Blood of the Demon

Crawford shook his head. “I know you can, Kara, but … I was told to reassign these cases.” He looked pissed, which made me feel slightly better. At least this wasn’t because he thought I couldn’t handle the caseload.

 

“I guess the theory is that there’ll be too many ill feelings if you start getting all the juicy cases,” he continued. “We don’t have that many murders around here, and the other detectives want their share.” He pulled a sour face, and I knew that he didn’t really give a shit about hurt feelings.

 

I still didn’t bother to hide my scowl. Unfortunately, there was a measure of truth to what he’d said. There was already some resentment and ill will toward me over the resolution of the Symbol Man case and my strange disappearance, and Sarge was only doing what he’d been told to do.

 

But Pellini? I’d counted myself lucky that I’d never had to work directly with the dour, overweight detective. He’d been with Beaulac PD for only four years, after fifteen with NOPD, and so far the best impression I had of him was that he was lazy, sloppy, and generally unpleasant to be around. He seemed miserable, and I had the feeling that the only joy he had in life was when he was making other people miserable as well. But would cases be reassigned just because of his whining? He whined about everything. Usually everyone simply ignored it.

 

“Go get him up to speed on what you have so far, Kara.” Then Crawford paused. “Give him a chance. He does have a lot of experience.” But I could see the doubt in his eyes.

 

I nodded and muttered something about typing my notes up, then left Crawford’s office to return to my own. It took me only about twenty minutes to type what I had so far on the two deaths, but I was as detailed and thorough as possible so that no one could point any fingers at the quality of the work I turned over to Pellini. I wanted to dither and put off handing the cases over to him, but unfortunately I had too much else I needed to do. As soon as I finished typing, I printed the reports out, then made my way to Pellini’s office.

 

His door stood open and I could see him leaning back in his chair, looking at something on his computer. The screen was faced away from me, so I couldn’t tell what it was. But when he saw me in the doorway, he clicked on something else, making me suspect that it hadn’t exactly been work-related—not that I had any room to judge, since I did my own share of Internet surfing on taxpayer dollars. Pellini’s office was about half again the size of mine, which meant that it was the size of a large closet. Pellini was as well, or darn near. He was big and blustery, with greasy black hair and a thick mustache that looked like it belonged on a seventies-era porn star. The rest of him was far from porn-star quality, though. He’d given up on maintaining any sort of physical standard well over a decade ago, and his belly hung so far over his belt that I had a hard time imagining how he put his pants on. Not that I tended toward mental exercises related to Pellini and his pants …

 

I extended the small sheaf of printed pages. He looked at them, then reluctantly straightened in his chair and leaned forward to take them in something just short of a snatch, blowing his breath out as if that small effort had winded him. Which it probably had. I made a mental note to get my own out-of-shape ass to the gym. I was nowhere near as bad as Pellini; I could still run two miles without puking, though it sure wasn’t pretty. But I knew I owed it to the cops I worked with to stay in something resembling good condition. I couldn’t even imagine how Pellini would handle backing someone up in a fight or a foot pursuit.

 

I kept the professional smile glued into place as he glanced over what I had so far—even when he gave a snort that sounded suspiciously derisive. “I’ll have to teach you how to do a follow-up,” he said, his tone pompous. He looked up at me, a slight sneer curving his mouth. “You got fucking lucky with the serial killer. Now it’s time for you to learn how to do a proper investigation.”

 

I clenched my jaw tightly enough to feel my teeth squeak to keep from saying something that would no doubt be career-destroying. “I don’t think I got lucky,” I said stiffly. “I put in a lot of time—”

 

“You got lucky,” he said, cutting me off. “But don’t take offense,” he continued, as I tried to control my seething. “Most cops make great careers out of being lucky.” Then he gave me an arrogant smirk. “I’ll teach you how to solve a case by actually working it, though.”

 

Diana Rowland's books