Skin Deep

CHAPTER 10

ELYSIUM GENERAL HOSPITAL blended into its surroundings like any other neighborhood business building. A solid mass of concrete with cantilevered sides, it had been built in the 1950s as part of the urban renewal south of the National Mall. The brutalist architecture suffered from unfavorable critical reviews. After struggling to find tenants for years, a coalition of fey groups purchased it and founded the hospital. If the Celtic fairies and Teutonic elves agreed on anything, it was quality health care, and EGH was the one place where no one argued politics, of the fey kind anyway.

Laura strolled the fourth-floor corridor, the Mariel Tate glamour drawing its intended attention from hospital staff and visitors. Her high heels punctured the hushed working atmosphere with a firm, measured rhythm. Mariel didn’t rush and would not be rushed, her movements steady with purpose, the casual sway in her hips conveying a woman comfortable in her own skin more than one attempting to provoke desire in an onlooker. She had other attributes to do that.

She paused at the door to Corman Deegan’s room. For a moment, she thought she might have the wrong room. The file in her hands had Deegan’s picture in it, a trim man dressed in jeans and a blue oxford shirt. He appeared more youthful than his picture, certainly younger than his fifty-some years. Druids weren’t immortal, but they lived decades longer than humans and aged at a much slower rate. Some were rumored to have lived centuries. In the file photo, Deegan looked to be no more than in his early thirties, his blunt-cut hair swept over his ears to the nape of his neck adding to the youthful appearance. The man sitting in the chair by the window looked considerably older.

He tilted his head to follow some movement outside the window. “I’m not sure why InterSec is interested in talking to me,” he said.

Laura chided herself for forgetting that other druids had a wider sensing range than she did. She stepped a few feet into the room until she sensed Deegan’s body signature. “My name’s Mariel Tate.”

He turned, revealing a healing cut on his right cheekbone and a fading bruise under his eye. “I know. I’m Corman Deegan.”

She gave him a slow half smile. “I know.”

They exchanged bemused stares as they took each other’s measure. That close, she sensed he had what would be considered an average-strength body signature, not one of the heavy-hitting powerhouses of the fey world but not to be underestimated. Innate body essence was important in manipulating essence, but it wasn’t the only thing that determined power. What you did with it counted. Laura knew powerful fey who didn’t have the skills to exploit it. She was an example of someone with ability deficits that she more than made up for in other ways.

Deegan gestured for her to take the guest chair while he remained in the other. “You look too perfect. You’re wearing a glamour.”

The comment didn’t surprise Laura. There were ways to see beneath a glamour, but it wasn’t an ability. Druids were particularly skilled at creating glamours. They couldn’t see through them, though they had a knack for noticing telltale signs when one was being used. Laura thought, for instance, that the Janice glamour was obvious to most druids, but she worked carefully on the Mariel one to avoid notice or comment. She took Deegan’s awareness as evidence of his attention to fine detail rather than a flaw in her glamour skills. “I don’t like to fuss with my hair and clothes.”

“I’ve never been very good with them myself.”

She wondered if he believed her. With her own essence-sensing deficit, she could sympathize with what he meant. Her limited range might be a flaw in her abilities, but her acute ability to sense emotions made up for it. When Deegan spoke about her glamour, she noted that his tone and manner reflected observation rather than definitive knowledge. She sensed no suspicion from him, reinforcing her belief that he accepted her visual appearance as nothing more than a tidied-up version of her actual appearance.

“Druid Deegan, I imagine you know by now about the raid in Anacostia that did not succeed as intended. I’ve been asked to review the situation since an InterSec agent was almost killed. Could you tell me for the record why you were not on the mission?” she asked.

“I was here enjoying the Salisbury steak and Jell-O.” His voice was calm and neutral without a hint of sarcasm. His eyes, though, sparked with irritation.

She didn’t react. “What flavor Jell-O?” He frowned at her, but said nothing. “I asked you a question, Druid Deegan.”

His frown deepened. “Lemon.”

She arched an eyebrow. “How was the steak?”

He gave her a look of grudging approval. “I have been here for two days. The staff can verify that.”

“I asked how your steak was, Druid Deegan.”

She watched him suck in his lower lip in thought. Deegan was not a novice. She imagined him considering whether it was worth annoying an InterSec agent he didn’t work for. “It was fine, thank you,” he said.

“Excellent. Now let’s not waste time with sarcasm and word play or this will be a very long conversation. Understood?” she replied. Still irritated, he nodded.

Laura rested her hand on the file on her lap. With her druidic memory recall, she didn’t need to take notes. Humans found it intimidating for some reason to be questioned by someone who never lifted a pen, but druids didn’t, so Deegan wouldn’t mind. In order to gain rank in druidic training, he had had to develop the same skill. “I understand you were brought here unconscious.”

His hand trembled as he adjusted his robe. Since he projected neither fear nor anxiety, Laura assumed that the motion was a physical tremor. “I apparently had too much to drink and got into a fight. When I woke up, I was in this room and head-blind.”

Laura raised an eyebrow again. On Mariel’s face, it was a significant gesture, her finely arched eyebrow lifting smoothly. “ ‘Apparently’?”

“I don’t remember the fight. Too much booze.”

“You were at the Vault, I believe.” She didn’t just believe. She knew.

He nodded. “I was there with Gianni and Sinclair.” He let his gaze linger on her legs. “I’m surprised I’ve never seen you there.”

“I’m not very social in D.C.” Laura moved her hand a fraction against the file folder. “It’s not the first time you’ve had head-blindness.”

“No.”

“Have you noticed the pattern?” She had. It was obvious to anyone who bothered to look.

He didn’t quite freeze, but the hand stopped moving. “What is this, some kind of intervention?”

Not the answer she expected. Laura picked up embarrassment and a touch of anger. “Would you like it to be?”

He set his jaw. “I do not have a drinking problem.”

The response clarified his reaction. In the past six months, Deegan had had five instances of head-blindness, all after being in a bar. She hadn’t focused on the drinking angle but the fact that he had been at the Vault. “That’s not the pattern I’m talking about.”

His eyebrows drew together as he frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“Each time you’ve had an episode, you missed work the next day. The file indicates that on each of those days, you had something on your calendar related to the planning of the raid in Anacostia.”

Surprise swept over his face. Laura sensed that the emotion was genuine. “Huh. It never occurred to me. What do you make of it?”

She flashed the half smile again. “I was hoping you might tell me, Druid Deegan.”

He bowed his head in thought. “Someone didn’t want me on the raid.”

“And succeeded.”

He shook his head. “It was SOP. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“But it wasn’t, in the end, was it?”

He closed his eyes, as if blocking out his surroundings to help him concentrate. Laura knew he was using mnemonic techniques to match the days in his memories to their events. “The brownie security. That was the one consistent topic on each of those days, either a review of their files or interviews with informants.”

The brownie security, Laura noted, one of whom turned out not to have been a brownie at all. “You didn’t think it was odd that the meetings weren’t rescheduled if the task of removing the brownies was yours?”

“I read the summary reports. Everything indicated they had low-ability brownies working the door,” he said. “No one seemed concerned. It was like I said-SOP.”

“Have you read reports of the raid?”

He shook his head. “Not hard copy. Captain Foyle filled me in.”

“You picked up on my slight glamour, Druid Deegan. How refined is that skill?” She hoped the phrasing would reinforce her contention that Mariel Tate’s glamour was inconsequential.

Deegan shrugged. “I don’t know. Most people screw something up-no texture to fabric, perfectly symmetrical faces, things like that. I notice them.”

“Do you think you would have sensed an Inverni fairy glamoured as a brownie?”

He ran a tired hand over his head. “Maybe. Wings are tough to hide. The Inverni have a lot more power than brownies. Under the right conditions, I might have figured out it wasn’t a brownie, but probably not what the actual species was.”

Unlike me, Laura thought. Had she been so careless? Should she have noticed something like that? She pushed the thoughts aside. “Do you remember anything unusual at the Vault the nights you came down with head-blindness?”

He closed his eyes again. “No. Simple drinking after work.”

“Who were you with?”

He answered without hesitating. Now that she was jogging specific memories and he was using mnemonics, his recall had refreshed the memories. “Sinclair and Gianni all five times. Sanchez three times.”

“Same bartender?” she asked.

Deegan shook his head. “No. And it was random who put the orders in.”

“Were your drinks ever unattended?”

He shrugged. “I know what you’re asking, but I don’t remember. If I’m not focused on something particular, it doesn’t go into the hypermemory. You know that.”

She did know what he meant. She was using her hypermemory for the interview, recording every nuance of the conversation. “I’m just asking. What did you think of Sanchez?”

He hesitated. She registered doubt and curiosity and was pleased to have stumbled on something that raised her suspicions.

“I think he was working undercover for someone,” he said.

“Why?” she asked, cool, neutral, a simple request for clarification from someone like Mariel, who had a reputation for having seen it all.

Deegan twisted his lips for a moment. “Just a hunch. He asked questions that seemed innocuous, but then he had a knack for following up on them so often that I started to notice the pattern. He never took a personal call at work and said little about his private life. Sometimes he would be late or leave early or take long lunches with lame excuses. Foyle got him on that a lot, but Gabe didn’t seem to care.”

Laura noted the use of the first name. Not unusual, but rare among the cops she knew. If a cop had a long or odd last name, his brothers shortened it or came up with a nickname that played off it. Women were often called by their first names, and they sometimes called men by theirs. With the guys, it happened between close friends. Buddies. “You partnered with Sanchez a lot, right?”

Deegan nodded but looked at his feet when he did. “Yeah. He was a good cop.”

“Did you tell anyone your suspicions?”

He shook his head. “No, it was just gut stuff.”

She finally felt some grief. Not the intensity of lovers, but there had definitely been a friendship. She remembered thinking during the raid that Sanchez had no trouble working with her sendings. She sensed no guilt from Deegan. Given the obvious friendship between them, he’d project guilt or regret if he knew someone had set Sanchez up. She didn’t think Deegan was involved, not with what she was sensing from him.

“Did you ever meet Tylo Blume?”

“Twice. He offered me a job. I declined.”

“Why?”

Deegan shrugged. “Why not? I didn’t need the work.”

“Sanchez took some work.”

“Yeah. They all did. Sanchez was pushing for more.”

“Did you eat or drink with Blume?” she asked.

Deegan furrowed his brow. She worried for a moment she had been too clumsy. “Not that I recall.”

“So you had head-blindness only when you drank with Gianni, Sinclair, or Sanchez.”

Anger colored Deegan’s body signature. “Are you implying something about my fellow officers?”

She gazed steadily at him without showing any emotion. “Am I?”

“I trust them with my life,” he said.

“Janice Crawford will be pleased to hear that,” Laura said.

Deegan leaned forward, essence sparking around him in fragments. Laura didn’t move. As Deegan loomed over her, she pushed more essence into her glamour, enhancing her eyes. The gaze of an Old One was not easily held. Deegan flinched. He hesitated in the silence, then leaned back in his seat. “They’re good men,” he said.

Laura cocked her head to the side. “You don’t seem particularly concerned about Crawford. It makes me curious about your loyalties.”

He sneered at her. “Race-baiting, Tate? That’s a human game.”

She leaned back and crossed her legs. “I was talking about loyalty to truth over comrades.”

He snorted. “I don’t know anything more than what I’ve told you.”

Not quite a lie, but not the truth. He had suspicions about something or someone. She had angered him too much, and his body signature was distorted by emotion.

Laura stood, adjusting some pages that threatened to slip out of her folder. “When are you reporting for duty?”

“Not soon. Something important is apparently damaged. I’m still head-blind.”

She walked to the door. “That’s all the questions I have for now, Druid Deegan. I may contact you again as the investigation proceeds.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You mean you’ll stop by to confirm answers you already have.”

Laura threw a slow smile over her shoulder. “Don’t be too sure what I know or don’t know.”

She moved smoothly out of the room with a soft, rolling gait, knowing damned well that despite his anger at her, Deegan watched her ass. She wasn’t insulted. She often turned it into an advantage.