stale, with a sweet rankness lying underneath it.
“Why would Rushkin want to live in a place like this?” Marisa wondered aloud.
The same question had lodged in Alan’s mind.
“Free rent,” Bitterweed called back over his shoulder. “Isabelle’s upstairs in the studio.”
When they got to the second floor, Scara darted ahead of them, stopping at a closed door about halfway down the length of the hall. She seemed to take longer than necessary to simply turn the doorknob, but her body shielded whatever she was up to.
“In here,” she said cheerfully when they joined her.
She opened the door and stepped aside. Alan got a glimpse of Isabelle’s startled features turning toward them, and behind her, an unfinished canvas on an easel; then Bitterweed gave him a hard shove.
He stumbled into the room, dragging Marisa and Cosette along with him. The door slammed behind them and he heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.
“How could we have been so stupid?” he cried, turning back to the door.
The knob remained immobile in his hand when he tried it. He gave the door a kick, but only succeeded in hurting his toe. Swearing softly, he turned around to face the rest of the room. Marisa was regarding Isabelle with frank curiosity. Cosette had attached herself to Marisa now and stood hip to shoulder against her. Marisa hesitated for a moment, then laid a comforting arm across the girl’s shoulders. Isabelle regarded them with an unhappy gaze. Her eyes were rimmed with red and swollen from crying.
“Why ... why did you come?” she asked, her voice heavy with despair. “We wanted to help,” Alan said.
Isabelle shook her head. “But now he’s got you, too.”
“You mean Rushkin?”
“I mean the monster.”
Alan waited, but she didn’t elaborate. The silence that stretched between them grew uncomfortable.
Alan cleared his throat. He looked at the painting behind her, marveling at its emotive power even in this unfinished state.
“That painting,” he said.
“She was going to be my vengeance on the monster,” Isabelle told him. Her voice seemed drained of expression. Not toneless, but empty. “But then John told me how numena can’t harm a maker and then the next ... the next thing I knew ... he killed John ....”
Her eyes flooded with tears and she began to cry. Alan regarded her helplessly, wanting to be supportive, but there was something about her that made him keep his distance. She simply stood there, shoulders shaking, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She was looking right at him, but Alan didn’t think she actually saw him.
“Alan,” Marisa said softly. “For god’s sake, go to her.”
Her voice broke through Alan’s paralysis. He glanced in her direction to see that Cosette had buried her face against Marisa’s breast, John’s death hitting her just as hard. Marisa indicated Isabelle with a nod of her head. Alan hesitated a moment longer before closing the distance between them. He put his arms around Isabelle, gathering her close. There was no pleasure in the contact. Only days ago, he’d have given anything to be this close to her, but since then everything had changed.
Isabelle pressed her face into the crook between his neck and shoulder. Her arms gripped him tightly. But the weeping didn’t stop. It felt as though it would never stop.
Rushkin hadn’t only killed John, Alan realized. This time, with this death, he’d utterly broken Isabelle.
Roger Davis stayed on at the precinct to catch up on some paperwork after his partner left for the day. Reports were always backing up as new cases took priority, and it seemed like he was always behind. It wasn’t until the evening shift came on that he was finally ready to call it quits himself.
Tomorrow was soon enough to print the files. He shut off the computer he’d been using and leaned back in his chair, stretching the stiff muscles in his lower back. How people could work at a desk job all day was beyond him.
Picking up his sports jacket from where it hung over the back of the chair, he slung it over his shoulder and headed downstairs. On the way out to his car he stopped by the sergeant’s desk to double-check that the All Points Bulletin on Alan Grant had been dropped. That was when he discovered another APB, this time for a pair of nameless thieves: white female, approx. five-one, 105, late teens, black hair, wearing death-rocker punk gear; and a Native American, approx. six foot, 170, black hair in a ponytail, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans.
The mention of the ponytailed Native American was what had first caught his eye, but then his gaze settled on the address where the robbery attempt had taken place. In the offices of the Newford Children’s Foundation. He thought: ponytailed Indian spotted in Mully’s hotel just before she’s murdered, Mully trying to grab the money from her daughter’s books that was being channeled into the Foundation, ponytailed Indian involved in a robbery attempt at the Foundation. There were connections here. He couldn’t see them yet, but he could feel them.
“Who caught this?” he asked the desk sergeant.
Hermanez leaned to have a look. “Peterson and Cook.”
“Are they still in?”
“Nah. Their shift ended the same time yours did, except they were smart enough to go home.”
“Some of us aren’t so good at fitting twenty hours’ work into an eight-hour shift.”
Hermanez laughed. “Tell me about it.”
“So you know anything about this robbery?” Davis asked.
“Started as a ten-sixty-seven, but by the time we got on the scene, the only thing left to do was take statements.”
“What were they after?”
“A couple of paintings—supposed to be pretty valuable, Cook says, but nobody could put a dollar value on them.”
“Paintings,” Davis repeated.
Hermanez nodded. “Me, I’d have them evaluated and insured if they’re that valuable, you know what I mean?”
But Davis wasn’t listening. The connections were weaving more tightly together now. He’d seen those paintings. They were by the same woman who, according to Alan Grant, was going to be illustrating this collection that Margaret Mully had been so set on suppressing before she’d been murdered. Had the Indian killed her? Maybe they’re running some kind of scam together and when it goes bad, the Indian kills Mully, then tries to pull this heist so that he can still come out ahead.
Flimsy, Davis, he told himself. Very flimsy. But he was curious now. “You remember who they talked to?” he asked the desk sergeant.
“I forget her name. Remember the black woman who brought that bunch of kids by for a tour of the precinct last month? She was a real looker.”
Davis had to think for a moment. “Something Hamilton,” he said. “Rosanne. No, Rolanda.”
“That’s her. She’s the one that stopped them and did most of the talking. Want me to get someone to track down their report?”
Davis shook his head. “No. I think I’ll swing by the Foundation on my way home and have a talk with her myself “
“Now you’ve got me feeling itchy,” Hermanez said. “What do you see here that I don’t?”
“Nothing,” Davis told him. “At least not yet. But the only lead I’ve got in a case that Mike and I are working on is a ponytailed Indian and the really interesting thing is that our case has a connection to the Foundation as well.”
“You’re talking about the old witch that got murdered last night—the one who wanted to take away all the money from the Foundation’s kids.”
Davis nodded.
“Maybe you should give the guy a medal, if you find him,” Hermanez muttered.
“If it was up to me,” Davis admitted, “maybe I would.”
“Course, we don’t condone murder on our turf,” Hermanez said. “No matter how much the victim deserved it.”
