Under Suspicion

“I don’t care. There is nothing to see here. If you know that”—I pointed to the body that was now being moved, still under cover of the tarp—“is a regular John Doe, why are you interviewing these people?”

“I sell books, Sophie, and people like these”—he spread his arms as if he were among his brethren— “keep the myths that I debunk alive. More myths, more books.”

“More sales.”

“Spoken like a true capitalist.” He pressed the microphone underneath my nose. “Are you sure you don’t have anything to add?”

I looked from the fallen centaur to the woman with the hairnet, wringing her hands; the woman beside her was still muttering “Tiamat” and describing the evil attributes of the sea legend.

Harley may not have had fangs, but he looked every inch the bloodsucker lurking beside them, his microphone at the ready.

“I have nothing to say to you.”

I was inching through traffic and listening to Nina’s cell phone ring in my ear after my run-in with Harley and the centaur. By the time a Muni bus cut me off, and a line of Art Institute students zigzagged in front of my car, Nina picked up and I screamed, “Finally!”

There was a short pause and then, “Sophie?”

“Sorry, Neens. I’m stuck in traffic and I just came from the docks.”

“Trolling for dates again? Do we need to have another talk about acceptable places to meet men?”

My left eye started to twitch. “I was on the dock because the police pulled a centaur out of the Bay.”

“That’s weird. Centaurs are not known for their swimming prowess.”

“He’d been murdered.”

“Oh.”

“I called Dixon. Investigations is coming out to take care of it.” I shook my head, tapped my fingers on the steering wheel. “This is scaring me, Nina. First Mrs. Henderson, and now a body in the Bay?”

Nina harrumphed. “Do you know how many bodies there are in the Bay? I’m guessing thousands. That centaur could have been in there for ages and just washed up now. It’s not pleasant, I’ll give you that, but I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

“I guess.” I rested my foot on the brake, staring at the flashing lights in front of me. “You know who else I ran into? Harley.”

Nina let out a pained little yip. “Harley? My Harley?”

“He’s already your Harley?”

Nina ignored me, prattling on. “Oh my gosh, is he okay?”

“He’s fine, but I can’t say as much for the people he was talking to. He was here preying on their beliefs. He had an entire camera crew and was interviewing people who saw the—the body.”

“Chupacabra? Anything that looks somewhat odd around here and it’s a chupacabra.”

I nodded, inching my car forward as the light in front of me changed. “Yes, but ... he was practically making fun of them. He was using them to prove his stupid debunking theories—making them look like idiots, like they all believed in these silly, made-up stories.”

Nina blew out a sigh, and I imagined her on the other end of the phone, examining her manicure. “That’s what he does, Sophie. He’s an author. He has to interview people, has to introduce the myths so that he can debunk them. It’s no big deal. It’s what sells his books. Besides, half the legends that people believe in are made- up.”

I wanted to zing Nina with something about her being a vampire, about her being one of the most made-up myths of all, but my mind was still churning, folding over the crumpled centaur and Harley’s shiny white veneers as he listened to the women argue. Dollar signs were practically glistening in his eyes.

“He’s mean, Nina. And he’s wrong. There was a dead demon forty paces from him and he was interviewing some old ladies, getting them riled up about a chupacabra and Tiamat.”

“So what do you want me to do? Drag him to the Underworld to prove that he’s wrong? I’m not sure if you’ve recently read the UDA bylaws, but keeping the whole demon thing under wraps is really something we rely on around here.”

“Doesn’t it bother you at all that you’re all hot and bothered by a man whose entire career centers around the idea that we don’t exist?”

I could hear the rustle of cellophane as Nina unwrapped a blood bag on her end of the line. “According to him, you do exist. I don’t.”

I paused and Nina relented. “What are you really upset about, Sophie?”

My bottom lip pushed out and I slumped lower in the driver’s seat.

“I’m not sure.”

Chapter Five

I was steeling my resolve to walk into Dixon’s office and demand a full-scale investigation of Mrs. Henderson’s crime scene, and the body we just found, when my cell phone buzzed as I waited in the vestibule for the UDA elevator to come up.

“This is Sophie.”

“Sophie? Kale.”

“Hey, K—”

“Where are you? Are you on your way to the office?”

“I’m waiting for the elevator right now. Kale, what’s wrong? What is that? Kale?”

When the elevator dinged thirty-five floors below the San Francisco police station, the line went dead. I banged the phone against the heel of my hand a couple of times, shrugged, and threw it in my purse, knowing I’d see Kale in a millisecond.

But I didn’t.

The big metal doors slid open on the Underworld Detection Agency and it was—forgive the expression—like a ghost town. There was an ominous quiet; and though all the lights were on and business should have been in full swing, the lobby was desolate.

And then I heard the scream.

It was a high-pitched, bloodcurdling sound. It was a mixture of angst and misery, terrified and terror inducing. I clenched my hands into fists, feeling my fingernails digging little half-moons into my sweaty palms.

“Kale?” I called, my voice sounding odd and tinny in the silent room.

I took a step toward the reception desk and felt a hand grip my wrist, then yank me downward.

“Kale?”

She was huddled underneath the reception desk, a sweatshirt wrapped around her head. Pierre, our centaur filing clerk, was down there with her, sitting back on his haunches, hands pressed over his ears.

“What’s going on?”

Before Kale could answer me, there was another earsplitting scream, and then I knew.

“Banshee?” I said, grimacing.

Kale nodded and I rubbed my temples, the rhythmic drumbeat of a migraine beginning to pulse behind my eyes. “They wouldn’t be so bad if they could get the screaming thing under control.”

“She’s waiting for you in your office,” Kale said, pointing.

I nodded, then stepped out from under the desk. My ankles and knees cracked as I did so. “It’s okay, everyone, you can come out.”

Little by little, the UDA lobby came back to life as clients rolled out from under chairs and from behind the potted palms. Every man, woman, and beast held their hands over their ears or were sporting homemade earplugs, which may or may not have been torn from last month’s Martha Stewart Living.

I prepared myself to meet Bettina Jacova.