“I assume that’s the case.”
“Can you keep her safe?”he asked.
“My place is the safest we have at the moment. I’m sure I can keep a human out. Besides, if her mother really wants to find her, she can, no matter where we put her. My place is best, she’s comfortable there.”
Hamilton pressed his palms together. “Good, then that’s what we need from you. Rourke and I will need to find more evidence.”
“What about the red hairs?” I asked.
“All we can officially prove about that is that they came from a red wig. It’s not enough to get us a warrant against the red-headed sister to obtain a match, or access to the one you said had a slightly bloodstained bag that could have belonged to one of the victims. We need something conclusive to point us in their direction.”
“But we know it’s them.”
“We suspect it’s them. Without evidence it’s just a game of pointing the finger and saying ‘it was you, wasn’t it?’” Rourke said reasonably. I glared at her.
“There’s a certain finger I’d like to point at you right now. Can you guess which one it is?”
Hamilton pushed to his feet, slamming his hands down on his desk.
“Enough. We’ve all got work to do. Cassandra, take the girl back to your place, keep a watch on her. If we’ve got one under surveillance that means at least one murder won’t take place. Now, are we done?”
I took a deep breath and calmed down. I’d nearly forgotten that there was something else I needed to talk to him about.
“Actually, there is something else,” I said, giving Hamilton a pointed look. “I’d rather we talk alone.”
Rourke recrossed her arms defiantly. “You’re asking me to leave?” she huffed.
“Yeah, because I’m asking him for help, not you. I know better than to ask you for anything.”
Hamilton sat back down and said, “Give us a minute, Sam.”
Rourke growled and stomped out of his office, slamming his door as she went. We both winced as we listened to the glass rattle. Hamilton looked at me.
“I take it this isn’t case related?”
“No, it’s rather personal, actually.”
He nodded his head solemnly. I pulled the chair in close to his desk. Up close I saw the bags under his eyes and I wondered when he’d last gotten any sleep. Hamilton, like most really good cops, once on a case didn’t stop working until it was solved. It was something I admired about him.
“What’s up?”
I pulled out the cards. “I know this isn’t really going to be your area, but you’re the only guy whose opinion I feel I can ask. I received these cards over the last couple of days, each with a gift.” I laid the cards out in front of him. He looked at each one, then went back as if to read the whole thing as one message.
“Red roses first, then a potted African violet and then a box of chocolates, which seemed highly suspect.”
“Where are they?”
“With Ro. She said she’d look to see if there was anything in them.”
He looked up at me with concern. “What made you think that? I mean these are certainly creepy, but a big leap to poisoned confectionery.”
“The first two were left at my apartment door, the third was found inside my apartment. My locked apartment. They’d been left while I was sleeping. Trinket said she saw a man standing at the end of my bed.”
“It sounds like you have a stalker and a very serious one at that. We can file a report and I’ll make sure Ro’s finding go in with it, but that’s all I can do.”
“I have to take all the legal measures I can, right?”
“Yes, but I would make sure that you don’t sleep alone in case he makes good on this,” he said, tapping the last card. “If you’d like I could…”
“I’m going to stop you there. Trinket’s going to be there, so I won’t be on my own.”
Hamilton gave me a brief, “aww shucks” smile and rose to show me out. His desk phone began to ring. He looked at it as though longing for it to disappear; instead he picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear.
“Homicide. Hamilton.”
I continued walking toward the door.
“Cassandra, hang on a minute, please–” Then, returning to his conversation, “Yes, thank you. We’ll head right out there now. Goodbye.” He let the phone drop back into the cradle. “It looks like Summer’s done as mother asked. I think you should come with me to the scene.”
I nodded and reached for the door. Trinket saw me coming out and stood to greet me. Hamilton emerged from the office on my heels.
“Give me five and I’ll meet you out front,” I told him. Hamilton nodded and started gathering up men to go out to the scene with him.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“We think number six…” I didn’t finish the sentence. She clapped her hands to her mouth; I knew she understood. She was the only one of her sisters now that hadn’t killed someone. I put my hands on her shoulders and made her focus on me.
“Hamilton wants me to go with him, so I need you to go back to my place, okay?” I placed my hand on her cloak and muttered the quickest “don’t look” spell I could muster. It wouldn’t make her invisible as such, but it would make her less noticeable. “Tell Incarra I am putting her in charge, and that neither of you are to open the door to anyone at all. Put your hood up, be quick, be quiet and try not to be seen.”
She nodded obediently, and I went out to see yet another body.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Hamilton drove a midnight blue Toyota sedan, the interior of which was decked out to the nines. I had the feeling that he came from money—besides, his parents had named him Paris, as in the Prince of Troy. Just as I was named after a princess of the same city.
The original Cassandra and Paris had been brother and sister. I wonder if, like the current Paris and myself, they had been friends. It was hard to know; according to legend, their father, King Priam, had fifty sons and twenty daughters. I laughed out loud, thinking about how knackered his poor wife had to have been.
Hamilton glanced over at me, smiling. “What’s so funny?”
“I was just having a random thought about family and about how comfortable I am with you.”
“What brought that on?”
“The car. I mean, it’s fancy on your salary, unless your dad is secret royalty or something.”
He smirked. “Or something.”
“Y’know, I’ve never asked you about your family before. You have one, I assume.”
He nodded. “I do.”
“Did your mother pick Paris as a name, or your dad?”
“Actually, neither did. My mother died giving birth to me. It was my step-mother who named me Paris.”
“Step-mother. Your father remarried really quickly!”
“Some might see it that way, but I adored my step-mother. She was very beautiful, very soft and very kind. You sort of remind me of her sometimes. I haven’t seen her since I left home. Dad and I don’t get on.” He got this crease between his brows as though he disliked thinking about his father. He shook his head and shot me a look. “What about you?”
Quid pro quo, I supposed. He deserved to know about me. “Mom’s gone, step-father too, actual father…” I made a line with my finger in the air. “Fill in the blank.”
“That’s got to be tough at your age.”
I gave a noncommittal shrug. That was as far as I was prepared to talk about my family.
“As far as money is concerned,” Hamilton said, accepting the hint to change the subject, “it’s all my own. I’ve not always been a cop. I did some male modeling once.”
“I can believe it.”
“Yet you’re the only woman I know who hasn’t agreed to go to dinner with me at least once.”
I smiled at him broadly. “I’m just contrary that way.”
In an ideal world, Hamilton might have been a good guy for me. He was handsome, had hi
s own job, wasn’t clingy—although with him, that sadly meant he had commitment issues—and there was a certain something about him. Unfortunately, in reality he was a notorious Romeo, and I just didn’t find that attractive.
The smile vanished as we turned onto a side road that ran around the back of a bowling alley and met the yellow tape. We both got serious in a hurry. The crime scene unit van pulled in next to us. Ro got out the passenger side; she and the driver went around to the back of the van to get suited up with the help of a third technician, who was already in his shiny suit. I never saw the two techs in her lab—I didn’t even know their names. Both were men; I decided on the spot to call them Potato Suit Bob and Potato Suit Bob Two. Hamilton and I ducked under the tape, closer in but still a fair distance from the body—and when I saw it, I didn’t really want to get any closer.
The girl was sitting against the bottom of the wall between two green dumpsters piled with black sacks, beer bottles and empty pizza boxes. Her legs were sprawled at an abnormal angle, as though she’d scrambled back from her attacker until the wall had prevented her from going any further. Her arm lay down at her sides, palms up, and her head lolled to the left. She looked like a marionette who’d had its strings cut. A silent doll, who was done dancing. Her eyes were wide, mascara smeared into black lines like spider legs. Potato Suit Bob Two, a member of the forensics team who doubled as a photographer, took a photo, then tried to put her head straight. Blood spat across his legs from a wound that had been pressurized by the angle. I held one arm across my belly as my stomach roiled.
“I think I might toss my cookies,” Hamilton said, “which is ironic as that’s the last thing I ate.”
“Please don’t,” I said. “I’m not sure I could take it.” I took deep breaths. We hadn’t even gotten to the most horrible part, the hole in her chest. Hamilton scanned the ground on either side of the body.
“I can’t see a purse again. What is it with these girls and the purses?”
“Either they’re robbing their victims too, or they’re making a bad attempt to make it look like a robbery gone wrong—which is dumb, considering the whacking great hole they leave. Like that could be done by accident.”
“Yup, which leads me back to my original question—where’s the purse?”
“That wasn’t your original question, but I’ll play along—we’ve got two perfectly good dumpsters here.”
I looked between the two giant green dumpsters, only briefly scanning the body again, until I came to focus on the tech standing by his open kit.
“Hey Potato Bob, glove me.”
Both Hamilton and the tech looked at me blankly. From the corner of my eye, I caught Ro’s gesture: she stuck up her hand and snapped the latex glove. See, there was a woman who got me. The tech guy pulled gloves out of the kit and brought them over to us.
“Y’know, my name’s Brian,” he said gruffly, thrusting the box at me.
“Of course it is, sweetie,” I said, pulling out a pair of gloves, “but I got one of those pesky senses of humor.”
He waited for Hamilton to remove a pair of gloves before stomping back to his kit. Hamilton jabbed me with his elbow.
“How to lose friends and alienate people…Potato Bob?”
“She’s got some bizarre fantasy that our suits make us look like baked potatoes at a barbeque,” Ro called.
“It’s not a fantasy, y’all are right here.”
“Did you just say y’all?”
“I thought I’d channel some of that good old country home charm.”
“Shame it’s the wrong country and it’s not your home.” He started toward the dumpster on the left.
“Spoil my fun,” I muttered under my breath and went for the one on the right. Throwing back the lid, I was smacked in the face by the smell of stale food and liquor.
“Oh, yuck. Don’t we have people to do this?”
“You’re not counting yourself as a person now?” Hamilton said, pushing aside the first layer of bin bags.
“I mean other people, grunts, interns, lackeys, peons…take your pick.”
Hamilton chuckled. “You’re not squeamish over a little dumpster juice—stop being such a girl.”
“Hey, my objection has nothing to do with my gender, more my sense of smell.” I wafted my hand in the air, trying to clear some of the offending odor away. “What do you mean, a little dumpster juice? I’m looking at soup here.”
“I wouldn’t panic. If it’s in here it’ll be close to the top. I doubt our suspects liked the idea of diving through this muck any more than you do.”
That was of little comfort as I pulled back a black mass of plastic to reveal a dead rat. I was instantly embarrassed by the girly squeal I gave at the sight, but I still did the grossed out girl dance for about twenty seconds.
Hamilton walked over to my side, peering over the green rim to see what had spooked me.
“Dead rat? The owner must dust the bins with vermin poison. Good thing this area isn’t popular with tramps.”
“We don’t get that many tramps, full stop, because things eat them.”
Hamilton shook his head with reluctant amusement. He said, “The city draws and hides so much.”
I stared at him. That was quite a profound but accurate statement. Our pretty little city, on this side at least, was so steeped in magic—and the resulting hotspots—that it drew all sorts of beings here, but the abundance of magic also hid individuals behind a kind of smoke screen. I wondered if that had been part of the reason my mother had come here. If you wanted to blend in, pretend to be something else, this was the place to do it. If you hid amongst the wolves, vampires, elves, dwarves and witches, it’d be like a supernatural where’s Wally.
“So, no purse?” Hamilton asked drawing me back from my thoughts.
“Not in the dumpster, but we haven’t looked under it.”
He nodded. “I’ll get some extra muscle,” he said, turning away from me. I put my foot against the green polyurethane, not wanting to touch it with my hands again—gloves or no gloves—and shoved. The dumpster rolled about five feet, and the grinding of the wheels on the concrete made Hamilton turn. He looked between me and the moved dumpster quizzically.
“They roll real easy, full or not,” I said with a shrug, and pointed to what I’d revealed; lying in a dry patch under the dumpster was a mobile phone. It was slim and the screen had cracked in one corner.
“You want to get a photo of this?”
The tech with the camera dutifully trotted over, snapped shots from a couple of different angles and gave me a curt nod to let me know he was done. I bent, picking it up gingerly. The screen flashed on. Hamilton gave a grunt of annoyance.
“I didn’t touch anything,” I said, examining what was on the screen. “Looks like she was in the middle of a text. Plans cancelled. Show not on. Be home soon. Could have been to her mom.”
“Is there a number for her in there?”
I cancelled the text and scanned through the phone book until I came to a number marked “home”. I read the number off to Hamilton, who jotted it down. He walked away from me to make a call I didn’t envy. I took the phone in my hands and went to sit on the lip of the crime scene van. The battery only had a half life left, but the screen kept fading in and out because of the damage. The shot on her background was a candid of a man sleepily shoving cereal into his mouth, his eyes turned to see the camera just as the picture was taken. It was an image of good humor, something they’d probably laughed at later. It was her text message, though, that made me start to search through her phone, looking for a calendar app.
Hamilton came around the back of the truck, shaking his head and sliding his thumb across the screen to lock his cell phone.
“I hate having to make these calls. They’re going to come down to the station to view the body. Doctor Soltaire’s going to want her van back.” I looked up from the phone and turned it so he saw the screen. Today’s calendar entry read—Le Circe De Poupee, 8:00 p.m.
He blinked at it.
“Think we have enough for you to get a warrant now?”
He nodded. I reached behind me to grab an evidence bag and put the phone into it. I left it sitting on the van floor behind me.
“If I call around until I find the right judge. It’s Judge Heckerman’s poker night.”
“Who does he play with? Other judges?”
“Ex-cops and small time ex-cons mostly, but the game changes venues a lot.”
I jumped up from the tailgate and began to walk with him. “Then you’d better get back to base and start phoning around.”
“Yup. Want me to drop you off somewhere?”
“Yeah, if you…” I was cut off by the sound of my name being called. I turned to see Ro beckoning me. “Hold that thought, I’ll be right back.”
I did a quick dart over to where Ro was standing her hands on her hips.
“What’s up, doc?” I smirked a little at my unintentional funny. Her brow creased.
“I didn’t want you to go running off without me talking to you. I found something in those chocolates. It wasn’t subtle, it was kind of a bluish gunk, you’d see it, but probably not until you’d already taken a bite. Point is, it was in every one of them, like whoever left them for you wanted to make sure you got dosed.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. I left it in the mass spectrometer because the call came in. The results should be ready by the time I get back.” I looked back at Hamilton, who was watching us, his arm resting on top of the open car door.
“So, I don’t want to go home?”
“Not just yet. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t sleep well until I knew what that stuff was.”
I nodded—that was definitely something we agreed on.
She took my nod for compliance. “Go back to my lab and wait for me.”
I nodded again, turning to leave her.
“Oh, and, Cassandra,” she said, making me turn back to her. “Don’t touch anything.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Hamilton gave me a ride back to the station while I called my place to check on my house guests. Incarra, smart girl that she was, didn’t answer my phone until she heard my voice on the answer machine.
Silent Doll Page 18
