The room was dark and cold and dank. A cellar or something underground. It probably smelt like black fungus, Kit had been in a few places like this that did, but she couldn't quite...there was something heavy, across her throat. It was not helping...
"O'Malley darling? O'Malley? Kit!"
Kit opened one eye. "Did you call me darling?" she smiled. "And why can't I breathe?"
"I think there's something coming between us," Alex said.
"Glurrp."
"Oh Thistle! Will you get off my chest please," Kit said, pushing The Cat onto the bed behind her. Kit rolled onto her right side and rested her head on her arm on her pillow. "Is that better?" she asked Alex, who was lying in the mirror-image position, gazing at her.
"Much. Does she always do that?"
"What, sleep on my face?"
"No, come between you and, um, whoever's in the bed with you." Alex widened her eyes.
Kit ran her index finger along Alex's jaw and across her lips. "There's never been anyone in this bed for her to get jealous of," Kit replied. "Until now, that is." Clever little puss, she thought.
Alex looked puzzled rather than disbelieving. "What about whatshername? Sam?"
Kit couldn't have raised her eyebrows any higher if she tried. "You've got a good memory. You never even met her."
Without breaking eye contact, Alex tried to catch Kit's finger in her mouth. "No, but she might have been competition."
"Never," Kit shook her head. Ever!
"So, are you saying that Thistle didn't think this Sam was worthy of her jealousy," Alex asked, with a playful sparkle in her eyes, "or that Sam was never in this bed?"
"Yes," Kit replied, and then changed the subject. "Are you going to your work today, or are you going to trail around with me?"
"Is that an invitation to watch you work, or to stay here and play?" Alex ran her hand down Kit's bare back.
"Work," Kit pouted. "Unfortunately."
Alex smiled questioningly. "When we first met, O'Malley, you made a huge song and dance about how you work alone, and how you don't need amateurs tagging along screwing up the tagging along process."
"That's quite true, I did say that and I do work alone," Kit acknowledged. "But mine being, ordinarily, such a lonesome profession I am also - as you well know - easily persuaded, coerced or hoodwinked into accepting company."
"You mean you don't know how to say no."
"Yes," Kit said. "Also, in January when I said that to you, I thought that you didn't like me."
"And now?" Alex queried.
"And now, I'm thinking that you might like me," Kit smiled hopefully. "A little bit."
"A little bit," Alex nodded. "And then some."
The phone started ringing.
Kit used her index finger to push Alex's hair back behind her ear. "I think I like you very much," she stated. "But I'm going to answer the phone, because it's annoying."
Kit rolled over and snatched at the receiver. "O'Malley," she said. "Whoo-ah," she added, as Alex's hand slid from Kit's back to her front.
"Um? Are you the private eye?"
"Yes, I am the private eye."
"Well, where are you?"
"What do you mean where am I?"
"Well, I'm outside your office and there's no one here."
"Really? And who are you?"
"Crystal Blake."
"Crystal?" Kit repeated, giving Alex an incredulous look. "And why are you outside my office?"
"Because you gave Jack your card and I didn't kill him."
"Who said you did kill him?" Kit pulled a face that reflected Alex's look of amazement.
"The people on the radio. Look can I talk to you in person like?"
"Ah, yeah sure. Just wait there. I'm hanging up now though."
"Oh, right. Okay."
"Is that the Crystal-mantis?" Alex asked.
"Yep. She's downstairs and, get this, she didn't kill Jack." Kit rolled out of bed, then rolled back in again to kiss Alex four times, and then once again for luck. "I shall return," she said, then rolled onto the floor, picked up and pulled on her black track pants and rummaged through a pile of stuff for a windcheater.
"I'm going to ring my office and have Margaret cancel today," Alex announced, watching Kit get dressed. "I'd much rather follow you around town."
"Goody," Kit grinned. "I'll be back in a tick. Oh hey," she added, skidding to a stop in the doorway. "Can you find out the name of Douglas's client, the one who sent Carol to you?"
"I'll see what I can do. Don't be too long."
Kit ran down her hall, flashed past her lounge and down the inside stairs. She grabbed her office keys off their hook, won the small argument with her front door and, having got it open, gripped the dear-life railing and made her way carefully down to the ground floor.
Crystal Blake - sure, and I'm Elle McPherson, Kit thought - was pacing, in very high heels, very tight pants and a pale green angora jumper in front of the door to O'Malley Investigations.
"Morning Crystal," Kit said cheerily, coming up behind her to unlock the door.
Crystal jumped, said "at last!" and followed Kit inside, where she continued to pace.
"Have a seat, please Crystal, you can't afford to burn up any more calories."
"What? Oh," she said and sat down. "Look, the radio is saying I'm responsible for Jack. I'm bloody not. Really, I'm not."
Kit frowned in puzzlement. "I don't get it, how would the radio have got your name?"
"They haven't yet, but it's only a matter of time. All morning they've been saying that Jack died from road rage, but I swear he was alive when I left him."
"Blimey!" Kit said. "Were you in the green sports car?"
"No." Crystal got up, walked around her chair, and sat down again. "I was driving that god awful caddie. Thanks to you!"
Kit was lost; Crystal had quite possibly always been lost. "Back up Crystal, please. Start from the beginning."
Crystal took a deep breath. "Jack and I were going to go dancing at the Chevron last night. We'd had dinner and we were driving along - I was driving along - and there was this car that was tailgating us, you know crowding right on the bumper."
"Tailgating, right," Kit nodded. "A white sports car?"
"No. What's with the sports car? It was a bloody big Toorak tractor thing. It might have been green but it was so close it coulda been pink and white and I wouldn't have known. Anyway, because you had made me Jack's bloody designated driver, he was saying 'go left, go right you silly bitch, slow down, I thought you said could drive, go faster'.
"I kept shouting at him to shut up coz he was making me more nervous than the dickhead on my tail. But he had to keep yelling, 'left, left, lose the prick, watch out,' all that kinda stuff. So finally when we got to a row of shops, which were like open, I just pulled over, told him to shove his shitheap of a car up his bum, and I got out. No, I thumped him on the arm, and then I got out. I left him there, walked into a shop and called a taxi. Jack drove off himself, by himself, I swear."
"Have you told the police?"
"No, I'm telling you."
Like I give a shit, Kit thought. "Okay Crystal," she said, "first of all road rage usually refers to an altercation between the drivers of different cars."
Crystal blinked - three times. "What are you trying to say?"
"The term 'road rage' does not apply to an argument had by two people travelling in the same vehicle. It's not road rage if you're pissed off with the person in your own passenger seat. It doesn't matter what you disagree about or how angry you get, it's just an argument."
"But the radio's been saying...?"
Kit held up a calming hand. "Last I heard," she said, "the radio was saying that the police were looking for the driver of a sports car who, and which, may have run Jack's Cadillac off the road. You see the difference?"
"Yeah," Crystal said, although she didn't sound too sure.
"After you left Jack, did you find a green or white sports car and then chase Jack around the streets of Port Melbourne in it?"
"No," Crystal denied, slowly and with a frown. "Last time I saw him was in Clarendon Street, South Melbourne, I swear. And I don't know anything about a sports car."
Kit resisted the urge to pick up the phone and whack herself in the forehead; and there seemed little point in doing it to the stick insect. "Go home Crystal, you don't need to worry about this."
"You're sure?"
"I am almost positive," Kit said, trying to keep a straight face. "Give me your phone number, just in case, and I'll keep you posted. How's that? But you know, even if you'd stuck a meat cleaver in Jack's head it still wouldn't be classified as road rage. Murder - yes; but not road rage."
"Oh thank god," Crystal said handing Kit a business card. "But you'll still keep me posted?"
A Dream Come True was standing in her kitchen when Kit returned upstairs. Alex, dressed in one of Kit's oversized slouching-around-the-house shirts was half bent over investigating the contents of the fridge. Kit just stood and stared, her body doing the weird waterfall thing again; and then again again, because it wasn't until that moment that she realised how perfect a DCT could be if realised with all the right ingredients. This was not just a gorgeous woman in her shirt in her kitchen; it was Alex in her shirt, Alex in her kitchen, Alex full stop.
"Wow," Kit exclaimed.
"You're back, that didn't take long," Alex said, stepping back from the fridge.
"There wasn't much to work with," Kit explained.
Alex waved at the interior of the fridge. "Do you just keep this appliance in your kitchen to practice your echoes in, or do you sometimes use it for food?"
Kit pressed a finger to her lips. "Shh. It's actually a secret portal to another dimension."
Alex closed her eyes for a moment. "Does this other dimension have a good café?"
Kit brushed past Alex on her way to the coffee pot. "I'd suggest going to the bookshop café down Swan Street for breakfast if it didn't mean that you'd have to put more clothes on."
"Hey, I'll go like this if it means breakfast."
Kit caught Alex around the waist, then trailed kisses down between her breasts, which were barely and seductively revealed by the almost mostly open shirt. "Dressed like this, you are breakfast," she said.
Alex ran her hand through Kit's hair and moved forward against her mouth. "O'Malley?"
"Mmm?"
"If I don't have coffee soon and strong I shall be reduced to a catatonic state."
"Ooh, not good," Kit said, reluctantly doing up the buttons of her shirt on Alex, to avoid further temptation. She poured two cups of hot consciousness-raising elixir from the contraption that she held to be the best invention on the planet: a coffee machine that turned itself on for your breakfast time. "So, did Margaret let you cancel today?"
"Barely," Alex smiled. "Oh, Douglas's client who referred Carol on to me is an Irene Sutton. I don't know her, Margaret couldn't or wouldn't tell me anything else, and Douglas is not due in until this afternoon. What did the Crystal bug have to say for herself?"
"That it was my fault that Jack had been making her drive around town so he could drink; that they were being tailgated by a Range Rover or something, not a sports car; that Jack was back seat driving, loudly and abusively; and that, before getting out and leaving him to drive himself, she'd thumped him in the arm told him to stick his car where the sun don't shine. Oh, and that she didn't kill him."
"Now why would anyone think she had?
"Apart from the fact that some woman sooner or later was bound to come to her senses?"
"Yeah."
"She thinks her hissy fit in Jack's Cadillac constitutes road rage."
"As you would," Alex said, thoughtfully. "But, O'Malley, you may be on to something. What if Jack's fatal accident wasn't caused by a random road rager. What if one of Jack's women did run him off the road?"
Kit put on her definitely worthy of consideration and extrapolation face. "That's a lot of women to consider, Alex. Of the three I've met - Crystal, Paula and Sandra - I'd have to say that the most likely candidate would be...any one of them."
"Or maybe Erin's right and it was Mercury," Alex suggested.
"Or a complete stranger," Kit added.
"Or Jack was the one suffering the rage, until he lost control of his own motor car."
"Hold the presses!" Kit tapped the bench. "I forgot, I mean I just remembered a potential possibility for the list of aggrieved sheilas."
Alex threw up her hands in an 'of course' gesture. "The wife," she said.
"Oh. That makes two possibilities. But I was thinking of Virginia Walsh."
"We discussed this last night, Kit," Alex said. "Just because you saw her get in the OZ-ONE 4 car yesterday, doesn't mean it was her you saw delivering Jack to his shop on Friday morning. And, even if that was her on Friday, it doesn't mean Jack's been lifting his leg over her too. Maybe Jack is, was an AusFirst member or patron. He certainly had the relevant personal credentials."
"I'm glad you won't let me jump to conclusions," Kit smiled. "But the thing about conclusions that can be jumped to, is that they must in fact be possible or they wouldn't be in reach."
"I'm sure that statement makes sense in someone's universe, O'Malley."
"Crystal Arthropod said she and Jack were being tailgated by a large 4WD that may have been green. And what colour are the AusFirst vehicles?" Kit flipped her hands over. "Green."
"May have been green?"
"Or pink and white," Kit said softly. "Irene Sutton you say," she said, changing the subject. "Well your Margaret mightn't be able to tell us who she is, but Carol should be able to."
"Good thinking. But why is it that we need to know - exactly?"
"I'm not sure, Alex. No reason in particular, it's just that I find it odd that on the same day she comes to you, not Douglas who is this Irene's preferred legal person, she presents you with a problem that lands her on my doorstep."
"That's called networking, darling."
"Yes," Kit nodded, squirming on her stool as the top spill of her waterfall threatened to overflow again. "But why you? Why me? Why now? How come Carol Webster knows Jack and Rebecca Jones knows Jack? How come Jack knows Paula and Paula knows Rebecca? How am I going to figure this out and do you know the way to San José?"
Alex laughed. "You don't really think for one minute that your two separate case are related by anything more than sheer coincidence?"
"No," Kit sighed. "But it's all so weird. So I'm going to follow up on all the weird until I find something sensible." Kit headed into her office, and opened her teledex to look up Carol Webster's home number. "By the way, did you call me darling?" she asked, and then nearly spilt her coffee in surprise as the phone rang just as she put her hand on the receiver.
"O'Malley," she snapped.
"Thank my Aunt Jemima's socks you're there!"
"I thought you'd gone back to swearing, Erin honey."
"I have. It's just that I'm not sure what my present company thinks of bad language and I don't want to piss, I mean annoy them any more than I have to, and I really think O'Malley that I need your help to get out of here because I tried Jon but he's out on a job and I don't think I want to be here any more."
"Where are you?"
"I'm in David Dukes' kitchen and I don't like the look of things."
"What things and where is David?"
"The things in his kitchen, which seem to have been thrown madly in all directions, and the things outside which won't let me out, and I don't know where David is."
"Was he there when you got there?"
"No, O'Malley. That's why I don't know where he is now."
"And what's outside, Erin?" Kit asked, already with an inkling of what her answer would be.
"Athena and Apollo and that humungous black boy."
"Poseidon?"
"That's the one. O'Malley can you come get me please?"
"Alex and I will be there in fifteen minutes, Erin." Kit couldn't resist it, "Don't go anywhere."
"Ha-ha, fucking ha! Oh, sorry boys and girls, your worshipfulnesses. Please hurry Kit, and bring a sacrifice."
"My goodness," Alex commented twenty minutes later as Kit maneuvered the pits and cauldrons of Mulberry Lane like an old hand. "We should be in a little country town - fifty years ago."
"The Dukes' homestead, beyond them thar trees," Kit said, parking her car under the old oak tree, "does little to bring that impression up to date."
Kit wondered, as she stood at the gate contemplating her immediate future, whether she was being in the least bit sensible or downright stupid, okay - both, in venturing onto David's property if he obviously wasn't there to control or lock away the Hounds of Olympus.
"I think you should stay here, Alex," she suggested.
"O'Malley, please don't ask me along for the ride and then tell me it's safer to sit in the car."
"But it is!" Kit insisted. "And also, if we both get stuck in there who's going to go for help?"
"We'll use the phone, like Erin did."
"Erin might be dog food by now," Kit muttered, making a flawed-and-she-knew-it judgement call to open the gate. Alex followed her in.
"If we walk casually in a non threatening and definitely not scared witless manner," Alex said quietly, "the nice doggies will be less likely to rip our throats out."
"You're just saying that to make me feel better, I can tell," Kit said, glancing ahead to David's kitchen house, where Poseidon, Apollo and Athena stood like sentries by the wire screen door.
"No, I'm not," Alex was saying cheerily, "I've heard it's quite tru-oh-my-god!"
Kit and Alex stopped slowed to a stop, and tried their damnedest to appear non-threateningly nonchalant as five of the Dukes' deities, led by Juno, rounded the corner of the nearest cottage at top dog speed, with lips curled, snarling and barking...
There's no time like the present, Kit thought.
Growling, drooling, and ready to lunge...
"Stand, guys."
Juno pranced to a halt, the other four dogs forming a strategic V behind her, and eyed the intruders with curious suspicion.
"Well I'm amazed," Alex noted, letting go of her breath but not Kit's arm. "And impressed."
"That makes two of us," Kit said. "S'okay Juno," she added to the queen of the dogs, and then to Alex, "I didn't actually know whether that would work. Awfully glad it did."
Juno cocked her head and the other four dogs took one step forward.
"Ditto that, with bells on," Alex said softly, "but now what?"
"Just follow me, slowly and quietly," Kit said. She held her hand out, fingers tucked under, to Juno. "Remember me, Juno," she said in a soothing tone. "Friends, okay. David - remember? Friends, okay. Good girl."
Juno, alone, stepped up to Kit and sniffed her offered hand then nodded - well, it looked like a nod - and allowed Kit to scratch her head. Juno accepted Alex's offer of friendship, or truce.
"Oh yes, good girl Juno, good girl," Kit praised. "Can we come in then? You run on."
Juno's forward scouts ran off around the cottage again, but she escorted Kit and Alex all the way up the rest of the driveway by running this way and that but, strangely, with little enthusiasm.
"I don't believe this Kit," Alex said. "You've got some kind of knack with dogs."
"No," Kit said. "I just remember what David did and said, and hoped like hell it would work for us. Believe me it depended entirely on Juno remembering who I was. She does seem a bit listless though, so maybe she's only a really good watchdog when he's here to make sure she is, or he's here for her to protect."
Poseidon bounded off the veranda to show them he meant business, but immediately deferred to Juno's single bark. Athena and Apollo then moved away from the door to allow them passage.
"Truly amazing, Alex said, "unless of course this is a plot to get us all inside."
"Erin?" Kit called out. "You still in there?"
"No, sweetie, I went snorkeling on the Barrier Reef. You really should come in and take at look at this."
Kit opened the screen door and entered the mess that had been David Dukes' dingy but neat kitchen. The fridge was open, its contents tipped all over the floor; recipe books, canisters and everything else that had been on the benches around the sink had been opened, ripped and thrown around; two of the wooden kitchen chairs weren't anymore, and the leg off one of them had been stabbed into the pantry cupboard.
In the midst of this disaster area sat Erin Carmody, fearless investigative journalist, bailed into the corner of the couch by a smiling black and white mongrel.
"Is he keeping you company, or keeping you in your place, Erin?" Kit asked politely.
"If the guy whose house this is wasn't here, why did you come inside?" Alex asked, pleasantly.
"And I do hope you're not going to claim that the dogs wrecked the room so they could blame it on you later," Kit smiled.
"Make with the jokes, why don't you," Erin said through he clenched teeth. "But can you please get Smiley-mutt here away from me."
"Stand down," Kit said. The dog kept grinning - at Erin. "Yo dog - hop down."
"Yo dog?" Alex said. "You had better luck outside."
"I knew her name." Kit held up her special 'I know' finger, pushed the door open and called Juno inside. "Want to help us out, please, Juno?"
"Erin," Alex hissed. "What are you doing?"
"Smiley-mutt has a tag, I'm trying to see his name."
"Wait, I remember," Kit said. "Lie down - peace."
Smiley-mutt leapt onto the floor and padded over to Juno, who nodded. Yes, Kit thought, I'm not imagining things, that was definitely a nod.
Erin hadn't moved. Erin was still sitting in the corner of the couch wearing a strange expression. Granted it was a different strange expression, but...
"Erin, are you paralysed?" Kit asked.
"M... Mercury," Erin stammered waving a finger in the general direction of most things in the room.
"Who? Where?" Kit asked, glancing there and back again.
"Him, there, the smiley-mutt - his name is Mercury."
"So?" Alex said. "Don't they all have names like Mercury and Athena?"
"Oh shit!" Kit declared. "I do believe Erin, that we have been well and truly sucked in, chewed up and spat out. That is the last time I believe a guy just because he offers me a coffee."
"And I really hate it when I like someone who turns out to be a liar," Erin pouted.
"Fill me in please," Alex pleaded. "Second on the scene here doesn't have a clue what you two are on about."
"David Dukes told us he didn't have a Mercury in his family," Kit explained. She glanced at the screen door, the exit, just to make sure that Alex hadn't been right about David's mongrel pack herding them into an enclosure. Everything seemed normal. Juno, sitting beside her, almost wagged her stumpy tail at Kit although her attention was primarily focussed out the door and down the drive.
"Righto, time to leave," Alex decided, making gathering motions with her arms. "Come on kids, we're out of here."
"We have to find David bloody Dukes," Erin snarled. "I want to give him a piece of my mind."
"Are you mad, Erin?" Alex asked. "What if he is Mercury and he did kill Jack Higgins?"
"What?" Erin demanded. "Do you know something I don't know? Again, O'Malley."
"Don't look at me, it was your theory," Kit shrugged. "Although, the media seem to have picked up on it, possibly because you gave the idea to Marek, who passed it on to only-the-gods know how many cops and therefore journos..."
"We get the picture, honey," Alex said, linking her arm through Kit's. "Can we go now please?"
"Alex is right, let's scram," Erin agreed. "It's not a good plan to hang around waiting for a possible road raging murderer to return from the supermarket, or wherever he is, and run us down with his, with his shopping trolley."
"No," Kit shook her head. "You were right, Erin. We do need to find David."
"Why?" Alex queried. "Let's just call the police, that's what they're for."
"There are two reasons we have to find him," Kit said. "First, and most important, I do not want to be the bunny who calls in the SOGGIES to discover that the only Mercury in cooee of this place is a grinning dog. Second, look at this room. Even if David is Mercury, I doubt he did this to his own kitchen."
"Sloggies?" Alex said.
"S-O-G, Special Operations Group," Erin explained. "Like a SWAT team," she added and then she and Alex performed a silent consultation that mostly involved eyebrow raising and lip pursing.
"Good," Kit smiled, without waiting for their affirmative response. "Erin, did you only get to sticky beak in this room before you were bailed up or had you searched the whole cottage."
"There's no one here but us mice," Erin admitted sheepishly. "And there's only two other rooms. The bathroom's through there," she said, pointing at the door near the couch she'd been on, "and there's a large bedroom, or bunk room rather, in there," she waved at the door opposite the front door.
"Okay you lot, where's your Dad?" Kit said to the dogs, as she opened the screen door and crowded out onto the veranda with Juno and Mercury. Apollo, Poseidon and Athena were sitting exactly where Juno, it seemed, had told them to stay.
Kit scanned the yard, the verandas around the other cottages and the shadows in between for any signs of a person of the human variety who might be trying not to be seen. When Alex and Erin joined Kit on the veranda, Apollo took off down the drive by himself.
"Juno and her bunch came from where that dog just went," Alex stated.
"That's the cottage that David said he sleeps in," Erin reminded Kit.
Kit dropped her hand gently to pat Juno on the head. "Juno. Where's David? Find David, girl."
Juno ran ahead, returned to Kit, then ran further ahead before coming back. She escorted them in this way across the yard to the far cottage on the right; or the first on the left, if one was on their way in to Chez Dukes.
Kit opened the rickety screen door and knocked on the solid one. She waited, listened and then thumped again, loudly. "David? Are you in there, David? It's Kit O'Malley, can I come in?"
"No one home," Alex noted.
"No one answering," Kit smiled at her. "There is a difference." Kit tried the handle, which turned. She pushed the door open a crack and called out again but there was still no response. She could now, however, hear a TV or radio going in the next room.
"Um, Kit?" Alex said nervously.
"It's okay Alex."
"Um, Kit," Erin said.
Kit turned to find that ten of David's dogs had formed a semi-circle behind them in the yard. Juno was nudging her leg in an effort to get inside, so that meant there were two dogs not accounted for: Hera, who Kit hadn't spotted at all; and Apollo who'd been relieved of guard duty on Erin.
"I really don't like this any more," Erin said.
"Okay, we'll call in the cavalry," Kit agreed but, as she went to shut the door, Juno changed her mind back again for her by pushing past her into the cottage. As Kit still had hold of the handle it was Juno's push and her automatic pull-back that helped the door to whack her in the head.
Alex and Erin laughed, of course, but in the split second view she'd had of the interior, Kit knew there was indeed more than one Mercury around these here parts.
She pushed the door open again and found Juno and, the missing-until-now, Hera scratching at the door into the bedroom. Kit, with Alex and Erin right on her heels, entered a kitchen sitting room much like the one in the other cottage, except this one had no fridge or stove.
Apart from the lack of appliances, the main difference in the décor was the feature wall to their right. Covered in cork tiles, the huge pinboard wall was in turn covered by photos - hundreds of photos of Jack Higgins, Carter Walsh, Adam Goddard, and one or two other faces that Kit only vaguely recognised. Some had slashes of yellow or red paint across them, and some had been stuck with darts, in targets that had been drawn on heads and chests.
"Oh no, a loony-room," Erin whispered. "I never thought I'd get to see one of these in the flesh, and now that I have I realise I could have forgone the experience. This is creepy."
"Yeah, but where's Carol?" Alex asked softly. "There's no photos of Carol."
Kit glanced around the room, spotted an open tool box on the floor next to the table, and picked out a very large and heavy shifting spanner. "David," she called out. "Are you here?"
"Where are you going?" Alex demanded.
"I am going in there," Kit pointed to the closed door. "Please, please stay right here."
Kit moved cautiously across the space, hefting the wrench into a useful swinging position. She turned the handle slowly and opened the door just wide enough for the dogs to squeeze by. "David, mate? This is Kit O'Malley. Remember - the private investigator? Are you in there?"
There was no answer so Kit pushed the door a little further open, then took a precautionary step backwards. She did not want David, or anyone for that matter, taking her by surprise.
She could see that the PC, on a desk along the wall to her right, and a television, next to it in the far corner, were both on. Juno was now sitting beside the TV, looking from Kit to whatever it was that Hera and Apollo were staring fixedly at. Kit logged the question of how Apollo got into the room, for later consideration.
Forty-three shivers and a really bad feeling crawled up Kit's spine. She really did not want to go any further. But she swallowed, took a deep breath and held it, then stepped into the room.
David was lying sprawled in a half sitting position on the floor but up against the couch. His bloody hands lay upturned on his thighs and his head, with its gaping mouth and throat, was resting back on a box on the seat of the couch. David 'Mercury' Dukes was very, very dead and Kit could not remember ever seeing so much blood.
She backed out of the room and stood perfectly still, her hands hanging by her sides, while she swallowed repeatedly to keep down the bile.
"What's wrong, O'Malley?" Alex asked.
That's odd, Kit thought. Alex sounds like she's at the other end of a long, large metal pipe.
"Kit, what's in there?" Erin asked. Or maybe she said "Kit, that's not fair".
Shit, Shit, Kit swore silently, I do see dead people. She gave a short laugh, knowing that thought was in exceptionally poor taste, but recognising the hangman's humour for what it was - the sick joke kicking in at the appropriate inappropriate moment. Firm hands on Kit's shoulders, from behind, made her jump and drop the spanner. The noise brought her back from every past horror, to this one.
She shook her head and turned on the spot. "Do not go in there," she said.
"Why not?" Erin asked moving forward.
"Please Erin. Trust me, just this once, you really don't want to see what I've just seen."
Erin stopped and frowned. "I always trust you, Kit."
Kit smiled wanly then reached into her bum bag, pulled out her mobile and handed it to Alex. "Could you ring Marek, on his mobile. Tell him that I don't care what he's doing, I need him here yesterday."
"What are you going to do?"
"I have to go back in there and try and get those dogs out of that room."
"Oh my god," Erin exclaimed. "The dogs didn't...?"
"Oh no," Kit shook her head. "It was a human animal that denied David Dukes his future."