Down the Rabbit Hole

“It’s weird to the mega. Where do you want me to start?”


“Take the kitchen,” Eve told her as the morgue team did their work. “We’re going to send samples of any tea, coffee, herbs—hell, pretty much any consumables. And we’ll get the sweepers in here, in case there’s anything.”

McNab, who could’ve passed for a weird psychic in his sunburst shirt and the hip-swinging vest covered with neon blue stars, came to the doorway, then sidestepped for the morgue team and body bag.

“We may have something.”

“What something?” Eve demanded.

“We found a memo cube in the room across the hall. A recording. Roarke says it’s your vic’s voice. It’s weird, like she was in a trance.”

Eve nudged by him and went into the room where Roarke stood working his PPC.

“Her circle of light,” he said.

“Yeah, I saw that. This cube?”

When he nodded, she picked it up and activated it.

“In my circle the door is closed. Nothing passes through. Safe and quiet mind, safe and quiet mind. Too much blood! Too much. What have I done? Help me see. Blue smoke, blue light. Too many voices. Quiet, be still.”

Just breathing now, long, deep, a shuddering breath, and more steady ones.

“Blue smoke, blue light. See through it. See true. Bright, bright, bright. Not true. A lie, another lie. I am not weak.”

Weeping now, the words thick with tears.

“I found my strength after the lies. These are just more. I didn’t see. I didn’t know. Bright. It hurts to see. It hurts to know. Blood on my hands. So much blood. Bright blood. A lie, see through the lie to truth. Simon. Zacari. Roland. Carroll, and more and more. One truth in the lies. Where is the truth? All are death. That is the truth.

“Now rest, just rest, mind, body, spirit. Know his truth is death, and don’t follow.”

“Peabody, run those names and all combinations. Simon, Zacari, Roland, Carroll—add bright into them. She says bright too often for it not to mean something.”

“I already am.” Roarke continued to work his PPC. “Give us a few minutes here, it’s a dicey job on a handheld.”

“McNab, tag Feeney. Let him know we need the lab. It’ll go faster at Central.”

“Considerably,” Roarke agreed.

“We’ll load up her electronics, take them with us. Let’s move. Peabody, let Dawson know the sweepers need to send samples of anything she’d have consumed to the lab. Officer . . .” She read the name tag of the uniform on the door. “Kinsey. Hold here for the sweepers.”

“Yes, sir.”

They hauled down Dupres’s tablets, ’links, desk comp.

“Roarke, narrow the search, crossing the names with psychic and/or medium work and licenses.”

“I didn’t just come down in the last shower of rain,” he replied, and slid into the passenger seat.

“What does that even mean?” She gauged the traffic, cursed it, then shot away from the curb. She felt the first real crack in the case, needed to widen it—and snarled at the fat, sticky knot of vehicles in her way.

“I’m going in hot,” she announced, hitting lights and sirens.

In the back, Peabody said, “Oh boy,” and clamped her hand on McNab’s. Focused on the work, Roarke simply tightened his seat belt without glancing up.

“I might have something on Zacari. One Anton Zacari, lived and worked as a spiritual consultant in Prague from 2049 to 2052. Closed up shop, relocated to Kashmir.”

“Where?”

“Himalayas, darling. And there he went missing on a mountain trek, and is presumed dead.”

“The dead don’t kill.” Judging an opening, she punched for more speed. “Got an image of him?”

“I do. Age forty-eight when he dropped off the grid. No marriage, no co-habs, no criminal. Hmmm.”