Chapter 17
The squad room looked a lot like the ones I’d seen on TV, although somewhat smaller. The flooring was tile, the lighting fluorescent, the desks utilitarian steel, each holding a computer terminal. It would have been hard to make the room more drab. Duggan was one of two detectives there. He was in shirt sleeves, his tie loosened around his neck.
“Miss Wilde,” Duggan said, looking up as I approached his desk, Merlin trailing behind me. I’d asked the sorcerer to change into the jeans and shirt Tilly had given him, but he’d refused. Comfort meant more to him than fitting in. A sentiment to be applauded if he were a teenager, but problematic, since we didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to him. I worried about the questions his appearance would raise. Where did he come from? Was he destitute? Homeless? Crazy?
“Good afternoon, Detective,” I replied.
Duggan was frowning in Merlin’s direction. “Is he with you?” He seemed poised to leap over the desk and muscle him outside if I denied any connection to him.
“Yes, he is.” I enjoyed watching the detective’s expression try to accommodate to this unexpected news.
“Relative?” he asked, no doubt thinking that had to be the reason I was in the company of an elderly man who looked like a vagabond.
“His name is Merlin,” I said to skirt the issue. Telling the detective that I didn’t know, would only lead to a round of twenty questions and a series of lies that would eventually trip me up. “He’s from England,” I added. “Merlin this is Detective Duggan.”
Duggan extended his hand, looking like he’d prefer to shake hands with a serial killer. Merlin bowed slightly from the waist, which left the detective in an awkward position with his arm in midair. I’d personally taught Merlin that a handshake was the norm in our society, so I knew he was having a little fun at Duggan’s expense. I shot him a glare, which he pretended not to notice.
“Is there a place we can talk in private?” I asked Duggan.
“Yeah, I suppose,” he said grudgingly, letting his hand fall to his side. Merlin and I followed him out of the squad room and down a narrow hall. He stopped at the first open door, with the lettering INTERROGATION ROOM 1, turned on the light switch with the swipe of his palm and waited for us to file in. Compared to this room, the squad room positively sparkled. There was a table in the center with two chairs, all gray metal. I was surprised there wasn’t a naked light bulb suspended above the ensemble. Duggan told us to have a seat and ducked out long enough to locate another chair and drag it into the room. Opting to be contrary, Merlin eschewed the chair to pace around the small room as if there was something of interest to be found on the scuffed and dirt-smudged walls. Duggan sat down opposite me, arms crossed at his chest. “What can I do for you today, Miss Wilde?”
“It occurred to me that you might not know about the feud that was going on between Harkens and Silver, the dentist who shared the building with him. Given the fact that Harkens was murdered, I thought you might appreciate the heads-up.”
“Do you?” he said, not looking the least bit appreciative. “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I didn’t already know about that. Not to mention the fact that they both called us to complain about each other on a weekly basis. Curtis handled the calls, but the paperwork came across my desk too.”
“Sorry. I was trying to be a good citizen,” I murmured. “Didn’t mean to step on any toes.” It hadn’t occurred to me that Duggan might take offense at my input. He’d asked the public to call the hotline if they had information pertaining to the case. I almost said as much, but given his foul mood, I decided against it.
“Anything else you wanted to get off your chest?” Duggan asked, pointedly looking at his watch.
“Just that Silver told me he was at the bank at the time Harkens was killed. Of course I have no way to find out if that’s true or not.”
“Maybe you think I should deputize you, so you can poke your nose into more places where it doesn’t belong?” His face was as impassive as stone.
“No, of course not,” I replied, trying to remain polite in spite of his jabs. “May I ask if the bank corroborated his story?”
“Ask away, it’s a free country,” he said expansively, “but you ought to know that I have zero intentions of releasing that information at this time.”
“Well, I guess I should let you get back to work then,” I said, standing. I was getting dizzy from watching Merlin circle the room anyway. Why had I ever thought I could trick the detective into revealing whether or not the alibi panned out? Hubris, plain and simple. Duggan pushed his chair back from the table, the legs screeching across the tile as he rose. Halfway up he froze, his flinty eyes glazed over. I whipped my head around to find Merlin. The sorcerer had stopped pacing and was staring straight at the detective.
“Merlin, don’t you dare!” I snapped, hoping Duggan couldn’t hear me in his present state. “No black magick—you promised.”
“Nary a soul will suffer by my actions,” he replied calmly, still holding the detective in his thrall. “You have a lot to learn, my dear. Not all magick is distinctly black or white. As in life, most magick falls within areas of gray.”
“No!” I filled the word with all the gravitas I could muster. I couldn’t afford to let Merlin run wild. He was far too powerful, and I’d be setting a dangerous precedent. The world he came from had vastly different rules about what constituted acceptable behavior. “You play by my rules,” I said, “or you can find someplace else to live.” If he called my bluff and went off on his own, he’d have no one to guide him through the mine field of the modern world. There was a good chance Tilly and I were all that stood between him and disaster. Was there even a penal code for crimes of magick? Merlin must have reached the same uncomfortable conclusion, because he released Duggan a moment later. He did it so abruptly that the detective pitched forward and almost succumbed to gravity, before regaining his balance. He looked at me, then at Merlin, with questions he clearly couldn’t put into words. Instead he straightened his shoulders, hardened his jaw, and strode out of the room. He was standing at his desk when we caught up to him.
“I want to apologize if I overstepped the bounds, Detective,” I said, feeling that I needed to do some damage control. “I hope you’ll write it off as an innocent desire to help.”
He gave me a stiff nod. “Leave the investigating to the police, and you and I will get along real fine.”
“Got it.”
He sat down in his swivel chair and turned to face his monitor, which most people would have taken as a dismissal. But I still had one card left to play and I was too stubborn to leave bad enough alone. “There’s been so much death in my life lately,” I said, “first my mother and grandmother and now Jim. Not that I can really compare losing a friend with the loss of my family. I think it’s a matter of reaching a tipping point.”
Duggan nodded again without looking at me. He was probably hoping if he didn’t engage me further, I’d run out of steam and leave.
“You know what it’s like, Detective. Losing your wife the way you did was so awful. My Aunt Tilly was telling me that Jim helped you sue that doctor for malpractice.”
Duggan turned back to me, eyes narrowed, jaw tight. “You’ve been checking up on me?” he demanded, more like an accusation than a question.
I did my best to appear taken aback, as though I had no idea this would be his reaction. “Checking up on you? No, not at all. Tilly mentioned it in light of Jim’s death. You know, she was thinking about all the people whose lives he’d touched over the years.” I left it at that. If I added the rest of what I’d discovered, it would be as good as saying, you had a dandy motive to murder Jim. Shouldn’t someone be investigating you?
Duggan’s face was flushed a deep red, and a vein in his temple was pulsating. “Harkens and I parted company years ago,” he said through clenched teeth. “Count yourself lucky he won’t be around to screw up your affairs.” And there it was. Years had passed, but the detective still carried a deep and abiding hatred for Jim. In other words, a perfect motive for murder. But who had the guts to say that to Duggan’s face or place him under investigation? For now I intended to tuck the information away in a well-lit corner of my mind. It was ammunition to be used if Duggan decided to arrest Elise, ammunition to be given to a defense attorney and private investigator. Elise was the only one I planned to tell about this exchange with the detective. I hoped it might give her some much needed peace of mind. I had one more thing to do before I left the police station. A bit of fence mending.
“I . . . I am so sorry, Detective,” I said. “I seem to keep putting my foot in my mouth today. My grandmother used to call it hoof-and-mouth disease,” I added with a thin, nervous laugh that I didn’t have to fake. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
Duggan didn’t say a word, but I could feel his eyes boring into my back as Merlin and I walked out of the squad room.
Once we were in the car, I slumped back in my seat, wilted. The bravado that had enabled me to stand up to Duggan left my body in one long, shaky breath. Merlin, who seemed completely unperturbed by his first encounter with modern law enforcement, gave me a wholehearted and enthusiastic thumbs-up. It was one of the many things he’d learned from watching TV, not all of which were as commendable.
“If your goal was to enrage the man, your aim was true.” He clearly meant it as a compliment, but it made me laugh. I hadn’t thought about it in quite that way before, but I suppose that had been my goal. Make the man angry enough to ignore discretion and he might let something slip that I couldn’t have pried out of him under normal circumstances. I turned on the engine and backed out of the parking spot.
“Don’t forget, you promised not to repeat anything you saw or heard in there,” I reminded Merlin. It was a promise I’d extracted from him on the long ride to the county seat.
“You have naught to worry about, dear girl. My word is my bond. Ask anyone who knows me.” Not the best guarantee, since everyone he knew had been dead for centuries. As I drove home, my initial sense of victory lost its luster. With the clarity of hindsight, I knew that I had not just tested Duggan’s feelings about Jim; I may also have added my name to the top of the killer’s hit list.