“Pierce, Jorge,” greets the older of the pair, his thick hair entirely white and silver. “How you doin’?”
“Nice and warm today, Lou,” answers Jorge. “What brings you out here?”
Lou pulls a hand-size notebook out of his back pocket. “We heard from some neighbors that Landon Burnside plays with you sometimes.”
Burnside?
Mum pokes me hard in the thigh.
Corgi scratches at his bulbous nose. “We’ve got a Landon, sure enough. Don’t know his last name, though. Average sort of guy?”
A bland, little nothing of a man.
Lou’s partner holds up a photo, and yes, it’s Landon, not that there was really any expectation otherwise.
Corgi nods along with some of the others. “That’s him. What’s he done?” His eyes don’t go to me when he says it, but Yelp’s do, and Steven’s.
“He was found dead last night in his room.”
White light flares in my vision, but doesn’t clear with frantic blinking. It just hangs there, blinding me, until Mum’s finger pokes between my ribs hard enough to make me choke. Spots dance as the world flickers back into view.
“How was he killed?” Mum asks calmly. “Can you say?”
The officers exchange a look and a shrug. “Hard to say; he’s been dead awhile. Examiner’s working to figure out what was done to him.”
“Done to him,” Mum echoes. “So you do suspect foul play.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Tapping the back of my hand to pull my attention to her face, Mum nods toward the parking lot. “I’ll tell them. You call.”
“Ma’am? You have any information on Mr. Burnside?”
“I can tell you that the FBI considers him a person of interest in an ongoing investigation,” she says, and her voice is smooth and strong the way it is at work.
I pull away from the table, careful to keep within sight of the officers as I take a few steps from the island. My hands shake, and the phone nearly drops twice before I can get a good grip on it.
“Hey, Priya,” comes Eddison’s hoarse voice in my ear a minute later. “Checking in?”
“Landon’s last name is Burnside.”
“A last name? Excellent, that will—Priya, how in the hell do you know his last name?”
I choke on a bewildered laugh. “He was murdered a while ago. He was found yesterday.”
“Local cops?”
“Who else?”
“Hand over the phone, will you?”
The cops are both looking at me, though Lou is listening attentively to Mum. I walk back up and hold out the phone. “This is Special Agent Brandon Eddison; he’d like to talk to you.”
Lou’s partner looks at me intently, then takes the phone from my hand, gently, like he’s afraid if he touches me I’ll shatter, and steps to the far end of the island before speaking. He must introduce himself, but I can’t really hear. Before I can sit back down, Mum hands me her phone.
“Agent Finnegan. Just in case.”
I nod, walk away again, and pull up the number Agent Finnegan gave us. I usually email him, though lately I’ve fallen to texting whenever there’s a new flower delivery. I count the rings until he picks up.
“Agent Finnegan,” he says crisply, half a bite away from brusque.
“Sir, this is Priya Sravasti, and Landon the creep was found dead yesterday.”
He mutters a handful of curses in Japanese. “I’m going to ask this, understanding that it’s a rude question—”
“They don’t know when he was killed, so I can’t try to tell you where we were.”
“Have you informed Hanoverian?”
“Eddison’s on the phone with one of the local cops right now.”
“All right, I’ll get the contact info from him so we can request a visit to the body and scene. Are you safe?”
“Mum and I are out at the chess park.” Which, come to think of it, isn’t exactly an answer. It’s all I’ve got, though.
“Once the officers let you go, head home and stay there. If you don’t feel safe there, come up to Denver and get a hotel, just let me know which one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Priya?”
“Yes, sir?”
“We’re going to get you through this.” His voice is warm and firm, and under other circumstances I’d probably find it reassuring, perhaps even comforting.
But his hands are tied.
I sit back down and give the phone to Mum. God, the smoothie feels so heavy in my stomach, and I keep swallowing against the need to vomit.
“So this man was stalking you?” asks the older officer.
“Maybe,” I mumble. “He was definitely a little too focused on me for comfort.” I glance at Mum, who nods. It’s not like they aren’t going to learn all this anyway. “I’ve been getting flowers that correspond to a series of unsolved murders; given Landon’s attention on me, the agents thought he might be connected. They wanted to talk to him but he stopped coming to chess, and they weren’t finding any trace of him on paper.”
“He didn’t have ID; his landlord told us his name.”
His partner returns to the table and offers me my phone. “You seem to have Murphy’s own luck, Miss Priya.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, only that I was on the force in Boston when your sister died,” he explains in a thick Texas drawl. Oh God, no wonder he looked at me so intently. He recognized me. “My wife and I moved here when her pop got sick, but I’m not like to forget your family. What a tragedy. Tell you what, though, you’ve grown just as pretty as your sister.”
I gape at him. I don’t think I’m even capable of more than that.
Mum gets to her feet and slides around until she’s mostly blocking me. “If that’s how you feel is appropriate to speak to my daughter, you won’t be speaking to her at all,” she informs him frostily. “Your partner can deal with us, while you back the hell away.”
As the officer stumbles through an apology, Corgi leans over to tap my knee. “Keep learning from your mama, Blue Girl,” he whispers. “Together you two could scare the world into behaving right.”
I squeeze his hand because I can’t even attempt a smile.
“Go call the captain,” Lou tells his partner, and watches him walk away. “My apologies, ma’am, miss. I’ll speak to him about it.”
“Remind me of his name,” Mum says, in a tone that’s far less question than command.
“Officer Michael Clare,” he replies. “I’m Officer Lou Hamilton, and I’m sorry to be doing this, I know it’s a stressful time, but I do have to ask you both some questions in light of this new information. I promise, I will be the one asking.” He gestures up to the Krogers. “You might be more comfortable inside. Gentlemen,” he adds to the concerned vets, “Clare will have some questions for you, too, about Mr. Burnside, if you don’t mind.”
Gunny nods gravely. “We’ll wait for him. Be safe, Miss Priya.”
Inside the café, Lou settles us at a table and goes to get us drinks. I can see Joshua a couple of tables away, buried in a book, and behind the counter, the sparrow-barista greets the officer with cheerful familiarity.
I don’t remember Officer Clare. To be fair, I don’t remember any of the uniformed people I met the night of Chavi’s murder, or the couple of days after. Really the first strangers to make an impression were the Quantico Three. Five years later, though, Officer Clare remembers me.
Even though I never really thought Landon was behind the deliveries, there’s something terrifying about learning for sure that he isn’t.
If it isn’t him, then who?
“All right, Finney, you’ve been digging for a week now; tell us something good.”
The helpless laugh from the speaker in the middle of the conference table is less than reassuring. “I really wish I could, Vic, but we lost the only person remotely on our radar.”
“Now that we know more about him, was he likely for the previous murders?” asks Vic, sprawled in one of the high-back rolling chairs. One elbow is braced on the plastic arm to prop himself up, two fingers digging into his temple to hold off what looks like a hell of a headache. Ramirez’s pen is tapping a mile a minute against the table, which can’t be helping.