Dispatch called.
“Captain?”
“Yeah, what have you got?”
“Uniforms called in. They say they checked the apartment for those security guards, but no one answers.”
I sighed. “Their supervisor says that neither of them is answering his phone. One of them has a white compact car, about ten years old.” I gave her the license number and waited.
“Captain? They say the car is there.”
I had a bad feeling. “Tell them to try not to break anything too badly, but go in. On my authority.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I waited some more. When the dispatcher came back on the line, she was significantly more subdued.
“Captain, they found them. Both dead. Said they looked like they’d been sick.”
“Ok, thanks. Call forensics and have them go out there.”
I hung up and went looking for Carmelita. I found her talking to Kelly Quinn. “You can add the evening-shift guards to the casualties,” I told them. “Evidently, they talked the cook into feeding them. It’s been a long day. Catch a ride back to headquarters, and I’ll see you downtown in the morning.”
“What about Murphy? The chauffeur?” Carmelita asked.
“He’ll be a lot more willing to talk after spending the night in a cell,” I replied.
Home was closer than the office, but I drove in to Police Headquarters. I had received several calls throughout the day, and one incident in particular concerned me. I called Mychal when I left the Danner residence and asked him to meet me.
“So, what happened?” I asked as Mychal handed me a take-out cup of coffee.
“Joel Romero left his office about twelve-fifteen to meet his wife for lunch,” Mychal said. “Between the front door and his limo—about ten steps—someone blew his head off with a high-powered rifle.” Romero was a Hundred Family and an ally of Findlay.
“Sniper.”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea why?”
Mychal shrugged. “His wife says he doesn’t have any personal enemies that she knows of. But Joel was the younger brother of the Family head, who is in poor health.”
“Sounds like an Akiyama-Moncrieff assassination,” I said. “They want to sow chaos among the Families that support the Magi Council.”
“Yeah. It was definitely a professional hit. Do you really want me to spend time investigating it? I’m not real hot on driving up to Wilmington and asking Akiyama Hiroku if one of his assassins ventured down to Columbia today.”
I shook my head. “Back burner. What else is going on?”
“A couple of drug dealers—humans—have turned up dead this week. Rumors are that a new big boss is consolidating her power.”
“Her?”
He chuckled. “Reina de LaCosta. One of our informants describes her as mid-twenties, medium height, a bit chubby, with blonde hair, and magik.”
“Susan Reed,” I said.
“That was my first thought.”
Reed had been an HLA activist we captured and imprisoned at the arcane prison in Gettysburg, northwest of Baltimore. She had escaped with a man who had once been the Magi crime kingpin of the east coast. Shortly thereafter, she killed him and disappeared. Her new name, translated as Queen of the Coast, fit with her profile. Susan was one of those people who thought she was a lot smarter than everyone else. I had to admit, she usually was one step ahead of everyone else, including me.
“I don’t suppose your source has an idea about where she hangs out?” I asked.
“Not a clue. Very mysterious.”
“Stay on it. I’ll have Carmelita check with her sources as well.”
I dreamed about the dragon lady that night. Akashrian. I cowered in the corner of a room lit with the red light that demons favored. She towered over me, bloody red. The saliva that dripped from her mouth hissed when it burned holes in the floor. Her glowing eyes pinned me like a butterfly, helpless before her. In one hand, she held a human leg dripping blood, and every so often, she would take a bite from it. Human screams came from somewhere beyond my sight. The screams sounded like my father’s voice.
The dream seemed to last forever. I woke up in a cold sweat, with the first light of dawn showing through my window.
Chapter 4
Colin Murphy had lost a lot of his casual arrogance by the time Carmelita and I sat down with him in the interrogation room at Police Headquarters. A night in jail does that to a lot of people.
“Good morning,” I said, taking a sip of my take-out coffee. Murphy stared longingly at the cup, but I didn’t offer him anything to drink. Jailhouse coffee might have been considered a form of torture. “With a little more time to reflect, do you have anything new to tell me today?”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Where were you on Thursday, and who were you with?”
He shook his head. “Her husband will kill me.”
“If he does, I’ll lock him up.”
Murphy took a deep breath. “Ivanka Johansson.”
That was a name I hadn’t expected. My Aunt Courtney’s best friend and certainly no friend of the Danners. Also, a fan of Ronald Rump, a gigolo hairdresser who hung out with Courtney’s crowd.
“Out of curiosity, how much did she pay you for your little assignation?” I asked.
He told me, and Carmelita snorted. Murphy was younger and better looking than Rump, and his fee was half as much, but Rump would have done Ivanka’s hair as part of the service. It still boggled me how much people were willing to pay to get laid.
“Tell me about Julia Danner,” I said, switching gears. Julia was the youngest Danner daughter, and she still hadn’t turned up.
Murphy’s demeanor changed again. He began to fidget, shifting uneasily in his chair. His gaze darted around the room, looking anywhere but at me or Carmelita.
My partner leaned forward. “What are you so worried about? You were doing her? A sixteen-year-old kid? Her daddy’s dead, and you’re out of a job and a place to live. What do you have to lose by being honest with us?”
Murphy started to say something, an indignant expression on his face. Carmelita held up her hand. “Yes, I know. Don’t tell me sixteen is legal age. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re disgusting and will probably never work in this town again. So, tell us about her.”
“Who told you that?” he practically shouted.
“You did, honey,” Carmelita said. “It’s written all over your face. You’re in so deep that oxygen is getting scarce. Your only hope is to cooperate with us. Don’t worry, we’re homicide, not vice. But unless you want us to charge you with hindering our investigation, I suggest you start answering our questions. Truthfully.”
After spending a minute or two trying to imitate a cornered rat, Murphy deflated.
“I didn’t seduce her. She came after me. Smart kid. Too smart. She thinks she’s an adult, but her father didn’t see it that way. Graduated high school early, set to start at Hopkins in the spring. She’s a lot younger than her brother and sister, and that caused problems. She wanted to do the things they do—go out to bars, sleep around, that sort of thing. She accused Sara—her older sister—of ratting on her to their parents and trying to control her. Accused Sara of being jealous because Julia is prettier and smarter.”
“Was she banging anyone else?” Carmelita asked.
“Probably. She got caught sneaking out at night, and it wasn’t to see me.”
“Any idea where she is?” I asked. “Friends, places she likes to hang out?”
He gave us a couple of names, along with a pub where Johns Hopkins students hung out. “She used to go over to the library at Hopkins,” he said. “She might have met some people there.”
“The library?” Skepticism dripped from Carmelita’s voice.
“I said she was smart. She loves chemistry the way most kids love video games.”
“Do you know anything about her magik?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Air and
water. Inherited from her mother and father.”
I thanked him for his cooperation and terminated the interview. As Carmelita and I gathered our things and got ready to leave, Murphy asked, “Am I free to go?”
I grinned at him. “Oh, no. That was a pretty story, but you’re still a suspect, and we might need to ask you more questions. Besides, if you’re innocent, you don’t want to leave us. You’re a material witness, and someone might want to finish killing the rest of the staff. You’ll be safer here.”
As soon as we were outside the room, Carmelita giggled. “Did you see his face?”
“Yeah. I want you to go up to Hopkins and snoop around the library. I’m going to go visit Julia’s friends.”
“You think she did it? Poisoned her whole family?”
“Murphy seems to think so. Or maybe he’s just trying to point us in any direction except him. If she didn’t do it, then she’s in danger, and she may know who did it. Let’s follow up his leads, and maybe tomorrow we can figure out what else he might be able to tell us about the Danner family. Right now, I’m not sure what questions to ask him.”
Before I left the building, I went downstairs to the morgue in the basement. I found Kelly Quinn supervising one of her assistants who was conducting an autopsy on a man with half a head.
“Joel Romero?” I asked.
“Correct,” Kelly said. “I should have the cause of death sometime today.” She winked at me, and I could see the grin wrinkles around her mask.
“Anything on the bullet?”
“Either a soft-point high-velocity round, or an explosive. We didn’t recover anything except tiny fragments. I’m leaning toward the soft-point.” She put her finger on a small round hole above Romero’s left eye. “I would expect an explosive to leave a much larger entrance wound.” I agreed. An explosive round from my Raider 50 probably would have blown his head off.
“Have you done the Danner family yet?”
She nodded. “As I suspected, thallium sulfate poisoning.”
“You said that it might have been magikally enhanced.”
“It’s not only enhanced, but it was bound to the salt. Not a true chemical reaction, so it would have to be a magikal binding. I thought at first I’d probably find thallium only in the top of the can, but none of the salt was clean.”
“Thanks. Anything else?”
“We found a jar with traces of sodium chloride and thallium sulfate in the trash outside. No fingerprints.”
I looked up the friends of Julia Danner that Murphy identified. One was a freshman at Johns Hopkins, the other was still in high school. As far as I could tell, both lived with their parents. Interestingly, while both families were Magi, neither were members of the Hundred.
The Hundred were an insular group, mostly socializing and doing business with each other. I ran a quick check on the girls’ families. Katie Starling was a scholarship student at Hopkins. Her parents owned a construction company in West Virginia. Darlene Marberry’s father worked for a Danner-owned company. Her place at Julia’s prep school was through a Danner-supplied scholarship.
The girls’ class schedules weren’t public information, but for a magitek hacker, accessing them was like taking candy from a baby. By the time I reviewed the available public and secure information, I felt like I had a handle on where and when I could corral Julia’s friends for private conversations.
But I wanted a more expansive picture of Julia, so I went to her school early to speak with the headmistress, planning on talking to Darlene Marberry after she finished her classes for the day.
As I walked into the building for the first time in almost twenty years, that old feeling of trepidation came over me. The place where I had been bullied so relentlessly hadn’t changed at all. I felt like I could have closed my eyes and walked straight to the headmistress’s office.
“Captain James, Metropolitan Police,” I said to the receptionist, showing my ID. “I’d like to speak to Dr. Stolnikova, please.”
She spoke over an intercom, “Dr. Stolnikova, a policewoman is here to see you.”
There was an audible sigh. “Send her in.”
Galina Stolnikova had gone to university with my father, and my grandmother told me once they had a relationship for a while. Tall, blonde, busty, and immaculately tailored, she hadn’t changed much in the twenty-some years since I saw her last.
“Captain James,” I said, holding up my ID as I walked through the door.
“You!”
I smiled. “It’s a real pleasure to see you again, too.” I sat in a chair in front of her desk without being invited. “I’d like to talk to you about one of your students, and then I need to meet with another one. I assume you heard about the Danner family?”
Stolnikova attempted to recover from the shock of seeing me. “Yes, I heard. Dreadful. But none of their children are students here.”
“Oh? I thought that Julia attended here.”
“She did, but she graduated and moved on.”
That didn’t completely tally with what I’d found online. “I thought she wasn’t due to graduate until the end of the term. Another two weeks, I believe.”
“Well, officially. But she’s finished all of her requirements, so there wasn’t any need for her to continue attending classes.”
Gee, that sounded familiar. The headmistress had ushered me out the door before the end of a term.
“What did she do?” I asked. “Blow up the chemistry lab?”
Stolnikova looked uncomfortable, but when I continued to wait for an answer, she finally said, “She didn’t blow anything up, but she was conducting forbidden experiments. Mixing magik with chemical reactions. Why? You don’t think she had anything to do with her family’s deaths, do you?”
“What can you tell me about her? Socially? Academically? Emotionally?”
The woman across from me took a deep breath. “Well, I guess now that she’s dead, I’m not breaking any confidentiality. She was a bright girl—extremely bright—and took top marks in all of her courses. Funny you should mention emotionally. Very emotional, very quick to take offense, unstable temperament. She didn’t have many friends, and didn’t seem to care. I guess the easiest way to describe her was a nerd—smart, socially awkward, but pretty and athletic.”
That sounded like both me and Dr. Stolnikova.
“And her friends?”
“Only a couple, and very much like her. They had their own little clique. The only one left now is Darlene Marberry.”
“I’ll need to talk with her. And, by the way, to our knowledge, Julia is still alive. She wasn’t home when the rest of her family died. She is missing, though, and we’re trying to find her.”
Chapter 5
Darlene Marberry was the sort of girl that no one noticed. She was pretty, but not in a way that caught a person’s attention. Brown hair, brown eyes, average build and figure for a seventeen-year-old girl, especially when wearing a school uniform.
She shuffled into the small conference room where I awaited her, acting for all the world like an unappreciated teenager. I introduced myself and invited her to sit. She eyed me with suspicion, and I debated with myself as to how to approach her.
“Darlene, I’ve been told that you’re friends with Julia Danner.”
After a moment, she nodded. “Yeah?”
“I’m investigating her family’s deaths. You’ve heard about it?”
She nodded again, staring down at the table.
“Do you know where Julia is?”
Her head snapped up and she stared at me, her eyes wide. “She’s—I mean, I thought—”
“We didn’t find Julia’s body. We think she’s still alive.”
The relief on Darlene’s face couldn’t have been faked.
“The information we have,” I continued, “is that she left her home around noon on the day before the deaths were reported. No one has seen her since, and she isn’t answering her phone. Darlene, I’m worried about her. Whoever cau
sed her family’s deaths may want to finish the job, or she might have been kidnapped. Whatever happened, I need to find her. Do you have any idea where she might have gone? Does she have a lover, or another friend she might be hiding with?” I leaned forward and made sure she met my eyes with hers. “Her parents are dead, Darlene. Nothing you tell me is going to get her in any trouble.”
“There’s a guy. Freddy, but I don’t know his last name. I think he’s a university student, but I don’t know where he goes to school. I never met him. I do know that her parents found out about him, and she got in trouble. She stayed out all night and they grounded her.”
“Does he go to school here in town?”
Darlene shrugged. “Somewhere in the Metroplex. Her dad took her car away for a while, but she still went to meet Freddy using the train.”
“Any idea where she originally met him?”
“At a party, I think. Katie might know.”
“Katie Starling?”
Darlene nodded.
“Does Julia have any other friends that you know of? Besides you and Katie and Freddy?”
Darlene shook her head. “We’re not exactly part of the in-crowd. Me, especially. My parents aren’t members of the country club, and I don’t get invited to all the cool kids’ parties.” She said it matter-of-factly, but a little bitterness snuck in there.
“What can you tell me about Julia’s magik?” I asked.
“Whhoo. She’s bad. Air and water, and pretty strong. Nobody here messes with her. A couple of girls—older girls—tried to bully her when she first came here, and she kicked their butts. That’s how we got to be friends. A few girls were being mean to me, and Julia stepped in. She and Katie. Everyone gives them a wide berth.”
“What’s Katie’s magik?”
“She’s an electrokinetic.”
“And yours?”
“Fire.”
“Is Julia an illusionist?”
She hesitated, and I waited. Reluctantly, she nodded. “Yeah. She’s pretty good at it. That’s how she’s able to sneak out without her parents catching her.”
Soul Harvest (The Rift Chronicles Book 3) Page 3
