by Sarah Biglow
WINTER’S RECKONING Copyright © 2020 by Sarah Biglow.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For information contact; www.sarah-biglow.com
Editing by: Under Wraps Publishing Services
Cover Design by: Deranged Doctor Design
Print ISBN: 978-1513659572
Published by Sarah Biglow: 2020
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Created with Vellum
Contents
December 18, 2017
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
December 19, 2017
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
December 20, 2017
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
December 21, 2017
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
December 31, 2017
Epilogue
About the Author
December 18, 2017
One
Time has a weird way of speeding up and slowing down all at once when you’re grieving. It had been eighty-nine days since a sniper—I believe it was an Order member—took Desmond from us. It felt like an eternity and no time at all had passed. In all that time he’d never come out of the pendant to explain himself—not once.
My heart skipped a beat every time I walked into the precinct. My mind liked trying to trick me into thinking that I’d see him again. He would be sitting in his office waiting for me or some other officer who needed help. However, the only time I saw his face there anymore was on the wall of fallen officers. He hadn’t carried a badge and gun like the rest of us, but Captain Beech had lobbied for him to get a photo on the wall.
“I’m going to solve this, Des,” I whispered to his photo as I stood in the hall. I could feel eyes on me as I addressed his portrait. I pivoted slowly to find Captain Beech standing behind me.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” she said in an uncharacteristically soft tone. “But do you have a minute, Trenton?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. The words felt almost robotic as I followed her through the bullpen and into her office.
“Close the door,” she instructed.
My palms grew sweaty as I eased the door shut and sat across from her. I could see a case file sitting on her desk with the label obscured. The captain folded her hands over the folder and said, “I wanted to check in with you. See how you’re handling things.”
“I’m fine,” I replied
“Desmond was murdered right in front of you, Ezri. I most definitely wouldn’t be okay if I were you.”
“He’s not the first person I’ve lost,” I answered, averting my gaze.
“I know you lost your mother when you were young.”
“Really, Captain I’m fine. I’ve got Jacquie, my dad and fiancé that I can lean on and the best place for me to be is right here, doing my job. Like he’d want.”
She leaned back in her chair and regarded me in silence. Once upon a time I would have shrunk under that gaze. I could still remember the feeling of having my badge and gun taken from me nine months ago in this very office. The tiny hairs on the back of my arms stood on end as nervous energy bubbled just below the surface. A hint of strawberry wafted up to my nose, signaling my magic was ready to lash out at whatever was coming for me. I clenched my teeth, forcing my power back into check.
“I appreciate your dedication to the job. That’s why I called you in here.” She uncovered the case file and turned it to reveal Desmond’s name. “I’m afraid we’ve officially classified his case as a Cold Case.”
“No … Captain, you can’t,” I protested.
“I’m sorry Trenton. Without any leads to go on, we’ve hit a dead end.”
“Have they reviewed the video footage from the bank?”
“You know they have,” she answered.
“What about the bullet? They recovered it, right?”
“It doesn’t match anything in the system. I’m sorry. Unless you have any new information that you haven’t already shared with the detectives assigned to the case, I’m afraid it’s out of my hands.”
I opened my mouth to protest more, but closed it. I’d told the officers assigned to the case everything I could remember right after it happened. Even so that didn’t mean I didn’t have more information to give them. I hadn’t gone combing through my memory of that day. Part of me wanted to believe it was too painful to relive. While another piece insisted that I didn’t need to go that route, because Desmond would show up and fill me in on everything. That hadn’t happened though. Maybe it was time to take a trip down memory lane.
“There’s nothing else,” I finally said and stood. “If that’s all, ma’am, I should get back to work.”
“Here, take this to the records room, would you?” She passed me the file and I held it tight. I could feel the bulge of a thumb drive inside.
“Sure thing.”
I retreated to my desk and grabbed my jacket, pocketing the drive. I had a stop to make before it and the file ended up in records. Jacquie appeared carrying two coffees. “We have a case?” She asked as I breezed by her.
“I’ll explain on the way,” I answered.
The coffee fortified me for what I was planning. Jacquie eyed me in silence as she pulled onto Commonwealth, following the flow of traffic away from the city and toward Authority headquarters in Newton. Since Desmond’s death, I’d been staying away from the Council, much to their thinly veiled annoyance. I’d insisted we bring new people onto the Council to fill the vacancies left by the Order’s attacks and then I’d ghosted them. Logically I knew I was falling back into old habits, but what’s said about old habits is true.
“So, what did Beech want?” Jacquie finally broke the silence.
“They’re shunting Des’ case to Cold.”
“Damn, Ezri, I’m sorry.” I catch the sideways look of sympathy she shoots me before switching lanes. “You know that they did all they could with the evidence they had.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat as she pulled into the circular drive of headquarters, the tiny drive in my pocket weighing on me. “I may have borrowed some evidence,” I replied and darted out of the car.
I paused long enough in the front hall to catch sight of Teddy Cox racing after some other kids, their laughter echoing off the walls. He may have lost his sister to the darkness, but I’d still managed to keep my word to Lola. I’d kept him safe and out of the Order’s clutches. He turned, spotted me and gave a quick wave before disappearing again.
“You realize this is illegal?” Jacquie hissed as I marched up the stairs with the flash drive in my hand.
“Avery is a police tech consultant. I’m not going to just give it to her,” I argued as I made my way through the Council meeting room and into the tech hub.
Avery sat at the computer flipping through somet
hing on her screen. I cleared my throat and knocked on the doorframe to announce myself. I had enough time to catch a glimpse of a tab on her browser with the word séance in the title. She spun to face me, pulling her headphones from her ears. I could see the red rims of her eyes from crying. I couldn’t blame her.
“I’ve got a job for you,” I said and handed the flash drive over.
Looking over her shoulder I caught a glimpse of the images that flashing on her computer screen. Images of her and Desmond over the years, places I’d never known they’d gone. From the Aquarium to a Duck Boat tour and down by the Esplanade.
She caught me looking and her cheeks flushed. “I’m making a memorial video for him. I needed to do something just to help make myself feel better, and this seemed like a good thing. I figure, he’d like it and it chronicles our whole relationship.”
“It’s nice,” I said.
She tapped a few keys on the keyboard and the pictures disappeared. She slid the flash drive into a port on her computer and pulled up the security camera footage. Avery’s shoulders stiffened as she hit play. “Why would you give me this?”
She slammed the space bar to make the video pause and turned her back on it. I shoved my hands in my pockets. “Because I need your help, Avery. They’re filing his case as a Cold Case.”
“Can they just do that?” She gulped, her voice jumping an octave.
“With a lack of evidence or witnesses, they have to devote their resources to cases they can actually solve,” Jacquie answered.
I hated that my partner was right. Which is why I was standing here, asking my cousin’s widow to work her literal tech magic to find me something I’d missed. Something the mundane techs wouldn’t have spotted. “I need to know if there’s anything magical on the footage. Please, Avery. Help me get him justice.”
“You were there. Haven’t you already done your memory walk thing?” She quipped, tapping a few other keys to minimize another set of browsers I couldn’t read.
“I … No.” Avery didn’t know about my pendant and how it worked. Or at least how I suspected it worked given all of the dead relatives that had popped up to lend advice and their magic in the last nine months.
“But you’re fine with me having to watch the man I love die?” She ground out.
The more I thought about it from her perspective, I could see and even justify her anger. It did seem cruel to make her watch his last moments. I carried that memory with me. It wasn’t fair to make her witness it, too. “I’ll ask one of the others to do it. I just need to know if there is any trace of magic picked up by the footage.”
“No. This is Desmond. My Desmond. No one else is laying hands on this footage.” She looked up and her gaze was sharp enough to cut. “But don’t ask me to help you again. Not unless you’ve had to live with this pain.” She balled her hands into fists and took a sharp intake of breath. “I still feel him when I’m at home, like he’s there trying to reach out to me. I can’t walk past our favorite coffee shop or listen to classical music without hating the people that took him away from me.”
I stood there in silence, having no idea of how to respond to her. Thanking her seemed heartless, but I didn’t want her to think I had plans to go combing through my memory of that day just to ensure she would help me again in the future.
“Don’t focus on him. I know it’s hard, but try to focus on the sights and sounds around him, in the rest of the video,” Jacquie offered.
Avery’s gaze flitted to my partner before settling back on me. “I’ll text you if I find anything.”
She swiveled in the chair, pulled the headphones up over her ears and tapped a few keys on the keyboard in front of her. She pulled the flash drive out of the computer port and held it out to me without looking up. That was our cue to leave. I pocketed the drive and Jacquie led the way out down to the first floor.
“You’re going to go digging in your memory, aren’t you?” She asked once we were back in the car.
“I can’t not do it, Jacquie. And not just because of what Avery said. I’ve been avoiding it for months.” I studied the file folder in my lap, conjuring an image of Des smiling at me. “I was hoping he’d show me the way, but he’s been silent. It’s time I take the reins on this thing. If the police can’t get justice for him, I’m going to do it. No matter what.”
“Careful, partner. That’s vigilante talk right there. You put that badge on to serve and protect people. It isn’t a license to go off the rails, because you’re hurting.”
I turned to face her, my fingers tightening around the file until I was sure I’d come away with a mess of paper cuts. “The Order did this. The timing of his death is too suspicious not to be their dirty work. I don’t know, maybe they got pissed I stopped them from stealing magic, so they wanted to hurt me. Whatever the reason, I know they’re why Desmond is dead. This isn’t about me being a cop. This is about me being the Savior.”
“That may be true, but you go poking around places you aren’t supposed to, and the very non-magical police are going to come down on you ... and hard. Captain Beech likes you, but she’s got a department to run and doesn’t need rogue cops.”
I sighed. “It would be a lot easier if I knew my partner had my back.”
She arched a brow. “When did I ever say I didn’t have your back?”
“I didn’t exactly fill you in on the plan,” I answered sheepishly.
“You mean the plan you’re half-assing right now?”
Guilty. “So, I need to drop this off at records before the Captain finds out about our little detour. First though, I need to make one more stop. I need to pay a visit to an old friend at the morgue.”
Two
In some small way I’d been lucky to not have to pay the morgue a visit since my first case back in March. I hadn’t seen Assistant Medical Examiner Tricia Karo in that long either. Still I felt bad about not reaching out to her since then. Besides, that road went both ways.
She sat at a lab table; eyes pressed close to a microscope when we entered. The doors gave a pneumatic hiss as they closed behind us.
“Just a second,” she said without moving.
I took the time to get myself back in the mindset of being a cop instead of an emotional wreck clinging to my need for justice. I knew Tricia wouldn’t narc on us for looking into Desmond’s death even though the case was closed. Despite that I still worried she might refuse my request. I’d practically had to twist her arm to test the knife my mother had used to kill herself.
“How can I … Ezri. Hey, long time,” she said, spinning around in her chair.
“Yeah, it has been,” I agreed and stepped up. Jacquie stayed put near the door.
“You working a new case?” Tricia eyed the folder tucked under my arm.
“Not exactly.” I opened the file just enough for her to see Desmond’s face from his department ID photo. “I just had some questions.”
“You aren’t the investigating officer. I can’t talk to you about it,” she said.
I grabbed her wrist to keep her from rolling away. The smell of berries tickled my nose as a little magic slipped out, willing her to stay put. “I just need to know if you left anything out of the official report. Was there anything off about the bullet?”
“Off? Like what?’
“Like inexplainable stone dust at murder scenes,” I answered.
The color drained from her face. “Everything I found is in the report. I wish I could tell you differently, but there was nothing remarkable about the bullet. The gun hadn’t been used in any other crimes according to analysis.”
“Are you sure? Could you test it again? Maybe the killer has gotten bolder in the months since and it will have a match now.”
Tricia shook her head. “It would have come up if anything new was logged into the system.”
“Please, can you check just one more time?”
Tricia gave me a sad look, but nodded and turned to her computer. I exhaled, not realizing I’d been
holding in a breath as she typed. I waited, watching the progress bar on the search through the ballistics database. My heart leapt into my throat as it came up with zero matches.
“I really am sorry. I know you were friends.”
“Something like that,” I murmured, and my left hand grazed the pendant hanging from around my neck. After we’d reconnected, Desmond and I had agreed to keep our familial connection, far flung as it was, quiet. “Thanks for trying.”
Jacquie gave Tricia a wordless nod as we retreated back to the car. “Now what?” She prompted.
“Now, I need to go for a little stroll down memory lane.”
“Your fiancé is going to be pissed as hell at you for that.”
“Only if he finds out,” I reminded her as she put the car in drive.
The trees rose up along the street, their branches barren and forlorn as we made the trek to the condo J.T. and I had shared since September. It had finally started to feel like home. I wasn’t eager to go diving back into my own trauma. Also, Jacquie was right, J.T. would be mad at me for doing it without any magical back-up. I didn’t always emerge from these trips unscathed.
Sitting in the middle of the living room of my condo, watching Jacquie pace did nothing to help my nerves.
“You really should call him,” she said, finally planting her feet.
“J.T.’s on shift right now. And it’s not like someone else is going to try attacking me. It’s my own memory. I’m safe.”
I needed her to believe my words, because my track record for going into memories without ending up injured or worn out wasn’t great. Except this time, I had no choice. If Desmond wasn’t going to come out to play, I’d just have to go in and dig around myself.
