pulled up alongside it and rolled down my window. “Want a burger?”
Corvallis was in the passenger seat, grinning at me. “No, thanks.”
“Hey! Yeah, if you’re giving it up!” The cameraman-cum-driver leaned across her, looking eager. I handed the food over, figuring the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, and I might need a friend on the news team if Corvallis was going to insist on following me.
I was trying not to think too hard about a reporter following me. I barely had any idea what I was going to do even without a monkey wrench in the works, and the only thing I could think of that would make it worse was broadcasting my bizarre talents on local TV. In the best-case scenario, nobody would believe her. In the worst, they would, and I’d be like Christ in the temple.
Which was not to say I was Christ-like in any way. Gah. I put on the nicest smile I could, trying to rid myself of the thought. “Are you following me, Ms. Corvallis?”
“As a matter of fact, I am.”
Outright honesty had not been the response I was expecting. I blinked up at the woman. “Why?”
“It strikes me you’ve been involved in some interesting events the past few months.” She smiled at me. I didn’t like it, and did my best blank expression. It usually worked to irritate and distract Morrison.
It didn’t work on Laurie Corvallis. “An officer—not a detective, just an officer—at the Blanchet High murder scene. Immediately after that you were on the list of approved visitors for Henrietta Potter. Mrs. Potter died quite violently, didn’t she?”
A bolt of cold loss shot right through the flutter of power behind my breastbone, making bile rise up in my stomach. For an instant I was desperately grateful I hadn’t eaten the food I’d bought, or I’d be revisiting Erik’s early-morning sickness right there in my car. The smell of vomit lingered in leather forever, too. I shuddered the feeling away, knowing Corvallis was watching my reaction with professional interest. I’d barely known Henrietta Potter, but I’d liked her enormously. Her sudden, violent death had shocked me to the core. “Yeah,” I managed. “She did.”
“Then your name came up during the police investigation of Faye Kirkland’s death,” Corvallis went on conversationally. I inhaled through my nose, long slow breath.
“That was weeks ago. Why are you following me now?”
“Well, the third time’s the charm, Officer Walker. I see you going into the precinct building, saying you’re on your way to work on a day when a quarter of the North Precinct police force has been admitted to the hospital, and half an hour later you’re walking out, still in civilian clothes and getting in your—” she broke off to consider Petite briefly, then gave me a quick grin “—shiny Mustang.” The smile faded into something more predatory. “And I start putting all these little strange things together, and I start to think maybe I have a story here.”
Nausea kept burning in my belly, churning up until it felt as if it was encouraging my heartbeat to rattle too fast. My fingertips were cold and my cheeks were hot, physical reactions to what I thought was best referred to as blind, screaming panic. I wanted Laurie Corvallis to go away, far away, from my weird little life, and to never come near me again.
Saying that, of course, would pretty much guarantee she’d be on my back like black on night. I gave her a rueful little smile that I hoped hid the ninety-mile-an-hour pulse in my throat, and managed to keep my voice steady as I said, “Ms. Corvallis, if you really want to investigate me, I can’t stop you, but you’re going to be disappointed. I’m not a very interesting person. As for being at work, I have some personal things to take care of today. I just needed to stop by the station to talk to a couple of people.” I wasn’t a very good liar, and hoped that was close enough to the truth to hide it.
Interest glittered in the reporter’s eyes. “And you weren’t pressed into service, given the situation?”
I tipped my chin down and looked up at her through my eyebrows. “A lot of people are out on sick leave, Ms. Corvallis, but we usually do get paid for sick leave. The department doesn’t have a lot of money for overtime. Sorry to disappoint you.”
Corvallis pursed her lips, looking as though she was in fact disappointed. “You’re lying to me, Officer Walker. You said you had to get to work, when we spoke in the parking lot.”
I stared at her. First, how she remembered exactly what I said was beyond me. Second, “Do people typically say, ’Please excuse me, but I’ve got to run inside and talk to a couple of people before I leave and go about my day’ to you when they’re heading into their work building, Ms. Corvallis?” Sure, I was lying now, but now I had a moral high horse that made it easier.
“People often find being very specific in what they say to a news reporter is a good idea.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said in genuine, pointed incredulity. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Ms. Corvallis, I’ve got some personal business to take care of.” I clipped the words off and she smiled at me.
“I hope you’re telling me the truth, Officer Walker. I’ll find out if you’re not.”
“I’m sure you will.” I bared my teeth at her, which was as close as I could get to a smile, waved goodbye at the driver, who lifted the half-eaten burger in salutation, and backed out of the parking lot to drive home with shaking hands.
By the time I got there I at least had a plan. I had no illusions that it was a good plan, but at least it was a plan, and that was better than sitting around with fast-food coffee going sour in my stomach, worrying about Billy and Mel and a whole lot of other friends. I turned my computer on and prayed the gods of the Internet would have some answers for me.
They didn’t. Mystical sleeping sicknesses and the Net turned out to have little in common, although I did learn more than I ever wanted to know about African trypanosomiasis. The only references that covered both sleeping sicknesses and mysticism were stories about African evil spirits who’d turned into the mosquitoes that carried the disease. It was a long shot, especially since there just weren’t that many mosquitoes in downtown Seattle parks. On the other hand, these evil spirits were evidently sensitive to topaz, so if I got really desperate I could always start collecting topaz and hand it out to people.
Actually, that didn’t sound like a bad idea, which in and of itself made me wince. I hoped I wasn’t going to turn into one of those New Agers with the frizzy hair and the gypsy skirts. I punched in a search on topaz’s inherent qualities and came up with an Indian—the subcontinent, not the Native Americans—belief that it helped bring good dreams and peaceful sleep. Between that and the evil spirits, handing out chunks of it sounded like an actively
I took a deep breath, accepted my doom and Googled “magic sleep,” which turned out to be just the ticket for a Dungeons & Dragons cleric in search of spell statistics. I put my forehead down on the keyboard, depressing keys until they started a long painful beep.
The sound was enough to send me shoving away from my desk purposefully, gripped with the determination to do something, even if it was stupid. I drove Petite down to East Asian Imports, the incense-filled shop I’d met Faye Kirkland at only three weeks earlier, and bought every piece of topaz they had. Half an hour later, my pockets full of rocks, I marched into the precinct building, a woman on a mission.
Morrison was the first stop on my mission, and he wasn’t there. That took the wind out of my ambition and I stood there staring at his desk for a while, relief warring with disappointment. He was the hardest person to talk to, so I wanted to get it over with. On the other hand, more sympathetic ears might make it easier to work my way up to him. I went back to Missing Persons, a flawed piece of stone clutched in my hand.
I didn’t like the Missing Persons office. It always seemed cold, even in July, and the door stuck, making a draft that riffled all tidy rows of photographs and vital statistics that lined the walls. I thought it sounded like the lost whispering for help, and found it overwhelmingly depressing. Homicide was bad, with all its raw violence floating at the surface, but Missing Persons was worse. It had the tang of hope sullied by desolation, the knowledge that every day a case wasn’t closed meant it was that much less likely there would ever be a happy ending. Murder was concrete; it made an end to things. Hope could hang on like a bitch.
“You always get that look when you come in here.” Jen Gonzales, the woman I was in search of, came out from one of the inner offices, offering her hand to shake. I put mine in it automatically, her fingers startlingly warm in the perceived chill of the office.
“Hi, Jen. What look?”
“Makes your eyes sad, and no offense, Joanie, but a lot of the time you don’t have the happiest eyes, anyway.” Jen had a faint Spanish accent and always shook hands when people came into her office. It’d finally
