Secrets of the Demon (16 page)
Read Secrets of the Demon Online
Authors: Diana Rowland
I put Roger out of my mind for the moment and returned my attention to the crime scene here. I’d yet to get a good look at the body and I hadn’t wanted to do so with Roger around.
The bushes ringing the building were high and deep, and it wasn’t easy getting to where I could even see the body up close. It would have probably been another week before the body had been found, and then only if someone decided to investigate the smell. I didn’t want to mangle the bushes too badly, but I managed to squeeze through enough so that I could get a peek. Not that the effort and scratches were worth it. He was quite clearly dead, and had been so for several days. He had on dark blue pants and a leather bomber-style jacket over a dress shirt that had once been white, though blood and dirt now marred it. I could see a few maggots around the eyes and nose. A couple more days and his face would have been barely visible beneath the carpet of maggots.
I extricated myself from the hedge in time to see my sergeant get out of his car and head my way.
“Got your warrant. Search away. You do know this was supposed to be a simple do-nothing case?” Crawford said with a sour look as I brushed leaves off my pants.
“It’s my own fault,” I said with a sigh.
He regarded me with narrowed eyes.
“I made the mistake this morning of saying that things were pretty slow right now.” I gave an apologetic shrug.
“God almighty, are you nuts?” He rolled his eyes. “So, do you figure he took a dive out the window?”
“He took a dive all right, but I think he was helped along.”
He looked at me sharply. “Not a suicide?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” Together we headed upstairs to the office. I unlocked the door with Roger’s key, then walked to the window, carefully avoiding the thin smear of dirt on the floor.
“The windows prop open and have to be pulled shut,” I said. “But it was shut—even though it wasn’t latched. I doubt he climbed out, hovered for long enough to push it closed, and then plummeted down.”
Crawford frowned. “No way the wind could have pushed it closed?”
“I don’t think it’s likely.”
“Well then, we’ll treat it like a homicide unless some other evidence to the contrary comes along.”
I gave a slow nod as I stepped back out into the hallway. “It’s a funny coincidence too ...”
“What’s that?”
I looked up as Jill exited the elevator with her case in her hand and camera slung around her neck.
“Bitch, you suck,” she grumbled with a good-natured gleam in her eye. “Two scenes for the price of one?”
“I hate for you to get bored,” I replied. “And can you please collect a sample of the dirt at the base of the window?”
She nodded and proceeded on in, too used to me to question any of my strange requests. But Crawford gave me a funny look.
“What’s so special about the dirt?” he asked.
“I don’t know if there is,” I replied glibly. “But the rest of the floor seems pretty clean, so it might be from the attacker’s shoes. Can’t hurt to collect it.”
He seemed content with the answer, to my relief. “So, what’s a funny coincidence?” he asked, dragging me back to the subject from before Jill arrived.
“Oh, right. Well, the reporting person is Roger Peeler, who also happens to be the drummer in Lida Moran’s band.” Too bad I couldn’t tell him about the fact that I was fairly positive that Lida and Vic were attacked by the same sort of creature.
“What about the victim? Any connection there?”
“Not that I know of,” I replied. “But I haven’t had a chance to look it into yet.” I then explained how Roger was in the habit of using Vic’s private gym.
“Hunh. That’s interesting.” He pursed his lips, silent for several heartbeats. “It looks like you have a lot of digging ahead of you.”
“Yay. Woo,” I replied, deadpan.
“Don’t bitch about digging,” Jill said from across the room as she snapped pictures. “I’m the one who was asked to pick up
dirt
.”
dirt
.”
Crawford glanced at me. “Is she always such a whiner?”
“Always,” I said with a deep sigh. “It’s embarrassing.”
“I heard that!” Jill mock-snarled.
He chuckled. “I think I need to leave before this gets bloody.”
“Smart man. I’m going to go through the office and see if anything leaps out as a motive,” I said.
“Sounds good,” he said. “I’ll see about talking to others in the building.”
“Can you check and see if there’s any video surveillance?” I wasn’t too confident that there would be. The building was old and decrepit, and I seriously doubted that any of the cameras still functioned properly.
“Will do.” He turned to head out.
“Oh, and Sarge ... ?”
He pivoted back to me while I put on my best hopeful /pleading expression.
“Kara, that expression doesn’t work on you,” he said with a glower. “It looks like you have gas. Just tell me how you want to add to my workload.”
I snickered. “Well, I’d like to take a look through the victim’s residence. But, at the rate I’m going here I might not be done until late, and I’d feel awful if I had to call you out in the middle of the night if I found something that needed your expertise.”
“Yes, I’ll take care of getting the search warrant,” he grumbled, muttering dark invectives about worthless investigators under his breath as he left the room.
“Love you too, Sarge!” I called after him cheerily. I swung back to Jill. “You done with your pictures?”
She nodded as she unslung her camera. “Just finished. You need to do something?”
“Can you go ahead and collect the sample of dirt? I want to check something.” I couldn’t do this with Crawford in the room.
Jill pulled on gloves and scraped a portion of the dirt into an envelope, then stepped back. I crouched and placed my hand on the dirt that remained, shifting into othersight. Taking a steadying breath, I allowed the feel of the odd resonance to hum through me.
“It’s the same as the thing that attacked Lida Moran,” I murmured.
She crouched beside me. “A monster made of
dirt.
The golem.”
dirt.
The golem.”
“Or something similar.” Shifting back to normal sight, I stood and pulled on gloves, then moved over to the desk and began opening drawers. Boring tax forms, boring letters, boring financial statements. I shuddered as a flashback from my time in white collar crimes washed over me. Too many hours spent poring over tedious paperwork ...
“Whoa,” I said, slowly pulling a paper from the top drawer
Jill glanced at me from where she was dusting the window for prints. “Got something?”
“Not sure,” I admitted. “These are photocopies of checks written to Victor Kerry ... and written by Adam Taylor, manager of Ether Madhouse.”
She frowned and came over to peer at the paper. It showed the fronts and backs of three checks, each for five thousand dollars, and each stamped with NSF. I looked to see if there was any notation for what the checks had been for, but the lines on the checks were blank. However, the back of the paper had two brief lines of handwriting: A.T. $15,000. R.P. $15,000.
R.P? Roger Peeler?
“Adam Taylor already has several outstanding bad check warrants,” I informed her.
“Hmm.” Jill furrowed her brow in thought. “So maybe Adam came up here and they fought and he chucked ol’ Vic here out the window with his trusty golem?”
“Quite possible,” I said. “Though these checks are dated from only a few weeks ago, and I don’t remember seeing any warrants for this amount. But that certainly doesn’t rule out a confrontation.” I set the paper aside and continued rifling through the drawers and file cabinets, but nothing else non-boring leaped out. A laptop case was propped against the desk, and I confirmed that there was actually a laptop within it. “Let’s take this as well,” I said.
“Sounds good. I’m finished up here,” Jill announced as she gathered up her case and camera. “If you’ll carry the laptop down, I’ll take it to the lab and submit it for processing.”
I pushed the desk drawers closed and picked up the laptop case. “Lemme give Ryan a call and tell him what’s going on.”
“Meet you downstairs.”
I nodded to her then called Ryan. “So, get this,” I said after he answered. “I think I have a homicide where the victim was thrown out a window by the same thing that attacked Lida. Or rather, the same type of thing.” I gave him a quick synopsis of what I had and who the victim was. “At first I thought that maybe Vic was in the wrong place at the wrong time and that Roger was really the target since he often worked out up here, but then I found copies of some NSF checks from Adam Taylor to Mr. Kerry.”
Ryan made a
hmmphing
noise. “You sure don’t go for the simple cases, do you?”
hmmphing
noise. “You sure don’t go for the simple cases, do you?”
I laughed. “Where’s the fun in that? But it’s also possible that the thing with the checks is totally unrelated, and that the entire band is being targeted, one by one.
But
even if there’s no connection,” I continued, “now we have a legitimate reason to go talk to Mr. Taylor.”
But
even if there’s no connection,” I continued, “now we have a legitimate reason to go talk to Mr. Taylor.”
“Did I miss something?” he said, sounding puzzled. “Why do we need a ‘legitimate reason’?” I could hear the quote marks in his voice.
“Oh, that’s right,” I replied, a note of acid creeping in. “I haven’t spoken to you yet today to bring you up to speed on Ben Moran speaking to the chief and the mayor.”
“Do tell,” he growled.
I gave him the gist of my meeting with the chief.
“I like your chief,” Ryan said gruffly after I finished.
I smiled. “Yeah, he’s all right. But now that I have a possible homicide, all bets are off. Ether Madhouse is rehearsing at Adam’s studio every night this week, and Ben Moran and the mayor can kiss my ass.”
“You’re becoming quite the rebel, aren’t you?” he said with a laugh.
“You feds are rubbing off on me.”
“About damn time. So did you want to hit the rehearsal tonight?”
Grimacing, I glanced at my watch. “Ugh. It’s four already? I don’t think I’ll be able to tonight. I have no idea how much longer I’ll be here. I want to run a search of the victim’s residence tonight as well.” Sleep? Who needed sleep?
“Stop being coy. I know how much you love all of that paperwork.” I could hear the grin in his voice.
“Wow, we have a bad connection. I’ll touch base with you later on, but I think that further harassment of Lida Moran and the band will have to wait until tomorrow.”
“That’s cool. Zack’s in New Orleans right now anyway, picking up some paperwork from the bureau office there.”
“Maybe we should sic Zack on Lida. She’ll melt beneath his charms,” I said, laughing.
“As if he needs any more reason to be cocky.”
Chapter 13
I locked the office and returned downstairs right as the coroner’s black van pulled up. I suppressed a laugh as I saw the driver exiting the van with a pair of lopping shears in his hand. Sarge had obviously tipped off the coroner’s office as to the inaccessibility of the body.
Jill was finished with her pictures of the area, including shots of the exterior of the building. She retreated to give the van driver access to the hedge, but he hesitated, eyeing the thick bushes. He slid a hopeful glance to me.
“Any chance you have a chainsaw in your car?” he asked.
I had to grin. “Sorry!”
“Worth a try,” he said with a rueful smile as he stepped forward, lopping shears at the ready. It took him several minutes to hack his way through the hedge, and I had to agree that a chainsaw would have been more efficient. The damage to the bushes would have been about the same.
Once the brush was cleared away, Jill stepped forward to take more pictures, and then I had the chance to take a decent look at the victim. Unfortunately my better view of the body didn’t give me any new and fascinating insights. He was still bloated and maggoty. No previously unseen bullet wounds or arcane symbols. But I took a mental note of the fact that he was still wearing his jacket. He’d probably been attacked as soon as he arrived at the office in the morning or right when he was leaving.
The coroner’s personnel loaded the body into the body bag and onto the stretcher, then dutifully carted him off to the morgue.
“All right, chick,” Jill said. “I’m done with my part, and I’ve seen you too much today. I’m gonna hit the road.”
“Love you too, bitch,” I replied, smiling.
She grinned and headed to her van. I helped the officer take the tape down, then made my way to the other side of the building where I’d left my car.
A chill wind hit me as I turned the corner, briefly robbing me of breath in shock at the abrupt change in temperature. It was a mild day, but that blast of air felt practically arctic. It faded as soon as it hit me, leaving behind an eerie calm that sent the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.
That feels like the wind from a summoning.
The thought snaked through my head even as a whisper of arcane brushed past me.
That feels like the wind from a summoning.
The thought snaked through my head even as a whisper of arcane brushed past me.
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