Andy shrugged. “Sure. Once you sign the register you can do whatever you want…well…you know what I mean.”
“Thanks.” She scribbled her name on the sign-out sheet and crossed the room to a vinyl padded bench. She didn’t care if Andy witnessed her trance. In fact she was grateful for the company. After her last trip to the quaking, she wasn’t sure she wanted her corporeal body to be alone while her spirit roamed the in-between.
She opened the bag’s plastic fastening and pulled out Tanesha’s sweater. The soft cashmere had created static electricity inside the plastic bag. It crackled as she moved it and featherlight tendrils of the expensive wool stood straight up in all directions. She smoothed the garment, keeping it mostly folded on her lap, and closed her eyes.
In an instant she was back in the bland apartment surrounded by shades of gray and deep shadows. Through her hands she felt a rhythmic pulse, like a heartbeat, and realized that’s exactly what it was. Tanesha’s sweater retained the staccato beat of the young woman’s heart and it played like a record, changing tempo from smooth and even to wild and erratic.
Rihana turned and tried to survey the room, forcing her consciousness back through the bursts of emotional energy that she was able to read from the sweater.
She heard muffled voices—a woman’s high-pitched plea and the low rumble of a man. Someone touched her throat and pain arced through her body. She screamed and shoved at her attacker only to find herself sitting on the padded bench, staring at the sweater, which she’d thrown to the floor.
Andy stared at her over his desk. “You okay?”
“Mmm. Yes. Sorry about that.”
“No problem. I’ve never actually seen one of you…you know, work before. What did you see?”
“Not much, but I felt a lot.” She forced her fingers not to shake as she gathered the sweater from the floor and tried to stuff it back in the bag. It barely fit. She had to ball it up and cram it inside the plastic pouch then squeeze out the excess air in order to get the zipper fastener closed again.
“I always figured it would take a lot longer.”
“Sometimes it does. Tanesha Wain was killed quickly. That’s all I get. I can’t seem to go any further back than that moment. I can’t see the face of the man who did it.”
Andy rose and took the bag from her. He watched while she signed the register again with quick, slashing strokes of the pen. Anyone who looked later on might wonder how her signature could have changed so much in less than five minutes.
“Sorry it didn’t help.”
“Me too. Thanks for your help, Andy.”
Rihana left the morgue without a backward glance, eager to put distance between herself and Tanesha’s last moments of life. Her inner tremors subsided bit by bit as she concentrated on climbing the stairs to the third floor where her desk was located. Halfway there she ran into one of the secretaries from Social Services who greeted her with a sunny smile. “Miss Daniels, I’m glad I found you. Detective DeYoung is looking for you.”
That was no surprise. She hadn’t spoken to Nathan in over twenty-four hours and he was probably expecting a report on her investigation. “I’m on my way to his office now. Thank you, Elaine.”
Rihana quickened her pace, taking the stairs at a jog. By the time she reached DeYoung’s office, she was winded. The exertion actually did her some good. With her blood pumping, the lingering chill of the quaking had faded away. She felt normal again, if a little tired.
She knocked on the glass door. DeYoung’s gruff reply came quickly. He slammed his phone down as she let herself in and glared at her until she settled in the chair opposite his desk. “What’s wrong?”
His expression morphed from blatant anger to sarcasm. “Don’t you know? You’re the mind reader.”
She bristled. One important rule for psychics assigned to precinct work was never to intrude on the minds of their co-workers, even if they could. Fear of having their innermost thoughts read or broadcast still made many employees of the force skittish. The average person was somewhat paranoid to begin with, so working with someone who might be able to hear them thinking about playing hookey or stealing a box of pens from the supply closet made everyone a little nervous. She wasn’t alone in her fight to demystify her abilities and reduce some of the tension they caused, but the constant uphill battle made her bone weary.
“That’s uncalled for, Nathan. You’re supposed to be on my side about this position and lately…”
“You’re going to tell me what you think is appropriate behavior when I’ve just been informed that you spent the night with a suspect?”
Her heart plummeted into her stomach. Holy fuck. How had Brogan figured it out? “Excuse me?”
“Come on, Rihana. Carl can be a horse’s ass on the best of days, but he knows his job. He saw your purse in Heath Gyland’s apartment.”
The same purse she was carrying now. Damn. Why hadn’t she gone home and gotten a different one…to keep up the subterfuge? Yes. That was a good question. Why hadn’t she tried harder to perpetuate the lie? “He knows it was my purse?”
“Tell me it wasn’t and I’ll drop this. I’ll even apologize and I’ll make him do the same.”
She would have given anything to accommodate him, but Gramma Essie’s voice in her head pinged her conscience. Good girls never lie. They don’t need to.
“He’s innocent.”
Nathan’s jaw dropped. “That’s your response?”
“Do you want me to make excuses?”
“Yes. Actually, I do. I’d prefer you to give me a song and dance about how you were working under cover…leading him on, doing whatever you had to in order to find out the truth. It would still be disgusting, but at least I’d understand it. What would make you throw down for a perp? I don’t get that. This guy could be a killer and you want to jump his bones?”
Rihana felt ill. “He’s not a killer. That much I have found out. I didn’t sleep with him to get that information.” Why had she slept with him then? Because she wanted to believe he could make her feel something other than shame for her sensuality? Because just looking at him set her nerves on fire and from the moment they’d met, she couldn’t get him out of her mind?
“You’re jeopardizing the investigation.”
“I’m telling you the investigation is going in the wrong direction. Heath Gyland should not be a suspect and neither should his partner.”
Nathan threw his hands in the air. “Then who should be?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a face, but I’ve seen the man who killed Tanesha. He stalked her. He let himself into her apartment and surprised her sometime after Heath left her.”
“And how did he manage to inject poisoned ink under her skin without a struggle? She had no defensive wounds, her clothing wasn’t out of place and nothing in the room was broken or disturbed. The facts say she knew her killer.”
“I don’t think she did.”
“The facts say Gyland had motive, means and opportunity. His prints are on her doorknob. One of his hairs was found on her bed.”
“He admits to being in the apartment.”
“She knew him. She liked him. She let him tattoo her and he killed her. All I need is a plausible reason why.”
Rihana rose. “He. Didn’t. Do. It. I know that. You’ve believed my instincts in the past. Why not now?”
“I believed you when I thought you couldn’t lie. You’ve never been dishonest, Rihana. In fact, it’s a fault of yours. Whatever your personal moral code has been up until now, I always knew I could count on you to give me straight facts. Tell me now, are you having some kind of relationship with our suspect?”
No. The word echoed in her head. She didn’t have a relationship with Heath. She’d had sex—incredible sex—but that was all. Her hesitation cost her.
DeYoung rose also. “You’re off the case. Do yourself a favor, stay the hell away from this guy until the investigation is closed. If he’s innocent and you want to help him, back o
ff. If he’s guilty and you want to stay alive, back the hell off. Am I clear?”
She’d never, ever been removed from a case before. It stung like a burn, like a slap across her face. She wanted to hate Brogan for it, but truth was, the blame was all hers. She’d lost her head over Heath, lost her perspective and, worst of all, her heart. Now she might lose her job.
She straightened her spine and looked Nathan in the eye. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “I’ll be at my desk, working on my other cases.”
“Be careful, Rihana. When I say I think you could be in danger, I mean it. I don’t trust this guy.”
“Well, I do.” She whirled around and left the office, head high despite the burden of shame weighing her shoulders down. Gramma Essie would have been mortified. Thank God she wasn’t here to see this. Thank God she’d never know how far her perfect granddaughter had fallen.
* * * * *
Despite what he’d told Brogan, Heath didn’t go to SkIntense. He called Darq and told him about the detective’s visit, then he headed to Tanesha’s apartment.
Getting past the unbroken police tape and the lock on her door took little effort. His own guardians saw to that for him. Once inside, he scouted around, not sure exactly what he expected to find. The Gemii assassin had been here in person, not simply as a wraith the way he’d visited Rihana. That meant he had to have left some evidence behind.
Heath stared at the bed for a long time, trying to imagine how soon after his interlude with Tanesha the killer had gotten inside. The outline of her body, rendered in white reflective tape on the carpet next to the bed, disconcerted him. He’d never been to a crime scene, at least not on this world. The obsession with small details fascinated him. On Verakos, so he vaguely recalled from his brief childhood there, crime was rare and easily solved when it did occur thanks to the psychic abilities of his people and the guardian beasts with which they bonded.
The population here lacked the luxury of being able to see directly into the minds of others, so they had to rely on drops of blood, strands of hair and stray marks on the floor to tell them what had transpired. They should have been grateful for people like Rihana, who could take the guesswork out of finding criminals. Instead they ridiculed her at every opportunity, even while they relied on her services.
The thought of her suffering for her gift made him angry. The thought of the Gemii assassin killing more women in his quest to wipe out the royal bloodline enraged him.
He struggled to control his anger and continued searching Tanesha’s apartment. Her bedroom yielded nothing and the living room had been stripped of anything valuable to the police investigation such as her computer, her paperwork and her date book. The bathroom seemed to have been similarly stripped. The medicine cabinet was nearly empty, but smudges on the shelves told him there had been bottles and boxes sitting inside. The various closets had been rifled through and someone, perhaps a landlord, had cleaned out the refrigerator, leaving nothing behind but an unopened quart bottle of water.
Heath closed the fridge and sighed. He felt foolish snooping in Tanesha’s kitchen for clues. Something on the door of the refrigerator caught his attention then and he reached up to move an old calendar that had been stuck to the metal surface by a bulbous, smiley-faced magnet.
The calendar itself was more than a year out of date, probably why the police hadn’t bothered to move it. Odd that a freelance writer, with so many appointments and rendezvous in her schedule, wouldn’t update the calendar in her kitchen. Heath guessed perhaps she kept it because she liked the picture, a tangle of adorable puppies climbing over bales of hay. Heath pursed his lips as the calendar slid lower down the fridge door revealing a small photograph that had been taped behind it.
The picture held Heath’s attention riveted. It was a head shot of a dark-haired man. His faint smile looked pained rather than amused. Heavy brows shadowed his eyes and a long, sharp nose defined his face as narrow and severe. He supposed the man might be considered handsome by the opposite sex, though Heath found his expression seemed to convey distrust.
He wondered how Tanesha knew the man and why she would have hidden his picture behind the old calendar.
Evidence. The word echoed in his mind as he slipped the photo into his back pocket. He should not be touching it and certainly not removing it from the apartment. Fortunately, police procedure wasn’t his concern at the moment.
* * * * *
Rihana found it nearly impossible to concentrate on any of her other work. When not actively involved in trailing suspects or getting impressions from clothing or interrogations and interviews, she normally searched through old missing persons files and cross-referenced them with city maps. On occasion, details from the files would trigger images or short trances in which she would see or feel the victims. She’d closed four cases this way over the years—finding two people alive years after searches for their bodies had been called off. She’d also led police to two unmarked graves. She didn’t consider those cases to be successful, despite Nathan’s assurances that she had done the grieving families a great service by helping to find their loved ones even after they were beyond saving.
Today, nothing held her attention. She shuffled through papers and evidence lists, photographs and maps and came up blank time after time. Her thoughts kept drifting back to Heath.
Only after Carl Brogan drifted into her field of vision did she shake off her malaise. She followed his movements with her eyes as he waltzed into Nathan’s office, then stared through the glass while the two men talked. Figuring she was already in trouble, she did something that not only had she never even attempted before, but that she’d specifically promised DeYoung she would never do. She summoned the quaking and projected herself into the glass enclosure.
The icy cold of the nether realm surrounded her, and for once she didn’t allow it to bother her. Her consciousness drifted across the room and hovered outside DeYoung’s door a moment before she entered. Though she watched her own hand turn the knob and swing the door into the office, she knew, out in the real world, her body still remained passively at her desk.
The two men’s voices reached her like echoes as she slithered into the room. She was a wraith, without width or depth. A ghost.
Brogan spoke first, not waiting for acknowledgement from his superior. “Wain’s boyfriend is missing.”
“Which boyfriend is this? Gyland?”
“No. Not Stone either. A neighbor fessed up that a few months ago there was a guy hanging around. Dark hair, mean-looking. Tanesha called him Jem or Jim. They fought a lot and one night she threw the guy out of the apartment. A few minutes later a pile of stuff goes sailing out the window and hits the sidewalk, clothes, pictures, crap like that.”
“You have a full name?”
“Not a real one. I got a ‘Jim Smith’ from a couple of people on the block. Sounds like an alias. Sketchy descriptions match what the neighbor said. Swarthy, short, wiry. He walked fast and talked fast. Apparently when she threw him out, she was thorough because we found nothing in the apartment belonging to a man. One of the earliest dates in her book was with a J E M or J I M. They had lunch. That was about a week before the neighbor reported the fight.”
DeYoung glanced over Brogan’s shoulder and Rihana knew his gaze sought her out. She couldn’t see herself, sitting at her desk, but she hoped she didn’t look too spaced out. If something seemed wrong, the two men might leave the office to investigate.
“So you think a disgruntled ex killed her.”
“Not really. I think Gyland did it, but the ex adds a new dimension. It’s a stone I can’t leave unturned, no pun intended.”
“Any luck with the partner?”
“No. He’s laying low and I don’t like that. Wain was apparently a pain in the ass reporter. She hounded people until she got a story. If these two had something to hide, it makes sense they might kill her to shut her up, keep her from publishing their secrets.”
“Her notes didn’t t
urn up anything out of the ordinary on the men or their business.” DeYoung returned his attention to Brogan. If Rihana could have, she would have let out a sigh of relief. A wind whistled through the quaking, chilling her. She fought to ignore it. If she stayed on this side of the divide much longer, she would come out of the trance sick and shaking and she couldn’t afford that, but she also couldn’t stand to miss any part of this conversation. If there was another suspect, then she had a lead she could follow to help clear Heath’s name.
“There’s still something not right about the guy. Those snakes on his arms…I don’t like them. I’ve run the images through our gang database and didn’t come up with anything. Now I’m checking cults and prison tats. The guy has a history. I know it.”
“Well, hurry up with your search. If there’s anything on this guy, even a parking ticket, I want to know about it.”
Brogan gestured over his shoulder. “You think a rap sheet will make a difference to Rihana?”
“I don’t know. She’s hooked on this guy and I don’t like it. Not only is it bad form, it’s not like her. She’s going to get hurt.”
“And fuck up our case.”
DeYoung glared. “Look, she might not be a cop, but she works for me and I don’t stand for watching my people get screwed over. If this guy has some hold over her or he’s tricked her into thinking he’s innocent, she could be his next victim.”
“So take her off the case.”
“Don’t you think that’s the first thing I did?”
“So send her out of town. We can lend her out to Long Island or Newark. They’re always begging for extra psychics. Hell, send her to Chicago or LA for a month or two until we pin this guy.”
“Hmm.”
Rihana would have kicked Brogan for his cavalier attitude. He saw her as a commodity to be loaned out at DeYoung’s whim. If Nathan fell for his suggestion, she’d just refuse to go until the case was closed or until Heath left, whichever came first. Once he was gone, she’d have no interest in staying in Manhattan anyway.
A rush of frigid air accompanied Brogan’s swift movement toward the door, and Rihana hastened to keep up.
Slither Page 12
