Forger of Light

by Nupur Tustin

  “The bedroom? Why?” The redheaded guy and his two companions pivoted toward her in unison.

  “It’s the only room that didn’t seem to have been as thoroughly searched as the other two,” Blake explained, a little too hastily perhaps. “By the killer, that’s to say.”

  The assertion wasn’t entirely truthful. Even Carrothead, who’d been there the evening before, looked justifiably skeptical.

  When Blake had entered the apartment the previous evening, every room in it had looked as though it had been thoroughly ransacked. It had seemed mostly a chaotic, haphazard effort, but thinking back Blake was beginning to think the search had been more systematic than that.

  In his experience, random searchers didn’t pull open every drawer and peek behind every cabinet door. No effort had been made to put anything back in its place, but that’s precisely how he’d known every nook and cranny in Reynolds’ apartment had been scrutinized.

  If the woman who’d just whizzed past them was the killer’s accomplice, there was no reason to believe she’d been any less thorough.

  Still if Celine thought the tech guys’ efforts should focus on Reynolds’ bedroom, given her track record, Blake for one was willing to go along. And he’d do anything to ward off the inevitable discomfiting questions.

  “Seems likely that the killer or his gal would focus on the bedroom the second time around,” he pressed home the point.

  “If you say so,” Carrothead muttered. He picked up his case, gestured to his colleagues, and entered the apartment.

  A few minutes later, Carrothead poked his head out the apartment door. “You sure you had an intruder here?” He paused, then receiving no reply continued, “Looks more like a cleaning lady came through.”

  That caught Blake’s attention. “What do you mean?”

  Carrothead shrugged. “Place looks considerably more tidied up than it was last I saw it. I’m not saying she did a bang-up job, but . . .” He held his palms up, spreading them apart, and shrugged again.

  “Think she was sent to contaminate the scene?” Julia mused aloud when the redheaded technician slid his head back inside Reynolds’ apartment.

  Celine considered this. A dullness settled like a stone within her. A sign that Julia’s hypothesis didn’t jive with reality. The shapely hands she saw straightening knick-knacks, closing cabinet doors, pulling out and shoving drawers in suggested a different interpretation.

  “No, I think she was a neat freak in search of something.”

  “A burglar with OCD,” Blake said with a harsh laugh.

  The prospect of their intruder having potentially destroyed evidence didn’t seem to bother him—surprisingly enough.

  “Either way, doesn’t really matter,” he said now in response to Celine’s unvoiced question. “The place has already been processed, and we’re re-processing it. Hope Carrothead has the sense to take some more photographs.”

  He strode to the door and barked out the order. His edginess—while understandable—was making Celine feel unsettled. She closed her eyes, taking a few calming breaths. Whatever awaited her inside would likely drain her of her energy. She needed to prepare for it.

  A few deep breaths later, her now lulled mind began to wander. Where was Jonah? He’d been gone a long time.

  She opened her eyes, about to ask the question, when the techs emerged from Reynolds’ apartment. “It’s all yours,” they said to Blake.

  “You should probably fingerprint us,” Julia reminded the redheaded guy who seemed to be in charge.

  Blake nodded. “We didn’t go in, but it’s not a bad idea. You’ll want to eliminate our prints from any that were found.”

  Let’s not give your stupid ADA any reason to wriggle out of doing what needs to be done. Celine heard the thought as clearly as though Blake had spoken aloud. She wondered if it was the ADA—a female, Celine sensed—who was the reason for Blake’s jumpy energy.

  Or was it sleep deprivation? One of the crime scene techs brought out a fingerprinting kit—the action punctuating her speculations.

  She’d noticed the dark shades under Blake’s eyes when he’d met them at the airport. They were even more prominent now. He clearly hadn’t gotten much sleep. And it was wreaking havoc on his temper.

  “Mine are on file,” Blake said when the tech approached him. But he held out both hands, nevertheless.

  A few moments later when they’d all been fingerprinted, he turned to her.

  “Ready to go in?”

  “Sure.” She nodded, nervous now. The energy that assailed her in places where death and violence had occurred was so traumatic she had no words to describe the experience. The only thing worse was the shock that had slammed into her when she’d realized she’d never see her parents again.

  The incident was seventeen years in the past, but it was a memory time had no power to fade.

  Reaching out for Julia’s hand, she stepped toward the threshold.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  She walked across the threshold. The redheaded tech was right. The place didn’t look nearly as torn apart as it had in the crime scene photos Blake had shared on the ride over.

  Her gaze moved past the mantelpiece, the broken sculptures, the colorful abstracts on the walls—were they prints?—to the dust-streaked wooden floor. She took two steps, lifted her foot to take a third, and stopped.

  Oh my God! Was that Reynolds?

  She hadn’t expected to see his body still here, splayed out like that.

  She’d known Reynolds was dead. She’d been aware she was seeing an apparition when he’d appeared above them on the second-floor landing. But none of that was sufficient preparation for the shock of stumbling, almost literally, upon his corpse.

  Oh my God! This was just as bad as when she’d discovered Dirck’s dead body.

  “I thought he’d been taken away.” She pointed, finger trembling.

  Why hadn’t they removed the body? They’d come twice—and hadn’t considered removing the body?

  Wasn’t that standard protocol? Or had someone thought the presence of a corpse would enhance her visions?

  Reynolds was wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in a few minutes ago—blue denim jeans and a white dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, open at the collar. It would’ve been a sexy look but for the angry red gash that sliced through the skin on his neck.

  “Thought who’d been taken away?” She heard Julia’s voice but couldn’t locate her. Where was she?

  “Him.” Celine pointed.

  Why was Julia sounding so puzzled? Couldn’t she see Reynolds lying lifeless on the floor? His head was turned toward them—green eyes, flat and emotionless, staring accusingly at them.

  At her.

  “Reynolds?” It was Blake asking the question now. Celine couldn’t see him either. Her eyes seemed incapable of taking in anything but Reynolds.

  “Yes, Reynolds.” Celine was getting impatient now. Who else but Reynolds? Why did they keep asking these stupid questions?

  She stretched her hand out as far as it would go, forefinger pointing.

  “He’s dead.” She tried to drive home the point.

  “Yes, Celine, that’s why we’re here.” Julia’s tone irritated Celine. She sounded like she was talking to someone mentally impaired.

  “Why is he still there?” The sculptor’s tall frame was twisted, his face contorted into a grimace.

  “Where?” Blake sounded mystified. “Shhh!” Julia hissed. “I think she sees him.”

  Of course, she saw him. How could she not? There he lay—not a person, not even a threat, but a twisted, broken mannequin.

  The light had gone out of those vivid green eyes, like a candle snuffed out. One moment, the eyeballs had been dancing, rolling in their sockets in agony. The next—

  Oh, f—what a mess!

  “I didn’t mean to kill him.” Her voice sounded like the anguished cry of an injured animal. “Didn’t want to.”

  “No?” Julia asked
.

  Celine shook her head. “I was just trying to talk some sense into him.” With a piano wire? Sure, the cops would buy that! She could feel the thin wire in her palms—trying to escape her slick, sweaty grasp.

  She shook her head again, the sense of desperation rising.

  “He didn’t know what he was getting into. What he was getting us into. He wouldn’t listen.”

  “What happened?”

  Celine looked down at her hands—compact, beautifully tanned hands, the nails manicured and buffed. Hands that had never had any dirt on them.

  Bits of skin and blood glistened on the wire clutched in them.

  She grimaced. “Don’t want to get that stuff on myself.”

  “What stuff?”

  “The stuff on the wire. His blood, his skin . . . Oh God, I’m going to be sick.” She bent over, stomach heaving.

  What had she done? She’d never killed anybody. Never lifted a finger against . . .

  “Jesus Christ, get me out of here,” she moaned.

  Julia guided her out of the apartment. The sensations subsided, the nausea loosened its grip on her.

  Still bent at the waist, Celine stared at the marble floor. This wasn’t working. How was she expected to get any useful impressions with a corpse staring her in the face?

  She raised her head and eyed Julia and Blake.

  “You need to get that body out of here. I’m not going back in with it still there.”

  Blake was staring at her as though she’d lost her mind. “There’s no body in there, Celine.”

  “Yes, there is.” She straightened up. Why was he lying to her? “I saw it.”

  “No, Celine.” It was Julia who replied, her arm still around Celine’s shoulder. “There’s no body. You were just . . .”

  “Seeing things?” It had felt like a waking nightmare.

  “Having a vision,” Julia explained. “You were talking about not wanting to kill Reynolds. You saw a piano wire in your hands.”

  Okay, so she’d occupied the killer’s mind. That made sense.

  “I hate to ask, but you think you can go back in there?” Blake looked distinctly uncomfortable making the request. “Tell us more?”

  Celine hesitated. She knew her response ought to be an unequivocal yes. After all, that’s why she’d been brought here. But she simply could not bring herself to encounter Reynolds’ stiff body again or his dull accusing eyes. It was just too horrible.

  “Is there a way of not seeing his body?” Celine turned to Julia. “I don’t think I can get anything useful with my attention riveted on his corpse. How do I get past it?”

  Her friend reached into her voluminous handbag. “I might have an idea. Don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s worth a try.”

  Julia had just wrapped the navy bandana around Celine’s eyes when Jonah Hibbert bounded up the stairs. It wasn’t an interruption Blake relished. Sure, he’d wondered what was taking the guy so long. But Hibbert’s presence was about as welcome as a taser to the ribs, and Blake had been grateful for the brief respite.

  As always, the reporter had something to whine about.

  “Hey, why did those CSI guys wanna fingerprint me? Am I a suspect now?”

  “We’ve all been fingerprinted,” Julia informed him dryly, although the question had been meant for Blake. “Standard procedure.”

  Blake suppressed a smile. Figuring Jonah was less trouble downstairs and out of their hair, he’d asked the techs to corner the reporter and get his prints as well—buying them a few more precious minutes of peace. But here the reporter was, back in their midst, like the proverbial bad penny.

  Jonah turned to Julia, took in the bandana around Celine’s eyes, and stared at them, bemused. “Playing blindman’s bluff?”

  Blake ignored the question, as did the others. “Any luck at Starbucks?”

  “I got a name.” Jonah flipped pages in his tiny notebook. “Sofia, spelt with an f.”

  “Would she have used her real name?” Julia wondered. She adjusted the bandana around Celine’s eyes.

  Blake considered the question.

  “No reason not to,” he said finally. “I don’t think she figured on being intercepted. As it stands, if it weren’t for Celine, we wouldn’t have found her out. Besides, without a last name—”

  He turned to Hibbert with another question.

  “You get the impression she’s a regular?” If she was, she might live in the area.

  “Nope. The baristas have never seen her before.”

  “So we have a first name and the make and model of her car,” Celine spoke for the first time since Jonah had returned. She pushed the bandana up from her eyes. “That’s not too bad, I guess.”

  “Reynolds recognized her, didn’t he?” Julia asked her. “She could be a client.”

  “Or somehow connected to whoever killed him,” Celine said.

  She sounded hesitant, as though doubting the impressions she was receiving. Or her interpretation of them. Blake wondered why. He was no psychic, but as an investigator, he thought she was on the mark.

  Sofia wasn’t a client.

  “Employee of or girlfriend.” Blake ran through the options in his mind.

  She had to be fairly close to the killer. Why else had she come? And why else had Reynolds staged a hissy fit when he’d seen her—not that Blake had heard any of it, fortunately?

  That indicated some connection—however tenuous—to the General. Celine had picked up no such thing when Sofia had run past them. But their interaction had been so fleeting, how much could she have psychically picked up?

  Based on what Celine had shared before Hibbert showed up, the killer—a white-collar individual, judging by her impressions—had no prior criminal record. Obviously someone Reynolds had known.

  A client, maybe?

  Blake would need to get a list of Reynolds’ clients from Soldi. Hopefully the old fool wouldn’t balk at providing the information. His mind returned to the killer.

  The guy might have stayed squeaky clean until now. But his choice of weapon linked him to the mob. No doubt about it. An associate of the General; Blake was willing to wager every penny of his Federal TSP on that. An underling, perhaps. Or his business partner in the still-to-be-solved Gardner heist—the man Ella had dubbed the Boston Brahmin.

  Blake had no idea where or how his personal assistant had come up with that moniker. But it seemed to fit. And he liked it.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  “I’ll bet DMV could help us track down the gorgeous Sofia.”

  Jonah’s light tenor interrupted Blake’s train of thoughts—the words chafing his raw nerves like a steel wool pad.

  “With just her name and the color of her car?” Blake gave up on trying to mask his disgust.

  How was it that the same idiots who complained about federal intrusion into people’s private lives could—in the same breath—enthusiastically expect that a few odd details about an individual would call up an entire file of personal facts?

  “We don’t exactly live in a police state, you know. There isn’t a vast file in some centralized location on every person living within the United States.”

  Heck, if they’d had something like that, he wouldn’t have had to go through the process of being fingerprinted just to volunteer at his niece’s elementary school. As though as a federal agent, he hadn’t been fingerprinted enough.

  “What?”

  Jonah was staring at him, a pained expression on his face.

  “I have a partial license plate.”

  “You do?” It wasn’t much, but it would certainly do.

  “Yes, didn’t I mention it, the lovely Sofia almost got a ticket.”

  “And the meter maid”—Blake was aware of Julia wincing at the term, but heck, what else could you call those guys?—“remembered bits of her plate?”

  “No, but it was seeing the officer that gave me the idea of taking down her license plate. I didn’t get all of it, but—”

  Hi
bbert flipped through a few more pages of his notebook, found what he was looking for, and glanced up.

  “Z39,” he proudly proclaimed. “There was a letter before the Z. I can’t remember what it was.”

  “Which part of the plate is that, Jonah—the first or the last?” Celine voiced the question in Blake’s mind.

  “The last part”—Jonah looked at Blake, wide-eyed, eager, apparently trying to seek his approval—“I figured that was more important.” He turned back to Celine. “You see, the last digit on a Massachusetts plate tells when the car’s registration is up for renewal. So a plate ending in Z39 means—”

  “We’re looking for a car with a registration coming up in September,” Blake mused. “It’s not much, but it does help to narrow things down. Let’s go down, give Ella a call.”

  It was a nice excuse to get the journalist away from the scene of the crime, and he took it eagerly. He didn’t need Jonah broadcasting the few details Celine had gleaned to the public. You could never trust a journalist not to blab.

  He turned to Julia and Celine.

  “Why don’t you guys finish up here and join us downstairs?”

  “DMV will be able to figure it out, right?” Jonah sounded breathless as he followed Blake past the heavy glass doors of 60 Grove Avenue.

  “Yeah, sure,” Blake mumbled as he emerged into the afternoon sun. It was a bit more complicated than that—especially when all you had was a partial plate. But he was okay with Jonah thinking law enforcement could work magic. “We’ll let Ella take care of it.”

  He noticed the sky as he pulled his phone out of its holster. It was a serene blue, not a cloud in sight. Strange, how the oddest things caught your eye in moments of stress.

  His personal assistant picked up on the first ring.

  “I have a license plate I need you to run,” Blake informed her. “It’s a partial,” he continued apologetically.

  “Story of my life.” Ella’s tone was matter-of-fact. He could picture her sitting upright at her desk, pen poised over a legal pad. “Give it to me.”