My cell dinged in the middle of the medical resuscitation attempts and Occam and I read the news that JoJo had texted to our cells. Clarisse, the senator’s wife, had been on the way to a meeting in her official car, with a driver and a full security detail. The driver had gone off the Alcoa Highway and into the river. The car had been only ten feet offshore and had been recovered quickly, along with the bodies of the driver and her security—two women and a man.
The senator’s wife wasn’t inside. When the car was pulled out, at about the same time that the senator was flash-burned, it was discovered that the windows were all broken out. The car was riddled with bullet holes. There were no witnesses to the shooting, and the shooter was believed to have driven up beside them and opened fire with a high-powered automatic rifle. Casings were being recovered from the street where the attack took place. The same ammunition as had been fired at the Tollivers on each of the other occasions. Clarisse Tolliver was presumed dead.
Occam and I huddled against a wall, silent and ignored. Useless.
Twenty-seven minutes after we arrived, the senator’s heart stopped. They tried to resuscitate him for another half hour. Then they pronounced Senator Tolliver dead. The sudden silence was profound. The team working on him backed away. It didn’t last long. They had seen this kind of thing before. They began to clean up paper and plastic packages, to count discarded needles.
Occam and I informed LaFleur. Took names and told the doctors that we’d be sending papers to get copies of the medical report. Half an hour after the senator died, the day shift Secret Service agents, who had been stuck in traffic on the way to take over for night shift at the senator’s meeting, finally caught up with their quarry. We left the hospital.
The air outside didn’t smell like burned human, though the scent clung to our clothes and hair. Instead, the air was warm and the sun was shining. A dog trotted across the parking lot. An ambulance was pulling in. Cars followed it. Occam stepped off the curb into the street.
“You okay?” I asked Occam as we left the emergency entrance.
He didn’t answer until we were back in my truck, the cab an oasis of wakeful normalcy after a nightmare. “No. Not really,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of awful things in my life. Never seen a cooked piece of meat still trying to breathe. I don’t know how medical people do that kinda thing, day in and day out. It was . . .” He paused as if trying to decide how to phrase what he was feeling and seemed to settle on the inadequate, “. . . pretty horrible.”
I reached over and took Occam’s hand in mine. There was an instant of resistance, or maybe just surprise, before he laced his fingers through mine and gripped my hand back. His skin wasn’t rough or calloused like John’s. Or like mine, for that matter. Not the hand of someone who had labored too hard for too many years, working the land with tools that abraded the skin and damaged the joints. The flesh of his palm and fingers was firm and solid, like the paw of a young dog or cat. Healthy. Reborn every time he shifted forms.
He said, “The shooter went after Clarisse. If the flames in the restaurant were from a pyro, then we have two killers now. Maybe we did all along.”
Occam’s cell pinged and he swiped it with his other hand. Without emotion he translated what he was reading. “The senator’s postmortem has already been scheduled. It’s at four p.m. It’ll be performed by a forensic pathologist. According to the feds and the arson squad, the cook at the fire saw a strange-looking man in the kitchen just before the fire. She swears the man’s skin was blue.”
“We got to go to the PM?”
“Looks like I do. You got your own text.”
“I’ll check it after we get to HQ,” I said.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a small smile pull at his lips, and his dimple deepened. His shoulders relaxed. “When your hand isn’t busy being held, Nell, sugar?”
“That’s my plan,” I said, feeling unaccustomedly bold.
“I find I’m right fond of that plan.” His fingers tightened on mine and I squeezed back.
FIFTEEN
“The senator’s PM is scheduled for four p.m. today,” Rick said, “and Occam and I will be there, along with two feds and two members of the Secret Service. Meanwhile, JoJo’s been digging sideways and has discovered that the daughter who produced Justin Tolliver—Miriam—and who fell off the map right after Justin was adopted by her parents, was never reported missing.”
“So we don’t know if she disappeared as in ran away or disappeared as in presumed dead,” I said. And then realized how dreadful it was that I could say such a statement in a calm and rational and unemotional tone of voice. I didn’t know what I was becoming as a special agent, but it wasn’t the woman I had been.
Rick said, “Disappeared as in there’s been no sign of her since—no leads, no official search, no credit report, no death certificate, and she isn’t on any missing persons databases—nothing.”
“That’s odd,” Soul said, “especially for the family member of a public official, who could pull strings and find her, get her case special attention.”
JoJo said, “We have an incoming call from T. Laine and Tandy.”
The overhead screens flickered and Tandy’s face appeared, his lips moving, his eyes to the side. T. Laine appeared beside him, and she was clearly looking at him, listening. Rick said, “We have visuals. Why don’t we have audio?”
Oh. Sorry, Tandy’s lips said, without sound. He punched a button and looked at the screen, saying, “Starting over. Healy’s prison cellmate died in an infirmary fire last night. We were just shown in and saw the place. It looks like either he was attacked with a flamethrower or he suffered self-immolation.”
“But there is no accelerant smell,” T. Laine said. “One of the warden’s trustees said it was spontaneous combustion. That’s what we got. A dead witness.”
Rick cursed inventively and rubbed his head. His eyes were glowing slightly green, the color of his cat. We were getting too close to the full moon. “So now we have three players? And one’s in Texas? Get home,” he said to Tandy. “We’ll see you late this afternoon.”
“Okay, boss,” Tandy said. “Out.” The screens went black.
Rick swiveled in his chair to the partial team in the conference room. “Clearly we have more than one killer. It’s highly unlikely that a killer managed to get inside a maximum security prison, find and fry a specific prisoner, and then get back here in time to locate and fry the senator, and shoot up Clarisse Tolliver’s car.”
“Unless he could fly,” I said softly.
Rick cursed again and threw himself out of his chair. Pea, the grindylow, appeared at his side and leaped onto Rick’s shoulder, chittering madly as Rick stormed down the hallway, calling for Soul.
A flying, fire-throwing, gun-shooting paranormal. Which would explain how the shooter got away each time. He/she/it shifted shape and flew away. Like an arcenciel?
There were no other known species that could do all the things we had seen and that had been attributed to it. If it could fly or even teleport . . . how would we stop it? Without commenting further, I went home to shower off the stench of fire and death and to sleep, a feeling of failure riding on my shoulders, and later, into my dreams.
• • •
T. Laine and Tandy were in the conference room when I got back to HQ, both wearing fresh clothes, hair still damp from showers, and the EOD meeting was in midswing. On the screens was a new case file. What had been a protective investigatory case was now an examination of data and evidence with national importance: the investigation into the extraordinary and bizarre death of Senator Tolliver by unknown means and under unusual and possibly paranormal circumstances.
A stranger stood in the corner, a man with a face like a piece of oak and a suit that had to cost a month of my wages. He was a Secret Service agent, one of the ones who had come to the hospital after the senator was blasted with
fire. And he was staring at Occam.
I didn’t have to be Tandy to know why he was here. Occam was a wereleopard. Occam had been in the presence of the senator at the time of the bizarre and unexplainable fire. Occam had survived that fire when the senator and his security detail had not. And Occam the wereleopard looked fine. Occam was a suspect. I looked around the table as I took my seat and saw from their body language I had missed some important stuff. I pulled up the files that were open on the big screens, scanning to catch up on the intel.
An irritated burr in his voice, Rick said, “Clementine, record the attendance of Probationary Special Agent Nell Ingram. Time is six twenty-seven.”
I flinched and whispered, “Traffic.” And then I flushed with anger, cleared my voice, and said, “I was caught in traffic. There was an accident on South Illinois Avenue.” Rick looked at me blankly. “On Sixty-two near Tuskegee Drive,” I clarified. Unit Eighteen was composed of out-of-towners, not local people, and for months now, I’d had to refer to roads by their number instead of the pike name or street name.
Rick said, “Okay, so why aren’t you at the senator’s place, reading the ground?”
“Ummm.” I flicked my eyes around the table, meeting Tandy’s. “Because the senator’s dead?”
Tandy gave me a slight nod telling me that Rick was not himself, but that he was working to share his own calm with the boss. The full moon was close. Rick was antsy. I put a sugar cookie shaped like a gift box tied with a bow onto a paper plate and passed it Rick’s way. He didn’t take it, instead looking even more annoyed.
Calmly, Soul said, “Nell is where she should be. In fact, I think Nell should concentrate on a timeline. We have murders to investigate. This is now our case. The FBI and Secret Service will still be involved but on the periphery.”
“Fine,” Rick said, his voice tight, his green-glowing eyes on me. “Read the file notes, Ingram. T. Laine, continue.”
T. Laine said, “I spent the last half of the day and the flight back working on the legislation angle. The senator had three bills before Congress: one that would make all paranormals born in this country equal citizens with all protections under the law; one that provides regular law enforcement equal power over all paranormals; and the last one unrelated, that requires much deeper background checks on all gun buyers and a three-week waiting period. All this is totally out of character for a Republican senator, especially since several of the Tolliver companies contribute to the production of weapons.”
Tandy said, “I’ve been talking to his aides. They say he’d been acting strange for the last three months, taking breaks and disappearing, missing meetings, postponing trips to DC, abstaining from votes he normally would have strong feelings for or against. It means nothing by itself, but taken together with a possible paranormal turf war, it might eventually make sense.”
“Occam,” Rick snarled. “Update us on the senator’s PM.”
Occam didn’t raise his eyes from his computer screen, eyes that were glowing the golden brown of his cat, but his lips lifted in a snarl of his own. The tension in the room was suddenly too high, the air feeling too hot. The werecats were acting catty, not human. It could be from the stuff I missed before I arrived. Or because when it came to cat shifting, Rick was a brand-new were and had little control over his emotions. Or because the dominance games in the null room had been unsuccessful. Or because, when I helped Rick shift back to human during the last full moon, breaking the wereleopard curse he was under, maybe I didn’t succeed all the way. I had tried not to think too much about that event, but I had never broken a curse, let alone one applied by a cat-woman. Maybe I just partially solved his problem and he was still in trouble. Or maybe the tattoo magic spell on and in his flesh was the problem. Whatever it was, Rick acting hotheaded or out of control would be bad for him and for all of us in Unit Eighteen. Rick tilted his head in a catty, nonhuman manner.
At the gesture, the Secret Service guy slid his hand inside his jacket, moving like former military, instincts on high. I glanced to Tandy, and he looked spooked.
Out of nowhere, Pea landed on the table, chittering madly. She leaped over the little Christmas tree, dropping onto Occam, landing like a cute kitten, a grindylow reacting to the rising violent were-pheromones in the room.
Tandy stood, his Lichtenberg lines too bright, too red on his white, white skin. His face was caught in a rictus of fear, his eyes on Rick, his hands reaching, as if to hold the SAC in place. And failing. Something was about to happen. Something bad.
There was only one grindylow. Where was the other?
The Secret Service guy was drawing his weapon. Occam’s eyes flashed golden fire. Rick reached for his service weapon.
I barked, “Rick!” I pulled on Soulwood. Pulled peace and calm from the sleeping trees and bound them around Rick’s cat. I had claimed Rick soon after I met him, claimed him for the land, to heal him, to heal his were-magics. Now I used that, and reached out to Tandy too, hoping he could help calm the cat. But the empath was panicked himself, picking up the wereleopards’ territorial anger.
I used the tools I had and wrapped Soulwood around all of them: the cats, the grindylow, Tandy, the government warrior. More quietly, I said, “We’re all happy here.”
Rick blinked. His eyes lost the green leopard sheen. Pea looked up from Occam and leaped all the way across the table to land on Rick. Stuck her nose into Rick’s face and chittered. It seemed everyone in the room took a breath. “Everything is okay,” I said. I looked at Tandy and said again, softer, “Everything is okay.” Tandy nodded and closed his eyes, his body language wilting. The empath had learned that in times of extreme stress and fear he had the ability to share his own emotions, to change other people’s reactions, but he hadn’t managed to do that, instead falling back on old patterns of being controlled by the rages and passions around him. Now he too drew on Soulwood, pushing the calm of the land that lived inside me into the room. It was a bizarre sensation, similar to the touch of a slow spring rain pattering down on the earth. I liked it.
The tension in the room went down fast. The Secret Service agent blinked in confusion and replaced his weapon with a soft click of hard plastic holster.
Rick’s weapon disappeared; he took a breath and released it. “Where were we?” he asked.
The glow in Occam’s eyes died and he said, “I’ll skip the weight of the senator’s liver and brain and heart and conditions of his internal organs to give you the English translation of the COD. Cause of death is listed as third-degree burns and inhalation of superheated air, resulting in the shutdown of his respiratory system. It’s transcribed in medicalese, but that’s the gist. They were starting on the security guys when I left, but prelim results were the same.”
“But he was human,” Rick stated.
Occam hesitated, glancing at the Secret Service agent as if weighing what he wanted to say, and it was clear he had held information back. “His organs were . . . off. His digestive system wasn’t normal.” He looked at Soul and she tilted her head, telling him to continue. “He had no kidneys, no gallbladder; his liver was bluish. His blood smelled weird and it was darker than expected. The unburned parts of the senator’s skin turned a deep bluish color that looked nothing like livor mortis after death. The forensic pathologists sent patches off for DNA workup and they’ll be processing it through chemicals and dyes to look at it under a microscope in twenty-four hours. We should have a report in forty-eight hours or so. But no. The senator was not human.”
• • •
The meeting lasted too long. When it was over, the Secret Service agent left and the others went home or to their office cubicles. I printed out a dozen files and spread the pages over the conference room table, to put together a timeline and a possible family tree. I worked for hours, as the moon passed by outside the windows, marking the night’s progression. I drank eggnog right out of the carton. It wasn’t near as
good as Mama Grace’s nog. I ate cookies. Also not as good. When I was done, I organized it into a new file with bullet points.
Wilder Thomas Jefferson, infant, taken to orphanage—1950.
Burns it down at age 15 (entering puberty, which is when many paranormals come into their powers).
Numbers of potential paranormals in Jefferson/Tolliver family: Wilder Thomas Jefferson? Jefferson’s wife? (Note: No details on her. Determine status.) Justin’s mother Miriam Tolliver (actually sister to Senator T) missing? Sonya Tolliver, deceased? Clarisse Jefferson Tolliver, missing presumed deceased? Charles Healy (Jail 1973. Missing 11 years). Nanny. Devin. Unknown which family line trait descended. Both? Unlikely.
Theory: Long-lived pyro shape-shifters, able to assume human form. No kidneys. Nonhuman digestive tract. Gray skin. Dark blood postmortem.
Possibility: Flight?
Possibility: Ability to hide/camouflage scent patterns? Males only?
Need/want way to reproduce safely.
Need/want way to transfer holdings.
I did a little more research and added to the list:
Note: Wilder Thomas Jefferson never married, but starting 30 years ago, he was photographed often with his young daughter, Clarisse. Went into business with Tolliver upon three things: marriage of Sonya to Justin, Clarisse marriage to Abrams, and birth of Devin.
Possibilities of pyro types: phoenix (would fit flight), hellhound (a fire-based type of gwyllgi?), dragon (different from arcenciels?), efreet (multiple spellings; can be caught or killed with magic), cherufe (reptile humanoid; may not be true shape-shifter), salamander (born in volcanoes).
As I pulled together the timeline and possibilities, I found something that T. Laine had entered into the files just before she went to Texas. Soon after the birth of Devin, there was a huge fire at then-state-senator Tolliver’s mansion and two bodies were found in the building, an adult female and a child. Fire investigators determined that a servant and her child died, and death certificates were issued in the names of Monica Smith and Marcus Smith. Which was interesting, but not particularly useful information. Unless . . . I sat back in my chair, watching Soul, who was standing still as a glass statue, both of us thinking.