I walked the rest of the way to Hammer Street in a daze. I kept trying to picture the face of the little girl that had just burned away, but all I saw was a rotating series of faces, all absurdly angelic. At that moment, I would have knifed Charles Hammer in a police station, in front of forty cops and a dozen TV-news cameras.
This was my mind-set when I finally reached Hammer Street. It was a single block long, curving westward with no sidewalks. I walked up the middle of the street. There were stone walls on either side of me, and thick blackberry vines growing over the top. The road sloped upward, and as I reached a cul-de-sac, I saw three houses.
The smallest sat on the north lot. It was made of brick and had pretty white balconies. The second house, on the southern lot, was made of mortared stone. It was low and wide, and was probably very modern forty years ago. Both were shuttered and dark.
The largest house occupied the western lot. It was made of wood and stood three stories tall. It had a nest of slanting roofs, mismatched balconies, and clusters of stone chimneys. On the southern side of the house, a tall, round tower loomed above the rest. It was the oldest of the houses, and it dominated the street. I turned around and saw the town of Hammer Bay laid out before me. Maybe the house was meant to dominate the town, too.
I checked Cynthia’s card. Of course her address matched the large house.
I wondered if Annalise would be grateful if I killed Charlie Three myself, right now. I wondered if her hands would heal.
There were three cars parked in front. One was the silver Escalade. Beside it was a fifteen-year-old BMW, a good car and pricey when it was new, but it had suffered rust and salt corrosion and the damage had been allowed to spread. The third car was a blue Tercel. It was such an ordinary, unassuming car, it was nearly invisible beside the others.
The street was empty. There were lights upstairs at the large house, but everything seemed still. I assumed all three houses belonged to the Hammers, although I wasn’t sure what gave me that impression. Maybe it was the way the street had been laid out for maximum privacy. Maybe it was that I didn’t think anyone would share an address on Hammer Street in Hammer Bay with the Hammer family.
An instinct for caution made me approach the brick house first. I circled it, looking for an unblocked window. There wasn’t one. The stone house, though, had a broken shutter on a back window. I peered in.
Nothing. No furnishings, no art on the walls, nothing. It was an empty shell. I went to the big house and rang the bell.
To my surprise, Cynthia answered. She looked aggravated, and several strands of her dark hair stuck out in random directions. “You’re late,” she said. Her tone wasn’t friendly.
“Where’s your brother?” I asked. The anger in my voice surprised me.
She ignored the question. “I’m afraid I’m a little busy right now. I’ll have to ask you to wait in the library.”
“Where’s your brother?” I asked again. “Where’s Charles?”
“I don’t like the way you’re asking that question.”
I imagined myself throttling the answer out of her.
No. I turned away and stared back over the town. The cold, furious sense of purpose that had driven me across town began to fade. I was not going to start killing everyone between me and my target. Annalise would have, but I was not going that far.
“I’ll wait in the library, then,” I said to her.
She stepped backward to let me enter. “I don’t like that you’re late. I expect people to be punctual. I’m not a person who likes to wait for others.” She sounded flustered and annoyed, and I wasn’t sure if she was trying to put me in my place because I’d scared her in the car, or if something else was getting on her nerves and she was taking it out on me. Either way, I didn’t care.
She led me into the library and shut the door. I looked out the window. I saw a wide green lawn with a winding white stone path laid across it. The sight was soothing.
I held up my hand. It was trembling. I wondered how I could find out the name of the little girl I had just seen killed. No one would remember her. No one would go looking for her. There would be nothing in the news. I could look for that fat lady, I guessed, under the assumption that it was her daughter, but what good would that do? She wouldn’t remember her any better than anyone else. I could break into their house and search the place for a photo …
I laid my hands on the window frame and pressed my face against the glass. I was not going to break into that woman’s house. That little girl was never going to be more to me than a small bonfire, seen at a distance. I didn’t need her name.
There was a small door to my right. I ran to it and yanked it open. It was a bathroom, thank God. I would have hated to vomit into one of Cynthia’s closets.
I washed my face and rinsed out my mouth. My emotions were back under control, and I felt better. I felt like myself again. I didn’t want to be some angry hard-ass who bullied his way toward his enemies. I didn’t want to be Annalise.
That gave me pause. How many dead bodies had Annalise seen? How many dead children, killed by some jackass with a spell book? No wonder she acted the way she did.
I heard a man and a woman start shouting at each other, and I headed toward the door. On the way, a small picture in a silver frame caught my attention. It was a black-and-white photo, taken a long time ago.
On the left side of the picture was a man in a dark waistcoat. His face bristled with white whiskers, and he had the satisfied look of a man who fed himself well. In the center was a tall, angular man in a long, road-worn coat with a walking stick in his hand. His hair was a little too long and needed combing, and he smiled out of the side of his mouth. He looked like a smooth talker and a bit of a con man, the sort of friend you keep for a lifetime but never, ever trust. Both wore hats and old-fashioned clothes. I guessed the picture was taken in the thirties.
On the right was a young girl in a pretty white dress. Her hair was bobbed, and her little shoes pointed slightly inward. I could see, at the lacy cuffs and collar of her dress, a faint spider’s web of black lines. Tattoos. She had turned her solemn little face to look up at the con man, and I could see by her profile that she was Annalise.
I stared at the picture, dumbstruck. She looked eight or nine years younger than she looked now, but I was sure the picture was taken at least seventy years ago. Who was the man she was looking at? A second glance at him showed tattoos covering the back of his hand. I squinted at Annalise’s face. She looked love-struck and slightly awed. Was this her teacher?
The shouting started again. I set the picture down, opened the door, and went out into the hall. There were doors all around and voices were coming from behind one of them. I walked toward the sound.
“Now, Cabot,” a man said. “There’s no reason to be so upset. Cynthia didn’t—”
“Don’t tell me what she did!” a man shouted. I guessed it was Cabot. “I know what she did! I have eyes!”
“Well, here’s a good idea for you,” Cynthia snapped. “Use them.”
“Things are going to come around again,” Cabot said. “Things are going to be made right. You watch, and you watch out!”
I had almost reached the heavy oak door when it flew open. A man in his mid-fifties with a heavy paunch and a blotchy face stormed past me. His thick, dark hair was speckled with gray.
There was something in his expression that I didn’t like. He looked like a man who didn’t care anymore.
I watched him stomp off. His clothes had been expensive once, but the heels of his boots were worn away and his jeans were frayed at the bottom.
“I thought I told you to wait in the library.” Cynthia had moved up next to me. She looked irritated. “Well?”
I heard the front door slam.
“I’m nosy.”
She glared at me. After a moment, she said: “Come into my office. Please.”
I followed her into a small room. The floors were hardwood, and a large desk dominated the far corner. The only adornments on the walls were a pair of kimonos set in wooden frames.
A fat little man sat on the couch, rubbing his face wearily. His long, graying hair hung over his shoulders. “That man exhausts me—”
“Frank,” Cynthia cut in, “this is Raymond Lilly. Mr. Lilly, this is our mayor, Frank Farleton.”
Frank lifted his face from his hands and looked up at me in surprise. He didn’t look pleased to see me. “I know who you are. What are you doing here?”
I turned to Cynthia. “Call me Ray. I’ve seen the mayor before but didn’t introduce myself. He was too upset about your brother’s seizure. Isn’t that right, Mayor Farleton?”
“What are you doing here, please?” he asked again. At least he was polite.
“She invited me. How long has Charles been having seizures?”
The mayor struggled off the couch. He had to huff vigorously to lift his bulk onto his feet. “What do you mean? Who invited you?”
I heard the front door slam again. No one else seemed to notice it. The office door was behind me to my left, the desk in front of me to the right. I backed against the wall and slid my hand into my pocket next to my ghost knife.
Cynthia strode behind her desk and offered me a strained smile. The mayor sat on the corner of her desk. “I don’t think Frank means who invited you to my house. I think he means who invited you to Hammer Bay.” Her pretty smile betrayed a touch of scorn. Her hands were shaking. She was having a bad day. “But,” she continued, “you’re here to answer my questions, not his. And if you don’t feel like answering, all I have to do is call Emmett Dubois. Once I tell him you broke into my car and tried to take the keys—”
The office door burst inward and Cabot charged in. I was ready for him, but I was still too slow. He lifted his arm. He was holding a pistol.
Time seemed to slow down. Cabot aimed at Cynthia. His teeth were bared, his cheeks flushed red.
The mayor stepped in front of her, his arms spread wide, his fat cheeks puffed out in an almost comical way.
I swung the ghost knife at the gun. Cabot squeezed the trigger. The hammer drew back. I was too slow. The gun fired. A bare second later, the ghost knife swept through it, slicing it apart.
The mayor flinched as the bullet struck him just above the collarbone.
Cabot squeezed the trigger again, but the gun was already coming apart. It didn’t fire. He turned toward me, his mouth opening in what I imagined would be angry protest. He looked at the remains of the gun in his hand in utter shock.
I slid the edge of the ghost knife into his chest and, before he had a chance to go slack, threw an overhand left. I was off-balance, but the punch landed just in front of his earlobe. Cabot dropped like a marionette with his strings cut.
I turned toward the others. The mayor was holding the top of his right shoulder with his bloody left hand. He stumbled away from Cynthia and looked at her. Then he collapsed onto the floor. The bullet appeared to have only grazed him, but he was bleeding profusely. His face looked pale.
Cynthia looked at me. Her mouth hung open in a little O, and her face was slack and pale.
I don’t like guns. I stared down at the mayor for a moment too long, wishing the whole thing hadn’t happened.
His face grew more pale by the second. Cynthia gaped at him.
“Call an ambulance,” I said. Cynthia turned her empty gaze toward me. She seemed to be in a trance. “Right now!” I shouted.
She jumped and lunged for the phone on her desk. She wasn’t used to being yelled at.
I grabbed an arm cover off the couch and knelt beside the mayor. I confirmed that the bullet had grazed him just above his collarbone, well away from the arteries in his neck. If he’d been less fat, it might have missed him altogether.
I wadded up the arm cover and pressed it against the wound. “Well, well,” I said, trying to keep my tone light, “look what you’ve managed to do. This doesn’t look too bad, though.”
“It hurts,” he said.
“Being a hero usually does.”
“What? I’m not a hero. I wasn’t thinking. I just—”
His face was getting paler. I grabbed a cushion off the couch and slid it under his feet. “Of course you didn’t think,” I said. “Who would jump in the path of a bullet if they were thinking?”
Cynthia spoke into the phone, asking for an ambulance. She spoke so quickly she was on the verge of babbling. I called her name to catch her attention, then told her to speak as calmly as she could. She took a deep, shuddering breath and recited her address into the phone. She told the operator on the other end that the mayor had been shot.
“I don’t want to die,” the mayor said. His voice was small and childlike. He squeezed his eyes shut, and I saw tears running down his face. “My wife …”
“I’m no doctor,” I told him, “but I think you’re going to be okay. Harlan was shot much worse than you, and he’s recovering. Just try to take deep breaths and stay calm. The ambulance is on the way.” The color came back into his face just a little.
Cynthia hung up the phone and stared down at the scene in utter befuddlement. “What happened to Uncle Cabot’s gun?”
“Come over here and make yourself useful,” I said. She circled around her desk and knelt beside the mayor. “Put your hands on this cloth and keep a steady pressure on the wound.”
She looked at my bloody hands and balked.
“This man just took a bullet for you,” I said. My voice was low and edged with anger. “Now do it.”
She did.
The mayor looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so embarrassed—”
Cynthia burst into tears.
I watched her for a moment, to make sure that she kept her hands on the wound. She did. The mayor began to comfort her, and his color definitely improved. It helped him to have someone to comfort.
Cabot lay in the doorway. I wiped my bloody hands on the front of his shirt, then began to pat him down. He didn’t have another gun. He moaned and began to come around.
My ghost knife was in my pocket, although I didn’t remember putting it away. I slid it through his hand. It wouldn’t keep him unconscious, but it would make him docile.
I heard sirens. “You two sit tight,” I said. “I’m going to open the front door.” Cynthia and the mayor kept murmuring to each other. They didn’t seem to hear me.
I dragged Cabot into the hall. Docile or not, I didn’t want him waking up in the same room as them. Then I walked over and opened the front door.
The EMTs were already jogging up the steps, a stretcher in their hands. Behind them was Emmett Dubois, his hand on his holstered weapon. Emmett squinted the length of the hall and saw Cabot lying at the far end, his shirt smeared with blood. Cabot shifted his leg, barely on the edge of consciousness.
“He’s right this way,” I said to them, pointing to the open office door. They rushed past me.
When I turned around, I saw Emmett Dubois pointing his gun at me. “Turn around, put your hands behind your head, and drop to your knees.”
“I’m getting sick of having guns pointed at me.”
“Ain’t that too bad.” He pushed me onto my stomach and began twisting my arms behind me. Cynthia stepped out of the office and saw us.
“What are you doing?” she said. “He didn’t hurt anyone. He saved us.”
She told him what happened. Emmett uncuffed me and helped me to my feet. He offered a brief but insincere cop apology and made a beeline for Cabot. Cabot had come around enough to rub the side of his jaw. Emmett rolled him on his stomach and cuffed him. Cabot didn’t resist.
Cynthia stepped close to me. Her hands were shaking. “I have to go to the hospital. Will you drive me? I don’t think I can manage it right now.”
“Sure,” I told her.
The EMTs emerged with the mayor on a stretcher. They didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Emmett dragged Cabot to his feet and led him toward the door.
“I’m sorry,” Cabot said. “I’m sorry, everyone. I shouldn’t have done that.”
He went on and on like that. Hearing his meek, whining voice seemed to set Cynthia on edge, so I held her back to let the others get ahead. We stood on the front porch and watched them load the mayor into the back of the ambulance, and Cabot into the back of Emmett’s police car. They started their engines but didn’t turn on their sirens.
After they had disappeared around the corner, Cynthia turned toward me. “Do I look terrible?” she asked.
Her eyes were red and puffy from crying and her lip twisted down on one side as she fought back her tears. Her makeup was still perfect. “You can check yourself on the way. Do you have everything you need?”
“No, I’ll be right back.”
She rushed back into the house. I took the scrap of wood out of my pocket and laid it against the doorjamb.
Nothing. The design churned at its normal slow pace. The Hammer house was no different from any other. I looked at the other two on the cul-de-sac. If I were Charles Hammer the Third, heir to a timber fortune and own er of a wildly successful toy company, which would I live in? A tiny brick house or an empty stone one?
Neither, really. I started toward the brick house for no other reason than that it was slightly closer. I had only gotten a couple of steps when the door opened behind me.
“I’m ready. Let’s go,” Cynthia said.
She gave me the keys and I drove. She flipped down the passenger-side visor and studied her face. I tried not to pay too close attention as I wound my way through traffic, but I could see her hands trembling slightly.
“Are you all right?” I asked her.
“Yes. I think I’m going to be fine. What about you? Are you all right?”
The question surprised me. For a second I thought she’d known about me in the library toilet. Hanging on, I wanted to say. Then I realized she was talking about Cabot and the gun. “I’m fine. Maybe I’ll freak out later, but I’m fine right now.”
“You’re not really going to freak out, are you?” she said. “You’re just saying that to be nice.” I shrugged, and she laid her hand on my arm. Just for a moment.
It was my turn to shiver. Damn, it had been a long time.
We reached the hospital. I was glad to see that Ethan’s van was gone.
The receptionist told us that the mayor was in intensive care. Cynthia seemed to shrug this off, but I was confused. “I didn’t think his wound was that serious,” I said. “It looked like it just grazed him.”
“Well …” The receptionist looked around and then began shuffling papers on her desk. She looked up at Cynthia as though she was one of her supervisors. Maybe that’s what it meant to be part of a founding family—everyone treats you like you’re in charge. “I shouldn’t have told you that much. HIPAA rules.”
Cynthia leaned forward and said, “Look—”
“Is there someplace we can wait?” I interrupted. The receptionist called a volunteer, who led us to a waiting room on the third floor. We sat on a plastic couch beside a stack of bland supermarket magazines.
“His wife hates me,” Cynthia said. “She hates me already. I just hope she doesn’t take another swing at me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she brought a hatchet. Good thing we’re already in a hospital.”
She went on and on like that. Cynthia rambled, mostly about how much Farleton’s wife hated her. She didn’t mention Cabot at all, and I didn’t bring him up. Misery was pouring out of her, and I didn’t want her to shut me out. Not when I needed her to point me toward her brother.
The door at the end of the hall opened, and Emmett Dubois entered. Trailing along behind him was a tall blond woman, probably just a year or two older than Cynthia. She was long-legged and wore way too much makeup on her lovely face. She looked utterly distraught.
Cynthia jumped up. “Miriam, I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” Miriam snapped. “I just want to see my husband.”
Emmett stepped between them. “Let’s find Frank’s doctor. Would you come with me?”
Miriam shot a withering look at Cynthia, then followed the chief down the hall.
Peter Lemly rushed in. He was red-faced and sweating, and I could hear him panting from down the hall. He followed the chief and Miriam Farleton.
“Did you see that?” Cynthia said. “She hates me.” I didn’t say anything. “She’s always hated me. Ever since high school. She was three years ahead and she dated Charles for a couple of weeks. He wouldn’t turn his life over to Jesus, though, and he got tired of hearing her talk about it. He broke it off with her, and for some reason she blamed me. She thought I was making fun of her behind her back.”
“Were you?” I asked, although I was pretty sure I knew the answer already.
“Hell, yeah. But Charles didn’t care what I said. He never cared. He always had to do things his own way.”
“Your brother sounds like an interesting guy.”
She didn’t take the bait. “I saw the way you were looking at her,” she said.
I shrugged. “She and the mayor don’t exactly look like a couple, do they?”
She laughed. “The whole town, men and women, felt the same way when they started going together. Frank was ten years older and even fatter than he is now—she’s worked on his weight over the years. He’s a good man, even if he’s kind of a wimp.” I didn’t mention that a real wimp wouldn’t have taken a bullet for her. “I think he’d be scooping ice cream in the back of a truck if he hadn’t married her. She’s the ambitious one. But they sure do seem to love each other,” she said. “No one really understands it.”
“Maybe he cast a spell on her.”
She turned and looked at me. She was measuring me, trying to see if I had dropped the word spell casually or if I was hinting at something. The way she looked at me told me what I needed to know. I wondered what would happen if I laid Annalise’s magic-detecting scrap of wood against her skin.
I shrugged. I wasn’t ready to show my hand yet. She blinked and then shrugged, too. I wondered how much she knew about what was happening to the kids in town.
“Where’s your brother?” I asked her. “I’d like to meet him.”
She leaned back in her chair and looked at me sideways. “I’m supposed to be asking you questions, remember?” She had a half smile on her lovely face. It looked good on her, but it was too practiced. “I asked you to come to my house so I could shine a bright light in your face and pepper you with questions.”
“Okay, but let’s leave out the badge-wearing goons.”
“I think we can go goonless for now.”
We smiled at each other.
She asked me a couple of questions about Annalise’s meeting with Able Katz. I answered with harmless lies. The questions she asked told me more about her than she realized. I figured she must not have friends in the company or any pull with her brother or she would already know the basics.
Emmett Dubois arrived. He told us that he would need statements from both of us. Strictly routine, he assured us. Cabot had already confessed.
This time, I wanted to put him off until I could talk to a lawyer. Maybe Annalise would hire one for me, but Cynthia turned to me and said: “Why don’t you go first? I want to wait and explain things to … you know. Be nice to him, Emmett. He saved my life. Frank’s, too.”
“Of course I will, Cynthia,” Emmett said.
We left the waiting area and walked into an empty room. Emmett set his folder and his hat on the bed, then took a tape recorder from his pocket.
“Do you mind if I tape this?”
“I guess that’ll be all right.”
He turned on the machine and recited his name, my name, the date, and other information. Then he asked me what happened.
I told him, with a couple of modifications. I didn’t tell him about the fire on the basketball court. I didn’t tell him that I had gone there looking for Charles with the intent to kill him. I didn’t tell him that I chunked into the toilet, and I didn’t tell him that I’d cut the gun with the ghost knife.
I did say that the gun fell apart after it fired that first time. I said I felt lucky that I hadn’t been killed, and that I personally didn’t think I’d saved anyone’s life. Cabot’s gun was defective, and I coldcocked him. Even if I hadn’t been there, I said, he couldn’t have done more than he did.
We went over it again, this time focusing on why I was there, why Cynthia had invited me, and why I had gone. I had sensible answers for everything, and he didn’t seem concerned.
It was the friendliest conversation I’d ever had with a cop. It made me a little nervous, but I did my best to smile and act friendly in return.
Finally, he shut the recorder off. “That jibes with what Cabot told me, although he claims that you broke the gun with your bare hands.”
“Heh! Really? Weird. Someone should tell him guns are made of metal.”
Emmett chuckled. “That’s what I figured. We did take the gun into evidence, though. It was in a strange condition.”
“How so?”
“It didn’t explode, the way guns do when the barrel is jammed. It was sheared apart. Like it was cut.”
“Is that unusual?” I asked, being careful to look him in the eyes—but not too closely—and not to touch my face.
“I’ve never seen a weapon fail that way. Never heard of it, either.”
“Weird. And lucky.”
He looked at me for a moment, then smiled. He was a friendly guy today. “It sure was lucky.” He began to gather his stuff. Then he stopped and looked at me again. He knew something he wasn’t saying.
There was something else going on here. There was something I wasn’t seeing.
And honestly, I didn’t like being on such friendly terms with Emmett Dubois.
“Excuse me, Chief,” I said. “Can I ask your opinion on something?”
“Okay. What is it?”
I opened my jacket wide, so that when I reached into it he would see there was no gun. I drew out the scrap of wood.
“This is a little something that I’m trying to sell to Hammer Bay Toys. I think it’s a neat little trick.”
I set the scrap of wood on the bed beside his folder. The design on the front continued its slow, implacable churning.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. He looked down at the moving paint, obviously intrigued. Then he looked up at me. “May I?”
“By all means,” I said.
Emmett picked up the scrap of wood. As soon as he touched it, the design went dark. A tiny flare appeared on the wood, and then a jet of black steam and iron-colored sparks erupted from the design.
The chief had a predator inside him.
Emmett dropped it and jumped back. He laid his hand on his weapon. “What the hell was that?”
“This,” I said, “is a Geiger counter for magic.” I picked it up. My tattoos and ghost knife made the design flare silver for a second. “You have some kind of nasty spell on you, Chief. What is it?”
He stared at me, his eyes wide. I stared back. Was he involved in the deaths of those children? Did he even know about them?
“Come on, Chief. Tell me what’s going on here. What’s happened to you? What’s happened to your town?”
“Who are you? What are you doing in this town?”
“You already know who I am. You read all about what I did last fall. As for what I’m doing here, there’s something wrong in this town. I’m here to fix it. Party’s over, Chief. We know about you now.”
He sniffled. I had spooked him. He wasn’t used to that. “Maybe I should take you in—”
I laughed. “You don’t have any idea what I am, do you? I’m not going anywhere with you this time. You’re going to have to tread carefully.”
It was a bluff, but I wasn’t going to put myself at his mercy. He was infected and had to be destroyed. Once Annalise found out, she’d pinch his fat head off.
But was Emmett an underling? The secret source of Charlie Three’s seizures? Or was he another victim?
Emmett glared at me and backed toward the door, his hand on his weapon. I just smiled at him. He left.
I sat for a moment, thinking about Cynthia, the mayor, and Cabot. Was Cynthia in on it with her brother and Emmett? Was Farleton in on it, too? Maybe Cabot was trying to put a stop to the deaths. It was something to think about.
I walked back to the waiting room. Cynthia was still sitting on the plastic couch. I was startled to see Annalise on the other side of the room, incongruous in her oversized fireman’s jacket, steel-toed boots, and tattered pants. For one absurd moment, I thought she’d come to be treated for her burned hands.
Cynthia stood when she saw me. “Was he decent to you?”
“He was fine.”
She rubbed her hands on her pants, looking uncomfortable. She wanted me to keep her company, but Annalise was already moving toward me. Cynthia sat again. Annalise took my elbow and led me down the hall out of earshot.
“What have you been doing?” she asked.
“Making enemies. Friends, too. The chief of—”
“That girl said you saved her life,” Annalise interrupted. “Is that true? Who is she?”
It seemed funny that Annalise was calling Cynthia a girl. Cynthia looked to be six or eight years older, but looks can be deceiving. “Sure, it’s true. And she’s Cynthia Hammer, sister to Charles Hammer the Third. She’s the one who was following us in the SUV.”
Annalise glanced back at Cynthia, making sure she was still on the couch. “I want you to fuck her,” she said. “Then find out everything you can, especially where her brother is. I can’t track him down.”
“You’re a real class act, boss.”
“Just do it. I have work to do in the morgue.”
She turned on her heel and stalked away. I wondered again how many dead bodies she had seen, and how long it had taken her to become what she was.
And she hadn’t even given me a chance to tell her about the predator in Emmett.
I ran into the hall, calling her name. She stopped and turned toward me. A passing nurse shushed me forcefully.
“What is it?” Annalise asked.
“Predator,” I said, my voice low. She tensed and leaned toward me. I had her attention. “Inside Emmett Dubois. I don’t know what it is, but I’d guess his brothers are infected, too.”
“How do you know this?”
I removed the scrap of wood from the inside of my jacket. She frowned and took it from me.
“Did he see this?” she asked, holding up the slowly moving design.
“Yep.”
Annalise nodded and pocketed the scrap of wood.
“You have your next assignment,” she said, and walked toward the elevators.
I went back to Cynthia. She was, apparently, my next assignment. Spending the night with her wasn’t the worst thing that could happen, but I didn’t like that Annalise had ordered me to do it. I didn’t even like the idea that she would know. It was creepy. I sat a little farther away from Cynthia than I had before.
“Is that your wife?” Cynthia asked. “Your girlfriend?”
I was honestly confused for a moment. “Who?”
“That redhead. The one you were just talking to.”
I laughed. “Sorry,” I said. “But that’s funny. She’s actually my boss, and she hates my guts.”
“Oh.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m glad she’s not your girlfriend.”
That was my cue to say something smooth. Before I could think of something, the door to Frank’s room opened and Miriam stepped out.
“Are you Ray?” she asked me.
I stood. “I am. Is there something I can do?”
“He wants to talk to you.” Her lips were pressed together in disapproval. She pointedly did not look at Cynthia.
I moved toward her and the door. “Is he well enough for that?”
“No, he isn’t. The gunshot wound was minor, but he had a heart attack in the ambulance. The surgeon is on his way to the hospital now. But he insists on speaking to you.”
“I’ll be quick,” I said, and went into the room. She shut the door behind me, remaining in the hall.
Frank lay in the hospital bed, tubes running out of his nose. Peter Lemly stood by the side of the bed, and another man stood beside him. He must have arrived during my interrogation, because I didn’t recognize him. He was tall, straight, and serene, with graying hair carefully styled. He was the third of the four men who had met with Emmett Dubois beside the van when I saw Charles have a seizure. He turned toward me without meeting my gaze, and I saw that he was wearing a clerical collar.
It made sense for the reverend to be there. But I didn’t understand why Lemly was in the room.
“We meet again,” Frank said. His voice was hoarse and weak.
“Let’s do it without the ambulance next time,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
He gasped between breaths. “I wanted to thank you.”
“Forget about it. Relax. You’re going to undo all my hard work.”
Miriam had entered the room just in time to catch that last word. She narrowed her eyes at me. No one else seemed to care. Ah, well, I’m the bane of respectable women everywhere.
“Anything I can do for you,” the mayor said.
“When you’re stronger, I want to talk about Hammer Bay.”
“He needs his rest,” Miriam said.
“Of course.” I backed toward the door. I was trying to think of a way to compliment him, to tell him, in front of his wife and a reporter, that I thought he was a damn brave man, but he spoke before I could.
“Hammer Bay,” he said. His voice was low and a little angry. “My town. So rotten and corrupt. It’s time I did something about it.”
Miriam glared at me. Peter Lemly lunged forward, his tape recorder in hand. “Would you repeat that, Uncle Frank?”
Miriam snatched up a clipboard and thumped Peter on the top of his head. He wasn’t deterred. The mayor began to say something else, but the reverend grabbed Peter’s elbow and steered him out of the room after me. Within a couple of seconds, we were both out in the hall.
Cynthia was not sitting on the couch. She wasn’t anywhere in the hall that I could see. Had she stepped out for a second, or had Miriam shooed her away while I was in Frank’s room?
“Did you hear what the mayor just said?” Peter asked me. The door closed behind us. “Did you hear?”
“I heard that the mayor is your uncle,” I said.
“Never mind that.” He paced the hall. “The mayor is going to fight corruption in this town.” He sounded excited, as though he was in a thirties gangster movie.
“Tell me about the town.”
“It’s pretty straightforward,” he said. He was a guy who loved an audience. “The Hammers control the jobs. They’re the first family around here, and they’ve always had a nose for the next thing. The next move to make. Until Cabot, that is.
“The Dubois brothers keep the peace, maybe a little too much. And lately they run a protection racket. I’ve been trying to get someone in town to go on the record about this, but no one will.”
“Not since Stan, the bartender.”
“How did you know about Stan Koch? He was supposed to bring me a bunch of records showing how much he’d been paying to Wiley Dubois over the years, but he was killed.”
“Attacked by wild dogs.”
“There really aren’t a lot of dogs in town. Never have been. Someone gets a dog, it barks all night and all day, and within a couple of weeks it vanishes. That was a dull story to track down, let me tell you.”
“The Hammers and the Dubois brothers. Is that it?”
“There’s the reverend in there. Thomas Wilson. His church is the largest in town. There is a small Catholic church behind the Bartells Pharmacy, and there are some folks who speak the language of the angels in living room services, but Wilson’s is the biggest. He doesn’t do much, though. He cares about souls, not works.”
“Who else?”
“I guess Phyllis Henstrick. She runs the vice, and some of the jobs, too. When business is good, her boys build and fix. When it’s bad they get a little something from the whore house. A whore house is pretty recession-proof. That’s pretty much everyone.”
“What about drugs? There are always drugs.”
“Sure, there’s a little weed to be had here and there. No one much cares about that. Everything else, the Dubois brothers have some trick where they hunt them down.”
“They take them over?”
“Actually, no. Their mama had a little trouble with pills back in the day. Mama’s little helper, if you know what I mean. She cracked up their car, killing herself and their little sister. They don’t much like drugs. When someone goes into the woods with a trailer to start up a meth lab, they don’t come back. They just disappear, and Emmett drops by to give their friends little warnings. You know what I mean?”
“Subtle things, under the guise of investigating the disappearance, right?”
“You do know what I mean. So, is Hammer Bay Toys moving its manufacturing overseas?”
“If I wanted to talk to Charles Hammer the Third after business hours, where would I find him?”
“Probably at his home.”
“And where’s that?”
“Oh, no. We’re protective of our patrons around here, Mr. Lilly. You’re going to have a hard time with those sorts of questions.”
“What if I ask about his seizures?”
“The Hammer family, er, condition is a private affair, which means the whole town knows about it. Not that there’s anything to tell. Now, is Hammer Bay Toys moving its manufacturing overseas?”
“No comment.”
“Oh, come on! I just laid out the whole town for you, and you don’t pay me back?
“I have something for you. How much do you know about the shooting at the Hammer place?”
“Cabot took a shot at his niece after they argued about the family business. He hit Frank instead. You coldcocked him and saved them both.”
“Not quite true,” I said. “The truth is, the mayor saw the gun and stepped in front of Cynthia, protecting her. He stepped in the path of the bullet without even thinking about his own safety. Sure, I slugged Cabot, but I was standing right next to him when he came in. I don’t think he even realized I was there. And I didn’t really save anyone; Cabot’s gun came apart after one shot. Frank is the real hero.”
“Is this true?”
“Ask Cynthia.”
“Don’t think I won’t. What else?”
“First, don’t put anything in the paper about the mayor and Emmett Dubois. Not yet. Give Frank a chance to recover and prepare for the fight.”
“He’s had three terms to prepare for a fight.”
“If you publish too soon—”
“I hear you. Anything else?”
“Leave town. Go to Seattle and sign on with a big daily. Or a weekly. But go. This town is dead already.”
“So it’s true, then? The jobs are going to China?”
“I’m not kidding. It’s time to leave Hammer Bay while you still can.”
“Pft.” He waved me off. “I’m not giving up on my town.”
The door to Frank’s room opened and Rev. Wilson stepped out. He managed to look down at us without actually looking at us. “I wonder if it would be possible,” he said, his tone stuffy and superior, “for you to converse elsewhere. These rooms are not soundproof, you know.”
Peter wedged his bulk between the reverend and me. “Are you going to support the mayor in his fight against corruption?”
“The mayor is in a terribly weakened condition. He won’t be fighting anything or anyone for quite a while. It would be irresponsible for you to claim otherwise.” He turned to me, glancing at me briefly before turning his eyes to the side. “And why are you still here?”
That was a good question. I walked away while Peter tried to get a statement from the reverend about what he was already calling the mayor’s “new initiative.”
I walked to the elevator. Beside it was a hospital directory, which told me that the morgue was in the basement. I entered the elevator and pressed the button. Cynthia hadn’t returned, so I decided to stick close to my boss.
Why was Annalise in the morgue? I hoped it had something to do with Karoly Lem. I didn’t want to go down there and see the corpse of someone I knew.
The basement was practically a ghost town. I wandered through the halls, looking for a sign that would point the way. Eventually, I found one. I followed the arrows.
I expected gray paint on the walls and rows of metal tables with bodies lying on them. I was glad to be wrong. What I found was a small reception desk in a little waiting room. Annalise stood beside the desk, filling in a form on a clipboard with her sharp, jagged writing. Her face was pale and her thin lips were white. She had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Opposite her was a morose-looking woman with nothing to do but watch.
“Someone will contact you about the body,” Annalise said as she handed over the clipboard. The woman accepted it and slunk through the door behind the desk. She was gone.
Annalise hefted a blue canvas bag from the edge of the counter. She winced. Then she turned to me.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Karoly’s things. What are you doing here? I gave you a job to do.”
“While I was looking for a club to hit her over the head with, she slipped away. I’ll have to drag her back to my cave some other time.”
She scowled at me. I saw something in her expression I hadn’t seen before. She looked vulnerable.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I said, amazed that I was genuinely worried. “How bad are your hands?”
She walked around me toward the doors, stuck her hands into the handles, and sucked air through her teeth. She was hurting. Bad.
I pulled the doors open for her. She didn’t like receiving my help, but she didn’t have a choice.
We walked up the hall together, turned a few corners, and pushed through a couple of doors. I had no idea where we were going. I decided to change the subject. “Did you find out what Karoly’s message was?”
“I have his laptop in here,” she said. “I’ll read through it when we get back to the room.”
“They let you have his laptop?”
“They searched it and didn’t find anything. Who picked you up in the van?”
“Saw that, did you? Thanks for getting me out of trouble, boss. They worked for a player I haven’t met yet: Henstrick, the woman who runs a construction firm and a brothel.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, stick with the job I already gave you.”
“I didn’t say I … forget it.” She stared at the floor as we walked. I wondered how well she knew Karoly, and how hard she was going to grieve for him, if at all. “While I was in the Hammers’ house, I saw a picture—”
“I have an idea,” she interrupted. “Go to the parking garage and get the van. I’ll wait out front for you.”
The look she gave me was angry and dangerous. Her face was paler and more sunken than before. I backed off. She held out the blue canvas bag, and I took it, being careful not to brush it up against her injured hands. She stalked away.
My life would become a lot easier if she were killed here in Hammer Bay. At least, I assumed it would. Maybe, when a peer in the society died, her wooden man was killed, too, like a pharaoh’s slaves. Maybe the wooden man was reassigned to another peer, or traded around like a punk.
Or maybe they were cut loose. Maybe they were told to go away and not come back.
It sounded thin, but even so I didn’t want anything to happen to Annalise. She hated me and would probably engineer my death, but the power she had was fascinating.
And I liked her.
Christ, I needed to get laid.
She hit a metal panel on the wall with her elbow, and the double doors in front of her opened. She stepped through, and the doors closed behind her.
I hustled back up the hall and reentered the morgue. I wanted a look at that clipboard Annalise had filled out. I wanted to see if it had an address on it, or a phone number. I wanted anything that I could use to track down some information on her or the Twenty Palace Society.
The reception area was empty. I rang the little bell on the counter. No one came. I rang again. I was all alone with the cracked plastic chairs and the slowly ticking clock.
I set the canvas bag on the floor. I’d seen the woman carry Annalise’s clipboard into the back, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t brought it out again. I leaned over the counter and searched. There was an outdated computer, a steaming cup of coffee, a small collection of Pez dispensers, and a big framed picture of some sort of picnic. There was no form clipboard.
I vaulted over the counter and shoved the chair under the desk. There were file drawers below, but I didn’t go for them yet. I figured that I’d have better odds in the back, and I had to do this quickly, before Annalise noticed the delay.
I laid my hand against the door. If there were metal tables and corpses on the other side of this door, I hoped they’d be covered with a nice, big cloth.
I pushed the door open.
The first thing I thought was: That body should be on a table, not the floor. Then I noticed a pool of blood slowly creeping toward me.
It was the morgue attendant, of course. Her throat was a raw, red mess, but her face looked utterly peaceful.
There were, indeed, tables in here. Two of them had sheet-covered bodies on top. I saw a phone on the wall and decided not to use it.
I couldn’t see the clipboard anywhere.
On a table in the corner of the room I saw a pile of dark blue clothes set beside a pair of shiny black shoes.
There was a holster and pistol on top of the pile. Cop clothes.
The blood had almost touched my shoe. I stepped back.
From somewhere in the room I heard a low growl.