Secrets of the Demon

Chapter 10

I showered and changed into my work clothes at Jill’s house—a far more convenient option than making the thirty-minute drive back to my house to do so, where I would then have to make another thirty-minute drive to get to the station. My cell phone rang as I was toweling off after my shower, but since I recognized Ryan’s ringtone, I finished drying off and getting dressed first. It felt a bit weird to think about talking to him on the phone when I was naked. Yes, I was that stupid.

“I figured you’d have called earlier,” I said after I called him back.

“Don’t you go running in the mornings with Jill now?”

I frowned. Had I told him about that? I couldn’t remember. Not that it was a big secret or anything. “Yeah, my twice weekly dose of ‘let’s hang out with someone who makes me feel like an out-of-shape slob.’”

He laughed. “You’re far from a slob.”

“I notice you didn’t say that I’m far from out of shape,” I pointed out.

“You’re far from a slob,” he repeated.

“Asshole,” I grumbled, but I was smiling.

“Don’t compare yourself to Jill, fer crissakes. She was nearly an Olympian.”

“Huh?”

“Didn’t you know? She was a hotshot gymnast—expected to nail the trials and go to the Olympics ... um, ten years ago or so. Then she had a bad fall, hit her head, and dropped out of competition.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling oddly hot and cold at the same time. “No, I didn’t know that.” And how do you? I’m supposed to be her best friend, and yet you know these things?

“Find anything in your research?” he asked, pulling me out of my stupid little pity spiral.

My lips twitched. This was his way of asking if I’d found out anything from Rhyzkahl, but I knew he had no intention of mentioning the demonic lord. “Nope. Yesterday was pretty much a bust for getting any sort of useful info.” There. That covered the summoning, without saying it outright.

He muttered a curse. “Which means we’re pretty much at a standstill with this now. Any other cases at work that you can sink your teeth into?”

“Not really. Things are pretty slow right now.” Then I cringed.

There was a pause. “I can’t believe you said that,” Ryan said, voice low and ominous.

I laughed. “Me neither. Holy shit, I just totally jinxed myself.”

“Dork,” he said with a chuckle. “Okay, give me a call later on.”

“I’ll try to squeeze you into my busy schedule,” I promised.

The biggest drawback to starting my shift at ten was a distinct lack of parking places in the detectives’ parking lot. I scowled and circled the small lot twice in the misguided hope that a free space would magically appear, but my arcane powers failed me in spectacular fashion by refusing to vaporize any of the other vehicles in the lot and thus saving me the walk from the side parking lot.

Oh, whoopee. I could summon demons, but I couldn’t get a parking space.

I grudgingly drove around to the side parking lot and walked the extra hundred feet, refusing to feel any sort of shame for being all grudgingly about the walk. I’d gone running that morning. I should be exempt from any sort of additional exertion. Right?

I paused before entering the bureau, my eyes drawn to a blackened patch about fifty feet away, in the detective’s parking lot. That’s where the lightning struck the other day. My fingers prickled, an odd sense of familiarity tugging at me unpleasantly as I started slowly toward the spot. It wasn’t just a storm, the thought whispered through my head. I shifted into othersight as I reached it, even though I had a feeling I already knew what I would see.

I crouched, mouth dry as I looked at the star-shaped scar in the concrete and struggled to understand how my othersight could be showing me what were unmistakably arcane wards.

The lightning wasn’t random. But, why on earth was part of the parking lot warded? That didn’t make any sense. I wiped my sweating palms on the front of my pants as I deepened my sensing as far as I was able. A faint twinge of relief stole through me as I studied the wards. They were old and nothing I’d ever seen before, but the fact that they weren’t recently placed made it slightly less ominous. There was no way I was going to start poking at them, but my assessment revealed something important. The parking lot wasn’t warded. The lightning had broken through to the ground below the parking lot. That’s what was warded.

Confusion and unease tightened my gut. Why would the ground there have wards? And how long ago had they been placed? And had that lightning strike been directed, or had these wards somehow drawn it, like a lightning rod? And what did—

“Hey, Gillian, you lookin’ for your lost virginity?” An unpleasant nasal voice jerked me out of my careening thoughts. I gritted my teeth and stood, then plastered a pleasant smile onto my face as I pivoted to see Boudreaux regarding me with a snide smirk, Pellini standing beside him with his thumbs tucked into his belt. Not that I could see his belt since his belly extended well over it, but that’s where I assumed his thumbs were tucked. I didn’t want to consider any other possibilities. Boudreaux didn’t have to worry about large guts—he was about my height and so scrawny I had a suspicion I outweighed him. He looked like a meth-head to me, and I had a feeling that the only reason the Narcs didn’t use him for undercover work was because they didn’t trust him to not screw up.

“Hi, Boudreaux,” I replied in an overly sweet tone. “Were you offering to help me look? Or were you going to loan me yours, since you still have it?” I grinned, then turned to walk inside, more than a little surprised to hear a guffaw of laughter from Pellini. The two detectives had always been somewhat annoying, though there’d been a time not too long ago that annoying had been more along the lines of obnoxious, unpleasant, and insulting. Until Ryan had done ... something. I still wasn’t quite sure what, and I had zero proof that he had, but the two detectives had undergone an unbelievable change of attitude toward me in the span of a few minutes, going from openly hostile to warm and welcoming.

Seriously freaky.

The two hadn’t remained full of warm fuzzies, to my strange relief. I wasn’t sure I could handle the bizarro “nice” versions of Boudreaux and Pellini. However, they’d so far failed to completely revert back to the blistering assholes they’d once been, and had apparently settled into “annoying but not outright mean.” I could handle that.

There was a note on the door of my office telling me to go see the chief when I got in. I dropped my bag on my desk and then headed to the chief’s office, more curious than worried about the summons. Chief Robert Turnham had been the captain in charge of the Investigations Division before he’d been tapped to replace the previous chief of police. In fact, he’d been my supervisor during the Symbol Man investigation and had maintained a huge amount of faith in my ability to handle the case, for which I was still humbled and grateful.

His secretary gave me a smile as I entered the outer office. “Hi, Kara. You can go on in. He’s expecting you.”

Well, she wasn’t acting as if I was about to get a reprimand. I thanked her and continued on through, pausing to tap on the doorframe instead of barging on in. Even with the secretary’s go-ahead, I still wasn’t quite nervy enough to enter the chief’s office without permission.

Chief Turnham had worked for NOPD for fifteen years and had then spent the next ten years with Beaulac PD. A tall, slender black man with limbs that seemed too long for his torso, he gave an impression of being dour, but anyone who’d worked with him a while knew that he preferred to be a quiet observer until he knew precisely what he was facing. He was meticulous, and often anal-retentive, but he was also fair and dedicated. A far cry from his predecessor.

He looked up as I entered and gave me a warm smile. “Gillian. Come on in. Close the door behind you, please?”

The request to close the door sent a warning ping through me, but there was absolutely nothing in his expression or demeanor to indicate that anything untoward was about to happen. I complied, then took a seat in front of the desk. Little had changed in the office since I’d last been in here with the previous chief. The Beaulac PD seal was still painted on the wall behind his desk, and the shelves were still filled with books and various awards. But they were no longer arranged meticulously by height, and there were pictures of other people besides the chief. It was little things, but the general atmosphere seemed much less foreboding.

But some of my tension must have been evident. “Relax, Kara,” he said. “You’re not in any sort of trouble.” He leaned back in his chair, as if to emphasize that this was a casual meeting.

Right. Like any meeting in the chief’s office could ever be truly casual. But I forced down the sliver of worry and made myself relax into my chair. “Of course not, Chief. I never do anything that could get me into trouble.”

He let out a dry laugh. “If it doesn’t get caught on camera, it never happened, right?”

I maintained an innocent expression. He gave a soft snort of amusement, then leaned forward and laced his fingers loosely together on the desk in front of him. “I wanted to let you know that Ben Moran called me this morning.”

I frowned. “Oh?”

He gave a slight nod. “He wanted to let me know that he was worried for his niece and to inform me that he believed that the incident Saturday night was little more than a prank that got out of control.”

My frown deepened. “And why did he feel the need to call you with this theory?”

I could see his jaw tighten briefly. “He wanted to see if the investigation could be quietly dropped, and he expressed his concern that Lida would face possible fraud charges when it was discovered that the attack was merely a publicity stunt.”

I digested this for several seconds. Chief Turnham remained silent as he allowed me time to consider what he’d told me.

“I see,” I finally said, tamping down my annoyance at the entire situation. “What do you suggest I do, sir?” I steeled myself for the order to drop the case and look the other way.

“Do you believe it was a publicity stunt?” he asked, eyes intent upon me.

“It’s one possibility, sir,” I admitted. “But so is the possibility that Lida has a stalker. At this time I have nothing definitive to prove or disprove anything. Plus, the, uh, circumstances surrounding the incident in New Orleans were unusual enough that I wouldn’t be comfortable simply letting the whole thing drop. Not without Lida coming forward to admit it was a prank.”

He didn’t ask me to explain what I meant about circumstances, merely gave a tight nod. “You should know that after I spoke to Ben Moran I received a call from the mayor, asking me to please accommodate Mr. Moran in any way I could.” I could hear a trace of anger in the chief’s voice now which told me that he was absolutely livid. He never showed anger. “But I want you to know that I expect you to do your job to the best of your ability and that you have my support.”

I took a deep breath. “Sir, I appreciate that.” I paused, unable to keep from smiling. “But the mayor and Mr. Moran are forgetting a fairly crucial detail.”

Chief Turnham gave me a questioning look.

“She was attacked in New Orleans, sir.”

A broad smile spread across his face and he began to chuckle. “And I take it you had a member of the NOPD on your task force?”

I matched his smile. “Yes, sir. Detective Marco Knight took the report, which means that Mr. Moran and the mayor will have a much harder time getting the whole thing dropped.” I inclined my head to him slightly. “But, as far as this department is concerned, I think you can honestly state that the Beaulac Police Department has no active cases concerning an attack on Lida Moran.”

He leaned back in his chair. “Detective Gillian, what I want to say at this moment would no doubt be considered extremely inappropriate and unprofessional, even though it would be meant as a compliment to you.” Then he surprised me by laughing. “Screw it. You’re a devious, clever bitch, and I’m glad you work for me.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said with a grin. “I think.”

“Though I have to admit that I did wonder why a financial crimes task force was looking into a singer receiving death threats in the first place.” He gave me a penetrating gaze, and I was reminded that he was quite shrewd, and I would be a fool to underestimate him.

“Well, sir, its primary focus is financial crimes, but it also deals with anything that doesn’t quite fit anywhere else.” Including anything related to the arcane or “magic” or strange creatures or ritual murders ... but I had no plans to explain all of that to him. “The whole thing is under the Homeland Security umbrella, which makes it kind of a catchall. When the complaint came in, our group was the one that was available.”

“All right, well keep in mind that there’s a lot of attention on you and that task force now. Make sure that you have justification for whatever you do.”

“Yes, sir.”

He gave me a wave of dismissal and I made my exit, mulling over what he’d said. I’d been a cop long enough to be unsurprised that someone with social or political clout would try to influence an ongoing investigation. Yet I could understand why Lida’s uncle would try and do so. If his niece truly had participated in something as boneheaded as a publicity stunt—and, to make matters worse, one that got out of control—it was no surprise that he’d want to shield her from repercussions that would no doubt destroy her career and affect her future.

I’d also been a cop long enough to know that the world was not fair and just, and that people with money and influence often did not have to suffer the same tribulations that the “common” folk did. I still vividly remembered an incident from my days as a road cop. My sergeant had asked me to stay after roll call, and after everyone else had left, he’d handed me a speeding ticket that I’d written the day before. With a tight expression, he’d then asked me to please change it to a ticket for not wearing a seat belt.

“So, who is it?” I’d asked.

He’d sighed and shrugged. “Who knows. It came down from someone in the upper ranks. Someone they don’t want to piss off.”

And, I’d dutifully crossed out the speeding charge and written in the one for seat belt use. Sure, I could have made a stand against influence and the good ol’ boy network. But I also knew you had to pick your battles, and I didn’t want to stay a road cop forever.

The chief’s comment about the task force bothered me, though. What if he was pressured to take me off it? A pang went through me at the thought. Even though I had no desire to leave Beaulac PD, working with the task force gave me—and my abilities—a feeling of legitimacy that I’d never had before. Now I summoned demons for good reasons—to find missing people and stop killers and protect potential victims. I liked that. A lot.

But he’s not the type to bow to political pressure, right? The chief was good people. I had a huge amount of respect for him. But the chief of police is an appointed position, I reminded myself. If push came to shove, I doubted he’d be willing to sacrifice his job so that I could stay on the task force.

My gut was churning at the direction my thoughts were taking. And when I returned to my office there was yet another note on the door, though this one told me to go see my sergeant, Cory Crawford. Continuing down the hall to where his door stood open, I looked in to see him reading what looked like a report, a baffled expression on his face. Crawford was a stout man engaged in a constant battle with a midsection that wanted to be more than stout. His hair had gone gray long ago, but he continued to dye it a dull brown—an almost perfect match to the color of his eyes. He was similarly unimaginative in his wardrobe—brown, brown, and more brown—except when it came to his ties. Those were always wild and psychedelic, in eye-bleeding colors and patterns. He’d recently grown his mustache back—which was, of course, also dyed. I’d never tell him, but I actually thought he looked better with the mustache. There weren’t too many men who could pull it off, but he was definitely one of them.

I tapped on his door frame. “You wanted to see me? I can come back if you’re in the middle of something.”

He glanced up, then waved me in. “Nah, come on in. Glad for the break. I’m trying to decipher Pellini’s report. Makes me wonder if English is really his first language.”

I resisted the urge to snicker or make any other sort of commentary and dropped into the chair in front of the desk.

Crawford rubbed his eyes. “God, his reports give me headaches. You already went to see the chief?”

“Yes, he’s recognized my innate brilliance and intends to promote me to deputy chief.”

“Good, then you can approve my vacation time,” Crawford said without missing a beat. I laughed and his eyes crinkled in a smile. “Funny, I figured it had more to do with the whole Lida Moran thing.”

“Yeah, well, that might have come up too,” I said with a casual shrug. Then I made a face. “You know how it is. People with pull will pull.”

Crawford’s expression soured. “At least you understand. It sucks, but you’re usually pretty good at keeping your head out of your ass.” He turned and shuffled through papers on his desk. “Anyway, I need you to take some cases. I hate to throw you the boring shit, but it’s your own damn fault for not being an incompetent fucktard.”

“Sorry, Sarge. I’ll have to work on that.”

Crawford scowled as he handed two folders to me. “Spare me that, please. We already have our quota in this department. Now get out.”

I gave him a sarcastic salute, then retreated to my own office with the folders.

I skimmed them quickly—one was a supposed burglary, but on closer reading it became clear that it was a property dispute related to a divorce and that the “burgling” wife still had legal access to the residence in question. That one was easily resolved—at least for now—with a few phone calls to the respective lawyers of the divorcing couple.

The other was a missing person report that had come in only about an hour ago. Victor Kerry, white male, fifty-six years old, hadn’t shown up for his regular training session at his gym last Friday or this morning.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered. I started to toss the report back onto the desk, then paused as the name of the reporting person caught my attention. Roger Peeler? That’s the drummer from Lida’s band. I vaguely remembered Lida’s comment about him being a personal trainer. I went back and read through his statement more carefully, though still with an admittedly jaundiced eye. Personally I saw absolutely nothing strange or suspicious about skipping out on a session with a personal trainer.

I finished reading the report, still far from convinced that there was anything to justify the complaint. From what I could determine, Victor Kerry was a financial planner and CPA with no family in the area. Roger Peeler had stated that Mr. Kerry was extraordinarily diligent about his workouts, and when he’d failed to show up for two sessions in a row Mr. Peeler had gone to Mr. Kerry’s residence and his office, but had failed to locate him at either place.

“Wow, talk about your stalkers,” I muttered. It seemed far more likely to me that Mr. Kerry had gone away for the weekend and had seen no reason to notify his personal trainer. In other words, the probability is high that this is a bullshit case.

On the other hand, the universe was gifting me with an opportunity to question one of the members of Ether Madhouse. I wasn’t about to let that pass that by. Even if it did mean going to a gym.