Crowbones

CHAPTER 35

Grimshaw

Watersday, Novembros 3

Grimshaw ambushed Ilya on the staircase that led up to the Sanguinati’s office above the police station. He waited for the vampire to come down a few more steps before he leaned against the wall, a deceptively casual pose.

“If you could have, you would have gotten those kids away from Sproing,” he said in a conversational tone. “I have to figure that someone higher up the chain of command said no to that request but wouldn’t tell you why. I also have to figure that you don’t feel comfortable about the security you have in place around Silence Lodge. So you split up the kids, keeping the youngest with your own people and having the three teens doing ‘internships’ at human businesses.”

Ilya came down another step. “Perhaps I wanted some businesses to have a means of reaching me and mine quickly if there was trouble and the human ways of communication were severed. Perhaps the presence of Crowbones makes me feel vulnerable in a way I never have before.” He stared at the glass door at the bottom of the stairs. “Perhaps the arrival of the fosterlings coinciding with the arrival of this Hunter is the reason the youngsters can’t leave.”

He’d wondered about that as he’d brooded by himself last night. “Teenagers can certainly kill people. Even children can kill by accident or on purpose. But I don’t believe any of your youngsters did what was done to Adam Fewks’s body or killed either Crow. Which means one or more of your fosterlings might be a target or might be the bait that can flush out the contamination that landed Crowbones on our doorstep, and separating them gives you the best chance of keeping some of them alive.” Especially if one of them is a killer who would endanger other young Sanguinati.

“What would you have done?” Ilya asked quietly.

“I don’t know that I would have done anything different,” Grimshaw replied. “But putting Kira with Vicki?”

“The Jumble has layers of defenses.”

He didn’t point out that Adam Fewks had been killed with breathtaking speed within sight of The Jumble’s main house—and he didn’t point out that at least one enemy might be inside with Vicki and Kira. Ilya already knew that. But Grimshaw wasn’t sure the vampire had considered the unintended consequences of pairing a young Sanguinati female with Vicki DeVine. It wasn’t Vicki herself; it was the attraction she seemed to have for the more reclusive terra indigene around Lake Silence. “All right. Let me see what sort of busywork I can assign to my intern.”

“And I should not keep Mayor Roundtree waiting much longer.” Ilya smiled, showing a hint of fang. “I believe he has opinions about the current situation.”

May all the gods help the village’s mayor if he tried to turn this into political fodder.

Grimshaw and Ilya walked out together, then went in opposite directions.

When Grimshaw walked into the station, he found Officer Osgood and Viktor huddled around the desktop computer.

“Hey, Chief.” Osgood looked a little flushed, which Grimshaw took as a sign that the rookie wondered if he’d overstepped some boundary.

Better flushed than pale, Grimshaw thought as he approached the desk that held the computer.

“We’ve ignored e-mail for a couple of days, so I thought Viktor could go through the e-mails and delete the junk,” Osgood said.

Grimshaw studied Viktor, who studied him in turn. “You know how to work e-mail?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know how to separate important from junk?”

“Do you need your penis enhanced?”

“No.”

“Then that is junk e-mail.”

Smart-ass. But sharp. And aware. And already a predator. “Fine. You sort the e-mail and delete the junk. I’m going to make a circuit around Main Street. Osgood, you have the phones. Don’t head out for anything but an emergency until I get back.”

“Yes, sir.”

Grimshaw zipped up his jacket, walked out of the station, and turned right. As people had moved into Sproing over the past few months, some of them had taken over empty storefronts on Main Street to start up new businesses. Or so he’d been told. Most of the new ventures didn’t have signs in the store windows to indicate what they would be. One of them had long folding tables piled with cheap or used goods. A storefront flea market?

The owner hadn’t bothered to wash the windows or put up any kind of sign but seemed to be open for business, more or less.

Some of the abandoned houses in Sproing had been looted after the Great Predation. Since Grimshaw didn’t claim to be a trusting man, he wanted to know if any of the items taken from those houses were showing up on those tables. He’d give Paige and Dominique Xavier money out of petty cash and have them take a good look at the merchandise being offered. They had a skill for distinguishing quality items from dross.

As he continued down the street, Grimshaw stopped when he saw Gershwin Jones, the owner of Grace Notes, Sproing’s only music store. A flamboyant dresser whose deep voice held the lyrical rhythm of the Eastern Storm Islands, Jones was an Intuit whose ability to sense things around him was more focused than Julian Farrow’s talent. Except during times of acute danger, Julian responded to the underlying health of a place; Gershwin was more like an early warning siren when a tornado was about to touch down.

“How’s the music?” Grimshaw asked, using the code that had developed naturally between them.

“Somber but not a dirge,” Gershwin replied.

“If you hear the first note of a dirge, you let me know.”

Gershwin looked up the street. Five Sproingers were gathered in front of Lettuce Reed. The door opened and Karol Sanguinati crouched to hold a wooden tray of the carrot chunks that were the critters’ treat.

“The day they don’t show up on Main Street to make their rounds?” Gershwin said, raising his chin to indicate the Sproingers. “That’s the first note of the dirge, full on.”

Grimshaw nodded and continued on his own rounds. Residents who had been there over the summer gave him a nod but didn’t approach because they knew the routine. Osgood was approachable and willing to listen to gossip; the chief wasn’t approached unless you had a real emergency. But Grimshaw dropped by Come and Get It at some point every day and casually told Helen Hearse anything he felt Sproing’s citizens should know—and Helen would pass that information on to everyone who came into the diner.

It was early, but he picked up sandwiches for lunch, choosing rare roast beef for Viktor since he wasn’t sure what the young Sanguinati usually ate that would be on a human menu.

“Best way to get the roads back open is to assist the police in their investigation,” he said as Helen packed the meals into one of the diner’s delivery boxes. “And folks should be on the lookout for a teenage boy named Tom Saulner whose friends haven’t seen him since he parted company with them on Trickster Night.”

“Could he have gotten a ride out of town that night?” Helen asked.

“Possible. He could also be holed up somewhere. We still have plenty of empty houses someone could use for romantic assignations.” He waited until Helen finished snickering over his choice of words. “But I haven’t received any reports of a missing teenage girl, so I don’t think that’s the reason he hasn’t returned to his friends.”

“Could be another boy that’s missing,” Helen pointed out.

“Could be,” he agreed. “Even if parents think their son is out tomcatting somewhere, if someone hasn’t come home when expected, regardless of age, I want to know about it. What’s out there isn’t playing around, and I’d rather not be looking for bodies—or what’s left of them.”

Helen tucked some paper napkins into the box. “I’ll pass the word.”

Leaving the diner, Grimshaw walked up the street, stopped in front of one of Lettuce Reed’s windows, and looked at the selection of books on display.

A lot of names ending in “gard.” It looked like Julian had pulled stock from the back of the store, where people in the know went to browse for books written by Intuits and Others.

Julian stepped outside a minute later.

Grimshaw casually pointed at the display. “Enticing the tourists or warning the residents?”

“A little of both,” Julian replied. “I’m taking a look at any books I have in inventory that deal with folklore or urban legends. I’m also taking a look in my personal library.”

Like most of the buildings on Main Street, the bookstore had two stories. Unless the previous owner did something truly weird with the space, the second floor of the building was big enough to be a three-bedroom apartment. Since Julian preferred to live in one of the Mill Creek Cabins and hadn’t rented the upstairs space to anyone, Grimshaw didn’t know what the Intuit had up there—and until Julian chose to tell him, he figured it was better for both of them if he didn’t know.

“So far I haven’t found any information about Crowbones,” Julian continued. “I’m reaching out to other booksellers, on behalf of a customer, to see if anyone has an early edition of a book of folklore that might fit what Professor Roash claims to have seen.” He hesitated. “Ian Stern has connections to an Intuit college and could reach out to colleagues without raising suspicion. Michael, as an author, could be researching a new story. Enlisting their help might be a way of gaining information without tripping any alarms.”

Julian had a point, especially since they didn’t know the extent of the trouble they were in.

“I’ll think about it. I can’t rule them out as suspects any more than I can rule out any of the other guests who were at The Jumble on Trickster Night, but I’ll think about it.”

Grimshaw crossed the street. As soon as he walked into the station, Viktor said, “Sir? I have some urgent messages for you.”

Setting the box of food on his desk, he went to see what the young Sanguinati considered urgent. Captain Douglas Burke had sent a current list of names and contact information for all the police captains in the Finger Lakes area. Asterisks after names indicated the men Burke considered trustworthy.

He felt a shiver of relief to see an asterisk after Captain Walter Hargreaves’s name. He hadn’t worked with Hargreaves long before being sent to Sproing, but he trusted the man and needed the cooperation of the Bristol police force. And he knew there was some connection between Burke and Hargreaves.

Another list came from Greg O’Sullivan, an agent in the governor’s Investigative Task Force who was working out of Lakeside. That list contained the names and contact information of the agents in the ITF.

“Good work,” he told Viktor. “Print those out for me.” Then he reviewed the calls that had come in to the station, prioritized the calls, and distributed the food.

As he sat at his desk to write a carefully worded message that would be sent to the men on those two lists, the word “urgent” kept bothering him. Why would Viktor say those e-mails were urgent? Important? Absolutely. But “urgent” indicated a need for immediate action. Was that the excitement of youth talking, or did Viktor need him to act within a timetable and was he pushing the information that would produce the desired result?

Or was Grimshaw just too damn suspicious of everyone right now?

Then again, someone who had come to the area recently was a target. Or bait. Or both. And for Wayne Grimshaw, that meant there was no such thing as being too suspicious.