“Let me guess. You ended up glimpsing forty-five different ways to poison Master Dekanos.”
“More or less. Surface thoughts are fleeting. They lack detail. It takes more power than I have at present to delve deeper into a mind.”
Now I let out a tired sigh as we went inside the house. “So much for using you as a pooka-powered lie detector, then.”
Shelly, ever the polite host, had left a note on the kitchen table. It confirmed my guess that she’d turned in early for shuteye to make an especially early shift. And it directed me to the fridge for leftover chili and a plate stacked high with pineapple chunks.
I decided to take her up on her leftovers once Destry reported that Shelly’s bedroom door was shut tight. After a full bowl of freshly microwaved food, it was impossible to keep my eyelids from sliding low. My pooka friend politely cleared his throat as I yawned.
“I remember that you prefer to disrobe in private,” Destry said, with a trace of his distinctive Gallic chortle. “And I believe that you shall sleep better with a ‘night mare’ guarding you from outside your bedroom door.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “You won’t be put-off by staying out here?”
He shook his head, making his bristly mane waver. “Rest easy, Dayna. I shall take care not to startle Shelly when she wakes and comes out to the kitchen.”
I decided to take Destry at his word. I practically sleep-walked my way to the guest bedroom. A quick washup and change of clothes to sleepwear, and I was out as soon as my head hit the pillow.
The night passed without a dream to so much as ruffle my sleep.
At least until an insistent noise tickled my ear.
I woke to the irritating buzz of my alarm clock. Pale yellow sunlight streamed in through the window. The muffled sounds of a television filtered through the wall. That was something new. I sighed and put it out of mind as I switched off the clock’s alarm. Crawling out of bed, I went through my morning toilette and grabbed the nearest set of matching clean clothes.
Once I finally pulled myself into a state of half-consciousness, I decided it was time to visit the kitchen for a quick breakfast. I took no more than three steps out the bedroom door before I came to a halt. Shelly’s living room television was set to the local Shopping Deals network. The overly-enthusiastic announcer was busy hawking some kitchen gadget called an ‘Omelet Bazooka’.
Destry watched the screen, riveted. A little sticky-note pad lay on a table in front of him. His citrine eyes glowed a brighter shade of yellow as a ballpoint pen hovered over the pad, jotting down notes with little swirls and loops. I walked over to stand next to him, amazed.
“Ah, bonjour, Dayna!” The pooka said happily, as he finally noticed me. “This channel is such a marvel. I have taken notes to remember which items I like the most.”
“So I see.” I nodded sagely. “How did you find this channel? And when did you learn to, ah, write like that?”
“Chére, your friend Shelly was kind enough to put this on for me before she left. As for my work with the pen, it is a magic trick I have been working on for some time. We of the pouquelaye find it hard to interact with the corporeal world when we are in ethereal form. I wish to improve upon that.”
Now I was curious. I leaned over to take a look at the pad. Aside from the egg-bazooka-thing, Destry had made notes to himself to purchase a collection of ‘Almost-Genuine’ Dutch crockery. He had also listed two dozen roll-up blinds made to look like rice paper, a selection of Chinese lanterns, and a set of silver cutlery with Elvis Presley’s face engraved on the handles.
Not for the first time, I wished that I could figure out what was going on inside the pooka’s head.
“Oh, there are three more things,” Destry went on, though his glowing citrine eyes never left the screen. “First, Shelly left you something to eat on the stove. Second, look to the right of the stove to find the keys to her spare car.”
I went into the kitchen and found a trio of still-warm bacon slices and a dollop of fried eggs in a pan on the stove. It wasn’t health food, but I scooped the pan’s contents up with a slice of bread and washed everything down with some iced tea. Then I snatched up the keys and stuck my head back out into the living room.
“Um, what was the third thing?” I called over to the big black horse.
“I told Shelly about the case we are working on, and the samples you plan to test,” he called back. “She said that she would reassign your most urgent paperwork for today. And to meet her at the ‘chem lab’ as soon as you arrive.”
Not for the first time, I looked up to the heavens and asked whoever was up there to make Shelly a saint. I went back to my room and gave one more rueful look in the mirror. My hair was still a patchwork of black and yellow, but I could live with it. Then I grabbed my samples in one hand, gun holster in the other.
Destry nodded to me as I went out the front door. “I shall be right behind you, chére.”
I went around the side of my moving van and spotted a beat-up little Mitsubishi sitting off to the side of the main driveway. It was a hatchback, equal parts dirty white, rust-spot red, and baby-puke green.
Beggars couldn’t be choosers, though. I unlocked the car, stowed my gear under the hatch, and slid into the driver’s side. The springs in the seat let out a chorus of creaks, and the raw scent of motor oil tickled my nose when I turned the engine over.
It might have been ratty, but the little car jounced its way along the unevenly paved Los Angeles streets without complaint. Finally, I pulled into a space at the OME’s parking lot. I got out and waited for a count of five before Destry materialized next to me as a horse-shaped black cloud.
I opened the car’s rear hatch, passing over my gun and holster as I grabbed the bagged-up samples from the Everwinter Glade. Destry cocked his head at me as I closed the car up. His hooves made loud clacks on the asphalt as he followed me towards the OME building.
“You do not take up your…défense?” he asked. “That seems unlike you.”
“It is,” I acknowledged. “You haven’t been around since the bomb threat I called in. Or the assassination of Chief Sims. The rules have been changed so that only officers in the LAPD can carry firearms into the building.”
His only comment was a dismissive snort. Destry made sure to phase into ethereal form as we went through the lobby and the security checkpoint. Just like before, no one so much as glanced at him.
The pooka and I walked down a series of slate-gray corridors until we arrived at the Chem Lab. I halted in surprise as I spotted the brand-new lab door, one that looked like it had been pilfered from an airplane hangar or secret submarine base. It was curved around the edges like a pressure door, and it had a fancy octagonal window. Instead of a keyhole, the designers had built in a sensor pad at waist level. A baleful red LED glowed at the top of the pad as if daring me to cross it.
Inside, Shelly was busy speaking with a pair of technicians. As soon as she spotted me, she finished her talk and headed towards me. She’d attached her OME identification card to a belt clip, and as she approached, the sensor pad let out a ping and glowed green. The door slid to one side with a hiss of compressed air.
She grinned. “Sounds like it ought to be on a starship, don’t it? Come on in. You too, Destry.”
With my friend’s encouragement, I stepped across the threshold. Destry followed suit as the two lab techs exited. They moved to one side to avoid the big black horse, but they didn’t even look up from their paperwork. I knew about the pooka’s ambient ‘ignore me’ magic, but it was still amazing to watch in action.
Instantly, I picked up the elevated scents of metal, plastic, and reagents. I looked around, amazed at the changes since I’d last been in the Chem Lab. The long, dinged-up tables and bright orange plastic chairs still made the place look like a struggling outlet of a discount pizza chain. But most everything else was in the process of being remodeled.
The ceiling’s acoustic tiling had been removed, revealing bundl
es of cables and multi-colored wiring. Several walls had been torn out for re-configuration, exposing naked metal beams. It also exposed the chemical supply tanks, liquid piping, and the scuffed backs of the safety equipment cabinets.
“It’s still a work in progress,” Shelly beamed. “But it’s coming along! And best of all, I cooked up an excuse to keep the lab to ourselves for the rest of the morning.”
Destry wrinkled his nose. “Everything I smell is synthétique. It is quite strange.”
“Yeah, it’s not for the uninitiated,” Shelly agreed, as she spread her hands to encompass the new rooms. “I’ve been pushing for an upgrade like this for six or seven years now, and the gears at the top finally ground things fine enough for them to happen.”
I pursed my lips. “Hopefully they haven’t disassembled any of the equipment I’m going to need.”
“No, everything’s still in working order,” Shelly reassured me, as we moved over to the bank of examination equipment at the rear of the main room. “The exotic stuff that just came in is in the new clean room we’re building.”
She nodded off to my left as I set my samples down on the counter and began slipping on my protective gear. I glanced that direction as I gloved up and slipped a visor over my eyes. Sure enough, brand new test equipment – some still wrapped in shrouds of plastic – glistened on the shelves. Yet another of the futuristic doors separated the newly created chamber from the main room.
“What are the red ‘eyes’ that I see here?” Destry asked, as he brought his nose down close to the door’s sensor. “I saw one outside as well.”
“Those? Darlin’, that’s part of our new keyless entry system. The OME’s got sensitive, flammable, and expensive materials in here by the case and canister-load. We’re issuing magnetic cards to cut down on who can get in or out of here.”
While Shelly explained the intricacies of the card reader system to Destry, I focused on getting down to my forensics work. My samples of Dekanos’ tissues and a chunk of the poison-coated branchlet went onto sets of clear Lucite trays. From there, I sent them into the appropriate gas analyzer or mass spectrometer stations.
I double-checked to make sure that everything was working within proper tolerances before moving on to the next steps. The blood and tissue sample analysis would come back in extremely quick order. But the chemical readout on the poison would take longer.
In the meantime, I carefully removed the rest of the branchlet and put the withered coil onto a larger tray before sliding the tray under one of the lab’s microscopes. I didn’t see anything, which bothered me until I recalled that Liam had directed me to this very item.
I’d learned from personal experience that fayleene could see farther into the light spectrum than humans. That had cracked a case for me once before, so perhaps it would help a second time. Reaching up, I switched to a polarized light filter. Nothing showed up, so I changed it out for one that allowed me to see into ultraviolet.
That did the trick.
Not only did I see the shine that Liam had mentioned, but there was a specific pattern left behind. It reminded me of the swirls left behind by drying paint. I used a pair of forceps to turn the sample over.
It turned out that the shiny substance coated only one side. It flowed in a perfectly straight line, leaving fan-like markings that pointed down towards the end. What’s more, the origin point of the substance showed no hole, no indentation, no bulge in the side of the branchlet. It hadn’t come from the tree itself. This substance had been a thick, syrup-like liquid that had only flowed with the downward tug of gravity.
Finally, the sequence of events in the Senior Archmage’s poisoning popped into my head.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The murderer had approached Master Dekanos when he’d been standing or lying under his tree, deep in meditation. They’d put the poison high up on a branchlet perfectly positioned to drip the substance onto the unsuspecting unicorn’s lip. From there, the poison ran down the back of the tongue, still following gravity, burning as it went. Given the potency, a single drop was all it took.
But what was the substance?
And better yet: How did the murderer get past both physical and magical barriers and into that tree, all without the unicorn noticing? Whoever it was hadn’t left so much as a foot or hoof print in the sand patterns that surrounded Dekanos’ small island of turf.
The phone rang from further on down the counter. Shelly went to pick it up. She spoke a couple of sentences and then shook her head before she hung up.
“That was one of the admins,” she said. “McClatchy and Gavitt have been trying to get hold of you. They’re meeting upstairs right now, and they’ll want you to join them this afternoon.”
“Well, that makes my day,” I grumbled. I reached into a pocket for my phone. “I don’t think I turned off my ringer, but I didn’t get any calls.”
“That ain’t out of the ordinary. These heavy walls block most of the signal. We’re puttin’ in a paging system to get around that.”
“Well, that might be a benefit in disguise. If anyone in management is looking for you, the only way they can call is on the landline.”
“I wouldn’t object, I’ll tell you that much.” She motioned towards the machines on the counter as they hummed away. “How’s that coming?”
“It’s coming. Should just be a minute or two, longer for the tissue sample analysis.”
Destry perked up at that. “That is fast! Faster than when I was last here with you.”
“Newer equipment,” Shelly informed him. “It’s quicker than a hot knife through warm butter. More accurate, too. But the really advanced stuff is in the clean room we’re setting up. I’ve been waiting to start unwrapping things, and it sounds like I have time to do it now.”
She jutted a hip towards the sensor, which flashed green and slid the door out of her way before stepping through and flicking a switch on the inside wall. The sensor light went out and the door stayed open.
I listened to Shelly humming to herself as she began fiddling with one of her new toys, as happy as a child opening presents on Christmas Day. Then I turned my attention to Destry.
“Well, if I have to go see McClatchy, then maybe it’ll work out in the end. Because you’re going to come along with me when I get called up there.”
“But of course,” the pooka said smoothly. “I shall read what thoughts I can to make things easier for you.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” I crossed my arms as I continued. “I brought you back here for Bob’s sake. As soon as that IA is done and out of the room, I’m putting you to work.”
Destry shuffled his feet nervously, making a series of scraping clops against the floor. “Putting me to work? Pourquoi? What would you have me do?”
My eyes bored into the pooka’s. “You’re fixing whatever you did to him, that’s what you’re going to do!”
His voice got tiny. “But…what if I cannot?”
“Then you find a way to neutralize him so that he won’t be a danger to anyone,” I said coldly. “One way or the other, I want this to end. Today.”
Before Destry could say anything else, a ping came from the devices working on the blood and tissue samples. I turned away from him and sat back at my computer monitor. The readout on the tissue samples popped up on screen.
The first thing that struck me was the relatively small amount of calcium carbonate, phosphate, zinc, and copper in the samples. That made sense. It meant my hunch about the nature of the burn on Master Dekanos’ tongue was correct.
Combustion hadn’t caused that strange wound. Instead, it came from a chemical reaction to the substance administered via the branchlet drip. Nothing else would have turned those tough membranes in the mouth into cellular mush.
The next readout came complete with a diagnosis for a serious blood disorder.
“Hyperkalemia?” I said aloud. “What the heck?”
That was a medical term referring to when a patient had
excessive potassium in their bloodstream. An imbalance of that nutrient could drastically affect the function of nerves and muscles. But I wasn’t a big-animal vet like Shelly. For all I knew, the level shown was normal for a large, older horse.
“Hey, I have a question,” I called over to her. “Do equines have significantly higher amounts of potassium in their bloodstream?”
“What?” Shelly looked up from where she’d been removing plastic wrap from a block-shaped device. “No, not if you mean free-floating potassium. But they’ve got more red blood cells than we do. If you’re seeing higher levels of potassium, then you might have a lot of ruptured cells in the mix.”
Destry cocked his head at that. “Can one really tell how much of a substance is in the blood?”
“You bet your ghost horse rump we can.” Shelly patted the device she’d just unwrapped. “Take this baby, for example. This uses an ultrahigh vacuum to detect the percentage of organic compounds down to the a millionth-part.”
“Intéressant, but how does that work?”
Destry walked over to where Shelly was working. He couldn’t fit into the narrow confines of the clean room, but he stuck his head in through the open door. I wasn’t sure how much he really understood, but Shelly seemed delighted to have an audience.
Me, I wasn’t as happy. I’d just checked the data for the exact amounts of potassium found.
Dekanos’ levels were off the charts. Way, way up into toxic levels.
I thought about the pulped feel of the flesh along the sides of the burn mark. That excess potassium had to be from massive numbers of shredded blood cells.
But what kind of poison could do that?
A second ping came from the analyzer further down the counter. I sat down at the new station and pulled up the results on the substance I’d isolated off the branchlet. I ended up scrolling down the screen a couple of times to read the entire report.
The Conspiracy of Unicorns Page 20
