small press mysteries written by locals who’d inscribed them to her. The twelfth was a memoir by a skateboarder … the cover looked interesting, and it had been half-price. It was a good thing she’d only allowed herself two days of Litquake; it ran a little more than a week, and if she’d treated herself to even one more day she feared she would have doled out all her meager savings. Evelyn loved to read, real books where she could bend over the pages to mark her place, not the e-stuff her friends and classmates downloaded. But she vowed that her purchases from the event would remain stacked in the bottom of her closet until after the bar exam. Books were the only things she let clutter up her life.
In the meantime, there’d be only Holder’s case, whatever else crossed Thomas’s desk, and studying. She sniggered. How many other law students realized that “dying” was the largest part of the word “studying?”
A song ran through her head and she set her feet in time to it: Sonny and Cher’s “The Beat Goes On,” a moldy oldie that fit her pace at the moment. She’d heard it on the radio in the bus and couldn’t get it out of her head. One of those … what did they call them … earworms. She’d refused Thomas’s offer to borrow his iPod when she ran; she didn’t want earbuds delivering songs that kept out the noises of the city. She loved this city.
She jogged in place at the light, Cher wailing away in her head, while a pair of older women looked in each other’s shopping bags and made tsk-tsking gestures. The “WALK” sign came on just as her imaginary Sonny started singing “la dee da dee dee, la dee da dee die.” Then she was off, picking up speed and leaving the sidewalk behind, stretching her stride and cutting across the park.
More than a thousand acres, larger than Central Park in New York City, Golden Gate Park ran three miles north to south, a half-mile east to west. She ran under the shade of a stand of tall trees—blue gum eucalyptus and Monterey pines. This was in the opposite direction of the San Francisco Law School on lower Haight, which was basically downtown.
She’d given herself enough time for Strawberry Hill. It was an island in Stow Lake in roughly the center of the park, and she took the closest bridge and pounded across it, narrowly avoiding a group of Japanese tourists and a chattering, red-skinned imp. The heat in her legs intensified as she climbed the trail, not losing speed, pushing herself, letting the breeze that had picked up comb her short hair. Fortunately, the temperature had dropped a half-dozen degrees since court and made for better running.
She was on her fourth or fifth pass of “The Beat Goes On” when she reached the top of the hill. Evelyn briefly pictured herself like Rocky Balboa, charging up the steps in Philadelphia, fists pumping at the top. She stopped herself from taking that iconic pose, but continued to run in place, looking down across the park. She could see most of the western part of the city from this vantage point, the glow of sunset giving it all a warm fall cast that would make a picturesque jigsaw puzzle.
Evelyn’s side ached a little from the exertion; it was a friendly pain. She headed back down, feeling the gentle thump of her iPad against her back. It was a tough machine. Her running never seemed to hurt it or jar its circuits. She had a spiral notebook with her … just in case the iPad ever decided to give up that proverbial ghost. A part of her wanted it to succumb during one of her jogs; she was looking for an excuse to get the mini version. The red-skinned imp had stopped talking to himself and emitted a loud wolf-whistle as she passed.
Back on Haight, she felt the feverish warmth in her cheeks, the run doing its job. She guessed her pace was five or six miles an hour, a good clip, though she certainly could manage better. But “better” would mean working up a serious sweat, and she didn’t want to do that right before admiralty class—maritime law, her least-favorite subject, and therefore the one she had to study the hardest for. It was an elective she took only because she thought it might come in handy given California’s sprawling coast.
Evelyn was in her fourth year … fourth and a half … of the San Francisco Law School’s otherwise three-year JD program. If she hadn’t worked so much, she could have taken the role of a traditional student and done it in three. But she needed the work to pay for school, and working in the legal profession—first for Saul Goldstein and now for Thomas—was an equally important education.
Only six weeks to go and she’d be done.
Then the bar about eight weeks after that.
The people on the sidewalk were a colorful lot, a couple of fey in the mix huddled in a conversation under an awning, most of the passersby ignoring them. Because there were so many folks out tonight, she slowed so she wouldn’t run into anyone. Evelyn had allowed herself forty-five minutes for the run to the park and then to class; she’d be pushing it to make it on time. Dinner at her desk in the lecture hall again. Good thing she’d packed something.
Her heaviest class load was Mondays and Wednesdays … secured transactions, international human rights law, and advanced criminal law. She’d taken tax law, conflict of laws, and securities this past summer. Except for admiralty, it had been relatively easy for her … but then she’d spent about half of her twenty-seven years in law offices, basically her entire stint in San Francisco.
What would she do when she passed the bar and had her license? And she would pass the bar; there was no “if” to that component.
Well, practice with it, that was a given. But where?
Unless there were more cases that paid well like Holder’s, Thomas wouldn’t be able to afford her … and neither could she afford to keep working for part-time legal assistant rates. Not and pay back her school loans. She swore she could feel her heart skip a beat. As much as she wanted to graduate and pass the bar, she wanted to stay with Thomas. She told herself it was because of the cutting edge OT law they were involved in.
She’d hesitated renting the second floor apartment from him when he’d first hired her, wanting to keep their relationship detached and professional, a
nd fearing that being sandwiched between the law office below and Thomas’s apartment above might breed too much familiarity. But the rent was too cheap to turn down, the location too convenient to work and to the law school.
O O O
The turkey wrap went down quick, followed by an apple juice box chaser. She crammed grapes in her mouth while she typed notes into the iPad, all the while only halfway listening to the professor.
She took the bus back, accompanied by the wail of police sirens and an ambulance. Always there were sirens in the city, part of its music. Evelyn was up for another run, but it was nine thirty, and sometimes the nocturnal element that wandered Haight at night had a seediness to it. Sometimes that nocturnal element also took the bus, but it was still considerably safer. She exited at the stop only two blocks from the office and tripped off the curb, the strobe-like effect of red and blue flashing lights bouncing off the buildings ahead disorienting her.
“No.” Evelyn felt her stomach ride up into her throat.
There were people out on the sidewalk, gawkers who’d come out of bars and restaurants or down from their apartments so they could get a better look.
Evelyn hurried toward the police cars parked in front of the law office. Barricades were set up and officers kept the curious lookiloos at bay. Traffic was redirected to the side streets.
“What—what’s happened?” she hollered, jumping to see over the heads of the people in front.
Evelyn edged through the throng, gagging at the smell of a couple of street people who were wholly filthy. She looked for Thomas, no doubt he’d be at the center of whatever was going on, trying to calm people and help the police.
“Thomas!” Evelyn cried, forcing her way to the front and up against the barrier. She tried to dip under the barricade, but an officer stopped her.
“You have to stay back, ma’am.”
“I work there,” she said, pointing at the office. She spotted a red-and black-skinned fey in the backseat of the closest police car. It had on a pale muscle shirt that was spattered with blood.
The front door of the office was propped open. A man and a woman wearing dark jackets, MEDICAL EXAMINER in yellow on the backs, wheeled out a gurney, a body on it in a vinyl bag.
“I work there.” Again she tried to drop below the barricade.
Then she knew why the police and the ME were there.
Dear God, somehow she knew.
There are crystal clear moments when worst fears become real, when ill thoughts hang ugly and suspended like carcasses of meat on hooks in the slaughterhouse. She knew it was Thomas on the gurney, and the realization hit her like a sledgehammer to the gut.
Her knees threatened to give out.
“I work there.” It came out as a whisper.
“If you work there, ma’am, then we’ll probably need to speak to you,” the officer said. He’d been saying something else, but it was lost in the lights and the shushing sound of traffic from the side streets and in the conversations of the crowd.
“Ma’am?” The officer was in her face, looking concerned. “Ma’am?”
Her legs were jelly and they wouldn’t hold her up. She gripped the barricade. “Thomas? Where’s Thomas Brock?” She knew … that he was on the gurney … but she asked the question anyway, some little piece of her mind railing against fate and holding onto hope.
“Ma’am—” the officer gently gripped her shoulders. “Thomas Brock is dead.”
The darkness reached out and suffocated Evelyn.
Chapter 1.7
“It’s those … things, ya know. It’s those things that go in and out of his office, those things he called clients.”
“Monsters come and go every once in a while. I see ’em. I live right across the street, above the deli, and I watches ’em when I ain’t working. I watches ’em, I say. I see a dead man go in and out of there quite a bit earlier this week.”
Dead man … Evelyn knew the gossiper was talking about Mr. Holder. She was woozy, being helped up by a policeman. Somehow she’d gotten on the other side of the barricade. He was walking her toward the office.
“Maybe that dead man did it, wanting to have a dead attorney.”
She heard someone laugh at that comment.
“You sure that’s Brock in the body bag? He had a geezer for a secretary. Sure it ain’t her in the bag?”
“Nah, heard the cops say it was Brock. Heard that it was murder, that they got the thing that did it, too. See that thing in the car? Looks like the devil itself.”
“I see monsters come and go out of there once in a while.”
Evelyn tried to turn her head to get another look into the back of the police car, but all she saw was the policeman’s armpit. She had seen a fey, though, a red and black one, no more details visible because of the way the car was parked.
Dead. Thomas was dead. She felt her legs start to give way again.
“Joe, get the paramedic over—”
“No. I don’t need one. Don’t want one,” Evelyn said. She’d refuse a ride to the hospital too if they offered. “I just need to sit down. Just let me sit down.”
It was a dizzying whirl of colors … the lights from the police cars, the neon from the two bars across the street, the spotlights—streetlights—that shown down on the lookiloos in their garish clothes. All of it seeming to be a psychedelic paisley that spun to the music of police radios crackling, the incessant buzz of the craning necked gawkers, and to the Mamas and Papas who were singing “California Dreamin’” out of someone’s open window.
Brown leaves, gray sky, the Mamas and Papas harmonized.
Evelyn wished this was all some horrid California dream.
All the lights were on in the office, and they sat her at Gretchen’s desk, turning the chair so it faced the front window and the still flashing police lights. They hadn’t turned her fast enough, though. She’d seen into the very back by the conference table.
There was a lot of blood on the floor, some on the back wall, files, papers, and pink message slips were scattered about, and a desk lamp was knocked over. Classic signs of a struggle. Technicians were fingerprinting the place; instinctively she kept her hands off Gretchen’s desk. Evelyn was good at noticing details, and she’d seen too many; her stomach churned. The police had brought her in here because they were going to ask her to “take a look around.” Otherwise they would have kept her outside, maybe in one of the squads. All that blood, that wasn’t an accident.
Murder, she remembered one of the lookiloos saying. No question it was murder.
“Thomas was murdered.” Evelyn doubled over and worked to keep the turkey wrap and grapes down.
“Ma’am.” The policeman set his hand against her back. Back? Where was her backpack? Her class notes and iPad and—There it was, sitting on the floor next to her. She hadn’t remembered taking it off, guessed that one of the cops had done that for her, maybe when she’d collapsed at the front of the crowd and he’d carried it here for her. “Ma’am—”
“Evelyn Love. My name is Evelyn. Please don’t call me ma’am.”
“Yes, ma’ … Evelyn.” He sat a small bottle of water in front of her. She was quick to open it and take a long swallow.
“I work here,” she said. Hadn’t she already told him that? Told one of them anyway. “I’m Thomas Brock’s legal assistant.” Was. She gestured behind her without turning around. “The desk in the middle. That one’s mine.” Was mine. She’d remembered that the blood hadn’t quite reached that far, not to her desk or Thomas’s; it was a long, narrow building.
The cop pulled over a chair, the rollers clattering against the old wood, brought it all the way around so he was in front of Gretchen’s desk. He tapped on the desk to get her attention. He was wearing white latex gloves. Had he just put them on? No. He’d had them on when she first saw him.
It was her chair he was in, and she almost asked him to switch; she had it at just the right height. Gretchen’s was too low. She saw him adjust the chair high
er to better fit his long legs. She decided that bothered her; he’d had no right to do that. “Has anyone called Gretchen?”
“Who?”
“Gretchen Cain, our secretary. This is her desk.”
“No, ma’am, not that I know of. Evelyn. But we’ll get to it.”
“I should call her.”
“Not yet.” He nudged the water bottle and she drank a little more.
“When did this happen? Who called it in? Why—” It hadn’t been that long ago, the police still swarming, the crowd so interested. And yet it had been at least a little while, since they were already moving Thomas’s body. They’d been here long enough to take pictures, call the coroner. How long could that take? They could have done all that in less than an hour, she guessed. Sirens had serenaded the bus to its stop; the police had still been arriving. “How long ago—”
He shook his head.
Were they using anything supernatural in their investigation? A witch or a seer to mentally reconstruct the murder? It didn’t look like it, looked like only plain-old cops were here. Maybe they didn’t need anything supernatural if they already had the suspect in custody. Maybe it was too cut and dried. Evelyn knew most police in the city didn’t like relying on any supernatural elements anyway, prejudice coupled with a dogged determination to rely on human skills.
“What about his father? Thomas’s father. Reginald Brock of Brock, Davis & Davis. He’s—”
“Someone is going to Mr. Brock’s house now to notify him.”
Evelyn knew Thomas hadn’t seen his father for many months. The two didn’t get along, though once upon a time Thomas had admired his father enough to follow in his legal footsteps. Something caused a split, however, and Thomas had talked only a little about it, saying his father delighted in trying cases against OTs and that he disapproved of Thomas’s practice, which favored them.
“What happened here?” Evelyn tried again, not bothering to hide the desperation in of her voice. She had a hundred more questions, all lining up in her befuddled brain. She shivered; it was cold in here. Val … Valentino was around, probably not willing to show himself. Val hated cops. But the chill told her he was probably hanging in the wall, watching. Maybe Val had seen what happened. “Tell me what happened.” After another swallow of water, she added. “Please.”
The Love-Haight Case Files Page 4