too, with the days getting shorter still over the next couple months. “How long’s the exhibit been in town?”
“Since the beginning of the month, but it’s been advertised for almost a year. Plenty of time to set up.”
“Great. Have we got yesterday’s guards in to talk yet?”
“They’re on their way.”
I nodded and ran my hands through my hair, fisting them there before letting go and turning to Billy. “I think Jason’s death broke the wards, and that’s what set off the ghosts last night.”
“Why didn’t they get charged up when it got to Seattle, then? Or any time in the month it’s been sitting here?” Billy wasn’t arguing, just making sure I’d thought my claim through.
“It was warded.” I didn’t know if I’d missed the warding—not that I had clue one about what wards might look like—or if it’d been obliterated when the cauldron was moved, but I was, for once, certain of myself. “I know it’s the haunted time of year, but the ghosts and the cauldron—it’s not coincidence, Billy.”
He said, “Don’t let yourself get so fixated you overlook other possibilities,” but what I heard was agreement. He was right: I shouldn’t cling too hard to my theory and maybe end up blinding myself to the truth, but at least he didn’t think I was barking up the wrong tree. Or into the wrong cauldron, for that matter.
“I won’t.” I turned away from the city before voicing the other idea I suspected Billy shared: “So. Sandburg?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nodded once. “I think so.”
Thunder rumbled up above and fat blots of rain chased us back into the museum to pursue our case.
Four months of detective work hadn’t yet accustomed me to just how damn long it took to question everybody linked to a murder case. Meghan, the poor girl who’d found Chan’s body, had to be tranquilized before she could answer questions, and then she spoke in a soft monotone, tears draining down her cheeks. I’d eat my hat if she had anything to do with the murder. The security guards who’d worked the day shift swore they’d seen nothing and that the cauldron had been safely in place when they’d done their last check at a quarter to six.
The Sight, it turned out, was a half-decent lie detector. It picked up on the same kinds of things a polygraph did: anxiety tended to spike pretty much the same way in everybody. Baseline emotions ran pretty high during questioning, but to the best of my ability to tell, everyone was telling the truth about what they had or hadn’t seen.
What threw me off was Sandburg read as innocent, too. I wanted him to be guilty; it’d be easy. But until Chan’s autopsy report came back, and maybe not even then, we didn’t have anything to pin on him except access and timing. He didn’t have an alibi for the sixteen hours prior to turning up at work. He’d eaten dinner out, and had a credit-card slip to back up that claim, and then had gone home, where he had no family to verify whether he’d been there or not. Arresting him would be tidy, quick and satisfying. But only if we were right, and his steady pale aura said we weren’t.
Billy and I were both near staggering with exhaustion before we finished. I’d gotten a whole three hours of sleep before work, and he’d had to drive home, so couldn’t have gotten more than two and a half at the outside. I pulled in at the Missing O, the coffee-and-doughnut shop down the street from the precinct building, without asking or being told. We had a dozen things to discuss about the case. Instead we hunkered down over enormous cardboard cups and tried to keep our chins from dipping in. After enough coffee had turned to acid in my belly, I shuffled over and ordered two apple fritters and two maple-covered pershings before asking Billy if he wanted anything.
He glowered at me, which was disproportionately funny, and I came back to the table, giggling as I handed over his share of the doughnuts. “I never did get lunch.”
“So we’re having doughnuts for dinner? Don’t tell Melinda. I’ve gained twenty-eight pounds since she got pregnant and I’m supposed to be on a diet.”
“You’ll lose it after she has the baby. You did last time.”
“Most of it.” Billy looked at his fritter despondently, then shrugged and ate half of it in one bite. “Dunno why it didn’t all come back off.”
I grinned and slid down in my chair. The coffee—plain black this time, no flavorings to mess with the doughnuts—was starting to give me a false perkiness. “Did you get anything from Chan?” A lot of cops came to The O to do business, but not many did it so their coworkers wouldn’t overhear them talking about discussions with the dead.
Billy sighed around a smaller bite of doughnut. “Not as much as I’d hoped. He didn’t really know he was dead yet. Said he had a migraine when he came in. I checked his records, he had prescription medication for them. He got the light-sensitive kind, with halos and sparks, so he liked working nights. He said he had one, not enough to make him really off his game, but that he wasn’t at his best. He thought the lights around the cauldron display’d set it off. Poor kid. In the end I told him to just go over to one of the quiet corners and sleep it off, that I’d clear it with Sandburg. With any luck he’ll just fade out.”
I licked maple frosting off my pershing while I listened. It was a disgusting habit, but I’d been eating doughnuts that way since I could remember. First maple sweetness, then cinnamony goodness beneath it, spiraled in a flat roll bigger than my palm. Yum. I had to wipe my mouth to ask, “That was it? Nothing else at all?”
Billy shook his head. “He said it was quiet, that Redding entertained him with stories about his family, but that was about it. He never saw what hit him. Usually they don’t when it comes from behind.”
“I don’t remember seeing anything about Redding’s family.” I dropped my doughnut, appetite gone. “Do I need to talk to them?”
“No, Chan said they were killed in a wreck years ago. A wife and two little girls. Redding liked to talk about them, and never got married again. He still wears his wedding ring. Chan figured that was love.”
“Oh.” My appetite, fickle thing that it was, came back immediately upon realizing I didn’t have to go break bad news to an unsuspecting wife. “That’s too bad.”
“Yeah. I hope we find him alive. I—Who
I turned to see Daniel Doherty opening the O’s front door. I didn’t think he could be looking for me specifically, unless somebody’d told him when Billy and I radioed to say we were heading back to the office, in which case I was going to pull someone’s toenails out. Doherty’s gaze roved over the café in the way that strangers in a strange land look: as if they know they’re the wrong type to hang out there but that they’re shy on choices, yet still willing to turn tail and run if the territory looks too unfriendly.
I did my best to look unfriendly.
His expression of surprise, then relief, told me that one, he hadn’t been looking for me, and two, that he would now cling to me like a leech. Briefcase in hand, he scurried over to our table. “Detective Walker.”
“Mr. Doherty.” I had a pretty good growl when I wanted one, but it failed to deter him. He offered Billy a hand, saying, “Daniel Doherty, it’s a pleasure to meet you. May I join you?”
Billy picked up on my subtle “no” signal—I was kicking him under the table—and said, “Yeah, sure, Mr. Doherty. We were just discussing a murder case. What do you do?”
I kicked him one more time. Doherty put his briefcase down, tugged the thighs of his pants up an inch and sat. “I’m in insurance. I was at your office today to talk to Detective Walker.” He procured a rueful smile that was probably meant to be charming. “I’ve been waiting for her to come back, and someone was kind enough to tell me I could get a decent cup of coffee here.”
“Why the hell are you here on a Sunday, anyway?” I demanded. “Don’t you have a family to go home to?”
“Actually, no,” he said pleasantly, “but I came in because I believe your schedule gives you the next two days off, and I didn’t want to miss you in case you had plans that took you out of town for your weekend. Really, I won’t be in your way, Detective. I’ll just be an observer. I could have even done this without informing you, but that approach always makes me feel like something of a Peeping Tom. It’s an unpleasant sensation.”
Not nearly as unpleasant as my elbow breaking his nose was going to be. Billy looked back and forth between us like we were a Ping-Pong match. “Committing insurance fraud, Joanie?”
Of all the things he didn’t need to say right then. I savaged what was left of my pershing. “It’s about the vandalism Petite suffered earlier this year, you jackass. The insurance doesn’t like that me and my nice neat driving record suddenly had a slew of claims even though that’s exactly why I pay full coverage.”
“Oh. Crap.” Billy shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry. If I’d known it was Petite I wouldn’t have cracked a joke.”
