by Anton Strout
Davidson pointed at me and Connor. “I was hoping to wrangle up those Other Division troops of yours I called about earlier to check something out for me tonight,” he said.
I laughed. “I don’t know,” I said, bitterness in my words. “I mean, with all the recent cuts and layoffs, we’re already looking pretty swamped. I’ve probably at least doubled my caseload lately. You can thank the mayor for me personally.”
Davidson narrowed his eyes at me, but kept his politician’s smile. “There can always be more,” he said, unflappable as always.
“Wow,” I said, spitting my words out in his face. “An idle threat.”
“Simon,” the Inspectre interrupted. There was a warning in his tone. “That is conduct unbecoming a member of the Department, not to mention one from the Fraternal Order of Goodness.”
I felt my anger twist into embarrassment, wishing it wasn’t all happening in front of Jane. She must have sensed it because she squeezed my hand and gave me a thin smile. “Sorry, sir,” I said.
Davidson looked around the group of us like he was king of the hill. “May I continue?”
“By all means,” the Inspectre said.
Davidson jerked his thumb toward Jane and looked at Inspectre Quimbley. “You mind if I grab her as well?” I felt a weird flare of jealousy, and tried to damp it down. I still couldn’t shake Cassie’s feelings.
“Jane?” the Inspectre asked, his eyebrows rising. “Whatever for?”
Davidson ran his eyes up and down her. Despite his usual politician’s polish, he almost looked lascivious when he did it, or at least that was what the twinge of jealousy I felt from the tattooist was telling me. I pushed it down.
“We could use a woman’s touch on this case,” Davidson said.
Jane squeezed my hand. Hard. “Wow,” Jane said. “Sexist much?”
“No kidding,” I said. I put myself between the two of them, as protective jealousy rose up in me. “And why’s that exactly?”
Davidson held his arms up, hands open and empty. “Easy, Mr. Canderous,” he said. “I’m just saying we might need someone with her particular assets.”
I turned to the Inspectre. “Sir?”
The Inspectre hesitated, and then gave a slow, stern nod.
“You want to tell us what’s up?” Connor said, still seated.
Davidson’s smile faltered. “I’m not really sure yet,” he said. “We’ve got a crime scene. The regular cops who showed up on the scene wouldn’t say. They just called it in to my department and left it at that. Whatever it is, though, they want nothing to do with it and when a call comes in on something like that, well. . . it’s usually something in your realm of expertise. We’ve got a dead teacher on our hands.” Davidson pulled out a small notebook and flipped it open. “A Professor Mason Redfield.”
“Mason?” the Inspectre asked. The color drained from his face as if he was seeing a ghost. “A gentleman around my age?”
“I’d say so,” Davidson said. “Not nearly as lively as you, clearly. You know him?”
The Inspectre stared off across the room, lost in thought, and gave a slight nod. “I did,” he said. “Long ago.”
“So, I can have a few of your people?” he asked.
The Inspectre nodded again, his face sad and distracted. “Take whoever you need,” the Inspectre said, and then turned to me. “You take point on this.”
I looked over at Connor, but he didn’t seem to mind. “Are you sure, Inspectre?” I asked.
“Very,” he said, his face dead serious now.
“Great,” Davidson said, trying to speed things along. He gestured toward the exit. “I think Simon, Connor, and Jane should cover it. Shall we?”
My eyes stayed on the Inspectre. I had never seen him so unnerved before.
“Go,” the Inspectre said, closing the folders in his hands. “I’ll let Director Wesker know that Jane went with you. He won’t be too pleased that I allocated one of his people to Davidson, but there are some perks to being the senior ranking officer around here, I suppose.”
“I’ll try to return them in one piece,” Davidson said, the sparkle returning to his smile. “Promise. I have a police van waiting outside. It will spare you having to cab it back uptown. I know how tight you folks are for cash around here.”
Connor stood up and brushed past Davidson, heading for the front door of the café. “Don’t get too toothy there, smiley,” he said to me. “I call shotgun.” Davidson started after him.
“Dammit!” I said. “I wanted shotgun.”
“Fine by me,” Jane said. She took my hand and ran off after them, practically dragging me. “I call flamethrower.”
4
Davidson drove while the rest of us rode in the back of the police van in silence. Jane leaned her head against my shoulder as we listened to the sound of the rain beating down on the roof of the van as it raced up through the concrete canyons of Manhattan.
The going got slower as we headed farther up to the East Side. Rain that lasted more than a few hours in Manhattan could bring the city to a dead stop, but at the moment we were at least maintaining a slow crawl through an ocean of traffic. Somewhere in the east Forties we turned right off of First Avenue and headed farther east than I usually traveled. I thought we might be heading into the East River itself, but then I noticed several large buildings filling the skyline.
All of them were towering—about ten in all—and looked like they all belonged to the same construction project, with each of them in various states of completion. Large straight towers of steel fit with bare construction bulbs rose above the slick black glass and modern steel architecture of the finished floors below. Only the center grouping of buildings looked finished and lit up from habitation.
Davidson pulled into the only finished arc of a drive that I could see, running through a small patch of unfinished landscaping that still managed to block the entrance view from the street. Several empty cop cars were already parked along the drive.
We stepped out of the police van and I held an umbrella out for Jane as she crawled under it with me. Davidson came around to our side with his own umbrella and looked up at the impressive size and design of the building.
“You sure this place is habitable?” I asked.
Davidson nodded. “Some of it,” he said. “There are several buildings going up for this whole development. About three of them are finished and already have occupants.”
Connor whistled as he joined us and took it all in. “How much is rent on this place?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know,” Davidson said and started toward the entrance to the lobby. “Let’s just say I don’t think anyone with our government paychecks will be moving on up to the East Side to a deluxe apartment in the sky anytime soon.”
“Funny,” I said. “I figure with the kickbacks you see from helping out Sectarians and vampires, you’d be set up for life.”
Davidson stopped and turned on me. With the look on his face, I braced for him to launch into me. Instead, he pursed his lips and shook his head. “Not tonight, Simon,” he said. “We’re about to enter a building where some of the most prestigious people in Manhattan live and we’re going to be trying to investigate something discreetly. My interests are the Mayor’s, not my own. If you want to cut into someone, why don’t you write him a letter?”
“Like I need more paperwork?”
Davidson walked over to Connor. “I liked him better when he was still new,” he said. “At least then he followed your lead a bit before becoming irreverent.”
Connor shrugged. “What can I say? I trained him right.”
Davidson turned away from us all and headed into the building without waiting.
I turned to Connor. “Thanks, Dad,” I said. “Can I borrow the car?”
Connor headed for the building as well. “Don’t start that with me,” he said. “I get enough of that from Aidan. He acts like he’s actually eighteen sometimes.”
“But he is your o
lder brother, right?” Jane asked.
“Vampires seem to have a very distorted sense of age and maturity,” Connor said, “because time doesn’t affect them quite the same. I think they get a really bad case of arrested development. How does one act their age when one is technically ageless?”
We hurried after Davidson and headed into the most finished of the buildings. The lobby was swanky with fresh leather furniture and a few choice art pieces that were actually tasteful. Davidson flashed an ID and our group hit the elevators, riding up until we got off on the twenty-seventh floor. A large assembly of police officers was gathered in the hallway nearby and we had to push past them before we found someone in charge. A uniformed officer in his forties with a little paunch nodded at Davidson. He eyed the three of us with the usual disdain that we were used to from the regular cops.
Davidson reached out and shook the officer’s hand. “What’s got your men so spooked, Sergeant?” he asked.
The head officer hesitated, a look of frustration crossing his face. None of his men made a move to offer up anything.
“You know what, Mr. Davidson?” he said. “Why don’t you just take your Monster Squad inside and see for yourself?”
“Nice,” I said. “Why don’t you clear out some of your boys, then? Or is the NYPD afraid of a little rain outside?”
The officer’s eyes widened. He looked like he might be on the verge of pulling his gun on me.
Davidson raised one hand to the officer and the other to me. “Gentlemen, please,” he said. “Let’s just do our jobs.”
The officer nodded, and then started ordering his men off the floor of the apartment building. Once they cleared the area, Davidson threw open the door to the apartment in front of us.
The space itself wasn’t the first thing my eyes landed on. A magnificent view of the East River and the Queens skyline filled up an entire wall of sliding glass doors at the far end of the room. The shadows of gargoyles stood out along a patio beyond the windows, lit up occasionally by a reflection of city lights coming off of a full-sized pool. Already I had a bit of apartment envy and I hadn’t even stepped in yet.
“Welcome to the home of Mason Redfield,” Davidson said. “Deceased.”
The four of us entered the apartment and the first thing I noticed was that the main room was several times larger than my entire apartment and almost as tastefully decorated. The owner of the apartment was lying dead and faceup in the middle of the living room.
“Nice place,” Jane said, nervously looking around the space and avoiding looking at the guy. “Bet there’s a lot of drawer space.”
I tensed as a surprise twinge of the tattooist’s raw emotional anger flared up for just a second, and I shot Jane a look as I pushed it down as best I could. “Not now, Jane. Not here.”
Connor circled around the dead man in the center of the room, barely paying attention to the body. “You know, for a crime scene, it looks remarkably tidy,” he said.
I walked over to where the body lay. He was an older gentleman in his late fifties with gray hair pulled back in a widow’s peak like an aging Eddie Munster.
“His eyes are open,” Jane said from where she stood farther away. His cold blue eyes were staring up at the ceiling, blank. “Creepy.”
Connor knelt down and closed them.
“Thanks,” she said.
“No problem,” Connor said, and then began looking over the body without disturbing it. “It’s the least I could do for an old acquaintance of the Inspectre.” He studied the corpse for a few moments more before speaking. “I don’t see a mark on him.”
Connor looked around the room, and then pulled out one of the vials of ghost bait he always had on him. He uncorked it and the smell of patchouli hit my nostrils. After several moments of nothing happening, he corked it and slid it back inside his coat.
“If his ghost is around here somewhere,” Connor continued, “I’m not picking it up.”
Jane moved a little closer. She cocked her head down to look at the corpse more closely. “Look at his mouth,” she said. “His lips are parted and there’s some kind of sheen just behind them.”
“Let me,” I said, kneeling down on the other side of the body. “I’ve already got my gloves on.”
I grabbed the side of his jaw and eased the corpse’s mouth open. “What the hell. . . ?”
I turned his head to the side. A clear liquid poured out of the man’s mouth onto the fancy wood floors.
“Water,” I said. “Or at least it looks like it.”
By now, Connor had slipped on a pair of gloves as well. He moved the man’s head back to the way we had found him. He pulled out a Maglite, twisted it on, and held it up to the man’s mouth. “There’s more.” He compressed the man’s chest and water poured out of his mouth again, this time to both sides of his face. “His lungs are full of it.”
Davidson stepped back. “Are you telling me he drowned?”
“From the inside,” Connor said. “Yes.”
“But his clothes and hair are dry,” Jane said.
Davidson jerked his thumb at her. “What she said. Maybe someone forced a hose down his throat?”
“I don’t think so,” Jane said. “Look at the floor. Until Simon tilted his head, there wasn’t a drop of water anywhere. If there had been a struggle or something like that, you’d think there would be water all over the place.”
I stood up. “She’s right. No wonder the regular cops are spooked. No signs of struggle. . . nothing that makes sense.”
Davidson crossed his arms and stood in silence for a minute. When he looked up again, he was staring at me. “You want to do your little magic-fingers thing you do?”
“Magic fingers,” I said, standing. I stripped off my gloves. “You make me feel like a coin-op bed in a sleazy motel.”
“Hey, if that’s what works for you . . .”
“Quiet,” I said, and then set to work passing my hands over all the objects, antiques, and decorations around the room.
“Well?” Davidson said, sounding rather annoyed.
“Nothing,” I said and shrugged.
“Did you forget to charge your psychometry or something?” he asked.
I stared at him, shaking my head. “Do you have the first clue how this works with me? The building is new, and I think a lot of the stuff this guy has here is new, too. All of these quality-looking antiques? Fakes.”
“So?”
“I can read a lot of objects—old, new—but it helps if they have some significance for there to be a psychometric charge. Either everything is too new to have a lick of a charge or something is blocking it somehow. Not everything in this world carries a charge to it.”
Davidson looked more confused than ever. He turned to Connor. “Is there a chart of some kind that I could use to follow all this?”
“This isn’t science,” I said. “It’s parascience. The research, even in our records down in the Gauntlet, is a bit sketchy on the how and why of it all. I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit your investigative needs.”
Davidson unfolded his arms and pointed at the corpse in the center of the room. “What about reading the body?”
“Thanks, but no, thanks,” I said. “I don’t do the dead.”
“Eww,” Jane said, flailing her hands like she was trying to shake the mental image off of her.
I scrunched my face up. “I didn’t mean it like that,” I said. “I just meant Connor’s the guy who deals with the dead.”
Connor stood up from the body. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Like I mentioned a minute ago, this guy’s soul ain’t around here.”
Davidson’s lips were pursed in agitation. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, his usual mask of composure was back in place. He walked over to Jane and put his hand on her shoulder.
“Listen, Jane,” Davidson said. “I need you to go around to the rest of the apartments on this floor and ask some questions. See if anyone heard anything.”
“That�
��s why you brought me along?” she said, looking a little miffed. “Couldn’t your cops have done that for you?”
David Davidson shook his head. “Did you see them in the hallway before?” he asked. “They were freaked-out enough that they didn’t even want to come back into the apartment. You want me to send those guys knocking on all the doors? I think you’d be a far more welcome sight to the residents. The people who can afford to live in a building like this are either cultured or rich beyond the beyond. Probably both. They’re going to be more receptive—more forthcoming—to a pretty young woman than to creepedout cops.”
“Oh,” Jane said, crossing her arms. “How sexist of you. And here I thought you might actually need me for my technomancy.” She made no effort to move.
Davidson looked over at me. “Are all ex-cultists this stubborn?”
Jane’s eyes flared with anger, so I spoke up quickly.
“Pretty much,” I said. “Be lucky she’s an ex-cultist. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to be standing that close to her if I were you.”
Jane gave him an evil grin. “A girl can learn a lot from cultists. Like how to fillet a man using a kukri . . .”
Davidson smiled back at her, not missing a beat. “Maybe we can save that as our second option. . . you know, after asking questions of the nice people who live here.”
Jane looked over to me. Her eyes smoldered. I nodded. “Go,” I said. “There’s nothing to be done in here yet. Talk to the neighbors. Then check their security system records.”
“Security systems don’t ever want to cooperate with my technomancy,” she said, “locks or otherwise. It’s like they’ve purposely been trained to not talk to me.”
“Still, there’s nothing for you to do in here. I think this crime scene is technically going to get classified as Other Division anyway, so that means Connor and I will get stuck with all the paperwork on this one.”
“I’ll go talk to all the neighbors, then,” Jane said, still somewhat cheesed off, “but if anything Arcana related comes up, call me.”