“No, we’re going to talk to an obstinate teenager.”
“Excuse me?”
“Fiona left last night, alone.”
I whistled at the thought. Sure, I’d only seen her once but that didn’t sound like it was a fun parting.
“We took Maeve and Nora to the zoo Monday night—”
“Why not Emma?” I interrupted.
“I’m not taking my daughter to see one of her kind locked up like an animal,” he growled but a second later he sounded like himself again. “Fiona talked to him, he seemed to know what to do, but then he didn’t do it. She wanted to go back to plan A but without any way to tell him that she couldn’t.”
“Uh, why not go back to the zoo and tell him?”
“Because she’d been seen too much. I mean, someone speaking Gaelic to an animal that’s really listening gets noticed. Anyway, she was going to extend her ticket but I told her I’d deal with it.”
So there we were, dealing with it. We parked in the gorilla lot, under a cheerful Andy Warhol style print of a gorilla, and hiked to the seal enclosure, getting there in time for the afternoon feeding and seal show.
I counted six seals doing tricks for fish and we found the seventh when we slipped into the side of the building without anyone noticing. It helped that Danny somehow memorized the door code.
The room was the same boring concrete space I’d seen on Monday. Nothing fancy here, bare concrete floor, and a short barrier stopping the seals from coming into the main room. It only came to my waist, and on the other side a seal, large enough to intimidate me, was sitting peacefully.
Maybe he wasn’t in the mood to do tricks? I didn’t know, but as I glanced around at the rolled-up garden house, the makeshift cot, and the small shabby desk, I realized I was missing the most important thing. Behind the short concrete wall, the seal had begun shifting into a man.
I couldn’t look at enough places at once. His solid black eyes shifted, then his skin rippled and split. My gaze followed the flesh underneath the brown fur when I should have been watching the head.
When I looked back a face emerged, a strong jaw line, black hair plastered wet against his head, pink lips formed into a sly smile. Too late I realized he was naked, and I was staring. When he stood up, slipping the last bit of his seal skin off as he walked to the low enclosure wall, I was grateful for the way it blocked my view.
“Danny!” He shouted happily, and the two men embraced separated only by the half wall. “What’s yourself doing here? Not still worried about me, are you?”
“Fiona left yesterday.”
“Then I suppose it’s back to paradise around here, without her barking orders at me.”
“No.” Danny shook his head. “Not paradise. You’re playing a dangerous game. Why haven’t you gotten out yet?”
“Well about that…”
“The werehyena giving you trouble?”
“Becca? Oh no, she’s a love through and through. To be honest, she’s half the reason I don’t want to leave.”
“You don’t want to leave?” I asked without realizing I had spoken out loud. They both looked at me, Danny turning his head, and the young man turning on the charm. He’d been good looking a minute ago, good looking and naked, now he was pouting, sexy, and stunning.
“Don’t bother, she’s with me,” Danny said, and it stopped. Like throwing a switch, suddenly the young man wasn’t all gorgeous anymore. “Answer the question, why don’t you want to leave?”
“There’s Becca, she’s lonely, I mean powerful lonely. She’s got no one around here, doesn’t fit in, misses her home but loves what she does. There aren’t a lot of jobs for—”
“You’re falling for her,” Danny stated bluntly.
“What? Well a bit of shifting, and maybe I am a little, on the edges, when I’m not enjoying never having to work, all the food I can eat, and no one telling me what to do with my life. Besides, why should I leave? The minute I get home Fiona will take a strip out of my back the size of a door.”
“You can’t stay forever.” A muffled round of applause from outside the building underscored Danny’s point.
“Not forever, but for a bit. Tell Fiona it’s punishment, tell her I couldn’t charm Becca and I’m miserable. She’ll love the idea that I’m stuck here hating every minute of it.”
“Punishment? Yeah, she’ll love it, but then she’ll want me to get you out.”
“I’ll get myself out, when I’m ready.”
They both stopped and I strained to hear something. There was nothing. The show outside seemed to have finished and the crowd noises were gone.
“That’s Becca, heavy footsteps no matter what shoes she wears,” the young man announced. “Better dash before she sees you.”
“What about you?” I asked, incredulous.
“Oh she’s seen me, every bit of me.” His leer answered a question I’d had early about what shifting meant. Free fish, no work, and a willing woman, yeah, Danny was going to have to pry that boy out of there.
****
Our excursion with all of its fascinating insights into selkie life didn’t take long enough. We got back to the squad room as the sun started to set. The short January days seemed to suck all the light and warmth out of the world. By six tonight it would be black as night out, a depressing state of affairs that echoed how I felt about Christine Sweeny’s case. I thought about driving to her house and sitting outside, hoping for some brilliant revelation. I even thought about going inside and trying to channel her ghost again, but Danny nixed both ideas. We’d picked up the autopsy report. It was strange—cellular dehydration in a drowning victim—but not special, no reason why she would stick around.
We kicked around ideas of places where we could drum up answers, then made a list of what we already knew. She worked in politics as a lobbyist for a chemical company. She had a boyfriend who worked in a lab and there was something strange going on there. Someone tall (presumably whoever killed her) drove her car to Rivermont. And…and…and nothing, that was what we had.
Danny agreed it was time to reach out for help. He got the forms to put a reward on the tip line. Stumped but not wanting to be useless, I decided to take a different approach. I called Mark. Not just a powerful vampire and Jakob’s friend, Mark was also the FBI liaison to the SIU.
If any of Christine’s political activity was dicey he’d know. He asked me to stop by his place with some information so I left a note for Danny and headed over.
****
Mark’s home was a familiar Cape Cod, a cheerful A-frame house. A few months back I’d talked him into getting furniture but in general he treated his house like a place to sleep in and nothing more. His car, a giant rambling ’64 Chevy Impala, got more attention and love. Then again, when all he did was hunt werewolves, he’d probably spent more days sleeping in the trunk than he’d slept in his new house. I sighed as I knocked on the door. I knew better than to hope he’d met a neighbor or headed out to a local bar to make a friend. After a brief fling with Phoebe, Mark hadn’t shown even the smallest interest in dating.
He opened the door with a lopsided grin. The werewolf attack that led to Jakob turning him into a vampire left Mark with a series of heavy scars. The most obvious but not the worst was a dagger-shaped point that ended below his left eye. He wore his black hair long to hide it and the dozen other thick ropes of scars that climbed out of his collar. It didn’t work. He couldn’t smile on that side, not the way other people did.
I’d known him for a while, and I’d gotten used to the scars, but I still had to stop myself from cringing sometimes. From what Jakob told me Mark had been stunning once, a handsome prince from a fairy tale. Now he was only stunning from the right side.
“Jakob asked me to move in.” I smiled up at Mark as I walked inside. Sure, I was here for work, but no one at work would understand how great this was.
“Really?” he asked dryly. “And how did he do that? Did it sound like ‘will you marry me?”
<
br /> “You need to stop that. I think I’d know if he proposed to me.”
“Obviously not.”
“Seriously, it’s getting old.”
He stood there looking at me. Mark was obsessed with the idea that Jakob wanted to marry me, and had wanted to marry me for ages. While the two of us joked about it, I knew better. When someone proposes to you, you know.
“Fine, let’s talk about the dead girl,” I said. Mark’s social skills left a lot to be desired. He’d spent so long pushing people away, afraid they’d mock him for how he looked, that he wasn’t any good at getting along. I blamed it for the way he refused to let the marriage thing go.
“After you called, I ran her through our computer system. She’s in there, but it’s covered up. I have a meeting later on with some very cloak-and-dagger types to figure out why.”
“Cloak-and-dagger types?”
“FBI agents who are nearly religious about being FBI agents. They want to meet in the mall parking lot in a couple of hours. You know a public place so everyone is safe, but dark enough that I won’t see them.”
“Oh, very Woodward and Bernstein.”
“Exactly, I figure it’ll give me a chance to pick up E’s birthday present. I don’t suppose you’re going to give me any brilliant ideas about what to get?”
E’s thirtieth birthday was in the beginning of February. She’d already invited Jakob and me to the party. Mark got an invitation out of politeness but I hadn’t expected him to go. The two of them fought like children whenever they were in the same room together.
“I don’t think you get presents for people over ten.”
Mark shook his head at me. “This from the woman that didn’t even tell people it was her birthday last year.”
He teased me a bit more, promising to tell me everything that happened in the parking lot, and sent me home worried I should get something for E.
Chapter 10
I woke up on Friday morning with a feeling of expectancy I didn’t deserve. I knew I shouldn’t put much stock in whatever Mark could find out for me but I couldn’t help it. The case had gone on too long. I packed a bag of running gear for my Saturday long run at Jakob’s place, sure I wouldn’t see the apartment before Monday.
Hopefully by the time I came back Christine Sweeny’s case would be solved. I drove into work feeling undeserved happiness. It all came crashing down when I stopped for a cup of coffee.
They sold newspapers by the cash register, just a few in case someone wanted something to read, an innocuous enough item. This morning the headline wasn’t innocuous: “Police apathetic in murder case?” it asked and I recognized the picture.
Christine Sweeny with blonde hair and a smile I’d never seen before looked up at me. The article was written by someone who didn’t like the SIU. I bought the paper, not happy to spend money to see my work abused.
I stepped out of the elevator and into the squad room reading. Between the tearful interview with her mother and the sound bites from the boyfriend about us “sending him away” from her house after a few minutes, it was clear the paper thought SIU didn’t give a damn.
The fact that we had no evidence and no information to go on didn’t make it into the article. Yeah, they managed to leave that part out, even left out the way we’d tried to bribe someone into coming forward.
“You’ve read it,” Danny said. From his tone I knew he’d read it too.
“Yep. Any ideas of what we can do about it?” The article didn’t change the fact that we didn’t have anywhere to go on this case. Forensics didn’t get anything useful out of her car. After its time in the river there wasn’t anything left on the body. Hell, even the cryptic message from the ghost wasn’t helping.
“Don’t know, doesn’t matter though, we’re the stars at a briefing with the Lieutenant and a half-dozen other important people.” He heaved himself out of his chair. “Come on they’re waiting for us.”
I rolled my eyes, grabbed a notebook from my desk, and headed in.
****
I didn’t leave the room until we broke for lunch at twelve-thirty. Four and a half hours of going over the case, the tiny amount of evidence, and the other work we’d done in the past week that maybe (they weren’t sure) should have been given a lower priority. I got a sandwich from downstairs and checked my voice mail hoping for news from Mark.
Instead there was a message from a victim advocate group, Justice Now, telling me they wanted access to the files for the Christine Sweeny case. They couldn’t have them of course; no one got files from an ongoing investigation, but Justice Now had a habit of making the police look bad. They usually stayed away from the SIU but it looked like our time of not being hassled was over.
Another four hours in the room, more time I could have spent actually doing something spent instead on deciding if something was done wrong and who could be blamed. I hated every minute of it.
I spent the time fantasizing about ways to get revenge on the reporter who’d decided to publish the story. He was the second person I was going to call when I got out of there. The first person was Mark, and I rehearsed my angry speech to him in my head for most of the afternoon. When we were finally done, I got a chance to use it.
“Is there something you want to tell me?” I said without even any other greeting.
“Actually, there is, I met this girl and—”
“I meant about my case!” I shouted, startling Danny, who sat across the desk from me.
“Oh, oh that!” Mark said. “Shit, I’m sorry, Mal.”
“You have no idea how sorry you should be. Tell me you got something good about the dead girl.”
“You mean the dead mistress,” Mark corrected. Apparently today was the day for everyone to tell me I was wrong about everything.
“Mistress?”
“She was sleeping with a senator on the side. There’s a chance this is really about him.”
“Lovely. And why does the FBI know this?”
“Never you mind why we know, just be happy we told you.”
When I say Mark wasn’t as much of an ass as he used to be, I don’t mean to imply he was suddenly a great person. Today, for example, I wanted to strangle him and I only blamed half of that on my many meetings.
“What else can you tell me?”
“Not much. The good senator might not be good but the girl seems to be okay. She’s got nothing in her background that’s fishy, nothing illegal anyway. I had to find that part out on my own by the way. The people I met with are investigating the senator—something about organized crime. It’s all very dramatic; they even tailed me through the mall.”
“Anything else?”
“Watch your back on this one. People like this don’t enjoy being investigated and I don’t think the FBI is going to be much help.”
I thanked him for what little he had given me and said goodbye. Another time, another day, and I would have asked about the woman he’d met but not today. Today was a complete sucking void of frustration and negativity, no reason to try and fight it.
“Turns out Christine Sweeny was having an affair with a senator who may or may not be in with the mob,” I reported to Danny.
“Could they have killed her?”
“No idea. What should we do now?”
“We increase the amount of the reward on the tip line and we interview everyone we’ve already interviewed.”
“That’s it?”
“Well we can hope the media attention gives us something new, someone who saw something but didn’t realize it, and they come forward.”
“But that’s just waiting. We need to do something, to act. Going over the same interviews again isn’t going to help.”
“It’s what we’ve got,” Danny said, sounding tired. I looked at him, not wanting to yell at him but wanting to yell.
“Someone drove that car. Someone. Someone out there knows. Maybe they don’t know everything but they know a part of it. What can we do to get them to talk to us?�
�� I demanded.
“Nothing.” The last voice I wanted to hear came from the doorway. “All we can do is ask. There’s no way to force them to come forward.”
I turned to look at Amadeus expecting a smug expression but he only looked weary.
“I mean it. I did this job for years and when the leads dry up, they dry up. The only thing you can do is sit back and wait, hoping something breaks loose.”
“Well that’s not good enough.” I grabbed my bag and stormed out of the office. I could have ranted about him, could have called him on throwing his experience in my face again, but I wasn’t angry at him.
I was angry for the girl, the one who’d sat next to me, begging me to stop them. Stop who? What was this great conspiracy? I’d been trying to find her killer for over a week and I hadn’t gotten anything new in five days. The chances of me stopping them were dwindling to nothing.
****
I drove angry, going faster than I should have. I parked angry and I slammed Jakob’s front door. Anger and frustration, there was nothing that could make this day go any better. I headed back to the bedroom. It was after six and Jakob would be getting ready for work. I could find him and share my bad mood with him. Except he wasn’t there, he was in the shower.
I sat on the bed, nursing my anger. I should find another job, I should quit. I should move someplace new, get a new job where I wouldn’t be lectured all day about things I couldn’t control. I should…I mean I could…
Yeah, to hell with it. I stripped and joined Jakob in the shower, happy to let the water wash away my day. I walked into the shower naked, cold but not desperate to get under the hot water yet. Jakob was in the middle of washing his hair, the bright blond muted by heavy white suds, his eyes shut. I reached out to him, stroking my hand along his chest, expecting him to jump but he didn’t.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“I know your heartbeat, your scent, the way you move.” He ducked under the water to rinse.
“Really? Then what’s my heartbeat doing now?” I reached between his legs to catch him, the soft flesh of his body fitting neatly into my fist as I squeezed gently. His only answer was a moan, and he pulled me closer to him, the water splashing all around me. “Hey no fair!”
Blood, Dirt, and Lies Page 13