The night was long, frozen, and coffeeless. And tedious, mind-numbing, and boring. When the hours moved along toward dawn, I picked up my blanket and went back to my car, where I wrote my report about speaking to Sonya, while yawning, and listening to country music on a local radio station.
I was stumbling on my feet the next morning when Occam showed up, arriving early, just after sunrise. I was so tired I didn’t even care that he wanted to date me. That we had kissed. I just plodded to his fancy car and checked the psy-meter 2.0 against his were-energies. I decided that the machine was working, but couldn’t rule out that it was giving false positives, which was no help at all. I grumped that out, gave him my notes, and trudged back to my truck, exhausted, frozen, and annoyed. This case was likely to bore me to death.
Unfortunately for my exhaustion and state of mind, Rick pulled up before I left. I glared at him when he tapped on my truck window, but rolled the glass down and turned off the noisy truck. “What?”
He chuckled softly. “Long night?”
“No coffee. Humans are scared of their own shadows. Psy-meter is acting strange. And I’m sleepy.” And Occam kissed me. Wants to date me. Not said.
Occam trotted up, his gait long and lean. “Morning, boss. What’s up?” he asked.
Speaking softly enough that his voice wouldn’t carry out of our small group, Rick said, “The dogs indicated that a paranormal creature of unknown species was at every one of the incident sites. I got a good whiff of the Tollivers’ pillows at their burned house. The master suite was in a protected area away from flames and water damage. Justin smells human. His wife, Sonya, wears a lot of perfumed products, but underneath it all, she doesn’t smell human. Not quite. I’ve never smelled that scent before, but I’m betting that she’s a para of unknown species.”
My sleepiness took a hit of adrenaline and I woke up fast. I had talked to Sonya. And just before that, the psy-meter had spiked. But I hadn’t actually measured Sonya with it. My mind raced through the possible ways that Justin’s wife might have fired on the Holloway party while being a guest, burned her own home, and shot up Old City. She had been placed in the dining room at the Holloways’ when the shooting started. She was with Justin during the Pierced Dreams shooting. She was home with Justin eating dinner when the fire started and had been with her family for a good forty minutes prior. “There’s no way she could have done the attacks. And we’ve all agreed that the shooter looks and moves like a man,” I said.
“Partner?” Rick asked.
“We weren’t present when the FBI and Secret Service spoke with Justin and Sonya,” Occam said. “I doubt we’ll be allowed to bring them in for questioning.”
“We need to be careful,” Rick said. “We’ve got law enforcement overlap, political complications, and pressure from up-line to not upset the applecart. Funding is a never-ending issue, and Abrams Tolliver is a big proponent of funding PsyLED. We don’t want to offend him by bringing in his sister-in-law.”
“Or outing her,” I said, “if she’s still in the closet. Her husband may not know.”
“If we have to arrest her, that might offend the senator,” Occam said, with a bit of insolence in his tone. “But if we don’t arrest her and her alleged partner shoots him, that might offend the senator even more.”
“So, let’s posit that Sonya Tolliver is an unknown paranormal creature. Then maybe there are more of them,” I said. “Maybe the same kind of creature is tracking and attacking the Tolliver family.” I thought of the church and the way the churchmen had chased me. “Maybe she got away and they want her back. Or maybe they are protecting her. Or maybe lots of things.”
Rick had been checking our perimeter, his eyes traveling but his head unmoving. Satisfied we were unobserved, he withdrew his hand from his jacket with an odd, dull, crinkling sound. He was holding a gallon-sized plastic zipped bag, the air smoothed out, a wad of cloth inside. A pillowcase. Rick had stolen Sonya Tolliver’s pillowcase. “Get a good whiff,” he instructed Occam.
The werecat took the bag, hitched his hip against the truck as if to get comfy, opened the bag, and ducked his head to it. “Hooo,” he said, making a face. “Musky. That’s pungent.” He passed it to me.
I stuck my nose in, expecting to get an awful scent as part of the boys’ “Here, this stinks—you smell!” game. I caught a hint of body odor and something a little like pond water. I thought back to the house and the grounds. There had been fishing equipment and the kayak behind the shed. “I smell river water. The river is close enough that the scent shouldn’t count. There’s nothing here that reminds me of the assassin.”
“Your nose ain’t any better than a human’s, Nell, sugar.”
I shrugged and passed the zip bag back.
Rick said to Occam, “If you get a chance to read the senator’s house, I want you to sniff around. In case there are paras passing as human living there too.”
“Yeah, that’s gonna go over real good with the Secret Service. ‘Hey, you, Texas boy werecat,’” Occam said in a passable nasal Jersey accent. “‘What da hell you doin’ sniffin’ da senator’s laundry?’”
Rick didn’t laugh. “Don’t get caught. Nell’s right. If Sonya really is a paranormal, and still in the closet, then we might have an intra-or interspecies war brewing. The senator is working for pro-paranormal legislation. We need to keep him safe. And if someone in his family is paranormal and he knew it and didn’t reveal it to the Senate Ethics Committee—”
“He could lose his position, which would hurt paranormals everywhere. It’s to our benefit to keep him alive and healthy. Got it, boss.” Occam winked at me and walked away.
I looked back and forth between the two werecats, absorbing the possible ramifications of the senator’s family having a paranormal. In the middle of an internal or external war. Or launching a war. Or . . . Or I was too tired to think. I turned on the truck and the heater, and went home. Somehow I made it home alive, which meant Mama musta been praying for me because I’m sure I slept the whole way.
? ? ?
It was three p.m. when I woke to the sound of banging. I half fell out of bed, grabbed my shotgun, and stumbled to the front of the house, where I spotted Mud through the window, on the front porch, no coat, arms crossed over her chest, and three cats weaving around her legs. I put the gun away, located my service weapon hanging in its holster and shoulder rig on a kitchen chair, to make sure they were secure, and opened the door. The cats ran in, silent, twitchy, irritated. I’d left them out all day. “Mud?”
“You’uns need a dog.”
“A dog,” I said, feeling as if I’d missed something.