Fallen Angels 03 - Envy (23 page)

Jim frowned and eased up. “Dog?”

As a little happy bark rippled over to him, it was clear that what he was seeing was not a mirage: More than the information his eyes provided, in his chest, he knew that was his animal.

“What the hel are you doing here?”

As the wiry-haired stray came over, his limp hampered him only a bit, and Jim was abruptly reminded of the first day he’d met the dog at that job site.

Where Jim had died for the first time.

That had been the start of it al , hadn’t it. And he’d had no idea where it was going to take him.

Sinking down on his haunches, he gave Dog some good stroking. “Are Eddie and Adrian here?”

The chuff that came back at him seemed like a “negs” if he’d ever heard it.

“Wel , I’m glad you are.”

Dog planted his butt on the ground at Jim’s feet. Even though the creature was smal er than him by about a hundred and ninety pounds and nearly six feet, Jim had the sense that he was being protected, not the other way around.

“You’re not real y a dog, are you.”

There was a stretch of silence. Then another chuff—which seemed rather noncommittal.

“Didn’t think so. You going to tel me where you went?” The animal sneezed and shook its head. “Okay, I respect your privacy.”

That got him a paw on the leg.

Jim parked it on the grass and stroked Dog’s rough, scratchy fur. Refocusing on the dinner that he could see but not eat, on conversation he could witness but not hear, on warmth he could sense but not feel, he knew he was nonetheless not alone.

And as rain started to fal , he was surprised at how much that mattered.

G
ary Peters had always thought he was a lot like his name: nothing special. There were mil ions of Garys in the nation—same for the Peters thing—and his physical appearance was no more dynamic. He’d somehow managed to avoid a beer gut, but his hair was thinning, and now that he was creeping up on the big four-oh, he was at the crossroads of buzzing the stuff al off. Face was mashed potato white, eyes were dirt brown, and it was debatable whether he had any jawline—or whether he was just neck from cheek to col arbone.

Bottom line? He was the flyover guy, the one women didn’t see between the spanked-out metrosexuals and the athletes and the Richie Riches.

Which was why the sight of Britnae hipping into his desk and looking at him like . . . wel , like
that
. . . was a bit of a shocker.

“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “What were you saying?”

She leaned in . . . and good God, those breasts . . .

When she eased back again, he had a feeling that she’d spoken, but he had no idea what—“ ’Scuse me, phone.” He reached over and picked up the receiver. “Caldwel Police Department—intake. Yup. Uh-huh. Yeah, he’s booked and processed. Yeah, sure—I’l get a message to him that you’l be in in the morning.”

He made some notations in the log and turned his attention back to Britnae. Who’d decided to sit up on the corner she’d perched against.

Her skirt had been smal to begin with. Now he believed it was a micromini.“Ah . . . what?” he said.

“I asked you when your break is.”

“Oh, sorry.” For chrissakes, that was like getting “what’s your name?” wrong. “Not for a while. Hey, don’t you usual y go home at five?”

“I got stuck undoing a payrol screwup.” As she pouted, her already puffy lower lip went right into pil ow territory. “It’s so unfair—and I have another hour ahead of me, at least, and it’s so late.”

He glanced at his clock. Eight p.m. He’d just started his new ten-hour shift of checking in prisoners and evidence, so this was early for him. Then again, he got to go home at six in the morning, and her department had to be here at eight thirty a.m.

She leaned in again. “Is it true that al of the Kroner stuff is here?”

“You mean upstairs in Evidence? Yeah, it is.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Some of it.”

“Real y?”

There was something total y cool about the way her eyes widened a little and her hand went to the base of her throat.

“It’s pretty nasty,” he added, feeling his chest get bigger.

“Like . . . what is it?”

Her hesitation told him that she wanted to know, but didn’t at the same time. “Bits and pieces . . . if you get my drift.”

Her voice dropped to a mere whisper. “Wil you take me in there?”

“To the Evidence room? Oh, yeah, no, I can’t. It’s only for authorized personnel.”

“But you’re authorized, aren’t you.”

“And I’d like to keep my job.”

“Who would know?” She tilted forward even farther. To the point where he imagined that if he sat up a little straighter, they’d be kissing.

Afraid of making a fool out of himself, he moved away, pushing his chair back.

“I wouldn’t tel ,” she whispered.

“It’s not so simple. You have to sign in and out, and there are security cameras. It’s not like a break room.”

He could hear the petulance in his own voice, and abruptly despised his balding, half-assed self. Maybe this was the reason he never got laid.

“But you could get me in . . . if you wanted to.” Her lips were absolutely mesmerizing, moving slowly as she enunciated the words. “Right? I know you could, if you wanted to. And I wouldn’t touch anything.”

God, how strange was this? He’d expected to come into work and just do his thing like he did every night. But here it was, this . . . crossroads.

Did he Gary Peters it? Or did he grow a set and actual y
do
something with this hot chick?

“You know what? Let’s go.”

He stood up and double-checked that his keys were on his belt—which, of course, they were. And what do you know, he had a reason to go up to the third floor. During the night shift, there was only a skeleton crew on at HQ, so he was the one responsible for walking any stuff upstairs—and Hicks and Rodriguez had just brought in two grams of pot that had been sealed and signed for.

“Oh, my God,” she said, leaping off the desk. “For real?”

His chest went back to feeling thick rather than hol ow. “Yeah. Come on.”

He put up his break sign, the one that told people to hit him up on his remote if they needed to book anyone or log in evidence, and then he opened the door for her.

As she passed by and he smel ed her perfume, he felt tal er than he had been when he’d come into work, and it was great. And he knew there was a real y good chance of getting away with this. The Evidence staff had been working around the clock for days on the Kroner stuff, but they’d final y decided they needed to sleep, so there would be no one up there. And damn right Britnae wasn’t going to touch anything—he was going to make sure of that—so there was going to be no need for anyone to check the security tapes.

Risky? Little bit. But at worst, they’d reprimand him—he had the cleanest record for attendance and performance of anyone in intake. Because he had no life. And Britnae was never going to approach him again.

Sometimes you just had to be something other than a Gary Peters behind the desk—

Britnae jumped up and hugged him. “You are so cool!”

“Ah . . . you’re welcome.”

Shit, what a dumb ass he was. And thank God she didn’t hold onto him for long because he nearly fainted.

Except you know what, he did feel cool as he led the way, taking her up in the elevator to the second floor and then insisting, like he was 007, that they hit the stairs for the rest of the way. At the top landing, he opened the fire exit, and listened. Nothing. Not even cleaning people. And down at the end of the hal , the lights in the forensics lab were off.

“I’ve never been up here before,” Britnae whispered into his sleeve as she gripped his arm.

“I’l take care of you. Come on.”

They tiptoed down the hal to a heavy steel door marked EVIDENCE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Using his keys, he unlocked the thing and pushed the way into an anteroom where the check-in was. His nerves perked up as he went over to the desk where the receptionist sat during normal business hours, but as he logged in and registered, he knew he wasn’t going to turn back now.

“Oh, my God, I’m so excited!” As Britnae put her hands on his upper arm and leaned into him, like he was her protector, he didn’t bother hiding his smile, because she couldn’t see his face.

This was . . . very cool, he thought as he started to enter the cannabis into the system.

As Devina rubbed herself against the officer’s body, she did this sad sack Gary Peters guy a favor by putting the security camera in the corner to sleep. It was fun to pretend to be the office ditz, and the idiot desk jockey was eating up the lie, but the ruse needed to begin and end with the pair of them tonight.

He wasn’t going to remember this tomorrow morning: In order for this to work, the status quo had to be preserved.

“Okay, let’s go in,” the guy said as he logged off the computer.

Using Britnae’s high-pitched voice and Kardashian, fake-ass, California pronunciation, she said, “Oh, my God, I’m soooo psyched. This is too real!”

Blah, blah, blah . . .but she got the tone right, because she’d been casing headquarters for quite a while now. And it wasn’t like the vocabulary was a stretch—add OMG to any one noun and one verb and that was that.

Over at the second bolted steel door, Gary Peters swiped his pass card through the reader on the wal , and then the lock disengaged with a
clunk
.

“You ready?” he said, al Big Man.

“I don’t know . . . I mean, yes!”

She bounced a couple of times and then resumed breasticulating on his arm as she held his hand. And while he soaked up the show, she thought, What a dumbass.

The instant they walked inside the massive storage facility, the cat-and-mouse routine took a backseat to her mission. On some level, she was pissed off at this diversion, but then again, she supposed she would have had to do something like this anyway.

Jim Heron’s disappearance was forcing her hand, though, and she hated that.

She just couldn’t fucking believe there was no sign of him. First time that had happened with an angel, and she knew only one thing for sure—he hadn’t backed out, or given up. Not in his nature. The war was stil going on, and she had a soul to take over—and there were ways of guaranteeing that he showed himself.

The guard led her down the long rows of floor-to-ceiling shelving that were set at various heights and fil ed with boxes and bags of an incalculable variety of shapes and sizes. Everything was clearly cataloged and indexed, little hanging tags and mounted alpha-numerical signs delineating some sort of system.

What a col ection. What organization . . .

Devina had to stop and take it al in. “This is
amazing
.”

The idiot officer got al proud and shit, even though he was just a cog that worked in the larger machine. “There are tens of thousands of pieces of evidence here at any given time. Everything is referenced by case number and logged into the computer so we can find things efficiently.” He started walking again, heading for the recesses of the place. “There are exceptions, though, like with Kroner, because there’s just so much associated with the case.”

As she fol owed, she stared up and around at al the objects. What. A. Turn-on.

Al the way in the back, there was a bank of empty tables with chairs, like the place was a cafeteria serving up inanimate objects for consumption.

“Detectives and officers are al owed to come in and take more pictures or reexamine things or pul evidence for court. The lab also takes the objects down the hal from time to time, but they have to return the evidence. Kroner’s stuff is over here. Do
not
touch anything.”

Around the back of a six-foot-tal partition, there was a temporary workstation set up with tables, chairs, computer and photographic equipment, as wel as bins of empty plastic bags and rol s of adhesive labels. But that wasn’t the interesting stuff. Running along low-slung shelves that were eight or nine feet long, there was a lineup of bar-coded bags that had jars and jewelry and other things in them.

Her little minion had been a busy, busy boy, hadn’t he.

“Usual y, evidence is logged in down at intake, or in the lab if it’s human remains, but there was so much taken from that impounded truck, they had to set up a temporary processing unit here. Al the tissuamples were done first, because they were worried about preserving them—but it turned out Kroner knew exactly what to keep the stuff in.”

Of course he had. He wanted to have parts of his victims with him always.

“There’s a lot of other objects here.” The officer lifted a white sheet that covered a huge, shal ow box.

Ah, yes, exactly what she had hoped to find—a tangle of T-shirts, jewelry, purses, hair ties, and other personal effects.

Taking it al in, she felt truly, deeply sorry for Kroner. She knew exactly where his obsession was coming from, the way you didn’t want to lose what you had worked so hard for, the way you treasured your connection with the objects. And it was even more difficult for him, because unlike herself, he didn’t have a way to keep his victims forever—and now he had lost his col ection.

Abruptly, Devina struggled for breath.

He had
lost
his precious objects, and here they were, under the aegis of humans who touched them and recataloged them and might possibly, someday in the far future, throw them away.

“Britnae? Are you okay?”

The officer appeared right by her side, hitching a hold on the image of the secretary’s arm.

“Sit down,” she heard him say from a distance.

As the room started to spin, Devina did what she was told and put her head between the knees that were not her own. Throwing out a palm, she gripped the edge of the table as if she could hold on to consciousness that way.

“Shit, shit . . . here, let me get you some cool water.”

As the officer shot off, his footfal s went at a dead run down the stacks, and she knew she didn’t have a lot of time. With a shaking, clammy hand, she took out the gold earring she had brought with her from her own col ection. Tears waved across her vision as she realized anew that she was going to have to give the thing up if she wanted to progress this round with Heron—and DelVecchio.