In the office area, part of the living room, she found a few paper copies of Winston’s financial dealings. A real estate broker, he had made a great deal of money. She was sure most of his records were on his computer, and though she turned it on, everything was password protected. She had some small skill in that area, but she was no expert. Should she take it with her, try to find someone who knew what to do and might be able to break into the files?
She looked at the paperwork she’d found more carefully. They were sales documents, mortgage papers, all items associated with his line of work. But as she shuffled them one last time and was about to push them aside, a shudder went through her as she realized one particular address was familiar to her.
The warehouse where the Children of Phonos would have sacrificed Luis Gallardo. Winston had been the broker on the sale, and the attorney had been Andrew Bullington, the prick who’d hurled himself out a window rather than face the vengeance of the cult he served.
As she was considering that, she kept going through the desk.
She found a printed directory.
It was in a file marked “Donors: At-Risk Children’s Intervention,” which sounded noble. But a quick glance told Indigo that the priestess’s address was in there, as were Bogdani’s and Allessio’s. She folded the document and slid it under her shirt. If she was going to work with Sam and both of their employers and blow the lid off the cult’s entire organization, figure out their connections to human trafficking and other crimes that had nothing to do with the occult, this list would be the beginning of that.
She heard a ding down the hall and the sound of the elevator doors opening. Another apartment adjoined Winston’s, and the newcomers could be going there, but Indigo had a feeling that her time had run out.
She clicked off the lights and concealed herself in the entrance hall, in the corner where the open door would hide her. She wrapped the gloom around her until she was swathed in darkness and waited. A moment later she heard the snick of a key in the first lock, then the second. It would have been simple enough for her to flee, but she had come here for answers. Marshall Winston was dead. She had to know who else had a key to his apartment.
In the light from the hallway, she saw a flash of red hair and glimpsed a face she recognized. Detective Angela Mayhew.
Like a bad penny, Mayhew kept turning up. For the first time, it occurred to Indigo that the detective hadn’t botched the criminal case against the Newells at all. That maybe Detective Mayhew was on the cult’s payroll, or even a member.
Tonight, the woman was trailed by her partner and junior, Hugh Symes. Detective Symes was thin and pale and looked unhealthy, while Mayhew was bursting with vigor. As she went down the short hall to the living room, she was saying, “Hugh, we have to call the captain after we’re through here. He’s going to want to know.”
“This guy Winston was a buddy of Captain Mueller’s?”
“Close enough that the captain knew exactly where to get an extra set of keys.”
“Well, we ain’t gonna find a body in here,” Symes grumbled.
Detective Mayhew wandered through the living room and the kitchen, flipping on the same lights Indigo had used.
“You haven’t even looked around,” Mayhew said.
“We woulda smelled it, Ange.”
Indigo wanted to get out of there. It would be simple enough to slip into the shadowpaths. But she wanted to know what had drawn the detectives to this place. If they thought they might find Winston’s corpse here, then the bodies at the warehouse had still not been discovered—at least not by the police—but what gave them the idea that the man might be dead?
“Must be nice to have that view of the park, to say nothing of the doorman,” Mayhew muttered. “Check the bedroom,” she said more loudly.
The detective had said her captain, Mueller, was friends with Marshall Winston. Could the police captain be involved with the Children of Phonos as well? Was that so hard to believe? Maybe the bodies had been found, but not by the police … or by police who were in league with the cult, or a part of it.
Indigo’s head spun. How far did the cult’s influence reach? How deep did their corruption run? Indigo could hear Mayhew rummaging around. It sounded to Indigo as if the detective was hurriedly looking for something while Symes was out of the room.
“Hey,” Symes called. “Ange, come look at all the watches this guy had. He lives alone. You think his estate’ll miss one?”
Indigo held her breath while she waited.
Finally, Angela Mayhew’s steps clicked as she stepped off the area rug in the living area and went into the bedroom.
Time to go.
Remembering the dearth of shadows in the hall, Indigo pictured the darkest moon shadows in Central Park. The next instant, she was there, in the center of a clump of trees. Two men were doing the nasty about a foot away. They were so intent on their pleasure that she was able to slip away again without their noticing either her arrival or departure.
Her next stop was the apartment of the high priestess, Charlotte Edwards.
Indigo knew the address was on the Upper East Side, and not far from an art studio she’d written about in her early days at NYChronicle. She shadow-walked to the studio, or rather to the alley behind it. After her encounter in Central Park she felt lucky that no one was peeing against the wall. Presumably even in the Upper East Side that happened.
Indigo stepped out, then set off at a brisk walk, searching for the right address. Soon her steps slowed. Edwards’s address was not a condo or a co-op, by all the signs. She and her husband owned the whole house. Nora had lived in New York long enough to know what that meant in terms of investment, so Indigo knew it, too. For a moment, Indigo felt a moment of dizziness. Did she know everything Nora knew? Did Nora know everything Indigo did? What if the answer was no?
The question terrified her, and she forced herself to focus on the task at hand.
Charlotte. Dead evil priestess. Who told me that all the children’s deaths were my fault.
Indigo wished she could kill the woman again. Once wasn’t enough.
The whole house was dark, with the exception of a dim light glowing somewhere in the tiny backyard. Indigo went there in a thought. The garden had been planted for privacy, with a brick patio outside the ground floor, right up to the kitchen door—at least, Indigo assumed the kitchen was at the rear.
In the middle of the city, this spot was peaceful and relaxing. And dark. Indigo went up the rear steps like a cloud of smoke. She looked through the windows, locating the source of the light, a small lamp on the counter of a kitchen she could only gape at. No one appeared to be home.
Everything was locked up tight, but Indigo couldn’t let that stop her. If someone had sent Angela Mayhew and Hugh Symes to search for the corpses of the cultists Indigo had killed, other detectives might show up here at any moment. She tried all the keys on Charlotte’s key ring, and none of them fit. This puzzled her, but she couldn’t take the time to figure it out.
Indigo became pure shadow and slid through the keyhole.