Embers (27 page)

“I’m pretty sure that our arsonist is going to show up.” Anya gave him a description of Ferrer.

“I can leave two guys down here, but will Investigations eat the overtime costs? My budget’s shot.”

“Sure. I’ll bring over the forms. Just don’t leave that scene alone without calling me first.”

“It’s your dime, lady.”

She’d no sooner hung up the phone than a knock rattled the loose frosted glass in her office door. She kicked her chair back, and the wheels rattled across the cracked tiles. She snagged the doorknob and pulled the door open.

Marsh filled the doorway. And he did not look happy.

“Good morning, Captain.”

Marsh looked down at her. Anya followed his gaze. Her hair was straggly, makeup licked off by voracious dogs. Yellow Labrador hair covered her suit. She reeked of garlic butter. And it wasn’t even nine a.m.

“Rough night, Kalinczyk?”

“Um. No, sir.”

His nose wrinkled. “You smell like pizza.”

Her mind raced. “I’m taking garlic tablets. For my blood pressure.”

“Well, stop.”

“Yes, sir.”

Marsh crossed his arms over his barrel chest. “We’ve got a problem.”

“Sir, I promise, the garlic—”

“We’re past the garlic.” He gestured out to the hallway, and Vross fairly bounced into the room. His pasty face was covered with a shit-eating grin. That couldn’t be good. “Do you have anything to report to Detective Vross and myself about the arson case?”

“I just got off the phone with the scene commander to have the apartment complex put under surveillance. I’m certain that Ferrer will be back, just like all the other scenes.”

“Yeah, well, we’ve had Ferrer under surveillance ourselves.” Vross opened a manila envelope and dumped a half-dozen black-and-white photos on her desk. “These are pictures from the Detroit Museum of Arts surveillance cameras.”

Marsh cast Vross a look that could have scraped paint off a wall. “Detective Vross took the initiative to conduct surveillance without bothering to let us know.”

Anya swallowed. She paged through the photographs. They showed Ferrer holding her hand. Ferrer kissing her. Ferrer with his arms around her back, fingers buried in her corset laces. She laid them carefully back on the desk, leaving greasy garlic-butter fingerprints on the margins. “Ferrer sent me an invitation to his art opening. I’ve been trying to get him to talk.”

“So, playing tonsil hockey with the chief suspect is your idea of interrogation?” Vross sneered. “Or did you make some quid pro quo arrangement? A little piece on the side for a piece of evidence?”

Anya stood up, knocking the chair back. She could feel Mimi uncoiling in her gut, awakened by her rage. She stabbed her finger into Vross’s pudgy chest. “I didn’t sleep with the suspect.”

“Yeah, well, you look real familiar with him from here.” Vross looked back at Marsh.

“This is why you should never let broads out of the typing pool. They can’t control themselves around men.”

Anya reached back and slugged him. She didn’t know if it was her own anger or Mimi’s influence, but it felt damn good to feel her knuckles splitting open Vross’s nose. He stumbled backward, hands clutching his face. Blood gushed between his fingers.

“I guess we can’t,” she growled at him.

“Lieutenant Kalinczyk,” Marsh barked. He put himself between Anya and Vross. “Stand down.”

Vross stabbed a bloody finger at her. “Bitch, I’m gonna charge you with assault on a police officer.”

Anya crossed her arms, concealing her bloody knuckles in the crease of her elbow. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but it had been worth it. “Really? You going to fess up to the boys that you let a little girl hit you? I doubt it.”

Vross came across the desk at her. Marsh blocked him with an elbow to the chest, shoving him back to the ground. Marsh stood over him in his perfectly starched shirt and loosened his tie. “Don’t make me mess up my shirt, Vross.”

Vross climbed to his feet and shoved past Marsh. He gave Anya a poisonous look and slammed out the door.

Anya righted her chair, then sank into it. She felt deflated and anxious, now that the wrath and adrenaline were draining away. She looked up at Marsh. It hurt her to disappoint him, because he’d always believed in her. “I’m sorry, Captain.”

Marsh looked at her the way a father looks at a daughter who failed algebra. “Look. I know that no one’s perfect in our line of work. We’ve got more than our fair share of addicts, drunks, psych cases, bullies, and sadists.” His eyes softened. “I don’t want to see you go through any of that. I don’t want to see you become a monster like Vross. You’re a good investigator. But you need to get your head screwed back on straight.”

He opened his hand. “Give me your badge and your gun, Kalinczyk. You’re off this case, on administrative leave until further notice.”

Her face burned in humiliation, and her hands were balled into fists so tight her nails cut into her palms. She handed her badge and gun over to him, mumbled another apology as she slipped out the door.

“And for Christ’s sake, stay away from Drake Ferrer,” Marsh called after her.

Anya pretended not to hear him.

Anya sat at the bar in the Devil’s Bathtub, staring forlornly into her orange juice. Sparky paced up and down the length of the polished bar like a caged tiger.

“Katie, I would really like to have something more powerful than this.”

Behind the bar, Katie shook her head. Her long blonde hair was braided into a series of complicated knots, the overall effect resembling a macramé pith helmet. It was very Viking. “No. No booze for the demonically possessed. That’s just giving Mimi a bigger opening to mess with your head. And your body.”

Renee sat on the stool beside her, nodding.
“It’s true. I once saw a guy with a demon
infection drink ’til he passed out. . . and then the demon took over. It wasn’t pretty.”

“What happened?”

Renee shrugged, rattling the beaded fringe of her dress.
“The demon thought it would be
fun to confess to the feds the names of every rumrunner the guy knew. The mob had him
rubbed out in less than a day. Poor sap didn’t know what hit him.”

The back door to the bar scraped open, and Anya heard the squeak of wheelchair wheels on the scarred wooden floor. Max pushed Ciro’s wheelchair across the room. The old man looked fragile as a husk, but at least he was sitting up. His eyes clouded when he saw Anya.

“Katie told me what happened. I’m so sorry. . .”

She slid off the bar stool and knelt beside the chair. Anya shook her head. “It’s okay, Ciro. And I’m sorry to bother you about this.” She bit her lip. This should be something she could take care of on her own, without having to ask others for help. She hated the feeling of being beholden to others, the vulnerability in the asking.

“Hush, child.” The old man’s hand brushed her face. “We’re going to take care of you.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, and she brushed them away. In the face of Ciro’s kindness, she couldn’t help but feel exhausted and humbled. “Thank you.”

In the doorway, Jules watched. His hands were jammed in his pockets and Anya could see the wrinkle in his brow. “It’s our fault that this happened, after all. I was. . . I was too busy looking out for the goals of the team, rather than the team itself. Now Brian’s in the hospital, and you’ve picked up a hitchhiker.” He looked away, and his voice was barely audible. “I pushed you guys too far, and I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, Jules. Really.” She was surprised at his declaration. Hell, she was startled at his presence here at all. She figured she’d burned her last bridge with Jules at the hospital.

Jules frowned. “I can listen to ghosts on tape, hear the smallest whispers of what they’re saying, but. . . I don’t hear live people so well. And I wasn’t listening very well to you, when you said you couldn’t do these things I asked.”

“We’re good, Jules, really.” Anya squirmed. “Can I at least buy you a beer?”

“Sure.” Jules climbed onto a bar stool. Max scrambled up beside him. Katie handed Jules a Detroit Lager from a microbrewery across town. She handed Max a can of pop. Max sulked.

“And as for you, young lady.” Ciro faced Anya. “Go get some rest while we plan.”

Anya blinked. “Are you putting me down for a nap, Ciro?”

“You’ll need the energy. Besides which, you know as well as we do that whatever you hear, the demon hears. We need to keep our strategy hidden from the demon, so it must be kept from you as well.”

Sparky climbed off the bar into Anya’s lap. His gill-fronds looked a little droopy. And, she had to admit, a nap sounded mighty appealing.

“I’ll tuck you in Ciro’s guest room.” Katie wiped her hands on a towel and came out from behind the bar. She led Anya up the creaky back stairs to Ciro’s apartments. She opened the door to a sunshine-filled room with antique wallpaper and a twin bed covered in a multicolored afghan. A window seat overlooked the street. Sunshine poured through the glass to a square on the bed.

Katie moved to draw the blinds, but Anya said, “That’s okay. I think Sparky and I would like to sleep in the sunshine.”

“That’s probably for the best. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” Katie quietly shut the door.

Anya crawled under the covers, which smelled like mothballs and cedar. Sparky stretched his full length out beside her, his pale, speckled belly raised to the sunshine. Within moments, snores tickled his gill-fronds.

From the corner of one half-shuttered eye, Anya spied Renee sitting in the window seat. The spirit of the singer hummed a dusky lullaby.

“Thank you, Renee.” For the first time in many years, Anya felt inexplicably
cared for.

“I’ll watch over you, while the others prepare,”
the ghost said.
“Now, sleep.”

Renee returned to her humming and Anya closed her eyes. The sunshine filtering behind her eyelids rendered her not into darkness, but the warm, red glow of sleep behind her eyes.

Anya dreamed she was sitting in the last pew at St. Florian’s church. No service was being held this late at night. Votive candles flickered near the altar, casting warm, moving light up to the darkness of the nave. She had the sense that this far back in the darkness, no one could see her. Not even God.

Ahead, in the first row, a woman sat before the votives. Her hair was coiffed in a 1950sstyle back-combed bouffant with a wide headband. From the edge of the pew, Anya glimpsed the hem of a polka-dotted skirt. When the woman lifted her hands to the back of the pew before her to pray, her hands were covered in white gloves.

A figure entered through the back door. Anya watched as the priest walked through the aisle, toward the woman. She recognized him as the young priest from the church, the one whose ghost had frantically warned her to give up the demon. But now he was solid and real, his shoes making sounds on the floor. This was what he had been, when he had been alive.

Anya followed him up the aisle. She noticed her feet didn’t touch the ground, that her presence was unknown to the priest and the woman.

The priest sat down beside the woman in the pew, at a respectful distance. He spoke to her, but Anya couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sound of blood pounding. Anya realized it wasn’t her pulse, but the priest’s. She could feel the itch of the collar around his neck, as if it were her own. The woman looked shyly away, then back again, her gloved hands gripping the pew in front of her. Anya could feel the priest’s hands sweating. In the back of his head, she could hear him reciting the rosary. Anya felt a twinge of panic, caged in the body of the priest. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. . . could only watch.

“We have to stop this,” the woman said. “My husband is beginning to suspect.”

Anya could feel the priest reaching for the woman. His fingers tangled in her perfectly coiffed hair and his mouth pressed against the woman’s. She yielded slowly, reluctantly, coiling her arms around his neck. She broke away moments later, her eyes dark and confused.

“We’ll be more discreet,” the priest promised, reaching for her hand.

“No.” She shook her head. “It has to stop. This will destroy him.”

“What if I left the church?” he said suddenly, desperately. “What if. . .?”

She lifted her head and looked at the priest. “But I can’t leave
him
. And I would not see you destroyed, either.” She stood, breaking free of the priest’s grasp on her wrist. She pressed her hand to his cheek in a moment of what looked like pity and walked away down the aisle of pews.

The priest sat alone, stunned and silent. Anya could feel the hollowness of his yearning, the aloneness settling over him like a fever. He rested his head against the back of the pew in front of him, but he couldn’t make his hands fit together to pray. Each time he tried, his fingers failed to lace together, like the south and north poles of a magnet. There were no prayers to resolve this. Anya felt the acid tang of that obsession rising in his throat. He couldn’t live without her.

And he
wouldn’t
live without her. The priest stumbled out of the pew, through the back hallways and into his office. Anya could feel the bile rising in him, the rage and despondency as he rifled through the desk drawer. His fingers closed around the cool blades of a pair of scissors.