4

Agent Salazar was down on the sidewalk, a pool of blood spreading out beneath him. I pulled out my grem-phone and dialed 911. The device sputtered, sparked, then fell to pieces in my hand. I cursed, but no sooner had the last modified toy car tire stopped rolling then I heard the sirens in the distance. Apparently, my deal with the Gremlin only covered three calls.

“Colin, we really need to go.”

My dark voice was right.

“I usually am.”

I stayed anyway. I had become associated with a lot of unpleasant things in recent weeks. I needed penance, even if only for psychological reasons. I grabbed Salazar’s hand and squeezed it. “Come on, buddy, hang in there. The cavalry’s on its way.”

I thought he was unconscious, but his eyes opened and looked at me. “Thank you.”

The next hour was a blur of names and faces. For all the officers, agents, paramedics, and special investigators I met, I don’t really remember any of them. Unlike in my vagabond days, they all seemed to believe I was one of the good guys. They respected that I had stayed with the downed agent until help arrived…but they also respected my employer once his name came up. I answered their questions (sans any reference to magic or pocket flamethrowers), but they seemed more interested in running forensics on the scorched truck, two bodies, and the strange acidic slime puddle in the middle of the parking lot than in talking to me.

“Fisher.” I recognized that voice immediately.

Her eyes were chestnut brown this time, not the lake water blue I’d seen in the Oklahoma interrogation room. A quick glimpse at her aura revealed no supernatural skin-riders. “Agent Devereaux.”

She stood beside me and watched the technicians at work. “I told him coming to see you was a bad idea. I’ll admit this wasn’t exactly what I was worried about, but I knew it was a bad idea. Everything involving you is a bad idea.”

I nodded, uncertain of what to say. I didn’t know Rick Salazar well, but I had intuitively liked him. It didn’t help that I had no idea what she did or didn’t remember of our past conversation.

We stood there in silence. At last, she gave up and asked the question I’d been dreading for the last hour. “Were they trying to kill you or him?”

I went with my gut. “Me, I think.”

“Yeah, me too.” Her reply surprised me. “It’ll be a tough sell. Most of the locals are already committed to calling it an attempted cop killing. Hard to blame them. I wouldn’t want to investigate anything involving Valente International, either.”

I didn’t feel like talking. Agent Devereaux eventually continued. “Do you have it taken care of? Will Valente make sure the people responsible pay?”

I nodded. “If he doesn’t, I will.”

More silence followed before I asked, “What about Salazar? Is he going to make it?”

“Early reports, the docs think he has a chance. He caught both shots in the belly, well away from heart and spine. Still...”

“Still.” I glanced around the crowded parking lot. “You want to go for a walk? My car’s trapped inside the crime scene tape.”

I could tell she wanted to remind me I was a suspected serial killer, but instead she nodded. “What’s on your mind?”

I waited till we were comfortably away from the buzz of the crowd before answering. “I want to know what Salazar was looking for. I feel a little responsible for what happened to him.”

“I was hoping you’d tell me. Whatever it was, he wasn’t sharing with the rest of the team. Something about Oklahoma was gnawing at him…maybe in spite of, or more likely because of, the orders from on high to file the deaths under unsolved and move along.”

“The Old Ways massacre and the animal-like bite marks. He showed me a few pictures, but that’s as far as we got before the attack.” That was what I started to say, before I dodged a silenced bullet via intuition, but that was way too weird, even for me to accept. How had I known it was coming? And why didn’t I instinctively try to pull Salazar out of the way too?

“Yeah, that was the odd one. Three gunshot victims, fifty-seven heartless, frozen bodies. Our guy profiles as a lone killer, but there’s no way one person did all that. It was almost like one of those religious cult suicides. But why that MO?” I could feel her eyes digging into me, as if the answers were written just beneath my skin.

“No, no, NO.”

“Too late, I’ve made up my mind. It’s penance and I’m doing it.”

“Doesn’t that have to be assigned by a priest or something?”

Before I could talk myself out of it, I opened my mouth. “Look, he seemed to think I knew what happened. I don’t, at least not all of it, but if you send me his files on it, I’ll see if I can’t fill in the gaps. I think I can name the killer to you, maybe even prove it to your satisfaction, but I doubt it will be anything you can type up in a report.”

She looked stunned. “Are you offering to turn state’s evidence against Lucien Valente?”

“Not exactly. Just get me Salazar’s file and I’ll see what I can do.” I was being a Good Samaritan, but I was also curious as to what exactly had happened at the Old Ways commune after Veruca and I had left. Thinking back on all the very young and very old living there, I could see how they would be easy pickings for an angry wendigo. But...

“Why so many? Why didn’t they run?”

“Exactly.”