by Gina LaManna
I stood in the doorway, debating a knock, when I heard the snore. With a start, I leaned closer and, sure enough, found the commander was deep in sleep. Thinking it best to back away, I retreated slowly, but I wasn’t fast enough.
The commander snortled—a sort of chortling snort—into awakeness, his eyes bleary and his reaction time like something out of a slow-motion sequence. His feet came down to the floor with a crash and his arms landed splayed on his desk as the captain muttered, “Whoozz’eerree?!”
I froze, halfway between exit and entrance, not sure which would be worse: the fact that I’d caught the commander sleeping, or that I’d tried to ditch out after.
Commander Thomas gave a bleary stutter and then a wipe of his eyes as he sat in his chair. “Come on in, come in, Lieutenant.”
“Detective,” I corrected, easing the door shut behind me as I stepped into the room. “You might not remember me, but I’m looking into Lucia Livingston’s open caseload.”
The commander nodded, too embarrassed to make eye contact with me. “Sure, sure. What can I do for you?”
Finally, a stroke of good fortune had come my way. The commander had barely looked at me, let alone asked for my name or ID. He was probably still half asleep and hugely embarrassed at being caught, which worked to my advantage.
“I have a few questions for you, sir. I was told you were familiar with Lucia’s work and that she reported to you,” I said. “Since her—ah, departure from the force, I’ve been assigned to pick up the pieces. The problem is that I’m not sure which pieces she’s been working on.”
“Right,” Thomas said, scrunching up his face in confusion. “Reserves never quite fit into a box. We sort of let them...” He waved a hand as he fumbled through papers on his desk. “Do their thing.”
I now understood why Commander Thomas had been put on a desk job—because he couldn’t mess things up this way. Apparently, the man didn’t do a lick of work except shuffle papers and nap at his desk. He was just waiting for the retirement payout to kick in before heading to The Isle and laying out the beach towel.
“Lucia gave me weekly reports, and I have them somewhere,” Thomas said, shuffling through papers. “There were three open cases I recall from a few different units...aha. Here we go.”
“Great, thanks,” I said, snatching the files from his outstretched hand. “This is exactly what I needed.”
“You don’t want to hear about the files?”
“Sure,” I said, flicking through them and getting an eyeful as I did. “Anything in particular I should know?”
“One of them was a kook,” Thomas said, gaining momentum as consciousness returned. The commander still had mad nap-hair, but it made him look like a crazy scientist more than anything. “Some woman with necromancer claims. Saying someone was raising her son from the dead to spook her.”
“Wait—more necromancer claims?” I flipped through to the last report and found the facts to match with Thomas’s story. As I read through the papers, the claims made in Lucia’s files sounded suspiciously similar to the accusations Renee had voiced this morning. “What came of them?”
“Lucia went and visited the woman, but there was no sign of any necromancer activity. Obviously,” he said. “Necromancy is a serious, heinous crime. What necromancer would risk a lifetime of imprisonment to spook some old lady? Not a way for most to get their jolly’s off, in my opinion.”
“Right,” I said, glancing at the dated copy of the report. “But Lucia spoke to this woman two weeks before she vanished—er, left the department. Why hadn’t she closed the case if nothing had come of it?”
Thomas wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know, but she must have gone against my orders. I told her to move onto something that would hold some real water with the division.”
“You mean, a splashier case that would make the department look good,” I said, sliding out the first file. “Like this one?”
The commander paled. It was amazing he still hadn’t recognized me, but then again, he was so old I doubted he read any sort of magazine where Matthew and I had been splashed across the front page, and I’d never met him in person before.
“That is an important case to the department, yes,” he said. “The Bellevue family is a—ahem—big supporter of the Sixth Precinct.”
“They donate the big bucks,” I interpreted. “You wanted to make sure things were going the way they should have been, right?”
“I wanted to be sure procedure was followed. And yes,” he admitted, “it would have been nice to report a favorable result to the Bellevues.”
“But neither Sienna nor Lucia had favorable things to feed you, did they?” I pressed, feeling frustrated at the commander’s desire to please. My curiosity had skyrocketed the moment I’d laid eyes on the Bellevue name. Surely, this couldn’t be a coincidence.
Lucia had been investigating a necromancy claim and the Bellevue case. Then she’d disappeared, probably because she was asking questions that were hitting too close to the truth. A truth someone wanted buried.
Shortly after Lucia’s probable kidnapping, Sanders had shown up to harass Sienna at the morgue over a case she’d been involved with. Now bodies were disappearing? Something wasn’t adding up, and I had the feeling Lucia was at the center of it all.
The question was whether any of Lucia’s cases had caused her to go missing, and if so, which one. There was still the possibility that someone had taken Lucia for reasons entirely unrelated to her career, though I was beginning to doubt that option more by the minute.
“What did Sienna tell you?” I asked. “What did she find in the Bellevue case?”
He hesitated, but he could read the look of impatience on my face. “She said it wasn’t an open and closed murder-suicide. And if it was, she was declaring the troll dead first, which meant that Ellen Bellevue would’ve been the murder-suicide initiator.”
“Correct,” I said. “So why didn’t Lucia close it? What alternative solution was she looking into?”
I already had my suspicions, but I wanted to hear it from the commander’s mouth. Judging by the frustration knitting between his brows, he knew it, too.
“She was wondering if a third party had something to do with it,” he said grudgingly. “Lucia and Sienna agreed that it might not be a murder-suicide at all, but two murders.”
“And the finger would naturally point to, say...a member of the Bellevue family?” I suggested. “Now that wouldn’t look great on a report from the precinct, would it?”
He remained silent, his gaze stony.
“Commander, you didn’t warn Lucia to stay away from the case, did you?” I leaned forward. “You wouldn’t have suggested that she overlook a few trivial details and wrap things up with a neat little bow, correct? Because if you did, that would be putting blame on a troll who, by all accounts, appears innocent according to Sienna’s records. Did you ask for those records to be buried?”
“Enough!” Commander Thomas roared, shoving himself to a standing position. “I won’t have a detective talk to me in that tone. What did you say your name was?”
“I’d calm down, Commander,” I said, remaining seated with a hand extended. “This doesn’t have to turn ugly; I only want the truth.”
His eyes bulged, and a vein popped on his forehead, but he eased his creaking old body back into the chair behind his desk. “Who are you?”
The words were a hiss, and I allowed a small smile.
“Detective DeMarco,” I said. “Former Reserve for the precinct. I’m back as a special consultant looking into Lucia Livingston’s disappearance for Captain King.”
“But King is in Homicide, and there’s no body for Lucia,” he said, and then corrected. “She’s not dead, I mean. She just...left. Retired.”
“She didn’t leave, though, did she?” I crossed my arms. “You were supposed to protect her. That’s your duty, sir.”
“I’m retiring in four months,” he growled. “The last thing I need is a Bellevu
e arrest. I only told Lucia to leave the evidence as inconclusive. Nobody needed to know—the kids were both dead already.”
“I can see we are not going to ever agree on this,” I said, struggling to swallow my distaste for the commander, “so I’ll propose a solution. You give me the information I need and don’t stand in my way, and I won’t ruin your retirement package by snitching on you to the chief.”
Thomas had a retort prepared, I could see it at the ready, but something in my resolve changed his mind. “Fine. What are your questions? Make them quick.”
“Fill me in on Lucia. Was she reporting to you?”
“Yes. The department agreed not to allocate her specifically to the Homicide Unit,” he said. “As the commander of the Investigative Division, I assigned Lucia to the cases where a Reserve was most beneficial. Lucia was working on a Narcotics case—the second file you have there. I also told her to close it, but she didn’t.”
“It looks like petty theft,” I said, “at a quick glance. She suspected it wasn’t as simple as that?”
He nodded. “The farmer who had his plants stolen didn’t even want to press charges. Said it wasn’t worth the time or the effort, but Lucia didn’t want to let it go. I said she could keep it so long as she got the rest of her work done.”
“The Bellevue case was another one on her plate at the time of disappearance,” I confirmed. “Lucia was looking into it against orders?”
“No,” Thomas backtracked. “I truly did want justice for those kids, but I also am sensitive to the Bellevue family’s needs. They want justice, too, but they are a very prominent figure in society. We had to handle the case delicately.”
I let his lies slide by, hoping his cooperation would be enough for me to crack the case. Between the odd, petty narcotics case with the farmer, the Bellevue murder-suicide, and the necromancer claims...I suspected Lucia had stumbled upon something she shouldn’t have. The question was which case file had led to her disappearance? Who had wanted her silenced more than everyone else?
I briefly wondered if Commander Thomas himself could have made Lucia vanish, but I let that thought fly away as soon as it entered my head. He was on a one-track road to retirement, and he wasn’t about to rock that boat. If anything, he would’ve delayed the Bellevue investigation for a few months on trumped up charges and dumped it on someone else’s plate on his way out the door. He was a coward, not a murderer.
“You’re right,” Thomas said quietly, reading the assessment in my eyes. “Whatever you’re thinking about me, it’s probably true. I don’t think it’s my fault that Lucia is gone, but I didn’t do much to help her. I know that.”
“Fine. The necromancy charges?”
“Same,” he said. “I thought she should’ve closed it because the lady sounded like a crackhead, but Lucia seemed to think otherwise. I said she could leave the file open for another week granted she got—”
“—all her work done,” I finished. “When was her last report to you?”
A redness flushed his cheeks. “Two weeks before she left the department. I cancelled our prior meeting because I was otherwise occupied. We were due for a report the first day she didn’t show up for work.”
“So this information is a month old, and it’s two weeks behind even that?” I couldn’t keep the frustration out of my voice. “These leads are all going to be cold.”
“How are you so sure she didn’t just ditch the department?” Commander Thomas looked genuinely confused. “Lucia was a young woman with a stressful job. Couldn’t it be that she cracked and needed a break?”
“No,” I said simply. “You’d know that if you actually listened to her.”
Sitting back in his seat, he looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “If there’s anything I can do to help...”
I stood up, slung the papers into my purse and hiked it onto my shoulder. “I think you’ve done enough.”
Chapter 10
Twenty minutes after leaving the station, I found myself holed up in a corner of the Coffee House, a local cafe known for its quiet corners, squashy chairs, and bright, sunlight-drenched rooms.
I’d chosen the café for its slow pace of service and the bookshelves stacked whimsically around the room, adding layers of privacy.
As I settled in, I slid Lucia’s old files from my purse. Curling before the fireplace, I sipped a piping Caffeine Cup—nowhere near as tasty as Grey’s French press—and dove into the files.
I read through the reports, but there were precious few notes left in Lucia’s handwriting. The reports were mostly a pulled together pile of junk that would please her boss and let her carry on her own investigations because she was ‘getting her work done’.
I was tempted to find a nifty little curse to use on Commander Thomas. If only he’d listened to Lucia, maybe he could have prevented her disappearance—or at least pointed me in the right direction. As it was, I had a mess of files on a powerful family, necromancy claims, and a farmer with stolen goods who refused to press charges...
I swallowed my beverage and shook my head in frustration. Where is the link between them? The questions continued to pelt at me until I had a headache from reading the same lines of text over and over. I closed the files, sat back in the cushy armchair, and shut my eyes. I let my brain wander and think, and once again, I was led to the spiderweb struggling to connect the dots.
Renee Lupis had thought she’d seen necromancy magic in action, and so had Penny Wilson, the woman from Lucia’s case. It hardly seemed possible that both had imagined things, but I also doubted real necromancy was happening. So, what had caused both women to make the same claim?
I wondered if it could be linked to the Bellevue family. After all, Renee was married to Sanders, who was a lawyer to the Bellevues. Sanders had visited the morgue where bodies later disappeared...and where Sienna was lying about the Residuals on her hands.
I stood up in frustration, ready to tear up the files and head home. Between Lucia’s open cases and my own, combined with the Hex Files and Matthew and Grey, my brain felt stuck. Jammed. As if all the information was there, but my head was too full to sort through it. I needed to walk, to turn my brain off and let it sift through the information in its subconscious way while I prayed for a lightbulb.
As if on cue, my Comm buzzed. I waved goodbye to Mrs. Batz, the gremlin who ran the Coffee House, and headed outside to answer my call. To my surprise, it was my youngest brother, Jack.
“Hello?” I answered. “Is everything okay at the pizzeria? Sorry I haven’t checked in yet today—it’s been nuts.”
“It’s fine,” Jack said, his breathing heavier than usual. “Willa needs you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Head to her place, will you? Her mom’s sick and needs to go to the hospital.”
“Oh, no. Okay—I’m on my way. How’s Willa?”
“You know...” Jack trailed off, affection clear in his voice. “She’s a tough cookie. She said she could handle it alone, but I really think it’d be good to have you there.”
“Thanks for the message. I can’t believe she didn’t Comm me herself.”
“Uh, if you haven’t noticed, she doesn’t carry a Comm. Also, she didn’t want to bother you. I offered to Comm you earlier, but she refused and said you were busy.”
“Dang it, Willa!” I shook my head, cursed. “She’s stubborn. Well, I’m going to meet her now. Thanks, Jack. I’m sorry—I need to hire more help for you at the pizzeria.”
“I roped Dougie into helping.”
“How’d you manage that?”
“I have the magic touch.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said, “thanks again.”
I hung up the Comm, slid the files deeper into my bag, and put thoughts of active cases into the back of my mind as I launched into a fast walk to the first trolley I could find heading north. I jumped off at the closest stop to Willa’s house and jogged the few blocks to her address.
I’d never been inside Wi
lla’s house. From a distance, it appeared warm and welcoming, just like her. A charming little garden sat out front, complete with a trellis crawling with roses and an entire section dedicated to homegrown fruits and veggies. Tufts of lettuce poked their noses from the dirt while fat, juicy tomatoes hung delicately on their vines.
As I bypassed the white picket fence and made my way toward the little stone cottage, I ducked under a rooftop knitted with grapes. On either side of the doorway, hyacinth bloomed sweet and floral and perfectly Willa. A row of gorgeous green herbs hung from the windowsill, lush and vibrant. They were some of the prettiest plants I’d ever seen.
I raised a hand to knock, but the door tumbled open before my fingers touched the red-painted wood. I nearly lost my balance, but I managed to right myself in time and grasped the railing on the stairs for balance.
“Dani?” Willa’s face scrunched up in confusion. “What are you doing here?”
I glanced at my new friend, a spellslinger with a big heart but little skill with magic, and saw a pinch of worry between her brows. She was propping up her mother, a fragile looking blonde who might once have been a beauty like Willa—back when she wasn’t shrunken in with shoulders hunched halfway to her waist.
“I came here to be with you,” I said, swallowing to keep my voice calm. “And to help with anything you might need.”
“Jack Commed you,” Willa said on a sigh. “I told him not to bother you—it’s no big deal. My mum’s been ill forever, so this is routine for us. I’m just sorry to leave Jack high and dry.”
“Dougie’s there, and he’ll be fine,” I said. “Your mother’s health is far more important than any slice of pizza. Come on, let me help.”
“Well, okay then, since you’re already here,” Willa said with a shy smile. “But the second we get to the doctor’s office, I’m sending you home. Or off to your case, wherever that might be.”
“Are you sure she doesn’t need to get to a hospital?” I frowned, slipping my arm around her mother’s shoulder. She seemed nearly unresponsive. “Your mother looks...well, it’s up to you, Willa.”