“It’s the nature of the beast, Joanie. Can’t get no satisfaction.” He gave me a sideways look. “Are you really okay?”
“Right as rain.” I scratched my jaw where the blood had been. “I don’t know how real this thing is, Bill. I’m not sure if it’s something you can catch. Whatever Mother did to it set it back a lot of years, but she thought she’d have the power to destroy it, and that was a big fat bust. And whatever it is has got a master.”
“Forget about the master. The master isn’t the thing stringing girls out by their guts, right?”
“Right.” God, I hoped I was right.
“Then he’s not our problem right now. By the way, Melinda wants to know if you’re still coming over for dinner.”
I blinked. “What?”
“It’s the equinox tonight. She invited you last week, remember?”
“And you think to bring this up in the context of masters? Or was it being strung out by your guts?”
Billy fashioned a crooked grin. “You know Mel. She’s a slave driver.”
I laughed. “So a little bit of both. Yeah, I don’t see why not. I mean, you tell me. I know it’s the first forty- eight hours of a murder investigation that are most critical, but we’re kind of way the hell past that. Is taking the night off going to make a critical difference?”
“If it does, it’s my ass in the hot seat, not yours. You’re just a beat cop, remember?”
“A beat cop who isn’t doing her job today. Crap.” I got to my feet. “Did Morrison put somebody on the Ave to cover for me, or am I going to get beaten within an inch of my life the next time he sees me?”
“You’re fine, Joanie.” Billy’s voice was gentle. “People who spontaneously rupture eardrums, even if they follow it up with a little lay-your-hands-on-me action, are generally considered out for the day.”
I sat back down. “Yeah? That happens enough to have a protocol for it?” Probably only with me around. Great. “Can I bring Gary to dinner? Petite’s still in the shop.”
Billy looked around. “Where’d he go?”
“Back to work. Some of us,” I said in my best gruff Gary voice, “gotta work for a living, darlin’.”
“Oh. Sure, bring him. Mel cooks enough to feed an army anyway.”
“That’s because you have four kids, Billy. That
Billy snorted. “I can look up weird shit on the Net, Joanie. You’re the one with the direct line to higher powers.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick, Billy. Don’t say things like that. Higher powers my ass.” I actually shuddered.
“Whatever you want to call it, you’ve got a bead on something I can’t access. Even the captain knows it.”
A fact which did not fill me with joy and glee. I sighed, dropping my chin to my chest. “Last time I went into the wonderful world of the weird, my eardrums exploded, Billy.”
“Look at it this way. At least nobody shoved a sword through your lung.” He gave me a sunny smile that held up to the glare I shot his way.
“Thank you. Thank you, Billy, that really helped a lot. Bastard.”
“Hey.” Billy looked injured. “My parents were married.”
“Mine weren’t.” Huh. I’d never thought of myself as a bastard before. Interesting, what you can get through almost twenty-seven years of living without thinking. “Look, Billy?” I heard myself get all quiet, like I was about to impart something important. Billy heard it, too, and leaned forward.
“My mother had the chance to eliminate this guy back when she faced him. She didn’t because she was pregnant with me and she didn’t want to risk me. So this whole thing is kind of my fault.” I wrapped my arms around my ribs, staring at a broken corner of tile beneath Billy’s desk. “I mean, the fact that there are more dead women now. I know I’m being sort of a jerk, because I hate all this crap, but…I really want to get this thing solved. I need to. Whatever it takes.”
Billy clapped his hand on my shoulder, solid and reassuring. “We’ll figure it out, Joanie. We’ll get this guy. You’ll get your piece.”
Or maybe he said
The drumming hadn’t been enough to fill me up. Not all the way, at least. Maybe a hundred drums would’ve poured so much energy and power into me that I’d have been good to go for the rest of the day, the rest of the week, as long as it took. But by midafternoon I was stumbling like Petite did when she ran short on gas, and nothing I did brought me even one whit closer to figuring out what the Blade was or how to stop him from killing someone else.
So I did what any sensible woman would do. I went—no, not shopping. My idea of an ideal shopping experience was walking into the store, finding exactly what I wanted on the first rack I stopped at, buying it, and being out of there in five minutes. I was a retailer’s nightmare.
But I was also a well-trained Seattleite. When the chips were down, I went for coffee.
The Missing O was half a block down the street from the precinct building, run by an entrepreneurial young fellow who thought the idea of opening a doughnut and coffee shop next to a police station was pretty funny. After a while the cops started thinking it was funny, too, and began to take a certain pride in being the O’s number-one clientele.
A barista greeted me not by name, but by drink: “Tall hot chocolate with a shot of mint?” I waved an agreement and went to pay without ever having to say anything. A minute later I was ensconced in the corner, hands wrapped around the drink.
A coffee shop with a mug of hot chocolate was no place to solve the world’s problems from, but it beat a sharp stick in the eye. I let my eyes half close, watching the world through a blur of lashes and waiting for inspiration to strike.
Inspiration, last I checked, did not come in the form of Captain Michael Morrison. Well. He was certainly inspiring in some ways. He frequently inspired me to mouth-frothing argument, for example. At the moment, though, he stood a few feet away, frowning down at me as if unsure how to approach. I untangled my eyelashes and looked up at him. “I don’t bite.” I thought about that statement, then nodded, determining it was true. I couldn’t remember having bitten anyone in my sentient years.
Morrison let out a fwoosh of air and shrugged his shoulders. He was wearing a seaman’s coat with big black buttons, so out of fashion it looked like haute couture. “That’s a great coat.”
He looked as startled as I felt. To the best of my recollection, nothing like a compliment had ever passed my lips when I was speaking to the captain. He shrugged again, hands in his pockets, which made the whole coat move like a woolen wall with a purpose in life, and sat down. “Thanks. Belonged to my father.”
“Seriously?” I supposed it was unlikely Morrison had sprung fully formed from the forehead of his mother, but I’d never given much thought to his family. “He was a sailor?”
“Merchant marines. He died when I was twelve.”
Neither of us knew what to say after that. I slid down in my seat and wrapped my fingers around my hot chocolate tightly enough to bend the cardboard. “So,” I said after a while, just as he said, “Your hearing’s back.” I twitched a grin at the plastic top of my cup and nodded. I didn’t see if Morrison smiled, too.
“You and Holliday learn anything yet?”
“We would’ve mentioned it if we had.” It came out sarcastic. I hadn’t meant it to. I saw Morrison’s bulk move back a few centimeters, like he was responding to my nasty tone and putting extra space between us.
He muttered, “You certainly are,” under his breath, making me look up in amused offense. His expression hadn’t changed. Maybe I was the only one who thought he was making a joke. Great. Just great.
“I really want to solve this.” I kept my voice low, afraid he’d think I was kidding. After a moment something relaxed in his gaze, a little gleam of approval coming into it. I annoyed Morrison for a variety of reasons, starting with knowing a lot more about cars than he did, and ending, emphatically, with wanting a career as a mechanic when it was his opinion I could be a good cop. It was possible I’d taken one tiny baby step toward a better
