“I’m not kidding. It’s time to leave Hammer Bay while you still can.”
The door to Frank’s room opened and Rev. Wilson stepped out. He managed to look down at us without actually looking at us. “I wonder if it would be possible,” he said, his tone stuffy and superior, “for you to converse elsewhere. These rooms are not soundproof, you know.”
Peter wedged his bulk between the reverend and me. “Are you going to support the mayor in his fight against corruption?”
“The mayor is in a terribly weakened condition. He won’t be fighting anything or anyone for quite a while. It would be irresponsible for you to claim otherwise.” He turned to me, glancing at me briefly before turning his eyes to the side. “And why are you still here?”
That was a good question. I walked away while Peter tried to get a statement from the reverend about what he was already calling the mayor’s “new initiative.”
I walked to the elevator. Beside it was a hospital directory, which told me that the morgue was in the basement. I entered the elevator and pressed the button. Cynthia hadn’t returned, so I decided to stick close to my boss.
Why was Annalise in the morgue? I hoped it had something to do with Karoly Lem. I didn’t want to go down there and see the corpse of someone I knew.
The basement was practically a ghost town. I wandered through the halls, looking for a sign that would point the way. Eventually, I found one. I followed the arrows.
I expected gray paint on the walls and rows of metal tables with bodies lying on them. I was glad to be wrong. What I found was a small reception desk in a little waiting room. Annalise stood beside the desk, filling in a form on a clipboard with her sharp, jagged writing. Her face was pale and her thin lips were white. She had a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Opposite her was a morose-looking woman with nothing to do but watch.
“Someone will contact you about the body,” Annalise said as she handed over the clipboard. The woman accepted it and slunk through the door behind the desk. She was gone.
Annalise hefted a blue canvas bag from the edge of the counter. She winced. Then she turned to me.
“What’s in there?” I asked.
“Karoly’s things. What are you doing here? I gave you a job to do.”
“While I was looking for a club to hit her over the head with, she slipped away. I’ll have to drag her back to my cave some other time.”
She scowled at me. I saw something in her expression I hadn’t seen before. She looked vulnerable.
“Hey,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me,” I said, amazed that I was genuinely worried. “How bad are your hands?”
She walked around me toward the doors, stuck her hands into the handles, and sucked air through her teeth. She was hurting. Bad.
I pulled the doors open for her. She didn’t like receiving my help, but she didn’t have a choice.
We walked up the hall together, turned a few corners, and pushed through a couple of doors. I had no idea where we were going. I decided to change the subject. “Did you find out what Karoly’s message was?”
“I have his laptop in here,” she said. “I’ll read through it when we get back to the room.”
“They let you have his laptop?”
“They searched it and didn’t find anything. Who picked you up in the van?”
“Saw that, did you? Thanks for getting me out of trouble, boss. They worked for a player I haven’t met yet: Henstrick, the woman who runs a construction firm and a brothel.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, stick with the job I already gave you.”
“I didn’t say I… forget it.” She stared at the floor as we walked. I wondered how well she knew Karoly, and how hard she was going to grieve for him, if at all. “While I was in the Hammers’ house, I saw a picture-“
“I have an idea,” she interrupted. “Go to the parking garage and get the van. I’ll wait out front for you.”
The look she gave me was angry and dangerous. Her face was paler and more sunken than before. I backed off. She held out the blue canvas bag, and I took it, being careful not to brush it up against her injured hands. She stalked away.
My life would become a lot easier if she were killed here in Hammer Bay. At least, I assumed it would. Maybe, when a peer in the society died, her wooden man was killed, too, like a pharaoh’s slaves. Maybe the wooden man was reassigned to another peer, or traded around like a punk.
Or maybe they were cut loose. Maybe they were told to go away and not come back.
It sounded thin, but even so I didn’t want anything to happen to Annalise. She hated me and would probably engineer my death, but the power she had was fascinating.
And I liked her.
Christ, I needed to get laid.
She hit a metal panel on the wall with her elbow, and the double doors in front of her opened. She stepped through, and the doors closed behind her.
I hustled back up the hall and reentered the morgue. I wanted a look at that clipboard Annalise had filled out. I wanted to see if it had an address on it, or a phone number. I wanted anything that I could use to track down some
