Downpour

TWENTY-SEVEN

Quinton, adept at getting what he needed while staying off the grid, had turned the water on, but it wasn’t warm. There was a generator off the kitchen, but it required gasoline and we didn’t have any handy short of a wet slog back out to the Rover. The propane tank for the stove and refrigerator was equally empty. The undead had ripped my clothes, so I was half-naked and I’d lost the packet of yellow silk. I was so cold from exposure, exertion, and the icy water of the lake that I couldn’t stop shivering. But I had mud, blood, and bits of dead things smeared all over me and it was too disgusting to leave there, so we ended up washing under the icy tap. Quinton had pulled the old couch up as close to the stove as he could and we snuggled naked together in the blankets to warm up. Quinton curled himself around me and his body seemed to burn my deeply chilled skin. It would have been much more erotic if I hadn’t been shaking so hard.

My hearing was still full of low buzzing that made everything sound distant and crackly, like an old radio with a bad antenna, but it was improving slowly. I filled him in on what I’d been pursuing since I had arrived at Blood Lake and what had come hunting us.

“Why haven’t the cops shown up about the shooting?” I stuttered between chattering teeth.

“Maybe no one heard it,” Quinton suggested. “You said there aren’t many people up here this time of year.”

“No, but there are a few.”

“And most of them probably don’t want the local sheriffs to come around and interrupt whatever magical nastiness they’re up to.”

I frowned over that and wondered who’d been at the door that had cast golden light onto the lake.

“How did they know we were here?” Quinton asked.

“Who?”

“The zombies. You haven’t stayed here before and you said Newman only gave you the key Monday. You didn’t use the place last night or the night before, so how did Costigan know to send the corpse brigade over here to attack you?”

“That’s a good question. I’ll have to ask the Newmans that tomorrow. I was given the impression they didn’t talk—at least not civilly—to Costigan, who seems to be in charge of the zombies around here. I need to talk to him, too. I haven’t done anything to attract his ire, that I know of—we’ve never even met.”

“Yeah, but you did tell the ley weaver that Costigan couldn’t be trusted, and that might have gotten back to him. And I don’t suppose Willow and her pet demon are the most honorable spell-flingers in the area, either.”

“More than you might imagine.” I paused, thinking, and feeling a little less like a human Popsicle. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You said you had to make a deal with the FBI to get their help. What did they want you to do?”

“Oh . . . I can’t really discuss it.”

“Will they be coming back for more? Are you stuck on their hook?”

“No. Part of the reason I cut my hair—well, it’s a little complicated, but I wanted them to think I’m not a good risk. The FBI doesn’t use the same kind of people as other agencies. They’re really cops at heart and they have less tolerance for rogues and lunatics than, say . . . the CIA does. It doesn’t mean my dad won’t come after me, but I think I’m done with the Feebs.”

“Your dad—he wouldn’t turn you in to the NSA, would he?”

Quinton snorted. “No. It wouldn’t suit his agenda. I’m an embarrassment that could ruin his career at this point. He’s just as glad to have me stay missing.”

“Do you despise him?”

“Not really. I just know I can only trust him to do what’s best for his career at any given moment. No person is ever going to come ahead of his job. I think that’s what made my mother leave him. She said it was the general stuff—the secrets, the tension, the absences—but I always had the impression there was a specific incident that broke them apart. Mom wasn’t an angel, either. She had affairs and she ran her life as if the rest of us weren’t important most of the time. Not that she made bad, selfish decisions all the time; she just didn’t feel the need to discuss them first. She looked after my sister and me all r—”

I shook my head and turned in his arms to put my hand over his mouth. “You have a sister? You’ve never mentioned that before.”

He shrugged and chafed my upper arms, ostensibly to keep me warm, but I thought he just wanted a moment to think before he answered. “She’s in Europe, somewhere.”

“Just ‘somewhere’?”

“I know where, but it’s not important. She’s married and has kids—none of the family business for her. I think she still writes to my mom and calls her, but she’s making her own life without the rest of us and it’s probably safer to leave it that way.”

That I understood. I also sensed that her decision had hurt Quinton in some way that he didn’t want to discuss. I let it slide and leaned against him. “You never told me Solis knew who you really are.”

He kissed my temple. “Nope. He swore to tell no one, and that included you.”

“So . . . should I start calling you by your real name, now that you’re in from the cold?”

Quinton laughed. “What, as if I were someone out of a John le Carré novel? You do, and I shall be forced to take drastic measures.”

“Oh? How drastic?”

“Like this,” he said, and swooped his head down to blow a loud raspberry against my belly.

I squealed and wriggled around in the blanket as he tickled me and made more ridiculous noises against my skin. It was silly and it hurt a bit from the pulling of my scars and unevenly healed muscles, but I was more than just warm now and I sure as hell wasn’t going to complain.

In a few minutes he stopped tickling and began stroking and kissing my skin instead. It felt strange without the soft rasp of his beard and the silky trailing of his hair, but the heat of his mouth and tongue still wrung a gasp of pleasure from me. He moved lower, sliding his hands and lips down between my legs.

He licked and nibbled, his fingers sliding over moisture, then pushing deep. I put my hands on his head to pull him into me and was frustrated by his short hair. I felt him chuckle against my hot, wet flesh, and the sensation made me moan. He continued, without remorse, building a scalding tension in my body with every touch, driving me tighter, higher, until it burst apart, pushing outward on my cry of ecstatic release.

Liquid and hard, he slid up and into me as I was still gasping. He groaned and buried his face in my neck, biting lightly as he thrust and then licking where he’d bitten. He nipped at my earlobe and then pressed his lips against my ear. “I love you.”

I shuddered under him, arching into his movement, and turned my head, capturing his mouth with mine. I didn’t need to hear what I knew. I loved the feel of him, the touch and the taste and the depth of his motion inside me, drawing me tight again. I only wanted to feel, without words, to come with him in that breaking, crystal instant.

He gave me my way, making love with only the conversation of our bodies and the upward-spiraling cadence of our gasps and moans, the depth and speed of his thrust and my response. I felt the tension in his body snapping as he groaned and shuddered. A wave of awesome sensation burst into me, like a million sparks dancing over my skin, igniting something that burned across us both. I clenched my eyes shut against the brightness of it through the Grey as I shattered and came with him, feeling our energy twine together, blazing into a circle encompassing us alone and illuminating the world within, then fading softly, slowly. . . .

He laid his head against the crook of my neck once again, breathing deeply, slowing, until his body eased and he slid over to lie beside me. I watched him and smiled until he fell asleep. Then I laid my head down and stared into the dark, feeling his contentment and my own anxiety winding over me. How could I feel warm and fuzzy while I also felt like a lying bitch? I didn’t know how I was going to protect him, or how I was going to live up to him. What Quinton feared most, what he had given up his freedom and anonymity for, was all too possible. When my father’s ghost had gone, he’d taken away the thing that made me nearly immortal: my deepest kinship with the Grey, the growing inhumanity that had enabled me to hear the song of the energy, to change the structure of the grid and kill a god. That was gone and I had lied to Quinton: I was no longer bulletproof; I could die as easily as anyone and leave him forever.

We got up while the sun was still low and went out to search for the yellow silk banishment and see how much mess the creeping dead had left behind. We had no luck with the missing spell, and I guessed it had probably been carried off by a bird that was now living in the silkiest yellow nest in the world. The remains of the zombies weren’t very identifiable except that most weren’t human. The stink of decomposition had already attracted scavengers that had done a good job of carrying bits away and spreading the rest around. It was a pain in the ass to scrape up the glop and parts left behind and bury them, but at least none of these dead would be walking again.

Over a cold breakfast afterward, I looked over the lists I’d gotten from Faith. I swore and laid the papers aside. “Useless. The people on the list are the people I already know about. There used to be more full-time residents, but now there’s only a handful and they’re all accounted for. I’m still looking for someone who’s here, but not here. It’s not seasonal renters or even the nonresident owners, because most of the overt violence has happened in the late winter and early spring before they come up here.”

“What about Ridenour?”

I shook my head. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t seem to have any magical power. He doesn’t seem to even see the magical things going on.”

“He could be acting. He was married to a demon for a while, after all.”

“But he didn’t know what she was until Willow told him. And the huli-jing is gone now, so his connection to the grid through her was cut.”

“Doesn’t mean he can’t have started to play with it on his own, if he was so desperate to get his wife back or take revenge.”

I nodded. It fit to a degree, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with it. Still, it would explain Ridenour’s not coming to find me after Willow had escaped from the greenhouse, since he’d have gone after her himself. I respected Ridenour enough that I wanted more proof before I accused him of bashing in Strother’s head and killing Leung. Ridenour didn’t seem to have any Grey abilities of his own, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have borrowed some. After all, whoever had moved the Subaru into the lake had needed help. If the killer wasn’t very good at magic, it would explain why the crimes themselves were sudden and violent and why only the aftermath and cover-up had the tang of the Grey. Ridenour didn’t live at the lake, but he was around constantly. . . .

Quinton pointed at the other list. “What about that one? Anything there?”

I picked it up and scanned it. “List of what was found in Leung’s Subaru.” I shook my head. “They’re going to have a great time trying to figure out what’s significant in this bunch of rotting junk. Not a lot survived the fire in the front of the car, but the stuff in the back was mostly intact until it hit the water. Leung was a real pack rat,” I added. Then I summarized the list: “A big lump of wet paper—probably maps—that started to rot as soon as it got into the air; pocket change; keys; a rifle and a box-worth of unfired cartridges to match; a large rock; the remains of what was probably a pair of boots—in addition to the pair he was wearing at the time; a tire iron and jack, badly rusted; a spare coat that was mostly rot and guesswork; a plastic crate of rusted canned goods; a surveyor’s transit in a waterlogged wooden box; two baseball caps in dubious condition; the remains of two blankets—”

“Sounds like the back of your truck,” Quinton interrupted, “only wet.”

That gave me pause. The house was neat, orderly, and prepared for a stint of bad weather—if we’d had some gasoline, we could have had the generator running, which would have given us plenty of power to run the water heater as well as the lights. If the propane tank hadn’t been empty, we’d have had heat, a working stove, and a refrigerator, all without main power or a gas line. I’d assumed the house had been cleaned and closed up, but Leung’s clothes were still in one of the closets and the shotgun hadn’t been locked up, but left standing beside the kitchen door in case of aggressive wildlife. Except for removing the gas cans that must have been around and having the propane tank drained and purged, Geoff Newman hadn’t done anything to the house but shutter it up and lock it. Leung hadn’t been a hoarder; he’d been ready.

“It is like my truck. He carried things he thought he might need if he got stranded or in trouble. He even had his old surveyor’s transit. I’ll bet these are the things he packed when he was still working and didn’t see any reason to remove them once he retired.”

“So you need to concentrate on what doesn’t fit—if anything.”

I read through the list again. “This is strange. Even ignoring the dead fish and soda bottles, there are some odd things in this collection. The weirdest has to be the extra finger.”

“That’s a little gruesome. Where’d that come from?”

“From a grave,” I thought aloud, remembering the petty, squabbling dead of Tragedy Graveyard.

“A zombie was in the car?”

“I don’t think so. I think someone laid a spell for Leung in his car. I don’t know what it did, but that’s my guess.”

“A spell?” Quinton frowned. “Mara doesn’t need bones to cast a spell.”

“Not the kind she does, no. But not all magical systems operate the same way. Mara was telling me that one of our mages out here might be using hoodoo, or something akin to it, and that practice definitely does use bones. I’d guess anything involving a human finger isn’t a nice thing. The rest of the spell has washed away by now, so no telling what it was. What else doesn’t fit?” I wondered aloud, reading the page yet again. “A rock, a pair of lineman’s pliers, a screwdriver . . .”

“Aside from the rock, those don’t sound too odd.”

I looked up. “According to the list, Leung had a complete tool kit in the back. He didn’t need to have an additional screwdriver and pliers in the front seat. He certainly wasn’t fixing anything while he was driving. Besides those, there’s this stone—some kind of quartz and it weighs eighteen pounds.”

“Wow. Maybe that’s your anchor.”

“Maybe, but what was Leung doing with it? The dead near Costigan’s house said Leung had been killed for the anchor—or because of it. Jewel said . . . her father was going to do something about the lake.... Whatever he was doing, he either didn’t do it right or he never finished.”

“Not before someone killed him.”

“But if the rock is the anchor, then the anchor was in the lake. Why didn’t that fix the problem?”

“Anchors don’t do much good if they aren’t set,” Quinton said. “Maybe he hadn’t put it in the right place.”

“But why would his killer risk putting the anchor back into the lake at all? The problem here seems to have started in 1989 when the magic got wild. The only person who wants to shut that off is Jewel Newman, and if she’d killed her father for it, she’d have made sure the anchor got replaced properly. The others benefit only so long as the anchor is out of place. I can’t see why one of them would risk shutting off the power by throwing the anchor stone back into the lake at all.”

“What if they didn’t know?”

“You’re suggesting an ignorant mage.”

“At least one of them is self-taught. Which is sometimes the same as mud-ignorant.”

“I don’t think Willow killed her father.”

“Then it must be the mysterious number five.”

I sighed and sipped the weak tea Quinton had made by warming up cups of water on top of the Franklin stove. “I still have no idea who that is. Or if it’s the rogue or the child. I can figure out the nexus and the puppeteer—that’s Jewel Newman and Elias Costigan. I know the east must have been Jonah Leung or Willow’s mother, because they’re both dead. Willow could be the child, but she could also be the rogue.”

“Think about it from the ley weaver’s viewpoint. They’re his terms, so the titles are based on his ideas.”

“Which is something I can’t begin to fathom. And it’s not helping.”

“Then leave it for now and we’ll need to attack a different part of the problem. What’s on the last sheet of paper?”

“It’s Alan Strother’s car log for the day he died. It shows the locations and times where his car stopped. For most of these, I can tell whom he went to see by looking up the residents on the other list. I also see when he clocked back in, how long he was out of the car—that sort of thing. But there are these holes. . . .”

“So he checked out the houses on the list and then what?”

“He drove around. Back and forth a few times. It didn’t make a lot of sense and I’m still trying to figure out the pattern.”

“Who’s still on your list to talk to?”

“Almost all of them. And now I want another look at that rock, too.”

“I guess we’re driving back to Port Angeles, then.”

Faith was curious about why we wanted to look at the rock. “It’s not some kind of precious stone. It’s just a rock. Probably fell into the car when it sank.” But he pulled out the box of personal effects that weren’t too rotted to touch and let us have a look anyway. He did insist on our wearing gloves when we handled the stuff, though. Just in case.

Out of the water, the objects no longer exuded a Grey mist. Most were so inert, they looked like shapeless blanks in my sight—but not the rock. It glowed green and gold with something burning in its core like a banked fire, and it whined and whispered like distant radio signals. If it wasn’t the anchor, it was something equally magical. Quinton looked at the rock while I talked to Faith.

“Not much to go on,” I commented, stirring the smaller items with my gloved fingers. “Screwdriver and pliers are interesting. . . .”

“We’re thinking whoever sabotaged his brakes and fuel line left them—they don’t match the set in the back,” Faith said, confirming my belief that he was no fool. “It’s too damn bad they’ve been down there so long that we’ve got no viable traces on them. The cold water preserved a lot more than we could have hoped for, but it’s still pretty slim pickings.”

“I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. I could see Quinton rummaging in his backpack, but I ignored him for now and did my best to keep Faith’s attention off him, too.

“So are we all. What do you make of this stuff?”

“Not a lot, I have to admit. Looks as though he was prepared for any contingency except being murdered and dumped in the lake.”

“Yeah, Leung was a careful guy, but he was a little superstitious, from what I’ve picked up. Believed in demons, I’m told—Chinese demons, that is, the sort who can’t turn corners and are afraid of the color yellow. You know he always wore something yellow or red?” He nodded to himself. “That’s what I’m told.”

“It must have made him easy to see in the brush.”

“Don’t know about that. Never went hunting with the man. Judging by the rifle, though, he wasn’t averse to it. Some folks think it’s cruel, but round here it can be the difference between making it and going on welfare.”

Quinton held up a meter of some kind with a couple of probes hanging off it. “Do you mind if I test this crystal?”

Faith gave him an odd look. “What sort of test?”

“I just want to see if it’s holding an electric charge.”

“It’s been underwater for a while.”

“I understand, but some materials don’t dissipate electricity in water. If it’s charged, Leung might have been convinced it was something magical.”

“I’m not sure . . .” Faith started.

“I won’t cause it any harm. I’m just going to poke it.”

Faith frowned. “Oh, I suppose you can go ahead. But if it explodes or breaks, I’m going to be a mite put out with you.”

“Understood.” Quinton stuck the probes on the rock in various locations and poked at it in silence until we got bored of watching him and went back to our own conversation.

I started. “But Leung wasn’t shot, was he?” I almost hoped Faith would say he had been, and we’d at least have ballistics to catch the killer by.

“Nope. ’Cording to the doc, head trauma would have killed him if the fire didn’t. Just waiting on the formal autopsy report to confirm which it was, but it’s been pushed back, so it’ll be a few more days.”

“Why?”

“Murdered cops are a little more important than guys who’ve been dead for five years.”

My turn to nod. Of course they’d push the death of Alan Strother up the priority list.

This was especially true since it was a fresher killing that had a better chance of clearing and might solve Leung’s murder at the same time.

Faith didn’t seem to notice when something gave out a bright, hard note in my inner ear like a soprano breaking a glass. Quinton yelped.

Faith and I turned to him.

“It sparked. Not a big deal. I just wasn’t expecting it,” Quinton explained.

“Sparked?” Faith asked.

“Yeah. This thing’s mostly quartz and it’s electrically active. Most quartz is, but this one might be some kind of conductor.... Can I take this rock with me?” Quinton asked. “I’d like to see what else it does.”

Faith made a face. “I’d love to get rid of it, but until we have more information, I can’t let you.”

I chimed in. “You know he wasn’t beaten to death with it, so how is it material?”

“Probably not, but it’s in the inventory and it’ll have to stay. Why would you want it?”

I gave it some thought before I replied. “I think Leung wasn’t the only superstitious one around the lake. His killer might have put it in the car to frighten him. . . .”

“You mean all that mumbo jumbo about Elias Costigan laying Voodoo curses on folks to keep ’em away from his place?” Faith snorted. “I think he’s managed to put a good scare into a few people, but that’s all it is. I’d take it more seriously if one of the Quileutes or Makah were shaking feathers and bones at me.”

“Why?”

“I figure the Indians might know a bit about the spirits around here—if there are any. But a self-proclaimed Voodoo witch doctor? He’s a crank.”

“Even a crank can be dangerous, Faith.”

“I don’t deny it. But all you’ve got there is a spare finger and a rock that sparks. Voodoo curse or not, it’s no smoking gun.”

I needed that rock, but Faith wasn’t going to let me walk out with it until the case was solved. I’d have to try another approach. “What’s your take on Brett Ridenour?”

“What about him?”

“I’ve been thinking that if Strother’s killer is someone from the lakes and we’ve eliminated most of the full-time residents, what about the nonresidents who are around all the time? Ridenour certainly fits that description, and he’s a little obsessive about ‘his’ lake and ‘his’ park. I imagine that if he thought there was a threat to it, he might think he had cause to take drastic action.”

“Ridenour? I’m not sure about that . . . but he can be a little overzealous, I guess.”

“And he has a personal spite for Willow Leung.”

“True—he blames her for his wife running off and leaving him. But it’s not Willow who’s been killed.”

“Maybe his dislike is based on more than his missing wife. Maybe he thinks Willow knows something that could incriminate him in her father’s death.”

“And good luck finding that out. Willow Leung is harder to catch than a snowflake at midsummer. Alan Strother was the only person who ever got close enough and he didn’t manage to catch her, either.”

“That might have been because he was in love with her.”

Faith stared at me. “In love with her? He didn’t know the girl except through her jacket and one meeting when he was fresh out of training.”

“Not true. They’ve known each other since high school. Ridenour arrested them and they were in juvenile together.”

“No bull? How do you know? Juvenile records are sealed. Did Ridenour tell you?”

“Willow told me.”

Faith rubbed his hands over his hair. “Paint me blue. You’ve talked to that crazy woman? Why didn’t you call me, catch her, something?”

“I didn’t have any cell service at the graveyard in Beaver and what was I supposed to do—throw a blanket over her and tie her up? She thinks I can find out who killed Strother and her dad. She was willing to talk to me because I’m not a cop.”

“Can you get to her again?”

“Not reliably. She finds me.”

Faith huffed and frowned. “Damn it. Damn it! You have to get that girl to talk to me.”

“She’s not going to walk in here and get herself arrested.”

“I’ll go to her.”

“What could she possibly tell you? If she knew who killed her father or Strother, she’d have told me already.”

“She knows what happened to her brother and Timothy Scott.”

“Scott was the phone lineman she shot?”

“Yeah, but I’m not sure about it.”

“She says she did it.”

“On purpose? Lying in wait? That doesn’t sound like something a nineteen-year-old girl does no matter what Ridenour says about her. If you’re telling me the truth, she’d already done a stint in juvie and, believe me, she wouldn’t want to go to jail after that, so I can understand her running. But what does a kid that age know? She doesn’t have any perspective on the world. She thinks everything is her fault and she blames herself even if it’s an accident. She probably thinks she’s responsible for her mother’s death, too, one way or another.”

“You talk as though you know.”

“I’ve seen a lot of screwed-up kids. They come in two kinds: the truly hard and the scared shitless. Willow Leung’s crimes aren’t the acts of a bad kid, a hard kid; they’re wild-kid stuff. Except for the murder, which makes no sense at all. A young woman whose rap sheet is trespass, joyriding, petty B and E on abandoned buildings, and smoking dope doesn’t lie in wait and murder a man she’s never met. Not without cause.”

I knew why she’d really done it, but I was sure Faith didn’t; yet he seemed unconvinced of her guilt and that made me curious. “The report she gave was that he raped her and she shot him when he came back to try again.”

“Total bullshit. Her dad wouldn’t have let that slide if there had been such an incident. He’d have come after Scott himself. But Tim Scott had never been on that route before, so there never was a chance for him to have raped her and come back. I would bet you my salary for a year it was a pure accident. She didn’t even know him. I think she cooked up the rape story because she was scared and it’s more sympathetic than ‘I thought he was a bear.’ ”

“You don’t think she did it?”

Faith shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “No, I’m pretty sure she shot him. I just don’t think she murdered him. I don’t think she killed her brother, either, but I think she does know what happened to him and it’s made her scared. Look, her mother died, her half brother died, her dad was a little preoccupied with their deaths, and her half sister ain’t exactly Miss Sweetness and Light.”

“Hang on. Half brother and half sister? Willow’s mother wasn’t Jewel and Jonah’s mother?”

“Nope. Kind of surprised you missed that in your background on Leung.”

“It wasn’t a full report—I only spent two hours on it,” I objected, stung.

Faith shrugged and he went on. “Leung’s first wife, Doreen Fife, divorced him and moved down the hill to town when the two kids were in their early teens. Eventually she moved back east and got remarried. She kind of divorced the whole family, really. Stopped having contact with them once she had a new family to occupy her time,” Faith added with a snort of disgust. “Steven married Sula Yu a couple years later and Willow came along a couple of years after that. That house on Lake Sutherland’s been in Sula’s family since they built it back in the settlement days.”

“Sula’s family was Chinese?”

Faith nodded. “You don’t hear much about ’em, but there were a handful of Chinese out here as workers when they were building up the railroads. Mostly they left afterward, but the Yus stayed. Dodged the Exclusion Act by keeping to themselves up on the mountain. Mostly quiet, law-abiding folks far as I can tell. Until this generation. Willow’s been in j-camp, and she’s run a little wild, but—except for shooting Scott—her worst crime appears to have been getting on the wrong side of Brett Ridenour.”

“I thought you liked him.”

“I like him well enough and I’ll give you that he’s dedicated to his job, but he’s bitter and he’s got an inflexible mind. As far as he’s concerned, there’s Ridenour’s way and there’s the wrong way.”

I considered that and I couldn’t disagree. I sighed. “If I can get Willow to talk to you, will you let us . . . borrow that rock?”

“No. But I might misplace it for a couple of days.”

I held out my hand. “I’ll let you know.”

Faith unfolded his arms and shook my hand. “Be careful, Ms. Blaine. You’re walking in some damned tricky territory.”

I just nodded, and Quinton and I left Faith to his desk and the box full of waterlogged evidence.