I leaned against my car, crossed my arms over my chest. Ryan came beside me and crossed his arms in an echo of my stance. I couldn’t match his dark glower, though. I needed to work on that.
I saw that Jill and Votevha had retreated to the back of the house and were sitting on a bench, observing with a careful disinterest. There was no way to know where Eilahn had gone, but I knew she’d stay out of sight. I continued to give the mayor the stink eye while the others entered my house. Tracy gave me another look full of regret as he followed the rest in, a camera slung about his neck. Usually someone from the crime lab came along on search warrants to photograph and record the scene.
“I hope Jill doesn’t get in trouble for being here,” I murmured, suddenly worried.
“Relax,” Ryan replied softly. “She’ll be fine.”
I wasn’t convinced. The mayor was definitely the sort to carry a grudge. Maybe he wouldn’t even realize she was a Beaulac PD employee.
“By the way,” I said, “Roman’s not our guy.”
Ryan grimaced. “I know. Eilahn filled me in. When she wasn’t ordering me to scrub, that is.”
I bit back a laugh. “Is it wrong if I say, I wish I could have seen that?”
“You’re a mean woman, Kara Gillian.”
I hugged my arms around me as I listened to footsteps in my house. I’d conducted any number of search warrants in my years in law enforcement, and I’d always done my best to try and ignore the looks on the people’s faces as we violated their privacy and rummaged through their personal belongings. It was horrible and intrusive, but I could try to take solace in the fact that I’d done my best to make sure it was done with the goal of preventing or solving a crime.
But this was complete fucking bullshit. This was someone fucking with my life just to fuck with it. I resisted the urge to shoot a death glare at the mayor. “Is it just me,” I muttered to Ryan, “or does the mayor seem hell-bent on getting into my house?”
Ryan flicked me a glance. “You think he could be the summoner?”
I cast a sideways look at Peter Fussell. “Fuck, I don’t know, but he sure is acting weird. I mean, I know he hates me, but what if all this is just because he wants a look at my summoning chamber? Or the storage diagram?”
A grimace passed over Ryan’s face. “If so, he’s tipping his hand pretty heavily. And how would he know about it anyway?”
“He could have learned of it from a demon,” I said after some brief thought. “I’ve used it to summon quite a few demons, so I would imagine that word has spread a bit.” I jammed my hands into my pockets and hunched my shoulders. “This sucks.” I didn’t mind them sifting through my not-so-delicates, but the thought of them rooting around my basement made my stomach hurt.
“Can you get the demon you just summoned to check him out?” Ryan asked.
“That would be ideal,” I replied, “I’ll need to renegotiate terms with him.” I glanced at my watch. “Shit. Maybe not. He’s been here for a long time.” At Ryan’s questioning look I explained, “The lower-level demons can only stay a couple of hours. Not like reyza who can stay most of a day or longer.” In fact I really needed to dismiss the nyssor soon, but I couldn’t do that until all the searchers had left. Crap. I didn’t want to draw attention to the demon by going to check on him. Instead I pulled my phone out and thumbed in a quick text to Jill. How is he doing?
A few seconds later the reply came: he says he’s tired. Yep, I’d have to find another way to check out the mayor.
It was nearly twenty minutes later when Chief Turnham emerged, followed by my sergeant and Tracy.
The mayor straightened and lifted his chin as the chief walked down my steps. “Well? Did you find the evidence you need?”
I was thrilled to see the Chief Turnham give the mayor a withering look. “No, we didn’t find any evidence. I told you this was a waste of time.”
Well, that confirmed my suspicion that Mayor Fussell had been the supreme driving force behind this crap.
Fussell’s face twisted into a scowl. “You didn’t look hard enough. Get back in there and tear the place apart! She has drugs hidden in there somewhere. You know she had to have poisoned those people!”
Chief Turnham’s eyes narrowed, but I didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Hey, asshole!” I shouted as I stalked over toward him. “You got a problem with me, that’s fine, but while you’re dicking around with this shit, the real killer’s sitting back laughing at us.” Unless it’s you, I added in a silent death glare.
He drew himself up. “What did you call me?”
I stopped, thought back to my words. “I’m pretty sure I called you an asshole. But that was wrong of me to do. I meant to call you a complete blithering fucking asshole idiot.”
“Gillian!” The chief’s voice snapped out. “That’s enough.”