“You okay?” I asked Occam as we left the emergency entrance.
He didn’t answer until we were back in my truck, the cab an oasis of wakeful normalcy after a nightmare. “No. Not really,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of awful things in my life. Never seen a cooked piece of meat still trying to breathe. I don’t know how medical people do that kinda thing, day in and day out. It was . . .” He paused as if trying to decide how to phrase what he was feeling and seemed to settle on the inadequate, “. . . pretty horrible.”
I reached over and took Occam’s hand in mine. There was an instant of resistance, or maybe just surprise, before he laced his fingers through mine and gripped my hand back. His skin wasn’t rough or calloused like John’s. Or like mine, for that matter. Not the hand of someone who had labored too hard for too many years, working the land with tools that abraded the skin and damaged the joints. The flesh of his palm and fingers was firm and solid, like the paw of a young dog or cat. Healthy. Reborn every time he shifted forms.
He said, “The shooter went after Clarisse. If the flames in the restaurant were from a pyro, then we have two killers now. Maybe we did all along.”
Occam’s cell pinged and he swiped it with his other hand. Without emotion he translated what he was reading. “The senator’s postmortem has already been scheduled. It’s at four p.m. It’ll be performed by a forensic pathologist. According to the feds and the arson squad, the cook at the fire saw a strange-looking man in the kitchen just before the fire. She swears the man’s skin was blue.”
“We got to go to the PM?”
“Looks like I do. You got your own text.”
“I’ll check it after we get to HQ,” I said.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a small smile pull at his lips, and his dimple deepened. His shoulders relaxed. “When your hand isn’t busy being held, Nell, sugar?”
“That’s my plan,” I said, feeling unaccustomedly bold.
“I find I’m right fond of that plan.” His fingers tightened on mine and I squeezed back.
FIFTEEN
“The senator’s PM is scheduled for four p.m. today,” Rick said, “and Occam and I will be there, along with two feds and two members of the Secret Service. Meanwhile, JoJo’s been digging sideways and has discovered that the daughter who produced Justin Tolliver—Miriam—and who fell off the map right after Justin was adopted by her parents, was never reported missing.”
“So we don’t know if she disappeared as in ran away or disappeared as in presumed dead,” I said. And then realized how dreadful it was that I could say such a statement in a calm and rational and unemotional tone of voice. I didn’t know what I was becoming as a special agent, but it wasn’t the woman I had been.
Rick said, “Disappeared as in there’s been no sign of her since—no leads, no official search, no credit report, no death certificate, and she isn’t on any missing persons databases—nothing.”
“That’s odd,” Soul said, “especially for the family member of a public official, who could pull strings and find her, get her case special attention.”
JoJo said, “We have an incoming call from T. Laine and Tandy.”
The overhead screens flickered and Tandy’s face appeared, his lips moving, his eyes to the side. T. Laine appeared beside him, and she was clearly looking at him, listening. Rick said, “We have visuals. Why don’t we have audio?”
Oh. Sorry, Tandy’s lips said, without sound. He punched a button and looked at the screen, saying, “Starting over. Healy’s prison cellmate died in an infirmary fire last night. We were just shown in and saw the place. It looks like either he was attacked with a flamethrower or he suffered self-immolation.”
“But there is no accelerant smell,” T. Laine said. “One of the warden’s trustees said it was spontaneous combustion. That’s what we got. A dead witness.”
Rick cursed inventively and rubbed his head. His eyes were glowing slightly green, the color of his cat. We were getting too close to the full moon. “So now we have three players? And one’s in Texas? Get home,” he said to Tandy. “We’ll see you late this afternoon.”
“Okay, boss,” Tandy said. “Out.” The screens went black.
Rick swiveled in his chair to the partial team in the conference room. “Clearly we have more than one killer. It’s highly unlikely that a killer managed to get inside a maximum security prison, find and fry a specific prisoner, and then get back here in time to locate and fry the senator, and shoot up Clarisse Tolliver’s car.”
“Unless he could fly,” I said softly.
Rick cursed again and threw himself out of his chair. Pea, the grindylow, appeared at his side and leaped onto Rick’s shoulder, chittering madly as Rick stormed down the hallway, calling for Soul.
A flying, fire-throwing, gun-shooting paranormal. Which would explain how the shooter got away each time. He/she/it shifted shape and flew away. Like an arcenciel?
There were no other known species that could do all the things we had seen and that had been attributed to it. If it could fly or even teleport . . . how would we stop it? Without commenting further, I went home to shower off the stench of fire and death and to sleep, a feeling of failure riding on my shoulders, and later, into my dreams.
? ? ?
T. Laine and Tandy were in the conference room when I got back to HQ, both wearing fresh clothes, hair still damp from showers, and the EOD meeting was in midswing. On the screens was a new case file. What had been a protective investigatory case was now an examination of data and evidence with national importance: the investigation into the extraordinary and bizarre death of Senator Tolliver by unknown means and under unusual and possibly paranormal circumstances.
A stranger stood in the corner, a man with a face like a piece of oak and a suit that had to cost a month of my wages. He was a Secret Service agent, one of the ones who had come to the hospital after the senator was blasted with fire. And he was staring at Occam.
I didn’t have to be Tandy to know why he was here. Occam was a wereleopard. Occam had been in the presence of the senator at the time of the bizarre and unexplainable fire. Occam had survived that fire when the senator and his security detail had not. And Occam the wereleopard looked fine. Occam was a suspect. I looked around the table as I took my seat and saw from their body language I had missed some important stuff. I pulled up the files that were open on the big screens, scanning to catch up on the intel.
An irritated burr in his voice, Rick said, “Clementine, record the attendance of Probationary Special Agent Nell Ingram. Time is six twenty-seven.”